https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/392608
Footage published by the IDF Arabic language spokesman shows the brutal public beating of Gazan civilians who attempted to procure food from Hamas-controlled storehouses.
Friday, July 5, 2024
Biden moves into tie with Trump in new survey
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753402-biden-trump-race-white-house-poll/
Each candidate received 40 percent support in the poll. That’s a 2-point improvement for Biden, who trailed Trump 41 percent to 39 percent in an identical poll in mid-June. A fifth of respondents were undecided.
The results for Biden could lessen concerns about his candidacy after a poor debate performance last week. A rising number of Democrats have called on Biden to leave the presidential campaign and let another candidate lead the ticket in November.
Supreme Court’s weakening of public corruption safeguards sparks alarm
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4754860-supreme-court-decision-bribery-law-corruption/
Ethics and legal experts warn that the Supreme Court has struck a serious blow to prosecutors’ ability to crack down on the abuse of power and public corruption.
And that’s ringing alarm bells when Donald Trump, who was convicted in May by a Manhattan jury on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records and who was hit with a $355 million penalty in a civil fraud trial in February, is leading in the presidential race.
A New Report Adds Evidence That Trump Was a Russian Asset
Donald Trump was a tool in a long-running Russian campaign to weaken the United States. That’s been documented in Republican-led investigative reports, and now it has been updated with new evidence, thanks to the U.S. Intelligence Community’s assessment of the 2020 election. The report, drafted by the CIA, the FBI, and several other agencies, was released in unclassified form on Tuesday, but it was presented in classified form on Jan. 7. In other words, it was compiled, written, and edited during Trump’s administration. It destroys his lies about the election, and it exposes him as a Russian asset.
Senate Russia report proves Trump collusion was very real. But do voters care?
Far from a hoax, as the president so often claimed, the report reveals how the Trump campaign willingly engaged with Russian operatives implementing the influence effort. For instance, the report exposes interactions and information exchanged between Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik and then-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. According to the report, campaign figures “presented attractive targets for foreign influence, creating notable counterintelligence vulnerabilities.” (Manafort was later convicted of tax and bank fraud.)
All of Trump’s Russia Ties, in 7 Charts
These charts illustrate dozens of those links, including meetings between Russian officials and members of Trump’s campaign and administration; his daughter’s ties to Putin’s friends; Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant; and his short-lived mixed martial arts venture with one of Putin’s favorite athletes. The solid lines mark established facts, while dotted ones represent speculative or unproven connections.
Links between Trump associates and Russian officials
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Links_between_Trump_associates_and_Russian_officials
By April 19, 2019, The New York Times had documented that "Donald J. Trump and 18 of his associates had at least 140 contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, during the 2016 campaign and presidential transition."[16]
Segula- Rav Moshe Shapiro
From Looking into the Sun by Rabbi Menachem Nissel published by Feldheim
Rav Moshe explained that segulos are not a magical shortcut. The avodah (hard work) for parnassa includes tefillah, maasim tovim, and working on emunah. If you've worked on these things, the heavenly shefa can come pouring down. 1he segulah can then be a vessel to contain them.
Rav Shlomo pressed on. "What did Rav Moshe think of the new custom where Ashkenazic men do pesichah (opening the Ark)when their wives are in their ninth month?" Rav Shlomo's greatgrandfather,Rav Shimon Schwab, did not approve of the custom. (Note: The custom is mentioned in the Chida, Avodas Hakodesh 1:90.)
Rav Moshe replied that pesichah all year round unleashes rachamim min haShamayim. However, to do so without kavanah and tefillah is a maaseh kof b'alma, nothing more than the actions of a monkey.
Not all my friends received such positive responses. When asked about the Yerushalmi segulah of going to the Kosel for forty days, Rav Moshe responded with, "Why can't you just daven?" When a close talmid suggested a certain segulah, Rav Moshe gave him a piercing look and said, "Why don't you just hang up a horseshoe?"
Trump wasn’t exonerated by the presidential immunity ruling, even though he says he was
Former President Donald Trump on Tuesday misrepresented in a social media post what the U.S. Supreme Court’s Monday ruling on presidential immunity means for his civil and criminal cases.
“TOTAL EXONERATION!” he wrote in the post on his Truth Social platform. “It is clear that the Supreme Court’s Brilliantly Written and Historic Decision ENDS all of Crooked Joe Biden’s Witch Hunts against me, including the WHITE HOUSE AND DOJ INSPIRED CIVIL HOAXES in New York.”
Thursday, July 4, 2024
Justices claim immunity ruling allows presidents to poison staff, have Navy SEALs kill political rivals
But although the majority opinion from Chief Justice John Roberts explicitly stated that the president "is not above the law" and immunity is only a factor when it involves an "official act" — the justices sent the case back to lower courts to determine if the acts at the center of Trump's case were "official" — the ruling raised a series of frightening possibilities, according to the trio of dissenting justices.
Trump immunity decision shows that conservative ‘originalism’ is a farce
Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts announced that presidents have a presumption of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. He identified a handful of obvious official acts that underpin Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Donald Trump for his actions relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which must therefore now be excised from the case — while at the same time refusing to draw any lines for unofficial acts, instead punting that question to the lower courts for the justices to resolve in an inevitable appeal another day
Trump’s attorney argues that fake elector scheme falls under 'official acts' of president
In an interview with CNN, the attorney, Will Scharf, also argued that Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election qualify as official acts, which would shield the former president from prosecution.
Trump's Lawyers Claim paying Hush Money to PornStar in White House is Core Presidential duty
Trump’s lawyers say jurors should not have heard the Hicks testimony, and other evidence from the ex-president’s stint in the White House that they claim unfairly influenced the jury.
What is an ‘official’ act, and how will a judge interpret Trump’s immunity?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/07/02/official-act-trump-immunity-trial-judge/
The Supreme Court sent Trump’s federal Jan. 6 case back to a trial judge to decide three questions: Which alleged acts by Trump charged by special counsel Jack Smith fall under the executive branch’s exclusive constitutional authority and are therefore immune from prosecution? Which are official acts but prosecutable because they pose no danger of intruding on the power or function of the presidency? And what acts can be prosecuted because they involve private conduct, such as actions taken by Trump as a candidate, not as an officeholder?
Garnel disagrees with this
Garnel IronheartJuly 4, 2024 at 5:28 PM
The Constitution defines what official acts are available to the President. He cannot push someone into traffic and claim it's an official act. Kal v'chomer activating a SEAL team to go and assassinate an American citizen who is no objective threat to the country.
The hysteria surrounding this ruling is not unlike claiming Jews poisoned the local well.
Project 2025 Leader Unveils Plan for Life After Second American Revolution
https://www.newsweek.com/project-2025-heritage-foundation-republicans-american-revolution-1920870
In a statement to Newsweek, Roberts echoed the remarks he made on X and said, "Unfortunately, it's the Left that has a long history of violence, so it's up to them to allow a peaceful transfer of power. As we saw in 2020, organized groups on the Left have the capacity to carry out violent riots, take over cities, and weaponize taxpayer-funded agencies to target their political opponents."
Roberts outlined how the ruling might help transform the federal government with conservative policy proposals, should Donald Trump win the White House in November and adopt Project 2025. The Project 2025 website states that it is a presidential transition project seeking to "build on four pillars that will, collectively, pave the way for an effective conservative administration: a policy agenda, personnel, training, and a 180-day playbook."
Can the President Send SEAL Team Six to Assassinate His Rival? After Monday, Yes.
But as Justice Sonia Sotomayor explained in her dissent, the lesson from Nixon is that when presidents use their power to commit official acts in pursuit of a criminal scheme, that is when we should be most concerned about their conduct and most eager for them to face accountability. Because that is when their criminal conduct poses the most heightened threat to democracy. If the president can take this immense power we entrust him with and manipulate it for corrupt ends—knowing he will never face accountability—then we have fundamentally changed the nature of what the presidency is. He is no longer a person who is elected by the people to represent them for four years. He is an emperor who walks into office, surveys his new powers, and gets to decide how to use them for his own corrupt advantage—to enrich himself, to entrench his authority, to prevent the peaceful transition to power, to even execute his rivals. I just think that is exactly the opposite of how the executive power had been understood until Monday morning. And I find myself baffled that six justices would say that presidential accountability is now constitutionally prohibited rather than constitutionally required
Fauci says he has ‘no doubt’ Biden is capable of continuing as president
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/4754808-fauci-no-doubt-biden-capable-as-president/
He called Biden “very probing in his questions, very analytical, very calm about things,” and said during briefings, Biden always asked “very relevant questions.”
Fauci continued, “So my interactions with him, I have to say, have been very, very positive, in every way.”
Conservative Heritage leader: ‘Second American Revolution’ will be bloodless ‘if the left allows it to be’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4753439-heritage-leader-second-american-revolution/
The leader of conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation argued the Supreme Court’s ruling on presidential immunity will reinforce a “second American Revolution,” which he said would “remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”
Wednesday, July 3, 2024
Trump attorney argues ‘fake electors’ scheme was an ‘official act’
Trump attorney Will Scharf told CNN Monday night that some acts alleged in the former president’s federal election subversion indictment do constitute private conduct but the effort to put forth slates of alternate electors in 2020 from key battleground states is not one of them.
“We believe the assembly of those alternate slates of electors was an official act of the presidency,” Scharf said, noting the Supreme Court left that question for lower courts to decide.
John Dean says Nixon ‘would have survived’ Watergate under immunity ruling
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4750581-supreme-court-immunity-nixon/
John Dean, former White House counsel for the Nixon administration, said he believes former President Nixon “would have survived” the Watergate scandal if the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling issued Monday, which largely shields former presidents from criminal prosecution for actions in office, existed at the time.
Not Responding to Embarrassment Gives power of Beracha?
There is a widespread claim that not responding when someone insults or embarrasses you gives you the power of Beracha
Does anyone know its source?
I have been told it comes from the statement "toleh eretz al blima" but can find nothing, it is also claimed the following is the source but I don't see how?
Chullin (89a)With regard to that verse, Rabbi Ile’a says: The world endures only in the merit of one who restrains [shebolem] himself during a quarrel, as it is stated: “He hangs the earth upon nothing [belima]. Rabbi Abbahu says: The world endures only in the merit of one who renders himself as if he were non-existent, as it is stated: “And underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27), i.e., one who considers himself to be underneath everything else is the everlasting arm that upholds the world.
Rambam (Sanhedrin 26:06) Although a judge or a nasi has the right to look past affronts to his honor, he cannot look past being cursed. Similarly, with regard to other people, even though the person who was cursed is prepared to look past the matter, the person who uttered the curse is lashed, for he committed a transgression and incurred liability. If, however, a person is obligated to be placed under a ban of ostracism, because he conducted himself in an unbridled manner in court, and the judges desire to look past the affront to their honor and not impose a ban of ostracism, they have that license, provided it will not lead to a decline in the honor of the Creator. For example, people at large were repudiating the words of the Torah and the judges. Since the people overstepped the bounds, the court must act firmly and punish as they see necessary.
Tuesday, July 2, 2024
Donald Trump Says Fake Electors Scheme Was 'Official Act'
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-fake-electors-scheme-supreme-court-1919928
Donald Trump lawyer has said that an alleged fake elector scheme was an "official act" and so should be immune from prosecution in Trump's federal election interference case.
Trump's team is alleged to have created and submitted fraudulent certificates to falsely claim Trump had won the Electoral College vote in certain states to disrupt President Joe Biden's victory.
Johnson dismisses Democratic ‘hyperbole’ over immunity ruling: ‘It’s madness’
https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4750970-house-speaker-dismisses-presidential-immunity-fears/
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Monday shrugged off Democrats’ concern over the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity ruling, calling their fears of future presidential criminality “madness.”
“Look, there’s all sorts of hyperbole tonight…and just this, fantastical, these hypotheticals they’ve made up [that] future presidents are going to turn into assassins and all the rest,” Johnson said Monday in an interview on Fox News. “It’s madness.”
“Listen, remember this. The president and vice president are the only two officers in our constitutional system that are elected by all the people, no one who is elected to that office going to be prone to this kind of crazy criminal activity,” Johnson added.
Trump’s Assassination Fantasy Has a Darker Purpose
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/05/trump-biden-assassination-fbi/678476/
Trump has a way of projecting his own vices onto others. His view of presidential power is absolute—to the point that his lawyer recently argued before the Supreme Court that ordering the military to assassinate a political rival “could well be an official act.” There is probably some limiting principle to this particular argument, but the fact that the issue is even under discussion is not a good sign for our democracy. Perhaps he believes that Biden was out to shoot him because he thinks that’s an order that presidents can freely give.
The Supreme Court’s disastrous Trump immunity decision, explained
https://www.vox.com/scotus/358292/supreme-court-trump-immunity-dictatorship
Roberts’s opinion in Trump, however, seems to go even further than Trump’s lawyer did. The Constitution, after all, states that the president “shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” So, if presidential authority is “conclusive and preclusive” when presidents exercise their constitutionally granted powers, the Court appears to have ruled that yes, Trump could order the military to assassinate one of his political opponents. And nothing can be done to him for it.
Macron’s implicit endorsement of ‘antisemitic,’ ‘pro-Hamas’ far left shocks French Jews
Macron, who will remain president regardless of the parliamentary electoral results, “just endorsed a party controlled by pro-Hamas” forces, Yohann Taieb, a French-Jewish journalist, wrote on X on Monday. The Jewish groups that endorsed him were “being taken for a ride,” Taieb added.
This sentiment, shared by many French Jews, stems from a series of unusual choices by Macron throughout one of the most tumultuous political episodes in France’s recent history.
Hypothetical SEAL Team 6 political assassination resurfaces in Supreme Court presidential immunity dissent
In their dissents, both Sotomayor and Jackson addressed the question of whether a president would have immunity from criminal prosecution for acts of murder -- including ordering the assassination of a political rival.
"This new official-acts immunity now 'lies about like a loaded weapon' for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation," Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
When the president "uses his official powers in any way, under the majority's reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution," she continued. "Orders the Navy's Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune."
I Saw the Grim Brutality of a Conservative Supreme Court Close Up
As Justice Sotomayor began to read her dissent, the atmosphere in the courtroom grew palpably more tense. In a powerful dissent joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan, Sotomayor called out the majority’s lack of legal reasoning, writing: “[a]rgument by argument, the majority invents immunity through brute force” and calling the majority’s conclusions “utterly indefensible.”
Supreme court ruling would permit Biden to assassinate Trump as a threat to Democracy
Legal experts said Monday that yes, as horrific and authoritarian as that sounds, the 6-3 decision by the court’s conservative supermajority means that President Joe Biden could theoretically order that Trump be killed and be immune from criminal prosecution.
Biden issues a warning about the power of the presidency – and Trump – after Supreme Court’s immunity ruling
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/01/politics/joe-biden-immunity-supreme-court/index.html
President Joe Biden on Monday condemned the Supreme Court’s decision which ruled that presidents have an absolute immunity from prosecution for core official acts, and issued a stern warning over a possible second term for former President Donald Trump.
“There are no kings in America. Each, each of us is equal before the law. No one, no one is above the law, not even the president of the United States,” Biden said in a speech from the White House.
Sigmund Freud and the Lubavitcher Rebbe
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/12519653_Sigmund_Freud_and_the_Lubavitcher_Rebbe
In the winter of 1902-1903, Rabbi Shalom Dov-Ber Schneersohn, the 5th Lubavitcher Rebbe (known by the acronym RaSHaB), from a scion of Chassidic Rabbis, travelled from Russia to Vienna to consult with 'the famous Professor Sigmund Freud. This paper discusses their 'encounter.'
Monday, July 1, 2024
As a Therapist, Freud Fell Short, Scholars Find
https://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/06/science/as-a-therapist-freud-fell-short-scholars-find.html
New revelations depict a Freud who seems at times mercenary and manipulative, who sometimes claimed cures where there were none, and who on occasion distorted the facts of his cases to prove his theoretical points. And, judged by current knowledge and standards, it is a Freud who, at least once, stepped over the line into malpractice.
In one little-known case that barely missed becoming a major scandal, researchers say, Freud induced two patients to divorce their spouses and marry each other. In addition, he hinted that the man should make a generous donation to his psychoanalytic fund.
Supreme Court Deals Blow to Trump’s Prosecution, Ruling He Has Broad Immunity
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/donald-trump-immunity-supreme-court-ruling-7ce6415b
The Supreme Court dealt a major blow to Donald Trump’s prosecution on charges he sought to subvert the 2020 election, ruling 6-3 Monday that former presidents enjoy sweeping immunity for their acts while in office.
The president “may not be prosecuted for exercising his core constitutional powers, and he is entitled, at a minimum, to a presumptive immunity from prosecution for all his official acts,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, joined in whole or part by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
The court on its own threw out parts of the prosecution’s case against Trump, including on his alleged efforts to use the Justice Department to advance his unsubstantiated claims of election fraud and submit slates of false electors to replace those President Biden won.
The ideologically divided decision didn’t kill the prosecution entirely, with the chief justice saying a president “enjoys no immunity for unofficial acts, and not everything the President does is official.”
Scathing Sotomayor dissent: "The President is now a king above the law"
Justice Sonia Sotomayor did not hold back in her dissent.
“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.”
“Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune.”
“Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today.”
The justice did not end the dissent with the traditional “respectfully” language.
“With fear for our democracy, I dissent,” Sotomayor wrote.
Psychological projection
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection
Projection (German: Projektion) was conceptualised by Sigmund Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess,[12] and further refined by Karl Abraham and Anna Freud. Freud considered that, in projection, thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else.[13] What the ego refuses to accept is split off and placed in another.[14]
Freud would later come to believe that projection did not take place arbitrarily, but rather seized on and exaggerated an element that already existed on a small scale in the other person.[15] (The related defence of projective identification differs from projection in that the other person is expected to become identified with the impulse or desire projected outside,[16] so that the self maintains a connection with what is projected, in contrast to the total repudiation of projection proper.)[17]
Some studies were critical of Freud's theory. Research on social projection supports the existence of a false-consensus effect whereby humans have a broad tendency to believe that others are similar to themselves, and thus "project" their personal traits onto others.[37] This applies to both good and bad traits; it is not a defense mechanism for denying the existence of the trait within the self.[38] A study of the empirical evidence for a range of defense mechanisms by Baumeister, Dale, and Sommer (1998) concluded, "The view that people defensively project specific bad traits of their own onto others as a means of denying that they have them is not well supported." [38] However, Newman, Duff, and Baumeister (1997) proposed a new model of defensive projection in which the repressor's efforts to suppress thoughts of their undesirable traits make those trait categories highly accessible—so that they are then used all the more often when forming impressions of others. The projection is then only a byproduct of the real defensive mechanism.[39]
Freud Was a Fraud: A Triumph of Pseudoscience
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/freud-was-a-fraud-a-triumph-of-pseudoscience/
Freud was a despicable person with multiple character flaws. He betrayed his scientific training in a tour-de-force of self-deception, succumbing to all sorts of irrational beliefs. His vaunted psychoanalyses never objectively helped a single patient. It is astounding that his ideas and his cult were so influential for so long. Freud was a fraud, a liar, a bad scientist, and a bad doctor; but Crews’ book about him is excellent. Crews’ detailed, well-referenced investigation of Freud’s descent into pseudoscience is a fascinating read. Readers familiar with the development of alternative medicine treatments will find many parallels.
Moses and Monotheism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moses_and_Monotheism
Moses and Monotheism shocked many of its readers because of Freud's suggestion that Moses was actually born into an Egyptian household, rather than being born as a Hebrew slave and merely raised in the Egyptian royal household as a ward (as recounted in the Book of Exodus).[4][5] Freud proposed that Moses had been a priest of Akhenaten who fled Egypt after the pharaoh's death and perpetuated monotheism through a different religion,[6] and that he was murdered by his followers, who then via reaction formation revered him and became irrevocably committed to the monotheistic idea he represented.[1]
KA please provide Torah sources for your hero
The Philadelphia Inquirer calls on Donald Trump to drop out after debate performance
"The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage," the Inquirer wrote.