US President Donald Trump’s statement on Saturday contradicting all his cyber and law enforcement agencies, as well as his loyal Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, about Russia’s massive cyberattack on the US, has probably crossed into dangerous territory.
Monday, December 21, 2020
Trump's bizarre defense of Russian hacks becomes dangerous - comment
A pedophilia website operator has been arrested in the kidnapping of a 12-year-old California girl
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/us/virginia-kidnapping-12-year-old-fresno-denver/index.html
A Virginia man authorities describe as a "White supremacist" and "an advocate for pedophilia" is facing charges in California and Colorado for traveling across the country to kidnap a 12-year-old girl, officials said Saturday.
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky: People 'need' to get coronavirus vaccination
Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, widely considered a highly influential rabbi and posek (final authority of Jewish law), urged people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus on Sunday.
New coronavirus variant: What do we know?
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55388846
The rapid spread of a new variant of coronavirus has been blamed for the introduction of strict tier four mixing rules for millions of people, harsher restrictions on mixing at Christmas in England, Scotland and Wales, and other countries placing the UK on a travel ban.
Legal Experts Explain Defamation Lawsuit Threat Made by Dominion Voting Systems Against Sidney Powell
Conservative attorney Sidney Powell and her legal team have been spreading a series of false statements and bizarre accusations against elections systems vendors via court filings and during various media appearances in service of their failed Kraken lawsuits. While privileges afforded to lawyers in most states suggest Powell doesn’t have much to worry about regarding her pleadings, her out-of-court appearances could be another question entirely.
Dominion Demands Sidney Powell Retract ‘Knowingly Baseless’ Voting Machine Conspiracy Theory
Dominion Voting Systems called on former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell to retract her groundless accusations of voter fraud involving the company’s voting machines, which it characterized in a letter to the right-wing lawyer Wednesday as “wild” and “knowingly baseless,” and threatened to take legal action against her.
Trump's talk of martial law sends White House staffers rushing to the press
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/media/stelter-trump-martial-law/index.html
Trump dismissed reports of the martial law discussion as 'fake news' in a tweet Sunday, but two people familiar with the matter told CNN that the the plan was argued in the Oval Office Friday -- although it remains unclear if Trump endorsed the idea.
It's a concept she calls "acceleration," in which violent extremist groups, especially White supremacists, try to overthrow the United States government. These groups believe that will take place through a civil war and look to "accelerate the chaos, accelerate the coming of the civil war."
The American Yeshiva Day School fraud
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/293430
Gone are the days of real ideological disputes between misnagdim and hasidim, Modern Orthodox and yeshivish. Those were for the simpler times, when Jews were still poor and sidelined members of society. Today, when we have reached the pinnacles of success in the secular world, the hashkafic distinctions that once defined us are no longer real.
Sunday, December 20, 2020
Trump responds to Bolton's 'incompetence' claim, hints he could reveal 'stupid stories' about former adviser
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-bolton-election-martial-law-michael-flynn
Bolton called Trump "unfit for the job" during an appearance on CNN on Saturday night.
"There's a theory out there, I know, that Trump is getting worse as Jan. 20 approaches," Bolton said. "No, he's not. It's the same behavior repeated over and over again. Let's take the idea of putting military capabilities into the swing states and running the election again. Look, there's a difference between incompetence and malevolence. In Trump's case, this is incompetencePresident Trump hit back after former national security adviser John Bolton blasted him for "incompetence" amid reports that Trump discussed invoking martial law with another former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
"Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting!" Trump tweeted in the early hours of Sunday morning.
'Appalling': Bolton reacts to Flynn's pitch for martial law
Trump is still only out for himself
“You Can’t Reason With Him at All”: Trump Spends Final Days Plotting Revenge Against His Enemies and Pardons for Everyone Else
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/trump-spends-final-days-plotting-revenge
At the nadir of his 1990 debt crisis, Donald Trump
bunkered himself inside Trump Tower for days on end, subsisting on a
steady diet of hamburgers and French fries. As his real estate empire
was collapsing, and his first marriage unraveling, Trump simply refused
to accept the reality that his life was in a tailspin. “Do people really
think I am in trouble?” Trump asked Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner
at the time, to which she replied, “Yes, they think you’re finished.”
One of Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, told Brenner, “Donald is a believer
in the big-lie theory. If you say something again and again, people will
believe you.”
Sweden’s king says country’s coronavirus strategy has failed
https://www.ft.com/content/d1e581a4-b7d9-4215-8a82-b1a4884c592c
Sweden’s king has admitted that the Scandinavian country has failed with its coronavirus strategy, which has left it with a far higher death toll from the pandemic than its Nordic neighbours. Carl XVI Gustaf told Swedes in his annual Christmas address that the country had suffered “enormously in difficult conditions” and that it was “traumatic” that many relatives of the almost 8,000 people to die with Covid-19 had not been able to say goodbye to them. “I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible. It is something we all have to suffer with,” the king added, in comments released on Thursday and due to be broadcast in full on Monday.