Thursday, June 13, 2019

Sen. Graham on Trump comments: It's a mistake

President Trump said Wednesday evening of foreign intelligence on election opponents that "it's not an interference, they have information—I think I'd take it," to ABC's George Stephanopoulos. "If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI—if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research, 'Oh let's call the FBI.' The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it. When you go and talk, honestly, to congressmen, they all do it, they always have, and that's the way it is. It's called oppo research."

It is true that most congressmen and presidential candidates do opposition research, but they pay American staff to do it and use legal search functions, they are not getting their research from illegally hacking into emails or from foreign agents.

"When foreign governments are offering to 'help' a particular candidate, it's not because they want to have a beer with them at some point. They want to be able to change our policies — including ones that make it easier for them to do things against the interests of the U.S.," wrote former FBI special agent Asha Rangappa on Twitter. "When such help is accepted and kept hidden, it becomes a source of liability for the candidate/officeholder. This means that the foreign government then has LEVERAGE over a person who ends up in a position of public trust."

Not even Trump-pal Senator Lindsey Graham could fully defend the president. "I believe that it should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to their campaign—either directly or indirectly—to inform the FBI and reject the offer," he said before launching into a Twitter thread accusing Democrats of also engaging with foreign nationals for campaign research by paying former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele for a dossier of information on the Trump campaign. However, a 2018 report by a Republican-led House committee noted that merely paying a foreign citizen for opposition research is within the boundaries of the law.

Former Senator Rick Santorum, meanwhile, defended the president's words by saying that he didn't mean what he said. The president was just speaking "colloquially," explained Santorum.

"He has, sort of—as we all do, filler words that don't mean what they say, like, 'I think,'" Santorum said on CNN. "So I took the president for his word that he would do both, which I think, I don't think that's necessarily inappropriate as long as he refers it to the FBI. As far as looking at the information, maybe he should and maybe he shouldn't and I don't think it's a crime in looking at the information as long as you refer it to the proper authorities."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi commented on the president's interview at her weekly press conference Thursday morning, but did not change her tune on avoiding impeachment chatter.

"Yesterday the president gave us evidence that he does not know right from wrong, it's a very sad thing," she said, "for the president to be so cavalier, to disregard any sense of ethics about who we are as a country, that's an assault on our democracy."

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/13/politics/donald-trump-spy-election-2020-foreign-government/index.html

In context: Sean Hannity’s conflicting remarks on jailing political opponents


Fresh off word from a Politico report that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told party leaders she’d like to see President Donald Trump in prison, Fox News host Sean Hannity gave a fiery monologue that’s had many people calling him a hypocrite.
"Speaker Pelosi now apparently telling senior Democrats she’d like to see Trump behind bars," Hannity said during the June 6, 2019, episode of "Hannity," his TV program. "Based on no actual crimes, she wants a political opponent locked up in prison? That happens in banana republics."


Wednesday, June 12, 2019

threats - is this normal behavior?


Yehuda Pogrow

Jun 9, 2019, 2:51 AM
Take everything with my name on it off of the internet. Like it never existed. 

Delete all of the posts in their entirety. 

Then reach out to Google and ask them to expedite the process of getting everything cleared off of their servers.

Do it by noon tomorrow EST.

Take it down, Eidensohn.

I don't threaten illegal action, but boy will I make the Legal Pain Rain.

Being in another country won't help you.

Ask those on Copy what I am capable of.

You want me to take pity on you. Really. You Do.

Troubled Dutch teen was not euthanised: minister

times of india


The Hague: A Dutch teenager traumatised by a childhood rape died at home after refusing food and drink but was not euthanised, a minister and a clinic said on Wednesday, dismissing "incorrect" media reports. Noa Pothoven, 17, who became famous after writing a book about her long battle with anorexia, severe depression and posttraumatic stress disorder, died on Sunday. Pothoven said in a final Instagram post that she had "lost the will to fight".

Tuesday, June 11, 2019

Birthright Trips, a Rite of Passage for Many Jews, Are Now a Target of Protests

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/israel-birthright-jews-protests.html

But the protests highlight growing unease among many young American Jews over Israel’s policies. They see Israeli leaders who have been drifting rightward and openly embracing the annexation of the West Bank, land on which Palestinians have long hoped to build their own state.
The Birthright protests also highlight a generational divide between Jews who grew up with the constant fear of Israel’s destruction, and younger people today who may be more likely to take Israel’s existence for granted, and who focus instead on the millions of Palestinians left stateless by the conflict.

Rabbi Eliyahu: Help women harmed by Rabbi Sheinberg

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/264425

The Rabbi of Tzfat, Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu, published a video supporting women who were harmed by Ezra Sheinberg, calling on the public to help them.
"I was privileged to accompany them on part of their path," said Rabbi Eliyahu, adding: "I saw what lionesses, heroines, brave and special women they are.”
At the end of the video, the rabbi said: "We need to help as much as possible, because that is how we will eradicate the spirit of impurity from the land."
The video of Rabbi Eliyahu joins other recently published videos, including of rabbis and rabbanits such as Malka Piotrkowsky and Yehudit Shilat, who called to help the victims with the fundraising process in which they now find themselves.
The victims of Sheinberg embarked on a mass mobilization campaign to raise money to help them in the civil suit they are now conducting against Sheinberg, and to help fund the psychological treatments they need.
They wrote on their Facebook page: "It's hard for us to say this out loud, but we, the victims of Ezra Sheinberg, need the help of the public. Years of treatment and legal proceedings and caused us to go into huge financial debt. We are at a crossroads where we must decide - do we ask for help or abandon everything because of debt? We have decided to fight. For ourselves, for our families, so that there will be no more women harmed in the future."
Sheinberg, the former Dean of Orot Ha’ari yeshiva in Tzfat, was convicted as part of a plea bargain for sexually assaulting eight women and sentenced to seven-and-a-half years in prison.

Smash the Wellness Industry

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/08/opinion/sunday/women-dieting-wellness.html


The wellness industry is the diet industry, and the diet industry is a function of the patriarchal beauty standard under which women either punish themselves to become smaller or are punished for failing to comply, and the stress of this hurts our health too. I am a thin white woman, and the shame and derision I have experienced for failing to be even thinner is nothing compared with what women in less compliant bodies bear. Wellness is a largely white, privileged enterprise catering to largely white, privileged, already thin and able-bodied women, promoting exercise only they have the time to do and Tuscan kale only they have the resources to buy.

'Today there's no patience. If it doesn't work they divorce'

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/264383

Kikar Hashabbat quoted Rabbi Hirsch: "Once the situation was that a woman by nature was subservient to her husband. He was the king at home and she did kindness for him and was also subservient to him, and he would honor her more than [he honored] himself. And that way, if you live that way, over time love and great friendship is built.
"Today the situation is different. Many girls don't have the natural subservience, they're not subservient to their husbands, they don't make him a king in the home, and especially in our communities, where the woman who works and the husband starts to deal with the house a bit, this kind of situation is created.
"Today there's a lack of patience. Once there was patience to wait. Today there's no patience, if there isn't something immediately, there's a fight and there's divorce. In the past 45 years the percentage of divorces in Israel has risen, grown, jumped. If a person knows that there's a way to get out of marriage, he's not willing to try