Acting secretary of the Navy has submitted his resignation after calling ousted aircraft carrier captain 'stupid'

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/modly-resign-crozier-esper-trump/index.html

 

Washington (CNN)Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly has submitted his resignation a day after leaked audio revealed he called the ousted commander of the USS Theodore Roosevelt "stupid" in an address to the ship's crew, according to a US official and a former senior military official.

On Monday, Modly told the crew of the Roosevelt that their former commander, Capt. Brett Crozier, was either "too naive or too stupid" to be in command or that he intentionally leaked a memo to the media, in which Crozier warned about coronavirus spreading aboard the aircraft carrier and urged action to save his sailors, according to remarks obtained by CNN.

Late Monday night, Modly apologized in a statement for calling Crozier "stupid" in his earlier remarks.

Trump removes independent watchdog for coronavirus funds, upending oversight panel

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/07/trump-removes-independent-watchdog-for-coronavirus-funds-upending-oversight-panel-171943

 

President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.

A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort. But Trump on Monday removed Fine from his post, instead naming the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.

Trump replaces Pentagon IG, removing him from coronavirus relief oversight panel

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/491560-trump-replaces-pentagon-watchdog-removing-him-from-coronavirus-relief

 

President Trump has replaced the Pentagon’s top watchdog a week after he was named to lead a committee charged with overseeing the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package.

Fine was appointed as chairman of the committee last week, a move that won praise across the political spectrum

 

Huge Anger On The World - How Can We Get Saved - Amazing And Powerful A Must Listen To Lecture

Rambam's Guide for the Perplexed on the Seder Night

Rabbi Sacks shares some ideas ahead of Shabbat HaGadol and Pesach

Passover Message from 2020 Genesis Prize Laureate Natan Sharansky

Passover closure comes into effect, with all intercity travel banned

https://www.timesofisrael.com/passover-closure-comes-into-effect-with-all-intercity-travel-banned/

Roads empty throughout Israel as lockdown enacted ahead of holiday; measures to remain in place until Friday evening and include 16-hour curfew from Seder night

Why public approval of Trump's coronavirus response may not save him in November

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/07/politics/2020-election-trump-approval-covid-pandemic/index.html

As America faces a potentially unprecedented domestic death toll, the political situation facing Trump may echo those confronting other presidents during wartime. In classic research on the Korean and Vietnam wars, several political scientists found that public support for those wars, and the presidents pursuing them, declined as casualties increased. In the 2009 book "Paying the Human Costs of War," Feaver and two colleagues qualified that research to argue that in fact, the public is much more tolerant of casualties when it believes that launching the war was the right decision and that the US is headed toward success, than if it concludes the war effort is doomed to fail.

That means the casualty level alone typically doesn't decide a president's fate in war-time, Feaver maintains. Instead, presidents face not only a "prospective" judgment about whether they will win the war but a "retrospective" verdict on whether launching the war was the right choice at all. The equivalent in November, he says, might be a division between a "prospective" judgment that the nation is heading out of the coronavirus ordeal and a "retrospective" judgment that Trump compounded the problem by initially reacting too slowly and downplaying the problem.

 

Navarro's laughable claim that he knows better than Fauci

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/06/opinions/peter-navarro-anthony-fauci-hydroxychloroquine-expertise-hemmer/index.html

(CNN)Dr. Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has yet to embrace hydroxychloroquine, the drug the President touts, without evidence, as a miracle treatment for Covid-19.

 

But someone in the administration has stepped up to promote the drug: Peter Navarro.

 

Navarro may seem like an odd person to be stepping into this role. Unlike Fauci, an infectious disease specialist who has directed NIAID under six presidents, Navarro is an economist. His principal role in the White House is to oversee trade policy.

But Navarro is ready to put his credentials up against Fauci's any day. As he told CNN on Monday: "My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I'm a social scientist. I have a PhD. And I understand how to read statistical studies, whether it's in medicine, the law, economics or whatever."

While that's more expertise than President Trump claims -- "I'm not a doctor, but I have common sense," Trump said while promoting the drug on Sunday -- it's a specious claim to expertise, one that fits in well with the administration's long-running war against experts.

'Bad testing policy, lack of leadership, danger of irreparable damage'

https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/In-critical-report-Knesset-coronavirus-cmte-gives-govt-exit-strategy-623908

The Knesset coronavirus task force's report offered the government recommendations, such as making changes to the country’s testing policies and establishing a national crisis-management body.

Trump taunts media as mutual disgust reaches new depths

https://www.foxnews.com/media/trump-taunts-media-as-mutual-disgust-reaches-new-depths

A number of people on my Twitter feed agree with Trump and Trotter that reporters are peppering the president with “gotcha” questions. These are usually along the lines of “you said X and now you’re doing Y.” But every politician faces gotcha questions--some fair, some unfair--and finessing them is part of the job. I don’t recall Trump supporters demanding that reporters be positive when Barack Obama or Bill Clinton was grappling with difficulties.

 

In such a polarized country, somewhere around half the public is going to cheer Trump’s evisceration of the press, and somewhere around half is going to applaud the journalistic denunciations of the president. But right now people are dying. We’re facing what Trump’s surgeon general called a Pearl Harbor moment. And yet the two sides keep carpet-bombing each other.

Cabinet approves nationwide lockdown at 7 p.m., curfew from Wednesday afternoon

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-april-7-2020/

According to new regulations approved by the cabinet, Jerusalem residents will be confined throughout the lockdown within their respective regions sketched out by government officials, dividing the city — which has the largest number of virus cases in the country — into seven portions.

Rich humans, some born in Israel, created coronavirus, Argentinian TV host says

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/278405

An Argentinean journalist apologized after saying that the coronavirus was created by rich Americans and Israelis during a prime-time news program.

Tomás Méndez, host of the popular ADN Tv, said on Wednesday that “bats are not responsible for the coronavirus, humans are.”

Those humans, he said, are “the richest of the world, some born in the United States, others in Israel and another in Europe,” who “are the owners of your life, who created this virus.” He singled out the Rothschild family, who often appear in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, and Bill Gates.

His comments triggered harsh criticism