Story Hour

Trump’s approval rating on the economy tanks in new poll

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/15/trumps-approval-rating-on-the-economy-tanks-in-new-quinnipiac-poll.html

Key Points

• President Donald Trump’s approval rating on how he’s handling the economy has dropped dramatically in the last month, according to a new poll.
• The poll, from Quinnipiac University, shows that only 44% of people approve of the way Trump is handling the U.S. economy, compared with 52% from the month before. 
• The results come just after the release of what Trump called a “spectacular” jobs report, which revealed that the economy in June added 4.8 million jobs, a figure that surpassed projections.

 

Fact check: Peter Navarro's claims about Dr. Anthony Fauci are misleading, lack context

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/15/fact-check-trump-adviser-navarro-claims-fauci-misleading/5443826002/

 Peter Navarro, a senior trade adviser to President Donald Trump, has taken aim at Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert and a member of the president's coronavirus task force.

Navarro wrote an opinion piece in USA TODAY that was initially published Tuesday night – and then the next morning in print – as an "opposing view" to a newspaper editorial that hailed Fauci a “national treasure” and that said efforts by President Donald Trump or his team to muzzle Fauci would be hazardous.

Bill Sternberg, USA TODAY's editorial page editor, said editors approached Navarro about writing the opposing view. The newspaper has a tradition of offering opposing views to its editorials. Some of the comments Navarro made echoed ones he had made earlier about Fauci.

 

Brad Parscale replaced as Trump's campaign manager

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53426285

Facing a tough re-election campaign, US President Donald Trump has replaced his campaign manager.

Mr Trump said he had substituted Bill Stepien, a field director for his 2016 campaign, in place of Brad Parscale.

Mr Parscale - who was reportedly blamed by Mr Trump's inner circle for a poorly attended rally in Oklahoma last month - will stay on as senior adviser.

Opinion polls show the president is trailing his Democratic challenger Joe Biden ahead of November's election.

Mr Trump's statement on Wednesday evening said: "Brad Parscale, who has been with me for a very long time and has led our tremendous digital and data strategies, will remain in that role, while being a Senior Advisor to the campaign."

IDF Targeting Girls in Non-religious Schools

BS"D

Israeli Army Draft Office Flagging  Girls in Less Religious Schools for Religious Interrogation - Wholesale - With Apparent Cooperation of Some Rabbanut Rabbis

-- Traditional & National Religious Girls Bearing Brunt of Recent Escalation; Human-Trafficking Concerns Rise

23 Tammuz, 5780 °°  July 15, '20

Parshas Matos - Masei


By Binyomin Feinberg


feinbergbinyomin@gmail.com



"... And if someone, like Pinchos, is one among a multitude, and every man is against him when he dares to speak out for truth and to fight for the Law -- the more lonely his stand, the greater the number of his adversaries, the more powerful is his word, the mightier his deed."

--  Rav Shamshon Raphael Hirsch OB"M (1808-1888), (in "Judaism Eternal," vol. 2, p. 293)


.....

Update link for the month of Tammuz to check in case we post during the week between our regular Wednesday/ Thursday posts:


https://docs.google.com/document/d/19P6537IM3H-v_UlYsRzeiukw9uBWq3M0GjaoYJhIQUk/edit?usp=sharing


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

As reported previously, in a major  development over the past several weeks, the Draft Office of the Israeli Army (operating under the entity "Meitav") is flagging teenage girls who study, or  studied in less-religious or non-religious schools - summoning them to a "Rayon Dat" (a military "Religiosity Interview," or, more often, interrogation). These girls are now receiving this order even without stepping into the Draft Office. Until now, it was generally only after entering the Draft Office that such girls would be identified, and only then confronted with a summons to the Draft Office. Now, girls are facing this formidable challenge earlier in the process, as young as about 16-1/2 years old, soon after they obtain their religiosity verification from the Rabbanut (Israeli Rabbinate). Apparently, there's a new Army protocol in place to flag all such girls on a wholesale basis.

Moreover, the Rabbanut itself - primarily in Jerusalem - has lately reported to have been asking multiple girls where they study, in a seemingly innocent, but potentially catastrophic departure from Rabbanut protocol. Coincidentally, girls asked that question are finding themselves suddenly summoned to the Draft Offices. Is the Rabbanut sharing that information with the Draft Office? Are we to assume it's merely coincidental that these same girls are shortly thereafter being ordered to appear before a military panel for religiosity interrogations?

Even if the Rabbanut is in fact not providing that information to Army headhunters, it's apparent - to volunteer women assisting these teenage girls - that the recent  Rabbanut shift in policy (questioning girls about their schooling while they are simply seeking religiosity documentation) is indicative of some form of Army-Rabbanut coordination.

Activist volunteers with "Chomosaich" report that about NINE such girls now are now facing Rayon Dat interview appointments - despite having followed proper procedures to avoid that. A lawyer active assisting the girls is running up against a brick wall.
Thus, these girls will likely need either a more expensive lawyer, or face the prospects faced by other female religious objectors, including threat of arrest, incarceration, and abuse by police, prison, and judicial authorities, as recently experienced by Hadasah Margolit Yakovov (20 y/o daughter of a Chareidi Bucharian immigrants), released after almost a month in Military Prison Four in wake of her refusal to enlist (see last week's post http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2020/07/israeli-army-fighting-to-make.html). That is, unless sufficient public awareness can be raised as to obviate the need to fight the Army on the legal front.

One example is the current Army pursuit Hodoyah E. Noteworthy is that in a written response this week to her attorney, Meitav conveniently neglects to address the recent Rabbanut directive to provide Corona-period extensions to girls requiring Rabbanut assistance, as raised in a letter the attorney sent on behalf of Hodoyah in June.

Furthermore, whatever explanation the Army may proffer to explain this needs to be seen in context of timing. They're embarking on this new policy just as Corona is resurgent. Does the risk of not drafting a few girls actually justify the risk of endangering yet more people within the Army and in the civilian population?

To provide a broader perspective, as was reported in The Jewish Press last December, the Ma'ariv (Nov. 5, '19) reported on the Army declaration of a shocking target goal, aiming to enlist a whopping 40% of national religious high school girls for enlistment in the military. The recent Rayon Dat dragnet fits neatly into that declared Army paradigm (in a modification of a popular expression, "if you can't get them to join you - beat them"), inasmuch as the main target here are teenage girls from traditional and national religious backgrounds. National religious girls are a natural target because their ideological affinity for the declared goals of the Army impedes their families from identifying illicit Maitav attempts to traffic their teenage daughters for less than idealistic purposes.  Traditional girls are simply easy targets, because, in addition to the aforementioned ideological sympathies, their religiosity is more easily disqualified by (often antireligious) Rayon Dat military officers, seeking to draft every non-secular girl they can (for trafficking-related reasons obvious enough render elaboration superfluous).

Volunteers with "Chomosaich"  observe that if this latest Army escalation against traditional and Mizrachi girls is left unchecked, then soon - G-d forbid - the only girls guaranteed their religious service exemption entitlements will be Chareidi girls of politically- connected affiliations

Anthony Fauci has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on: Peter Navarro

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/todaysdebate/2020/07/14/anthony-fauci-wrong-with-me-peter-navarro-editorials-debates/5439374002/

Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on.

In late January, when I was making the case on behalf of the president to take down the flights from China, Fauci fought against the president’s courageous decision — which might well have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives.

When I warned in late January in a memo of a possibly deadly pandemic, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was telling the news media not to worry.

Trade adviser Peter Navarro tears into Fauci in blistering op-ed: ‘Wrong about everything

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trade-adviser-peter-navarro-tears-into-fauci-in-blistering-op-ed-wrong-about-everything

White House trade adviser Peter Navarro tore into Dr. Anthony Fauci in a stunning op-ed on Wednesday, saying the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director, who has been a leading voice on the Coronavirus Task Force, has been “wrong about everything.”

“Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on,” Navarro wrote in a blistering op-ed for USA Today.

All the Ways the Influential Hydroxychloroquine Study Was Crap

https://gizmodo.com/all-the-ways-the-influential-hydroxychloroquine-study-w-1844378680

A controversial, highly influential study touting the drug hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for covid-19—one that helped launch months of research and failed clinical trials—has now been sharply criticized within the pages of the same scientific journal that published it. The new post-publication peer review highlights a variety of serious flaws in the study and concludes that the authors were “fully irresponsible” in how they presented their findings.

The original paper, authored by a team of researchers in France, was published in late March in the International Journal of Antimicrobial Agents. It was said to involve 20 hospitalized patients with confirmed covid-19 who were treated with hydroxychloroquine, some of whom were also given the antibiotic azithromycin. Compared to a control group of patients, the study claimed, people on hydroxychloroquine had lower levels of the virus on average or cleared the infection more quickly; the addition of azithromycin was associated with even faster recovery.

Though there had been earlier, promising trials of hydroxychloroquine to treat covid-19 elsewhere in the world, the French study sparked massive scientific and political interest in the drug. President Trump himself tweeted about the study the day after it came out, heralding the combination therapy as a “game changer” for the pandemic. Soon after, the U.S. government and others, including the World Health Organization, announced that they would start large-scale trials to test out hydroxychloroquine and the related drug chloroquine.

But it wasn’t long before other scientists began to raise questions about the study, how it was carried out, and the scientists who conducted it, particularly the senior author, a physician and microbiologist named Didier Raoult. Though Raoult had genuinely contributed to important research in the past, he and his lab were also previously accused of glaring errors and misconduct in their published work, with one episode leading to a year-long ban from a prominent microbiology journal. Once his hydroxychloroquine study began making waves, researchers unearthed other alleged examples of data fakery in some of his earlier research.

Rosendaal’s scathing review echoes many of the same criticisms made by outside scientists following the study’s publication. In particular, he condemns the decision by Raoult’s team to exclude from the study’s final results six patients who took hydroxychloroquine, including four whose condition worsened, one of whom eventually died during the study period (none in the control group died). There were also other inconsistencies, such as supplemental material mentioning that a number of asymptomatic patients were included for study while the study’s actual language claimed that it was an examination of hospitalized patients (people without symptoms are unlikely to have been hospitalized for covid-19).

Meah Sharim shteibel sign

Fauci

Ex-Harvard Medical School faculty member warns COVID-19 herd immunity is ‘wishful thinking'

https://www.foxnews.com/health/clay-ackerly-coronavirus-herd-immunity-wishful-thinking

A Washington D.C.-based internist and former Harvard Medical School faculty member has claimed the idea that herd immunity may slow the coronavirus pandemic is "wishful thinking" after a 50-year-old patient was infected for a second time with COVID-19.

"During his first infection, my patient experienced a mild cough and sore throat," Dr. Clay Ackerly explained in an opinion piece for Vox. "His second infection, in contrast, was marked by a high fever, shortness of breath, and hypoxia, resulting in multiple trips to the hospital.

"It is possible, but unlikely, that my patient had a single infection that lasted three months," Dr. Ackerly added. "Some Covid-19 patients (now dubbed 'long haulers') do appear to suffer persistent infections and symptoms.

"My patient, however, cleared his infection — he had two negative PCR tests after his first infection — and felt healthy for nearly six weeks."

 

Israeli Data Show School Openings Were a Disaster That Wiped Out Lockdown Gains

https://www.thedailybeast.com/israeli-data-show-school-openings-were-a-disaster-that-wiped-out-lockdown-gains

The assessment of Israel’s trajectory has direct bearing on the heated debate underway in the United States between President Donald Trump, who is demanding a nationwide reopening of schools for what appear to be largely political reasons, and health authorities who caution it could put the wider population at risk.

Importantly, on May 17 in Israel it appeared the virus not only was under control, but defeated. Israel reported only 10 new cases of COVID-19 in the entire country that day. In the U.S., the debate often is about reopening schools where the disease is not only not in decline, but surging.

On Sunday, for instance, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “There’s nothing in the data that suggests that kids being in school is in any way dangerous.” But that is not the case in Israel, where the data from June, the last month for which there is a full set of statistics, appear all too clear.

Galia Rahav, who chairs the department of infectious diseases at the Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv, said in an interview that “what happened in schools is just too much gathering, day after day, and kids come home and infect mom and dad. The top numbers of new infections were in kids.”

Due to the large number of infections among children, she noted, “the average age of an Israeli with COVID-19 has gone down to between 20 and 39,” while infections in citizens over 65 have held steady. In Jerusalem, the Israeli city with the highest rate of infection, most of the people with COVID-19 are under the age of 35.

Article 10: Freedom of expression

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/en/human-rights-act/article-10-freedom-expression

 Are there any restrictions to this right?

Although you have freedom of expression, you also have a duty to behave responsibly and to respect other people’s rights.

Public authorities may restrict this right if they can show that their action is lawful, necessary and proportionate in order to:

• protect national security, territorial integrity (the borders of the state) or public safety
• prevent disorder or crime
• protect health or morals
• protect the rights and reputations of other people
• prevent the disclosure of information received in confidence
• maintain the authority and impartiality of judges

An authority may be allowed to restrict your freedom of expression if, for example, you express views that encourage racial or religious hatred.

Trump’s Warped Definition of Free Speech

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trumps-warped-definition-free-speech/612316/

 Palin’s remarks were widely ridiculed at the time. The First Amendment, commentators on the right and the left pointed out, protects the freedom of speech, not the freedom from criticism. You have the right to speak, and others have the right to praise, mock, or ignore you as they see fit.

 

As absurd as it may sound, Palin’s bizarre interpretation of the First Amendment has now been adopted by the president of the United States. On Tuesday, the social-media company Twitter added a label to one of the president’s tweets, which falsely declared that mail-in ballots would be “substantially fraudulent,” urging users to “get the facts about mail-in voting.” Twitter did not ban Trump from the platform, or censor his tweet, although it would have been fully within its rights to do so, and in accordance with its own terms of service. It merely appended additional context showing that the president’s claim was false.

In retaliation, Trump signed an executive order yesterday afternoon directing the federal government to “reconsider the scope” of Section 230, a provision of federal law that shields companies from liability for content posted by their users. The First Amendment was explicitly written to protect the right of citizens to express opposition to their leaders; it says that Congress “shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” But to the president, criticism of his falsehoods is a violation of his free-speech rights. This position reverses the purpose of the First Amendment, turning an individual right of freedom of expression into the right of the state to silence its critics.

 

This should be obvious, but if your freedom to speak depends on the president approving of what you say, then you simply don’t have freedom of speech. The Trumpist defense of state censorship of social media is that if you do not want your kneecaps broken, then you should make sure you pay the protection money. Twitter is hardly the first media company to face this kind of extortion from the president; as my colleague David Graham points out, Trump has attempted to use the authority of his office to silence criticism from the Washington Post, CNN, members of the White House press corps, and even ESPN.