Saturday, September 12, 2020

Kapporus and adultery

https://agudah.org/agudath-israel-reissues-kaporos-kol-korei-2/

 R. Shmuel Kamenetzky clearly signs his name on a קול קורא stating that ladies and gentlemen should be separated during כפרות, which is a חומרא בעלמא. How much more so must Ms. Epstein move away from Mr. Fleischer, which is not a חומרא בעלמא, but a דין of יהרג ואל יעבור, as explained here:

 

 

 

Friday, September 11, 2020

Reporter to Trump: Why did you lie to the American people?

Trump rally attendees open up to Lawrence Jones about their support: 'He tells it like it is'

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-rally-attendees-lawrence-jones-michigan-biden

 Attendees of President Trump's Thursday rally in Michigan told "Hannity" election correspondent Lawrence Jones that they support the Republican because he "tells it like it is."

"Why are you supporting the president?" Jones asked one woman wearing a "MAGA" hat.

"Because he tells it like it is," she answered. Two other women told Jones that "he's real." One man indicated that Trump "tells the truth."

How Fox News covered the Woodward recordings of Trump

Tucker Carlson accuses Lindsey Graham of convincing Trump to talk to Woodward

 https://thehill.com/homenews/media/515817-tucker-carlson-accuses-lindsey-graham-of-convincing-trump-to-talk-to-woodward

 Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Wednesday accused Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) of convincing President Trump to sit for interviews with Bob Woodward for the journalist's forthcoming book "Rage" that reveals remarks by the president downplaying the coronavirus threat publicly while acknowledging its severity in private.

Why Trump talked, though he feared an ‘atrocious’ book from Woodward

 https://www.foxnews.com/media/why-trump-talked-though-he-feared-an-atrocious-book-from-woodward

 For all his attacks on fake news, Trump on some level craves the approval of the establishment media. He recently spent 40 minutes talking to a New York Times reporter, despite years of attacks on his hometown paper as biased and “failing.” And who is more of an establishment Beltway figure than Woodward?

But as officials in the Nixon, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43 and Obama administrations learned, charming Woodward is a strategy that only goes so far. It’s hard for officials to say no to him when you realize you’ll be in the book anyway and many of your colleagues, and rivals, are probably cooperating.

But Trump’s calculation wasn’t all wrong. Although his coronavirus comments sparked a media explosion, the book is filled with lengthy presidential quotes, making the case on issues from the pandemic to race relations to foreign policy.

Trump twists history of Churchill and FDR to cover up pandemic denialism

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/11/politics/donald-trump-churchill-fdr-pandemic/index.html

 President Donald Trump is now not just downplaying the coronavirus -- he's resorting to absurd historical allusions about great World War II leaders to try to disguise his culpability in 190,000 American deaths.

Trump ridiculously invoked the former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the President Franklin Delano Roosevelt at a Thursday night rally, claiming that like them, he had tried hard to calm public panic in a dark hour. It was a historically illiterate gambit, since unlike Trump in the pandemic, both statesmen leveled with their people about grave national crises.

Woodward's Tapes, Trump's Covid Admissions & a Homicide Prosecutor's Take on Criminal Liability

Thursday, September 10, 2020

Bnei Brak mayor apologizes for 'bad joke' train video

 http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/287018

 Bnei Brak Mayor Avraham Rubinstein issued an apology Thursday evening in response to the uproar over a video in which an actor pretended to block haredi passengers from boarding a train from the predominantly-secular city of Bat Yam.

"I am sorry for the way things happened, in particular I am sorry for the damage to the good name of the railway workers and the Transportation Ministry," Rubinstein said.

The video was commissioned by the Bnei Brak municipality through a public relations office, with the aim of protesting the removal of the city from the light rail programs in the Gush Dan region.

The actor stood between the haredi passengers and the train, physically preventing them from boarding, and proclaimed: "Haredim, do not board!"

Trump Shouts Political 'Hit Job' Despite Woodward's Taped Interviews | The 11th Hour | MSNBC

Why Would Trump Agree To Speak With Woodward? | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Joe: Trump Knew But He Lied To You And Your Family | Morning Joe | MSNBC

US official claims pressure to downplay intelligence reports

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-54096520

 An intelligence analyst at the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has said he was put under pressure to downplay the threat of Russian interference in the 3 November election as it "made the president look bad".

In a whistleblower complaint, Brian Murphy said he had been demoted for refusing to alter reports on this and other issues such as white supremacy.

The directives were illegal, he said.

The White House and DHS have both denied the allegations.

US intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election but President Donald Trump has rejected allegations that his election victory was influenced by Russia, at times questioning findings from his own agencies.

 Mr Murphy says he was under pressure from the White House to exaggerate the number of migrants with links to terrorism at a time when the administration was implementing tougher measures to halt the flow of undocumented migrants reaching the US-Mexico border, and making the case for a wall.

 

Trump's historic dereliction of duty laid bare

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/10/politics/donald-trump-coronavirus-bob-woodward-book/index.html

 It matters who the president is.

Millions of lives and livelihoods depend on the character, competence, altruism and integrity of the person in the Oval Office -- whatever their party or ideology. But President Donald Trump -- as he devastatingly revealed in his own voice to Bob Woodward -- met the great crisis of his age with ineptness, dishonesty and an epic dereliction of duty. Rarely have a president's actions -- or inaction -- and individual decisions on such a critical issue been so consequential and so exposed in his own time -- in this case in taped interviews with The Washington Post reporter for his new book, "Rage."
Throughout history, presidents responded to moments of great trial by leveling with the American people about often-dire challenges, but also summoned a collective sense of mission toward a less perilous destination.

 The fallout from the Woodward bombshells just 54 days before the election goes beyond White House palace intrigue. Trump's own narrative of the crisis has now been shattered. His frequent complaints that no one could have foreseen the magnitude of the challenge from Covid-19 are shown to be flagrantly untrue. Woodward reports that Trump was told by his national security adviser, Robert O'Brien, on January 28 that the virus would be the greatest national security threat of his presidency.

The President has spent months slamming China, which he accuses of knowingly exporting the virus to the US to harm the American economy after he earlier showered Beijing with praise for its handling of the situation. But he makes clear in the conversation on February 7 that he understood the severity of the virus -- and much of his information seems to have been coming from a conversation the day before with none other than Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The White House has spent months denying that Trump downplayed the pandemic -- only for the President to confirm it on a Woodward tape.