MAGA scrambles to repair the Hunter Biden narrative

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/28/trump-conspiracy-theoryhunter-biden-433131

 Weeks ago, when Rudy Giuluani first threw the contents of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop online, he promised a trove of even more damning information 10 days before the election.

Yet with less than a week to go, Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, is still moving down the conservative media food chain, looking for takers. 

 The Wall Street Journal and Fox News have both reported finding no evidence that former Vice President Joe Biden benefited from the Hunter Biden business dealings that have drawn scrutiny. More explicitly pro-Trump media outlets — OAN, Breitbart, Newsmax — have mostly shied away from publishing fresher, more salacious allegations. And conservative talking heads — pundits, politicians and loud MAGA Twitter personalities alike — have been more focused on the meta narrative around the laptop, arguing that mainstream media, social media companies and the deep state are conspiring to prevent President Donald Trump’s reelection by suppressing the story.

The story of Hunter Biden and the diminishing returns to disinformation

 https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/10/31/the-story-of-hunter-biden-and-the-diminishing-returns-to-disinformation

DONALD TRUMP’S rally in Martinsburg—his third of the day in Pennsylvania—felt less like a political gathering than a greatest-hits concert of an ageing rocker. Vendors selling T-shirts, buttons and banners lined the streets leading to the airstrip. The talent trotted out all the golden oldies: “Crooked Hillary”, “They’ll confiscate your guns”, “Mexico is paying for the wall”, and abundant derision of a rival band (“Joe Biden and the Democrat socialists”).

 

 

The media has mostly not taken the bait on dubious Biden claims – with some Australia-linked exceptions

 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/02/the-media-has-mostly-not-taken-the-bait-on-dubious-biden-claims-with-a-few-australia-linked-exceptions

The big difference between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections is that this time, mainstream media outlets are mostly not taking the bait on a dubiously sourced set of digital materials associated with the Democratic candidate.

Outside the rightwing bubble, the exceptions are disproportionately connected with Australia: Australian writers, Australian outlets, and/or outlets associated with News Corporation, who, like its founder, has Australian origins.

Anyone who reports on leaked digital materials, as I have, knows that it is trivially easy to fake, modify, subtract from or add to, and otherwise mess around with any documents in any cache. Some documents carry indelible marks, such as any emails that are signed with DKIM security signatures, but everything else can be messed with.

In this case, we haven’t seen the originals, just PDF printouts, and the New York Post has not been forthcoming with any detailed or satisfactory account of its own authentication process. It hasn’t said how it determined the authenticity of the cache as a whole, or individual items it has reported on, and has continued handwaving about the FBI subpoena, and the lack of denials from the Biden camp.

'A slap in the face': Keilar slams Trump Jr. for false claim

Trump’s comment at rally raises speculation about Fauci’s future at NIAID

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-hints-he-may-fire-fauci-after-election

The comments by Trump came after Fauci recently criticized his administration's handling of the pandemic, as well as White House coronavirus advisor, Dr. Scott Atlas during an interview published by the Washington Post on Saturday.

 Fauci added that he believed Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden was "taking it [the virus] seriously from a public health perspective,” while Trump was “looking at it from a different perspective," according to the Washington Post. He said the president's perspective was “the economy and reopening the country.”

Donald Trump threatens to fire Anthony Fauci after US election

 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/donald-trump-threatens-to-fire-anthony-fauci-after-us-election

Donald Trump has threatened to fire Anthony Fauci, America’s top infectious disease expert, during a midnight rally in Florida 24 hours before the US presidential election.

As crowds at the Miami Opa-Locka airport chanted “Fire Fauci”, the president allowed the chants to continue for several seconds before responding: “Don’t tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit a

He continued: “Nah, he’s been wrong on a lot. He’s a nice man though. He’s been wrong on a lot.”

 Fauci, one of the world’s foremost infectious diseases experts, has served for over three decades as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). He is one of the lead experts on Trump’s coronavirus taskforce and has frequently offered frank public health guidance in contrast to the president’s repeated falsehoods on the severity of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In a hard-hitting interview with the Washington Post published on Saturday night, Fauci said the US should prepare for “a whole lot of hurt” under the coronavirus pandemic and predicted a winter of 100,000 or more cases a day and a rising death toll.

Health Ministry warns against supplement touted as COVID-19 treatment

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/health-ministry-warns-against-supplement-touted-as-covid-19-treatment-647625

 The Health Ministry warned on Thursday against using the "N Corona" supplement publicized by the haredi (ultra-Orthodox) news outlet Kikar HaShabbat last week, stressing that the treatment had not undergone any professional testing or approval.

"The N Corona drops have never received the approval of the Helsinki Committee from hospitals in Israel needed in order to carry out clinical trials," wrote the Health Ministry in a statement. "It is forbidden to attribute medicinal properties to dietary supplements, and this is misleading to the public."

 

Hierarchy of authority parents versus yeshiva

 The question was recently asked

In the yeshiva world who is the final authority - parents or yeshiva? This is an old question

A related issues is father versus mother - can a woman have a Rav telling her to ignore her husband or to divorce him?

Can a woman have minhagim or chumros that differ from her husband?

Can a rosh yeshiva tell a bachur to marry someone that the parents don't think is appropriate

Can children  learn in a seminary or yeshiva that parent's don't like

Can they adopt minhagim that differ from their family?

 Is it different among Chasidim or Sefardim or even Yekke's 

Does modern Orthodox deal with this?.

If parents want children to get job training or go to college - do they have to listen?

If the yeshiva wants involvement in questionable financial aid programs but parents object

can a person be forced to vote for a particular candidate by parents or rabbis

Pollster who predicted Trump's 2016 win makes 2020 prediction

Politics is complicated

 Shabbos (11a) Raba b. Mehasia also said in the name of R. Hama b. Goria in Rab's name: If all seas were ink, reeds pens, the heavens parchment, and all men writers, they would not suffice to write down the intricacies of government. Said R. Mesharshia, What verse [teaches this]? The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.9

Shannon Nuszen: From missionary to observant Jew

 https://www.jpost.com/jerusalem-report/shannon-nuezen-from-missionary-to-observant-jew-647124

 Some time ago, I met a most interesting woman, highly qualified to talk about the tactics of proselytizing Jews, to bring them to believe in Jesus as the Messiah and the training required by missionaries. She is Shannon Nuszen, a former Evangelical missionary, who is today a Torah-observant Jew. In light of the recent controversy in Israel concerning the now-defunct missionizing Shelanu TV program – an offshoot of the widespread GOD TV – both directed especially at Jews, I wanted to find out what spreading the Gospel to Jews implies, and its modus operandi.

'An incredible scar': the harsh toll of Trump's 400-mile wall through national parks

 https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/31/trump-border-wall-wilderness-wildlife-impact

 Donald Trump entered the Oval Office with a campaign promise to build 450 miles of a new “border wall system” – a combination of infrastructure including bollard barriers, roads, perimeter lighting, enforcement cameras and other technology – even amid the pandemic, has continued at an increasing pace. According to Customs and Border Protection, 400 miles of the border wall system has been completed so far, with physical barriers from 18-30ft tall. If he wins, he may well aspire to wall off the border in its entirety.

Trump Thinks He’s Found Biden’s Greatest Vulnerability

 https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/trump-waging-psychological-warfare-against-biden/616813/

After 18 months of flogging the Hunter Biden story, what does President Donald Trump have to show for his efforts? His opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son culminated in his own impeachment. Despite railing against the scion’s alleged swampiness at nearly every rally, Trump’s convoluted narrative about Biden family corruption has taken root only on Fox News. At the very least, the accusation that Hunter leveraged his father’s high office to enrich himself has failed to measurably move the polls. Even Trump’s ardent supporters are now encouraging him to change the subject. Yet he remains obstinate in his obsession.

 Without a coherent message or an affirmative vision for a second term, Trump has clearly been betting his reelection on what military planners would call a “psyop,” or a psychological operation. That is, he hopes to use gamesmanship to destabilize the mind of his adversary, forcing him into a moment of anger or incoherence that illustrates his lack of fitness for the office. (“Too old and out of it” is how Trump puts it.) His attacks on Hunter Biden should be understood as the pillar of this strategy.

Here's what happened when NBC News tried to report on the alleged Hunter Biden emails

 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/here-s-what-happened-when-nbc-news-tried-report-alleged-n1245533

 Trump and his allies say there is evidence of corruption in emails and documents allegedly found on a laptop belonging to Democrat Joe Biden’s son. They say those and other documents show that Hunter Biden used his father’s influence to enrich himself through business deals in Ukraine and China, and that his father not only facilitated that, but may have benefited financially.

But the Wall Street Journal and Fox News — among the only news organizations that have been given access to key documents — found that the emails and other records don’t make that case. Leaving aside the many questions about their provenance, the materials offered no evidence that Joe Biden played any role in his son’s dealings in China, let alone profited from them, both news organizations concluded.