President Donald Trump and White House advisers have said for months that hundreds of millions of coronavirus vaccine doses would be "ready to go" by Election Day. But three days out, health experts are saying COVID-19 vaccinations were just another dubious campaign promise.
Tuesday, November 3, 2020
CNN's final 2020 Electoral College outlook: A remarkably stable race comes to an end
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/11/02/politics/electoral-college-outlook/index.html
Trump's path to 270 is dependent upon an
explosive Election Day turnout to make up for the advantage Biden
appears to have in the record breaking early, mail-in and absentee vote.
In our final outlook, Trump has 20 states totaling 125 electoral votes
solidly in his tally. If you add Texas' 38 electoral votes currently
leaning his way, the President is at 163 electoral votes.
We currently have six states and one congressional district in Maine as pure toss-up battlegrounds totaling 96 electoral votes.
It
is clear that Trump's path to reelection is far narrower than Biden's,
but it remains a viable one. And, while 2020 is a fundamentally
different political environment than 2016, he showed the ability to pave
such a path just four years ago.
Birx Delivers Stark Warning to White House on Eve of Election Day
Dr. Deborah L. Birx, who has carefully straddled the line between science and politics as she helps lead the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, delivered a stark private warning on Monday, telling White House officials that the pandemic is entering a new and “deadly phase” that demands a more aggressive approach.
The warning — sent in a private memo to White House officials as the nation — amounted to a direct contradiction of President Trump’s repeated false assertions that the pandemic is “rounding the corner.” In it, Dr. Birx suggested Mr. Trump and his advisers were spending too much time focusing on lockdowns, and not enough on controlling the virus.
Monday, November 2, 2020
Video altered to make it look like Biden greeted wrong state - Trump is desparate
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-video-altered-58124115393828f85cd496514bba4726
CLAIM: Video shows Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden mistakenly saying “Hello, Minnesota” at a campaign event in Tampa, Florida.
AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The sign behind Biden in this video has been edited to add the words “Tampa, Florida” and remove the words “TEXT MN to 30330.” The podium has also been edited to add “FL” instead of “MN.” Original video from this event confirms that Biden was in Minnesota and addressed the correct state in his greeting.
The video had more than a million views on Twitter on Sunday and was spreading quickly the weekend before the U.S. presidential election. However, the words on the sign and the podium in this video have been manipulated. Several sources prove that Biden did not address the wrong state in his greeting and he was indeed in Minnesota.
Who is the boss? - a father's story
I have a story to tell, and it’s an
important one – the question once arose, “can we simply push aside the 5th
commandment?” This might seem like an odd question, but the question arose
during an odd experience under strange circumstances. The Rosh Yeshiva is
always known as the more influential leader– even greater than the Yeshiva.
With that said, my son was studying Torah at well-known Yeshiva in New York.
At this school, I was under the impression that he’d study
Torah and learn how to connect with a mesora that was laid forth by his
parents. However, when I learned that Rosh Yeshiva was teaching his own mesora,
I found myself disheartened. As an Orthodox Jew, the power of the Rosh Yeshiva
is not unknown to me. He’s a considerable influence outside of school as well.
In the community, he’s a leader and a policy maker, and he’s often called to
act in such capacity. But to make children rebel against their parents? That
was unheard of, and it was something that I wasn’t willing to take lightly.
I began to take note of just how closed off this Yeshiva
community was from others. There was absolutely no accountability, and as a
result, I was treated with contempt. Not to mention, any speak of seeing a
gadol together was solemnly rejected. The community believed that survival as a
distinct entity necessitates more than just education. In other words, they
believed in indoctrination. However, that left parents – like me – scrambling
to understand just what our children were being taught and indoctrinated into.
I found myself increasingly perplexed by what was unfolding
before me, but I looked to the past to gain clarity. Rabbi Salanter was
concerned that without ethical behavior and spiritual warmth, study of the
Talmud would become motivated by vanity, and that adherence to the laws would
turn into an unfeeling, mechanical process. At that moment, I realized that the
Rosh Yeshiva was precisely what Rabbi Salanter envisioned happening one day.
My son has not eaten at my home in over two years, and yet,
the Rosh Yeshiva will not permit me and my son to see a mediator. Moreover, the
Rosh Yeshiva will not visit a mediator with me either. As a parent, I will
fight for my child. I will fight to ensure that my child doesn’t fall victim to
such strict indoctrination, and I will not sit idly by while the Rosh Yeshiva
calls me “bizarre,” “strange,” and, “someone with poor judgement.” Every parent
has a right to inquire about the welfare of their child – even when they’re
older. And every parent deserves a satisfactory answer. That’s what I’m here to
do.
Hunter Biden saga dominates online debate
https://www.axios.com/debate-biden-trump-hunter-newswhip-3b54c777-c007-4228-8fc5-9ab9e5f821c4.html
The mainstream media turned away. But online, President Trump's charges about Hunter Biden were by far the dominant storyline about the final presidential debate, according to exclusive NewsWhip data provided to Axios.
- Coverage of business dealings by Joe Biden's son — and pre-debate allegations by one of his former business associates, Tony Bobulinski — garnered more than twice as much online activity (likes, comments, shares) as the runner-up.
- The second-place topic — also pushed by Republicans — was the former vice president's comments on oil and fracking.
Why it matters: The Hunter Biden story — one of Trump's final Hail Marys against Biden — is still blazing away in the conservative media ecosystem, even though it seems to have fizzled on a broader stage.
The backstory: Trump and his team had high hopes for an investigation by The Wall Street Journal, and Trump had mentioned publicly that it was coming. But when it posted just after the debate, the findings undercut the Republican case by saying available records showed no impropriety by Joe Biden.
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
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
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.
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
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
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."
Sunday, November 1, 2020
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
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