Wednesday, January 13, 2021

McConnell furious with president, supports move to initiate impeachment proceedings: sources

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/mcconnell-believes-trump-committed-impeachable-offenses-supports-democrats-impeachment-efforts-report

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell supports Democrats' move to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Trump and is "done" and "furious" with him, sources familiar told Fox News.

The New York Times first reported that McConnell was pleased that House Democrats introduced an article of impeachment against Trump.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

The bonkers Republican logic on why Trump shouldn't be impeached

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/politics/trump-impeachment-riot-capitol/index.html

 

To do what the likes of Graham, Brady and Kilmeade is, quite simply, to let mob rule win. We can't act to punish the President, who clearly egged on the rioters, because it could lead to more riots!
Tell me how that differs from arguing after September 11 that we had better not seek to punish those responsible for the bombings because it might further incite them and lead to more bombings? Or how we had better not strike back after Pearl Harbor because it could lead to further attacks on the United States?
Right. You get it.
You can disagree with the strategy of impeaching the President with only eight days (and counting) left in his term. That's a fine debate to have. But you cannot in good conscience argue that impeachment shouldn't happen because it could trigger a violent reaction from Trump's supporters.
That already happened, people! Did you miss the p

Chasidic tale of marriage and adultery

 











Writings of Rav Yeshaya Shuv (#6) The grandson of Avraham Provishter who was known as the little Rav Avraham Malach the brother of the Rizhiner Rebbe who died without children from his second wife because he wasn’t married in this world.The Rizhiner gave chalitza to his wife. And Rav Avraham fulfilled the mitzva of divorce (He divorced his first wife). She was the daughter of a tzadik and he never had intercourse with her at all. She ended up committing adultery but no one knew that. However her husband the righteous Rav Avraham convinced her to repent and she confessed to him regarding her transgression. He immediately gave her a Get and she left him and returned to her home. However when she got home she regretted the confession and denied any wrong doing and raised a protest against Rav Avraham that he divorced her without cause. The great tzadik from Barditchov went to  chastise Rav Avraham regarding this. When he came to his community in Provishtev, the wife of the holy tzadik Rav Shalom the mother of Rav Avraham was still alive. She told him, “You have come to criticize my son Rav Avraham. If they say that you are a tzadik like my husband who all his life never had intercourse with me except when I got pregnant with my children as the gemora says about RavYossi )Shabbos 118b) “I had intercourse five times and had five sons” then you can criticize my child otherwise you cannot criticize him. He returned home without saying a word to him. 

 

Shabbos (118b):                R. Jose said: I cohabited five times and planted five cedars in Israel. Who are they? R. Ishmael son of R. Jose, R. Eleazar son of R. Jose, R. Halafta son of R. Jose, R. Abtilos son of R. Jose, and R. Menahem son of R. Jose. But there was Wardimos?- Wardimos and Menahem are identical, and why was he called Wardimos? Because his face was like a rose [werad]. Shall we say that R. Jose did not fulfil his marital duties?[except 5 times] — Rather say, I cohabited five times and repeated.

The Kedushah Crisis

 https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/the-kedushah-crisis

 Kedushah (holiness) was developed as a pietistic ideal for the virtuous few, encouraging married men to limit to the minimum the frequency and modes of sexual intercourse with their wives. Today, the Hasidic groups of Gur, Slonim, and Toledot Aharon (Toldes Aaron) have radicalized this ideal by imposing it on the community as a whole. Gur’s version is the most restrictive and the only one formalized as a set of ordinances (takunes), while Toldes Aaron’s version is the most lenient.

'Very strong case' Trump should resign over Capitol riots: Wall Street Journal editor

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-resign-capitol-riots-wall-street-journal-baker

Wall Street Journal editor-at-large Gerry Baker said there was a "very strong case" Tuesday for President Trump to resign from office with a week to go in his term, while hesitating to endorse the idea outright.
Trump is facing the sharpest political backlash of his presidency in its concluding days after a mob of his fervent supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a deadly melee last week. Several conservative outlets and commentators have called for his impeachment, removal and disqualification from holding future office, while Baker's Wall Street Journal editorial board called on him to resign last week for his sake and the country's.
"There's a week to go," Baker said on "America's Newsroom." "I'm not sure. The Wall Street Journal editorial page, where I work, has argued that very strongly, and I think there's a very strong case to be made for that. I think there are questions, then, about what happens after that happens."

Mary Trump: He's going to the Alamo to make a stand

Republican civil war: what's the party’s future after the US Capitol attack?

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/11/republican-party-future-trump-capitol-mob

With Trump now finally accepting he will leave office, the future leadership of his movement is increasingly up for grabs, with a ragtag band of senators, congressman, Trump family members – and Trump himself – already jostling for the position.

Whether anyone apart from the president is able to successfully ride the tiger of racism, nihilism and grievance politics that carried Trump to near-re-election after four years of American chaos and hundreds of thousands of preventable pandemic deaths is an open question.

U.S. Sanctions Giuliani's Sources of Biden Dirt, Labels Them Part of a Russia-Linked 'Influence Network'

 https://time.com/5928781/u-s-sanctions-giulianis-sources-of-biden-dirt-labels-them-part-of-a-russia-linked-influence-network/

The Trump Administration imposed sanctions on Monday against a group of Ukrainians who helped President Donald Trump and his lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, collect and spread political dirt on President-elect Joe Biden.

The sanctions were announced by one of Trump’s most loyal cabinet secretaries, Steve Mnuchin of the Treasury Department, and repudiated conspiracy theories that Trump has used to attack his main rival. They also demonstrated Trump’s weakening grip on power in the wake of his incitement of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Trump’s theories about the corruption of the Biden family in Ukraine have been painstakingly investigated and widely debunked, including by the President’s Republican allies in Congress. The allegations still became a centerpiece of Trump’s re-election campaign, culminating in his attempt to air these theories on live television during the first presidential debate in September.

This campaign of misinformation continued into Election Day, when Giuliani again went on television to air the theories he heard from his Ukrainian associates. By that point, most mainstream news networks in the U.S. had stopped allowing him to voice these accusations on the air. So the President’s lawyer appeared on RT, the Kremlin-owned propaganda outlet. Even there, the interviewer pushed back on the claims so firmly that Giuliani grew exasperated. “The problem is there’s never enough evidence,” he said.

Trump will visit his border wall on the heels of deadly Capitol Hill riot

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/politics/trump-border-wall-capitol-hill/index.html

 President Donald Trump will bookend his administration's focus on immigration with a trip to his signature border wall on the US-Mexico border, a visit on the heels of a deadly riot on Capitol Hill incited by the President as House Democrats prepare a second impeachment vote.

On Tuesday, Trump is expected to travel to Alamo, Texas, near the border, to mark the completion of more than 450 miles of wall -- a trip that caters to the supporters who put him in office in 2016 despite heightening tensions nationwide and a raging pandemic.
 
The border wall, which Trump repeatedly cited over the last four years as an accomplishment, cost US taxpayers -- not Mexico -- billions and became emblematic of the President's restrictionist immigration policies, which largely sealed the US off from immigrants and refugees.

Trump's disastrous end to his shocking presidency

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/12/politics/donald-trump-legacy-joe-biden/index.html

 President Donald Trump is leaving America in a vortex of violence, sickness and death and more internally estranged than it has been for 150 years.

The disorientating end to his shocking term has the nation reeling from a Washington insurrection. The FBI warned Monday of armed protests by pro-Trump thugs in 50 states, which raise the awful prospect of a domestic insurgency. Health officials fear 5,000 Americans could soon be dying every day from the pandemic Trump ignored. Hospitals are swamped, medical workers are shattered amid a faltering rollout of the vaccine supposed to end the crisis.
It took 200 years for the country to rack up its first two presidential impeachments. Trump's malfeasance has led the country down that awful, divisive path twice in just more than a year. With House Democrats expected to formally impeach the President for inciting a mob assault on Congress on Wednesday, he will rely on the Republican enablers who refused to rein in his lawlessness to save him from conviction again.

Brexit: UK driver has ham sandwiches confiscated at Dutch border

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55622331

 A Dutch TV network has filmed border officials confiscating ham sandwiches and other foods from drivers arriving in the Netherlands from the UK, under post-Brexit rules.

The officials were shown explaining import regulations imposed since the UK formalised its separation from the EU.

Under EU rules, travellers from outside the bloc are banned from bringing in meat and dairy products.

The rules appeared to bemuse one driver.

"Since Brexit, you are no longer allowed to bring certain foods to Europe, like meat, fruit, vegetables, fish, that kind of stuff," a Dutch border official told the driver in footage broadcast by TV network NPO 1.

In one scene, a border official asked the driver whether several of his tin-foil wrapped sandwiches had meat in them.

Company tells radio hosts stop stolen election talk

 https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/report-company-tells-radio-hosts-stop-stolen-election-75186199

 The ownership group for several talk radio hosts across the country, including syndicated figures like Mark Levin and Dan Bongino, says its personalities need to tone things down or face firing.

Cumulus Media content chief Brian Philips sent an email to managers Wednesday, the day of the U.S. Capitol riot, saying the company had to help induce calm.

Worse than impeachment - Bill Belichick declines Presidential Medal of Freedom offer from Trump

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/11/politics/bill-belichick-presidential-medal-of-freedom-spt-trnd/index.html

 Several people close to Trump have noted that, as his time in office comes to an end, one of the things he'll likely miss the most is not the work of the presidency but the trappings that come with it: the motorcades, rides on Marine One, tours of the Lincoln Bedroom given to dinner guests, a constant press corps at his side -- but also Medal of Freedom ceremonies.

 

Monday, January 11, 2021

Coronavirus isolation: All your questions answered

 https://www.jpost.com/health-science/coronavirus-isolation-all-your-questions-answered-655029

 Despite the lockdown, coronavirus is rapidly spreading across Israel at an unprecedented rate. In recent days, between 6% and 7.5% of those screened for the virus have tested positive, sending tens of thousands of Israelis into isolation.

The Health Ministry has been receiving an influx of calls with questions about how to handle quarantine. The Jerusalem Post, based on Health Ministry documentation, provides you with a guide to isolation – the who, what, when, where and how: