Democrat Tom Suozzi wins New York special election, will replace George Santos

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/385173

Democrat Tom Suozzi on Tuesday won a special election in New York for the US House seat that was left vacant when Republican George Santos was expelled from Congress, The Associated Press reported.

Suozzi defeated Republican candidate Mazi Pilip, an American Israeli woman who was born in Ethiopia and who was brought to Israel in 1991 during Israel’s “Operation Solomon”.

With the win, he retakes a seat he held for three terms before giving it up to run, unsuccessfully, for governor.

The victory narrows the slim Republican majority in the House and gives Democrats a much-needed win in New York City’s Long Island suburbs.

Raskin razzes Stefanik for ‘evasive and embarrassing answers’ on antisemitism

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4356577-raskin-razzes-stefanik-for-evasive-and-embarrassing-answers-on-antisemitism/

Raskin posed to Stefanik “five easy questions for you to address with ‘moral clarity’ on presidential tolerance for — and embrace of — antisemitism … Please avoid the waffling evasion you rightfully denounced!”

Raskin listed four examples of moments when Trump engaged in activity that some have labeled antisemitic and asked whether Stefanik would support a candidate engaged in such behavior. A fifth question asked whether she was prepared to denounce the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” linked to several mass shootings.

In response to an MSNBC interview in which Raskin made a similar point, Stefanik wrote on X, “Thanks for asking @jamie_raskin, the answer is simple: President Trump was the best friend Jewish people have had in the White House in modern times,” Stefanik wrote Monday afternoon on X.

Raskin asks how Stefanik can question anyone about antisemitism when she supports Trump

 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4353409-raskin-stefanik-antisemitism-support-trump/

“Where does Elise Stefanik get off lecturing anybody about antisemitism, when she’s the hugest supporter of Donald Trump, who traffics in antisemitism all the time?” Raskin asked during an interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.

“She didn’t utter a peep of protest when he had Kanye West and Nick Fuentes over for dinner,” Raskin said. “Nick Fuentes, who doubts whether Oct. 7 even took place because he thinks it was some kind of suspicious propaganda move by the Israelis.

“The Republican Party is filled with people who are entangled with antisemitism like that,” Raskin added, “and yet somehow she gets on our high horse and lectures a Jewish college president from MIT.”

‘She scares me’: Stefanik’s emergence as Trump’s cheerleader sparks criticism

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/30/elise-stefanik-trump-republican-election

In her early House years, Stefanik was widely deemed a moderate, but she has pivoted hard right to help Trump since his loss in 2020 when she joined 146 other House members who opposed certifying the election results.

Poverty is desirable

 Rabbeinu Bachya (Kad HaKemach Wealth 1:3) Because of the great harm that comes with wealth and for the many terrible troubles that arise from it, the sages praised the reverse which  is poverty, as they taught in Chagiga that Eliyahu said G-d did not find a solution for Israel, to be saved from sin, but poverty, The custom of the wealthy is that everyone who accumulates a little of it will long for more, and another who accumulates a lot of it will lust for multiples and will never be satisfied because he will never be satisfied

Chagigah (9b) Elijah said to Bar He-He, and others say, to R. Eleazar: What is the meaning of the verse: Behold I have refined thee but not as silver; I have tried thee in the furnace of affliction? It teaches that G-d went through all the good qualities in order to give them to Israel, and He found only poverty

Eruvin (41b) Three matters cause a person to act against his own will and the will of his Maker, and they are: Gentiles, and an evil spirit, and the depths of extreme poverty. What is the practical halakhic difference that emerges from this statement? It is significant as it teaches one to request mercy for people who suffer from those…

Avoda Zara (5a) Four kinds of persons may be regarded as dead, they are: the poor, the blind, the leprous, and the childless.

Nedarim (64b) Four are accounted as dead: A poor man, a leper, a blind person, and one who is childless

Mishlei (30:07-09)  Two things have I asked of you; do not deny them before I die; 8. Remove far from me falsehood and lies; do not give me poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that is needful for me;9. Lest I be full, and deny you, and say, Who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and profane the name of my G-d.

A ‘whale’ of a tale: Trump continues to distort cognitive test he took

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/19/trump-cognitive-test/

“I think it was 35, 30 questions,” the former president said in Portsmouth, N.H., of the test, which he said involved a few animal identification queries. “They always show you the first one, like a giraffe, a tiger, or this, or that — a whale. ‘Which one is the whale?’ Okay. And that goes on for three or four [questions] and then it gets harder and harder and harder.”

The only problem: The creator of the test in question, called the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, or MoCA, said it has never included the specific combination of animals described by Trump in any of its versions over the years.

CNN Doctor Trolls Trump Over 'Dementia' Boast With 1 Simple Sentence

 https://news.yahoo.com/cnn-doctor-trolls-trump-over-045944368.html

“If you think a dementia screening test is very difficult, you may have early dementia,” Reiner, who is director of cardiac catheterization laboratories at George Washington University, wrote on X:

The test was created to help doctors detect the warning signs of the cognitive impairments that can lead to dementia.

“It is supposed to be easy for someone who has no cognitive impairment,” Dr. Ziad Nasreddine, who developed the test, told MarketWatch in 2020.

Yet Trump has constantly claimed otherwise.

Stop Talking About Biden's Mental Acuity. Start Talking About Trump's Signs of Dementia

 https://www.newsweek.com/stop-talking-about-bidens-mental-acuity-start-talking-about-trumps-signs-dementia-opinion-1853741

The most telling evidence of Trump's growing dementia is found in his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is now centering his entire campaign. On November 11, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that, "We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible—they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream."

No, thanks, Mr. President: Special election candidates shun Biden and Trump

 https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/13/biden-trump-new-york-house-race-00141076

The strategic decision by the two candidates in the nail-biter race underscores the dissatisfaction Americans have with the elderly men likely to capture the two major party nominations this year. Both have high negatives and intractable problems for swing voters like those going to the polls on Tuesday: Biden would be 86 when his term ends and has been pilloried by the right and far left for his handling of the southern border crisis. Trump, meanwhile, continues to deny he lost the election in 2020 and is facing 91 felony charges.

Obama Didn’t Give Iran ‘150 Billion in Cash’

 https://www.factcheck.org/2019/03/obama-didnt-give-iran-150-billion-in-cash/

As a candidate during the 2016 campaign, President Donald Trump criticized the international agreement to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons’ program — formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had been adopted the year before. He suggested that the U.S. had returned $150 billion to Iran as part of the deal.

That’s not true. We’ve written about this issue before. PolitiFact and the Washington Post have, too.

But Trump has repeated the claim as recently as December, when he tweeted: “The Democrats and President Obama gave Iran 150 Billion Dollars and got nothing, but they can’t give 5 Billion Dollars for National Security and a Wall?”

Trump’s bogus claim now has been repeated in a meme that references the president’s declaration of a national emergency to redirect federal funds for a proposed wall on the southern border.

The meme, which has been shared 149,000 times on Facebook, mentions the recent lawsuit brought against the Trump administration by 16 states to block the national emergency. The meme says: “So, when Obama bypassed the Congress while giving Iran 150 billion in cash, how many States had sued him?”

Biden Had His Worst Week, Then Trump Made Him Look Competent

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/biden-had-his-worst-week-then-trump-made-him-look-competent?ref=home?ref=home

Again, “normal” people don’t like this deranged stuff that plays so well to the Trump base. It also shows how even on someone else’s big day, Trump has to be the center of attention. To paraphrase Alice Roosevelt, Trump has to be the pop diva at every concert and the star of every Super Bowl.

Biden takes a political hit but brings Americans home

 https://edition.cnn.com/2023/09/18/politics/biden-iran-americans-politics/index.html

Criticism from the likes of Trump and Pence is politicized in the context of their presidential campaigns – and ignores their own deals to free Americans. In 2019, Trump engineered a prisoner swap with Iran to free Xiyue Wang, a US citizen accused of spying. Trump also personally welcomed three Americans home from North Korea in 2018 after a deal which looked like a quid pro quo for a later summit with tyrant Kim Jong Un that turned into little more than a giant photo-op. Yet Trump’s deals, like Biden’s, also reunited Americans with their long-suffering families.

Trump Is Telling Us He’s an Enemy of the American People

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-telling-us-hes-an-enemy-of-the-american-people?ref=home?ref=home

In other words, as outrageous as Trump’s comments were this past weekend, what is most shocking about them is that they have not and will result in his immediate rejection by the members of his party. And, therefore, the goal in November must not be just to defeat Trump, but to decisively defeat—and thereby begin to destroy—the entire MAGA GOP movement.

Biden’s balancing act with Iran aims for deterrence, not a wider war

 https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/03/politics/biden-iran-balancing-act/index.html

President Joe Biden’s decision to strike 85 targets in Iraq and Syria on Friday in response to the death of three American soldiers last weekend amounted to a middle ground: short of a direct strike inside Iran, which would almost certainly spark a wider war, but still more expansive than any action the US has taken so far against the groups it accuses of destabilizing the region.