Trump’s Reality TV Presidency Just Got Bitten By Reality

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-reality-tv-presidency-just-got-bitten-by-reality/

President Trump’s new Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy’s resume includes roles on three reality shows: The Real World: Boston in 1997, Road Rules: All Stars in 1998, and Real World/Road Rules Challenge: Battle of the Seasons which aired in 2002. In that last series, Duffy and his partner crushed the competition, winning challenges that included rounding up cows while riding horses and playing a version of musical chairs involving inner tubes? Sure.

He continued, offering a distressed public and grieving families insightful observations like, “Obviously, it is not standard to have aircraft collide. I want to be clear on that.”

Still, the last person Trump would blame for this tragedy is himself because, unlike Harry Truman, the buck never stops at his desk.

Meanwhile, expect more tragedies. Trump’s regime is parroting Musk’s failed Twitter tactics, slashing funds for staff and oversight on the federal government. Failing to round up a cow is one thing on TV, but failing to enforce safety regulations across air, land, and sea travel is quite another.

That’s the reality. And it’s a deadly one.

Emily Damari’s mom: My daughter was held in UNRWA facilities, denied medical treatment

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/emily-damaris-mom-my-daughter-was-held-in-unrwa-facilities-denied-medical-treatment/

The mother of freed hostage Emily Damari revealed Friday that her daughter was held by Hamas at UNRWA facilities in the Gaza Strip, and that her captors refused to give her access to medical treatment.

Emily lost two fingers in her left hand after being shot by Hamas terrorists during her abduction on October 7, 2023. Her mother Mandy said it was “a miracle that she survived,” in a post on X thanking British Prime Minister Keir Starmer for calling them earlier in the day.

“Hamas held Emily in UNRWA facilities and denied her access to medical treatment after shooting her twice,” wrote Mandy, who like her daughter has British citizenship. “It’s a miracle that she survived, and we need to get aid to the remaining hostages now.”

Trump’s hidden revenge tour seeps out on Fridays as FBI pushes back

Trump's Justice Department launches sweeping cuts targeting Jan. 6 prosecutors, FBI agents

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-840165

Trump administration officials have pressured six senior FBI officials, as well as the heads of many field offices, to leave their posts by Monday or face termination, NBC reported on Friday.

Additionally, the Department of Justice fired two dozen federal prosecutors involved in the January 6 investigations on the same day. 

The FBI was ordered to provide by Tuesday a list of all employees who worked on a 2024 criminal case brought by the Justice Department against leaders of Hamas, according to a memo seen by Reuters. A source briefed on the matter also said the FBI was asked to provide a list of employees who worked on the two Trump cases brought by Smith.

Tulsi Gabbard’s Surveillance Folly

 https://www.wsj.com/opinion/tulsi-gabbard-senate-intelligence-hearing-director-of-national-intelligence-section-702-478ef0e7?mod=hp_opin_pos_5#cxrecs_s

Tulsi Gabbard faced the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday for her confirmation hearing, and her performance wasn’t reassuring. Given a chance to walk back her opposition to Section 702 surveillance policy, she reinforced why she would be dangerous as White House director of national intelligence.

Trump initial second-term approval rating among lowest in decades

 https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5116132-trump-approval-rating-gallup/?tbref=hp

A poll, released Thursday by Gallup, found that 47 percent of respondents support Trump’s term so far, just above the 45 percent he earned at this point during his first term.

It’s a rating that places him below all other elected presidents since 1953. He remains the only elected commander in chief with an approval rating below 50 percent, the survey found.

Trump’s disapproval rating is 48 percent, which is 3 percentage points higher than in 2017 and marks a new high for that rating at the start of a president’s term.

Former President Biden received a 57 percent approval rating, the same as former President George W. Bush.

Don’t Blame DEI for Crash at Reagan National Airport. Blame Ronald Reagan

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-real-problem-at-the-core-of-dc-plane-collision/

As has been widely noted, and as an official with extensive experience in airport operations affirmed to the Daily Beast on Thursday, the whole system is still suffering from the firing of 11,000 striking air traffic controllers in 1981 by the president for whom Reagan National Airport is named. The new controllers who took their place had a mandatory retirement age of 56, and many of them have been departing in recent years. An early FAA report after Wednesday’s crash noted that a single air traffic controller was doing work that customarily would have been done by two.

Lying or Deceiving is like idolatry?

Sanhedrin (92a)  Rabbi Elazar says: With regard to anyone who amends the truth in his speech, it is as though he worships idols. As, it is written here, in the verse where Jacob sought to resist taking his father’s blessing from Esau: “And I shall seem to him a deceiver [metate’a]” (Genesis 27:12), and it is written there with regard to idol worship: “They are vanity, the work of deception [tatuim]” (Jeremiah 10:15). 

Rashi says it is one who changes his speech speech so he is not recognized

המחליף בדבורו - משנה בדבורו שלא יהא ניכר:

However there is another gemorah in Bava Metzia (23b) which indicates that the phrase means to lie. 

With regard to these three matters alone, it is normal for Sages to amend their statements and deviate from the truth: With regard to a tractate, if he is asked whether he studied a particular tractate, he may humbly say that he did not, even if he did. And with regard to a bed, if he is asked whether he slept in a particular bed, he may say that he did not, to avoid shame in case some unseemly residue is found on the bed.

Why did Rashi ignore the explanation of the gemora in his explanation here? 

Lace-Front Sheitels: An Exploding Controversy

 http://www.5tjt.com/lace-front-sheitels-an-exploding-controversy/

 Rabbi Yitzchok Berkowitz rules that since there is no ma’aris ayin in sheitels according to the responsum of Rav Moshe Feinstein, zt’l (Igros Moshe Even HaEzer Vol. II #12), there would be no problem in lace-front sheitels. Rav Moshe’s letter was written in the summer of 1962 to Rabbi Dovid Lappa, z’l (who lived in Bayswater at the end of his life), and contained a number of rationales as to why there is no ma’aris ayin regarding sheitels. (1) Ma’aris ayin is only for a lav and not an issur aseih; (2) Most of the time it is recognizable that it is a wig; (3) Even if men do not recognize that it is a wig, women do recognize it, and that is enough to prevent a ma’aris ayin, as we can see in regard to shaving with an electric razor; (4) Since she is known as an ishah kesheirah, no one would dare suspect her of not following halachah.

Every president but Trump always began with sympathy after a plane crash

R. Hirsch as a Modern Orthodox Leader

 https://etzion.org.il/en/philosophy/issues-jewish-thought/rabbinic-thought/r-hirsch-modern-orthodox-leader

      Modern Orthodox communities tend to be open to some level of working together with other Jewish denominations on issues of common concern, as long as the Orthodox retain their autonomy over their own religious institutions. In contrast, R. Hirsch was a fierce champion of austritt, or separation.  Several scholars have wondered why a rabbi with cultural openness toward Gentile wisdom would be closed to working with other Jewish denominations.  Prof. Mordechai Breuer enumerates various approaches, but I am partial to Breuer’s own approach.  R. Hirsch was a man of yosher or truth.  He did not deny the truth that Gentile wisdom had something to contribute and that we could benefit from studying it.  For the same reason, he could not work with a group whose ideology he viewed as a distortion of the truths of Torah.[1]

In teaching them the languages of the civilized nations and introducing them to their literature we give them the key with which, when they are grown up, they can gain entrance to the intellectual creations of the peoples and feed and enrich their minds with all that is good and noble and true in the contributions of the noblest spirits to the realm of knowledge. (Judaism Eternal, vol. 1, p. 219)

Rabbi Aharon Lichtenstein and Academic Talmud Study

 https://etzion.org.il/sites/default/files/2022-05/Rabbi_Aharon_Lichtenstein_and_Academic_T.pdf

It is well-known that he studied English literature at Harvard, and he never concealed the fruits of those studies; to the contrary, he incorporated them into his spiritual and educational doctrine, both written and oral. The first four chapters of By His Light are based on lectures he delivered to English-speaking students during their first year at Yeshivat Har Etzion, and the book attests reliably to the yeshiva’s general intellectual and educational atmosphere. I will cite a few short examples from these chapters, allowing readers to absorb some of the music that students at Yeshivat Har Etzion absorbed from Rabbi Lichtenstein’s classes and discourses.

Elsewhere in the book, he writes:This activist approach … parallels the activist Jewish approach with respect to spiritual endeavors. In Christian theology there is a time-honored tradition—rooted in the words of  Paul and transmitted by Augustine, Luther and others—that sees human redemption as being dictated solely from Above. In Luther’s formulation, any human attempt to achieve spiritual or ethical perfection is a grave error, for it bespeaks arrogance (121)

Trump launched air controller diversity program that he now decries

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/01/30/faa-dei-trump-fact-checker/

At news conference, Trump read a list of disabilities he calls disqualifying, but his administration started such hiring in 201

Jesse Watters Unloads Bizarre ‘Dwarves’ DEI Theory for D.C. Crash

 https://www.thedailybeast.com/jesse-watters-unloads-bizarre-dwarves-dei-theory-for-dc-crash/

“The staffing shortages, Donald Trump is arguing, are a result of DEI policies,” Watters began on The Five’s Thursday newscast, referring to the president’s unsubstantiated claims that DEI quotas lowered the standards of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration subsequently causing the crash. “You go back to the Obama-Biden administration and they rejected 1,000 well-qualified applicants for air traffic control because they weren’t diverse enough. Joe Biden had a DEI quota.”

“And this isn’t about Black people,” Watters continued. “A lot of people hear, ‘DEI,’ you think Black. No, he is trying to set quotas for people who are deaf to get jobs, people who are dwarves to get jobs, people with transgender issues to get jobs.