A pedophilia website operator has been arrested in the kidnapping of a 12-year-old California girl

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/us/virginia-kidnapping-12-year-old-fresno-denver/index.html

 A Virginia man authorities describe as a "White supremacist" and "an advocate for pedophilia" is facing charges in California and Colorado for traveling across the country to kidnap a 12-year-old girl, officials said Saturday.

Nathan Daniel Larson, 40, is in Denver County Jail on a misdemeanor charge and faces felony charges in California for the kidnapping that authorities say utilized such "sophisticated" grooming methods that they fear there may be more victims.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky: People 'need' to get coronavirus vaccination

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/rabbi-kanievsky-says-people-must-get-coronavirus-vaccination-652761

 Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky, widely considered a highly influential rabbi and posek (final authority of Jewish law), urged people to get vaccinated for the coronavirus on Sunday.

In a video posted on Whatsapp, his followers posed the question to the rabbi whether "it is possible to [get the vaccination], or one must get it," with Kanievsky responding that everyone "needs" to get the vaccination in order to stop the spread of the virus.

New coronavirus variant: What do we know?

 https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55388846

 The rapid spread of a new variant of coronavirus has been blamed for the introduction of strict tier four mixing rules for millions of people, harsher restrictions on mixing at Christmas in England, Scotland and Wales, and other countries placing the UK on a travel ban.

Legal Experts Explain Defamation Lawsuit Threat Made by Dominion Voting Systems Against Sidney Powell

 https://lawandcrime.com/2020-election/legal-experts-explain-defamation-lawsuit-threat-made-by-dominion-voting-systems-against-sidney-powell/

 Conservative attorney Sidney Powell and her legal team have been spreading a series of false statements and bizarre accusations against elections systems vendors via court filings and during various media appearances in service of their failed Kraken lawsuits. While privileges afforded to lawyers in most states suggest Powell doesn’t have much to worry about regarding her pleadings, her out-of-court appearances could be another question entirely.

 

Dominion Demands Sidney Powell Retract ‘Knowingly Baseless’ Voting Machine Conspiracy Theory

 https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2020/12/17/dominion-demands-sidney-powell-retract-knowingly-baseless-voting-machine-conspiracy-theory/?sh=4a7f46893db0

 Dominion Voting Systems called on former Trump campaign attorney Sidney Powell to retract her groundless accusations of voter fraud involving the company’s voting machines, which it characterized in a letter to the right-wing lawyer Wednesday as “wild” and “knowingly baseless,” and threatened to take legal action against her.

Trump's talk of martial law sends White House staffers rushing to the press

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/media/stelter-trump-martial-law/index.html

 Trump dismissed reports of the martial law discussion as 'fake news' in a tweet Sunday, but two people familiar with the matter told CNN that the the plan was argued in the Oval Office Friday -- although it remains unclear if Trump endorsed the idea.

 It's a concept she calls "acceleration," in which violent extremist groups, especially White supremacists, try to overthrow the United States government. These groups believe that will take place through a civil war and look to "accelerate the chaos, accelerate the coming of the civil war."

The American Yeshiva Day School fraud

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/293430

Gone are the days of real ideological disputes between misnagdim and hasidim, Modern Orthodox and yeshivish. Those were for the simpler times, when Jews were still poor and sidelined members of society. Today, when we have reached the pinnacles of success in the secular world, the hashkafic distinctions that once defined us are no longer real.

 

 

 

Trump responds to Bolton's 'incompetence' claim, hints he could reveal 'stupid stories' about former adviser

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-bolton-election-martial-law-michael-flynn

 Bolton called Trump "unfit for the job" during an appearance on CNN on Saturday night.

"There's a theory out there, I know, that Trump is getting worse as Jan. 20 approaches," Bolton said. "No, he's not. It's the same behavior repeated over and over again. Let's take the idea of putting military capabilities into the swing states and running the election again. Look, there's a difference between incompetence and malevolence. In Trump's case, this is incompetence

President Trump hit back after former national security adviser John Bolton blasted him for "incompetence" amid reports that Trump discussed invoking martial law with another former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

"Martial law = Fake News. Just more knowingly bad reporting!" Trump tweeted in the early hours of Sunday morning.

'Appalling': Bolton reacts to Flynn's pitch for martial law

 https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2020/12/20/trump-oval-office-meeting-martial-law-bolton-tsr-sot-vpx.cnn

Former national security adviser John Bolton weighs in on news of a heated Oval Office meeting involving aides to President Trump, lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn. The gathering reportedly devolved into screaming matches over Powell and Flynn's suggestions about overturning the election.

John Bolton: Russia Hack Is Huge, ‘Cannot Underestimate Its Significance’ | MTP Daily | MSNBC

Trump is still only out for himself

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/20/politics/donald-trump-martial-law-election-2020/index.html

Rep. Adam Smith, the Democratic chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, called Trump "an aspiring fascist" who admires Putin and wants the same kind of control that Putin exerts over his own country and its elections. Smith said the reports that Trump entertained Flynn's theories about invoking marital law were "unbelievably disturbing."

"He is talking about basically leading a coup against the United States government and destroying our Constitution," Smith told CNN's Wolf Blitzer on "The Situation Room" Saturday night. "There needs to be strong bipartisan pushback against this. It is an unbelievably dangerous thing for the President to be talking about."

 

“You Can’t Reason With Him at All”: Trump Spends Final Days Plotting Revenge Against His Enemies and Pardons for Everyone Else

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/12/trump-spends-final-days-plotting-revenge

At the nadir of his 1990 debt crisis, Donald Trump bunkered himself inside Trump Tower for days on end, subsisting on a steady diet of hamburgers and French fries. As his real estate empire was collapsing, and his first marriage unraveling, Trump simply refused to accept the reality that his life was in a tailspin. “Do people really think I am in trouble?” Trump asked Vanity Fair’s Marie Brenner at the time, to which she replied, “Yes, they think you’re finished.” One of Trump’s lawyers, meanwhile, told Brenner, “Donald is a believer in the big-lie theory. If you say something again and again, people will believe you.”

Sweden’s king says country’s coronavirus strategy has failed

 https://www.ft.com/content/d1e581a4-b7d9-4215-8a82-b1a4884c592c

 Sweden’s king has admitted that the Scandinavian country has failed with its coronavirus strategy, which has left it with a far higher death toll from the pandemic than its Nordic neighbours. Carl XVI Gustaf told Swedes in his annual Christmas address that the country had suffered “enormously in difficult conditions” and that it was “traumatic” that many relatives of the almost 8,000 people to die with Covid-19 had not been able to say goodbye to them. “I think we have failed. We have a large number who have died and that is terrible. It is something we all have to suffer with,” the king added, in comments released on Thursday and due to be broadcast in full on Monday.

Heated Oval Office meeting included talk of special counsel, martial law as Trump advisers clash

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/19/politics/trump-oval-office-meeting-special-counsel-martial-law/index.html

 President Donald Trump convened a heated meeting in the Oval Office on Friday, including lawyer Sidney Powell and her client, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, two people familiar with the matter said, describing a session that began as an impromptu gathering but devolved and eventually broke out into screaming matches at certain points as some of Trump's aides pushed back on Powell and Flynn's more outrageous suggestions about overturning the election.

Flynn had suggested earlier this week that Trump could invoke martial law as part of his efforts to overturn the election that he lost to President-elect Joe Biden -- an idea that arose again during the meeting in the Oval Office, one of the people said. It wasn't clear whether Trump endorsed the idea, but others in the room forcefully pushed back and shot it down.

Trump downplays cyberattack on U.S., breaks with Pompeo on Russia's role

 https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/19/pompeo-russia-behind-cyberhack-of-us-agencies-448625

 President Donald Trump on Saturday publicly broke with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo over Russia's involvement in a massive cyberattack on the U.S. government.

Trump, in his first public comment since reports of the wide-scale breach surfaced last week, downplayed the attack in a series of tweets, suggesting without evidence that China may have been responsible and hacks on U.S. voting systems might have occurred as well.

Trump's Latest 'Con': Ripping Off MAGA Fans After Losing | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC

Trump raised $200m from false election claims. What happens to the money now?

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/dec/19/trump-raised-200m-from-false-election-claims-what-happens-to-the-money-now

 The battle is lost. The supreme court and electoral college have spoken. Even the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, so adept at remaking the rules for political advantage, has acknowledged that Donald Trump will not be the next president.

But the money flowing into Trump’s political coffers suggests that defeat will not drive the soon-to-be-former president into the political shadows.

Trump has been on a fundraising drive since the election, rapidly bringing in an astonishing $200m or more on the back of his false claims that the vote was rigged.

His campaign bombarded supporters with emails and text messages – as many as 30 a day – pleading for donations to a fighting fund to challenge the result. But with the election settled, that is not where the money is going.

The Price of Good Intentions By Yonoson Rosenblum | December 16, 2020 or why slavery and discrimination were really good and helping is bad

Try substituting Jew for the word black in this attempt to rationalize discrimination, Better yet this could justify discrimination against chareidim and Kollel by chilonim. After all Chareidim are also beneficiaries of the same good intentions section 8 foodstamps and antidiscriminaton laws as blacks

https://mishpacha.com/the-price-of-good-intentions/

Trump will leave office with a historically bad economic record

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/13/politics/trump-economy-record/index.html

 "Trump's economic record ranks near or at the bottom compared with other presidents," concludes Moody's chief economist Mark Zandi, who compared the economic results of all presidents from the last 70 years. "The economy under his watch has performed very poorly."

To be sure, the deadliest public health pandemic in a century has devastated economic activity during this last year of the President's term. But responding to unexpected catastrophe -- from hurricanes to terrorist attacks to civil unrest to financial crises -- represents a big part of the job. And, as Zandi notes, Trump's bungled coronavirus response has exacerbated and extended damage to jobs and output.

Trump silent in wake of massive cybersecurity hack

Trump Threatens Not to Leave White House on Inauguration Day: A Closer Look

Wisconsin judges denounced Trump lawsuit, antisemitic harassment follows

 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/wisconsin-judges-denounced-trump-lawsuit-antisemite-harassment-follows-652523

 “What you want is for us to overturn this election so that your king can stay in power,” Karofsky said, according to The Associated Press. “I do not know how you can come before this court and possibly ask for a remedy that is unheard of in U.S. history.”

Trump fights for a job that he's not doing as coronavirus rages

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/18/politics/donald-trump-absent-covid-stimulus-vaccine/index.html

 When the history of the pandemic is written, one of the great mysteries will be what President Donald Trump was doing in the waning days of his presidency as the number of Covid-19 deaths in the US soared past 3,000 each day, the virus spread unchecked and Congress dithered over the details of an emergency relief package that could be the difference between people being able to eat and being forced to sleep on the streets this holiday season.

Trump ran for president pretending he was the consummate dealmaker, the chief executive who could make things happen with a snap of his fingers. He will go down in history as a president who worsened the grief and tragedy of the most consequential pandemic in 100 years by being contemptuous of masks and the safety precautions designed by his own administration -- a man incapable of empathy, who chose to remain cocooned in his White House bubble at a time when leadership would have mattered.

For weeks now, Trump has spent most of his time plotting how to nullify the results of President-elect Joe Biden's November victory as he has fleeced his supporters to pay for a string of ill-conceived lawsuits that were tossed out of court by some of his own judicial appointees. When those efforts failed, he began looking ahead to January 6 when a joint session of Congress meets to formally count the Electoral College results -- seeing another opportunity to try and thwart the democratic process.

Putting 'politics in front of lives': DeSantis faces criticism over Florida's Covid-19 response

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/17/us/desantis-covid-florida-invs/index.html

 The Florida health department's social media feeds have barely mentioned Covid-19 in months, breaking the silence only this week to celebrate the arrival of the first vaccines. DeSantis has consistently downplayed the severity of the pandemic, following President Donald Trump's lead in denouncing mask mandates and restrictions on businesses. The governor has blocked local governments from enforcing their own measures to protect residents from coronavirus, and sidelined health experts even as he promoted questionable science, according to CNN interviews with more than a dozen Florida officials and experts.

Former NH GOP Chair Announces She's Leaving The GOP | Morning Joe | MSNBC

The Trump Presidency And American Democracy | Morning Joe | MSNBC

Does the Trump Administration Have Blood on its Hands? Olivia Troye: 'Yes.' | The Mehdi Hasan Show

US Election 2020: Trump's voting fraud claims explained