Thursday, December 31, 2020

Poll: 78% of Haredim back health rules, 60% broke them to send kids to school

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/poll-78-of-haredim-back-health-rules-60-broke-them-to-send-kids-to-school/

A majority of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox believe in the importance of lockdown restrictions to curb the coronavirus, but a majority of the community also sent their children to school in violation of the rules, according to a survey published Wednesday.

The survey said that 78 percent of ultra-Orthodox, or Haredi, Israelis believe there is “great” or “moderate” importance to adhering to the Health Ministry’s rules during the pandemic.

Trump's ridiculous exit strategy

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/21/opinions/trump-oval-office-transition-dantonio/index.html

Behold the crackpot presidency nearing its end.
After years of conspiracy theories, lies, and rage, the President seems to be turning the Oval Office into a stage set for the final scenes of a Biblical quality drama -- and more specifically, the tale of the super-strong Israelite warrior Samson, who declared "Let me die with the Philistines!" and in toppling the temple, died along with his enemies. 
 
Trump isn't Samson. America isn't a Philistine temple. Thank God there are still people around the President who resist the ridiculous drama.

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

GOP senator to delay affirming Biden victory by forcing votes on Electoral College results

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/30/politics/josh-hawley-force-votes-electoral-college-results/index.html

Rep. Mo Brooks, the Alabama Republican spearheading the effort to object in the House, said earlier this month Republicans were considering objecting to six states that Biden won, meaning as much as 12 hours of debate that would turn the process into a political circus and could spill into a second day of debate.
The last time the chambers voted on an objection was in 2005, when then-Sen. Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat, joined with then-Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, an Ohio Democrat, to object to Bush's Ohio win. Hawley cited the objection in his statement Wednesday.
But Boxer told CNN earlier this month the circumstances of the objection were starkly different to the GOP efforts to overturn Biden's election win.
"Our intent was not to overturn the election in any way. Our intent was to focus on voter suppression in Ohio," said Boxer, who has retired from the Senate. "They're talking about the vote that the presidency was stolen from Donald Trump. It's not even a close comparison."

Vaccines Are Safe, No Matter What Bobby Kennedy Says

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/30/opinion/covid-vaccine-bobby-kennedy.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

As a doctor, and as a member of the Kennedy family, I feel I must use whatever small platform I have to state a few things unequivocally. I love my uncle Bobby. I admire him for many reasons, chief among them his decades-long fight for a cleaner environment. But when it comes to vaccines, he is wrong.

Though his Facebook post linked to a dubious source — a website aligned with the Children’s Health Defense organization that publishes conspiratorially tinged stories on “Big Pharma” and “Big Food” — the basic premise was correct: two U.S. health care workers did suffer allergic reactions, one anaphylactic, the other more mild, to the Covid vaccine.

Shaking hands with women

Igros Moshe (E.H. 04:032.9):Shaking hands with women as greeting. It is obviously prohibited as I have written previously (O.C. 113) because of concerns for sexual arousal and pleasure. However I wrote (E.H. 56) that if you see religious Jews who are lenient to judge them favorably and assume that they are relying on the absence of sexual arousal and pleasure but I also wrote there that it is difficult to rely on this. I don’t see any inconsistency between prohibiting shaking hands but permitting riding on buses (E.H. 2:14) since there is no affection involved there for almost everyone

What We Know About AstraZeneca’s Head-Scratching Vaccine Results

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/health/astrazeneca-covid-vaccine.html

Surprisingly, the vaccine combination in which the first dose was only at half strength was 90 percent effective at preventing Covid-19 in the trial. In contrast, the combination of two, full-dose shots led to just 62 percent efficacy.

Fewer than 2,800 volunteers got the half-strength initial dose, out of the more than 23,000 participants whose results were reported on Monday. That’s a pretty small number of participants on which to base the spectacular efficacy results — far fewer than in Pfizer’s and Moderna’s trials.

How the Oxford-AstraZeneca Vaccine Works

 https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/health/oxford-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine.html

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is based on the virus’s genetic instructions for building the spike protein. But unlike the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, which store the instructions in single-stranded RNA, the Oxford vaccine uses double-stranded DNA.

The researchers added the gene for the coronavirus spike protein to another virus called an adenovirus. Adenoviruses are common viruses that typically cause colds or flu-like symptoms. The Oxford-AstraZeneca team used a modified version of a chimpanzee adenovirus, known as ChAdOx1. It can enter cells, but it can’t replicate inside them.

PA Lt. Guv Trolls Republicans on Voter Fraud: Trump Got ‘100% of the Dead Mother Vote’

 https://news.yahoo.com/pa-lt-guv-trolls-republicans-040549807.html

Democratic Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman on Monday night trolled Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and other Republicans over Patrick’s offer of reward money for proof of voter fraud, pointing that the only documented fraud cases in the Keystone state involve President Donald Trump.
Last month, in an effort to support Trump’s attempt to overthrow President-elect Joe Biden’s decisive victory, Patrick offered up $1 million for evidence of fraud during the Nov. 3 election. Patrick’s reward offer, however, essentially revealed that Republicans had no proof of systemic fraud and that he was hoping the money would entice someone to produce evidence.
Fetterman has spent weeks now throwing Patrick’s proposal back in his face, relentlessly hounding his Texas counterpart to pay up after highlighting a handful of individual instances of voter fraud. Fetterman really began ramping it up over the past few days after a Pennsylvania man was charged with registering dead relatives to vote for Trump.

Trump’s latest — and final? — voter fraud Hail Mary

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/29/trumps-latest-final-voter-fraud-hail-mary/

Until Tuesday morning, the claim was promoted mostly by credulous websites that did nothing to fact-check it and the conspiracy-theory site Gateway Pundit. But Newsmax is now citing the release, and Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” made a brief mention of it Tuesday morning, and Trump and his campaign quickly seized upon it.

The apparent explanation for this is actually rather simple, and it’s the same as many of Trump allies’ claims about supposed voter fraud and allegedly inflated coronavirus death tolls: It’s based on incomplete and lagging data.

UK is 1st to approve use of AstraZeneca’s cheap, easily stored COVID-19 vaccine

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/uk-is-1st-to-approve-use-of-astrazenecas-cheap-easily-stored-covid-19-vaccine/

 Britain on Wednesday authorized use of a second COVID-19 vaccine, becoming the first country to greenlight an easy-to-handle shot that its developers hope will become the “vaccine for the world.” The Department of Health said it had accepted a recommendation from the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency to authorize the vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and Cambridge-based British-Swedish drugmaker AstraZeneca.

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Trump lashes out at Republicans after they override his veto

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/12/29/politics/donald-trump-house-votes/index.html

President Donald Trump's ability to scramble American political lines continues even from the golf course, with House votes Monday showing that his feverish hold over the GOP -- and US government -- is hurtling toward a humbling end.

But be warned: Following along could induce some whiplash.
The House of Representatives took a pair of votes Monday night with mixed results for the President: Conservatives joined Democrats in voting to increase coronavirus stimulus checks, but they also joined forces to override his veto of the massive defense spending bill, a solid rebuke and sign of his waning power.
In a series of Tuesday morning tweets, Trump simultaneously called on the Senate to uphold his veto of the National Defense Authorization Act while claiming that "Weak and tired Republican 'leadership' " will allow the legislation to pass as-is.
If it were to pass, Trump said it would be a "disgraceful act of cowardice and total submission by weak people to Big Tech," a stinging criticism of his Republican allies.
In another tweet, Trump called on the Senate to expand stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000, a measure also passed by the House Monday.
Trump attacked Republican leadership without naming names, saying, "Republican leadership only wants the path of least resistance. Our leaders (not me, of course!) are pathetic."

The Post says: Give it up, Mr. President — for your sake and the nation’s

 https://nypost.com/2020/12/27/give-it-up-mr-president-for-your-sake-and-the-nations/

Mr. President, it’s time to end this dark charade.

We’re one week away from an enormously important moment for the next four years of our country.

On Jan. 5, two runoff races in Georgia will determine which party will control the Senate — whether Joe Biden will have a rubber stamp or a much-needed check on his agenda.

Unfortunately, you’re obsessed with the next day, Jan. 6, when Congress will, in a pro forma action, certify the Electoral College vote. You have tweeted that, as long as Republicans have “courage,” they can overturn the results and give you four more years in office.

In other words, you’re cheering for an undemocratic coup.

You had every right to investigate the election. But let’s be clear: Those efforts have found nothing. To take just two examples: Your campaign paid $3 million for a recount in two Wisconsin counties, and you lost by 87 more votes. Georgia did two recounts of the state, each time affirming Biden’s win. These ballots were counted by hand, which alone debunks the claims of a Venezuelan vote-manipulating Kraken conspiracy.

Joe Biden: 'Enormous damage' to US security agencies by Trump

 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55470625

Mr Biden said his team was not getting the information it needed, including from the Department of Defense, as it makes its transition to power.

He spoke after a briefing by national security and foreign policy aides.

Mr Biden takes office on 20 January but President Donald Trump has refused to accept defeat in November's election.

For weeks after the 3 November election, Mr Biden was blocked from receiving key intelligence briefings, an essential and normally routine part of a presidential transition.

Monday, December 28, 2020

New York State Probes 'Fraudulently Obtained' COVID-19 Vaccines, Criminal Investigation Opened

 https://time.com/5925135/new-york-covid-vaccines-fraud/

 A hyperlocal Orthodox Jewish news site, BoroPark 24, published a story on Dec. 21, saying ParCare had received a shipment of Moderna Inc.’s vaccines, and showed boxes of the vaccines in what appeared to be a refrigerator. It also had what appeared to be a copy of a ParCare advertisement touting availability of “The Newest Healthcare Revolution!” on a “first come first serve” basis.

Gary Schlesinger, chief exeuctive officer of ParCare, was cited saying people who are a “health care worker, are over 60, or have underlying conditions” can register online to get a vaccine. That differs from state guidelines, which allow only frontline health care workers, or staff and residents of nursing homes, to get the first batch of vaccines.

“We take this very seriously and DOH will be assisting State Police in a criminal investigation into this matter,” said Zucker in the statement. “Anyone found to have knowingly participated in this scheme will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”