January 29, 2023

That's really rude what you did at Lowe's

You know employees, who have nothing to do with staffing at the registers, have to put back all the crap you left in your cart. They will do that instead of helping customers and maybe running a register. What you did was selfish and inconsiderate.

January 27, 2023

Five killed, five wounded in shooting attack in Jerusalem; terrorist shot

Source: Times of Israel

Five people have been shot and killed and another five wounded in a terror shooting attack in Jerusalem’s Neve Yaakov neighborhood, police and medics said Friday night.

The Magen David Adom ambulance service said its medics were treating ten victims. Five of them were declared dead at the scene.

Police said the suspected gunman had been shot.

Preliminary reports suggested the terror attack occurred in or near a synagogue.



Read more: https://www.timesofisrael.com/five-wounded-in-suspected-shooting-attack-in-jerusalem-assailant-shot/

January 18, 2023

Antisemitism has spiked. The cause is no mystery.

Right-wing Republicans have their fingerprints all over the rise of antisemitism in the United States. The latest data make this clear.

“Over three-quarters of Americans (85 percent) believe at least one anti-Jewish trope, as opposed to 61 percent found in 2019,” the Anti-Defamation League recently reported. “Twenty percent of Americans believe six or more tropes, which is significantly more than the 11 percent that ADL found in 2019 and is the highest level measured in decades.” The report continues:

These tropes reference common anti-Jewish conspiracies theories that previous research has shown lead to hostility and violence. … Some of these statements [presented to respondents] view Jews as “clannish,” with 70 percent and 53 percent of Americans saying that Jews stick together more than others and go out of their way to hire other Jews, respectively. Other tropes relate to the concept of “dual loyalty,” with 39 percent of Americans saying that Jews are more loyal to Israel than the United States. Finally, we see over 20 percent support for several statements relating to Jews being too powerful in business and Wall Street.

Much of this sounds like the rhetoric coming from the MAGA movement, and specifically its leader, defeated former president Donald Trump. How many times have you heard Republicans, including House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, prattle on about George Soros, a Jewish Hungarian immigrant, as if he is the chief string-puller controlling the Democratic Party? Trump meanwhile routinely demonizes Jewish Democrats for not supporting him and the Israeli government.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/18/antisemitism-spreading-maga/

Gift Link:

https://wapo.st/3GT3DSG

January 12, 2023

The trailblazing female Muslim Arab IDF major

She is a Muslim Arab woman.

She’s an iconoclast and a pioneer.

An army officer who has received both the President’s Award of Excellence and that of the minister of defense, she is the first Muslim Arab woman to publicly become a major in the IDF.

Meet Ella Waweya, 33, internationally known as “Captain Ella” (even after her promotion), the IDF’s deputy spokesperson for the Arabic media.

Captain Ella’s unconventional life journey begins in the central Israeli city of Qalansawe, located east of Netanya, where virtually all the residents are Muslim Arabs. Although she was born into a conservative, religious family, from a young age Waweya felt that she wanted to be part of Israeli society.

She recalls her family watching the one-sided reports of the Qatari-based Al Jazeera on the Second Intifada when she was 12 years old. Confused about her identity and confounded by the unchartered questions of a preteen—was she Arab Israeli or was she Palestinian?—she knew one thing: She wanted to be a journalist but she wanted to show the side that Al Jazeera was not presenting—that of the State of Israel.

She had many questions but did not find anyone who could answer them in what is a very cloistered society.

“Until I turned 16, I was in sort of dilemma as to what was my identity,” Waweya recounts in an interview with JNS in her Tel Aviv office at the IDF Spokesperson Unit’s foreign press branch. “It was as if I was in a type of bubble and I was coming out of a cave to a different, very strange world.”

https://www.jns.org/the-trailblazing-female-muslim-arab-idf-major/

January 12, 2023

Survey finds 'classical fascist' antisemitic views widespread in U.S.

At points in the past half-century, many U.S. antisemitism experts thought this country could be aging out of it, that hostility and prejudice against Jews were fading in part because younger Americans held more accepting views than did older ones.

But a survey released Thursday shows how widely held such beliefs are in the United States today, including among younger Americans. The research by the Anti-Defamation League includes rare detail about the particular nature of antisemitism, how it centers on tropes of Jews as clannish, conspiratorial and holders of power.

The survey shows “antisemitism in its classical fascist form is emerging again in American society, where Jews are too secretive and powerful, working against interests of others, not sharing values, exploiting — the classic conspiratorial tropes,” Matt Williams, vice president of the ADL’s year-old Center for Antisemitism Research, told The Washington Post.

-snip-

“It used to be that older Americans harbored more antisemitic views. The hypothesis was that antisemitism declined in the 1990s, the 2000s, because there was this new generation of more tolerant people. It shows younger people are much closer now to what older people think. My hypothesis is there is a cultural shift, fed maybe by technology and social media. The gap is disappearing,” said Ilana Horwitz, one of the survey’s reviewers, and an assistant professor of Jewish studies at Tulane University.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2023/01/12/antisemitism-anti-defamation-league-survey/

Gift link: https://wapo.st/3k1O9Ee

More depressing news.

January 6, 2023

The DEA Shut Down a Pain Doctor. Now 3 People Are Dead.

First, there was the double suicide—a husband and wife from Georgia who took their lives one week after the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) suspended the license of their doctor, David Bockoff, a pain specialist in Beverly Hills. After Bockoff lost his ability to prescribe fentanyl and other powerful painkillers on Nov. 1, dozens of his patients became “opioid refugees” with nowhere to turn. The third death came barely a month later.

Another ex-Bockoff patient, 42-year-old Jessica Fujimaki, died Dec. 10 at her home near Phoenix. Autopsy results are pending, but her husband told VICE News he believes the cause of death was complications related to opioid withdrawal and medical conditions that caused severe chronic pain. She left behind two daughters, ages 13 and 11.

The DEA alleges Bockoff prescribed “alarmingly high dosages” of opioids to multiple patients, posing an “imminent danger” to the public. The doctor—who does not currently face any criminal charges—is attempting to fight back in civil court, denying any misconduct and alleging that DEA agents are the ones responsible for harming the public by effectively shutting down his practice with no consideration for people who relied on medications he prescribed.

“Much like a diabetic is dependent on insulin,” Bockoff’s attorney wrote in one court filing, “taking away the controlled substances allowed only by prescription from a DEA registered physician can be life threatening.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/dy7qqv/dea-beverly-hills-doctor-shut-down-opioids

January 5, 2023

Please, God, let this be the end of Aaron Rodgers

I was so close to being free of Aaron Rodgers. So, so close. There the Packers were at 4-8, with Rodgers being the same joyless asshole he’s been throughout his entire career: making frowny faces after every failed third down attempt, searching downfield in vain for Davante Adams only to find a succession of puds, spending more time with Pat McAfee than in the film room, and playing the worst football of his career. It was MAGNIFICENT, I tell you. Better than my wedding day. It was the time of my life, and it’s what Rodgers deserved after outing himself a season ago as a walking Substack.

He was done. Washed. One more loss and his Packers would be out of the playoffs, bereft even of the opportunity to continue their now-annual tradition of blowing a layup playoff game. He would then spend all offseason doing his whole fake “Hmmm maybe I’ll retire” shtick, and then get traded to Carolina, and then go 0-17, and then end the season in jail for assaulting Jim Harbaugh with a bottle of switchel. Oh, what a demise it would have been. All of that was right there to be had. MINE.

Instead, I got this:
https://www.sfgate.com/49ers/article/49ers-lions-end-aaron-rodgers-17694575.php