"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

“We have been reduced to a community of paranoid hypochondriacs, afraid that every breath will kill us” - Rabbi Chananya Weissman

“that the most basic human contact is an unreasonable roll of the dice, that everything we once considered normal and even obligatory must be off limits indefinitely – in some cases even forever.

This is insane. This is against everything the Torah teaches us.”

“not denying that covid is real & should be taken seriously. At the same time, I am denying...the angel of death is roaming among us, felling people left & right like Biblical plagues. This is not a Biblical plague. There are a million ways we can die...covid is just another 1.”

“I don't want to get it, and I don't want to give it to anyone else, but the terror that we have been living with for the last year is unjustified. Because of this terror, one third of Israel is currently living in poverty, with many others barely hanging on.”

“Drug and alcohol abuse are up; domestic abuse is up; suicides are up; social workers are overwhelmed; elderly people are dying from loneliness; children are traumatized; parents are falling apart; thousands of businesses have closed forever; and so much more.”

They report, you decide.

Mike Pence to confirm Biden then leave the country, says report https://t.co/oIkb1SU6wX via @YahooNews

A short reflection on the connection between personal psychology and "conspiracy theory."

(Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay
https://t.co/JdaHUam549)

I previously did a wellness check on @SaRaAshcraft that resulted in her becoming very angry at me. She isn’t posting on Twitter. I am hoping that she is under Federal protection right now.

It wasn’t the wellness check that she was angry about - she thanked me for it - it was the fact that I characterized her as needing medical help.

This was based on her Tweets.

A true friend cares about others but also knows when to back off.

There is not a day that goes by that I do not reflect on Sarah, who is an amazing human being I was privileged to meet over Twitter.

The police officer who did the wellness check on Sarah told me his impression that she is highly intelligent, reported being a trauma victim, and only needed help to be OK.

I understand why the help he offered, eg to go to hospital, might not have been what she wanted.

My little Jacob Wohl story: August 2016, we're sitting around the trading turrets at my office on a bored to tears slow day. Our receptionist said someone was here for his 2pm appointment. None of us had an appointment on schedule. Who is it? we ask? Some guy named Jacob Wohl 1/

Jacob Wohl, for those out of loop, gained quite a bit of notoriety for becoming the youngest guy to ever get himself barred for life from the financial industry. Now he's waiting in our lobby to pitch something. We're a large merchant bank. 2/

Send him in, we said. In walks young Jacob asking to be seeded with $25mm to start a new hedge fund in exchange for an ownership stake in it. Oh, & he needs an office. And a Bloomberg station. And needs to borrow staff until he can hire some guys. And he needs a leased car... 3/

And he needs an answer today. Right now. Because there's a competing offer from Izzy Englander's firm Millenium (we know those guys well). We fight the urge to literally start laughing, but do ask him...hey, you the same guy who got banned by regulators? He didn't even flinch 4/

He went on about that being untrue & handed over a letter he said was from his lawyer who had confirmed he was not barred, had been vindicated but it 'just wasn't in the system yet at the SEC, CFTC'...whatever that means. 5/

1 of 16: WE ARE ALL JEWS HERE: THE STORY OF RODDIE EDMONDS

One of the most moving and relevant stories of the Battle of the Bulge, or any American Soldier in any war, is that of Master Sergeant Roddie Edmonds, a Knoxville, Tennessee native, who served with the 106th Infantry.

2 of 16:

Roddie was captured early on in the Battle of the Bulge, on December 19th, when Panzer forces plowed through his unit.

He, along with almost his entire regiment, was forced to surrender.

3 of 16:

The men were transported to the Stalag IX-A POW camp in Ziegenhain, Germany.

Roddie was the senior enlisted American Soldier at the site. As such, he was the conduit between all American Soldiers and their German captors.

4 of 16:

In late January, the camp’s commandant, Major Siegmann [pictured here], ordered Roddie, a Christian, to identify all Jewish Soldiers and order them to stand in formation by themselves the next day.

[Jewish Soldiers were a minority within American units]

5 of 16:

Throughout WWII, captured Jewish Soldiers were often tortured and then killed by their German captors.

In fact, Jewish Soldiers had been told to bury their dog tags before capture. The dog tag identified Jews with the letter “H” for Hebrew.

OK winger wonderland story time boys & girls.

1. Sleet stops, it's warming up, neighbor decides get out & drive, probably after seeing some truck drive down our residential road (4-wheel drive). Neighbor has new SUV push button start, 2-wheel drive, which is NOT THE SAME THING.

2. So anyway, they back out of their garage & then pull forward down their driveway. The driveway is flat, but it's also a really really long driveway that goes from the back of the house down the side of the house. This will be important later.

3. They make it down the driveway just fine, so now super confident this will go well.

They pull out on our little residential road and start driving.

Mother nature is laughing her ass off right about now.

4. I should mention the roads through our little subdivision don't have curbs or sewers. We're basically out in the country so they just slope roads so the run-off goes into a ditch at the side of the road.

5. So anyways, their SUV starts to slightly fishtail. They haven't gone far at this point. So, they stop, and the SUV, although stopped, just ever so slowly slides to the side of the road and ends up half way in the ditch & almost tipped over.