It’s Netanyahu and Sa’ar, right vs. right. The coming weeks will be pathetic: will former chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot save us? will Amir Peretz leave us? will Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai run? Will Meretz get five seats or six? will Yair Lapid join a Sa’ar-Bennet government? Who will Ehud Barak support? None of these questions are important, neither is the existential question, the fateful one: Bibi or Gidi?

Whether Sa’ar succeeds in defeating Netanyahu from outside of Likud through a coalition of Bibi-adversaries remains to be seen. What is clear to all, however, is that while the Right is bickering, the Left is barely in the race. In this respect, the upcoming election really will be a referendum on Netanyahu.

The need to choose a side, Bibi or not Bibi, is a basic question for a journalist, but that stage is over. Most of the people aren’t sitting around with baited breath thinking about what coalition could be formed. They are mostly eager to see how the COVID vaccine will affect Bibi, who work a black T-shirt to be vaccinated on Saturday night.

No president has ever misused the pardon power as thoroughly as Trump has — not to rectify wrongs and dispense mercy but to reward political allies, excuse corruption and erase, as completely as possible, the work of the special counsel who plagued his years in office.

A president issuing pardons is legal. Legal things can be overt acts of a conspiracy. Here, a conspiracy to obstruct justice involving extortion, just like with Trump/Ukraine. Trump’s public words were clear: shut up & ill pardon you. These pardons are part of a crime. Indict him.

Pardon panic has some analysts bending over backward to argue that Trump’s pardons could be thrown out by courts, but there is no legal basis to suggest that pardoning family members or associates would be presumptively invalid. There are constitutional arguments against corrupt pardons, but frankly, all of these arguments face an uphill battle.

…while we can quibble about specifics, Trump’s general sentiment that the bloated bill is a “disgrace” is completely correct. One should also note that Trump-appointed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin played a key role in stimulus negotiations, meaning the administration really should have fought for these valid concerns before the bill got to the president’s desk.

Let’s be clear: On that important point, Trump is right. The bill is inadequate… [but the] idea that Donald Trump actually cares about the financial realities Americans face is ludicrous.

It will help unemployed workers to feed their families and to avoid eviction. It will help small businesses avoid bankruptcy. It will help to keep the trains and buses running in cities across the country… the poverty rate has increased from 9.3 percent in June to 11.7 percent in November…Without a deal, worse would lie ahead.

No one who grew up in a survivor’s home cannot understand human cruelty and the dangers of authoritarianism. No one needs a reminder of the importance of human rights, human dignity and human decency. Blinken lived with people who knew what it was like to be enslaved, who yearned for freedom, who never took freedom for granted and who cherished its blessings.

Blinken’s record has earned him respect from Israeli officials, even when he hasn’t always agreed with them. Michael Oren, a conservative former U.S. ambassador to Israel, called Blinken a man of “singular intelligence and warmth” in a passage of his 2015 book “Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide” — even in describing how Blinken rebuked Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for expanding settlement building after agreeing not to.

“He’s a mensch above all else,” said Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations executive vice president Malcolm Hoenlein.

“Even when we had disagreements, he was able to listen and help facilitate communication,” said Hoenlein, whose work with Blinken has also spanned decades.

…according to Reuters, Apple is hoping to bring something new to the table with a battery design that will make electric car batteries cheaper and last longer. One person involved in the project described the battery technology as “next level.” Apple’s focus on battery design makes a lot of sense given Apple’s work on improving batteries in its existing products.

…some Wall Street analysts are casting doubt on the arrival of the “iCar,” for more reasons other than it would badly screw up their finely tuned discounted free cash flow models.

“We would assign the chances of Apple unveiling its own standalone car by 2024 as 35%-40%,” says Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives.

A major sticking point for me amidst all of these ‘Project Titan’ rumors is how much this thing could cost. Apple products are always in the premium tier of their respective categories. I don’t expect an Apple-branded car to be any different. The question is though, how premium would they go? Apple is a mass-market consumer electronics company. By introducing a new visionary product at such an astronomical price, they could alienate too many customers and tarnish their brand.

Perhaps the most Jewish work of fantasy was written by Charles Dickens in 1843. It’s called A Christmas Carol. It’s so Jewish it should be taught in yeshiva… Here’s why: Dickens’ world-famous tale, still in print and continually presented on stage and screen, is all about what Jews call teshuvah. That’s typically translated as “repentance” but it’s better understood as “return” – a return to a moral life.

Who then ben­e­fited from the ac­cu­mu­lated wealth of Scrooge and Mar­ley? First Britain and then all mankind. Since Scrooge and Mar­ley never con­sumed the wealth they cre­ated, its use was a gift to all. It funded the fac­to­ries and rail­roads, the tools and jobs that fed and clothed mil­lions of British sub­jects and then bil­lions around the world. Their un­spent wealth was of no use to them, but it was of sub­lime use to hu­man­ity.

It took visits on Christmas Eve from spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Future for Scrooge to face up to his moral responsibilities. But in 2020, not even the worst pandemic since 1918, the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression, or a country gripped with racial injustice and political discontent reminiscent of 1968 have yet compelled the nation’s billionaires to recognize their privilege and responsibility. It’s going to take public pressure from the American people.