Home » Open thread 10/4/2024

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Open thread 10/4/2024 — 31 Comments

  1. Wonder if Chicken Little is kin to The Boy Who Cried Wolf?

    Once heard Karma described as a Transceiver – a combination of Transmitter and a Receiver. Signals aren’t just sent (transmitted) out locally, they are also sent out universally. Same for the returning (receiver) signals. Karma isn’t limited.

    Are the Republicans—primarily the more radical MAGA Republicans and Conservatives—sending out signals of defeatism in advance of the Presidential election? What would the returning signals be like?

    Yes they can control the weather.

    Hurricane Helene apparently dropped a lot of conspiracies along with the rain. I think that Marjorie Taylor Greene is suggesting and/or hinting that Biden/Harris ‘Weaponized Helene’ by “cloud seeding” it.

    Marjorie Taylor Greene has a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party

    This is a map of hurricane affected areas with an overlay of electoral map by political party shows how hurricane devastation could affect the election.

    On the right 1/3 down on that map it shows “State Customers Out” and then list states with numbers next to them. People without electricity? I’m sure she has a point, but humble me can’t see it…

  2. I’m remembering that Amy Chua insisted her daughters learn an instrument and gave them a choice of violin or piano, discussion finished. Made me wish I had a son the same age as her daughters, so we could move next door and practice the bagpipes. At 5:00 am. At just the right spot in the yard that the sound reached her bedroom window. Real loud.

  3. I see that a woman is now saying that Trump attended party’s with Combs.
    I also read that BO is stepping in to try to save Harris.
    Longshoremen strike over, for now. Wonder what Harris/BO promised them? And what happens in Jan?
    No, No, I don’t want to be the new head of Hezbollah.

  4. Hudson Inst., Can Kasapoglu, “The Israel-Iran War Enters a New Stage“,
    https://www.hudson.org/defense-strategy/israel-iran-war-enters-new-stage-middle-east-north-africa-defense-intelligence-can-kasapoglu

    Executive Summary

    By launching a large-scale missile attack against Israel on October 1, Iran has made a critical attempt to regain escalation dominance.

    This strike differed from Iran’s April 13 attack. This time, Iran employed a blitz salvo of ballistic missiles rather than a mixed strike package of drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles, giving Israel minimal warning.

    The Iranian ballistic missile barrage saturated, and to some extent evaded, Israel’s air and missile defense architecture. Israel’s passive defenses, especially its public shelters and hardened military bases, provided extensive protection to civilians and defense equipment.

    An Iranian attack with weapons of mass destruction would be catastrophic for Israel at its current interception rate.
    […]

    At the time of this writing, the ball is in Israel’s court. Israel’s political and military leadership is likely considering three main target sets:

    1) Critical nuclear and military facilities.
    2) Hydrocarbon production and export infrastructure.
    3) Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s inner circle, including the top of the IRGC’s chain of command.

    None of these options are mutually exclusive, and each might help Israel tilt the scales of escalation dominance back in its favor. In return, each option will determine Iran’s next step in the regional power play.

    To restate Kasapoglu, the dozens of ballistic missiles which got through the Israeli Arrow defensive system demonstrate Israel’s utter vulnerability to a nuclear tipped missile attack.

    From my point of view, hitting Iranian oil commerce is pointless to eliminating that defense and security vulnerability.

    Therefore, destroying Iranian nuclear-weapons development rises to the top of any necessary target list, with decapitation of the Iranian governmental power structure and toppling the regime not far behind, if not running neck-and-neck.

    Both these aims, however, are going to be dependent on achieving air dominance over Iran (if air supremacy isn’t reasonably within reach) which in turn necessitates a widespread destruction of Iranian air defense as a first order of business.

    After which, Katie bar the door.

  5. You really are too obtuse to understand what’s going on, in 1992, walkin lawton delayed the declaration of emergency to make dade country particularly country walk suffer, in 2005, landrieu and nagin refused to evacuate new orleans, using the bus fleet, their predecessors had looted the levy fund and they blamed w for the damage, yes michael brown was not optimum, but W did try to evacuate,

    they spread ridiculous stories of cannibalism at the super bowl, DIABLO’s like Geraldo and Shep Smith can be counted on to demagogue to maximize the death price, but when they are in charge, they refuse to take responsibility,

    the following year the dems diverted relief funds to other projects, in 2012, obama deserted sandy victims, and stay puft christie went along, in 2017 with Trump on site with Katrina but a corrupt Puerto Rican government which was refused to upgrade the power grid, well guess who they blamed, I have a whole stack of receipts like this,

    Israel has reserved the right to strike adjacent targets like the airbase as Isfahan, the one at Bushehr is problematic, because it would contaminate much of the Persian Gulf,

    bombing kharg island would probably drive oil prices to 120 dollars a barrel, and we have no cushion because they have depleted the reserves, in every way possible they have impaired any real resolution of this conflict,
    I think hitting their chain of command might make the iranians hold back,

  6. A few days ago someone here posted a link to Matt Taibbi’s recent speech on the Washington DC mall: https://www.racket.news/p/my-speech-in-washington-rescue-the

    I had it open in my browser tabs and finally got around to reading it. It is excellent! Thanks to whomever posted it, and thanks to Matt for stating so eloquently what so many of us are witnessing. There are nearly 1,000 comments. I read a handful. A lot of changers commenting, giving mini histories of their pasts, when they believed the regime, especially Democrat politicians.

    My attitude regarding American politics reflects Taibbi’s identically, at least based on what is in his speech. He explains that free speech is not a right, it is a human quality, and he gives some excellent, and humorous anecdotes about the affect on human behavior in parts of the world where government attempts to control and punish speech. The story about the American businessmen in Moscow is great!

    Taibbi also speaks on some of the history of how and why the Founders used the precise words they did in the Bill of Rights. Every American schoolchild should be taught this annually. It is our birthright and it not only belongs to anyone who obtains U.S. citizenship, it is incumbent on all American citizens to protect and defend it.

    The entire piece is well worth 5 minutes of your time.

    Let me pause to say something about America’s current intellectual class, from which the “anti-disinformation” complex comes. By the way: there are no working-class censors, poor censors, hungry censors. The dirty secret of “content moderation” everywhere is that it’s a tiny sliver of the educated rich correcting everyone else. It’s telling people what fork to use, but you can get a degree in it.

    America has the most useless aristocrats in history. Even the French dandies marched to the razor by the Jacobins were towering specimens of humanity compared to the Michael Haydens, John Brennans, James Clappers, Mike McFauls and Rick Stengels who make up America’s self-appointed behavior police.

    In prerevolutionary France even the most drunken, depraved, debauched libertine had to be prepared to back up an insolent act with a sword duel to the death. Our aristocrats pee themselves at the sight of mean tweets. They have no honor, no belief, no poetry, art, or humor, no patriotism, no loyalty, no dreams, and no accomplishments. They’re simultaneously illiterate and pretentious, which is very hard to pull off.

    They have one idea, not even an idea but a sensation: fear. Rightly so, because they snitch each other out at the drop of a hat; they’re afraid of each other, but they’re also terrified of everyone outside their social set and live in near-constant fear of being caught having an original opinion. They believe in the manner of herd animals, who also live whole lives without knowing an anxiety-free minute: they believe things with blinding zeal until 51% change their minds, and then like deer the rest bolt in that direction. We saw that with the Biden is sharp as a tack/No, Biden must step aside for the Politics of Joy switch.

  7. Art Deco,

    From what I recall reading, Amy Chua’s daughters are very well adjusted adults who love their mother and are grateful for their parents.

    Barely tangentially, J.D. Vance credits Chua for pushing him to write, “Hillbilly Elegy” and credits her as a key mentor in his life.

    I think I also remember hearing Rob Henderson (the brilliant psychologist raised in the foster system who coined the term, “luxury beliefs”) credit Amy Chua for mentoring him.

  8. I know this is old hat to many readers here, and I’ve become pretty jaded as well, but I still found this all pretty shocking.

    Editorial in today’s WSJ by Steven Stalinsky, who is doing great work at the Middle East Media Research Institute.

    https://archive.md/s7qhq

  9. Karmi,

    Left, right, red, blue can all point to Congresscritters they perceive as buffoons; and certainly many are.

    The key is for all sides to realize this division plays into their (our anointed leaders) hands. As long as we are fighting amongst one another we will never organize to reduce their power and control.

    Coincidentally(?) this also plays into the media’s hands, which helps them get more eyeballs and more advertising revenue.

  10. sdferr,

    Iron Dome is wonderful and has worked amazingly well. However, as with any artillery it is dependent on a supply of ammunition. I think I read the cost of manufacture of the artillery Iron Dome uses to strike incoming missiles is about 1/10th of the cost of the artillery it is intercepting. That gives them a crucial edge over their enemies, but it doesn’t eliminate the need for Israel to manufacture enough anti-missile missiles to keep it operational.

  11. I would say, it’s in his top 5

    that theme from the film, is so poignant, it chills one to the bone, even when you haven’t heard a note,

    I thnk I learned about MEMRI from Charles Johnson before he went utterly off his rockers now we know from widlanski that tom friedman’s arabic is so poor he couldn’t fail to make simple mistakes,re the shatila massacre, that he corrected in his book, but some one on staff should be able to publish excerpts of what they actually say, nick kristof was trained as an arabist, then they sent him to Moscow and Beijing, because of course, but he seems to learned the Dhimmi catechism, blame Israel excuse Islamists,

    the Post has gotten worse since its acwuisition by Bezos, with David Ignatius having forgotten most everything he learned in his first 10 years as correspondent, and turtles all the way down,

  12. sdferr,

    I just did some Internet reading. Hopefully my sources are accurate. So it looks like David’s Sling and Israel’s Arrow System are calibrated for ballistic missile defense. My apologies for lumping all that into the term, “Iron Dome.”

    I admit limited knowledge on the subject of Israel’s defense systems. The point I wanted to make is, I watch news footage of Israel intercepting so much of the stuff Iran and other nations launch and it is inspirational. I am amazed at the genius and effectiveness of the Israeli people. However, in this recent barrage I started thinking about the sheer volume of stuff being lobbed their way, and realized it must be difficult for Israel to manufacture the needed, defensive artillery to supply their defense systems.

  13. thats a peculiar target, a relatively small settlement deep in the southern negev,

    one is reminded of the helwan rocket project that nasser had commissioned with german expat scientists, (it’s the back story for the odessa file) lightly touched on in the film, the circumstances of how the program was sabotaged, suggests what MI-6 did not let on to Frederick Forsyth, Peter Miller was really closer to Otto Skorzeny in function, but peculiarly he was rarely reference even by Jack Higgins, another popular novelist,

    the Iron defenses are not perfect systems, they are meant to provide the most protection for key population centers like Tel Aviv or Haifa for example,

  14. Yes, beyond difficult, the actual task of a perfect passive defense against a moderate salvo of incoming nuclear tipped ballistic missile warheads is impossible. Foolish. Stupid. Pointless. Insane. It can’t work.

    Hence, other measures must, simply must be undertaken. And, sad to say, time has just about run out. Only a tiny sliver of possible action remains, with even that as sketchy of success as one might imagine. The shit has already hit the fan and is now spewing broadly across their space.

    Forgot to add: Thanks, Obama!

  15. As usual, a bracing Friday column by James Howard Kunstler at his Substack site with the sanitized Web address, in which he touches on the VP debate, Hurricane Helene, and Israel:

    https://jameshowardkunstler.substack.com/p/october-surprise

    A sample: “So, no aid for you, baskets of deplorables, shivering in the dark in your hills and hollows of Appalachia, your houses splintered, scant chattels lost, and your beloved hound-dogs carried away in the roaring torrents. The money that might have helped you begin to recover from the complete devastation of your lives is paying for Guatemalans to bunk in the Roosevelt Hotel and order-in quesadillas and churros, and refill their government-issued debit cards so they can afford a few nice things as they wait for mysterious others to cast ballots in their names.”

    Kunstler’s Clusterf*ck Nation blog was mysteriously zapped last month, but he is continuing at his new address to live up to Matt Taibbi’s closing exhortation in the speech that Rufus referenced above.

  16. “Art Deco @10:25am,

    “Personal artistic taste is personal, and millions agree with you, but I much prefer the swingin’, up tempo, Nelson Riddle Frank.”

    Sinatra was a singular talent who could get his phone calls returned by the best of the best: Riddle, Don Costa, Billy May, Gordon Jenkins, et al. Sinatra did a great album with Count Basie in ’63 or ’64 called It Might as Well be Swing. The arranger was none other than Quincy Jones.

  17. Hubert,

    I didn’t want to repeat “Matt Taibbi’s closing exhortation” at risk of offending the ladies present 😉 , but it’s a great close to a great speech!

    I agree with the commenter who suggested some enterprising patriot put it on a t-shirt and initiate mass sales.

    Imagine the cliche’d live news piece of lines at the local polling place on election day. Now imagine as the camera zooms in you notice a lot of the patient electorate are all wearing the same shirt. On the front of that shirt, Taibbi’s slogan. It just may make the regime shutter a bit.

  18. Sgt. Joe Friday,

    I love that Quincy Jones album.

    It is nearly inconceivable* the volume, breadth and quality of Jones’ work! I can’t think of another producer/composer/arranger who navigated so many genres so successfully. And to stay current with popular music through so many decades and changes. From Sinatra to Michael Jackson! And movie soundtracks across so many genres.

    A true genius.

    *It would be inconceivable, except Quincy actually did do it.

  19. Rufus: excellent idea. Me, I’d like to see a United-Colors-of-Benetton-type video with various public figures all repeating Taibbi’s line. Kind of like the creepy totalitarian celebrity “I pledge…” video that the Obama campaign rolled out in 2012.

    Can you imagine Martha Stewart intoning “M**********r, I’m an American”? Charles Cooke? Roger Kimball? VDH? Thomas Sowell? Heather Mac Donald? Neo (from behind her apple)? AI MITT ROMNEY?! It would be better than Barbara Billingsley speaking jive.

  20. @ Rufus > “A few days ago someone here posted a link to Matt Taibbi’s recent speech on the Washington DC mall”

    I second the recommendation to read Matt’s speech.
    As a disaffected Democrat, because that’s what “liberals” were at the time, he doesn’t pull any punches about the current state of the Party.

    It’s interesting to see people jumping from one ship to the other, with NeverTrumpers going left and honest journalists going right.

    Matt started his speech like this:

    In a pre-Trump universe chimpanzees would be typing their fourth copy of Hamlet before RFK Jr., Robert Malone, Zuby, Tulsi Gabbard, Russell, Bret Weinstein and I would organically get together for any reason, much less an event like this.

    True, everyone speaking has been censored. The issues were all different, but everyone disagreed with “authoritative voices” about something.

    Saying no is very American. From “Don’t Tread on Me!” to “Nuts” to “You Cannot Be Serious!” defiance is in our DNA.

    Now disagreement is seen as threat, and according to John Kerry, must be “hammered out of existence.” The former Presidential candidate just complained at a World Economic Forum meeting that “it’s really hard to govern” and “our First Amendment stands as a major block” to the important work of hammering out unhealthy choices.

    In the open he said this! Kerry added that it’s “really hard to build consensus,” and told Forum members they need to “win the right to govern” and “be free to implement change.”

    What do they need to be free of? The First Amendment, yes, but more importantly: us. Complainers. That’s our shared experience. We are obstacles to consensus.

  21. @ Mike Plaiss > “Editorial in today’s WSJ by Steven Stalinsky, who is doing great work at the Middle East Media Research Institute.”

    Great post. The first section was “old news” but the later reports were shocking.
    His last grafs:

    Among the terror supporters whose online activities my organization monitors is a New Orleans man who regularly praises Hamas and recently tweeted, “America needs to get October seventhed.” Another is a Maryland man who works as an “energy infrastructure contractor” and boasts that he has a federal security clearance. He posts on Twitter about his support for Hamas and warns he has access to sensitive government sites.

    Hamas itself has called for attacks on the U.S. “Oh Americans, Allah will punish you” and “declare war on you,” Haniyeh once warned in a speech. Top Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri called for “violent acts” against America in December 2023. In a speech posted online on Aug. 20, Hamas leader Khaled Mashal ordered his followers among them students in the West to conduct “martyrdom operations,” meaning suicide bombings, on Israeli and Western targets.

    For nearly a year, American supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah have been freely promoting terrorism, often targeting and trying to intimidate the nation’s Jewish communities. Jewish student groups on college campuses have been attacked, as have Jewish-owned private businesses, synagogues and nonprofits across the country. It’s past time that these people are exposed and their activities condemned and investigated.

    One AesopSon used to work in the space industry and had a lowish level security clearance: he had to report his on-line affiliation with a fanfic group that had non-American members writing anime parodies.
    If the FBI hasn’t already shut down and indicted the “energy infrastructure contractor” with the security clearance, they aren’t going to investigate anyone.

    Could be because the current Regime does NOT condemn their activities.

  22. sdferr

    Just your normal residential household in Southern Lebanon, stocked full of rocket launchers and various accoutrements.

    Which is why the IDF’s time in southern Lebanon will concentrate on locating and destroying the Hezbollah arsenal. It will take a while. Lebanese cooperated by fleeing north, so that the IDF will be able to concentrate on arsenal-destroying without a lot of house-to-house combat.

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