Peace in Rwanda and Congo?
Can we even begin to trust this good news? It’s mostly being covered by the press in Europe rather than the US, but it caught my eye [my emphasis]:
Congo and Rwanda have submitted a draft peace proposal as part of a process meant to end fighting in eastern Congo and attract billions of dollars of Western investment, U.S. President Donald Trump’s senior adviser for Africa said on Monday.
It is the latest step in an ambitious bid by the Trump administration to end a decades-long conflict in a region rich in minerals including tantalum, gold, cobalt, copper and lithium. …
The two countries’ foreign ministers agreed last month, at a ceremony in Washington alongside U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, to submit the draft proposal by May 2.
But neither Kinshasa nor Kigali has publicly confirmed doing so, and Rwandan Foreign Minister Olivier Nduhungirehe said on Saturday on X that the two sides’ contributions “have not yet been consolidated.”
Massad Boulos, who is Trump’s senior adviser for Africa and the Middle East, said on X on Monday that he welcomed “the draft text on a peace proposal received from both DRC and Rwanda,” describing it as “an important step” towards peace. …
The hope is that all three agreements can be signed in about two months, and on the same day, at a ceremony attended by Trump, Boulos said.
Those minerals again.
The two countries have a long, tragic, and bloody history. Here’s a portion of it.
The Trump administration has been very busy indeed, hasn’t it?
The very definition of a power couple
Love finds a way, despite hardships:
Lmao. https://t.co/xbgzmCTfxy pic.twitter.com/rzkCcW2x0Y
— Chuck Ross (@ChuckRossDC) May 5, 2025
Who are they? Why, 39-year-old Alexander Soros and 49-year-old Huma Abedin. If your memory needs refreshing, he’s the extremely rich scion of George Soros and is now head of the Soros empire, and Abedin was once Hillary Clinton’s top aide and is also the ex-wife of Anthony Weiner. Abedin is of half-Pakistani and half-Indian descent, was born here but raised in Saudi Arabia where her parents were teaching, and is a practicing Muslim.
I had missed their engagement, but apparently they’re due to marry next month.
Nice view; nice digs.
Giving illegal aliens a bonus … for leaving
This is certainly creative:
FOX EXCLUSIVE: DHS will announce today that they will begin paying for the commercial flights of illegal aliens who self-deport from the U.S., & they will pay these aliens an additional $1,000 once they are confirmed to have left the country. DHS tells @FoxNews this will save…
— Bill Melugin (@BillMelugin_) May 5, 2025
From Kristi Noem:
If you are here illegally, self-deportation is the best, safest and most cost-effective way to leave the United States to avoid arrest. DHS is now offering illegal aliens financial travel assistance and a stipend to return to their home country through the CBP Home App. This is the safest option for our law enforcement, aliens and is a 70% savings for US taxpayers. Download the CBP Home App TODAY and self-deport.
And from one of the comments there:
Let’s see some federal judge say they can’t do this.
Could be.
I have no idea how many people will take the government up on the offer.
NOTE: The first time I can recall hearing the phrase “self-deport” was in 2012, when Romney had a plan for it. Remember?
Israel is planning to do what it must: occupy Gaza militarily
During the discussion, the Chief of Staff said: “We are on the path to defeating Hamas, and this will also contribute to the effort to bring back the hostages.” According to the source, the plan includes conquering the Gaza Strip, maintaining a military presence, relocating the civilian population in Gaza southward for its own safety, crippling Hamas’ ability to distribute humanitarian aid, and delivering powerful blows [against the] terrorist organization, measures aimed at breaking its hold on the Strip.
The difference is the “maintaining a military presence” part – that is, holding territory. Apparently the ill-fated decade-and-a-half-plus experiment in Gazan independence is over for now.
There is also this: “The prime minister added that he is continuing to promote the Trump Plan to allow for the voluntary emigration of Gazans, and that discussions on the issue are underway with several countries.” No one wants the truculent, trouble-making Gazans, although they might express rhetorical sympathy. Palestinians have sowed discord and destabilization in the countries to which they’ve emigrated in large groups previously.
In the past I’ve featured many videos by Caroline Glick. A couple of months ago, however, she stopped putting out those videos and took a position with Netanyahu’s government as International Affairs Advisor. It is in that position that she spoke a few weeks ago to JNS, and I was struck by the resolve she expressed that is in line with the policy I just described. Here’s her speech; it’s not very long and I’ve cued up what I consider the heart of her message:
I don’t think any of this would be happening if Kamala Harris had been elected.
Sequel: the chicken and dumplings visuals
For those who followed my chicken and dumplings saga over the weekend, commenter “Chuck” has thoughtfully provided this link to a photo purporting to be of the items in question.
I’m searching my memory banks; it was a long time ago, probably about fifteen years ago, that I tried to eat that particular dish. The dumplings and gravy looked a great deal like that although I only remember getting one dumpling, sitting monumentally in its own dish and its own gravy and the size of a large grapefruit. Was my tasteless chicken in another dish, or in the same one and lurking under the massive dumpling? A minor quibble, if so.
Several people pointed out in the comments that many cuisines around the world have dumplings. Very true. But many such dumplings are of the noodlesque variety, which usually makes them far far far more tasty than the Tad’s variety (of course, nearly everything edible is tastier than the Tad’s variety). But large doughy masses of leaden aspect? No, no, a thousand times no. I will not eat them, Sam I Am.
Open thread 5/5/2025
Laughter
Did you notice on that Dave Barry Substack article I discussed yesterday that on the map of Florida he likens to the male reproductive system, he had labeled the body of water below it the “Gulf of Canada,” and also put a note underneath the map that said, “Source: Harvard University School of Medicine and Geography.” So funny. I hadn’t noticed the labels on my first go-round.
Also, for those interested in Barry’s history, please see this. Apparently, Barry has been writing these Substack pieces since January. I read quite a few of them last night and laughed and laughed.
Also, that piece I just linked starts like this:
When people hear that I’m starting a Substack, the question they always ask is: “Dave Barry? Isn’t he dead?”
I’m delighted to report that the answer is: Not yet! I’m still alive, and along with an estimated 85 percent of the Earth’s population, I have a Substack, which I invite you to subscribe to.
This other piece of Barry’s tapped into something that has long bothered me – secretly, because I thought it was just me. But I”m happy to see I’m not the only one who has the difficulty he describes, although I may be an extreme case. As a nightowl, many times when I’ve been in a hotel, I’ve gone to take a shower in the wee hours of the morning and spent at least an hour trying to figure the thing out before I’ve either given up or reluctantly woken my sleeping companion to help crack the code. My husband used to be very very good at that, but perhaps it’s a facility that declines with age. Barry writes:
Hotel shower controls are so complex that they could represent a serious threat to America’s national security, and yet untrained civilians who — we repeat — maybe had a couple of vodkas the night before are expected to somehow know how to operate them. …
Anyway, the good news is that I finally did figure out how to operate that particular hotel shower. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never be in that hotel again, and whatever future hotel showers I encounter will be completely different, thanks to the strict Hotel Shower Manufacturers Official Code of Ethics, which states: “No two hotel showers, even in the same hotel, shall have the same controls.” They’re working on a new wrinkle where the shower controls in your room will actually control the shower in another guest’s room, and vice versa.
Yes, it’s an exciting time for the hotel-shower industry.
I didn’t realize I’d missed Dave Barry, but apparently I did. I’m glad he’s back. We need humor these days, perhaps more than ever.
Speaking of humor, the other day I was describing to a friend the time Gerard and I ate at this restaurant near the beautiful Columbia River Gorge. The restaurant is now defunct, so I won’t be sued for libel (I don’t think) for what I’m about to write, but despite glowing reviews I can say it was probably the worst meal I’ve ever been served in a restaurant. Both Gerard and I ordered the specialty and we had high hopes:
The general rule is the smart diner never went wrong ordering the specialty of the house. And the rule holds true here, with the original chicken ‘n dumplins ($14.50). Enough food to feed two (or one, today and tomorrow), the meal starts with your choice of soup or salad and includes chicken, dumplings and green beans. The vegetables are forgettable, but the chicken is a feast of skinless dark and white meat stewed until fork-tender; the two enormous dumplings, each larger than our fist, are shot through with rich chicken flavor; and the chicken gravy, thanks to its secret ingredient, is pure umami.
It was ghastly, and it was big. Really really big, the dumplings much bigger than my fist and even considerably bigger than Gerard’s fist, and swimming in the most tasteless and gluggy gravy imaginable. The dumplings were dense as neutron stars and even more tasteless than the gravy. The whole thing was so awful I could not eat it and neither could he, and we were not picky eaters ordinarily.
All around us, people were happily chowing down with gusto, and the restaurant was full. We couldn’t understand it at all, but the upshot was that we started to laugh and became nearly helpless with laughter. When a waiter came over and asked how we liked the food, I had to pretend to be having a coughing fit. We paid and left without eating, and got into the car and laughed for about fifteen minutes before we could drive away.
After that, all it ever took for both of us to erupt into gales of laughter was to mention that restaurant.
Roundup
I keep having to resort to these roundups. Too much news; hard to choose! And so we have the following:
(1) The left suddenly wonders whether John Fetterman is cognitively impaired. But of course, he used to be a lot more impaired when he ran for the Senate, and they were just fine with that because they felt he would always side with the left. Same with a bout of serious depression for which he was treated early in his term. But as his mind and emotions improved, he started taking maverick-y positions, especially on Israel and the border. Therefore he is now the target of this sort of hit piece.
(2) There is a crisis in Israel concerning Ronen Bar, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet, the rough equivalent of our FBI. The whole thing mirrors the attacks on Trump from Comey and company during Trump’s first term, although in a way it’s even worse, in part because the country is at war. The Israeli media is much like our media, almost entirely on the left. If you want to get up to speed on what I consider a fascinating story with fascinating parallels, please watch the first half or so (or even less, if you don’t have that kind of time) of this. I’ve cued it up to begin where they discuss Ronen Bar:
(3) China is in trouble, it seems, in the fallout from Trump’s tariffs:
From the cramped streets of Sichuan in the southwest to the cold outskirts of Inner Mongolia in the northeast, furious workers are demanding back pay and protesting mass layoffs as factories shutter under pressure from Trump’s tariffs. …
The wave of unrest follows a brutal plunge in China’s export orders, now at their lowest since the COVID lockdowns. Goldman Sachs estimates up to 16 million Chinese jobs could vanish as Trump’s tariffs bite deeper into the regime’s weak underbelly.
Trump said the tariffs placed on China are having their intended effect.
“They were making from us a trillion dollars a year. They were ripping us off like nobody’s ever ripped us off,” he stated. “They’re not doing that anymore.”
Chinese authorities have no reluctance to be harsh with its protesting people. The more basic question is – at least, from the US-centric point of view – what will they do about the tariffs?
(4) This news is potentially very big and perhaps deserves a thread of its own. Here’s Margot Cleveland on the ruling:
HUGE win from Trump Administration and D.C. Circuit enters stay of lower court injunction. Lower court barred Trump Administration from managing Voice of America. D.C. Circuit stayed decision allowing Trump to move forward w/ firings/grant terminations. …
Court of Appeals decision is based on fundamental issue of “jurisdiction.” This conclusion should have wide-spread ramifications because many of challenges to Trump Administration are about employment decisions which CONGRESS said are NOT for district courts to decide.
That second paragraph is the heart of the matter.
More:
The Court of Appeals decision is also significant because it addresses the “wholesale” “dismantling” argument being presented in several cases (such as USAID cases). The Administrative Procedures Act is NOT for such claims either & Congress did not waive such immunity! …
In sum, this opinion is a HUGE win for Trump because it establishes 3 key principles that apply to many of the other cases being brought against Trump Administration: a) no jurisdiction over firings; b) no jurisdiction over grant terminations; c) you can’t get around Congress limiting district court jurisdiction by creative pleading of claims under other theories; d) with no bond harm to government will outweigh other harm; e) public has interest in Article III obey Article I.
(5) As Canada goes, so goes Australia, as the left wins the election.
Turley on “squatter” illegal aliens
The left knows that they can exploit our legal system to assure that when aliens enter this country illegally they cannot be easily deported, especially if they claim asylum. And various pro-illegal-alien groups (apparently many funded by taxpayer dollars, as DOGE has documented) have spread word far and wide, especially in Latin America but also elsewhere. A handy app to facilitate asylum claims (most of which are bogus) has also been provided, and all such claims must be heard.
Jonathan Turley has written a good piece on this phenomenon [hat tip: commenter “AesopFan”], which can be found here and is entitled “Squatter Syndrome: How the Inefficiencies of Our Legal System Are Making a Mockery of Our Immigration Laws.” Of course, it’s not just the inefficiencies, it’s the inefficiencies purposely exploited by the left. As Turley explains:
In courtrooms across the country, the nation seems trapped in a type of Squatter Syndrome, a macro version of the housing cases. The slowness of the removal process is being used to keep millions in the country indefinitely. It may prove to be President Joe Biden’s most lasting legacy, a de facto residency by simply overwhelming the system by the sheer number of unlawful entries. …
For years, the Biden Administration claimed that it could not close the Southern border without immigration reform, including the new pathways to citizenship. Donald Trump then effectively shut down the border in a matter of weeks with the same authority that Biden had for four years. Entries are down a breathtaking 97 percent under Trump.
The record conclusively shows that Biden and the Democrats could have closed the border at any time but chose to keep it open despite daily images of waves of migrants entering the country. These same politicians knew that, once in the country, it would be practically impossible to remove a significant number of these individuals due to a court system that takes years actually to deport an individual. They become de facto resident aliens and Democrats then insist that the length of their time in the country warrants a pathway to citizenship.
It’s a ratchet that tends to work only one way. Easy in, difficult out. To the left this is a major feature rather than a bug, and they have currently enlisted leftist-friendly judges to help them block Trump from carrying out the will of the people.
Those of us who are on the right have long known this was the leftist plan; it was quite obvious. And that’s one of the reasons why the Biden administration’s loud and repeated insistence – that they needed Congress to stop the “invasion” and that it was the GOP that hadn’t cooperated with Democrat efforts to stop it – was such an obvious lie, a lie broadcasted by a cooperative press. Luckily, the lie didn’t have the desired effect of facilitating Kamala Harris’ election or Democrat control of Congress in November of 2024. But the illegal arrivals remain; at least, the vast majority of them do.
NOTE: Turley’s piece ends with suggestions for speeding things up in the courts. It’s well worth reading.
Open thread 5/3/2025
This seems somewhat cruel to me. But the little girl is very sweet:
The left’s “undocumented” martyrs
The left has apparently decided that the way to fight Trump’s crackdown on criminal illegal aliens is to choose certain cases, lie about them, and make the deported people into sympathetic martyrs. That line of approach doesn’t appeal to anyone on the right and in fact it seems preposterous and easily disputed. But a lot of people find it sympathetic and that championing such people is the very essence of virtue.
How can that be? A combination of some or all of these principles:
(1) By definition, everything Trump does is bad.
(2) The underdog is always right.
(3) Members of certain designated identity groups are always right.
(4) The police are always against those designated identity groups and are trying to frame them, therefore such people aren’t guilty and the charges are bogus.
(5) We should have unrestricted immigration and it’s a sign of our virtue to do so, and a sign of evil to seal a border or deport anyone.
(6) Being a vicious gang member is just a valid expression of cultural differences, and who are we ex-slaveholders to judge?
(7) All crime except white-collar crime by rich white guys is the result of being a victim of discrimination.
(8) After all, the left’s basic approach worked with many people for Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, and others. So it makes sense to continue.