I encountered this fearless fellow a couple of days ago at a park near the ocean:
“… the light in his heart blinded him to the gleam of the knife. The longing for peace deafened him to the sound of the murders lying in wait.”
That is from an article appearing in Tablet, written by Michael Doran and Can Kasapoglu. It is a quotation from a eulogy delivered by Moshe Dayan in 1956 at the funeral of Ro’i Rothberg, who was the security officer at kibbutz Nahal Oz and was murdered by terrorists. Here’s another quote from the 1956 eulogy:
The residents of Nahal Oz, Dayan said, carry “the heavy gates of Gaza on their shoulders, gates behind which hundreds of thousands of eyes and hands pray that we will weaken so that they may tear us to pieces—have we forgotten that?”
Sound familiar? It could have been said at the funerals of many of the Israelis killed on October 7, because so many of them were idealistic leftists who deeply desired peace with Palestinians and believed it could happen. That’s one of the reasons they were willing to live relatively close to the border.
That does not mean I am faulting or blaming those Israelis. They bear no responsibility for the barbaric behavior of their sadistic assailants. Those Israelis dreamed a dream that was understandably seductive, and the alternative was (and remains) almost too awful to contemplate: that Israel is surrounded by enemies many of whom would like to murder and torture every Israeli and every Jew on earth, and that much of the world would either shrug or applaud were those enemies to succeed.
Many former Israeli peaceniks no longer believe in the possibility of a negotiated peace with the Palestinians, and they have plenty of evidence for that change of heart.
The article is basically about how Israel’s security was too reliant on technology for intelligence rather than human intelligence, and had remade the military based on incorrect assumptions as well:
In place of its former doctrines and force structure, Israel had adopted a more modern military approach favoring a “small and smart” force reliant on precision airpower, special forces, and technology-centric intelligence. As a result, almost without exception, Israel’s leaders failed to foresee not only October 7, but also the kind of war the military is now fighting: Not quick, surgical strikes lasting for several days at most, but a multi-front conflict requiring the taking and holding of contested land positions over the course of months and possibly years. …
As a result of this lack of vision and forward planning, Israel does not have the right force structure, defense technological industrial base, or alliances to ensure a longer-term victory.
I’ve read many articles saying essentially the same thing, and I wrote a number of posts about them. So this information isn’t new, although it bears repeating. Many of the ideas on which the Israelis relied came from the US and Europe, and the ideas are wrong – particularly for Israel but probably for all of us:
Big wars will not happen, so the thinking went, due to the technological superiority of the Western countries. The assessment rests on two key assumptions, namely, that technological advantages deter states; and that technological superiority itself can be the sole determinant of victory in war.
Why anyone of intelligence would have thought those two things were true, even before 10/7, is puzzling. Just look at Vietnam – which ended around fifty years ago – and anyone should be able to have seen the assumptions to be false.
The article is a very good – although depressing – summary of the situation. The West, and that includes Israel, had better get a lot more nimble and a lot more smart.
Trump’s rallies and the election (plus Biden says the polls are wrong)
Trump’s rallies draw a lot of people. An awful lot, even in blue states like New Jersey. Does this matter in terms of the 2024 election?
It’s certainly a good sign. It certainly means that, once again, he speaks to a great many people who are deeply frustrated with and angry at the Biden administration, the state of the country, and the state of the world. These people not only plan to vote for him, they plan to vote for him with enormous motivation and energy, as though the fate of the country and the world depends on it.
Because it very well may.
But I maintain that the rallies tell us little about who will win the actual election. Part of the reason is, of course, the opportunity for the Democrats to cheat, especially in big blue cities. Democrat voters are strongly motivated too, but in a different way. Few like Biden or want to go see him. But they regard him as the person who is standing in the way of a Trump re-election.
And so they will hold their noses and do whatever it takes to vote for him, whether they want to go see him speak or not. And it’s mostly “not.”
I wrote something similar in 2020. An excerpt:
There is no doubt in my mind that Trump has a ton of voters and that many of them are wildly enthusiastic rally-goers and voted for him with extreme intensity of purpose. If that was enough, he would have won in a landslide, and fraud couldn’t have kept up with it.
There’s also no question in my mind that Biden has almost no supporters at all, and that a great many of those who voted for him did so with ether relative distaste or indifference. His “rallies” were marked by nearly zero attendance. …
Biden’s campaign was counting on something entirely different from enthusiasm for candidate Biden himself to bring his voters to the polls: the strength of their hatred for Trump. The media and the Democrats had spent four long years drumming up hatred of the president, and I can attest to the fact that every Democrat I know (and I know a lot of them) has been fully on board with that hatred ever since Trump announced his candidacy long ago.
I’ve never seen anything like it. …
So there was plenty of enthusiasm on the Biden side, as well as the Trump side. But it was the enthusiastic drive produced by hatred.
I don’t mean to be completely negative about the prospects for a Trump win. It could happen. I hope it happens. It’s just that I’ve seen it slip away in 2020, plus of course there was the red wave of 2022 that barely rippled. I’ve also seen the last eight years of unremitting lies about Trump, and the current lawfare that is so outrageous.
I know that Democrats are determined to do whatever it takes to defeat him no matter how popular he is. The only question is whether they will succeed, not whether they will try everything humanly possible.
ADDENDUM:
Oh, and apparently Biden is busy saying that the polls are wrong and he’s really ahead:
President Biden doesn’t believe his bad poll numbers, and neither do many of his closest advisers, according to people familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: The dismissiveness of the poor polling is sincere, not public spin, according to Democrats who have spoken privately with the president and his team.
Well then, that settles it. “Democrats who have spoken privately with the president and his team” say so.
Although that was sarcasm on my part, I suppose it might be true. They might be sincere about polls; we certainly recall that the right is not immune to such beliefs about candidates on the right, either. And politician are narcissists – Biden most definitely is – and aides often tell the narcissists what the narcissists want to believe.
But I don’t think that’s what’s happening here. I actually think that they know the polls are bad but they think they can either come up with some October surprise that can change things, or they think they can overcome the deficit by fraud, or both. Certainly they want to be able to say “I told you so” if the fix is in and Biden wins.
My Medicare Part D provider is funnin’ with me
I got a voicemail this morning from my Medicare Part D provider. “We have some important information about your prescription!” it said insistently. And, unlike scam calls, it knew my full name.
Far be it from me to ignore such a thing. The mystery beckoned. Would it be something like, “We no longer cover it” or “You have to jump through another hoop to get it”? Would it be that the price had gone up?
When I called back, of course I had to prove that I’m really myself. It turned out that meant, among other things, saying my birth date – which for some reason these bots never understand when I say it no matter how well I try to enunciate. But there’s the handy keypad for that if all else fails. And then I had to climb a long flight of stairs to get my card, because they needed my ID number. And then a few more things. And then a few more. And then, finally to the point of the whole thing.
They were reminding me that I’m due to fill my prescription. That was it. I tried to explain that I had many pills left and didn’t need to refill it now, but the bot did not understand. That possibility was not within its Venn diagram of possible events in the world. The patient, calm, and yet strongly insisted quasi-female voice kept asking me whether I had filled it, but any “no” response got a flurry of further questions about whether I’d seen my doctor and whether my doctor had advised me to go off the medication. A “No!” “NO!” from me only elicited escalating misunderstanding from the bot, until I finally hung up and called customer service, where I had to plug in all those numbers and verify myself all over again.
I got to talk to a real person this time. But the real person said that in order to cancel reminders of that sort in the future I’d have to call the other number back. Although I tried to tell her that I didn’t think that would work, because the bot wasn’t programmed to do anything of the sort, the real person told me that was the only way to do it.
So it was back to the bot, laboriously authenticating myself again, and of course my attempt to cancel future reminders didn’t work. No matter how I tried, the bot did not understand. I hung up again, and then back to customer service, more authentication, and person number two, who graciously fixed the problem.
At least, she said she fixed it. I hope I don’t get any more of those reminders, but I wouldn’t bet money on it. And anyway, I get similar reminders from the pharmacy as texts, which are a lot easier to deal with.
The process was boring, time-consuming, and frustrating in a petty way that I realize has nothing to do with a real trial and tribulation. But it’s like chalk on a blackboard, and it took close to an hour from start to finish.
Open thread 5/14/24
We had many of these when I was growing up. And I still don’t like electric can openers and never use one:
The NOPE Act: defunding the UN
Here’s a worthwhile effort by some members of the GOP:
U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho), ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, today led 24 Senate colleagues in introducing the No Official Palestine Entry (NOPE) Act, legislation to update existing funding prohibitions in law that would cause the United States to cut off assistance to entities that give additional rights and privileges to the Palestinian Authority.
“The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) are deeply flawed, plagued by corruption, and incite terrorism through the egregious ‘pay for slay’ program. Giving the PLO a voice at the United Nations is preposterous and fails to account for the PLO’s role in inspiring generations of Palestinians to support acts of terror,” said Risch. “This legislation will ensure taxpayer dollars are not used to give the PLO credibility.” …
Current U.S. law prohibits U.S. funding to organizations, such as the UN, which give the PLO full membership or standing as a member state. The NOPE Act updates the existing funding prohibition to organizations that offer the PLO “any status, rights, or privileges beyond observer status.”
Here are the results of the UN vote. No surprise; most countries in the world are dictatorships or otherwise corrupt, and any body that gives each one a vote will be a force for evil:
A total of 143 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations recognized on Friday that Palestine met the necessary criteria to join the organization, and granted it new rights as an observer member. Nine countries, including the US and Israel, voted against, and 25 abstained.
The resolution “determines that the state of Palestine (…) should therefore be admitted to membership” and “recommends that the Security Council reconsider the matter favorably.” This resolution “would have a profound impact on the future of the Palestinian people,” even if, in itself, it “does not do justice to the state of Palestine,” which remains an observer, explained Mohamed Abushahab, ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, introducing the text on behalf of the Arab countries.
The vote has no particular effect except as pro-Palestinian pro-terrorist anti-Israel anti-Jewish PR. The US remains – for the moment – against such an attempt in the Security Council, although if Biden were to be re-elected I think the US might end its opposition.
What do the current presidential polls mean?
Ace reports on polls that are encouraging for Trump. When I read that sort of thing, I have mixed feelings.
The first feeling is the stirring of hope. Of course, the 2024 presidential election shouldn’t even be close. In terms of a comparison of their records as president, Trump should be leading Biden by at least 80/20. Realistically, however, I know that TDR and the MSM and force of habit mean that the actual numbers are far closer. But it doesn’t surprise me that Trump is nevertheless ahead; that’s how terrible Biden has been.
Paradoxically, Trump has also been helped by the lawfare against him. A lot of people, even those who dislike Trump but understand the danger of politically motivated trials, don’t like what’s happening to him and blame the Biden administration and the Democrats for banana republic tactics.
But … but … despite encouraging polls, over the years I have lost a great deal of faith in the validity of election results. The opportunity to cheat is there, because Democrats keep trying to advance rules to make cheating more easy rather than less. I think there’s little question that the left has no ethical objections to cheating; it’s only the practical considerations that might thwart them, and in big blue cities there isn’t much to stop them. And it’s in big blue cities that cheating gives the Democrats a great deal of bang for their buck, even in swing states or perhaps especially in swing states.
What’s more, there’s plenty of time before voting starts to cook up some new anti-Trump scheme and spread the word with the full cooperation of the MSM.
So it’s hard for me to have a strong belief that Biden will lose and Trump will win. I write “Biden” because, although many if not most people have been saying for ages that Biden won’t be running, I have long held that – short of him dying or close to it – Biden will remain the Democrats’ nominee in 2024. It’s an ominous prospect – and yet it may be helpful in a way, because Biden has become so unpopular an incumbent.
But even if Trump were to be elected – and I strongly hope that will happen – it’s terrible to even contemplate the forces that will be arrayed against him.
Biden to Israel: I’ll tell you where the Nazis are hiding if you promise not to hurt them
Biden and/or Biden’s handlers have come up with a new way to madden:
“The Biden administration, working urgently to stave off a full-scale Israeli invasion of Rafah, is offering Israel valuable assistance if it holds back, including sensitive intelligence to help the Israeli military pinpoint the location of Hamas leaders and find the group’s hidden tunnels, according to four people familiar with the U.S. offers,” reports the Washington Post.
With “friends” like the Biden administration, the State Department, and our intelligence agencies, who needs enemies?
Let’s see what the possibilities are here. My leading one is that the so-called intelligence is pretty much worthless, and that this is just an attempt at teasing Israel into sparing Hamas while getting little in return.
But another possibility is that the administration has actionable intelligence it’s been holding back on in order to coerce Israel/Netanyahu into letting Hamas live to fight another day. And that, in turn, is motivated by the same goal as the previous possibility: to further the left’s delusional and/or malevolent notion that Iran should be empowered to dominate the region. That latter aim has been in evidence since Obama took office, and although it was temporarily reversed by the Trump administration it roared back as soon as Biden was inaugurated.
A further goal is to force Netanyahu out of power, an aim which also originated with Obama. The funny thing – and I don’t mean “funny ha-ha” – is that Biden was chosen by Obama to supposedly be the foreign policy expert, the cool and experienced hand, in the Obama administration. Biden’s previous foreign policy experience was, however, at being wrong. And then he picked up more experience at furthering Obama’s Iran-enabling goals.
Whether the Biden family also gets some money on the side out of this approach is possible, although unknown.
Hopefully, if will all backfire on the Biden administration politically and militarily as well, and Israel will not yield to this sort of pressure.
NOTE: I’m having trouble finding it right now, but I also read a report that the Biden administration is helping to organize and fund the anti-Netanyahu contingent in Israel. If true, it wouldn’t be the first time; the Obama administration used taxpayer money to interfere against Netanyahu in Israeli elections.
Open thread 5/13/24
This may discourage you from eating clams. Then again, maybe not:
Happy Mother’s Day!
[NOTE: This is a slightly-edited repeat of my traditional Mother’s Day post. It was written while my mother was still alive.]
Okay, who are these three dark beauties?
A hint: one of them is one of the very first pictures you’ve ever seen on this blog of neo, sans apple. Not that you’d recognize me, of course. Even my own mother might not recognize me from this photo.
My own mother, you say? Of course she would. Ah, but she’s here too, looking a bit different than she does today—Mother’s Day—at ninety-eight years of age. Just a bit; maybe her own mother wouldn’t recognize her, either.
Her own mother? She’s the one who’s all dressed up, with longer hair than the rest of us.
The photo of my grandmother was taken in the 1880’s; the one of my mother in the teens of the twentieth century; and the one of me, of course, in the 1950s.
Heredity, ain’t it great? My mother and grandmother are both sitting for formal portraits at a professional photographer’s studio, but by the time I came around amateur snapshots were easy to take with a smallish Brownie camera. My mother is sitting on the knee of her own grandfather, my grandmother’s father, a dapper gentleman who was always very well-turned out. I’m next to my older brother, who’s reading a book to me but is cropped out of this photo. My grandmother sits alone in all her finery.
We all not only resemble each other greatly in our features and coloring, but in our solemnity. My mother’s and grandmother’s seriousness is probably explained by the strange and formal setting; mine is due to my concentration on the book, which was Peter Pan (my brother was only pretending to read it, since he couldn’t read yet, but I didn’t know that at the time). My mother’s resemblance to me is enhanced by our similar hairdos (or lack thereof), although hers was short because it hadn’t really grown in yet, and mine was short because she purposely kept it that way (easier to deal with).
My grandmother not only has the pretty ruffled dress and the long flowing locks, but if you look really closely you can see a tiny earring dangling from her earlobe. When I was young, she showed me her baby earrings; several miniature, delicate pairs. It astounded me that they’d actually pierced a baby’s ears (and that my grandmother had let the holes close up later on, and couldn’t wear pierced earrings any more), whereas I had to fight for the right to have mine done in my early teens.
I’m not sure what my mother’s wearing; some sort of baby smock. But I know what I have on: my brother’s hand-me-down pajamas, and I was none too happy about it, of that you can be sure.
So, a very happy Mother’s Day to you all! What would mothers be without babies…and mothers…and babies….and mothers….?
Comparison of the Jewish and Muslim state populations in the US
I’ve read a number of comments from people wondering about comparisons of Jewish and Muslim populations in different states in the US, so I’m tackling the question here.
In Europe the proportions are way in favor of Muslims, due to a combination of the Holocaust and of the encouragement of Muslim immigration. That is one of the main reasons Europe is in such a quandary, with many countries there deeply afraid of their own Muslim populations, which are substantial.
Just to take an example (doing some quick math here): in Sweden there are about 15,000 Jews out of a total population of about ten and a half million people. That’s a Jewish population of about .15%; in other words, minuscule. But Sweden has many more Muslims, probably about 8% of the total population. France is 5% Muslim and about .65% Jewish. These figures may not be exactly correct, but there’s no question that all over Western Europe the number of Muslims in the population dwarfs the number of Jews, a situation that has had tremendous political repercussions.
In fact, almost all the Jews in the world are concentrated in two countries: Israel and the US, which have roughly the same number as each other. And most US Jews cluster in certain cities in blue states, although for the most part those states would be blue even without the Jewish vote. One of those states is also red (at least at the moment): Florida.
But to get to the point of this post, here is a ranking of the Muslim population of the US, state by state. And here is the same for the Jewish population of the US, state by state.
Michigan, for example, has three times more Muslims than Jews. That tells you something.
Most US Jews are concentrated in California (1,234,540 and 3.1% of the state’s population) , New York (1,785,727 and 8.8% of the state’s population), New Jersey (626,220 and 6.7% of the state’s population), Maryland (240,100 and 3.9%), Masschusetts (301,880 and 4.3%), Pennsylvania (434,165 and 3.3%), Illinois (325,160 and 2.5%), Florida (672,465 and 3.1%), and Connecticut (118,350 and 3.3%). Nearly all those states are so very blue that – at least, by my quick calculation – even if every single Jew in them voted for Republicans the states would remain blue. As I already said, Florida is red. That leaves Pennsylvania as the only state where the Jewish vote would make a difference, and (interestingly enough) Pennsylvania has an extremely pro-Israel Democrat as senator, Fetterman, as well as a fairly pro-Israel Jewish Democrat, Josh Shapiro, as governor.
As far as the Muslim populations go: New York (724,475 and 3.6%), California (504,056 and 1.3%), Illinois (473,792 and 3.7%), New Jersey (321,652 and 3.5%), Michigan (241,828 and 2.4%), Maryland (188,914 and 3.1%), Pennsylvania 1.2%, and Massachusetts 1.9%. We therefore can see that Illinois and Michigan have more Muslims than Jews, especially Michigan, and their Muslim populations are fairly sizeable. There are other states with more Muslims than Jews, but they have a lot fewer of either and as voting blocks neither is especially important although in swing states they could make a difference. For example, North Carolina has 1.3% Muslims to .5% Jews. Georgia has almost the same number of both: 1.3% Jews and 1.2% Muslims. Louisiana has .3% Jews and .5% Muslims. Maine has .9% Jews and 1.2% Muslims, and Iowa has .2% Jews and .7% Muslims. A lot of states are like that.
So that’s the answer, as best I can tell.
Michigan: sounds like the voting fix may be in
I’ve noticed that when a state turns blue – both legislative houses plus a governorship controlled by Democrats – the government often uses the opportunity to change the voting laws in an attempt to ensure that the state never goes Republican again. And usually, there’s little the Republicans can do about those changes unless they somehow violate the state constitution and the state’s highest courts are not blue as well. The laws are passed legally, signed into law, and the die is cast.
For example, there’s Michigan:
In the 2022 mid-term elections in Michigan, voters handed control of the Michigan Legislature to the Democrats, giving them a majority in both the Michigan House of Representatives and the Michigan Senate — something that hasn’t happened for forty years. Since then, they’ve been working hand in glove with our notorious Democrat governor, Gretchen Whitmer, including passing a slew of bills that significantly transform election procedures in the State of Michigan and make it easier to commit election fraud, while at the same time making it harder to uncover it.
That’s the ticket. As Turkey’s Endogan once said, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
More on Michigan:
The new legislation hands over verification of absentee ballots from an elected bipartisan board of inspectors to city or township clerks. They also significantly expand the powers of election clerks and the Secretary of State. For example, the Secretary of State can now dictate election procedures without going through the formal rule-making process. This greatly increases the potential for fraud and significantly reduces the safeguards against it.
Senate Bill 367 allows clerks in municipalities with at least 5,000 people to process and count absentee ballots eight days before Election Day. The eight-day, pre-election day window will make it very difficult for poll watchers to observe the handling and counting of mail-in votes. (What could possibly go wrong there?) Municipalities will work closely with the SoS, to whom the bill assigns the task of unilaterally “supervising the implementation and conduct of early voting for state and federal elections.” (God forbid that the SoS has entrenched political biases.)
According to Representative Ruth Johnson (R) Holly, MI, these bills remove every instance of the word ‘fraud’ in the previous law and replace them with the word, ‘error.’ Criminality of intent is thus effectively insulated from prosecution and the ability to address election fraud is stripped away. In fact, under Senate Bills 603 and 604, alleged fraud can no longer be used to request a recount.
This not only seems to be doing away with the idea of fraud triggering a recount (which in the case of actual fraud wouldn’t do much good anyway, because if fraudulent votes have been cast they will just be counted again), it also seems to be doing away with bipartisan control over the voting process. But I assume that’s the point and the goal. The Democrats are trying to make it impossible for Republicans to ever get control and use the same mechanisms against them. And so what if the voters come to no longer trust the process. As long as the left can remain in control, the left doesn’t need their trust or their acquiescence.