Hegseth for Secretary of Defense was the one that was touch-and-go, but although the threesome of Collins, Murkowski, and Mitch McConnell voted “no,” Vance cast the tiebreaker vote and Hegseth is in.
Isn’t it good that McConnell isn’t leader of the Senate GOP anymore?
Kristi Noem is in for head of Homeland Security, all Republicans on board plus seven Democrats. Marco Rubio was already confirmed unanimously, and John Ratcliffe will be in charge of the CIA with a 74-25 vote for confirmation.
It helps to control the Senate as well as the presidency.
I almost wrote “safe and sound” – but of course, no one in Israel is all that safe as long as the Palestinians are unpacified and Iran is functioning under a vicious theocracy pledged to Israel’s (and the West’s) destruction. And how “sound” they are remains to be seen. But now that they are free they have a chance for healing. The four are Liri Albag (19), Karina Ariev (20), Daniella Gilboa (20), and Naama Levy (20). They were all a year younger than that when captured.
The handover from Hamas was much as before, with Hamas playing several roles, including beneficent benefactor, while the previously worse-than-useless Red Cross looked on:
Dozens of armed and masked Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad gunmen formed a cordon around a stage that had been set up in the square. A drone could be seen distributing candy to members of the crowd.
After the arrival of the Red Cross transport, the four hostages were brought into the square in separate vehicles. Dressed in olive garb meant to look like IDF uniforms and clutching “gift bags” from Hamas, the young women were marched onto a stage festooned with English and Arabic slogans such as “Palestine: The victory of the oppressed people vs the Nazi Zionism.”
A large sign in Hebrew also read, “Zionism will not win.”
One of the hostages is more famous than the others:
The image of 19-year-old Naama Levy became symbolic of Hamas’ atrocities on October 7, as a terrorist was seen dragging her by the hair from the back of a pickup truck. Naama’s hands were tied behind her back and her pants were soaked in blood. The Hamas terrorist grimaced at the cameras as he pushed her around at gunpoint.
All four of the young women were taken on October 7, 2023, from the military base at Nahal Oz. You can read about the significance of that here:
The four hostages Hamas released Saturday were taken captive while they were serving as surveillance soldiers stationed at the Nahal Oz military base on the border with Gaza. There, they were tasked with observing suspicious military movement. …
For three months prior to Hamas’ terrorist attack, Karina Ariev, 20, had warned her family of impending war, her sister Sasha Ariev, told the Christian Broadcasting Company, days after her sister was taken.
“They knew something, the girls who were the eyes of the country,” Sasha Ariev said, adding that her sister called her on the morning of the Hamas attack. Sasha Ariev said her sibling told her that she could hear shooting and screaming in the background and received a message from her sister telling her “the terrorists are here.” …
Daniella Gilboa, now 20, had told her commanders in the lead-up to Oct. 7 that she had seen people she suspected to be Hamas militants appearing to prepare for an attack, her mother, Orly Gilboa, said in August on the Meaningful People podcast.
There were few combat soldiers at the base, and the guards were easily and quickly murdered by the terrorists. If memory serves me, the attack occurred when many of the military observers were still asleep in bed, and most of them were killed. These four were captured alive, but my guess is that they saw a great deal of mayhem even prior to their abduction.
Now they are home with their families. At many points it seemed as though that would never happen. But it needed to happen, because there was no way that Israeli citizens would countenance giving up on them and considering them dead.
Many people believe this hostage deal is very bad because it will lead to even more slaughter. But as I wrote last week:
Many people believe that if Israel did not negotiate for the freedom of the hostages, the refusal would end hostage-taking by Islamic terrorists such as Hamas. I disagree. I think hostage-taking is a win for Hamas no matter what happens. They get the pleasure of having total control of the hostages. What a sense of power! That part of their motivation is similar to what drove someone like Ariel Castro, the man who kidnapped and tortured the three young girls in Cleveland, Ohio, for many years.
Not only can the Hamas kidnappers inflict pain and suffering on the hostages, and wield the power of life and death over them and release periodic videos of their pathetic state, but they cause the hostage families and millions of Israels and Israeli-sympathizers around the world to suffer. The taking of hostages – whether Israel bargains for their lives or not – also increases division and anger within Israel. These phenomena are their own rewards to those who hate Jews, Israel, and Israelis. Getting terrorists back in an exchange is a bonus, but it is not the only point and IMHO it may not even be the most major point of the whole undertaking.
Netanyahu added that the incoming Trump administration has promised support for a renewed military offensive if Gaza breaks the agreement (emphasis mine) “If we do have to resume fighting, we will do so in new ways and with very great power.”
Welcome home.
NOTE: For those who haven’t seen this already, I’m publishing it again:
True to his word, Trump, along with First Lady Melania Trump, touched down in the Old North State Friday morning. He was immediately swarmed by the crowd of well-wishers desperate for hope after four months of getting the runaround from FEMA. …
While there, Trump also floated the possibility of either reforming FEMA or getting rid of it altogether, saying states more so than the feds were in a better position to know the needs of their people. He also indicated the money to North Carolina would “go through us” and not FEMA.
Reports that freed Israeli hostages had been held in U.N. shelters in the Gaza Strip amount to “a very serious allegation,” Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, told JNS on Wednesday.
“We call on those who have information on this to share it formally with UNRWA or other parts of the United Nations so that we can investigate it further,” Haq told JNS at the global body’s press conference in New York.
Romi Gonen, Emily Damari and Doron Steinbrecher, who were released on Sunday, said Hamas had held them in U.N. camps that the global body created during the war to protect Gazan civilians and to provide them with food and water.
I get tired of saying that things like this are not a surprise, but they’re absolutely not a surprise to anyone who’s followed the news. The UN camps for “innocent civilians” cannot assure that the people there are not terrorists, and in fact the majority of Gazans are also Hamas supporters. Therefore it’s highly possible that plenty of people in the camps were aware that hostages were there and didn’t tell.
Oh, and having the UN investigate is like having the fox investigate the fowl murders in the henhouse.
Tomorrow is Saturday, and word is that the following hostages will be released:
The families of hostages Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag have been notified that they are expected to be released by Hamas tomorrow.
The four are IDF surveillance soldiers kidnapped by Hamas from the Nahal Oz post during the October 7, 2023, onslaught.
Apparently, the agreement required that civilian females be released prior to female soldiers, and there is still one civilian unaccounted for. That may be considered a violation of the exchange agreement.
Of these four, the most famous (to me, anyway) is Naama Levy. I wrote about her in this post from December of 2023:
Naama Levy was the young woman last seen in a video, being dragged away by terrorists and with the crotch area of her pants bloodied. Here is some slightly encouraging news, courtesy of the freed hostages …
The news was that she was still alive. Apparently, she is still alive; I conclude that only from the fact that it’s been said that live hostages will be released before dead ones.
And what of the Bibas family, with the two tiny red-headed children? I have long thought they are dead, but I fervently hope I’m wrong about that. If they are dead, Hamas will of course claim that they were killed by Israeli bombs.
Kfir Bibas, whose second birthday falls on Saturday, is the youngest of the 251 hostages seized by terrorists during Hamas’s brutal and unprecedented attack on southern Israel more than 15 months ago, which killed over 1,200 people and began the war in Gaza.
Hamas said in November 2023 that Kfir, his brother Ariel and their mother Shiri were killed in an Israeli strike, but since the Israeli military did not confirm their deaths, many are clinging to the hope they are still alive.
“To imagine them coming back alive brings me immense joy,” Hila Shlomo, a musician, told AFP at “Hostages Square,” a central plaza in Tel Aviv that has become the focus of protests and campaigns on the captives’ behalf.
“What happened to these children is a symbol, a symbol of man-made evil, but also of the victory of life if we manage to free them, whatever the cost,” said the 23-year-old, visibly moved.
I came across the following video yesterday, and I urge you to watch it even though the subject matter may seem arcane. But I found it fascinating. It’s a rabbi explaining traditional Jewish religious teaching on what price to pay for the freeing of captives:
A pair of former reporters at venerable DC-focused outlet Politico slammed “cowardly editors” at their ex-outlet for burying stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop — as well as other major stories — contributing to a false narrative that “misinformation” was being spread about Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden before the 2020 election.
Puck News scribe Tara Palmeri hosted Axios senior politics reporter Marc Caputo on her “Somebody’s Gotta Win” podcast for Inauguration Day to discuss their mutual frustration with what they saw as Politico’s mishandling of Biden family coverage.
“Politico did that terrible, ill-fated headline: 51 intelligence agents, or former intelligence agents, say that the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation, or bore the hallmarks of disinformation,” Caputo carped. “Turns out that story was closer to disinformation because the Hunter Biden laptop appeared to be true.”
“Close to disinformation”? It was a complete lie. Why not say it? And what did Caputo do about it? As far as I can tell, he said nothing, and stayed with Politico till a year after Biden’s inauguration, when he was hired by NBC – another news outlet that had spread the same lies and covered up the same story.
I suppose Caputo probably wanted Biden to be elected rather than Trump. I’m also fairly certain that he wanted to protect his own career, and speaking out at that time would have been a huge no-no.
But Now It Can Be Told.
The other former Politico reporter telling similar stories about Politico editors is named Tara Palmeri. She left Politico in April of 2022 for an outlet known as Puck, described in that link as “a startup newsletter-centric outlet.” As far as I can tell in a quick search, she’s been silent on the topic of the Hunter coverup till now.
Is any of this news? We already knew that just about every news outlet and social media platform actively promoted the lie that the laptop was Russian “disinformation.” We already knew that the lie and coverup almost certainly affected the 2020 election’s outcome and enabled Biden’s becoming president. The only new part is that a few reporters are coming out of the woodwork to say they wrote stories at the time that sort-of told the truth, and editors killed those stories. I’m going to assume that’s true, but those same reporters certainly seem to have kept a low profile about it till now.
And the American people seem to be in favor of it, for the most part.
I think Trump should add that he’s just following the lead of Sweden and other countries in northern Europe:
Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, and Iceland have agreed to cooperate in the deportation of migrants who have entered their countries illegally. Using Frontex assistance, these individuals will be returned to their countries of origin, as reported by Spiegel.
After a two-day meeting of justice and migration ministers in Copenhagen, Danish Immigration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek stated that representatives of the five countries will regularly convene in the future to improve collaboration with other nations on the repatriation and deportation of illegal migrants.
Consequently, the states plan to carry out joint deportation flights in the future, organized in cooperation with the EU border agency, Frontex, to return migrants without residency permits to their countries of origin.
The sheer numbers and scope of the executive orders Trump has issued are overwhelming. The Trump team has apparently been preparing this for a long time, a sort of executive order wishlist that they now get to fulfill. I’ve only scratched the surface of what appear so far to be the most important of the orders.
Birthright citizenship I dealt with in some depth in this recent post. It was always understood that there would be legal challenges and that it’s possible those challenges will succeed. I actually think they will succeed, not because the law can’t be changed, but because the proper mechanism for the change of an amendment is another amendment. I happen to think Trump’s position on birthright citizenship makes sense and I would support it; it’s just that an EO can’t do that, IMHO.
So to me it’s no surprise whatsoever that this has happened – the first round in the battle:
A federal judge in Seattle blocked, temporarily, President Donald Trump’s attempt to rescind birthright citizenship — the idea spelled out in the Constitution that every person born in the United States is an American citizen.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Coughenour on Thursday was blistering in his criticism of Trump’s action as he granted a temporary restraining order that blocks Trump’s executive order from taking effect nationwide. …
The executive order will remain blocked for at least 14 days while lawsuits in Washington and elsewhere proceed. Washington will next seek a preliminary injunction from Coughenour, which would continue to block the executive order as cases move along.
I assume the issue will probably go to SCOTUS.
Here are some of Trump’s other EOs, this time having to do with the Middle East:
US President Donald Trump revoked a host of what he called “harmful” executive orders and actions under former President Joe Biden that included the sanctioning of Jews living in the West Bank accused of undermining peace and security.
He also halted funding to Unrwa, the agency which distributes aid in Gaza but which Israel has repeatedly accused of employing staff with close links to terror group Hamas. The UN has admitted that nine of the agency’s staff may been involved in the October 7 attack on Israel.
Caroline Glick has done major work on how awful the sanctions on these “settlers” have been; see this, for example.
And Trump states the glaringly obvious and designates the Houthis as a terrorist group again:
In an executive order signed on Wednesday, Trump said that the terrorist group “threaten[s] the security of American civilians and personnel in the Middle East, the safety of our closest regional partners, and the stability of global maritime trade.”
“Supported by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force (IRGC-QF), which arms and trains terrorist organizations worldwide, the Houthis have fired at U.S. Navy warships dozens of times since 2023, endangering American men and women in uniform,” the order noted.
I have a good friend from grad school who is a typical democratic liberal, bordering on left, with a mild case of TDS. Generally he is a good guy except his politics blinds him to some obvious facts. I follow his FB page just to see what’s up, and also it’s a great way to monitor the thoughts of the more looney left as many of his friends fall into that category.
Things were quiet after the election, but have burst forth since Monday. On Tuesday there was much anguish about how we’re all going to die and the country will descend into Nazism, and how RFK is going make everyone drink bleach, etc etc. No rational thought at all, just complete mental breakdowns. Today, lot’s of reposts from left social workers and psychologists about how the flurry of executive orders is intentionally designed to keep all these poor people in a state of disequilibrium. …
Just wondering if Neo has seen similar reactions from here lib friends. It really is fascinating to watch.
My answer is yes and no. There’s been a lot of variety in responses, and I’ve come to think of it as the three varieties of Trump-hatred.
The first type probably shouldn’t even be called “hatred”; more like intense dislike and disapproval. These people never vote for Republicans or even consider it, but they’re not especially political animals. They follow politics somewhat but not obsessively, and it doesn’t dominate their lives or even come close. That doesn’t mean they don’t have firm political opinions, but their emotional investment in those opinions isn’t extremely high, and in particular their tolerance of their political wishes being thwarted is also relatively high.
The second group does hate Trump. They talk about him more, and when they do it’s with a bitter biting tone of extreme contempt. He’s stupid, he’s coarse, he’s a misogynist, he’s racist, he’s corrupt, he’s a sexual predator. They think the next four years are going to be awful but they aren’t living in significant fear.
Members of the third group are the ones physicsguy is describing. In their regular lives, they’re intelligent, thoughtful, and kind. But they believe some or even all of the following: Trump’s tenure means that there will never be another fair election and that the GOP will rig things somehow (method unspecified) to make it the case, Trump will try to run again in 2028, Trump will ban abortion on a national level, Trump will give Ukraine to Russia rather than just make some concessions to Russia, Trump will try to imprison his enemies and opponents with unfair charges, Trump will harm black people and gay people and trans people (perhaps by putting them in concentration camps), Trump will censor speech including the speech of the TDS sufferer, Trump will cause the death of millions including the TDS sufferer. How he will kill those people is left unspecified: will it be a war? A failure to deal properly with an epidemic? Global warming? Starvation? Gulags? Concentration camps and gas chambers? I don’t know, but it’s apparently some or all of the above.
In my circle of friends and acquaintances, groups one and two are rather large and group three is fortunately quite small. But it exists, and I know two people who fall into that category, one more rational than the other. I probably actually know more than two, but I’m not necessarily in close enough touch to know the details of each person’s thoughts on the matter.
