I wish she would stop touching the birds:
Joe Manchin announces …
… he’s not running for re-election to the Senate in 2024.
Looking back at my posts, in August of 2022 I thought there was a good chance he wouldn’t run for re-election in 2024. Logic tells me his retirement from the Senate is good news for Republicans, and I hope they won’t find a way to muck it up. And looking back to this post of mine from July of 2023, I thought there was at least a possibility that he might try to run for president 3rd party in 2024.
I still think that’s at least a possibility. After all, Manchin presently has this to say about his plans: “what I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” Hmmmm.
Looking ahead to 2024
I haven’t been feeling especially upbeat lately, and that’s an understatement. This is that time of the year when it gets dark early, especially up north where I live. Gloomy. October 7 and its aftermath have been horrendous. Tuesday’s election results are not encouraging at all and although I try to squeeze something optimistic out of them it’s just too much of a stretch at the moment.
I talk to friends and family and almost all of them are on such a different page politically and it seems as though that will never change, no matter what happens. I love them, but that’s the way it is. And no, I have no intention of ditching my friends and certainly not my family, so please don’t even suggest it.
This isn’t a post for analyzing why we’ve reached this point and what to do about it, but I refer you to some comments: from “Bauxite” here and here, and by “Turtler” here and here.
But for a complete change of pace, there’s this sort of thing. Utterly amazing, and I mean that in a good way. He is five years old:
And then there’s this by Horowitz at 86, shortly before he died. Same piece:
Stringers and collaborators: Hamas and elsewhere
This is unconscionable behavior:
On October 7, Hamas terrorists were not the only ones who documented the war crimes they had committed during their deadly rampage across southern Israel. Some of their atrocities were captured by Gaza-based photojournalists working for the Associated Press and Reuters news agencies whose early morning presence at the breached border area raises serious ethical questions.
What were they doing there so early on what would ordinarily have been a quiet Saturday morning? Was it coordinated with Hamas? Did the respectable wire services, which published their photos, approve of their presence inside enemy territory, together with the terrorist infiltrators? Did the photojournalists who freelance for other media, like CNN and The New York Times, notify these outlets? Judging from the pictures of lynching, kidnapping and storming of an Israeli kibbutz, it seems like the border has been breached not only physically, but also journalistically.
Pretty much all reporting from that area depends heavily on Palestinian stringers. This has been going on for a long long time. For example, the al Durah hoax (2000) was spread to Europe by a Palestinian stringer cameraman named Talal Abu Rahma, whom the French journalist in charge, Charles Enderlin, trusted implicitly. Enderlin should have known better – and maybe he did, so perhaps he was a mere fool rather than a knave and a fool.
So I have no trouble believing these more recent photographers were tipped off by Hamas and embedded with them, and kept quiet about it. More:
Eslaiah, a freelancer who also works for CNN, crossed into Israel, took photos of a burning Israeli tank, and then captured infiltrators entering Kibbutz Kfar Azza. …
Ali Mahmud and Hatem Ali were positioned to get pictures of the horrific abductions of Israelis into Gaza.
Mahmud captured the pickup truck carrying the body of German-Israeli Shani Louk and Ali got several shots of abductees being kidnapped into the Strip. …
Is it conceivable to assume that “journalists” just happened to appear early in the morning at the border without prior coordination with the terrorists? Or were they part of the plan?
Even if they didn’t know the exact details of what was going to happen, once it unfolded did they not realize they were breaching a border? And if so, did they notify the news agencies? Some sort of communication was undoubtedly necessary — before, after or during the attack — in order to get the photos published.
To go back even further in time, perhaps you remember this – when during a discussion of a Vietnam-like situation, Mike Wallace replied the following to a question about what he would do if he was embedded with the enemy and learned of an impending ambush of American soldiers:
Ogletree pushed Wallace. Didn’t [he and] Jennings have some higher duty, either patriotic or human, to do something other than just roll film as soldiers from his own country were being shot? “No,” Wallace said flatly and immediately. “You don’t have a higher duty. No. No. You’re a reporter!”
I really suggest you read the whole thing. This occurred during a 1987 panel discussion that aired on television, and Jennings first disagreed but then ended up agreeing with Wallace. And they weren’t even stringers; they were highly respected reporters at the time.
During the Vietnam War itself, there was also the case of Perfect Spy: The Incredible Double Life of Pham Xuan An, Time Magazine Reporter and Vietnamese Communist Agent:
During the Vietnam War, Time reporter Pham Xuan An befriended everyone who was anyone in Saigon, including American journalists such as David Halberstam and Neil Sheehan, the CIA’s William Colby, and the legendary Colonel Edward Lansdale—not to mention the most influential members of the South Vietnamese government and army. None of them ever guessed that he was also providing strategic intelligence to Hanoi, smuggling invisible ink messages into the jungle inside egg rolls. His early reports were so accurate that General Giap joked, “We are now in the U.S. war room.”
So there’s a long tradition of this sort of thing.
Open thread 11/9/23
Dershowitz may have finally had enough
Alan Dershowitz is getting really fed up with Democrats, but I don’t know if he can make the break. It always amazes me that he still identifies as a Democrat. However, the last few weeks may really have severed that bond. He is a practicing Jew and he wrote an excellent book called The Case For Israel decades ago, and the Democrat stance on Israel post October 7 seems to have enraged him.
So now Dershowitz is writing this:
If something is not done immediately – if it is not too late already – the breach between Jewish voters who support Israel (and even those critical of some of its policies) and the Democratic Party will become unhealable.
Maybe – permanent.
There can be no compromise on this issue.
I have supported the Democratic Party since I first voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, for much like my parents and grandparents, and since the days of Frankin Delano Roosevelt, a vast majority of Jewish-American voters could be reliably counted upon to cast their ballots for Democrats and contribute disproportionately to their campaigns.
This is unlikely to continue.
The silence of some Democrats, President Biden’s administration and America’s foremost liberal institutions in response to an eruption of left-wing anti-Zionism and Jew hatred is gut-wrenching.
It is nothing short of betrayal and Americans Jews must not move forward without a reckoning.
So far, he can’t quite see becoming a Republican, though. A mind – and a political party – is a difficult thing to change. Here’s Dershowitz:
Yes, centrist Jews have an alternative: they can become centrist Republicans. But that, too, will not be easy, since the Republican party is moving to the right on issues deeply concerning to many Jews – issues such as abortion rights, gay rights, climate control, gun control and the Supreme Court.
I saw that piece by Dershowitz a few days ago. And then yesterday I saw the following video, where he unloads on Barack Obama. Here, Dershowitz doesn’t pull his punches and he also expresses deep regret for ever having supported or trusted Obama. He gets quite revved up about it several times during the 14 minutes I’ve cued up, including at the end of the portion:
Dershowitz is just one person, of course. But he may stand for quite a few people.
Election results
The news is not good from yesterday’s election. I’m not going to analyze it in depth; others have done so. I refer you to this, this, and the initial portion of this.
If you want a brighter take on things, I suggest this:
… [T]here is some welcome news emerging from here in Loudoun County, Virginia: Buta Biberaj, the Soros-backed commonwealth’s attorney who was soft on criminals, preferring instead to prosecute concerned parents, has been defeated by her Republican opponent, Bob Anderson.
Another more hopeful take, this time about the Virginia legislature, can be found here. I hope the author – Bonchie – is correct:
Specifically, in Virginia, Republicans showed a surprising level of strength despite falling short of taking the legislature. That’s probably not what you are getting from the headlines this morning, but the numbers show an overperformance by the Glenn Youngkin-led GOP there.
The most stunning stat shows that Republicans won every single seat in districts rated up to Biden +9. …
The reality is that because of a redistricting effort by Democrats that occurred just before Youngkin took power, actually taking the Virginia legislature was always a long shot. There is no denying, though, that Republicans made a very strong push to do so on Tuesday and could be reasonably described as having overperformed. That’s been a rarely used word regarding Republicans the last several election cycles.
At some point, the electoral realities of a state come into play. Youngkin’s win in 2021 was astonishing, but it was not a new baseline. Virginia is a blue state. …
Ultimately, Virginia may just be a bridge too far, but the trends we saw were positive for Republicans. That shouldn’t be taken away from Youngkin. What that means for him going forward, I can’t say. Perhaps he will run for the U.S. Senate in 2026, or perhaps he’ll try to run for president in 2028, but the idea that his political career ended last night because he didn’t pull off a miracle in a blue state is dishonest.
If Republicans took the strategy from Virginia last night and replicated it nationwide, they’d win in a landslide in 2024. That’s not the message a lot of influencers and commentators on the right are going to tell you because they have other interests at play.
It seems to me that Democrats should be getting trounced everywhere. The fact that they’re not makes me think that (a) abortion continues to be a huge and overriding issue, and (b) young voters are bluer and bluer, and that is very difficult to overcome. Logic certainly doesn’t seem to have any effect.
No room at the doctors’ office
I’ve been going to my doctor – let’s call him Dr. X – for about twenty years now, and I really really like him. That may not sound so unusual, but for me it is, because I have always loathed going to the doctor; it makes me quite nervous and I’ve had some bad experiences. As I’ve gotten older and health care has gotten colder and more impersonal, my doctor was a real oasis. I would always come back from my appointments saying, “I love Dr. X! I hope he never retires!”
Today I got a message that I need to call the office – which is a large group practice – and reschedule. That’s all it said. It seemed odd and possibly ominous to me because I already have an appointment with him in January. When I spoke to a staff member on the phone, I was told that Dr. X has a serious health problem and may not be coming back to the practice. That was a blow. But a worse blow was that all their doctors have full patient lists and I’m on my own – find a new doctor, and good luck.
I’m well aware that most doctors these days, and certainly most good doctors, are full up and not taking new patients. I just have to start asking around and hoping for the best. There’s also a slim chance that my doctor might be returning. But I can’t rely on that at all and the reality is that he’s pretty long in the tooth at this point anyway.
There’s a silver lining, though. I used to joke that I can’t move away because I can’t leave my doctors. Well, now I can move if I want to. Got any suggestions? I probably won’t take them.
Open thread 11/8/23
Heart of darkness: torture and evil
I have decided not to watch or read the descriptions of atrocities that occurred on October 7. Nevertheless I come across headlines, I hear references, and so I actually know quite a bit about what happened. It is so terrible, so horrific, so sadistic, so atavistic, that the mind recoils. And yet it happened – and it happened in many cases to children, the most innocent of all.
So I’ll just link to this post at Legal Insurrection, which contains many of the grisly details, as well as this from Caroline Glick about both the atrocities and the widespread denial from Hamas-sympathizers. Consider yourself warned.
I’ve never been able to watch horror films, either, I think because of things I had read as a child that affected me so deeply that I became unable to deny what human beings can do to each other. I couldn’t keep what I saw on the screen in the realm of “just a movie.”
I can remember some of those things I read or saw as a young child. Holocaust photos, of course, which I came across at about the age of seven in a large book at a friend’s house. Another source was Greek mythology. I no longer remember the story, but I was about six and it had to do with soldiers surrendering and then being tortured and ultimately killed in ways I’ll not go into here. Another Greek mythology source was this tale, which I probably came across at around nine years old. I remember feeling as though I might throw up. I put the book down and didn’t pick it up again for a long time.
Another story that came along a little later – perhaps I was ten – was during a period when I read books about English royalty. Henry VIII’s two beheaded wives, of course, but most of all Lady Jane Grey. Her beheading at the age of 17 troubled me immensely. I didn’t care what she’d done; her death absolutely horrified me.
And so on and so forth into man’s humanity to man. I’ve had Catholic friends tell me they had similar nightmares when reading of the lives of various martyrs.
I simply could not understand, and still cannot understand, wanting to watch a horror movie as well.
So on a certain level the events of October 7 simply represent an old old story. As Sarah Hoyt writes:
Time and again when reading history, we come across some horrible act of violence, some terrible event, and historians from the safety of their offices and the height of their theories ask how this was possible? How could humans do this beastly thing? How is it even possible that civilized man, civilized, I say, could do this or that or the other.
The truth is that humans, despite all our striving to do better, are creatures where our violence and the ability to dream up and execute horrible atrocities are as much part of us are our dreams, our moral thinking, our thirst for knowledge and our theories. …
Humans have, with great effort, with discipline, with careful raising of their children and with philosophies that value life — be they Judeo Christianity or our national creed — raised themselves above the petty cruelty, the wanton sadism of the not-so-noble savage. We can, in places, in times, given enough abundance, enough time, enough luck, and enough investment in certain ways of living, raise ourselves above creatures that kill innocent women and children. We can even rise above creatures that make the bodies of horses and young men into art installations.
The beast inside isn’t gone. It’s not vanquished. It’s quiet. And kept quiet by ideals and thoughts, by our front brain repressing the impulses of beast.
However, this is never universal. This is never everywhere. …
But when the culture goes sour, when savagery is encouraged and when it’s believed a source of strength, and mindless violence against others is treated as proof of worthiness and power, be it in the Gaza strip or amid our ante-fa, it must be met.
There must be no excuses. There must be no “more sinned against than sinning.” There must be no excuses.
Because if the civilized won’t stand for civilization, savagery wins.
We must face evil and not deny its existence if we are ever to fight it.
NOTE: Here’s the Jewish approach to what it calls “the evil inclination”:
‘The good inclination and the evil inclination.’ In the typical Rabbinic doctrine, with far-reaching consequences in Jewish religious thought, every human being has two inclinations or instincts, one pulling upwards, the other downwards. These are the ‘good inclination’—yetzer ha-tov—and the ‘evil inclination’—yetzer ha-ra. The ‘evil inclination’ is frequently identified in the Rabbinic literature and elsewhere with the sex instinct but the term also denotes physical appetites in general, aggressive emotions, and unbridled ambition. Although it is called the ‘evil inclination’, because it can easily lead to wrongdoing, it really denotes more the propensity towards evil rather than something evil in itself. Indeed, in the Rabbinic scheme, the ‘evil inclination’ provides human life with its driving power and as such is essential to human life. As a well-known Midrash (Genesis Rabbah 9: 7) puts it, were it not for the ‘evil inclination’ no one would build a house or have children or engage in commerce. This is why, according to the Midrash, Scripture says: ‘And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good’ (Genesis 1: 31). ‘Good’ refers to the ‘good inclination’, ‘very good’ to the ‘evil inclination’. It is not too far-fetched to read into this homily the idea that life without the driving force of the ‘evil inclination’ would no doubt still be good but it would be a colourless, uncreative, pallid kind of good. That which makes life ‘very good’ is the human capacity to struggle against the environment and this is impossible without egotistic as well as altruistic, aggressive as well as peaceful, instincts. …
The Rabbinic view is, then, realistic. Human beings are engaged in a constant struggle against their propensity for evil but if they so desire they can keep it under control. The means of control are provided by the Torah and the precepts. …
It follows that for the Rabbis the struggle against the ‘evil inclination’ is never-ending in this life.
Obama pontificates while passing the buck to all of us on Israel and Hamas
Does Obama ever feel a particle of guilt? I don’t think so. But from his lofty perch, he tells us we’re all guilty:
Former President Obama said during an interview on Pod Save America that the U.S. had to admit that “all of us are complicit” in the Israel-Hamas conflict and added, “nobody’s hands are clean.”
What a meaningless statement; no one’s hands can ever be completely and utterly clean. But in this case, one side’s hands are far cleaner than the other side’s hands. And of course, Obama’s hands are very dirty indeed. He dissed Israel and empowered Iran, for starters, as well as helping to mess up Syria. Not only that, but he has not stopped trying to bring down his successor, the most Israel-friendly president ever, and the one who engineered the Abraham Accords.
More from Obama:
Obama also said he asked himself what he could have done differently during his presidency to “move this forward.”
That’s pretty simple. Take a look at what Trump did, and that’s your answer.
More:
“If you genuinely want to change this, then you’ve got to figure out how to speak to somebody on the other side and listen to them and understand what they are talking about, and not dismiss it. Because you can’t save that child without their help, not in this situation,” he continued.
It is obvious Obama has learned nothing. If he actually listens to the other side – Hamas – and “understands what they are talking about,” he would see that what they want is Israel’s destruction. That’s why there is no diplomatic solution and nothing whatsoever to be gained by “speaking” to them any more. Also, he should be able to observe that “saving that child” is the opposite of what they want, and that their actions prove it.
Let’s have another roundup
(1) The death of Paul Kessler, 69, has been ruled a homicide. Kessler was the pro-Israel demonstrator who died as a result of being struck in the head (reportedly with a megaphone), falling to the pavement, and hitting his head again. The perp was a pro-Hamas demonstrator. My guess is that, if they ever find the perp, he will be charged with battery and some form of manslaughter. I think these pro-Hamas crowds will become more violent at some point.
(2) Oops!:
She thought she was attacking an “Israel school” on behalf of “her people back in Palestine.” Instead, an Indiana woman backed her car into a building being used by a group that uses Jewish symbols while often engaging in antisemitic harassment.
That’s according to local news reports and Jewish leaders in Indianapolis, after police arrested Ruba Almaghtheh, 34, Saturday for her attack on a building belonging to a Hebrew Israelite sect, a Black nationalist group.
“Indiana woman” indeed.
(3) Alan Dershowitz on Trump’s testimony in the New York “fraud” trial. The segment begins at around 3:39, and in it he compares Trump’s tactics to those of the Chicago Seven in 1969, particularly Abie Hoffman. The idea was – and is – that the judge is so biased the guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion, and the defendant is trying to provoke the judge into making reversible errors. Also, Dershowitz defends Trump’s right to make political statements during the trial.
(4) Here’s a recommended video featuring the trio of John Anderson, Jordan Peterson, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They tackle some big questions about the survival of Western culture.
(5) How Hamas exploits international law. For my own point of view on international law – written in 2006 – please see this post. And while we’re at it, please see this post, written around the same time, for my opinion on the calls for “proportionality” in Israel’s response.