Here’s the Jerusalem Center again, with another extremely informative discussion. Once again, these guys aren’t telegenic, and the accents can make it a bit hard to listen, but I’m impressed by their knowledge and perspective. This discussion is about the entire Middle East picture. I’ve cued it up to start where the guest speaker enters:
NOTE: By the way, Hamas tells Israel sure, we’ll give you your hostages back … as long as you cease fighting us and cease existing. From past experience, Hamas has always thought of the hostages it holds as giving it absolute power over Israel, although this time it hasn’t worked out that way so far. But Hamas knows that the world is against Israel and will excuse the worst and most malevolent actions on the part of Hamas and other Palestinians, having firmly established its neo-Marxist credentials as victims no matter what they do.
Blinken unveiled his grand plan for Middle East peace: a Palestinian state. Yes, that’s right: Hamas murdered 1,200 Israelis, many in unimaginably gruesome ways, with Palestinian civilians gleefully cheering them on, and Blinken wants them to end up being the ones who emerge the winners from this present conflict.
A Palestinian state would seem to be the last thing any sane person would recommend now after we have seen Gaza become a jihad terror statelet, but Blinken has not bothered to let the experience of history, much less the power of common sense, revise his preconceived notions. As far as he is concerned, the Palestinians are violent because they lack self-determination.
Giving them self-determination (you know, like when they elected Hamas in Gaza) will therefore fix the problem. Never mind that they’ve turned down numerous quite generous offers to give them a state. Remember: the facts don’t matter in Washington.
Nor do they matter in Davos. And so Blinken said Wednesday that Israel could only attain “genuine security” if it allowed the Palestinians another base for jihad attacks in addition to Gaza, that is, a Palestinian state. He even had the audacity to present this tired, multiply failed, ill-conceived “solution” as a daring new idea that the Israelis needed to have the imagination and courage to seize upon.
One of the many, many, many reasons Biden (or his replacement) needs to be defeated in 2024.
It doesn’t surprise me that DeSantis endorsed Trump, because his policies were mostly in line with Trump’s – and better in some ways, such as COVID lockdowns. But when DeSantis challenged Trump as a younger, although less humorous and roguish version, he was lied about by Trump and Trump forces in order to make sure people didn’t notice the similarities.
This effort was immediately successful, something I noticed online. Almost instantaneously, enormous numbers of commenters would come here and elsewhere all around the right side of the blogosphere and on right media outlets spreading the anti-DeSantis word. It was spearheaded by various pro-Trump blogs, and I played whack-a-mole for a while against it: no, DeSantis hadn’t said this or that they were alleging he’d said. Yes, he really had made a strong statement about this or that they were alleging he hadn’t spoken about. And so on and so forth in that vein.
But very early in the game it became apparent that the combination of three things were coming together to make sure the DeSantis campaign would never get off the ground: (1) this aforementioned campaign of lies against him (2) the extreme loyalty of many Trump voters to Trump and no one else, which guaranteed close to 50% for Trump in all primaries; and (3) DeSantis’ own personality, which came across – especially with a brief look – as plodding rather than exciting or dynamic. He wasn’t “low energy Jeb,” not by a longshot – and certainly his record in Florida was very high-energy – but he personally came across as at least somewhat low-key.
And this just wasn’t going to do the trick when the very exciting Trump was around.
Trump was indeed “around,” but he never was around DeSantis, because Trump wisely never entered the debates. He didn’t need to, and he knew it. This meant that no one ever got a chance to match them up head-to-head, although it’s traditional.
And so DeSantis is out. I hope he tries again in 2028, because I think he’s excellent, and he’s young. But the question now is whether Trump can win the general. It depends on what happens between now and November – and that could be any number of things, including a black swan event that dictates that he be replaced (by his designated VP? By Haley? By DeSantis?). Trump is polling better right now than he was earlier in the campaign season, but the “rigging” of the election has barely begun, and the left will stop at nothing in order to stop him from holding office ever again. However, they also would have tried to destroy any replacement, including DeSantis. Would they have been successful? Perhaps – and DeSantis certainly wouldn’t have commanded the kind of loyalty of the base voters on the right that Trump has cemented.
In the end, I want the person nominated by the GOP to be someone who can win and who can fight. Both Trump and DeSantis would and will fight. I just don’t know whether either of them could have – or in Trump’s case, can – win in 2024.
I know; I know. It’s so convenient to have your appointments and test results in one place and accessible. It’s so nice not to have all that paper. That’s the theory, and it’s probably even true.
But patient portals enable medical offices to “encourage” patients to use the portal for all questions and communications, and allows the office to basically spam those patients by sending cryptic alerts to go to the portal for some important message or other. One goes there – which usually involves 2-step verification that the patient didn’t ask for and a checkbox for it saying “skip this step next time” although the step is never, never ever, skipped – and what does one find? The message is usually something on the order of “Brush your teeth!” “Don’t forget to eat your vegetables!”
Thanks, pals.
And when I get a text on my phone that I have an appointment on such and such a day, it does’t say with whom. I have to look that up on my calendar. And then it’s go to the portal for some sort of pre-check-in, which involves a review of my basic medical history such as medications, which are mostly out of date and have to be removed from the list with reasons given. I’ve noticed that for the most part such removals don’t stick, and the medications keep stubbornly coming back on the list. And don’t get me started on the release forms and privacy forms that no one ever reads because that would take several hours and the assistance of several lawyers.
Meanwhile, it becomes more and more difficult to get to a human being on the phone.
I’m not complaining about one doctor or another doctor; this seems to be universal where I live and perhaps where you live, too.
I don’t usually post on Sundays unless there’s big news. This qualifies:
… Now over the past many months, Casey and I have traveled across the country to deliver a message of hope, that decline is a choice, and that we, in fact, can succeed again as a nation. Nobody worked harder. And we left it all out on the field.
Now following our second-place finish in Iowa, we have prayed and deliberated on the way forward. If there was anything I could do to produce a favorable outcome — more campaign stops, more interviews — I would do it. But I can’t ask our supporters to volunteer their time and donate their resources if we don’t have a clear path to victory. Accordingly, I am today suspending my campaign.
I am proud to have delivered on 100% of my promises and I will not stop now. It’s clear to me that a majority of Republican primary voters want to give Donald Trump another chance. They watched his presidency get stymied by relentless resistance and they see Democrats using lawfare to this day to attack him.
While I have had disagreements with Donald Trump, such as on the coronavirus pandemic and his elevation of Anthony Fauci, Trump is superior to the current incumbent, Joe Biden. That is clear.
I signed a pledge to support the Republican nominee and I will honor that pledge. He has my endorsement because we can’t go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear — a repackaged form of warmed-over corporatism — that Nikki Haley represents. The days of putting Americans last, of kowtowing to large corporations, of caving to woke ideology, are over.
DeSantis was my favored candidate right from the start. But not long into the primary season it became crystal clear that Trump would be winning the nomination. I think DeSantis was also running out of money, whereas Haley has a lot of it due in no small part to contributions from Democrat and Republican NeverTrumpers. She seems to be determined to stay in the race as the Trump alternative, but except for crossover votes she doesn’t stand a chance. I think that, even with crossover votes, she doesn’t stand a chance.
I would love for DeSantis to be Trump’s VP choice. But I very much doubt that will happen.
ADDENDUM: “rbj1” points out what I had forgotten: that DeSantis as VP would mean that Florida’s electoral votes could not be counted for a Trump/DeSantis ticket. That certainly wouldn’t be a good idea. How about DeSantis for Attorney General?
… named Chloe Helimet has a lovely lyrical upper body for her age, and a calm presence. The variation she’s dancing is harder than it looks because the slow tempo requires so much control. Her feet are unusually flexible, which makes them extra-beautiful by today’s aesthetic standards. But such feet are often weaker than less flexible ones, and in my day people with that kind of foot used to wear large strong elastics to hold them back a tiny bit:
I’m not a fan of ballet competitions, which tend to emphasize technique and more technique. They have spread tremendously and taken hold over the last few decades, helping make dance into more of a sport and much less of an art.
But this girl is actually phenomenal, and she has fairly mature artistry as well. I discovered her again and realized it was the same girl as in the previous video – I recognized her feet. Her father was a major soloist for the San Francisco Ballet (now retired), and my guess is that he and his wife – whom I believe is also a dancer; both are from Estonia but have been in England and then the US for many decades – have been her coaches and perhaps teachers. I have never seen such wonderful port de bras (arms) by a dancer this young. Nor have I ever seen such a calm center in slow movements, or maturity of expression and lyricism. She is better than a great many adult soloists these days in terms of artistic expression, highly unusual because it usually develops late.
[NOTE: I thought it might be time to revisit the topic of how Hitler came to power. I know a lot of you are history buffs and are well aware of his path to dictatorship, but I keep seeing references – especially in other places – to the idea that the German people elected Hitler (usually said by the left with some supposed parallel to Trump, of course). The truth about Hitler is actually far more chilling: only about a third supported the Nazis but through series of fortunate (for him – unfortunate for the human race) events and machinations, Hitler became chancellor. Once there, he knew how to become dictator. I described some of the process in this post, written in 2006. I’m going to reproduce the relevant parts here, with some slight changes and additions.]
Several bloggers have pointed out a parallel [between the election of Hamas in Gaza and] the rise of the Nazis in pre-WWII Germany, saying “Hitler was democratically elected.” I beg to differ, at least slightly.
Yes, Hitler was selected by a Democratic process. But he did not come to power by winning the popular vote. He won neither a majority (difficult to do in a Parliamentary election, anyway), nor a plurality. In fact, he lost, and the Nazi Party’s fortunes were sinking.
Between 1931 and 1933, vicious power struggles would break out between rival political parties. The power brokers in these struggles were Hindenburg and Schleicher. The problem during this period was that no party even came close to achieving the majority required to elect its leader Chancellor. Coalitions were either impossible to build, or were so transient that they dissolved as quickly as they formed. Ambitious leaders from every party began maneuvering for power, striking deals, double-crossing each other, and trying to find the most advantageous alliances. Hitler himself would ally the Nazis to the Nationalist Party. “The chess game for power begins,” Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary. “The chief thing is that we remain strong and make no compromises.”
They had their sights on the prize from the start, and were confident that they could be the most ruthless of all. Hindenburg, who was around 84 at the time and not a well man (he died in 1934), was not up to the task of successfully opposing them. Although he was more popular with the people, he simply did not understand the depth of the calculating evil of the Nazis. Despite being against them, he ended up reluctantly playing a big part in their rise [emphasis mine]:
In 1932, hoping to establish a clear government by majority rule, Hindenburg held two presidential elections. Hitler, among others, ran against him. A vote for Hindenburg was a vote to continue the German Republic, while a vote for Hitler was a vote against it. The Nazi party made the most clever use of propaganda, as well as the most extensive use of violence. Bloody street battles erupted between Communists and Nazis thugs, and many political figures were murdered.
In the first election, held on March 13, 1932, Hitler received 30 percent of the vote, losing badly to Hindenburg’s 49.6 percent. But because Hindenburg had just missed an absolute majority, a run-off election was scheduled a month later. On April 10, 1932, Hitler increased his share of the vote to 37 percent, but Hindenburg again won, this time with a decisive 53 percent. A clear majority of the voters had thus declared their preference for a democratic republic.
However, the balance of power in the Reichstag was still unstable, lacking a majority party or coalition to rule the government. All too frequently, Hindenburg had to evoke the dictatorial powers available to him under Article 48 of the constitution to break up the political stalemate. In an attempt to resolve this crisis, he called for more elections. On July 31, 1932, the Nazis won 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag, making them its largest party. Still, they did not command the majority needed to elect Hitler Chancellor.
In another election on November 6, 1932, the Nazis lost 34 seats in the Reichstag, reducing their total to 196. And for the first time it looked as if the Nazi threat would fade. This was for several reasons. First, the Nazis’ violence and rhetoric had hardened opposition against Hitler, and it was becoming obvious that he would never achieve power democratically. Even worse, the Nazi party was running very low on money, and it could no longer afford to operate its expensive propaganda machine. Furthermore, the party was beginning to splinter and rebel under the stress of so many elections. Hitler discovered that Gregor Strasser, one of the Nazis’ highest officials, had been disloyal, attempting to negotiate power for himself behind Hitler’s back. The shock was so great that Hitler threatened to shoot himself.
But at the lowest ebb of the Nazis’ fortunes, the backroom deal presented itself as the solution to all their problems. Deal-making, intrigues and double-crosses had been going on for years now …
Hitler’s unexpected savior was Franz von Papen, one of the former Chancellors, a remarkably incompetent man who owed his political career to a personal friendship with Hindenburg. He had been thrown out of power by the much more capable Schleicher, who personally replaced him. To get even, Papen approached Hitler and offered to become “co-chancellors,” if only Hitler would join him in a coalition to overthrow Schleicher. Hitler responded that only he could be the head of government, while Papen’s supporters could be given important cabinet positions. The two reached a tentative agreement to pursue such an alliance, even though secretly they were planning to double-cross each other.
Meanwhile Schleicher was failing spectacularly in his attempts to form a coalition government, so Hindenburg forced his resignation. But by now, Hindenburg was exhausted by all the intrigue and crisis, and the prospect of civil war had moved the steely field marshal to tears. As much as he hated to do so, he seemed resigned to offering Hitler a high government position. Many people were urging him to do so: the industrialists who were financing Hitler, the military whose connections Hitler had cultivated, even Hindenburg’s son, whom some historians believe the Nazis had blackmailed. The last straw came when an unfounded rumor swept through Berlin that Schleicher was about to attempt a military coup, arrest Hindenburg, and establish a military dictatorship. Alarmed, Hindenburg wasted no time offering Hitler the Chancellorship, thinking it was a last resort to save the Republic.
On January 30, 1933, Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor.
You want to reach back in time and scream “No, no no!!” to Hindenburg. But alas, you cannot.
The Enabling Act followed not long after and solidified Hitler’s power; I’ve written about that here.
Someone was talking to me about this just the other day, as though we don’t already have enough to worry about:
So this must be the health scare du jour.
I actually rarely drink water from those little bottles. But I do use Sodastream, which is made of a different type of plastic that isn’t single-use. On their site they sort of talk around the issue but never come right out and say how their bottles stack up. But this scientist seems to be saying that Sodastream is better in terms of nanoplastics.
What I hate is how much plastic refuse one creates just by buying things: packaging of little electronics, food takeout, or even in the grocery store. I’m old enough to know it didn’t used to be like that. But it sure is now.
When I was young, we had a relative who distributed soda in glass bottles that really were recycled. We’d get cases of them delivered, and store them in the basement. It seemed like a great system.
Holder must think most people haven’t noticed the last couple of years. Here’s what he said [emphasis added and comments in brackets added]:
Well, I think we have to take them at their word and take Donald Trump at his word.
Whether or not that idiot [Mike Davis] becomes attorney general or not, they will — Trump will try to put in place an attorney general who will do the — do his bidding. But they have also learned from the first term, and it will not only be who is the attorney general.
The question will also be who is the head of the Criminal Division in the Justice Department, who are the U.S. attorneys around the country, and what hiring authority those U.S. attorneys have, so that we will have an administration in place that will actually do the kinds of things that they tried to do in the first term, but were thwarted by career people and by people, to be fair, other political appointees [that is, those many leftists appointed during the Obama administration] who decided that they would not go against the rule of law [or Democrat interests].
I think that second Trump term — and this is something that the voters really need to keep in mind when they go to the polls in November. A second Trump term would have a politicized, weaponized — forget politicized — weaponized United States Department of Justice that would do the kinds of things that, with all due respect, that idiot just said.
Politicized and weaponized DOJ – I couldn’t have described the Obama/Holder/Biden DOJ better myself.
What Mike Davis said he’d love to do was (1) fire a lot of people in the executive branch of the Deep State (2) indict the Bidens (3) deport 10 million illegal immigrants and their kids (4) detain people in the DC gulag (5) issue a lot of pardons, including to all the J6 defendents.
Now, I have to say some of that actually is pretty extreme, particularly number 3: the deportation of “anchor kids” who are citizens, as well as the volume of deportations he mentions – 10 million. He also lists putting kids in cages. I can’t tell whether he’s serious or merely mocking the left, because of course Holder and company and their replacements in the Biden administration were busy doing the equivalent of Davis’ five-point plan, only on the left: (1) hiring many many leftists to man (and woman) the Deep State, including the DOJ (2) indicting Trump’s people and then later Trump himself (3) letting in tons more illegal immigrants (4) detaining people in the DC gulag. I’m not sure about the equivalent of number 5, because I don’t think there were all that many leftists who were political prisoners of the right to begin with.
So I think that Mike Davis is obviously relishing the opportunity for payback. Is he speaking tongue-in-cheek in order to tweek the left, or is he serious? The video is here, if you’re interested in judging for yourself. It’s long, and I couldn’t slog through all the MSNBC verbiage, so I only watched a small part of it. But why is the left saying Mike Davis might be Trump’s AG, other than the fact that they think he sounds like someone they can use to conjure up fear? I just spent about 20 minutes of my life that I’ll never get back trying to find out when and where Trump said that this man had a good chance of being his AG pick, and I couldn’t find anything he ever said about Davis, although it’s possible I missed something (my intrepid readers can take up the quest). I did find the left asserting that Davis is on the fast track to be Trump’s AG. But of course they love the idea of spreading Davis’ more incendiary comments and saying that he is Trump’s pick, the better to frighten and motivate their listeners to be even more afraid of Trump than they already are.
By the way, if the right did try to stage a bunch of political trials like the left has done, success would be a lot more difficult for two reasons. The first is that the DC court system isn’t available; only people on the right would be found guilty there. The second is that in the red venues they’d need to choose, the judges would be less likely to entertain kangaroo court convictions, even of leftists. So the charges and the evidence against the defendants would have to be very strong. That’s quite different from the low bar the left faces when trying to convict people on the right in places such as DC.
The demonstrators in Israel for the hostages plead, “Bring them home!” But why address Israel? After all, Israel isn’t holding the hostages. And it’s been made clear for a long time that Hamas is finished negotiating, except perhaps to ask for a total Israeli surrender in exchange for the hostage release. So how can Israel “bring them home”? Aren’t the costs of such concessions unconscionable?
Israel is being addressed in these pleas, rather than Hamas, because Israel is humane and Hamas is not. Remember William Lloyd Garrison’s famous statement, “With reasonable men I will reason, with humane men I will plead … “. What many – most?- people forget is the rest of the quote, “but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.” Negotiations with Hamas are “wasted words.”
As far as a military way to bring them home goes – Israel probably doesn’t know where they all are, and even if and when Israel does know where they are (almost certainly not in one place but in many), a military approach would be likely to kill them or precipitate Hamas murdering them.
I think the phrase that makes more sense is “Let them go!” – addressed to Hamas and the Gazans. Of course, Hamas has no more intention of letting them go than Pharaoh had of letting the Jews who were slaves in Egypt go, as in the song “Let My People Go.” It took ten escalating plagues for that to happen, and it’s not surprising it took that much to get him to relent. Perhaps you believe that’s a historical fact, or perhaps you believe it’s a legend or a story, but whichever it is it tells something true about evil and power.
I suppose if the message is to be “Bring them home!,” the words should be addressed to the world: the UN, nations, supposed “humanitarian” organizations, and the international community as a whole. If the world was united in stating the obvious fact that the kidnappings are evil and Hamas must release the hostages or face attack or severe sanctions, globally – perhaps that would be enough pressure. But in reality that is very far from happening and Hamas knows it, and knows that the world is actually far more united against Israel.
Remember this past virtue-signaling? Now we hardly even have this sort of thing:
The following video is of another excellent and comprehensive discussion from The Jerusalem Center. It centers on the terrible choices the hostage situation presents, and how well Hamas has learned what Israel’s vulnerabilities around that are. I’ve cued it up to begin with a short talk on a different and yet important topic – the tax money Israel is supposed to transfer to Gaza and the West Bank as part of the Oslo Accords, and which the Palestinians use to reward terrorists for killing Israelis. After that brief discussion the speakers segue into the subject of the hostages (again, if it’s too slow for you, go to “Settings” and increase the speed). I had written a draft of the above post before I ever listened to this podcast, and I was surprised to hear the gentleman on the left of the screen (whose name and title I didn’t catch) say much the same thing about the phrase “bring them home” as I said. But there’s much much more in their talk that’s well worth hearing:
I think that Israel must not do any more large prisoner exchanges for hostages. Israel must hang tough against such negotiation and certainly against any long-term ceasefire. But I also think I know what the terrorists would do if Israel made that position clear – plus of course there would be the terrible and yet understandable spectacle of the grief-stricken and angry families of the hostages. The terrorists would then use Israel’s stance as a propaganda point to say that Israel is heartless. The terrorist propaganda would turn the terrorists’ own heartlessness and evil inside out and blame it on the Israelis, and much of the world would stupidly buy that, as they’ve bought so much else the terrorists are selling. In addition, I think the terrorists would start beaming videos of hostage after hostage pleading and pleading, and perhaps being mistreated or even tortured, as well as possibly killed either onscreen – or probably off, the better to claim that Israel’s airstrikes did the deed.
The bottom line is that, once hostages are taken by terrorists, there is no good result except their rescue. For release, the price is too high. And because of the number of the October 7 hostages and the way they’re being held and by whom, rescue is incredibly difficult.
NOTE: Last night when I watched that Jerusalem Center video, I thought of a film I saw in a large-screen movie theater when I was a teenager. Its name was The Sand Pebbles and it featured Steve McQueen, an actor on whom I had a huge crush; that’s why I went to see it. But the film itself filled me with horror – or rather, the only scene I remember after all these years filled me with horror. It featured the torture of an Asian man whom the sailor played by McQueen had befriended and whom the audience had grown to like. The man had been captured, and a vicious crowd was torturing him, with McQueen and the other sailors watching his torture from the deck of their ship. McQueen has a rifle, and he takes aim and shoots, putting his friend out of his misery. It is a searing, awful scene. But you understand that by doing that, McQueen ended the man’s suffering – because he was going to be killed slowly and painfully anyway, in full view of everyone. The McQueen character killed him, but stopped the sadistic spectacle of his suffering.
ADDENDUM:
Here is a video of a woman who was a hostage in Gaza. She is speaking to the World Economic Forum in Davos, describing her experiences and asking them to pressure Hamas for the release of the remaining hostages. I’ve not seen that approach before, and I think it’s a step in the right direction – not that the Davos crowd is going to do what she says, however:
Nikki Haley is doing well in New Hamphire, according to the polls. One of the reasons is that the popular NH Republican governor, Chris Sununu, has endorsed her.
Sununu is an interesting case. I think he would have been a shoo-in had he run for the Senate from NH in 2022 against the vulnerable Democrat incumbent, as he was expected to do. Instead, he announced that it was more important that he stay as governor. He did run for another two-year term as governor in 2022, but then announced about six months later that he wouldn’t be running for governor in 2024 either.
I guess it wasn’t so very important after all that he be the NH governor, because that leaves a very good possibility that a Democrat may win the NH governorship in 2024. Nor does this seeming retreat from politics mean that Sununu is actually retreating from politics, because he endorsed Haley a little over month ago, and has been making appearances with her. Sununu has made it clear he doesn’t like Trump, and his Haley endorsement should be seen in that light.
In New Hampshire, anyone can vote in the GOP primary unless the person is a registered Democrat. And even registered Democrats can fairly easily change their registration to “undeclared” and vote for one of the GOP candidates. It has to be done by a certain date – this year it was apparently in early October – but many many people just register as “undeclared” in general in order to keep their options open. It’s no secret that Haley is favored by Democrats and Democrat-leaners in the state, and there is a great deal of money behind her.
