Open Mic for the week of 3/4/2024
There’s a phenomenon where someone writes an essay about this or that but someone else wants to discuss something that has not yet made it to the front page.
This is unfair to everybody involved. It’s unfair to the guy who wrote the original essay because, presumably, he wants to talk about his original essay. It’s unfair to the guy who wants to talk about his link because it looks like he’s trying to change the subject. It’s unfair to the people who go to the comments to read up on the thoughts of the commentariat for the original essay and now we’re talking about some other guy’s links.
So!
The intention is to have a new one of these every week. If you want to talk about a link, post it here! Or, heck, use it as an open thread.
And, if it rolls off, we’ll make a new one. With a preamble just like this one.
I’m sure our legal eagles can split this hair for us later, but it seems to me that if a majority of the court doesn’t think he should be off the ballot for inciting an insurrection, they will happily grant immunity for his January 6th actions.
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/supreme-court-opinion-trump-ballot-03-04-24/index.htmlReport
The Governor of Colorado, in His sovereign immunity, may use His executive power to strike Trump from the ballot.Report
Would you consider Jared Polis to be a closeted Trumper if he fails to strike Trump from the ballot?
Is he undermining the country by not doing so?Report
Here’s the story the AP ran.
It closes with these paragraphs:
Before we move on, let me ask you whether you think that this story tells you the breakdown of how the Supreme Court justices voted on this particular case.
I’m pleased that CNN actually tells us the breakdown of how the justices ruled in the headline.
Would that we had more reporters/editors that good at this sort of thing.Report
Good news!
When I posted that comment, the opening paragraph said this:
Now it says this:
See that new word in the second blockquote?
Good for them.Report
“While all nine justices agreed that Trump should be on the ballot, there was sharp disagreement from the three liberal members of the court and a milder disagreement from conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett that their colleagues went too far in determining what Congress must do to disqualify someone from federal office.”
Was this added also?Report
Actually, that part was!
Here are screenshots from the windows that I still have open:
Here’s the original:
And here’s the updated version:
Sharp eye!Report
They seem to have added quite a bit then! It’s almost as if they updated the story as they got more information. WHAT A WILD IDEA!Report
All this was also added between what you screen shotted:
“Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson said they agreed that allowing the Colorado decision to stand could create a “chaotic state by state patchwork” but said they disagreed with the majority’s finding a disqualification for insurrection can only happen when Congress enacts legislation. “Today, the majority goes beyond the necessities of this case to limit how Section 3 can bar an oathbreaking insurrectionist from becoming President,” the three justices wrote in a joint opinion.
It’s unclear whether the ruling leaves open the possibility that Congress could refuse to certify the election of Trump or any other presidential candidate it sees as having violated Section 3.
Derek Muller, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame, said “it seems no,” noting that the liberals complained that the majority ruling forecloses any other ways for Congress to enforce the provision. Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California-Los Angeles, wrote that it’s frustratingly unclear what the bounds might be on Congress.
Hasen was among those urging the court to settle the issue so there wasn’t the risk of Congress rejecting Trump under Section 3 when it counts electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2025.
“We may well have a nasty, nasty post-election period in which Congress tries to disqualify Trump but the Supreme Court says Congress exceeded its powers,” he wrote.”Report
Methinks they saw the decision, rushed an article, and then backfilled with more details as they had a chance to read it and get some analysis.Report
Nice trick here:
SCOTUS: “Congress must enforce Article 3.”
Congress: “OK, This person is an insurrectionist and not eligible.”
SCOTUS: “NOT LIKE THAT”Report
The two timestamps of my two tabs:
Updated 8:02 AM MST, March 4, 2024
and
Updated 8:41 AM MST, March 4, 2024
Which tells me that the story could well have been different prior to the 8:02 one.
You’d think that the information about how it was unanimous would have been available by 8:02…
Oh, well. At least they updated their story as they got more information.
I’m going to close my tabs now.Report
My hunch is they anticipated the ruling coming down and had an initial announcement piece prepared for either decision and pushed that out immediately, then filled in the necessary details. This is a fairly common journalism approach on the internet.
But, hey, if you think something else is going on, please enlighten us.Report
So they had the editorial ready, just not the facts and they filled in the facts once they had access to them?
Yeah.
I can totally see that.Report
No, I don’t believe that at all.
The first thing in any template would be…
” in a [ x to x ] decision…”
Plus, getting the decision at all means getting the vote count. No editor is thinking you’re going to need to scoop the decision not knowing how it was decided.
It’s just framing and then the framing is called out and they change it.Report
If you want to believe conspiracy theories, you have that right.Report
JB noted the original piece went up at 8:02. When was the ruling made public? Was it before 8? If not, how much writing do you think they got done in 2 minutes? And when was the update issued?Report
8:02 MST. Which is 10:02 EST.
According to the webpage, “The Court may announce opinions on the homepage beginning at 10 a.m. The Court will not take the Bench.”
I’m looking at the opinion itself right now and checking out the metadata and…
Which ain’t useful.
So I’m guessing that they just scheduled it to come out at 10, the reporter had two stories ready: “Hitler II DEFEATED!!!” versus “Supreme Court Fails Country” and saw that Trump won and so posted the second version of the article before sitting down to actually read the silly thing and actually include the various facts and point out “okay, yeah, it was unanimous EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT WAS 5-4!!!”Report
That’s bizarre that you think media outlets framing their stories is a conspiracy theory.
I think it’s worse that they write their stories before the event happens … and then ‘update’ them after the fact.Report
You’re attributing to malice what is much more easily attributed to a combination of laziness and greed.
This is the AP… you really think they thought people weren’t going to find out what the numbers were? Sheesh. Enjoy lalaland.Report
I’m attributing ‘standard operating procedures’ that are bad… and you don’t ‘figure out’ the votes after you’ve written your ‘framing/spin’. That’s bad editorial practices — you report on what happened, not the story you’re spinning in advance.Report
What framing/spin were included in the 8:02 edition?Report
On the Twits today, Brother Hal pointed out that writing the story on the way to the ballpark ain’t just for sportswriters anymore.
What percentage of games can have the stories written beforehand with a paragraph tweaked here or there and the scores filled in afterwards?
Certainly not *EVERY* game and, yeah, there are upsets all the time (“that’s why they play the games”), but you’re probably going to be able to have a simple template for most games.
“It was a batter’s delight at (insert field here) last night. Across both teams there were (number) runs due to (bigger number) hits and (player) had his first game with two homers. (Pitchers) on both teams were both relieved before the seventh inning stretch and it did no good as (number) homers were hit in the 8th and 9th. (Team) walked away with the win but this series still has two games to go and there’s going to be another one in August. Get your tickets now, because if those games were as thrilling as this one, you’ll be telling your kids about it.”
“It was a night of pitching excellence last night as (pitcher) had 3 perfect innings before giving up a single hit.”
Sure, every game is unique… but…Report
Unanimous decision 9-0, thank agnostic God(ess?)!Report
9-0 that states can’t strike candidates for federal offices based on Section 3. 5-4 that only Congress can do so.Report
I’m now waiting (sarcastically) for the same split to tell us Presidential conduct in office can only be addressed by impeachment, meaning Cocaine Mitch was wrong (or right depending on how you want to slice it).Report
Yeah the 9-0 on the substantive question is what I was hoping for. The split on the minutiae doesn’t bother me greatly.Report
They skated awfully close to declaring the President a federal officer though.Report
Is it an alternate Tuesday? No? Well, I’ll believe in conspiracy theories for a few minutes anyway.
Suppose you want to convert the US to an authoritarian state. We know from history that strong-president systems tend to fail eventually and almost always in that direction. One of the situations in which that failure happens is when the legislative branch locks up. The president gets away with taking over because the legislature can’t address problems.
One way to get to that point is to overload the legislature. In a large complex modern economy, one way to do that is to pile on the minutia. Don’t let them delegate to lower levels of government. Don’t let them delegate to regulatory agencies. Encourage members of the legislature to draw everything out.Report
The last paragraph could be copied and pasted into the thread on Mitch McConnell.
Not for nothing is he called the “Gravedigger of Democracy”.Report
All good conspiracy theories borrow from reality :^)Report
Does ending Chevron deference count as taking stuff back from the Executive?Report
Yes.Report
It is not a pleasant thought at all, I agree Michael, but I don’t see a court case as being the cure to it.Report
It is a bit depressing to me that people get too into these one neat trick kind of arguments. They don’t work in humdrum cases and they won’t work here. Trump needs to be defeated at the ballot box but a lot of people have Trump-related PTSD and get triggered easily. I don’t know how to get people to toughen up butter cup,Report
It’s a pleasure to be able to agree with you unreservedly on this Saul.Report
I guess I’ll bet on defeated and then imprisoned in that order.Report
Sort of. Unanimous in the result, which is good. But it’s 5-4 on the “Only Congress can pronounce” part.
Note that per the per curiam majority, a state official can pronounce disqualification for an office created by that state. If Trump wants to run for a seat on Colorado’s Board of Education, he’s screwed. But he can run for President.
Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson — and separately, Barrett — all said that “We don’t need to proclaim that only Congress can do what Colorado’s Secretary of State tried to do. It’s enough to say that Colorado’s Secretary of State lacks the power to do this on her own, and that’s all we should be saying.” They’d leave for another day the question of whether some other figure capable of issuing a national judgment — say, a court entering a criminal judgment of insurrection or something similar to it — could also pronounce disqualification.
A reporter has found metadata in the released opinion suggesting that the Sotomayor concurrence was once at least a partial dissent.Report
Oh absolutely it’s not unanimous in the ways that lawyers would look at it but, all due respect to you counselor, lawyers are a tiny minority of the country and the vast majority of the masses will see “9-0 Trump stays on the ballot” and call it a day. And it’s with the masses that some kind of serious unrest might percolate. Thus my relief. I have no fear that a mob of angry attorneys will charge the barricades in DC.Report
This is from the Daily Telegraph so it might need a grain of salt but apparently British publishers are boycotting Jewish authors even on Jewish subjects that have nothing to do with Israel/Palesitne:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/03/half-of-british-publishers-wont-take-jewish-authors/Report
That’s their decision to make. Nobody has a right to be published. Get a blog online. Self-publish through Amazon. Private companies can do whatever they want.Report
From the Atlantic, the Golden Age of the American Jew is over: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2024/04/us-anti-semitism-jewish-american-safety/677469/?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=social
I agree and disagree with the essay. You probably need more examples then what is happening in Oakland and Berkeley.Report
I’m wondering how much of the Golden Age was in part because Judaism was the non-Christian religion of the United States for over a century. The exoticism and somewhat compressed ethnic understanding of most Americans put Jews closer to non-White rather than white. Now that we have millions of other non-Christian religious believers and more secular people plus an expended ethnic understanding, Jews are not as exotic anymore.Report
You know how long it took for Ireland to stop being Catholic? About 3 minutes after they figured out that England had stopped being Protestant.Report
A friend also argues that the Golden Age of American Jews ended something like 30 or even 40 years ago but it took a long time to notice. There is something to this. As noted below, the golden age of American Judaism coincided where Judaism was the Non-Christian religion of the United States and the American ethnic understanding was Whites and Blacks with Asians in the Big Cities in the North East and West Coast, Hispanics in the SW, and Native Americans on reservations. Once more Americans started to understand that there were other non-Christian religions rather than Judaism in the United States, many believed by people who were more obviously non-White, and ethnic demography was more complicated than things fell apart for Jews.Report
UN believes Hamas has been abusing it’s hostages.
That lines up with a number of Hamas’ issues during the negotiations. They don’t want to supply proof of life and well being until after the cease fire. They have never allowed the Red Cross (or whatever) to have access to check on them.
And not being stupid, the Israelis believe this too which probably explains some of the brutality in Gaza.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/04/europe/un-team-sexual-abuse-oct-7-hostages-intl/index.htmlReport
Wouldn’t surprise me in the least. Hamas are a bunch of monsters. The Israeli’s, though, are a state. If your analysis is correct then the Israeli’s are barely thinking at all and they desperately need their friends to pull them back from the brink or they’re going to fish themselves for generations.Report
or they’re going to fish themselves for generations.
Doesn’t work like that. After all this is done, no matter how many people in Gaza die, Israel will go back to being nice people and Hamas will still be monsters.
The world will be unhappy for a news cycle or three but will move on. The Arabs who haven’t forgiven Israel for existing for 75 years will remember this but no one else will two years after it’s over.
Long term we still have no idea if this war is a positive development. I see some things which imply it will be, UNRWA may be destroyed. Hamas is showing the results of an all out war with Israel. Netanyahu has probably wrecked his career.Report
I’m less sanguine than you are considering the opinions I see being minted about Israel among the “kids these days” (TM). If Israel was on solid footing otherwise I’d be less worried but the West Bank is still occupied (you and I’ve gone round productively on that subject and don’t need to re-litigate it) and the Israeli’s themselves can’t coherently even discuss what will happen with Gaza (or the West Bank) in the future.Report
Posit: If it weren’t for I/P, these kids or not so kids would be looking for another reason not to vote to Biden and that would probably be student loans. They are very loud but I think they are a minority and Arabs in Michigan have been trending right on social issuesReport
Campus activism has always been unreliable as a partisan political force. If they’re going to (i) vote at all and (ii) vote for a mainstream party, it will be the Democrats. However they’re pretty inconsistent about doing either of those things. To North’s point it probably doesn’t bode super well for Israel over the long term since a lot of them will ‘sell out’ into the Democratic coalition as they get older but I don’t know why the party establishment would prioritize their concerns more broadly as an election strategy.Report
This isn’t Biden voting I’m talking about Saul. This is generational attitudes about the state of Israel. People like our parents’ generation (and even earlier, Joe Bidens’ generation) saw Israel as either a miracle or a scrappy Jewish outpost fighting for its life. Our generation saw Israel as a strong and well-meaning Jewish state trying, awkwardly but trying, to reach a final settlement with the Palestinians. The generation after ours sees Israel as a completely secure state coldly indifferent to Palestinian lives while slowly squeezing them off their lands. The generation after that one is starting to see Israel as something close to or actually an apartheid state (with Netanyahu as the face of it) and now, with Gaza, the Israelis are managing to make themselves look even worse (and yes Hamas has provoked them to it, Hamas are monsters. Do you think Hamas views the Israeli’s current actions with anything except utter glee? I doubt it.)
The generations that look warmly on Israel are steadily shuffling off this mortal coil. The generations that have a mixed view of Israel are growing and there’s a relentlessly increasing young cohort of voters who view Israel as mostly bad to monstrous. I’m not talking about the campus identity wingnut idiot cohort. I’m talking about the voting masses. For fish’s sake- there’s a non-Zero chance that Netanyahu’s war could cost Dems the White House. Do you think those voters will forget or forgive? In my lifetime I have seen Israel go from a state with rock solid support from both parties to a state that has spent a decade alienating the Dems. Look at the trajectories. Look at the vectors. If Israel becomes a partisan issue then they’re half way to ruin and the US is the -pro- Israel nation worldwide.Report
These are young people for whom long ago atrocities against the Native Americans or whoever else they feel sympathy too are much more real than atrocities against the Jews that occurred within living memory. They also believe that the Muslims are genuinely into 21st century multiculturalism and don’t understand why Jews don’t want to be fifth class citizens of a Muslim country no matter how carefully you explain it to them. These are people who believe that Hamas and the Taliban are pro-LGBT.Report
Nope, you’re back to the identarian college fringe again. The voting masses of young kids just see Israel as strong, completely in control of a big mass of disenfranchised Palestinians, under no serious threat from their neighbors and, yes, trying to recreate the American Indian experience with the Palestinians in the 2000’s. It’s not a good look and it’s not an inaccurate look either and it is not minting generations of voters sympathetic to Israel- quite the opposite. And as a supporter of Israel myself I view that with great alarm.Report
Let’s assume that Israel decides to “solve the Palestinian problem” once and for all. Envision your worst interpretation of that phrase. What’s the youth of the US going to do? Are they going to vote in someone who promises to take some form of serious action against the Israeli state, invade and restore Hamas, or take any significant action besides MAYBE getting some symbolic funding cut? I very much doubt any of that. They won’t be allowed to. The powers that be have too much money & skin in the game to tolerate that type of disruption. There MIGHT be some internal US issues-possible violence here but would it be worse that the recent stuff? I doubt that.Report
What could those dumb idealistic kids do to Apartheid South Africa? And at least South Africa is/was largely a primary resource extraction state- Israel is a modern integrated state of the art economy that is profoundly dependent on international trade.
Also, come on, let’s be real. If Israel started ethnically cleansing the Palestinians in earnest Biden could stop them within a month and would need to to placate a lot more than the “kids”. Israel is profoundly dependent on the US for ammunition. Biden could make one phone call to his UN ambassador and the US could abstain on the next interminable security council votes. As soon as sanctions started landing on Israel her best companies would flee to other environs and Israel’s most productive citizenry (who overwhelmingly have dual citizenship) would likely decamp to other states. The sucking sound out of Tel Aviv would be deafening.
But the worst-case things the Israeli’s could do are so unlikely because the Israeli’s themselves are quite aware of how dependent they are on not doing them. So, dial it back to the worst thing that Bibi could do and maybe Biden would endure it? Then the kids would simply angrily remember. For the high engagement ones Israel would be a monster state and they’d never support a politician who supported Israel. For the larger lower info ones Israel would be that bad place where the Jewish crazy people live and they’d prefer to support some politician who said the right things about Israel (aka I don’t like em). And for the even larger masses of young voters the Israelis would be those people who caused trouble and made their side lose an election in ’24 and they’d not look kindly on anyone who supported them. Those of us who have good opinions of Israel and wish it well are getting older and dying more and more every day. The new voters being minted almost universally are forming poor opinions of the state of Israel. That matters. Somewhat now but in the future? It’ll be just about everything.Report
Israeli’s themselves can’t coherently even discuss what will happen with Gaza (or the West Bank) in the future
Yeah, they’re still in “never again” territory. We’re going to see a lot more Palestinians die, maybe 2x more than we’ve seen thus far.
Our place is not to stop them from destroying Hamas. Gaza and Hamas painted themselves into this ugly corner and thus far refuse to leave. If Hamas refuses to surrender then lots and lots of civilians will die. That’s part of the whole “total war” package.
Our place is to try to offer good suggestions and do what we can to prevent actual genocide (not the watered down meaning of that word, the real deal).
After the war is over, which could be next year, we get to offer sane, thought out suggestions to people who haven’t been thinking of it.Report
Of course Hamas won’t surrender. Those monsters would feed every Palestinian in Gaza into a wood chipper if it’d make the world hate the Israelis… and the Israelis are right there gassing up the chipper.Report
There is a disconnect between “Hamas represents the Palestinian’s popular political aims” and “Hamas would see all the Palestinians die before giving up”.
Similarly, when we’re interviewing random civilian Palestinians they’re never asked if they support Hamas.
There is some serious passive aggressiveness here.
If Hamas represents the Palestinians then they’re not surrendering because they want to fight on. They just don’t want to take ownership of that choice.Report
Pff, I guarantee you if you asked the Gazans if they wanted to attack Israel at the cost of Gaza being flattened they’d have answered with a resounding no. You are leaving out that the last time Gaza had an election was 2006.Report
They didn’t expect Gaza to be flattened. They expected the other Arabs would help them win and/or the world would prevent any serious problems.
I watched a Palestinian Reporter get very VERY pissed at another reporter stating that Hamas was committing war crimes. He was so angry he had to walk away from the interview. She dared to say that there were war crimes being done by both sides.
Israel isn’t supposed to be allowed to do this sort of thing. Hamas’ actions are legit and expected.Report
Hamas can’t have it both ways. They can’t claim to be the government of Gaza and the true legitimate governing party of the Palestinians and commit state acts like commit acts of war but they retreat into “oh, we aren’t really a state actor and are merely a terrorist organization” when they realize they can’t actually win a war against Israel. Nor should people allow Hamas to get away with it.Report
Hamas are a bunch of terrorist thugs. The only reason they’ve been in charge of Gaza was a combination of the PA’s ineptitude and the Israeli rights very purposeful propping up of Hamas because dividing the Palestinians made it easier to block a 2 state solution. Expecting anything good from Hamas is a fools’ errand.Report
It’s the “thug” part that makes Hamas less than popular in Gaza and not the “terrorist” part. If they stopped preying on their own civilians and focused entirely on terrorizing Jews they’d have the total support of Gaza.
The polling done before 10-7 showed the people of Gaza wanted the war. Presumably they thought they’d win, but that’s a different issue.
The plan appears to have been that when they show it’s possible to kill Jews, all the surrounding Arabs will join them and they’ll just steamroll Israel.Report
Polling is nigh meaningless when applied to a population group with no actual agency. If your opinions don’t mean anything of course you’re going to spout off about the Israeli’s. I think Hezbollah is a strong counterpoint to your position here- the Lebanese did not appreciate Hezbollah provoking the Israeli’s into flattening a large part of the country even though the Lebanese also have no love of Israel. Hezbollah has moved gingerly on the subject of provoking war with Israel ever since.Report
Polling is nigh meaningless when applied to a population group with no actual agency.
This is an effort to raise the evidence bar so high that we don’t know anything. The difficult reality is attacking Jews is very popular.
The right to return is overwhelmingly popular. If the Palestinians are going to have a RoR then the Jews need to go.
That requires a war. So it shouldn’t be a shock that everything we know says they wanted a war. They didn’t want the current reality, but they did want 10-7.
RE: Hezbollah & Lebanese
Sure. Fully agreed. The civilians don’t want to be subject to being flattened in a brutal war.
The Palestinians expected (and still expect) the World to step in and prevent Israel from doing much because the Jews don’t have the right to self defense.
There are no calls for Hamas to give back the hostages (much less surrender) because Hamas was in the right and Israel shouldn’t exist.
When all of this is over maybe lessons will be learned.Report
Professor Heather Cox Richardson, author of the book on the history of the Republican Party on why the GOP looks like a party heading for political collapse: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-28-2024Report
As a historian’s son, I love HCR because she is giving subsequent historians what they rarely have – contemporaneous analysis of major events, tied to the history that created them. The hope she infuses her letters with – her faith in her fellow Americans – is also somewhat catching.
What she has yet to do (understandably) is tell us what history tells us about the damage such a party can do to a nation on it’s way down. Already that damage has been considerable. And, contra Koz, American is not YET healing.Report
Oh it can do tons of damage. There is a lot of ruin in a political party especially one that has become a cult run by a gangster with cognitive decline.Report
She says that the Republican Party has lost its way since 2016. But if you look at party identification, it’s the Democrats who have been falling since then, while the Republicans have remained stable. Depending on the measurement, the Democrats are now equal to or below the Republicans.Report
Party identification among voters is a very poor way to assess whether a party has “lost its way.” Its like saying hotdogs are no longer popular due to declining ketchup sales.Report
Okay, you know how Vice went Bankrupt, right? Well, Alexandria Green has tweeted the following complaint:
She’s SOL, right? Like, she gets in line with water and sewage and the trash company and catering and all of the other writers and see how the pickings get divvied up, right?Report
Maybe she’ll get some retwits or whatever they’re called now. But that’s all she’s going to get. Hope she’s not actually dumb enough to pay a lawyer to go after them.Report
Going through the replies, there are a number of writers who have been owed money by Vice for years. “Every person I’d contact got laid off or left.”Report
Pro-Palestinian Berkeley students use the heckler’s veto to shut down an event held by Jewish students where an Israel attorney speaks:
https://reason.com/2024/02/29/berkeley-students-violently-shut-down-event-featuring-israeli-attorney/?fbclid=IwAR0tCv1pTy9wnWl3gfsdzqewFzR3UNqAoD3I68frEDnd6xjJ7lFqdvVm8q0
If Jewish students were to use the heckler’s veto at a Pro-Palestinian event, everybody would be screaming bloody murder. This happens every time there is a flare up in the I/P conflict. The Pro-Palestinian activists claim that they are merely anti-Zionist rather than anti-Semitic but they just can’t help themselves and go after Jews. Every time.Report
Everybody loves an underdog.Report
A couple of years ago, we discussed the Heckler’s Veto.
It’s weird to see this stuff bubble up again.
The story you posted the other day discussed how vandals were tearing down statues that had Jewish significance, for example.
It sucks.Report
A couple of numbers dorks did a study on “campus deplatforming events”. The subhed of their study: 2023 was the worst year on record for deplatforming attempts. 2024 is on track to beat it.Report
I can’t believe how many useful idiot treacherous and traitor Jews there are out there who believe that if the hold the “right” anti-Zionist opinions, they will be sparred by the genocidal anti-Semites or that there isn’t a widespread anti-Semitism problem in the pro-Palestinian movement. There is utterly no evidence whatsoever that 21st century Western multiculturalism is popular in the Muslim majority countries. Quite the opposite is true but you have all these God damn idealistic fools who are willing to destroy thousands of years of Jewish work in order to satisfy their self-righteousness and anti-colonial feelings while betraying their Mizrahi Jewish kith and kin. How many times do the Palestinians have to say “No Israel/No Jews” before people start talking them seriously. How many times do Muslim majority countries have to set up Islamic theocracies before people outside realize that maybe Islamic theocracy really is a popular form of government in Muslim majority countries. Instead these dopes go about casting their consciousness and throwing their own kith and kin under the bus to death.Report
“…useful idiot treacherous and traitor Jews…”
So any Jewish person who opposes Israel or Israel’s policies or Israel’s actions is a “useful idiot treacherous and traitor Jews”?Report
Yes, of course. Lee also opposes Israel’s policy of ethnically cleansing African Jews from Israel (in a racially motivated sort of way), so naturally he is a traitor too.Report
And also do non-Jews just not get it? Several times during the Israel-Hamas War, I’ve had goyim tell me that they don’t understand the conflation of Israel and Judaism. Even if we assume that Jewish identity was a mere religious identity as they posit, it shouldn’t take that many brain cells to figure that Jews might not like being subsidiary citizens of an officially Muslim country that is part of larger collection of officially Muslim countries. I mean they seem to plenty understand why Muslims find being under a Jewish country or Hindu country is alienating but when it comes to being a Jew in country where Islamic symbolism is placed everywhere and the constitutions state that Shariah is the basis of legislation, they go all dumb and say “nope, Jews should not find this alienating at all.”
I really don’t understand the thought process going on in these peoples heads. I really don’t. Blasphemy and apostate laws are popular in Muslim majority countries but lots of people in the West managed to convince themselves that the Hamas is a civil rights organization or that the Palestinians want a secular multicultural Palestine despite obviously saying otherwise. I really don’t get this. All I know is that thousands of years of Jewish work is going to get destroyed so that the vanity and self-righteousness of the goyim can be satisfied.Report
Then we are back to a place where Israel – as a nation – can not be criticized for its actions because there is no way to remove religious aspects of the state and thus any and all criticism becomes anti-Semitic. If that’s what you believe Israel deserves, fine. But understand that you won’t get a pass from the Left on that issue, and the Right will mock you for it.
Bibi’s Likud government is dragging Israel – as a nation state – into an immoral quagmire that will damage it for generations. He has been since taking power. If we can’t call that out, there is a problem.Report
Why do so many Western secularists give Muslim majority countries on the requirement to separate religion and state. They aren’t exactly unwilling to lecture non-Christian countries on the importance to separate religion and state. India, Israel, and many Buddhist majority countries get the same lectures that the Evangeliban does. When it comes to Islam though, special rules seem to apply and Muslim majority countries get to their theocracy if it is popular with the masses including laws against apostasy and blasphemy. Why is this the case?
There are commentators here who would say it is because nobody expects better of them but I don’t find this a convincing reason why the rest of the world has to strictly follow best principles but this particular group gets to violate all of them.Report
Most Western secularists are ex-Christians (which is Judaism+).
From GM:
Get rid of YHWH and what is Judaism? It’s just ethnicity.
And it is the current year.Report
It is very nice that Western secularists decided that we need to go with them as an ethnicity and a religion. How charitable of them.Report
YHWH disappeared with Young Earth Creationism.
It’s not like you can *REALLY* go from Adam to King David, you know.
I mean… we don’t believe that YHWH really exists, right? Certainly not in a form where He only has a special relationship with one particular ethnicity capable of avoiding cheeseburgers?
We’re far more sophisticated than that!Report
There are still YECs out there, not to mention former YECs who are not exactly old. YWHW may have a bit of life in Him yet.Report
Would you argue that YHWH would have a relationship with people of Jewish descent that is not available to, for example, people of Palestinian descent?
Could anybody have a relationship with YHWH, if they wanted to have a relationship with YHWH? Would the relationship be similar to the relationship shared with YHWH that any given person of Jewish descent is capable of having?Report
I don’t speak for YHWH or about what YHWH, if He exists, wants or permits, and I leave any speculation on that to those who believe in Him. I do have some vague ideas of what they think and would be pleased to learn more from someone who knows what he or she is talking about, but it’s not as though I have a position on the subject.Report
I certainly wouldn’t presume to speak on YHWH’s behalf either.
That said, it would seem to me that it’s unlikely that He reserves a special relationship with Him to only people who have the right ancestry.
That said… He might? Maybe He established a Covenant with Father Abraham and we’re stuck on the outside looking in.
But if you don’t believe in a second substance, talk of YHWH is, at best, a category mistake.
And people of Jewish descent’s relationship to the Creator of the universe is no different than the one available to you or to me. Or Palestinians, for that matter.Report
That’s certainly a theological position one can take. Like all theological propositions, however, it is incapable of resolution.Report
Sure. But in a world where “theology” is a category mistake because there doesn’t happen to be a deity more interesting than Spinoza’s, we’re in a place where “Jewish” is an “ethnicity” again.
They’re certainly not a people who have a special relationship with the Creator of the universe that isn’t available to, for example, Palestinians.Report
You’re awfully certain about that.Report
You might say that I am certain enough to have accepted a wager.
But if someone would like to make the argument that, no, people of Jewish descent actually have a Covenant with the Creator of the Universe that is not available to, for example, Palestinians, then I would love to have that argument with them.Report
I very much doubt that anyone who thinks that would be the least bit interested in having an argument about that with you. The people who think that think they have definite assurances from the Creator of the Universe. As between Him and Colorado Springs Man, the choice is easy, especially since there is simply no humanly-accessible method of determining such propositions.Report
I’m not interested in arguing against the proposition that “I have definite assurances from the Creator of the universe!”
I know plenty of people like that, after all.
I’m interested in “I have definite assurances from the Creator of the universe that are not assurances available to, for example, Palestinians!”
Do you see the difference between those two propositions? If you don’t, feel free to immediately pivot back to arguing as if I’m arguing against the former instead of the latter.Report
I’d argue that Jews have a relationship with G-d that’s different in kind from His relationship with the Palestinians (if that term is defined to exclude Palestinians of Jewish background). But if I’m reading you correctly, you’re arguing something much more interesting, that absent a religious framework, the Jews can’t be understood as a religion but as a culture. I’d note that all the main players in the Middle East think like me rather than like you.Report
I make a distinction between “religious framework” (which is something that can exist without a deity) and YHWH.
“Are you saying that Jewish people don’t have a religious framework?!?”
“Of course I’m not saying that.”
“Are you saying that YHWH doesn’t exist?”
“Yes. That is exactly what I am saying. Moreover, the relationship that Jewish people have to YHWH is no different than the one that is available to me. Or any given Palestinian, for that matter.”Report
Ah, I thought you were saying something more interesting.Report
An all-too-common mistake.Report
In the absence of YHWH, Jews don’t have a special relationship with YHWH that is not a relationship also available to you, me, or any given Palestinian.
YHWH would have to exist for a special relationship (maybe even a Covenant) to also exist.Report
I see the difference between the two propositions, but I think a fair reading of the Tanakh makes clear that the “definite assurances” in question are precisely those definite assurances of exclusivity you seem to want to argue with believers about. There is, of course, no reason those believers ought to listen to you instead of YHWH, and there is no mutually-agreed-upon, humanly-accessible means of settling the question, but if you want to argue with them good luck finding someone to play with.Report
Well, then. I guess we’re back to the questions I asked earlier:
If you want to argue that there *ARE* people who believe that people of Jewish descent have a relationship with the deity that is not available to you, me, or any given Palestinian…
Dude. I know.
I’m not interested in arguing whether they exist.
I’m interested in arguing whether they’re right.
I think they’re wrong.
“They have a right to be wrong!” might be an unassailable point, I suppose. But it’s not one that’s any more interesting than any other point made in this discussion.Report
I suppose we could also argue something like “but we don’t *KNOW* whether there is a deity! What about Russell’s Teapot!”Report
The point is they’re not interested in arguing with you, and there’s nothing you can say that will promote an interesting discussion. If you disbelieve in YHWH, or any other deity then of course there’s no relationship between YHWH (or Whoever) and the Jews that isn’t equally accessible (or equally inaccessible) if there’s no YHWH (or Whoever) to others. There would be no relationship between YHWH or Whoever and anybody. But surely you have something more interesting in mind than arguing with some hypothetical believing Jew about the existence of YHWH or Whoever, from which everything else follows trivially if He doesn’t exist.
No, wait, I know better than to make that mistake.
So what interesting proposition do you want to argue about that doesn’t hit a brick wall at the outset?Report
Well, then I guess we’ll be stuck in a place where people will be asking stuff like “Why do so many Western secularists give Muslim majority countries on the requirement to separate religion and state” and stuck without knowing why.
For what it’s worth: I have an answer.
It’s because most Western secularists are ex-Christians (which is Judaism+).
And if you get rid of the deity, Judaism becomes just another ethnicity.
There’s no special relationship with YHWH. There’s no special Covenant. Not even in theory.
Now if you want to believe that removal of “religion” and reliance on “ethnicity” doesn’t explain why so many Western secularists give Muslim majority countries on the requirement to separate religion and state, I’d ask for a better explanation.
Do you happen to have one with more explanatory power?Report
Change of topic? OK.
Yes. I addressed that elsewhere in the comments, in response to North and InMD.Report
Change of topic?
No. It’s the root comment. At the very bottom (or top, whatever).
That *IS* the topic.
But you think it’s because Western secularists don’t think that they can change the Middle East and want to avoid “virtue signaling”?
Surely because of how often they avoid it in other contexts?
Interesting.Report
Well, good luck finding someone who wants to argue with you about whether there is a YHWH and whether, if He exists or not, He has a special relationship with Jews that isn’t open to everyone else. I’ll watch this space.
But that’s what you brought up, not what LeeEsq had to say. If you’d rather go back to what LeeEsq was talking about to begin with, that’s fine. I’ve said my piece on that.Report
Well, if nobody wants to argue the point, that’s fine too.
But if you want to know why Western secularists have opinions about Judaism that they don’t have about unsophisticated religions, there you go.
I’ll let you sit content with your theory that Western secularists aren’t into virtue signaling.Report
Since when is Islam an unsophisticated religion?Report
Since at least the 90’s. Definitely ever since some have acknowledged that we should treat it with kid gloves due to potential violence.
“But what about the 1200s?”
“They were about 800 years ago.”Report
If you insist on putting a pin in it, let’s say since the Fatwa on Rushdie.Report
Saying that Islam is now an unserious religion because one radical cleric put a fatwa on a single author is akin to saying Muslims are all terrorists because Osama Bin Laden was.
People did say the latter but it was disingenuous at best when it was. Good to know where you fall on t hat spectrum though.Report
Imagine applying this rule to Christianity.Report
“Yeah. What would that even look like?”Report
Just give me a number of how many examples of Christian fundamentalist violence you want, how many examples of people shrugging in indifference, how many times major pundits and media have treated it with kid gloves for fear of violence.
Just a round number will do.Report
Chip, my criticism is not “they’re sometimes violent!”
But if you have, oh, three examples of the media treating Christianity with kid gloves for fear of violence, I’d be fascinated to see what you’ve got at your fingertips.Report
Well, off the top of my head, there is the frequent invocations of “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required” setting the stage of intimidation against journalists.
Then there is the fact that Trump’s Christian base views political violence favorably,
And the media complies by treating Christian violence as an aberration of lone wolves instead of a campaign.
The majority of American polled are unaware of the violence and outrageous statements by Trump, largely because the major media outlets don’t cover it.
Is it because the journalists fear violence, or just don’t take it seriously?
I’m not sure but the end result is the same as when they dismiss Islamic violence.Report
So “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some Assembly Required” is your example of the media treating Christianity with kid gloves for fear of violence?
That’s really interesting.
Could you explain your thought process behind coming to that example?Report
Its an example of the way Trumpists/ Fundamentalist Christians use threats of violence against anyone who doesn’t acquiesce.
Relatedly, can anyone find the NYT article about the Republicans candidate for North Carolina which discusses the fact that he is a Hit.ler quoting Holocaust denier who calls queer people “maggots”?
I seem to have trouble locating it.Report
Couldn’t find your NYT article either. I found one in Rolling Stone. Is this your example of the media treating Christianity with kid gloves?
That’s really interesting.
Could you explain your thought process behind coming to that example?Report
No, it’s not because of that one cleric. But that moment is where I’d put the pin.
The problem isn’t the cleric.
It’s the people who followed the fatwa. It’s the people who shrugged and said “welp, can’t do anything about a fatwa!”
It’s about how the fatwa is still in effect.
If it was just a crazy nutter in a tent uploading videos to youtube and who gets about as much attention as any given political ranter on youtube, that’d be one thing.
A different thing than this thing.
The thing is not “the fatwa”. It’s the attitude that Islam needs to be treated with kid gloves due to potential violence.
And if you wanted me to put a pin in when that started?
I’d say with the fatwa laid down when Salman Rushdie’s book was published.Report
Maybe I’m getting lost in this thread but I thought the subject wasn’t so much how Islam is seen by predominantly Muslim societies but whether it is subject to different rules in the West than other major religions.
The most illustrative example I can think of would be something like reactions to the Charlie Hebdo attack in France. No one would suggest it might somehow be predictable if a bunch of Catholics committed the attack in reaction to the magazine skewering the Pope or Jesus (which as I understand it, it regularly does) but there are those that would say doing the same, or even just drawing, Muhammad should be looked at differently.Report
Is it that you can’t read, or that you don’t?Report
Most western secularists expect nothing from Muslim majority countries, give nothing to Muslim majority nations and generally couldn’t find them on a map.Report
Yea this seems to boil down to asking why people aren’t up in arms about things that have zero practical relevance to them.Report
And about which we can do next to nothing. While there are certainly crazies out there, I know no one, whatever his or her views on the middle eastern situation, who actually approves of the actual, existing governments or policies of the Arab/Islamic world. The secular west has limited leverage to effect real change and repetitious flapping of one’s gums about the awfulness of sharia law as practiced in, for example, Saudi Arabia and Iran, would, in some circles, be described as virtue signalling and have about as much practical effect.Report
Agreed. Also worth mentioning that we aren’t that far removed from an obsessive government and media focus on the ME and the situation in Muslim countries, to say nothing of the occasional conspiratorial flare ups about sharia law coming to a courthouse near you. Personally I think we are in a much healthier place with respect to that which goes on in other countries over which we have little to no control than we were in the recent past.Report
The closest parallel to what’s happening in Gaza right now is probably what’s happened in Yemen over the last several years: U.S.-provided weapons used by a U.S. ally (and their ally) to bomb a civilian population, along with more or less deliberately-induced famine, in the name of a war against a group that isn’t particularly sympathetic (in fact, they’re quite awful). And much as in Gaza, the U.S. media is extremely wary of criticizing the side the U.S. allows and in fact helps to do very bad stuff. The major difference is that the suffering of the people of Yemen never seemed to gain traction except among a small subset of the left, some non-mainstream journalists, and NGOs/Christian aid groups. I think it’s reasonable for anyone to ask why that war got almost no coverage and this one gets constant coverage. There are a few possibilities: the speed and scale of the death and destruction, as well as the onset of famine, in Gaza are significantly greater; the relationship between U.S. aid and Israel’s genocidal massacre is more direct; there is a more established relationship between Palestinian activists and journalists and the American left than between Yemenis (particularly Yemenis living in areas under Houthi control) and pretty much anyone in the U.S., etc. I also think that, in addition to all of these factors, antisemitism plays a role, though I don’t think there’s any evidence that it’s the only, or even the largest factor at play, despite what many would have us believe. But I remain disappointed that Americans, and the American left in particular, haven’t generally been as up in arms about our relationship with S.A., and with their role in the war in Yemen in particular. I know from experience that discussing it in left groups was frustrating.
All that said, while we are witnessing a genocidal war fought with U.S. dollars and weapons, it seems like at best pretty gross attempt at distraction to say, “What really makes me angry is that people don’t criticize Muslim countries the way they criticize Israel.”Report
I think North is broadly correct in how it shakes out on generations and a lot of younger voters only know Israel as the big guy in charge. Not the plucky little underdog filled with Holocaust survivors. Plus they have seen the crazy right-wing settlers be assholes and a lot of Israeli expats seem to develop reputations for being very abrasive.
At best, a lot of it is a sincere wanting for ceasefire and ending of violence without much understanding on the deep history of the divisions in the region combined with despair over the helplessness. No one here can stop the divisions and hatred but they can push for symbolic ceasefire resolutions and/or more aid to Gaza.Report
I assume the people at Vox can identify Muslim majority countries on the map. Even the most educated Western secularists seems to give Muslims more leeway when it comes to theocratic politics.Report
They don’t give them leeway. They don’t give them anything Lee. They’re backwater theocratic wastelands and they don’t get anything of significance from the developed world other than the condescending adulation of the powerless identarian fringe of the bored university set.Report
Name names about who is giving whom leeway for what or go home.Report
Hmmm? Did you misthread this comment CJ?Report
I’m agreeing with you, and addressing LeeEsq. Sorry for the confusion.Report
Well, *THAT* certainly changes how one reads “or go home”.Report
When someone expresses confusion about your point, you clear it up. Or at least that’s how I roll.Report
Appreciate the clarification.Report
Maybe given is the wrong word but generally there seems to be a tendency to forgive a lot of the more hidebound tendencies in Muslim majority countries and accept it as it is compared to even India.Report
I think, where you’re missing the disconnect is a question of aspirations.
India is a huge democratic country that is aspiring to be in the liberal developed country club. When you’re a liberal developed country you get a LOT of perks. The cost of those perks is you have to -behave- like a liberal developed country. Israel -is- a liberal developed country and it gets a lot of perks. But it has to continue to behave as a liberal developed country to continue to enjoy those perks.
The various Islamic undeveloped sand holes are not liberal developed countries and they aren’t trying to be ones so they don’t get held to the standards of one. Outside the ones we bribe to get what we want from them (Don’t be commies*now a defunct reason*; don’t harass Israel; sell us your oil; don’t mess with global trade routes) the developed liberal club pays no mind to the underdeveloped sand holes except some occasional bouts of patronizing charity. No, they aren’t saying “separate your church and state” or “stop treating your women like animals” because no one expects those states will listen and *shrug* what are ya gonna do? They’re Islamic underdeveloped sand holes. We’ll send some thoughts and prayers (and not many of those even).
You seem to think that Israel should be given all the perks of being a developed liberal country but held to none of the standards of one. It just doesn’t work that way.Report
Universal human rights are supposed to be, well, universal. Expecting some countries or groups to live up to it and lecturing them on how they are violating universal human rights standard while allowing other countries to ignore them because reasons seems like making the concept of universal human rights less than universal.Report
It seems like the human right you’re demanding is freedom from criticism. I don’t think anyone has that, including when the criticism is unfair or hypocritical.Report
What I want is some consistency on the issue for my people. There are too many people that try to have it both ways with Jews. On the other blog, there was somebody who tweeted (but deleted fast) that the Simchat Torah massacre that the Israelis deserved it and this was just like the Nat Turner rebellion but also asked how could Jews commit genocide after the Holocaust. This person is also a big fan of the Algerian independence movement even though it kicked out Algerian Jews.
There is a lot of this. People demanding that Jews support their global cause because of our history of persecution but also saying we aren’t a real true minority and don’t have real true communal needs as a people. They were out and about celebrating the death of 1,200 Jews and the captivity and torture of hundreds more but they wail and wail for Jews to have humanity because of our history. Fishing hypocrites.
We have built villages, towns, cities, schools and other cultural institutions for our culture. Rather than seeing it as an oppressed minority liberating ourselves, they scream wypipo doing wypipo things. But they say we need to give support to their vision because of our history and be happy second class citizens in a country where we are never in the majority but never a real true minority. Damn them.Report
To be clear here, you’re talking about arguing on the internet with the identarian left? Good Lord(Lady?) man, why on earth are you wasting your time with them. It’s not like there’s some Grand Mufti of intersectionality that you can get to issue some consistent rule for the identarian fringe to adhere to. It’s just all individuals or tiny groups arguing over abstract nonsense and it shifts and changes every day as fashions and issues rise and fall in salience. You might as well be trying to herd seagulls on the beach.Report
These identarian fringe people tend to teach at many universities. Most of their students are going to ignore their stuff but you just need the right number in the right places and life becomes uncomfortable for the Jews.Report
I think you may be overestimating the reach of the University professor set.Report
I might be. This could be all very abstract to you but people arguing that every Jew who migrated to Israel/Palestine before or after 1948 was a vile settler-colonialist are basically arguing that it would be a better and more moral world if hundreds of thousands or millions more Jews died to me. That is indefensible. It is an utterly immoral proposition. I can not abide anybody who believes that, especially if they are too cowardly to come out and say it. They are disgusting people.Report
I think as long as you expect some kind of principle from those that subscribe to a worldview in which the only principle is that they have no principles you will continue to be frustrated. Now, on the subject of Israel generally I (no surprise) align pretty closely with where North is. But I do get that it sucks to feel like you are the only person upon whom free hits are permitted.
I know people made fun of it when I suggested if you feel threatened you should get a gun and learn how to use it. But in a similar vein, have you considered getting involved in a Reform synagogue? You may find it comforting to make some friends among what I imagine are more likely to be similarly minded people, and that hopefully aren’t so committed (albeit in a shallow, cosmetic way) to the most neurotic strain of progressive activist politics. You’d probably also end up around smarter people generally, and maybe feel less like no one has your back.Report
@inMD, I tend to be a lot harder on the Palestinians or really just Muslims in general than the average member of a Reform congregation on the West Coast. Most of them are what I would call Secret Disney Liberals and believe in multiculturaling harder. I see no value in performing the rituals of the ecumenical multicultural cargo cult because they will just go about going to the bathroom on us behind our back or at least be quiet when among their fellow Muslims being anti-Semitic in order not to get killed. This won’t solve anything at all.Report
Hey fair enough and you would certainly know better than me. I only specified Reform because that’s what the Jewish people I’m friends with are and while liberal none seem to have abandoned radio contact with practical reality. I’m probably going to get myself in trouble by suggesting this but maybe try a more conservative congregation?
To lay my own cards on the table, I much to my chagrin have found myself morphing into a practicing Catholic again. My politics haven’t changed, and I’m no better at the rules I’m bad at than I’ve ever been. But the result, especially since putting my kids into Catholic school has been immersion in meat space with decent, well grounded people. I’ve always been lucky in friends generally and not many people in my personal life have gone down the various crazy political rabbit holes we’ve seen emerge over the last few years, but nothing has been more reassuring that I’m not the one losing it than getting a little more of a structured community in my life.
Anyway I’m bringing it up because you’re clearly feeling hurt and betrayed but it doesn’t do anyone any good to fall into a doom spiral. The best solution is to go find a little solidarity.Report
We’re not talking pure principles, Lee, we’re talking geopolitics. Or, if you are just talking pure principles and your beef is with the pointy headed identarian set you argue with online then why are you wasting your time? They control nothing, decide nothing and accomplish nothing but generating heat on social media.
But if you’re talking about geopolitics, the idea of barging into the MENA states in any way to try and compel human rights died in agony in Bush the lessers idiotic wars in a wave of wasted blood and squandered treasure.Report
India is a huge democratic country that is aspiring to be in the liberal developed country club.
Modi and his bunch seem to be winning overwhelming victories on the premise of becoming a Hindu nationalist country.Report
Indeed he is and he’s doing worryingly well at it.Report
This also seems to allow some groups to indulge in themselves and other groups to be in constant sacrifice mode. The system of liberal standards for some countries but illiberal for others only works if the liberal countries are far away from the illiberal ones.Report
What you’re tip-toeing around is that it only works if certain liberal states accept they need to have defined borders and that the people in the lands inside those borders must be treated as citizens. And no, you don’t get to try to arrange to have the land without the people and also call yourself a liberal state.Report
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/05/politics/florida-anti-woke-act-blocked-businesses/index.htmlReport
Won’t anyone think of the white people?Report
It’s quite strange….
“Why ARE so many young people having heart attacks? They had seemingly healthy lifestyles… but all these people suffered heart problems”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-13154677/young-people-having-heart-attacks-lead-seemingly-healthy-lifestyles-suffered-heart-problems.htmlReport
Hardly. The story answers the question:
I know you want this to be about COVID vaccines, but even the notoriously unreliable Daily Mail couldn’t find a way to work that in.Report
Also, you what else causes heart problems? COVID.Report
This is anecdotal, but I think relevant. I never got sick…never. When I did it was never the flue or a cold, it was major. Then I got covid and was six for 6 weeks, before Covid was “officially” here. After covid, I never got sick….until I got the vaxes because it was a mandatory employee thing. I’ve been sick post having covid more times than in the prior decade. The only real factor that changed in my life was covid and the vax.Report
Sorry, pal, you failed the intelligence test. Spike proteins are not good for you, and 50% of the injected keep producing them for life (thus inducing a perpetual immune system response). The other 50% presumably manage to destroy the cells making spike proteins (which, in athletes, seems to mean “destroy heart muscle” which is never replaced).Report
Representative Mike Collins embraces an anti-Semitic twitter thread witch willfully misinterpreted a satirical piece that pushed back on the so-called shoplifting crisis: https://www.ajc.com/politics/politics-blog/mike-collins-draws-rebukes-after-agreeing-with-antisemitic-social-media-account/ULK4IT7XYFGTLG7OXDNQLPU4TY/Report
The account is called “Garbage Human”, and the tweet was “In case you were wondering, yes she is.”. Collins is saying he thought that the tweet was calling the reporter a garbage human.
I hate terms like that because they’re dehumanizing. But I wouldn’t have thought the “yes she is” was to whether she’s Jewish.Report
That was my take, as well.Report
I did check out the account though, and man, every single post was racist.Report
Game knows game.Report
Sinema drops out of 2024 Arizona Senate Race. This is good news for Democrats.Report
Such fishing fantastic news! Wonder where she’s cashing out to? To be a lobbyist you normally need to be able to get former colleagues to answer your calls.Report
No matter. Hopefully its a solid pick up for Team D.Report
I’d consider it more of a retention, but yes.Report
THIS.
GUY.
NEEDS.
TO.
GO.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/05/politics/bob-menendez-new-charges/index.htmlReport
Refresh my memory, is anyone still defending this SOB on the Dem side?Report
Not to my knowledge.Report
No, but they aren’t telling him to go or planning to throw him out as George Santos was. As I keep harping, if Dems don’t want to be BDSI’d they, in fact, have to not do “it.”Report
Correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t Menendez a Senator not a Congresscritter? Aren’t they a lot harder to expel?
*edit* Yup, just checked. It takes a fishin 2/3rds majority of the Senate to expel a Senator. They can’t get the Republicans they’d need to expel him.Report
And yet national Democrats aren’t even trying. There’s no call to resign from the DNC, or other Senators, or the White House. Sure, he stepped down from his Foreign Affairs chair, but has Chuck Schumer stripped him of anything else?
Democrats are own-goaling this one daily. They get noe sympathy form me for that.Report
Not to put too fine a point on it Philip but what is the margin of control in the Senate right now? If, instead of resigning, Menendez put Cocaine Mitch in charge for the remainder of this year would you consider that an own goal?Report
Yes. And equally egregious.
Like it or not, perception matters. and ANYTHING that the GOP can use to BSDI right now is an own goal. Especially one this flagrant.Report
So, then, what I see is Schumer dealing with a miserable situation. The Dem conference has to pressure Menendez to resign and signal disapproval of him but they can’t go full blast on him because if they do and he switches his vote he could throw control of the Senate to the GOP for the rest of the year at a minimum. I can respect you wanting maximal purity on our side- I do, but how many judges and other Senate business items are worth sacrificing for that absolute purity?Report
Menendez is not going to consider abandoning his party over this. That’s not how Jersey politics works.Report
If Menendez becomes both absolutely convinced he’s got no hope and gets hammered so hard he gets spiteful and the GOP or various right wing actors make an offer he very much could flip out of sheer spite.Report
OK this made me literally guffaw out loud:
RFK Jr. fuels talk of Libertarian party switch: ‘He’s a rogue punk rocker’
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4509804-rfk-jr-robert-f-kennedy-jr-libertarian/
Not just a punk rocker. A rogue punk rocker. Even the ghost of Johnny “God Bless George Bush” Ramone is sneering.Report
I remember taking the bar exam in the same room as RFK Jr. I passed. I don’t remember whether he did.Report
Prop G won.
Algebra is no longer illegal to possess in San Francisco.Report
Holy cow, that might not be the most interesting thing on the ballot. The San Francisco Chronicle states Voters make it clear: San Francisco can no longer be called a progressive city.
The story goes on to explain that the problem is billionaires.Report
Capability to self correct is a beautiful thing.Report
I spilled a lot of pixels complaining about San Francisco being downright absurd over the last year or so.
They voted in some good stuff yesterday. That deserves some pixels as well.Report
It would be interesting to see if there are any patterns to where this kind of self correction is possible versus where it isn’t. I would bet an upwardly mobile (legal) immigrant population in a jurisdiction that otherwise has a lot going for it economically is key. Maybe better phrased as a critical mass of Tiger Moms will not put up with obvious idiocy even when pushed by a handful of tech gazillionaires and their effete executives.Report
I think a lot of it has to do with insulation.
If you institute a policy that says “you shouldn’t arrest people for quality-of-life crimes!” and the criminals all live in Oakland… well, who cares? They’re not making my life any worse and I get to talk to my friends at Parco about “compassion” over a vegetarian-except-for-the-prosciuttini charcuterie board.
I don’t know why anyone in San Francisco has a car, anyway. Bart is all you need.
But when three of the people in your polycule have had to have their rear windshields replaced three times over the last six months (“I left the windows rolled down! I left the ‘there’s nothing here’ note in the passenger seat!”), they’re less likely to want to hear that particular speech. Again.
It’s time for the “I believe in compassion but we should also be compassionate for the people who also have to live here!” speech at The Blue Whale over crab meat.Report
No real dispute from me. But I still think it’s critical that you have a strong voting base that expects a high quality of life, or at least expects not to have to dodge obvious disorder and overwhelming silliness in tax payer funded schools.Report
Clara Jeffrey brings some clarity:
“Blocking housing because your rich North Beach constituents don’t want to have any remote possibility of an obstructed view of the Bay is not progressive.”
To be perfectly honest, I think that it’d be really easy to reframe a *LOT* of stuff that way.
“Defunding law enforcement is not progressive.”
“Shoplifting is not progressive.”
“Tearing down statues is not progressive.”
You just, you know, have to think about it instead of just looking at the aesthetics of it.Report
“A retired US Army colonel has slammed proposals for a new law that would allow vetted and qualified migrants an expedited path to citizenship by serving in the military. ”
Oh sure, what could go wrong hiring “foreign mercenaries”. That never worked out poorly before.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13159173/Retired-Army-colonel-warns-against-courage-serve-act-allow-migrants-obtain-citizenship-joining-military-amid-shortage-white-Americans-enlisting.htmlReport
The esteemed colonel is a nutter spouting MAGA talking points on Twitter.Report
Quite possible. Now, you want to comment on the actual policy?Report
We already allow Green Card holders to join up. If this gets legs it seems to me we would simply be making the getting of a green card easier?
That aside, when you have an all volunteer military, you have to have … volunteers. Strikes me that one really good way to enhance the assimilation f migrants into the US is to give them a hand in defending the place.Report
Sure. Did the nutter somehow miss the phrase vetted and qualified?
Edited to add: Perhaps the military not being able to meet recruiting goals is a blessing in disguise. Less manpower means (hopefully) less adventurism.Report
The US could get away with it in our current situation. Empires can’t do it but we’re not an empire.Report
I mean, the Roman Empire lasted for some 300 years after they started doing it (and that’s just he Western Empire), so empires can probably get away with it too.
The key is that by offering non-citizen veterans citizenships you’re making sure they aren’t just foreign mercenaries. Mercenaries have no connection to the community they are fighting for, but if they’re going to get citizenship then they do have a stake, they come to see it as fighting for their country.Report
Where it gets really dicey is when you’re occupying foreign countries and using foreign mercs to do it. At some point the mercs realize they don’t need you and you don’t have the ability to defend yourself.
The US, with it’s aggressively assimilistic culture, can absorb foreigners and make them and their children into Americans.
That’s a sustainable system. The whole “armed service leading to green cards” is just another form of brain drain which I like a lot.Report
In all our discussions about homelessness and disorder, the fact that voters have historically been reluctant to fund solutions has always stood out.
So it is a hopeflu sign that maybe they are finally willing to put their money where their mouths are:
Newsom’s Prop 1 holds narrow lead in California primary
Proposition 1, a statewide bond measure that Gov. Gavin Newsom championed as critical to solving the state’s mental health and homelessness crisis, held a narrow lead Tuesday evening in California’s primary election, but the contest was too close to call with votes still being counted across the state.
The measure redirects an existing tax on the rich under the state’s 20-year-old Mental Health Services Act to fund services for people with substance abuse disorders and includes a $6.4-billion bond to build more than 10,000 treatment beds.
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2024-03-05/prop-1-2024-california-election-results
Still early, and just a 1 point lead, but a good sign nonetheless.Report
In the same vein as San Francisco changing course: Brown University Will Reinstate Standardized Tests for Admission
Wes Yang speculated: Genuinely curious whether this was always a head fake they were forced into during the Floyd mayhem fully intending to end it when the freakout subsided, or if they instantaneously saw disturbing results that posed an existential threat to their credibilityReport
I would guess “instantaneously saw disturbing results that posed an existential threat to their credibility”.
Those test scores tell who is ready for college. Without them you’re admitting people who aren’t ready. You’re also giving them lots of loans.
Brown becoming a massive failure factory for minorities isn’t the result they wanted; Neither is Brown becoming a community college.Report
Those test scores – like most standardized test scores – tell you who is good at taking those sort of tests. There is some correlation to actual ability to complete college successfully (in terms of achieving the degree sought). But it’s not the only, or even the best indicator of future success.Report
Math tests tell you who is good at taking math tests.
Literacy tests tell you who is good at taking literacy tests.
Would that the world were not this way.Report
I’m not sure this is true. Standardized tests like the SAT are imperfect but they aren’t nearly as easily gamed as any alternative method I’ve heard proposed.Report
It may be the least bad option but the test prep industry is a real leviathan.
I’d be curious about a model wherein each college came up with it’s own unique test — one that was specific to their goals and expectations. It’d be a bear on students/applicants but would also focus more intentional thought and consideration about where they were applying. Reducing the application crunch would probably be a net positive. Though I’m sure there are plenty of holes in this plan… I just thought of it now.Report
I’ve never understood those test prep companies. You’re literally given the answers on those tests.Report
Test Prep companies give parents a sense of the ability to influence the outcome.
And, honestly, there probably is a handful of kids out there who will benefit from learning how to think about the test.
Sure, maybe most kids will either be a deer in the headlights no matter how much prep you’d give them or they’d say something like “they’ve been testing us non-stop… this is just like that” like at the end of Ender’s Game.
But a handful of kids would appreciate being walked around the obstacle course a couple of times before the big day. Sure, the real thing isn’t going to be identical…
But they’re going to ask you to know a bunch of big words so you may as well learn “loquacious”, “protean”, and “impecunious” even if they only ask you about one of them. Hell, here’s a list of 300 words. Learn all of them. Some of them you may even use someday.
And the kids who know 280 of those 300 words will tend to do better on that part of the test than the kids who know 180 of them.
The test prep companies can, at least, give you fancy printouts of those 300 words.Report
My understanding is that the test companies don’t produce consistent, scalable, material improvement (material being defined as broad outcome changing).
Anecdotally I took SAT prep and my math score went from bordering on the meh to sufficiently ok that when combined with an out of the park verbal gave me a solid enough score for the flagship. This class was an elective anyone could take at my public high school. My LSAT prep experience was similar. I probably improved by 6 or 7 points from the first practice test I took to the actual.* There was a bit of a cult IIRC around test prep with people claiming really big improvements, like 15-20 points. Maybe some people achieved that but I am skeptical that it was anything close to the norm.
*I did this at a time I was partying very heavily and going to metal and hardcore shows constantly which I am sure costs some points and some brain cells. It was worth it and I regret nothing.Report
I doubt we’re ever going to see anything that would do more than move people from “bordering on the meh” to “sufficiently okay”. We’re not going to get “sufficiently okay” to “holy cow, that’s good” with test prep.
But you don’t have to outrun the bear…Report
When I have read FdB’s posts on this subject he talks about ‘bands of achievement’ that individuals operate within. My guess is that with the exception of a tiny number of outliers the prep can help a person improve within whatever his or her band is but they aren’t going to change the band or enable the person to suddenly achieve something totally outside of the band.Report
In my junior year of high school we had a weekly vocab quiz which included words like that. That’s how I knew what supercilious meant when I had that on a performance review written by a lawyer who spent his days writing collections letters. He was probably right.Report
Be careful about getting too big for your britches with the guy who changes the date on the letterhead.Report
LOL
That was easily the job with the worst boss I’ve ever had and it wasn’t that guy.Report
Test Prep is expensive. Much easier to just have your kid take the test 2-6 times.Report
What does test prep consist of these days? Many years ago I was a kid in a state that did annual standardized tests. My fifth grade teacher spent some class time on the basics of taking a multiple-choice test like that.
I’ve said before that the last time I took the GREs the tests were given on a computer that took away most of those strategies. You couldn’t go to the next question until you’d answered the current one, and you couldn’t go back to previous questions.Report
My kid took the SAT on a computer yesterday.
She says you can go back and answer questions within the same section so it’s exactly like it used to be.
RE: Test Prep & what it does
Serious professional test prep is thousands of dollars.
For about $50 you can buy a self study book which covers the same stuff.
And all the noise about how test prep is an unfair advantage is mostly smoke. It helps at the margins but that’s where we have kids-who-are-ready-for-college competing against other kids who are also ready.
If you have a kid who isn’t ready for college then giving him a little (or even a lot) of prep isn’t going to make him ready.Report
I have been informed elsewhere that the GRE exams on the computers are adaptive, in the sense that if you are getting everything right, subsequent questions are drawn from a more difficult pool. The final score is based on both the number of correct answers and the degree of difficulty.
If that’s right, then having to answer and not being able to back up are reasonable.Report
The fact that it’s (or was anyway) a near universal test has upsides and downsides. I would hope that universities are looking at it along with the supplementals (GPA, resume, essays, etc.) and weighing it appropriately based on what their institution expects of its students.
Which isn’t to say I think all criticism of it is totally off base. I would just say that I think we have gotten so overly focused on the test as a hurdle for students that we have forgotten about the role it plays as a means of protecting them, especially in an era of ever rising educational costs.
Just to give you an example that’s not totally apples to apples, LSAT score has a very strong correlation with bar passage rate. I scored within the average LSAT range of people that went to my law school, and that average range correlates with somewhere between an 80% and 90% bar passage rate depending on where you look and how you crunch it. No matter how good or interesting my resume or background might be (and to be clear, it isn’t particularly) I am not sure that my law school would have been doing me a favor by accepting me if I’d had a lower score than I did. Arguably it could be quite the opposite and even predatory.Report
The sheer geographic size of the United States would make that difficult to administrate.Report
Good point!
I suppose you could still have the tests completed locally at testing centers that log you into whatever school’s test you’re there to take.Report
But it’s not the only, or even the best indicator of future success.
Brown wants to admit high functioning minorities in the same percentage of the population. Any “indicator of future success” is going to tell them that’s hard because “percentage of population” is not the same as “percentage of applicate pool”.
Their solution was to not use any indicator that tells them this. They’ll use special indicators that tell them what they want to hear.
If the Tests don’t mean anything and don’t predict anything, then shooting the messenger isn’t a problem.
My expectation is they found the opposite.Report
From WaPo:
“Brown’s test requirement will take effect for prospective students who are applying throughout next fall and winter, and would matriculate at the university in fall 2025.
Like many schools, Brown stopped requiring the SAT and ACT — for decades, a mandatory rite of passage for college-bound students — when the coronavirus pandemic shut down testing centers. The shift to test-optional soon inspired a surge in applicants at schools that made the switch nationwide.
The SAT and ACT have drawn criticism for years from detractors who argue they can act as a barrier for students from under-resourced backgrounds, given that children in wealthier or more stable homes can afford things like test preparation programs that might give them an edge. Many schools saw the pandemic-forced change as an opportunity to evaluate the real value of standardized testing, and whether it might be disadvantaging historically underrepresented students in particular.
Many colleges chose to continue their test-optional policies even after the public health crisis lessened, gathering data on how the policy was working out. Now, institutions across the United States are trying to figure out what comes next.
Some are decisively sticking with test-optionality, including Columbia and the University of Michigan. The University of California system has been wholly test-free since 2020 and appears committed to that policy.
But in other places, college leaders say that tests are too important of a predictor to forgo.”
Is there any evidence that the shift away from the tests was connected to George Floyd?
From a separate article:
“Even before the pandemic, test-optional policies were gaining traction. According to FairTest, a group that is critical of college admissions tests, 1,050 colleges had implemented a test-optional policy by September 2019. Forty-seven of those had made the decision in the prior 12 months.”
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-09-25-1-600-colleges-are-now-test-optional-how-many-will-go-back
All the available data points towards questioning of the usefulness of standardized tests beginning prior to the pandemic and then many schools’ hands being forced by the pandemic. With the pandemic behind us and a large amount of data on the impact of the test-optional policies, schools are now deciding whether to continue that policy or reverse course.
For the record, per an editorial from Brown’s President, they always considered the test-optional policy “temporary.”Report
Is there any evidence that the shift away from the tests was connected to George Floyd?
The guy himself? No, of course not.
The various, erm, “social movements” that grew in the wake of his death? Well, is there any evidence that there is a straight line between George Floyd’s death and any policy changes regarding historically underrepresented peoples anywhere?
With the pandemic behind us and a large amount of data on the impact of the test-optional policies, schools are now deciding whether to continue that policy or reverse course.
If we agree that it’s silly to think that maybe BLM had something to do with getting rid of tests, I think it’s not crazy to hypothesize that the impact of the test-optional policies was large enough to get them to reverse course *THIS* quickly.Report
“I think it’s not crazy to hypothesize that the impact of the test-optional policies was large enough to get them to reverse course *THIS* quickly.”
Um… isn’t that exactly what I offered? Schools are evaluating the data of the test-optional policies and, as a result of what they’re seeing, some are deciding to return to tests?
Again, my theory:
1.) Schools begin considering the effectiveness of SATs prior to 2020, with several hundred (I think I saw 1600 but have since closed the tab) going test-optional prior to that year.
2.) The pandemic basically forced ALL schools to go test-optional since testing sites were closed.
3.) As testing sites re-opened with restrictions, some schools returned to requiring tests while others remained test optional.
4.) Schools are continuing to evaluate the effectiveness of tests and making decisions accordingly. Different schools are deciding differently, as makes sense.
Do you disagree with any of that?Report
Oh no, absolutely not.
I kinda think that the “instantaneously saw disturbing results that posed an existential threat to their credibility” theory is the correct one.
They had a hypothesis, they ran an experiment, the experiment was pretty much immediately falsified, they went back to the old way.
The old way, while imperfect, is a hell of a lot more indicative of success than “vibes”.Report
“They had a hypothesis, they ran an experiment…”
Only, no. The pandemic hit and forced them to adjust course. They decided to stick with that course to see what happened. Having done that, they are planning to reverse course.Report
The idea that racism is behind every police murder, and the idea that racism is behind behind the tests having unequal outcomes, come from the idea that racism is the root of all inequalities.
Other than that they’re not connected to each other.
It’s like how Autism and Vaccines are not related to each. However, both are connected to Time.
The human brain is a pattern matching device and there are patterns all over the place.Report
Haley’s out.Report
To no one’s surprise but her own I suspect.Report
In every other country that relies on standardized tests to determine what college you go to, it is the national government that creates the entrance exam. Only in the United States do we out source it to for profit companies?Report
A billion years ago, I was acquainted with a guy who was a middle school math teacher in Philly. He told us about some of the guidelines he had for his word problems.
Some of his kids were rural. So it wasn’t fair to make word problems about “how many city blocks” or something like that.
Some of his kids were urban. So it wasn’t fair to make word problems about “how many eggs from how many chickens” or something like that.
His go-to was “marbles in a sock”.
When I was in high school, we used “marbles in a Grecian urn”.
I digress. Imagine making tests that would be similarly sensitive for someone from Vermont versus someone from Georgia versus someone from Oklahoma versus someone from Warshington.
Hell, you can even pull a 10th Amendment thing and say “this is up to the states”.
And, of course, the states will all say “my brother-in-law runs a test-writing company. We should outsource test-writing to him! I mean, we should contract this out to Tests-R-Us. They’re experts.”Report
‘
How many city blocks doesn’t even work for city people. City blocks out in Western car oriented cities are lot longer than they are in Eastern transit oriented cities. There are certain geographical challenges in making a test that works for everybody in the United States. This is true no matter who is writing the test. This is in fact an argument against standardized testing in the United States at least.Report
At the math test meeting:
“It takes Johnny 10 minutes to ride his bike around the block. How many minutes will it take him to ride around the block three times?”
“What if the child reading this problem comes from a family that cannot afford bicycles?”
“I DOUBT THAT WE’LL BE HARMING THE CHILDREN BY INCLUDING THIS PROBLEM IN THE TEST, GLADYS!!!”
“George! You’re out of line. Rewrite it.”Report
Whatever keeps us from considering the possibility that the real issue with students that struggle with this kind of thing is that they can’t read to begin with, not that they don’t know what a block is or are experiencing never having heard of a bicycle.Report
“Okay, well, what if he walks around the block?”
“Awful privileged of you to assume that the kid can just go walk around whenever he wants without having some racist property-owner call the cops to come and shoot him…”Report
“An old man takes 45 hours to walk one city block. How many hours…”
The question is which part(s) of the brain are we testing. For a math test, we should be finding out if the student can do pure math, and if the student can find the math question within a scenario, even an unfamiliar one. In order to test those things in a given proportion we need questions that are comparably unfamiliar to all students. We don’t want to test the kids’ ability to handle cultural stress. So, “what length ascot is appropriate for a 5’2″ man?” is out. But it’s not an impossible task.
I think the value of standardized testing far outweighs the challenges of it. The college or employer in Denver needs to have a decent measure of the applicant’s ability, without knowing the quality of a particular school system in Scranton.Report
Other than the likely financial benefits of a monopoly, what’s the problem with0 having a private company produce the exam?Report
That aside I’ve never been convinced the cultural gulfs were so profound that (euphemistically speaking) city kids don’t know that chickens lay eggs or that country kids don’t understand the concept of city blocks. Most Americans live in suburbs where they aren’t encountering either of these things yet no one comes up with weird theories like this when some of the children in them don’t do well on a standardized test.Report
I used to think that people couldn’t be so stupid as not to know that chickens laid eggs than I had to encounter a wide breadth of humanity.Report
People are definitely dumb but I see the analysis as grasping at straws to find a less ugly explanation than the one everyone knows is true. That being intelligence is variable and exacerbating that is the fact that there are a lot of parents out there who for whatever combination of reasons and circumstances don’t value education, don’t read to their children, don’t hold them accountable for academics, etc. and the test results just reflect that.Report
I feel like you really need to read about the gaokao before you start making this kind of criticism.Report
I give California voters a hard time, and with good reason, but credit where credit is due. They finally put Katie Porter in her rightful place: Far behind a retired baseball player, just ahead of some loon who thinks the minimum wage should be $50, and raving about the race being rigged by (((billionaires))).
May Orange County voters make better choices in the future.Report
Nice to know you think Adam Schiff would make a better Senator.Report
I don’t expect him to be good in any objective sense, but a member of the New Democrat Coalition is probably as good as can reasonably be expected from California voters.
“Better than Katie Porter” is a very, very low bar.Report
Sweden has officially joined NATO.Report
Their fish will help the NAVY greatly by sending diabetes bombs to RussiaReport
Heh I suppose that is their secret weapon. That along with chairs made from fiberboard ready to collapse at the slightest pressure.Report
Democrats possibly have no business winning the governor’s race in North Carolina this year, not because they picked a bad candidate but because it is still a reddish state and a Presidential election year. They might win anyway because the Republican candidate for governor is an utter loon: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/north-carolina-gop-mark-robinson-women-vote_n_65e7d899e4b0f9d26cacc002?hloReport
U.S. to build a pier to allow aide to reach Gaza by Sea: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/03/07/world/israel-hamas-war-gaza-newsReport
The Climate Crisis knows no boundaries:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/climate/louisiana-crawfish-disaster-us-climate/index.htmlReport
Gotta love bipartisan censorship:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/tech/congress-bill-bans-tiktok-america/index.htmlReport
Over on Substack, Mary Trump points out something interesting about Nikki Haley’s voters that isn’t getting media traction:
https://marytrump.substack.com/i/142354265/exit-data-were-horrible-for-donaldReport
Interesting. Obviously many people voting against Haley in the Republican primary are not going to be fans of Trump, but the fact that 50% express approval of Biden’s grossly irresponsible governance suggests that there are a lot of Democrats crossing over to vote in the Republican primary, secure in the knowledge that the Democratic primary is a lock for Biden.
I appreciate their pitching in to help out, but unfortunately it won’t be enough.Report
Or since Biden is the most economically conservative Democrat in two generations maybe they recognize a fellow traveler?Report
Matisyahu’s show at House of Blues has been cancelled due to fear of protests.
Report
There are times you come across a piece of propaganda that is so incredibly dishonest, you really don’t know how to respond to it. This morning I saw a Facebook propaganda post by a group calling itself “Truth Matters” that showed a thriving”Palestinian” beach city from 1944. Now anybody with a decent knowledge of Zionist/Israeli history would recognize the photo as an aerial shot of pre-state Tel Aviv, which has the pride of place in the Zionist/Israel narrative as being the first Hebrew/Jewish city to be built since antiquity. I guess it is a Palestinian city in a very technical sense but c’mon man.
This is a persistent theme in pro-Palestinian propaganda. They take the nation-building activities of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community of Israel/Palestine, and present it off as Palestinian. A few years ago there was a similar incident from a few years ago where the all Jewish football/soccer time of the Yishuv/Mandate Palestine as a “Palestinain” football team. The nation building activities of the Zionist movement are used to create a false impression of a thriving “Arab Palestine” that was suddenly destroyed by a mass influx of Jews that appeared out of nowhere.Report