157 thoughts on “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”

      1. I’m sure RFK Jr. is like “hold my beer” also to my knowledge we can’t lay any disease riddled child’s corpses at Hegseths’ feet whereas we very much can with RFK Jr…Report

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        1. As bad as the disease riddled children are I see it as an overall slower moving, easier to correct catastrophe than a strategic compromise of national security that might not be repairable. I also have to think that once parents start getting a taste of what letting these diseases back into the population looks like they will start to correct. Right? Right?? Ugh.

          But look its terrible company to be in and if someone wants to give RFK Jr. the edge far be it from me to argue about it.Report

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          1. It is kind of devils dancing on the head of a pin stuff.
            As for parents self correcting? I’m not a parent myself but I have a suspicion that if your idiocy gets your kid killed you really really have a motivation to defend that idiocy as not idiotic otherwise who’s to blame for your dead kid?

            We must shout and scream and raise a fuss;
            Before somebody thinks of blaming usssssss!Report

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          2. JFK Jr. is also going to start trying to control medications and bodily autonomy of autistic people, literally talking about imprisoning them, and is threatening to cut off ADHD medication. Very eugenic-y things.

            Also same about trans healthcare, but somehow that’s completely unrelated and fine to a bunch of people here. It’s surely not the exact same tendency.Report

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        2. This is probably shrill and considered gauche by the very serious people but I expect at some point RFK Jr is going to actually substantially mess with the childhood vaccine schedule as well as do other things that impede public health especially with regard to MRNA vaccines. He has already pulled us from working on the 2025 flu vaccines which will make them less effective worldwide.

          I have a thought game about what is going to be the breaking straw for blue state politicians to get them to actually start wondering if ignoring the Supremacy Clause is their best option. RFK Jr messing with the Childhood Vaccine Schedule might get them to set up the Blue State compact FDAReport

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    2. Not surprising. Trump has no loyalty to any of his minions and Hegseth has been doing nothing but embarrassing Trump. Also, on a personal level, Trump reputedly doesn’t like alchoholics at all; while he probably would overlook a characteristic like that to “own the libs and the media” once that choice starts embarrassing him the alcoholic trait would move up to the front of Trumps brain making it even easier for him to rationalize throwing Hegseth under the bus.

      But the real challenge for Trump will be how to find someone worse to replace Hegseth.Report

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        1. Not the same thing. If he’s doing this routinely he’s using the app so his communications aren’t captured and preserved. And for way more than this. It’s meant to prevent him or anyone else being held accountable by Congress and the courts.Report

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        1. ..the guy stole bodies _from_ Harvard, sold them to others, and was fired for doing so when Harvard learned of it.

          What a weird thing to think harms Harvard’s moral authority.Report

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          1. I could argue it does slightly reflect badly on their _competence_, indeed, they admitted they had poor controls over some of that and no real oversight. And created a policy afterward.

            But being incompetent in oversight of a specific thing to stop people from stealing from you isn’t the same as ‘lacks moral authority’. It’s not even Harvard ‘being bad at their job’…they aren’t a body bank, pretending such things existed. They’re a school, their job is education, and schools are often pretty bad at security, and often do end up having wake-up calls when people steal from them.

            This case is just somewhat icky because of what was stolen, but that doesn’t reflect on Harvard’s moral authority unless you think it’s immoral for Harvard to have bodies at all. (Which would be a distinctly minority view…most people understand why medical school have cadavers.)Report

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            1. “Didn’t your morgue sell bodies?”
              “We fired the guy who did that. Quit changing the subject.”

              There are those who see this as a perfectly cromulent response.
              Others see it as coming up at a particularly bad time.Report

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              3. Well of course it’s best. The real question is how bad it is given that it happened. If there’s a case that’s it’s more than a minor embarrassment and a hit to Harvard’s moral authority v. Donald Trump’s, someone ought to make it.Report

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              4. Oh, you don’t want to argue the point that I made but a different point?

                I agree with the different point you’re raising.

                Donald Trump’s moral authority is worse than Harvard’s. And that’s taking into account all of the egg that Harvard got on its face over the last few years from the various letters that got signed to the various presidents that abdicated to, yes, the stolen bodies.Report

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              5. Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that, while this blog has long been a site for the discussion of the nitty gritty of American politics and contemporary events, it was also the site of a great deal of, I don’t want to say theoretical or philosophical posts and discussions, but let’s say the discussion of ideas, both as they relate to American politics and contemporary events, and more generally. I miss the ideas.

                Now, so much of it seems to be things like this, little gotchas taken from the Right-Wing-o-sphere that serve as a sort of bait for the folks here who are less inclined to hang out in the Right-Wing-o-sphere.

                This is a function, of course, of pretty much all of the discussion here centering around the person who wades most deeply into the Right-Wing-o-sphere, and when I first started hanging around here again, I wanted to blame him, but you know what, I don’t think it’s his fault. The fault lies almost entirely with the people who fall for the bait (and I’ve fallen for it more than once myself).

                I don’t expect OT to ever go back to what it was: communities change, blogs change, and so on, but I think it would be pretty easy to radically change the discussions here just by not responding to bait. Jaybird has done what I think he wants to do by making us all aware of what the Right-Wing-o-sphere is saying and thinking, and I think we can all just say, “Huh,” and move on, knowing that taking the bait is pointless.Report

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              6. Part of the fundamental problem is that there has been an epistemic divorce between the right and the left. They have two separate overton windows.

                Stuff that isn’t bait and stuff that is get conflated with each other and real, serious, issues get ignored because, hey, that’s just bait. That’s not a real issue.

                And, wouldn’t you know it? We were in a bubble.

                As for whether the Right-Wing-o-sphere is talking about it, I can’t say for certain.

                I can just link to The Harvard Crimson’s article. Maybe we can spin it as being a “legacy” paper…Report

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              7. Now, so much of it seems to be things like this, little gotchas taken from the Right-Wing-o-sphere that serve as a sort of bait for the folks here who are less inclined to hang out in the Right-Wing-o-sphere.

                You have a pretty good point there. No one can actually believe ‘Harvard had bodies stolen from it’ is actually relevant, in any manner, to this discussion. It’s inane to discuss, and probably is best to ignore.Report

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              8. What was your point, that it’s a bad look? If so, I didn’t argue it, I agreed with it. Just as you didn’t argue with mine.
                If you had another point, let us know.Report

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            2. Sure, I guess, but it strikes me as an incident that would have people say “gross, odd, too bad Harvard didn’t have procedures in place to bust him right off. Oh well.” But I can’t conceive that this would linger in the mind of anyone persuadable re: Harvard in any material way.Report

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              1. Heh I think this one has more of a ‘News of the Weird’ or morning radio ‘.. and in other news!’ flavor to it, not something that’s going to influence voting.Report

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              2. We’re nowhere near an election, true (though I understand the next one is the most important of our lifetimes).

                As such, it’s just a fight in the PR arena.

                Another place where memes show up from time to time.Report

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      1. Obscure stories no one else is talking about?

        This is weird. Because I found it because people were talking about them.

        Are you in a place where you never encounter such stories? That’s a good way to be surprised by them. Maybe a statement like “well, *I* never heard that!” will be a sufficient counter-argument…

        As for “neither side has moral standing”, you misunderstand. It’s more of a “your moral authority isn’t legible”.Report

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      1. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” seems to be something that nobody really believes in anymore left, right, or center. Either they believe that people who disagree with them on many subjects are not merely wrong but illegitimate, and therefore don’t deserve defense, or they don’t believe that their ideological opponents will have their backs.Report

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          1. I wish many Jews would be capable of haggling or bargaining more. There are times I think that so many Jews are attracted to liberalism or leftism because we can’t take our own side in a fight. Totally unable to make demands for their own people.

            There has always been a certain sort of anti-Zionist Jew who while ostensibly opposed to Zionism because of the Palestinians have their real objection being that they believe the type of decisions necessary for Jews to have a country of their own will poison the Jewish soul. They think that political weakness and an inability for Jews to physically fight back against any anti-Semite allows Jews to maintain moral purity.

            I can’t stand this. These Jews are either deluding themselves into thinking that if Jews did all that was good and right in their books than the only anti-Semitism would come from the white right. Or even worse they might know that anti-Semitism will always come from all directions but believe that the moral superiority that you get from the purity of persecution is better. I’d prefer it if Jews could take their own side in a fight no matter where the opponent was coming from.Report

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            1. they believe the type of decisions necessary for Jews to have a country of their own will poison the Jewish soul.

              I don’t know about “poisoning the Jewish soul” but I will say that the last few months of stuff like showing Israeli soldiers acting like whites during Apartheid and posting it to social media doesn’t reflect well on, at least!, the people posting it thinking that it’ll get updooted.

              More than that, the updooters are not showing themselves as being particularly awesome either.

              If Israel has to exist in the state that it’s currently in, it’s doing so in such a way that has a lot of bad apples.

              Who, surely, aren’t representative of the culture at large. Why, it’d be anti-Semitic to suggest that it’s representative of anything at all.Report

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    2. Hey, look, it’s the ‘Palestinians beheaded babies’ hoax on that very page.

      I again remind people that was exactly one fatality that could qualify as a baby on Oct 7, 11-month old Mila Cohen, and that was shot in her mother’s arms from a distance. Even if you think that was purposeful, I think we can agree that is not ‘beheading’. This is incredibly well documented, this isn’t up for debate, we have literally the list of Israeli casualties and there is one deceased baby on it, period.

      Meanwhile, there are, however, quite a lot of pictures of Palestinian babies that could, indeed, be called ‘beheaded by Israeli strikes’, and pretending there are not such things while pushing a well-debunked false claim is astonishing.

      Are there literally any actual factual standards you will apply to the sites feeding you ‘news’ about anti-semitism?Report

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          1. Even if you think that Zionism is a bad idea, it really shouldn’t be that hard to determine why Jews do not want to be minority citizens in a state that defines itself specifically as Arab and/or Muslim and is part of a block of officially Arab and/or Muslim countries.

            On broader level, there is a big tendency on the Left to give anti-Semitism a harder definition than other forms of bigotry, racism, and prejudice. They do not see Jews as a people with cultural needs like they would see the Native Hawaiians but at the same time they love to invoke our past as a way to get support.Report

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            1. It’s more that ethnostates and the mindsets required to maintain them are incompatible with the current year.

              “But Jewish Ethnostates are different than White ones!”, you may wish to argue and I wish you well in doing so but, lemme tell ya, the number of folks willing to agree with that seems to be getting smaller every year.

              I would say that if Jews want to be treated the way that Native Hawaiians are, doing so is possible, but it involves being treated the way that Native Hawaiians were first.Report

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              3. In the last 3 years, there have been, to my knowledge, five major ethnic cleansings, at least two of which likely qualify as genocides, and one of which definitely so qualifies:

                1) Of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh by the Azerbaijani regime. Ethnic cleansing, not likely to be classified a genocide.
                2) Of ethnic Amharas in the Amhara region by the Ethiopian National Defence Forces, the Oromo Liberation Army, and other armed groups. Almost certainly genocide by international definitions.
                3) Of the entire non-Arab civilian population by Arab militias and both major warring parties (SAF and RSF). Almost certainly genocide by interinatonal definitions, and at this point, I don’t think there are many interanational groups who aren’t calling it such.
                4) Of the Palestinians in the West Bank by Israeli settlers and IDF. Pretty much universally recognized as ethnic cleansing, with aide groups and other NGOs marking the region as at high risk for genocide.
                5) Of the population of Gaza by the IDF. Pretty much universally recognized at this point by aide groups, NGOs, and genocide scholars, as a genocide, though this is vehemently denied by s dwindling number of blind supporters of Israel as an ethnostate.

                With the exception of (5), and to a lesser extent (4), almost all of the information I have about these comes from left media, not because, at least in the cases of (1) through (3), the American liberal and conservative media outlets don’t think genocide or ethnic cleansing is happening in those places, but because they don’t care enough to report on it extensively.

                The left cares about these things, and to the extent that the U.S. is involved, the left is pissed at the U.S. and its institutions (public and private) about it (see, e.g., the anti-imperialist left media reporting and opinions on the Saudis in Yemen, and the U.S.’s role in that conflict).Report

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            2. If the only way you can prevent an ethnic group from being a minority in a region is to ethnically cleanse and systematically murder the people who would comprise the ethnic majority, then what the people doing the ethnic cleansing and murder want seems particularly irrelevant in any decent person’s moral calculus.Report

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              1. We had about a half dozen countries created and/or changed when Brittan pulled out of the Middle East.

                I don’t see why it’s “moral” to insist that none of them be Jewish.Report

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              2. The argument that the Left makes is that Israel is different because they Jewish population consisted of illegitimate settler-colonialists. Never mind that the settler-colonialists would have been killed if they stayed home or would have been stuck under hostile Communist and Arab nationalist governments. They see Israelis as Pied-Noirs and want them gone like what happened to the Pied-Noirs.Report

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              3. Three fourths of the modern Jews aren’t citizens in other countries. So the Jews mostly have no where to go.

                Historically, many of those who do/did have passports are to Arab states that kicked them out and don’t want them back.

                It’s not useful to pretend they all have European passports and can just move back if enough pressure is put on Israel.Report

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              4. Yet, that is what many of the protestors believe. They don’t acknowledge that most Israelis are Mizrahi Jews, because that creates ideological inconvenience for them. If they do, they don’t listen to what Mizrahi Jews say their life was like under Islam. They that Israeli Jews would be able to move to Europe or North America easily.

                I really think that there are a lot of groups in the world angry at Jews for getting in the way of their grand ideological projects. They wanted us to be seen and not heard and allow them to go about creating their idealized nationalist, Islamist, Christian, or whatever community without protest. Instead Jews loudly insisted on our presence and rights.Report

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              5. We had about a half dozen countries created and/or changed when Brittan pulled out of the Middle East.

                And those countries that ethnically cleansed an area to exist were criticized for it and generally stopped, or continued to criticized for it.

                I don’t see why it’s “moral” to insist that none of them be Jewish.

                The problem with an ethnostate isn’t that it exists, the problem with an ethnostate is _what it does to people of other ethnicities who already exist in it_.

                No one cares if countries are ‘ethnostates’ if they only have one ethnicity in them. In fact, no one even bothers to classify them as such. Ethnostates are generally considered as such by how they treat their minority populations.

                And, in Israel’s case, it’s not just the people in actual Israel, it’s the fact it clearly wants _all_ Palestine’s territory, so it’s not only how it treats non-Jewish people within Israel, but how it (currently) treats non-Jewish people within (what it clearly plans to be future) Israel.Report

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              6. And those countries that ethnically cleansed an area to exist were criticized for it

                It is pretty normal for state creation to involve ethnic cleansing. Witness India and Pakistan, also created by Brittan pulling out. The abnormal part is we’re still talking about Israel’s 70+ years later.

                We had two sets of natives in that section of the world. The UN tried to split the difference and give both of them states. The Arabs refused and are still refusing.

                And that’s basically the conflict in a nutshell.

                Put differently, please describe what “peace” would look like and how far each side is away from accepting it.Report

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              7. All well and good and just about every country in the world has a bloody displacement in its past history. The older ones have such a deep history that the bloody displacement may be lost to time but there’s little controversy in recognizing that for most country’s except Iceland that’s the reality.

                What makes it different for Israel is that the Israeli’s are doing it right now. Not near a century ago but right now. Moreover they’re doing it while heavily subsidized and supported by the US especially and by the West in general to a more limited extend. That’s what makes it such a going concern. And it cuts both ways. The arabophillic kook left (mostly powerless but noisy) tries to pretend that Hamas, Gaza and the various Arab Irredentists don’t exist and the philosemitics (also noisy, currently in power and wealthy), like Lee and you, try and pretend that the Likud, the Israeli right in general and the settlers in the West Bank (or really the West Bank in total) don’t exist.

                Amusingly I think Jay hit the nail on the head far up thread. If you want to not be talked about as if you’re the new South Africa then you have to not behave like South Africa did.

                There is a reason that the lefts chorus of Israeli denunciation grows louder, wider and more broadly accepted as the years march on. That reason is Israeli (and to a much more limited degree West Bank Palestinian) behavior. Lee can rage against this, and I respect his emotional reasons to do so, but I also know Lee despises Netanyahu and Likud so I know Lee also knows what I’m saying is accurate. We are, right now, watching Likud working mightily to make the question of Israeli into a partisan issue in the US and we’re watching them have no small success in it. I still think Israel should, indeed must, exist as a Jewish state and any true friends of Israel should view her course in the past decade or two with utter horror (as, indeed, many many Israeli’s do).Report

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              8. RE: Iceland
                Iceland was settled by Vikings and their slaves.

                What makes it different for Israel is that the Israeli’s are doing it right now.

                That’s not what the wars are about, nor is it why the Palestinians refused peace in 2000 or 2008 (etc).

                The Palestinians make it very clear they view every inch of Israel as stolen and want the Jews gone.

                The settlers are a problem but in theory if the Palestinians ever agree to a peace deal we’d have land swaps and whatever to set boarders and clean all of that up.Report

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              9. To be fair to the Palestinians, I think that was true until very recently but recent protests against Hamas in Gaza makes me think that they got into their heads, finally, that this isn’t going to happen. Now we just need to get Netanyahu out of power and dictate borders.

                The people who really want Israel gone and won’t settle for anything less are the allegedly Pro-Palestinian protestors and radicals in the West. I find that they have a more hardline stance on Israel than the government of most Muslim majority countries.Report

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              10. I haven’t been following the protests.

                However we need to be careful not to read too much into them. Hamas is brutal to it’s own people, corrupt, and abusive so of course they’re unpopular.

                But that shouldn’t be read an a desire to make peace with Israel. The protesters could just want the Jews driven into the sea by a group that’s not self serving.Report

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              11. Yes, and before the Vikings and their thralls settled it Iceland was empty. Those original settlers have an unconquered/undisplaced chain of ownership right back to the land being vacant territory which makes Iceland relatively unique among most nations in that it wasn’t founded by conquering or obliterating a pre-existing occupant. The only reason I brought it up is it’s very unique and almost every other nation that currently exists was founded by conquest and/or displacement. Israel is special only in that her conquest and displacement happened in the modern era.

                You are correct that the Palestinians stupidly refused to cut a deal in 2000 and especially in 2008 when Sharon withdrew from Gaza. Israel dined richly on the Palestinians mistakes for almost 20 years but, instead of settling matters they simply kicked the can down the road and the credit Israel got for the Palestinians mistakes isn’t quite drawn down to nothing but it’s damn near done so. The Israeli settlers have made it equally clear, since 2008, that they want every inch of the land from the River to the Sea for themselves. They aren’t quite so crass as to say if they have to kill the Palestinians to do it then they’re fine with that but they are pretty naked in their slow motion ethnic cleansing activities in the West Bank as you’ve had to concede in the past. And at this point, almost twenty years after the Gazan withdrawal, I don’t think anyone can pretend the settlers aren’t a major component of the Israeli side of the problem. There hasn’t been an administration since Sharon that is capable of plausibly agreeing to any such peace deal even if the Palestinians were to offer one. We’re steadily moving past the point where the world views Palestinian refusal as the primary or sole obstacle to resolving the matter. That is why the Israeli’s position that it’s all on the Palestinians keeps steadily losing ground everywhere as the years tick on and why those left wing fringers keep slowly increasing their influence even as the Israeli’s keep increasingly insisting that it’s all on the Palestinians.

                Things that can’t go on forever won’t. If the Israeli’s keep pretending they don’t have agency then eventually history and the world will agree with them and then, as a people without agency, some kind of settlement will end up being imposed on them and they’ll no doubt hate it. Whether that’s by the global community or simply by the cruel grind of shifting national interests and economics I don’t know. But as a friend of Israel I’d be remiss if I didn’t continue warning about it.Report

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              12. almost twenty years after the Gazan withdrawal, I don’t think anyone can pretend the settlers aren’t a major component of the Israeli side of the problem.

                OK, hold up there. Full stop. Why are the settlements a problem?

                The Palestinians are genocidally inflamed by the existence of Israel to the point where it’s rare for the settlements to show up in their news. They don’t make a distinction between the settlements and the rest of Israel.

                That’s a big deal.

                The settlements make peace deals based on the 1967 lines of control impossible, but so what? Israel was able to offer peace in 2000 and 2008 based on land swaps, they still can.

                I would expect if we had to do it today there would also have to be population transfers as well. So various groups from both sides would have to pick up and move after boarders are established, i.e. exactly like what happened in Poland after ww2.

                There hasn’t been an administration since Sharon that is capable of plausibly agreeing to any such peace deal even if the Palestinians were to offer one.

                2008 wasn’t the most recent proposal to be rejected. The Trump peace plan was shot down as “hot garbage” because the Right to Return would only be into a Palestinian state and not Green Line Israel.

                If the Palestinians were to offer an peace plan then we’d see a huge amount of life put back into Israel’s peace wing and huge political pressure to accept it.

                But as long as the Palestinians are openly genocidal and constantly committing terror attacks it’s hard and pointless for a peace wing to offer them the proposals that they’ve made clear they’ll never accept.Report

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              13. Nearly all of the leftists rallying against Zionism and Israel for ethnic cleansing are going back to the 1948 War. It’s why the Pro-Palestinian activists in the West insist on an absolute right of return into green line Israel. That and this would destroy Israel.Report

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              14. Sure. And you can point at them and scream all you want. But they aren’t in power, haven’t been in power and are in your face strictly because they’re on the internet being noisy. But they keep inching slowly closer to power. I wouldn’t say they’re close yet- but they’re closer than they’ve ever been in the past and keep, slowly, inching closer. Maybe the Israeli’s need to change their actions to get different outcomes? No that’s probably crazy. They should just do the same thing they’ve done for the last two decades or so. Surely that’ll produce improvement this time right?Report

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              15. I am doubtful if a creation of an independent Palestine will satisfy the cosplay revolutionaries. They will find another reason to continue. The call for the complete destruction of Israel will never end unless it is made to stop.Report

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              16. Lee, for fish’s sake listen to yourself. Who the fishing fish cares what the fishing cosplay revolutionaries say on the fishing internet? Do you think their gibbering has any significant impact on the ground in Gaza, the West Bank and Israel? No. Not yet. The only reason they’ve been gaining in strength is because Israel and the Palestinians continues to be a live issue and both sides keep doing the dumb stuff they do. The cosplay revolutionaries won’t be of material significance until they take over a party which they haven’t done – yet. But the Israeli’s and the right seem to be doing their best to empower, magnify and provide grist for those left wing critics.

                But let’s be real here. Even if the Israeli’s unilaterally withdrew to established borders and an independant Palestine were established the screechers on the internet would and will continue to screech. They will be with us forever. But if their screeching is all they can do then the Israeli’s will live and indeed flourish.Report

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              17. (In Lee’s defense, “They’re just college students! Why do you care?” has sort of evolved since the first time I heard it in the 90s. Not all of them turn into yuppies driving beemers. Some of them become DAs.)Report

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              18. Unless they become DA’s with authority over Israel then they’re no threat to Israel even if they become DA’s. I agree they present a threat if they grow to the point where they can swing elections and dominate or even strongly influence a party. They’re not there yet. When Lee and you and I were kids they were just moss around our toes. In the aughts they were ankle high. Then Sharon withdrew from Gaza and they got cut back, I’d say by about a quarter and then only started growing again as the sunlight (Various forms of persecution and slow motion ethnic cleansing that, in this internet era, the Israeli’s can’t suppress or deny) from the occupation of the West Bank kept pouring down. Now they’re probably about knee high.

                Lee is running around screaming about the growing plants. I, and many friends of Israel, keep saying “You won’t stop them by flailing at them. You have to cut off their light.” But it’s easier to just curse at the plants then cut off the occupation so here we are.Report

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              19. It’s more that the “why do you care? They’re stupid college students and will grow out of it” has been demonstrated to be false for a non-zero number of the stupid college students.

                Some of them gain power not over Israel, but over more local Zionists.

                “Why do you care? They’re only DAs.” Will become “It’s not like they’re judges.”Report

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              20. Gosh, sounds like it’s even more imperative that the source of their ongoing proliferation, multiplication and radicalization should be addressed before they reach a point where they aren’t confined to mere talk? No? Okay well then continue swatting at the lawn with your stick. It doesn’t look like it’s working but at least it lets ya vent.Report

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              22. I’ve not said they’re only college students, I’ve observed that much of what Lee is fuming about is signaling and posturing on the internet and various gestures and ticks of the DEI left who are, at best, only one seat at the larger Democratic table.Report

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              23. Also the appetite for Gaza style withdrawal from the West Bank let alone a negotiated deal with the Palestinians, which will most likely on the Right of Return because not insisting on that means Palestinian Civil War, is probably really low even among the most left leaning Israelis now.

                I personally would love it if there was a way to get cosplay revolutionaries, radical academics, and other opponents of Zionism to apologize for their unrighteous denial of the justice of Jewish self-determination. But it will not happen. The war against Israel and Jews will never end.Report

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              24. Indeed. The Israeli’s historically have not made as catastrophically bad decisions as the Palestinians have but since Sharon they’ve gotten pretty steadily more irrational. Disengaging from the West Bank has been an unpleasant proposition since the 90’s but every year they’ve put it off has made it even harder and harder and has poisoned the Israeli public more and more. And now that Bibi’s pet Palestinians in Hamas have bit him on the posterior re-occupation of Gaza is even on the table. The best time for the settlements to have been removed would have been before they were established. The next best time would have been thirty years ago, then twenty, then ten. Now it’s a hundred times as hard and a hundred times more necessary. There are five fishing million Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, Lee. They’re not going to flap their arms and collectively fly to the moon.Report

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              25. Besides the growth in the ultra-Orthodox population, I think that the average Israeli is basically just frustrated that no matter what they do, it doesn’t stop the terrorism. They don’t believe that a Palestinian state will improve things at all. Many believe that the West Bank will become a gigantic base against Israel like Gaza became a base against Israel any any attempt to defend themselves will unleash howls.

                The mental minds of the people who hate Israel must be made to change for not fighting to happen. As long as enough people believe that Israel is blight on all of Islam or that it is a settler-colonial state than the war against Israel will continue forever even if there is a Palestinian state.Report

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              26. So basically you’re saying that it’s up to the Palestinians to determine if the status quos should end. Yet you also say the Palestinians want Israel destroyed. The status quos is, realistically, the only plausibly means of destroying the state of Israel; it can’t be done by force of arms, not with the pathetic capabilities of current Arab actors state and non-state alike. So why on God(ess)’s green earth would you think the Palestinians would change if you think they want Israel destroyed? The current course offers the chance that they’ll succeed!

                So, if you think the Palestinians want to destroy Israel why on earth would you leave the agency for resolving the conflict with them? It’s nonsensical. Even if we grant your presumptions about the Palestinians motivations then Israel’s current actions make no sense what so ever. They gain utterly nothing from occupying the West Bank except saddling themselves with disapprobation and long term threat to their state and yet they remain simply because withdrawing would be too difficult.

                Frankly, I don’t think the left wing folks screaming on the internet are the core of your difficulty Lee.Report

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              27. What needs to happen is we-the-World should stop pretending that the openly genocidal Jihadists are reasonable.

                The world should be calling on Hamas to surrender and disarm, not for Israel to go back to waiting for the next mass murder.

                The conflict goes on because we-the-world keep encouraging the Palestinians to continue it. In other situations they’d lose the war, accept that they’ve lost, do a lot of soul searching, and redo their ideological choices that led them into this disaster.

                Instead we keep shielding them from that outcome.Report

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              28. You keep pretending that Gaza is the only theater of that conflict Dark. It isn’t, you can’t imagine it is and your analysis, while accurate in strictly the Gazan context, utterly implodes the moment it’s expanded outside of that to recognize the reality that the majority of the territory/people in question are in conflict in a manner that doesn’t reflect well on the Israelis rather than Gaza where the reality and optics are the inverse of that.Report

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              29. Israel can change the status quo by doing a unilateral withdrawl/border determination on their own. I don’t know whether this would be seen as a true end to the occupation. Lots of people argue that Gaza is under occupation because of the blockage to stop arm importation. I imagine a hard border would get many to say that the Occupation still exists. It will be a moving target.

                Ultimately, the Palestinians and other Muslims are going to have to say they can live with Israel in order for the conflict to end.Report

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              30. Yes Israel could. It’d be difficult to drag their crazies along but they assuredly could do it. They also wouldn’t be likely capable of maintaining a blockade on the West Bank like they did with Gaza. Both of those are good things.

                Would it stop the online nuts or Arabs from critiquing Israel or screeching about refugees or the “nakba”? Hahaha no of course not. But it’d likely stop the masses from paying much attention to the Israeli question and people who actually matter in governments and companies around the world would consider the matter resolved. And they would consider the matter resolved even if, in a worst case scenario, the Israeli’s had to periodically flatten square mile sections of the West Bank because they were being attacked from there. In a worst case scenario Israel would face a threat from asymmetrical hit and run attacks but it’s long term survival both demographically and internationally, would be nearly entirely assured. Whereas in our current state Israel faces threats from asymmetrical hit and run attacks but its long term survival is in doubt because of the poison of the occupation of the territories.Report

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              32. Pre-October 7th Israel would do attacks from time to time into Lebanon and Gaza and the response internationally to the Palestinian/Arab provocateurs when they cried was “you dumb fishers- what did you expect?” when it wasn’t simply ignoring them. Israel is eminently capable of surviving and even thriving with a hostile West Bank next door while, also, finally making the West Bank Palestinians truly bear the costs of egregious attacks on Israel (-IF- they actually go that way. No one can say with any confidence what would happen if the Palestinians get autonomy in the West Bank).

                Israels’ ability to survive long term without the occupation is as near assured as a nation states ability to survive can be. Her ability to survive long term with the occupation is very profoundly in doubt. History has nothing good at all to say about how such projects turn out.Report

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              33. Hamas avoided serious attacks for years to build up forces and get ready. I can’t see the World supporting Israel going into Gaza having a serious war in that context.

                A serious West Bank war would be much worse than Gaza. I get what you’re saying, but there’s a really good chance that the West Bank would become Gaza-on-steroids.

                Further, if they’re going to set boarders, there’s going to be forced land swaps and population exchanges.

                Israel forcing various groups of Palestinians to leave to preserve the larger settlements will be ugly.

                If the argument is “this should be done for world support” then we need to take a good look at what the cram down will look like.Report

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              34. Please. Hamas had so much success in their attack in October because Bibi/Likud thought they were tamed with the subsidies he was directing to them through Quatar and re-directed the IDF away from their Gazan check points to the West Bank to provide support for the settlers antics there and ended up getting caught with his britches down when Hamas attacked. Hamas 100% bears moral responsibility for their atrocities but Likud is the godmother to October 7th and if Bibi had an ounce of moral fiber in him he’d have resigned in disgrace.

                I don’t deny that there’s a chance the West Bank could become like Gaza on steroids but I submit it would only be that way briefly. Israel has had considerable success in cowing its neighbors and making them recognize how the cost/benefits break down when they’re not trying to appropriate and ethnically cleanse them off of the land they’re on. It worked in Lebanon and I don’t see why it wouldn’t eventually work in the West Bank.

                I agree that if the Israeli’s unilaterally withdrew there’d likely be some degree of land swaps, forcible transfers etc. If they had a lick of sense that’d largely be of Jewish settlers into the new Israeli borders and if they intended to appropriate land that has Palestinians on it then they’d have to accept that the Palestinians would come with the land and would have to be made Israeli Arabs. That said if the Palestinians want to have a say in exactly how that border is set then they’d need to pull their heads out of their posteriors and actually agree to a deal. A negotiated disengagement is, obviously, easier than a unilateral one but either would be infinitely better for the Israeli’s than continuing with the occupation. The world yelped indignantly when Sharon unilaterally withdrew from Gaza too but since Sharon didn’t really displace any significant number of Gazans and dragged the Jewish settlers out things quieted down pretty fast.Report

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              35. RE: Cowing the West Bank Lebanon-style

                A lot of people in Lebanon want to have a functioning state. The West Bank is more comparable to Gaza.

                Big picture Israel will be taking what it wants and leaving. What’s left should be expected to be a failed state.

                If they had a lick of sense that’d largely be of Jewish settlers into the new Israeli borders…

                Doing this without Palestinian approval means breaking international laws on ethnic cleansing. They might as well go all in. Also if the Palestinians aren’t sitting at the table drawing lines then the Settlers will be.Report

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              36. You say that about the West Bank but you have no idea. If the populace of the West Bank were as rabid to attack Israel as you say then we’d have had a LOT more attacks, both against settlers, settlements and Israel proper than we have.

                As for ethnic cleansing I think your understanding of the definition is lacking; there’s no scenario I can think of where a country removing, even forcibly, its own nationals from occupied territories ever meets the definition of ethnic cleansing.

                Obviously if the Palestinians don’t negotiate then they won’t have a say in what the Israelis decide- such would be the unilateral in unilateral withdrawal. That being said the difference between a unilateral withdrawal and a normal ethnic cleansing lies in the amount of land the Israelis grab and how much displacement of the Palestinians they do.Report

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              37. If the populace of the West Bank were as rabid to attack Israel as you say then we’d have had a LOT more attacks

                Leaving Hamas in charge of Gaza for 18 years resulted in more attacks. If they held elections tomorrow Hamas would win. If they’d held them before the Gaza war Hamas would still have won. A less internally abusive Hamas would win consistently.

                Pulling out of the West Bank is duplicating the Gaza withdrawal and expecting it to work differently even though Hamas will gain a lot more resources.

                a country removing, even forcibly, its own nationals from occupied territories [never] meets the definition of ethnic cleansing.

                In a fair world where the policy is carried out in an even handed way, yes.

                IMHO keeping any of the land from before 1967 results in various claims, and that’s without removing any Palestinians which will also no doubt happen.

                Factor in the Settlers having a say without Palestinian input and it won’t be “even handed”.Report

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              38. I frankly doubt that your analysis is correct. When Israel re-invaded Gaza you didn’t see the populace flinging themselves at the hated Jewish interlopers- they ran for their life. Only Hamas’ militants fought. Gaza is not the West Bank. The West Bank is larger and the West Bank now has Gaza as an example. Additionally, Fatah abandoned Gaza after Hamas won that election but would not do the same in the West Bank were such an event to occur (they’d have nowhere left to go). But, even if your worst-case scenario is correct; Israel having a hostile West Bank next door is eminently survivable for Israel. If the Gazan example holds then Israel would reap incredible, likely decisive, sympathy from the world for withdrawing and the Palestinians, if they attacked, would read decisive disgust. Frankly it’s only the West Bank occupation that brought the Palestinian cause back from the bring globally and it still took decades to do. Eliminate the occupation and I suspect the world mostly washes its hands of the matter.

                Eh, my point is that words have meaning. There’s no one on the planet who’d look at Israel hauling its settlers out of the West Bank and say “ethnic cleansing” as no one said it when they did the same in Gaza. It’s an incorrect and thus moot assertion. I grant, though, we’re discussing an angels on the head of a pin scenario of course. With settlers exclusively in change withdrawal simply doesn’t happen at all- they just want some form of ethnic cleansing in the territories. If Israel goes for that, it’d be pretty unprecedented. I don’t think Israel’s character as a Jewish Democratic and internationally integrated state would survive it. We’d probably end up with some kind of Jewish Tehran in the Levant situation only this state wouldn’t have Irans natural resources and would probably end up very poor (Israel is profoundly dependent on trade) and threatened as a result of economic sanctions.Report

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              39. I think the biggest demographic threat to Israel right now is the Haredi Jews out breeding the non-crazies and Secular Israeli Jews are unique in having a TFR above the replacement rate.

                My stance on the activists and academic nuts online or not, and I live in a place where they are very much in the flesh, is a lot more hostile than your stance. You think they are annoying bugs. I see them as actively dangerous and dishonest. They define Zionism like Republican define feminism and refuse to learn anything about Zionism or Jewish history. They have menaced and disrupted Jewish events that have nothing to do with Israel or Palestine.Report

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              40. I respect that they’re an annoying nuisance for you. Vent about them all you want because they annoy you, I just suggest keeping them in perspective. Because as annoying as they may be the lot of them, until/unless they begin seriously swaying a major party, are less than nothing to the state of Israel. And if you are worried about those people gaining influence, beginning to have weight in parties etc there’s only one area to look as to why these people are gaining a following- at the Israeli right wing, their enablers in the American right and the occupation of the territories.

                As to the Haredi- I actually agree with you there but I’m neither Jewish nor a resident of Eretz Yisrael so I mostly don’t stick my oar in on the subject. That’s more an intra-Israeli/Jewish issue in my opinion.Report

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              41. I’m utterly tired of the double standards that the DEI/Intersectional movement applies towards the Jewish people. They both appeal to Jews for help because of our past while at the same time insisting that Israel is based on racist foundations but have no issue with Muslim identity states or that Jews are wypipo doing wypipo things. Their self-congratulatory festivals are filled with hypocrisy.

                That many Jews who should know better, can’t take the side of their own people in fight is also disturbing. I do not get anti-Zionist Jews. “Just one more ecumenical multicultural cargo cult event and all will be fine” they believe. It never occurs to them to make demands or check up on what people say about Jews when no Jews are around.

                We invite people to learn a little about us and we learn a little about them and foolishly believe that they will spread the message that the Jews aren’t bad when we aren’t around. That isn’t what happens though. Either the people who come to the ecumenical multicultural cargo cult events either stay silent when they hear anti-Semitism out of fear of getting hit or they go to the bathroom on us behind our backs.Report

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              42. *shrugs* The key to not being treated like a pig fisher is not to fish any pigs. The intersectional left and the anti-Semitic left and the anti-Semitic right all have reasons for being anti-Israel. It’d be easy to ignore them and it’s likely they’d dwindle a lot more if the Israeli’s could, ya know, manage to not do any pig fishing.

                But, also, are those multicultural cargo cults really that, well, important? I’ve never been to one personally.Report

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              43. I happen to live in an area of the United States where these people exist in large numbers and are very loud. There is a nearby and rather important Bay Area park where “F-word Israel” scrawled on the pavement. I literally know people in real life that I have to interact with fair frequency because of work who believe that “Israelis are the new you know what” without irony.

                I am utterly sick that it is always the Jews in general and Israelis in particular who have to do outreach work. It just feels like a one way street. Even though there are only 16 million Jews in the world and 2 billion Muslims, I guarantee you that more Jewish organizations are holding events like the below link than Muslim ones:

                https://www.jccsf.org/event/shared-grief-shared-hope-voices-from-israel-and-palestine/

                The enemies of the Jews are on the march and nobody seems that interested in putting them down. Pointing out the anti-Semitism of the DEI/Intersectionalists, the Left, and among the Muslim world is simply something that can’t be done. We are supposed to hold our nose at these freaks and believe they are pure as snow.Report

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              44. There is utterly no point in running around mopping at the puddles and streams of anti-Israeli sentiment blasting around the discourse while the firehose they feeds them continues blasting. And control of that firehose rests almost entirely in Israeli hands.

                The hypocrisy and double standard of the identity left has been a constant presence- the fetishizing and victim defending of the lower power party in any given scenario is innate to their thought patterns. But their gibbering, so long as support for it remains confined to Muslims and identarians, doesn’t mean much to Israels’ wellbeing day to day- unless the source that’s making them grow and persuade people isn’t dealt with.Report

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              45. TL/DR of my comment: I want to hear the plot and the plan for attacking global anti-Semitism whether it comes from the White Right, the Left, Intersectionalists, Muslims, or anybody else..

                I do not want people to appeal to Jews to Jews as victims of rash international conspiracy theories and hatred then shrug and do nothing if it turns out that all of Sumatra or Venezuela is in the grip of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. They should not say “well it doesn’t matter, there aren’t any Jews in Sumatra or Venezuela.” They should do something about it.

                A world war against global anti-Semitism should be the price for an independent Palestine. This is true even if it means going very hard against hundreds of millions or billions of people that will never meet a Jew.Report

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              46. You’re not thinking clearly if you think that is ever, remotely, going to happen. The prize Israel will gain for an Palestinian territory is being rid of the Palestinian territories and the threat the occupation of them poses to Israel herself.

                During the occupation of Ireland anti-english (and anti-Irish) sentiment ran riot in the states. It took generations after the occupation was sorted for those notions and that language to fade from the discourse. I know it infuriates you but you’re never going to see some widespread renunciation of anti-Israeli sentiment among the cruchy left and Muslims. That’s not how people work. At best, say if the occupation is ended, you’ll hear a larger version of what you heard from those actors when Gaza was withdrawn from. A great deal of fury and sputtering followed by a big fall off of talking about the subject.

                But that beats what you and I have seen during the decades that the Israeli’s have been digging their fingers into the West Bank- that sentiment getting louder in intensity and, more alarmingly, slowly growing in numbers and converts among the masses.Report

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              47. Considering how leaving Gaza didn’t really free Israel of Gaza, I don’t think leaving the WB will have the effect you think it will. People will find a way to say the Occupation continues even after the Occupation ended.Report

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              48. I took my left hand off your throat, where do you get off saying I’m strangling you!??! My right hand? Let’s not talk about my right hand- I took my LEFT hand off your neck! Why are all these anti-semites accusing me of being a strangler? I took my left hand off their neck.Report

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              49. The Trumpers seem to be pretty faithful Israel supporters.

                Maybe you should be better at seeing them as allies?

                If your response is to sputter and point out that no matter how good they are on *THIS* issue, they’re really bad on *THAT* issue, then why are you surprised that the DEI/Intersectional Omnicausers are the same way?Report

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              50. As I understand it there’s a pretty sharp divide between camps of pro and anti Israeli/Jewish Trumpers that’s papered over because, well, Trump but that’s not likely to last long beyond Trump.Report

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              53. That’s a post Netanyahu proposition. He can’t do any of that stuff and stay in power. It’s an open question if he can stay in power past the end of their current war which is one major reason the war isn’t ending.Report

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          2. I also never really heard an explanation from the anti-Zionists on what the Jews should have done instead of Zionism to deal with the problems that we were facing in the early to mid-20th century everywhere. Nationalists and ideologues in Europe and the MENA Region basically decided that they didn’t have use for the local Jewish population. Even if we were quietly minding our own business and keeping to ourselves in insular communities, we were getting the way of their ideological projects by simply existing. The Jews that fought for integration in the societies ended up dead or expelled. Things didn’t even get better after WWII because the Communists persecuted the Jews an the Arab nationalists and Islamists wanted Jews gone.

            It was the Zionist movement that actually managed to save hundred of thousands or even millions of Jewish lives by giving Jews fleeing rejection and persecution elsewhere a place to go and be Jewish safely. From what I can tell, the anti-Zionists would prefer if we stayed in place and suffered silently.Report

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            1. Should have done instead? In order to achieve what goal?

              If the goal was “to avoid being compared to Apartheid South Africa”, I’d probably point to something like “avoid being particularly comparable to Apartheid South Africa”.

              If the argument is that, hey, sometimes ethnostates are necessary and the steps required to maintain an ethnostate can be distasteful but they’re a price worth paying, well… I guess we’re going to have to establish that sometimes ethnostates are necessary and the steps required to maintain an ethnostate can be distasteful but they’re a price worth paying. Or having someone else pay them, I guess.Report

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              2. Well, if the cost of avoiding persecution and death is causing persecution and death, you’re going to find yourself resorting to all sorts of “Will to Power” kinda arguments rather than ones steeped in morality.

                Which is fine. Everybody loves Nietzsche.

                It’s difficult to pivot from that position to one that appeals to higher morality, though. It comes across as spectacularly insincere.Report

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            2. Antisemitism is a sign of a sick society. Jews are a safe enemy for a group/government that needs someone to blame for their own failures.

              Rather than own what’s wrong it’s much easier to blame [others]. So they’re the designated scape goat.

              Jews are hardly the only lightning rod (distraction), we see the same sort of thing on [gays/trans/racism].Report

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              1. My theory is that that further left has a neat system on how things are supposed to work. Jews as Jews don’t fit into this system and they find us inconvenient to deal with because it disturbs their cosmology.

                The very small numbers of Jews but our determination not to be excluded or marginalized is another frustration for them. They would prefer if we were just like the other small survivors from antiquity, seen but not really heard. Just sort of there.Report

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              3. A few minutes of talk on one Israeli talk show prove that all of Israel is evil and needs to be destroyed in lefty land. Meanwhile, decades of anti-Semitic comments in Muslim media and elsewhere prove nothing.Report

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              5. Nut picking. You have one very angry guy with his fellows pointing out that the rest of Israel society doesn’t agree with him.

                More importantly, Israel has an army right there and if they ever start treating “everyone as a terrorist” then we’ll see scary fatality numbers.Report

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              6. Yet, if you do an online search the one very angry guy is treated as the “true opinion” while the rest are not. The anti-Semites do this because it is convenient and dishonest.Report

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              7. “Nut picking”

                Imagine, if you will, one of the Sunday shows in the US. This Week, maybe. Meet the Press.

                And they had a guest who argued that we needed to kill the Jews.

                The other guests could argue with this person and point out that the overwhelming majority of the country disagrees and does *NOT* think that we need to kill the Jews. Which is true!

                Do you see the problem?Report

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              8. It’s not just the Jews, it’s also the jihadist Arabs. If you actually listen to them and understand they’re serious about what they want and why, then the Left is dealing with a “repressed minority” that can’t be handled in any other way.Report

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              9. This. The extremist statements made by Hamas or related groups are supposed to be taken “seriously, not literally” and just because of the conditions they have to endure and once the oppression ends they will become liberal. While extremist statements made by Jews are to be taken seriously and literally.Report

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        2. Did I say anything about what is and isn’t anti-semitic?

          Why, I don’t believe I did!

          Indeed, what I appear to have said is that ‘This obviously lying site is spreading very debunked and harmful lies as it say that someone’s behavior is antisemitic.’Report

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  13. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/23/technology/trump-private-dinner-crypto-memecoin.html?unlocked_article_code=1.B08.EfYE.XMrkN8WRv3ss&smid=url-share

    Let’s have blatant corruption for crypto!!

    “The flashy online announcement called it “the most EXCLUSIVE INVITATION in the World,” a chance to have “an intimate private dinner” with President Trump at his members-only golf club in Virginia, followed by a tour of the White House.

    A seat would be reserved for each of the top 220 investors in $TRUMP, a cryptocurrency that Mr. Trump launched on the eve of his inauguration.

    In an astonishing escalation of the Trump family’s efforts to profit from crypto, a website promoting $TRUMP, the president’s so-called memecoin, announced on Wednesday that the coin’s largest buyers would be invited to meet him. The effort was, in effect, an offer of access to the White House in exchange for an investment in one of Mr. Trump’s crypto ventures.”Report

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  15. Okay. We didn’t talk about this last week, but we should have. Last week, David Hogg, in his official capacity as DNC Vice Chair, said that they were going to start primarying safe incumbents who were “ineffective, asleep-at-the-wheel”. Like, and spending DNC money to do it.

    No, not in battleground seats (so Marie Gluesenkamp Perez is safe! Whew!) but in the *SAFE* seats. You’re too old and you ain’t no good? OUT ON YOUR KIESTER. It’s time for some young blood in there!

    Well, wouldn’t you know it, the Establishment Dems took exception and Politico is reporting that the Chair Ken Martin is going to tell Hogg to pick between his DNC Vice Chair position or to keep hanging out with the “Leaders We Deserve” group that intends to spend twenty megabucks on giving safe incumbents a whiff of grapeshot.

    The proposal to make it official that you have to stay neutral will be voted on in August.

    Which only seems glacial because of the internet. In the beforetimes, something like this happening in August would be timely.Report

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    1. Dave has a thread!

      They’re trying to change the rules because I’m not currently breaking them. As we’re seeing law firms, tech companies, and so many others bowing to Trump, we all must use whatever position of power we have to fight back. And that’s exactly what I’m doing.

      This moment requires us to have the strongest opposition party possible to stop Trump from destroying people’s retirement savings, disappearing people, plunging our economy into oblivion—and to provide a real alternative to the Republican Party for voters that we simply do not have right now.

      That will not change if we keep the status quo. We have no other option but to do the hard work of holding ourselves and our own party accountable.

      The fact that we spent 2 BILLION dollars and still lost an election to a convicted felon who literally attempted to overthrow our government must be a cause for serious reflection and a prime example of why change is so needed.

      We can’t fix a 27% approval rating by just changing our words. We need to change who we are.

      Three weeks ago, we lost a vote that resulted in the largest cuts to Medicaid that we’ve ever seen, because two people passed away while in office. That is unacceptable.

      Voters trust Donald Trump more on the economy than Democrats. That is an indictment of our party. Too many of our leaders are asleep at the wheel while Trump creates new crises every day that jeopardize our way of life.

      The role of the DNC is to set the Presidential primary calendar, set the Presidential debate schedule, to help strengthen our state parties, play a key role in building our data infrastructure for the party, and to be the campaign in waiting for whoever the next Democratic nominee is. Nothing I’m doing is at odds with any of that.

      Report

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      2. For once I gotta agree with Philip. I don’t see any particular problem with Dave rattling the gerontocracy in safe seats and the consultant class has enormous questions they should answer after their performance in the past.Report

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        1. The DNC Chair does, however.

          I suppose I can see his POV… Hogg doesn’t get to do this as a DNC Vice Chair. He can do it with his SuperPAC, if he wants (not like he can stop him), but he doesn’t get to do it as Vice Chair.

          The main thing that I’d wonder is whether Hogg’s theories are correct. Would nominating some firebrand over the guy with seniority result in more votes where it counts?

          All politics are national anymore. You can run against Nancy Pelosi and Elizabeth Warren in more places than just Massachusetts and California.Report

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          1. Huh, he even wrote an op-ed yesterday…

            Here’s the money:

            Eight years ago, the Democratic Party was at one of the lowest points in its history. Not only did we fail to stop Donald Trump’s election, but we had lost the faith of Democratic voters. The DNC was besieged by accusations that it had favored one candidate over another during the presidential primary process. The controversy alienated even our party’s most loyal supporters who felt that party bosses, not Democratic primary voters, were deciding which candidate would emerge in the general election as the Democratic nominee. They threatened to leave the party for good.

            And as we stared down the barrel of the Trump presidency, our party was weak at a moment when working families needed us to be strong. When you lose the trust of your voters, you lose your ability to fight for them. Indeed, 2016 was an existential moment for our party. To dig ourselves out of this crisis, we had to make structural changes.

            Report

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            1. I don’t think the inclination to shake up an aging establishment is wrong. The party needs it. What I question is whether David Hogg has the political acumen to do it in a way that actually helps the party. It’s easy to imagine a situation where he replaces a bunch of risk averse dinosaurs (good) with leaders so immersed in deep blue, alienating culture issues that the results is a net detriment to the brand nationally (bad).Report

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              1. There is no doubt in my mind that the party needs it and I have similar skepticism to yours.

                That said, it makes sense to me for the Chair to say “you don’t get to officially do this in your official capacity as an official.”Report

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              3. Another question floating around my head is “will firing Hogg have negative consequences for the DNC?”

                Some have speculated that it will look like the party is the party of the olds rather than of the young firebrands.

                The Chair is in a darned if you do, darned if you don’t position.Report

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            2. His own editorial doesn’t talk about “challenging incumbents” much less how and why they’ll be challenged.

              In theory a stronger party would avoid someone like Trump taking over but he’s arguing for the opposite.

              So it’s much emotional noise without any description, much less details, on what he’s trying to do.Report

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    1. Probably the worst part of Trumps inviterate idiocy is how well suited and situated the strongman states, China, Russia and North Korea, are to take advantage of and stymy every idiotic notion Trump has.

      I’m waiting with bated breath for Koz’s guest post explaining how this is all part of a brilliant plan and will be worth it in the long run.Report

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      1. If reactionaries and Trumpists did not have bad faith, they would not have any faith at all.

        Trump is an innate liar and it is basically a reflex for him. For him and his circle, lying is also a power flex of the own the libz variety.

        Trump 2.0 is going to be 2-4 years, maybe more if things go really badly, of constant bad faith stunts that are designed to throw red meat at their base of aggrieved white guys without college educations, 4 channers, and others fueled by the right-wing dank meme/podcasting empire who are all in on thinking the Democrats are the “Mom telling you what to do” party. The motivations of under-40 Republicans is purely Epartier Le Bourgeois with liberals as the bougies.*

        You see this in the Garcia case where it would be the easiest thing in the world to admit error, bring him back, and then find a country that will take him. Instead, they double and triple down from error to MS-13 gang member to MS-13 gang leader. Every time the issue comes up, it is an opportunity to troll. They did this with a Press Conference where they invited Red-Brown alliance podcaster and known Russian Asset Tim Pool to ask an incredibly bad faith question.

        MAGA is very racist and xenophobic but my impression is that one of their real animating hatreds, possibly their most animating hatred, is an absolute hatred of middle-class to upper-middle class college educated liberals especially if they are white and doubly especially if they are women. We are seen as class and race traitors and MAGAts current wars seem directed at taking down and conquering everything bougie-boho/In this House liberals hold dear.

        *Aided and abetted by guys who realize Trump is a no bueno but have irrational freak outs over Oberlin and Mount Holyoke students and anxious day dreams and nightmares about how one day their little girl is going to come home with a shaved head and septum piercing and say “Sorry Daddy, but the Revolution says you need to be placed against the wall. My non-binary Latinx lover Louisa is going to do it right now.”Report

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    1. Israel’s real world choices are to have an urban war (i.e. what you call genocide), or live with terrorists running cities. I’m not sure India is willing to (or needs to) level Kashmir considering it already runs it.Report

      Reply

  19. A 30-year Green Card holder from the Are They Really White Lands of Ireland detained at SFO for a 20 year old conviction which has been expunged.Report

    Reply

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