Reality based more like it; I don't consider reality to be innately transphobic. Trans men are, on average, slighter and more lightly build that their non-trans male compatriots- they simply don't present a believable threat to non-trans men. The dynamic is reversed for trans women which is why the rights incendiary charges and accusations find some measure of traction.
Well of course trans men aren't a threat- they don't have the biological context in mens' spaces that gives the trans woman in womans' spaces the bite it does. Quite the inverse actually.
Housing is a big challenge and it cuts against a lot of both intrinsic voter preferences and fashionably left wing notions. I remain optimistic that liberals are going to figure it out in time but they'll doubtlessly squirm and buck against it because it is politically very difficult.
That remains to be seen. Carney is far more of a technocrat than Trudeau was/is and doesn't have the burden of that last name either. Canada's liberals have, in the past, been very capable economic stewards (and, to be fair, so have Canada's Tories though that was before their destruction and resurrection in their current context).
I have no beef with Uncle Bern and AOC's gatherings- I apologize if that wasn't clear. I'm unenthused by Slotkin and MGP's behavior but also not raging in outrage at it. For Bernie and AOC- I have no particular beef towards their actions. In all honesty I think rather highly of AOC. I don't agree with her on many things but I think she's a fantastic Congresswoman and I'm delighted she's in the party.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
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.
Truth be told we got infinitely more wedding than the modest expenses we paid for thanks to my mothers social connections and her gardening obsession resulting in her having an acre of (somewhat jungle like in places) gardens to play in. Though ours was a far smaller affair, maybe 30 guests total?
Weddings are a funny business and I have a (somewhat to very chauvinistic) impression that women being involved hikes the cost. The one lesbian wedding we went to was an extravaganza fit to ransom the moon itself.
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.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/28/2025”
You're right on every account.
On “Gender Critical: Legally Defining Sex”
It's a clusterfish, yup.
"
Snerk
"
Reality based more like it; I don't consider reality to be innately transphobic. Trans men are, on average, slighter and more lightly build that their non-trans male compatriots- they simply don't present a believable threat to non-trans men. The dynamic is reversed for trans women which is why the rights incendiary charges and accusations find some measure of traction.
"
Well of course trans men aren't a threat- they don't have the biological context in mens' spaces that gives the trans woman in womans' spaces the bite it does. Quite the inverse actually.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/28/2025”
Housing is a big challenge and it cuts against a lot of both intrinsic voter preferences and fashionably left wing notions. I remain optimistic that liberals are going to figure it out in time but they'll doubtlessly squirm and buck against it because it is politically very difficult.
On “About Last Night: Carney’s Liberals Complete Canadian Comeback”
That remains to be seen. Carney is far more of a technocrat than Trudeau was/is and doesn't have the burden of that last name either. Canada's liberals have, in the past, been very capable economic stewards (and, to be fair, so have Canada's Tories though that was before their destruction and resurrection in their current context).
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/28/2025”
I have no beef with Uncle Bern and AOC's gatherings- I apologize if that wasn't clear. I'm unenthused by Slotkin and MGP's behavior but also not raging in outrage at it. For Bernie and AOC- I have no particular beef towards their actions. In all honesty I think rather highly of AOC. I don't agree with her on many things but I think she's a fantastic Congresswoman and I'm delighted she's in the party.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
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.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals”
You wouldn't believe some of the shoe-string weddings without a bride I've been to.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
*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.
On “US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection”
I mean, yes, it could be worse. Trump could be competent, smart and evil instead of incompetent, stupid and dully malevolent.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals”
Perfection.
"
Truth be told we got infinitely more wedding than the modest expenses we paid for thanks to my mothers social connections and her gardening obsession resulting in her having an acre of (somewhat jungle like in places) gardens to play in. Though ours was a far smaller affair, maybe 30 guests total?
Weddings are a funny business and I have a (somewhat to very chauvinistic) impression that women being involved hikes the cost. The one lesbian wedding we went to was an extravaganza fit to ransom the moon itself.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
"
It is galling.