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.
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.
Congrats on the expansion of your fam!
My husband and I got married in my mothers gardens (she's a retired landscaper so they were very beautiful). I mostly just hit under the table and wrote checks while he and she planned it but despite my complaining it ended up being quite economical. Though same sex weddings don't, I gather, have quite the same implicit expectations and associated expenses that straight ones do. Anyhow, I think marriages on the property is definitely the way to go.
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.
Don't get me wrong, it'll be an utter fiasco but if Trump folds, which I expect he will, we'll get just a bunch of terrible economic outcomes (historically bad most likely) but I think they'll fall short of a genuine economic collapse.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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).
Oh I have no doubt they can restart the automatic systems etc, but in terms of actively pursuing debtors or otherwise performing the operations of a coherent Department of Education? Probably a lot the same as the IRS.
Most of this is meaningless pap since Trump and the Muskrats have eviscerated the Dept. of Education's staffing and thus have eviscerated said Dept's ability to collect or pursue on the debtors.
Likewise they've fished up the IRS and we're looking at half a trillion in lower tax collection but that's probably okay because the people cheating are higher income non-wage earners and thus "deserve" to keep the money in right wing parlance. How right wingers can straight facedly claim the mantle of fiscal conservatives after W is beyond me but this, surely, permanently disqualifies them.
As to the question of student debt itself- forgiveness is overwhelmingly a transfer from quiet poorer taxpayers to noisier and wealthier/future wealthier former students so I'm very skeptical of it on those grounds. Likewise higher ed is becoming a waste fest with administration proliferating like kudzu and forgiving those loans would simply be throwing more money down that rathole so I remain very skeptical that it's either good policy and certain it's bad politics as long as higher ed is the way it currently is. Though, again, the rights "answer" to this seems to be to simply to install right wing politically correct rules and nakedly steal everything that's not nailed down in the institutions they get their hands on rather than feathering their nests genteelly like the current higher ed usual suspects do. So not much of an improvement.
Gotta agree with David TC on this one. How does this dude stealing from Harvard and getting his ass fired when they found out somehow reflect poorly on Harvard?
As a grit I'm, of course, pleased though I admit a certain trepidation as well. The Liberals of Canada did a fantastic job in the late 90's and early 2000's then benefitted from a stint in the wilderness to come back and do a tolerable job in the late teens and early 20's but Trudea forgot a lot of ol' Jonny Cretchien and Paul Martins hard won lessons. The Liberals maybe could do with another trip to the wilds in a world where the right wing party was, well, *looks at Poilievre* ...not that and a world with no Trump. In this world, though, I'm pretty happy to be able to vote for Carney and expect him to do well.
Oh I agree; I noted as such in my original comment. But I can't help but notice that all the stories of power transmission and power generation projects being blocked seem to be in blue states. NY and CA cost per mile of mass transit is a global joke but, to be fair, I suspect red states simply don't build mass transit.
That is a fair critique to a very broad blanket statement but Florida and Texas are, iirc, the largest red states and they do build both infrastructure, housing and utilities to a degree that leaves the largest blue states; New York and California, looking like punch lines. It's also not like the smaller blue states do much better though Minnesota has made some progress on housing at least.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
It is galling.
"
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.
"
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.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Caffeine Rituals”
Congrats on the expansion of your fam!
My husband and I got married in my mothers gardens (she's a retired landscaper so they were very beautiful). I mostly just hit under the table and wrote checks while he and she planned it but despite my complaining it ended up being quite economical. Though same sex weddings don't, I gather, have quite the same implicit expectations and associated expenses that straight ones do. Anyhow, I think marriages on the property is definitely the way to go.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
On “US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection”
Don't get me wrong, it'll be an utter fiasco but if Trump folds, which I expect he will, we'll get just a bunch of terrible economic outcomes (historically bad most likely) but I think they'll fall short of a genuine economic collapse.
"
The guy who came after Trump was Biden. Did you find him scary? Or did you mean Trump II?
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
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.
"
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?
"
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.
"
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).
On “US Department of Education Announces that it is Restarting Loan Collection”
Oh I have no doubt they can restart the automatic systems etc, but in terms of actively pursuing debtors or otherwise performing the operations of a coherent Department of Education? Probably a lot the same as the IRS.
"
Most of this is meaningless pap since Trump and the Muskrats have eviscerated the Dept. of Education's staffing and thus have eviscerated said Dept's ability to collect or pursue on the debtors.
Likewise they've fished up the IRS and we're looking at half a trillion in lower tax collection but that's probably okay because the people cheating are higher income non-wage earners and thus "deserve" to keep the money in right wing parlance. How right wingers can straight facedly claim the mantle of fiscal conservatives after W is beyond me but this, surely, permanently disqualifies them.
As to the question of student debt itself- forgiveness is overwhelmingly a transfer from quiet poorer taxpayers to noisier and wealthier/future wealthier former students so I'm very skeptical of it on those grounds. Likewise higher ed is becoming a waste fest with administration proliferating like kudzu and forgiving those loans would simply be throwing more money down that rathole so I remain very skeptical that it's either good policy and certain it's bad politics as long as higher ed is the way it currently is. Though, again, the rights "answer" to this seems to be to simply to install right wing politically correct rules and nakedly steal everything that's not nailed down in the institutions they get their hands on rather than feathering their nests genteelly like the current higher ed usual suspects do. So not much of an improvement.
On “Somebody is Always Taking the Joy out of Life”
What on earth is he up to in the final panel?
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
Gotta agree with David TC on this one. How does this dude stealing from Harvard and getting his ass fired when they found out somehow reflect poorly on Harvard?
"
Why?
On “Canadian Leaders Debate Amongst Themselves”
'Zactly, I'm a grit from childhood but even I'll admit they richly deserve a hiding periodically.
"
As a grit I'm, of course, pleased though I admit a certain trepidation as well. The Liberals of Canada did a fantastic job in the late 90's and early 2000's then benefitted from a stint in the wilderness to come back and do a tolerable job in the late teens and early 20's but Trudea forgot a lot of ol' Jonny Cretchien and Paul Martins hard won lessons. The Liberals maybe could do with another trip to the wilds in a world where the right wing party was, well, *looks at Poilievre* ...not that and a world with no Trump. In this world, though, I'm pretty happy to be able to vote for Carney and expect him to do well.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Thank you.
On “From Freddie de Boer: Abundance, Up To A Point”
Oh I agree; I noted as such in my original comment. But I can't help but notice that all the stories of power transmission and power generation projects being blocked seem to be in blue states. NY and CA cost per mile of mass transit is a global joke but, to be fair, I suspect red states simply don't build mass transit.
"
That is a fair critique to a very broad blanket statement but Florida and Texas are, iirc, the largest red states and they do build both infrastructure, housing and utilities to a degree that leaves the largest blue states; New York and California, looking like punch lines. It's also not like the smaller blue states do much better though Minnesota has made some progress on housing at least.
On “The Emergency Ordinary Times Facelift”
I have zero complaints, you've done an amazing job and, frankly, the site looks fantastic.