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).
Eh, word is Bessent is privately and probably illegally confiding to the titans of industry that Trump is going to fold like a cheap suit on the tariffs. So full on economic calamity may be averted, just tons of economic damage for *checks notes* less than nothing.
Perhaps proposals to eliminate the Dept. Of Education would have such contingencies but, of course, no actual legal proposal to eliminate the Dept. of Education is on offer in Congress so instead we have this shambolic mess.
You can squint at a car crashed into a tree and say "there were proposals to make an appointment with a scrap yard so that car was disassembled and its constituent parts sold and then some return on the car would be possible" but in light of the car being literally crashed into a tree and not being disassembled in an orderly fashion I don't see what this observation contributes. It's not a non-sequitur... is it some form of cope?
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.
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.
I half had that notion myself and I think you're correct. I just am rubbing my chin over what Master Briggs was thinking in putting it in there. The rest of the comic is talking about a cynic scoffing at the protags admiration of a film while saying it's all fake. Very straight forward Briggs but introducing the stereoscope in the final panel just fish-hooked my brain where I'd have normally moved on.
The stereoscope was invented in the early 1800's and Master Briggs is drawing in the late 1800-s and early 1900's. I don't imagine it was revolutionary by the time he portrayed it. Why's the protag looking at it? Is this admiration of the protags credulousness/openness to wonder? Or some other message? Or I'm just fixated on a triviality.
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?
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!
I hope they do but, based on their records, they'd have one ready to go not in the next Presidents term but the President after the next Presidents term.
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...
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.
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.
Okay but even if we grant your premise Trump won't, himself, be on the ballot and has proven entirely unable to transfer his personal support into general election wins for other non-Trump candidates when he's not on the ballot. So, nothing says any of that populist energy will redound to the GOP- especially if people are screaming "sh*t is fished up and sh*t and you fishers are in responsible."
If you're trying to hunt for who the Democratic candidate is going to be in 2028, well that strikes me as a fools game since Biden basically reset the whole deck with how things went down in 2024- I don't know if any of the previously rans will have any shot at contending next time. But a lack of a single standard bearer doesn't bode much for 2026.
Now if you're saying "I don't see any sign that a party/candidate that is admirable to me is going arise." well you're probably right and, I sadly say, I may be in the same boat- though my standards are less exacting than yours. But we're both not populists*, to put it mildly.
*Though you have a fondness for edge theories that codes populist so there's that!
Just so I'm clear, because I'm curious, is the hydrochloric acid needed for the extraction process of mining REE's or for the recycling REE's from coal ash ponds?
I have to admit that, looking back over the last decade or so immigration seems to have been the real driver for trouble for everyone to the left of the wild restrictionists both here and in Europe. Virtually none of the other subjects the right inveigles about compares remotely in scale or size. Hindsight is painful on this one.
Fortunately, as you well know, the popularity that matters in this current time is Trumps'. If he's disapproved of, and he is, more and more every day, then the voters will vote against him and his party. The Dems are not looking pretty on stand alone popularity but that's because a very large portion of those "disapprovers" are disapproving because they want the Dems to push back on Trump more. If Trump stays at this level of popularity he'll be wiped out in the midterms. If he keeps at his current trajectory of popularity change he'll be landslided out in the midterms.
After the next election maybe they will but this one certainly won't. The general silence, downplaying and indifference of the "freedom and small government" right has been quite impressive, it really just was about lower taxes and will to power all along.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
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”
Eh, word is Bessent is privately and probably illegally confiding to the titans of industry that Trump is going to fold like a cheap suit on the tariffs. So full on economic calamity may be averted, just tons of economic damage for *checks notes* less than nothing.
"
Perhaps proposals to eliminate the Dept. Of Education would have such contingencies but, of course, no actual legal proposal to eliminate the Dept. of Education is on offer in Congress so instead we have this shambolic mess.
You can squint at a car crashed into a tree and say "there were proposals to make an appointment with a scrap yard so that car was disassembled and its constituent parts sold and then some return on the car would be possible" but in light of the car being literally crashed into a tree and not being disassembled in an orderly fashion I don't see what this observation contributes. It's not a non-sequitur... is it some form of cope?
"
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 “Open Mic for the Week of 4/21/2025”
Heheh
"
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.
On “Somebody is Always Taking the Joy out of Life”
I half had that notion myself and I think you're correct. I just am rubbing my chin over what Master Briggs was thinking in putting it in there. The rest of the comic is talking about a cynic scoffing at the protags admiration of a film while saying it's all fake. Very straight forward Briggs but introducing the stereoscope in the final panel just fish-hooked my brain where I'd have normally moved on.
The stereoscope was invented in the early 1800's and Master Briggs is drawing in the late 1800-s and early 1900's. I don't imagine it was revolutionary by the time he portrayed it. Why's the protag looking at it? Is this admiration of the protags credulousness/openness to wonder? Or some other message? Or I'm just fixated on a triviality.
"
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?
"
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!
"
I hope they do but, based on their records, they'd have one ready to go not in the next Presidents term but the President after the next Presidents term.
"
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...
"
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.
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 “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
Okay but even if we grant your premise Trump won't, himself, be on the ballot and has proven entirely unable to transfer his personal support into general election wins for other non-Trump candidates when he's not on the ballot. So, nothing says any of that populist energy will redound to the GOP- especially if people are screaming "sh*t is fished up and sh*t and you fishers are in responsible."
If you're trying to hunt for who the Democratic candidate is going to be in 2028, well that strikes me as a fools game since Biden basically reset the whole deck with how things went down in 2024- I don't know if any of the previously rans will have any shot at contending next time. But a lack of a single standard bearer doesn't bode much for 2026.
Now if you're saying "I don't see any sign that a party/candidate that is admirable to me is going arise." well you're probably right and, I sadly say, I may be in the same boat- though my standards are less exacting than yours. But we're both not populists*, to put it mildly.
*Though you have a fondness for edge theories that codes populist so there's that!
"
That's not unreasonable.
On “Open Mic for the Week of 4/14/2025”
Just so I'm clear, because I'm curious, is the hydrochloric acid needed for the extraction process of mining REE's or for the recycling REE's from coal ash ponds?
On “The Lawless Lying Duplicitous Bastards of Abrego Garcia”
I have to admit that, looking back over the last decade or so immigration seems to have been the real driver for trouble for everyone to the left of the wild restrictionists both here and in Europe. Virtually none of the other subjects the right inveigles about compares remotely in scale or size. Hindsight is painful on this one.
"
Fortunately, as you well know, the popularity that matters in this current time is Trumps'. If he's disapproved of, and he is, more and more every day, then the voters will vote against him and his party. The Dems are not looking pretty on stand alone popularity but that's because a very large portion of those "disapprovers" are disapproving because they want the Dems to push back on Trump more. If Trump stays at this level of popularity he'll be wiped out in the midterms. If he keeps at his current trajectory of popularity change he'll be landslided out in the midterms.
"
After the next election maybe they will but this one certainly won't. The general silence, downplaying and indifference of the "freedom and small government" right has been quite impressive, it really just was about lower taxes and will to power all along.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.