Is Markwayne Mullin ok?
A day after trying to start a fistfight in a committee hearing, the U.S. senator said Wednesday that he has no problem biting people.
“I’ll bite 100%," he said.
"And I don’t care where I bite, by the way.” ??https://t.co/mFsRN3QDog
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) November 15, 2023
In related news, my 4-year-old aged out of this book a while ago and it's available to anyone who can use it on Capitol Hill.
Maybe I'll just leave it out on a table in a Senate hearing room. pic.twitter.com/EKw40IgEZ3
— Jennifer Bendery (@jbendery) November 15, 2023
GIFT ARTICLE
THE OMINOUS RISE OF CONGRESSIONAL ANGER
[Seriously, the last time this happened WAS before the Civil War]By Philip Bumphttps://t.co/oN4XgUJJyG
— Wilner: Republicans choosing fascism, with Trump (@JTMLX) November 15, 2023
Philip Bump, at the Washington Post — “The ominous rise of congressional anger”:
It is probably not terribly useful to draw sweeping conclusions from Sen. Markwayne Mullin’s demand Tuesday that a witness at a Senate hearing stand up and fight him. Mullin’s background is atypical for a senator, including a brief stint about 15 years ago during which he did mixed-martial arts fighting. The witness, meanwhile, was the head of the Teamsters union; his willingness to goad Mullin (R-Okla.) into the challenge was probably also atypical for someone appearing on Capitol Hill.
We might also be cautious about the weird, probably overheated interaction between Reps. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), also on Tuesday, in which the latter accuses the former of elbowing him. Or the scuffle in January when the Republican Party was trying to elect McCarthy speaker in the first place. These were all isolated incidents, explainable in isolated contexts.
But there’s an undeniable thread that links them, an acceptance, however slight, of the idea that physical violence has a place in the resolution of disputes. Should this pattern continue — or accelerate — it would mirror other countries in which democracy is eroding. Including, at one point, the United States.
The question of the extent to which Americans accept political violence in general has been lingering for years now. The riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, crystallized those questions, given that it was an overt collapse of a democratic process — the 2020 presidential contest — into a violent effort by supporters of Donald Trump to help him retain power…
There is no explicit Constitutional prohibition against suckerpunching a fellow Congressman in the halls of the Capitol Building, so it's hard to see what Kevin McCarthy did wrong here.
-Jonathan Turley
— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) November 15, 2023
Did not realize that the Senate hearing throwdown was over this tweet mocking Mullin for standing on a platform to feel taller during a debate ?? https://t.co/ZjjQDx8DNC
— Tim Miller (@Timodc) November 15, 2023
The outbreak of chest-thumping on Capitol Hill isn't b/c "tensions are high," it's because many Republicans exist in a constant state of panic over their manhood so they need to enact extravagant performances of masculinity. It's basically a drag show without the self-awareness.
— Paul Waldman (@paulwaldman1) November 15, 2023
This day —
Mullin kicked Burchett out of his workout group because of a “lack of character on his part” and that he doesn’t “trust” Burchett. Burchett said Mullin “berated” and “yelled at him” until he left.
colleagues @alweaver22 @mychaelschnell reporthttps://t.co/zZBpYhPYlt pic.twitter.com/pQ6ziFkO8p
— Emily Brooks (@emilybrooksnews) November 14, 2023
Every rich guy under 55 now rejects all notions of luxury or philanthropy in favor of crushing labor movements and learning MMA.
Raise taxes. They're clearly miserable. https://t.co/KDF38bB2bD
— zeddy (@Zeddary) November 15, 2023
Jay
Toxic Masculinity, writ large.
They should have Reps and Senators tested daily for steroid use.
Fiona
The way the hands on that book are drawn is causing me severe distress.
Msb
“Congressional violence” is a funny way to spell “Republican violence”.
strange visitor (from another planet)
@Jay: they should test empty gee first.
opiejeanne
Mark Wayne would have gotten expelled from Nursery School if he bit someone. The kids got one bite, and if they did it again they were gone. My youngest was bitten and the director headed me off in the parking lot to tell me about it. On the way home, Katie ( my kid) said she thought maybe the other child was hungry.
ETA: my money is on O’Brien.
Chetan Murthy
@Fiona: i tried it just now, and while it’s a stretch, it’s sort of doable. For a kid with more flexible arms and wrists, It might actually be pretty straightforward.
BellyCat
FTW
Jay
@strange visitor (from another planet):
It’s weird.
When we were in AZ with SWMBO’s best friend and her husband,
we spent a bunch of time watching seasons of Alone.
As is usual, one makes comments on screw ups and bad strategy.
She commented when I was out of the room that “Jay, could never do that!”
SWMBO commented, “remember Roche Lake?”,
After an awkward “umm”, her friend responded with “but he reads all the time and is quiet”.
Too much media, TV and movies.
Yes I love puppies, and am not afraid of wolves.
terben
You are on thin ice when you have to rely on an 82 year old to save you from your own ego.
Baud
Republicans will bring back dueling.
ETA: “You have insulted my honor, sir. I demand satisfaction.”
Rusty
Can’t they just go buy another gun and a new 4 door pickup with the latest over sized grill to sooth their manhood and just leave the rest of us alone? For all their money and power they are the most insecure group of people. Grow up.
Betty Cracker
So, Elon Musk endorsed the Great Replacement theory yesterday (CNN):
The “actual truth” is that Musk — an increasingly deranged, bigoted oligarch — controls a communication platform that could easily become a worldwide Radio Rwanda. Oh, and also receives billions in U.S. government contracts for satellite communications and NASA support, a situation I desperately hope someone in the government is reevaluating.
Marmot
@Rusty: Because the world is changing, don’t you see, and that means society is about to collapse, see, so they have to assert themselves! It’s completely natural!
/s
Edited to make sarcasm obvious.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I have not heard the “Jews hate whites” theory before.
No way he doesn’t use Twitter to try to influence the election.
Aussie Sheila
@Rusty: Yes exactly. In any other democratic Parliament in the world such histrionics would be greeted with contemptuous laughter, then sanctions imposed by the House.
This display, which I was able to watch, was unbelievably juvenile and a disgrace to a democratic assembly. Threats of violence in a democratic assembly is simply unacceptable. Period. Full stop.
Just because the US thinks it is the world’s oldest democracy (it’s not) doesn’t excuse this utterly disgraceful behaviour.
It’s not just the juvenile behaviour. It’s the constant degrading of democratic forms in the people’s assembly. Simply outrageous.
Every day in every way, the behaviour of US Republican Party MPs makes democratic forms and norms shakier everywhere else. They are a disgrace. Equally disgraceful is the failure of the US media in calling it out for what it is.
BethanyAnne
You can’t fight in here, this is the War Room!
Jeffery
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov
Baud
Dems are so feckless. Do you know they haven’t threatened violence against anyone?
Jay
@Jeffery:
Jeffery
NOVEMBER 16, 2023 AT 5:20 AM
Violence is the
lastfirst refuge of the incompetent.Mel
I feel like I need a tetanus shot and a Silkwood shower after just looking at that photo of Markwayne “Booster Seat”.
Biting? Seriously? Isn’t that usually the purview of serial killers or of junior high school mean girls brawling in the bathroom*?
* Especially unpleasant when aforementioned fighty bitey girls have braces. Teaching – not for the faint of heart…
Martin
@Baud: Since conservatives pushed Musk to buy Twitter because they wanted it as a vehicle to influence the election, and he bought into it every step of the way, I think that’s pretty much a given.
eclare
Equally disturbing is Markwayne’s assertion that he’ll bite anywhere. Colbert said last night that Oklahoma’s new state motto is “Welcome to Oklahoma! We’ll munch your junk!”
Martin
@Baud: C’mon, that was literally the chant at the Unite the Right rally – “Jews will not replace us”. That’s been a thing at least since the Klan first formed.
Baud
@Martin:
I understand the tradition of hating Jews. I have never heard of that tradition being supported by the idea that Jews hate white people.
Tony Jay
@Baud:
Why do you think Enlightenment Era Z.O.G. brought all of those swarthy bucks and alluring wenches over from Africa if not to wage a generational war against the White Man?
It’s all connected, Libtard. I thought you were supposed to be Woke.
Aussie Sheila
@Baud: I’ve never heard ‘Jews’ referenced as such in any civilised society as an amusing punchline. FFS.
No wonder the US is so outrageous in its coddling of Israel.
It’s a convenient camouflage for its inherent anti semitism. Which is what bloviating zionism is in actual fact.
mrmoshpotato
@Mel: I’m surprised Bubba Bo Bob Markwayne* (no, Autoincorrect, that isn’t two names) didn’t also endorse hair pulling.
*Apologies to the writers of Pinky and the Brain.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@Jeffery: From the same story that gave us a perfect example of 21st-century GOP negotiating tactics:
“You give us what we want in a week, or we beat the hell out of you and take it anyway.”
(In later editions, it was edited to “You give us what we want in a week, or we take it by force.” Which is much less pithy.)
topclimber
Laugh all you want but ain’t gonna be anyone telling Marky “bite me.”
Shalimar
In non-political news, Netflix has cancelled another group of shows mid-story. I am done with paying for more than one streaming service at a time. From now on, I will keep notes on things I want to watch and subscribe to each one of them for a month or two per year.
The big advantage they have is that they can tell full stories regardless of how popular they are and build up a library of great television. If they go to the trouble of licensing properties, license good ones and finish the showrunners’ vision for the story they want to tell. Cancelling series after a season or two is stupid and shouldn’t be rewarded with subscribers.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
The anti-Semitism was a lot more in the background until Trump’s election made the bigots feel they were safe to say it all out loud.
But yeah, this isn’t new. It’s one of the major foundational anti-Semitic tropes. It all rolls together around the idea that Jews are utterly, villainously evil. You can see how ‘Jews hate whites’ would be a big part of that messed up thinking.
Betty Cracker
@Shalimar: That hasn’t happened to me yet, but I would be pissed. In other programming news, I think the first half of the last season of The Crown drops today on Netflix, and another season of Slow Horses is coming up on Apple TV.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: The rant that the Illinois Nazi is shouting through his bullhorn in “The Blues Brothers”, the first time we see them, is actually a pretty accurate summary of the belief system.
eclare
@Shalimar:
That’s what I do with subscriptions, I usually end up switching between Hulu and Netflix (I am a fanatic for The Great British Baking Show).
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s been so long since I’ve seen that movie. I’ve forgotten the specifics. Thanks.
Princess
@Baud: Well, there was a guy named Hitler who pushed it hard.
Seriously, it never went away — it’s been underground in neo-Nazi groups but everyone can say the quiet part loud. The left hates Jews for being white and the right hates Jews for not being white. Horseshoe.
Baud
@Princess:
Right, I’m not questioning the history of antisemitism. I’ve heard it supported, for example, by the idea that Jews killed Jesus, or that Jews were not loyal to whatever country they lived in. I’ve just never heard this specific justification for antisemitism.
Betty Cracker
The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter blamed Jews for the immigrant “caravans” Fox News was then hyping nonstop because the synagogue had an immigrant aid society. The murderer accused the congregants of encouraging an “invasion” of immigrants to replace white people.
That’s the sort of company Musk is keeping these days. The GOP and its propaganda outlets like Fox News are complicit too, but Musk took it a step further by endorsing the idea that Jews are plotting against white people.
SteveinPHX
Now stepping into the ring!
MARKWAYNE “THE MANDIBLE!” MULLIN!
‘scuse the alliteration. Couldn’t resist.
eclare
@Baud:
I’ve never heard it, either.
eclare
@SteveinPHX:
Perfect!
Geminid
I discovered Magdi Jacobs (Mangy Jay) a couple years ago while reading Ragnarok Lobster’s Twitter account, so I wasn’t surprised last night when I found him reposting a picture of the smiling Jacobs, with the caption “I just turned 40.”
Ms. Jacobs followed up:
satby
@Baud: and here’s the scene from Blues Brothers.
Baud
@satby:
Wrong link. That was the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Aussie Sheila
@Princess: Er speak for yourself. Anyone who hates Jewish people for being white is both an anti semite and an ignoramus. But I repeat myself.
Right wing anti semitism goes to a range of tropes that are still current after a millennium of genocidal nonsense.
The coddling of Israeli settler colonialism by successive U.S. administrations has done nothing to enhance either Israeli security, Jewish security in the various polities in which they live and has trashed Palestinian rights, liberty and property.
The fact that the whole mess was mainly a creation of UK imperialism doesn’t make it any better. The US inherited/debt called UK colonialism post WW2.
Time’s up.
Israel needs assistance to feel secure. The Palestinians need support to gain their freedom, property and dignity.
The careless sentimentality with which even liberal and leftish US groups treat the issue of the displacement of the Palestinian people makes me sick. I have watched and listened to it my whole political life..
No more. Enough.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Basically it’s the idea that sinister Jews at the top of the pyramid are using Black or, in this case, brown people as “muscle” to oppress the poor salt-of-the-earth Christian whites in the middle of the sandwich.
And of course the Nazi version is starkly racial, but you can see politer versions of it in the right’s visions of the powerful “woke liberals” or “global elites” that they think are oppressing them. Liberal concern for the civil rights or proportional representation of minorities (who are imagined as dumb masses without agency) is just so the elites can use them as footsoldiers to stomp on Normal Folk. And sometimes the mask slips and someone just says it’s the Jews.
The science-fiction/fantasy writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, who got increasingly right-wing whackadoo as they aged, wrote a fantasy novel called The Burning City that I’ve only been willing to consume through summaries, but apparently it’s an extended allegory for 1990s Los Angeles set in some society that is stratified into three classes: the oppressive Lords who run everything, the indolent and feral Lordkin who do gang violence all day long, and the poor “kinless” stuck in the middle. The Lords egg on the Lordkin to pick on the kinless. The characters all have names that are, like, thinly disguised references to Rodney King and OJ Simpson and Ted Kennedy and such.
But I think about that a lot–that the right really thinks this is how the world works, that they’re the hard-bitten folk who some sinister elite deliberately oppresses by manipulating violent minorities to hurt them.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud:
Someone needs to watch The Blues Brothers this weekend. :)
Princess
@Baud: the Nazis specifically brought to the fore an idea of radicalized antisemitism. The Aryans were the “master race” and all the other “races” which they defined biologically not culturally, were ranked beneath them, with emphatically non-white Jews at the bottom, jealous and scheming against the rest. Its straight Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which I guess is about to be a best-seller again.
The old stereotypes of killing Jesus and money were kept but this new radicalized hatred came to the fore and never fully left. Frankly Aussie Sheila’s claim above that Zionists are really antisemites seems like a twisted backwards descendant of this too.
catclub
@Jay: I think Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary” refers to Johnson’s Dictionary. When Johnson said that ‘Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel’.
Bierce had Something along the lines of ‘I appreciate an earlier lexicographer, but I daresay it is the first.’
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
Thanks!
Gvg
@Baud: To be honest, I never got into the specifics of organized anti-semitisim before now. It was the past, until suddenly it came back. Lots of people seemed to have some little half remembered childhood predjudices that came back when they got old and senile. I knew the Germans scapegoated them because times were bad and they couldn’t actually fix them. I knew various kings in Europe had invited them in and protected them for their money and skills, then turned against them a few generations later and when the king and powerful nobles couldn’t pay debts or didn’t want to. I knew they got scapegoated over and over, but history taught underlying facts, not lies.
And after watching how the so called news doesn’t help by repeating lies, I can sort of agree that history should not be emphasizing what all the lies are, except at the advanced study level.
i don’t want a history book of the National Inquirer, and that is what a report on the history of Formal antisemitism would be like. I say formal….lots of people pick up a dislike and then just treat it like all their other dislikes with their own quirks. I mean the reoccurring stupid stuff like this shit.
Aussie Sheila
@Princess: Your slander is exactly the problem . If you think I am an anti semite you are either illiterate, ill willed or both. I won’t tolerate this kind of nonsense. Not here, not anywhere.
You have no idea my background or religion. You are a disgrace.
Instead of slandering people, you might learn some history. It’s better than speaking out of your arse.
Baud
@Gvg:
Yep, the hate comes first. The specific rationale flows from that. And as we’ve seen over and over again, the rationale doesn’t need to make sense.
BretH
@Rusty: vanity rides. Started noticing the new aggressive grilles a while ago and now can’t un-see them. GMC is by far the worst offender. I’m so old I remember when even trucks paid lip service to front end aerodynamics.
Matt McIrvin
@BretH: You know, when gas prices went way up in the 1970s there was a market reaction in which people started buying smaller, more efficient cars in place of the giant Detroit land barges they’d been buying. Seems like this time around, the price spike just drove people to keep buying the same monstro vehicles and… complain about Joe Biden. (Which makes me wonder if it’s really hurting them that badly.)
You can get hybrids and electrics, but you pay a premium for them and they end up being more lifestyle choice or tribal signaling than something you do for your wallet.
Geminid
@Geminid: I was glad Magdi Jacobs had a happy 40th birthday. The last year marked a turning point for her. She left Pennsylvania and an unhappy marriage and moved to Minneapolis , near her parents.
Ms. Jacobs is a good example of the many citizen journalists who have come into their own this past decade. She is somewhat of a generalist, but her commentary is informed by a good base of social science knowledge. Jacobs is much younger than me, but I have learned a lot from her dispassionate analysis even though I don’t follow her example as much as I should.
The Pale Scot
¿Quién es Más Macho?
Senor Llamas or Ricardo Montalban?
Marleedog
“Patriotism, n. Combustible rubbish ready to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name. In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit it is the first.”
@catclub:
satby
@Aussie Sheila: and you might be better to turn your attention to the growing antisemitism and Islamophobia in your own country, according to a quick Google search of current news articles from Australia instead of constantly showing up here to try to stir shit.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
At this point, it’s pretty clear that people’s views about the economy aren’t tied to reality.
SFAW
@Baud:
An armed Senate is a polite Senate?
sab
@Aussie Sheila: I agree our Republican MOCs are an embarrassment and poor role models, but haven’t the South Korean MPs bashed each other with chairs on the floor of their parliament?
Baud
@SFAW:
I wonder if dueling is subject to the filibuster.
SFAW
Sounds like Sen. Mullet’s got issues. Or is he drunk/drugged? Frequent threats directed at others might be a sign of … something.
Tony Jay
@Princess:
Ahem.
That right there? That’s an antisemitic trope of long standing, taking the Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy frothings of Herr Schickelgruber’s lot and welding them on to a comforting explanation for why those deluded Lefties have such a bad view on the transformative and civilising advantages of slavery and colonialism. Because of those Jews and their control of the global Cultural Marxism ideology again, innit?
Hearing it from wingnuts and conservatives is eyerollingly unpleasant, but that’s who and what they are. Hearing it regurgitated by Democrats and ‘centrists’ in the UK is just WTF, and not in a good way.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
Another example of an alarming development that turned out much, much worse than we were told it would be. Remember when we were told Elon Musk was simply interested in “free speech” and this purchase was just a business transaction?
Half of elite media are still on his fucking platform. They’ll lose their followers and ability to promote their books ad stupd Substacks if they leave Twitter! Priorities!
They could shut down Twitter in a week if they’d just fucking get off it but they won’t. Their careers and bank accounts are what’s important.
SFAW
@Baud:
We could ask the Parliamentarian, but he’s
in a Funkrecovering from a GSW.Baud
@Kay:
I wish Bluesky would open up its system. It seems to be the replacement to Twitter, if there will ever be one. But not if people need a code to sign up.
Chief Oshkosh
@Matt McIrvin:
The 70s jump was, in my memory anyway, much starker. Consider that most gas pumps simply weren’t made to show prices over a dollar a gallon. It seemed like overnight prices doubled (of course, they didn’t). Possibly a bigger injury to “life as usual” was that, for the first time since WWII, gas stations had no gas to sell. THAT really got people’s attention.
Aussie Sheila
@satby: Eff you. The level of anti semitism in Australia is dwarfed by the US having one party of a two party state devoted to anti semitism, thinly disguised as philo semitism directed at Israel, a project which the US was opposed to until the Soviet state supported its existence.
It’s a pity that criticism of either US foreign policy or Israel, or is that coextensive (?) is treated as ‘ shit stirring’’.
The level of denial about both US imperialism and its role in effing over the Palestinians is incredible. The fact that such an observation is taken as anti semitic on a centre left blog explains a lot about how all this happened over the last 75 years and why the rest of the world isn’t buying it any more.
Matt McIrvin
@Gvg: I think that for decades a lot of it just got thinly papered over as resentment about “Hollywood PC liberals” or “tenured radicals” or vaguely “global elites” or whatever–it was really still more or less hatred of the Jews but they didn’t call it that; there were euphemisms. Then Trump signaled that bigots could let their freak flags fly and they took the message.
What complicates it, of course, is the Israel/Palestine issue, in all sorts of ways, because it blows up the partisan alignments. Jewish Americans lean liberal, but they also lean pro-Israel, though there are huge generational splits. The right-wing government of Israel has been nakedly supporting right-wing US politicians, including some who are buddies with antisemites. There are, as we all know, “supporters of Israel” who support it either for alarming Christian apocalyptic reasons, or because they want diaspora Jews to leave the US and go to there. But there’s a strong strain of anti-Jewish bigotry in global Arab culture too that occasionally leaks into the rhetoric of pro-Palestinian advocacy in the US. But there are also plenty of people who jump to tar any advocacy for the basic human rights of Palestinians as antisemitic. And so on and so on.
It’s just a problem from hell. I think part of the reason Putin is so pro-Hamas is that whenever the heat gets turned up on this, he wins because it’s an internal wedge for his global opposition.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: I checked out an article on falling oil prices yesterday and was struck by a reason given for the drop: next year’s US oil consumption is forcast to be the lowest in two decades. Since a recession is not also predicted, my tentative conclusion is that greater fuel efficiency is finally having an impact. And the effect of EV adoption could be significant now as well.
In other oil news, the Biden administration just purchased 1.2 million barrels of oil to replace Strategic Petroleum Reserve stocks sold last year. Since canny Joe Biden sold high and bought low, we will make a profit of around $17 per barrel
Kay
@Baud:
It shouldn’t matter if they’ve been provided with an alternate to sell their work and influence. This is entirely career-driven and profit-driven for media personalities. They have decided that propping up Radio Rwanda is just fine it if they can still sell product- themselves.
I knew this is how he would use the platform and I’m a small town lawyer in rural Ohio. How did all these sophisticated and worldly genuises miss it? He TOLD US over and over this is what he intended to do.
Every day they are on that site they are responsible for what it has become. As we all know, the far Right needs an audience. If the elite audience went away Musk’s creation would wither and die.
BellyCat
@Aussie Sheila: I, for one, appreciate your so-called “shit-stirring!
Baud
@Kay:
But Blue sky isn’t an alternative until it gets more users, and it won’t get that until it opens up registration.
satby
@Aussie Sheila: fuck you back. Being an anonymous brave truth teller on the Internet to people who basically agree with you in the first place isn’t quite the flex you think it is. Plus, you know, the tedium of you saying basically the same thing each time you do. Comment as much as you want, understand that people don’t have to treat anyone’s comments with reverence. It takes a great deal of hubris to presume to speak for a different country, much less the “rest of the world”. Surprisingly, you don’t actually speak for anyone other than yourself, as do I.
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
Agreed. What worries me right now is leaders in Israel can meddle in US politics with literally no risk- when they back Trump (which they all did) they win and when they back Biden they also win.
They’ll screw Biden in a heartbeat because they get the same support from both parties and they are Right wingers who prefer Trump. There is no upside for Joe Biden here. It’s all downside.
Aussie Sheila
@BellyCat: I am appreciative, but not appeased. I have been a left wing activist in my country for over 50 years. Being called an ‘anti semite’ on a centre left US blog is a new one for me. I have witnessed Mossad activities in the Australian trade union movement up close as well as US interventions in actual trade union elections. I don’t think people here appreciate just how much US political tentacles reach out and touch even so called ‘allies’, how much it is resented, and how much Israel has learned from them and practices such techniques in many democratic countries. Calling sympathy for, and a desire for Palestinian self determination and freedom ‘anti semitic’ is simply insane if you are on the left anywhere except the US.
Kay
@Baud:
I love their petulant demand that the market deliver another platform exactly like Twitter for them to promote their work and careers and until they get one they will be backing this fascist. Fucking entitled brats.
They also worship rich people, Baud. Just like Trump, media created Elon Musk. They’re shallow and poor judges of character. They admire bad people.
Aussie Sheila
@satby: I don’t give a fuck whether you treat my comments with reverence of contempt. Really I don’t. What I won’t tolerate is being called ‘anti semitic’ by some idiot who knows squat about the history of either Israel or their own country’s role in its creation. Grow up.
Matt McIrvin
@Geminid: To be fair, even monster trucks and SUVs today are slightly more efficient than the giant cars of the 1960s (and smaller differences make more of a difference at the low end). They’d often get around 10-15 mpg, sometimes single digits. Today, an F350 is rated at 15 mpg, and an F150 is in the low twenties.
Chief Oshkosh
@satby: I don’t see why one must be responsible for the anti-Semitism of the entire continent in which one lives just because one points out some pretty glaring deficiencies in how things are going and discusses what may underlie some of the failures.
There is an extreme rightwing in Israel that’s headed up by an extremely corrupt leader, and that group has managed to stay in power for at least the last 15 years in a so-called democracy. Their policies and strategies included explicit support for Hamas, include allowing illegal settlements on the West Bank, and include interfering in US politics (heavily favoring the Republican Party). Those policies and strategies may be good for Israel or they may be terrible for Israel.
How’s it going so far?
3Sice
So what you’ll are saying is the GOP has a type, and it’s creepy gym coach?
That tracks.
Kay
Compare media’s outrage towards Left wing protestors who are anti semitic and Elon Musk. They don’t touch Musk. Because he’s 1. good for their careers and 2. they worship rich people – grovel before them in an embarrassing display.
They’ll be on Twitter today, business as usual. Musk could call for the elimination of a whole population and they’d still be counting their followers and promoting his brands.
Geminid
@Aussie Sheila: I usually disagree with half or more of what you say on this and other posts, but I do not think you are a shit stirrer. And I saw that your criticism of some supporters of Israel was qualified: you criticized “bloviating zionism.”
I won’t get into the question of whether the term antisemitism is elastic enough to include “bloviating zionism,” but I will say that while I am a Zionist in the same sense that Joe Biden meant when he said he is a Zionist, I believe that some of Israel’s most vehement advocates do that nation a disservice. This war is already bad enough without Western commentators weaponizing other people’s suffering for their own political ends, and that has been very harmful aspect of the debate worldwide.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
Frankly, it’s also insane for people in Israel to say they will (finally) get rid of Netanyahu when the war is over.
They’ve just given him an incentive to keep the war going. It’s been 15 years. At what point do they figure this guy out?
eclare
@satby:
QFT. Thank you.
Aussie Sheila
@Kay: Precisely. The charge of ‘anti semitism’ is levelled at those who are not in a political position to fight back. The US Republican Party is the most anti semitic organisation in the democratic world, but its pro Israeli stance shields it from the opprobrium that should be properly directed against it.
The international Right’s anti semitism is shrouded in anti Arabism and hostility to calls for justice for Palestinians. What makes it so outrageous is that successive Israeli governments have fostered this canard, ably assisted by US governments of both political stripes.
They are all guilty of both anti semitism and anti indigenous colonialism directed at the Palestinian people.
Soprano2
@Baud: Evidently they believe Jews are trying to “replace” them not with other Jews, but with non-white people. Thus the trope that Jews are allowing all the non-white immigrants to overrun the U.S., thus “replacing” white people. It’s nuts.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay:
I think that it is unrealistic to expect any group to walk away from the most useful tool in their field. And of course their careers and bank accounts are important to them – just like yours are important to you and mine are important to me.
Right here in this thread we are discussing that there are no viable alternatives to shXitter, and we use it essentially for leisure purposes, with little impact on our careers or bank accounts. If WE don’t shift to something when the stakes are so low, why should people who rely on it, even if indirectly, for a paycheck?
Maybe it’s more useful to focus on making shXitter better (essentially working to somehow have Musk removed from the helm is some fashion) or in spending OUR leisure time creating or promoting an alternative. That latter option is actually within our power, but we’re not doing much about it. shXitter is still used here and in every other center-left and left space I frequent. Just like we wanted Obama to fix everything (and later, Biden, and after him, we’ll want someone else), we hoped that Musk would kill off shXitter and solve the problem for us.
We’re lazy and lose focus easily. Just like every other group of humans. I don’t see why individuals in the press, or the press as a group, would be any different.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
the US was the first country to support recognition of the State of Israel. Truman pushed the UK to permit immigration of Jewish displaced persons into Palestine–those desperate persons had agency of their own–they refused to be sent back to Poland, where pogroms were going on even after World War II, or to stay in Germany, where they were housed, and were engaging in hunger strikes to convince the Allies to allow them to get to Palestine. (The UK did had restricted Jewish immigraton before and during most of the 1940’s.). Truman supported this migration, in part because he recognized (correctly) that there was no way the US Congress was going to approve significant resettlement in the US of the Jews who had survived the Holocaust.
Of course, as you no doubt know, that immigration of Jews from Europe was the smaller part of the Jewish migration to Israel; the majority of Jews in Israel arrived from the Middle East, Ethiopia and North Africa after 1948, many or most because they were kicked out.
PS–I love your settler colony, despite its racist past that makes the US seem enlightened by comparison.
satby
@Chief Oshkosh: but AS seems to feel we’re responsible for all the ills here. As I pointed out, berating people who basically agree is repetitive and pointless, but then I’ve seen this show from them for a few years now. Then she/they attacked Princess, more than once.
IOW, I said what I said. And as I also said yesterday to much acclaim, I have no fear of confrontation. Too many people here don’t seem to track what people say over time.*
* And AS has been singing the same song for a few years now, though current events may fine tune the message slightly.
Soprano2
@satby: I swear to God I saw a woman in the crowd scene in the beginning who looks like Sigourney Weaver!
Kay
@Aussie Sheila:
At the same time, I do think there has been what I recognize as anti semitism directed at US Jewish people since this began. I don’t follow it that closely and it comes thru even to me.
I hope Biden recognizes how angry a meaningful part of the D base is about this. It’s a real threat. It is all politically active people my grown childrens ages talk about. My middle son, who is a union member and “party” Democrat, dropped out of a text group of his high school friends yesterday because the fighting over this has gotten so vicious. My daughter has stopped donating to Democrats and is instead directing that to Doctors without Borders – she’s a PA and the scenes where the hospital workers are busting ass saving children with no power and supplies are killing her.
Aussie Sheila
@Soprano2: The replacement theory with Jews as its instigator is an old anti semitic trope. It is completely recognisable to anyone who has any knowledge of the last hundred years or more, particularly anyone on the left against whom ‘Bolshevik Jew’ is a slur that has long been slung.
Now however the trope has been turned on it’s head, and anyone who supports a free and independent Palestine is called ‘anti semitic’ and is accused of supporting another holocaust. It’s disgusting, transparent and its reactionary content and intent is recognisable to anyone who knows anything.
sdhays
@Matt McIrvin: And don’t forget that the pandemic really accelerated changes in remote work. Before the pandemic, I drove to work everyday. Since March 2020, I’ve been to an office exactly 4 times. In my current job, the nearest office is nearly 500 miles away, so my car pretty much stays parked all week.
There are drives (ha!) to get people back into the office, but the mix of remote workers who can’t come in is higher now than it was before, and I think that’s a permanent change.
Geminid
@Matt McIrvin: Last year I rode with a friend past Binghamton, New York in her four-door Honda Ridgeline truck. We got around 27 miles per gallon, mostly on I-81.
It was a pretty ride up and back. One of the highlights was seeing signs for the Joe Biden Expressway in Wilkes-Barre.
Aussie Sheila
@pajaro: Settler colonialism is ugly and unjust wherever it exists. In my country, in yours, and in Israel
RevRick
Amy Kaplan, in her work, Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire, talks about how two competing ideals of masculinity propelled propelled or resisted the drive for territorial expansion, which led to the Mexican War and its subsequent conflicts. On the one hand, was the martial view of manhood, emphasizing physical strength, domination, the defense of honor, and violence, prevalent throughout the slaveholding South and embraced Northerners seeking to justify their aggressions. On the other, was what she termed a restrained masculinity, favored by Northern Whigs, such as Abraham Lincoln, which valued responsibility, religion, temperance, and the domestic influence of women. Lincoln famously asserted that reason must master one’s emotions.
What appears to be simply a reflection of one’s personality instead has profound political consequences. And clearly, we see here, in these seemingly random outbursts, the multigenerational power of ideology and culture at work.
satby
@Kay: I hope Adam may get around to the psyops (run out of Russia) that’s egging a lot of the ugly confrontation on, as well as the ways both Hamas and Israel are spreading propaganda via video. It’s a self fueling outrage machine now.
Soprano2
@Baud: I think when people say “the economy” they’re talking about their high rent, the prices they pay at the store, and the price of gasoline. They aren’t talking about “the economy” the way pundits think about it. It is without a doubt true that many prices are much higher now than they were in 2020, for a variety of reasons. Where they fall down is blaming the president for it, because there’s not much he can do about the price of anything. IMHO reporters ask the wrong question when they ask “How do you feel about the economy?”. They should be more specific with their questions.
sdhays
@Baud: I wonder if registration is even the main issue. They’re still locked up so you have to have an account to even see content. Xitter content can be embedded and shared, so it has lots of network effects beyond its own network. Bluesky is still its own walled garden.
I don’t get why they’re doing that. Are worried about content scraping?
Baud
@Soprano2:
There will always be something. We saw how the economy turned around immediately when Trump won in 2016. Expect all the economic attitudes to change if he wins again next year.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Kay: On Saturday, I’m going to an author fair at the public library in Highland Park, IL. HP is a heavily Jewish suburb. As you may recall, it was the site of a mass shooting at a July 4 parade. It actually crossed my mind that some deranged person might take the chance to shoot people again.
Baud
@sdhays:
Yeah, it’s a bunch of things. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a roll out this slow.
Geminid
@Chief Oshkosh: I agree with much of your analysis here,but I would point out that much of Netanyahu’s tenure as Prime Minister since 2009 has been in coalition with center parties. That tenure was interrupted from June, 2021 to December, 2022 by a government led by Naftali Bennet and Center-Left party leader Yair Lapid. Only Netanyahu’s current government included political arsonists Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and their Kahanist party.
Kay
@Chief Oshkosh:
Oh, bullshit. NO GROUP are more scolding moralists than media people, EXCEPT when it comes to their own behavior. They have spent the last month tut tutting over Left wing Israel protestors while happily promoting their ow brands and careers on Musk’s site. They’re full of shit. They’ve created a happy little echo chamber on Twitter where they all cheer one another on and promote each others work and they are terrified to leave it.
Soprano2
@Kay: Credit where credit is due, NPR got off there a while ago, and they say it hasn’t made much difference for them at all. I wish the other news orgs would learn from that.
Anne Laurie
@Aussie Sheila: Fair warning — attacking other commentors personally *will* get you a time-out, and doing so repeatedly will get you banned.
I’m not a
pushoversweetheart like Cole, so keep that in mind next time you decide to have a hissyfit.Aussie Sheila
@satby: Why do you think the outrage against the Israeli actions in Gaza are Russian psyops? A lot of on line anti semitism is probably Russian bots, but there’s plenty of homegrown anti semites who don’t need Russia to encourage their idiocy.
I hope we aren’t going to see a new trope emerging that assigns ‘Russian influenced Agent’ to anyone objecting to the actions of a truly disgusting Israeli government.
Unless and until the centre left can distinguish between anti semitism and opposition to the unceasing coddling of every Israeli action against Palestinians, we will have unending opportunities for political mischief, aimed chiefly at the left, while pretending a philo semitism chiefly designed to protect the Right.
Soprano2
@Chief Oshkosh: It was much starker – gas prices doubled in a year after having been stable for a couple of decades. Many things were based on the stability of fuel prices, so when they doubled so quickly it threw the whole economy into a huge funk.
Aussie Sheila
@Anne Laurie: A hissyfit ? Is that what you call objecting to being called an anti semite? By all means, report me to the hall monitor.
WaterGirl
@Shalimar: That’s stupid and awful. Which ones?
WaterGirl
Jason Kander seems to think that if you’re a Markwayne type, the tough guy Mullin being stopped and scolded by 80-year old will be the most humiliating thing of all – and they will be mocking Mullin for it.
So sad!
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: That to me was extraordinary. Nothing abruptly changed when Trump entered office, but his supporters believed he had fixed the economy simply because they were now allowed to believe in numbers that they had previously asserted were fake.
There was a rally, I forget exactly when, at which Trump just out-and-out said this. He referenced good employment numbers and said “We used to say those numbers were fake but now they’re real, right?” and the crowd just roared. He’ll tell them he’s conning them to their face and they’ll just take it.
satby
@Aussie Sheila: Why do you think the outrage against the Israeli actions in Gaza are Russian psyops?
I don’t think all of it is, but a number of known security experts have been debunking a lot of the most incendiary stuff. And the voices of Palestinians who are angy that Hamas continues to use them as human shields are being somewhat suppressed.
The entire conflict is a nightmare and former allies Hamas and Netanyahu will use every chance to lie about what’s going on about it. Russia is just happy it’s distracting from Ukraine.
Geminid
@Kay: Netanyahu cannot keep this war going any longer than fellow War Cabinet ministers Gantz and Gallant allow. A lot of people did not notice this devopment, but 5 days into the war the PM was forced by pressure within Israel and from the US to accept creation of a three-man War Cabinet empowered to make all major decisions regarding the conduct of this war.
This agreement was ratified by the Knesset and has the force of law. It includes two Observers, Netanyahu ally Ron Dermer and Gantz ally Gadi Eisenkot, who like Gantz is a former IDF Chief of Staff. They are there to give advice, but also to keep Netanyahu from lying about War Cabinet decisions.
Normally, Netanyahu would try to bully his way back to primacy, but his public credibility is shot and Gantz and Gallant are not people he can bully.
So I do not think Netanyahu can prolong this war for his own protection. From what I’ve seen, Netanyahu’s removal from his Prime Minister post is a matter of when and not if.
Kay
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh, I think it’s a real concern. If I’m picking it up it’s pretty blatant – I am not involved in the issue. We had one (1) Jewish family in town and we would cross paths for 20 years (kids the same ages). We both went to the same dry cleaners and I once got their dry cleaning because I resemble the mother in the family – both of our dry cleaning had a high school marching band uniform, too! We would chat and she told me she had to go to Fort Wayne Indiana for religious services. More than an hour away.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2:
I think that often “the economy is bad” simply means “a Democrat is President”, with no further content.
Aussie Sheila
@satby: I don’t think they are all Russian psyops at all. Did you not read what I wrote?
I object to using undoubted Russian interference in western political discourse as an explanation for widespread opposition to the Israeli government’s outrageous behaviour in a crowded outdoor prison, and the refusal of many to face the truth of the occupation and theft by Israel of Palestinian lands and property since 1967. Let’s start there.
Mike in NC
The “leader” of the Republican Party is a 77-year-old toddler who wears a girdle, a diaper, and 2″ lifts in his shoes. Adult supervision is somewhat lacking.
Soprano2
@Geminid: Gas prices keep trying to drop here, but they keep popping back up. I saw $2.57/gal two days ago; now it’s popped up to $2.99/gal for some reason. I Googled but can’t find a reason why, sometimes it’s about a refinery being down or something with a pipeline. It’s not the price of oil.
Soprano2
@Kay: I think the less powerful people are, the more outraged the press is by them. That’s because it’s easy to pick on people without power because there are no consequences for it. If they call out Musk, however, there might be actual financial consequences for their organization, so they soft-pedal it. I think that’s one reason they’re obsessed with the Oberlin Councils of academia – it’s a soft target that they get a lot of points for.
pajaro
@Kay:
there have been massive demonstrations against Bibi for the past eight months, every single week. The total number of participants is as large as the country’s population–try to imagine a US movement that would have attracted 300 million people in total.
But the country’s existence is at stake, or at least its citizens perceive it to be, and the people (like my relatives) who have been demonstrating have been called back to serve in their army units for the time being. Bibi has brought in a centrist to temporarily form a unity government. His popularity has completely cratered–he is seen as responsible for Israel’s lack of preparation by a significant majority of its people, and they aren’t just going to forget who is responsible for the deaths or disappearances of their friends or family members.
Bibi will almost certainly have to leave when the war is over, and you are correct to believe that he is enough of a snake that this will incentivize him to keep it going, but most Israelis don’t seem to think that it’s possible to rerun the elections right now.
Soprano2
@Baud: Oh yes, without a doubt if TFG won the election *shudder* all the people now complaining about “the economy” would suddenly discover how wonderful the economy is, even before he took office! That’s why I say the reporters should ask more targeted questions, like “How do you feel prices for goods are affecting your life now?”. Asking people about “the economy” is useless.
Kay
@Soprano2:
True. Their anti cancel culture crusade was one of their more embarrassing lemming-like pile ons.
Bari Weiss and Matt Taibii and Bill Mahr believed Musk was a free speech warrior. Guffaw. Fucking dopes. Rubes.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
Right, you live in a settler colony, yet you get by with your land acknowledgement and are not asked to leave your house so an Aboriginal individual can move in. Likewise, my relatives, whose grandparents came to Israel in the 1930’s, should not be asked to leave theirs, and their country, which has existed for 75 years, should not be asked to go out of business.
Soprano2
@Matt McIrvin: I knew a guy online who loved TFG. He constantly complained about how the unemployment numbers were “gamed” under Obama, how the real unemployment was U6 or something like that. After TFG was elected he basically quit talking about it. I finally asked him “How come you don’t complain about how TFG is using the same unemployment numbers Obama did?” He made up some bullshit thing about how he still thinks U6 is right, blah blah blah, but basically it was that now he had a president he liked so it didn’t matter anymore. I’m sure he’s back to complaining about it again somewhere.
Kay
@pajaro:
Thank you for the info. It genuinely concerns me that people still believe this person is leaving voluntarily. He’s not. They are going to have to physically remove him from power.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: This is the basic theiry of white nationalism. Jewish people are blamed for the Civil Rights movement and the changes that happened because of that. Its a twofer, racist (takes away agency from black people and other out groups) and is antisemitic
The first time I came across it was during the Bush years when he was trying to get comprehensive immigration reform passed.
Kay
Mullin is an enrolled Cherokee. It pains me to admit this, but Republicans have had some success diversifying their party. A Republican here crowed to me the other day that their Prez primary was as diverse as a D primary and that is true.
Our kind of rote saying that it is all white people is just no longer true, at least at the federal level.
Matt McIrvin
@pajaro: One reason I’ve been reluctant to make too many oracular prounouncements on this is that I realize I do not understand internal Israeli politics at all. It’s easy for me to assume that Netanyahu is just the Israeli George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, but the dynamics don’t seem to be the same.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: I realized during the Great Recession that at least 90% of the U6 vs. U3 or whatever discourse is bullshit because these unemployment measures generally move in parallel. Maybe the top-line number is lowballing the number of people who have problems but it’s not going to say the number is going down when it’s going up.
I remember there was a website that some people liked back then called “ShadowStats” that purported to show a better measure of true unemployment, and a lot of people just assumed it was showing U6 instead of U3 or whatever. But it wasn’t. It was some bullshit thing that was concocted to track the other measures until the moment Obama entered office and then go absolutely wild. Progressives were mainlining a lot of right-wing conspiracy stuff in disguise.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: If you look at the voting patterns it is white people who are overwhelmingly voting R. Having a non-white person like Haley or Ramaswamy or a Herman Cain be a front for white nationalism doesn’t make it “diverse”.When over 80% of S.Asians and over 90% of black people are in the D column.
R grifters are a diverse bunch I will give you that.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
First of all, in the aftermath of the October 7th attack, many left groups in the United States immediately demonstrated in favor of the Hamas massacre, called it legitimate resistance, carried signs saying “by any means necessary” chanted “from the river to the sea,” These demonstrations occurred before Israel had begun to respond. These were from individuals who identified themselves as members of the left, who were supporting Hamas, an Islamist mysoginistic, homophobic, and overtly anti-semitic group, as any glance of its charter would show. So that happened.
As far as being able to support a Palestinian state and not be labelled anti-semitic, the two-state solution has been a part of US policy for a generation, and most American Jews support it. In the US, the worst Israel-at-all-cost advocates are Evangelical Christians, FWIW. Perhaps there’s less space to be nuanced in Australia, I don’t know, but here you can oppose Bibi and the occupation, most liberal American Jews do, and not be labelled an anti-semite.
StringOnAStick
People complaining about the price of goods would be very unhappy to live through a grinding period of deflation in order to get those prices back down to what they think they “should” be. How about pointing out the record corporate profits over the last year and politely suggest perhaps that has more to do with what they perceive as unfair prices, not Biden personally screwing them over? I crack myself up sometimes with the fantasies I spin.
Aussie Sheila
@pajaro: And your point is? Don’t put words into my mouth, and don’t presume what I think should happen once Israel is forced to relinquish its illegal settlements. Unfortunately for your argument, my country has belatedly recognised indigenous land ownership where there has been continued connection. Unjust in the light of the past 250 odd years? Undoubtedly . An improvement on the last 250 years, somewhat.
But I rather think Israel wouldn’t even consent to that accommodation. After all, the dream of a Judaea, from the river to the sea, with nary a Palestinian in between is not a new conceit.
Oh, and anti semitism has been around for a long time. It didn’t start on October 7.
StringOnAStick
@pajaro: My husband is Jewish and still good friends with many fellow Jews he grew up with, though they are mostly scattered across the US now. Most are not observant so they haven’t been going to services, and all but one are reform to very reform; the one who is conservative had a family event many of this group attended back in the 2000’s; I was shocked to see a huge poster in the entry area promoting a visit by Bibi to “tell the truth about Israel and the struggle against evil”, meaning all Arabs. He’s been cultivating American Jews for a long time, but the only people I see it working on is older and conservative Jews; there’s definitely a generational divide.
Matt McIrvin
@StringOnAStick: I forget which commenter it was here who said “they don’t even believe I’m a Jew”, concerning restricted definitions of Jewish identity in Israel. Which I have to believe is an element in some American Jews not seeing Israel as even a theoretical homeland.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
They have real diversity in their candidates and pols though. I don’t think we can continue to call this an exception when it includes senators, governors and legit presidential candidates. Haley and Scott were elected and they were elected by Republicans.
Mullin is actually the first tribal citizen to serve in the US Senate in 20 years. The last was Ben Nighthorse Campbell.
Baud
@Kay:
I agree. And frankly it’s a good thing. The GOP should be diverse, just as they should be sane. I’m not going to complain about either one, even if it makes it harder for us to win.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I didn’t call it an exception. Brown and native faces don’t make white supremacy more palatable except may be to white people who need that plausible deniability to vote R.
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
Anti Semitism has been around for a long time. but the number of incidents in the US has exploded in the last five weeks. The number of Jewish institutions that require police protection has increased, the number of people who have been threatened has increased, the desecration of places of worship as increased. And, as I indicated earlier, a lot of it has gone on in what folks had previously believed to be progressive spaces. (Things haven’t been fabulous for Arab-Americans either, FWIW, if you want me to discuss that, I can do it too).
pajaro
@Aussie Sheila:
so I won’t presume. What do you mean by illegal settlements? Are you talking about those people living in Israel within the green line, or the settlements in the occupied territories?
Geminid
@Soprano2: Gasoline prices vary for other reasons, but the price of oil is the baseline for these variations. Right now its fallen from $95 a barrel one yearcago to $77 a barrel.
The Saudis have been trying to keep prices up but weakness in China’s economy makes that harder. Also, US production keeps rising slowly but steadily.
Ruckus
@terben:
You are on thin ice when you have to rely on an 82 year old to save you from your own ego.
That 82 yr old might just be a bit smarter. And a bit less sure that they are always correct about everything.
I’d bet we’ve all gone through life knowing at least one person who always thought they were right, no matter the details or the recent history. Those people are the worst ones to have any power and sometimes the most likely to find a way to have some.
Ruckus
@Rusty:
Can’t they just go buy another gun and a new 4 door pickup with the latest over sized grill to sooth their manhood and just leave the rest of us alone? For all their money and power they are the most insecure group of people. Grow up.
Had to see that again.
Geminid
@Kay: Netanyahu will not leave his post as Prime Minister voluntarily, Ed. Israelis know this better than anyone. It will take a reorganization if the government by this Knesset or new elections. The first is the more likely way. That will most likely occur after the war is ended, but the guy is in very thin ice and I won’t be surprised if he’s out by this time next week.
But removing Netanyahu solves only part of the problem. They have to kick political arsonists Smotrich, Ben-Gvir and the rest of their party out of the government and keep them out.
Ruckus
@Baud:
Wrong link. That was the 2020 Republican National Convention.
OK, I just laughed out loud at that.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
By George, he’s GOT IT!
artem1s
@Matt McIrvin:
Bullshit. Honda hybrids cost no more than the ICE version with the same details. The specialty hybrids (Insight, CRZ) are usually cheaper than a comparable ICE. My CRZ sport was about 2-3K less than a Fit sport. The insights were somewhere between a Civic and an Accord depending the year. the new CRV coming out next year are loaded, but they won’t be any more expensive than any of their other fully loaded SUVs.
Paul in KY
@Aussie Sheila: Wondering if you’ve heard of this new US tv show called ‘NCIS Sydney’? Follows these cool & hip NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigation Service. I think) cats as they fight crime with their Aussie buddies in Sydney!
Am pretty sure just about all the stuff they do on show is BS.
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
There is also the concept that vehicles do now run better and get better milage than their predecessors because that is something that has been worked at with a lot of effort. That and experience. Anyway it has allowed some (GM in particular) to style trucks to appeal to somewhat toxic masculinity. Which is at least as ugly as the trucks.
Manyakitty
@Aussie Sheila: you might want to back up a little bit. Speaking as an American Jewish person, you don’t sound great. Listen to people with skin in the game, please.
Pink Tie
When I saw “no fightin’, no bitin'” at the top, I immediately thought of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TU7XRFM6cx0
“Let every Tom & Dick & Otto obey our golden motto, because what we need is brotherly love! Are ya listening Markwayne?”
Manyakitty
@satby: I’m still convinced Putin was behind the attack on Israel, at least as a cheerleader. I’d like to strap him, Bibi, trump, and musk into one of the worthless cyber trucks and yeet the whole lot into the sun.
Bill Arnold
@Aussie Sheila:
Yep, mostly agreed (there is some Russian amplification), but it is also always worth closely monitoring the activities of Russia’s large and very well funded extra-territorial influence apparatus(es). The downplaying of Russia’s influence operations, particularly those in 2016, by elements of the USA “left” angers me more that I am allowed to say here. (Particularly the academics.)
They (Russian influence operators) will be fucking around again (already are) in the USA 2024 elections, and elsewhere. At least Biden and administration have been reading the riot act about political interference in USA elections to Netanyahu and his henchmen. I hope for their sakes that they listen.
Manyakitty
@pajaro: thank you for saying all this so eloquently.
I am so tired.
Pink Tie
@pajaro: exactly this. Israelis correctly perceive that their existence is at stake in one way or another. My relatives are there as well, and my great-grandfather spent everything he had to rescue family from the European Holocaust and bring them to the United States; some eventually made their way to Israel. So the diaspora Jews, here and elsewhere, have Israel as the place where they *know* they can go. Personally, the right-leaning Jewish people I know here in Houston (including someone who works for AIPAC!) are cynical, bad-faith assholes just like the rest of the right-leaning Christians I know. AS’s arguments about American allegiance to Israel show no understanding of what Israel’s existence means to American Jews. Cold War manipulations affected the whole goddamned world; that isn’t why we support the existence of Israel, unless you happen to remember that it is the only democratic state in the Mideast. SMH.
Paul in KY
@Tony Jay: Not as woke as he thoke!
Paul in KY
@Baud: How about blood of white children used to make the passover bread? That bullshit (evil, scurrilous lie) has been around for a long time.
Paul in KY
@satby: I hate Illinois Nazis! And any other Nazi as well.
prostratedragon
@Pink Tie: Thanks! Olive Oyl is so cute.
Paul in KY
@satby: Now Aussie Sheila didn’t mention ranked voting (thru comment 76).
Pink Tie
@prostratedragon: I grew up with all the old Popeye cartoons and still love them so much, cancel culture be damned! Last summer I read Wild Minds by Reid Mitenbuler, tracing the development of animation through the 20th century. This is actually a topic touching on what diaspora Jews did in midcentury America — the early animation studios in New York, the development of some iconic characters and what became of them, how the studios traveled from NYC to Florida and later California. Utterly fascinating.
Justice for Betty Boop!
Paul in KY
@pajaro: These pro-Hamasers are nobody kooks who generally are trying to go the edgy-Antifa-anarchist route to try and shag that artschool boho girl. It’s like a mirror version of the Illinois Nazis in the Blues Brothers movie: losers who no one should give a shit about what they think, say or believe.
Paul in KY
@Aussie Sheila: Israel should return to the 1967 borders and then let the Palestinian state know that if they attack Israel again, then they’ll take em over again and it will really take alot of hoops to jump thru before they ever get their state back.
artem1s
@Kay:
so what? the GOP can turn out a token candidate or two. so can the Green Party. which of the GOP candidates are currently in office? and which have been voted into a high level or federal level office? which have an actual chance to unseat the front runner – the indicted white guy? Currently the Dems have more POC and women in office or holding positions in the three branches of government than the GOP has for it’s entire history.
Kay
@artem1s:
Well, as I said, Mullin, Haley, Scott and Jindal before Haley. Two southern states (SC and LA) and now OK.
Elected.
It is a fact that their primary field is as diverse as anything the D’s put up.
Matt McIrvin
@artem1s: I was thinking of the Hyundai Sonata, since that’s what I got.
Looking at the MSRPs for the line now, it appears there is a premium but it’s smaller than the difference between the trim levels, maybe about $1k-$3k.
WaterGirl
If anyone wants to read Zandar’s lovely obituary, it is linked in his Author page.
View by Past Author and then click on Zandar.
Matt McIrvin
@Ruckus: I cannot stand modern truck/SUV styling, and in general I want a car that is a car and I even think bubbly subcompacts with big windshields are cool, but it’s clear that my tastes are not those of the American buying public.
The modern taste seems to be to desire a vehicle that is as huge, aggressive and terrifying as possible–I recall one survey where people enthusiastically agreed that they wanted to drive something that screamed “get out of the way, I’m coming through!”
dnfree
@opiejeanne: My 3-year-old (about 47 years ago) was bitten in a preschool that was run as a class for high-school students. The solution one of the high-schoolers came up with was that my daughter should bite the other girl back. Fortunately the adult teachers intervened, because my daughter was horrified.
Matt
Sounds like he’s rabid.
Damn shame there’s only one way to know for sure…
Ruckus
@Matt McIrvin:
There is one that is by far the worst. I believe a chevy or gmc, I think a 2023 version and it looks like it was designed by a 6th grade class that was told “Make it as ugly as possible, and that it looks like you’d never, ever want to be seen in it or really never ever hit by this POS.” It looks like about 30 people worked on the design and the final was the worst design aspects from each of them.