Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So many bastards, so little time.

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

No one could have predicted…

He imagines himself as The Big Bad, Who Is Universally Feared… instead of The Big Jagoff, Who Is Universally Mocked.

You cannot shame the shameless.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Let there be snark.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

People are complicated. Love is not.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

He really is that stupid.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

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Reader Interactions

121Comments

  1. 1.

    Pete Downunder

    Mrs Downunder has been watching news footage from Syria. She noticed that in all the scenes of people in the streets celebrating there is never even one woman. Female oppression continues in the Arab states.

  2. 2.

    MobiusKlein

    I’m workshopping an idea for the California State Govt:
    Today, if you get mugged, you go to the cops, and tell them what happened. No guarantee they can track a guy down, but nobody would laugh at me for at least reporting it.

    But if you get cyber-crimed, you all would call me silly to go to the cops and report it. But does it have to be that way?
    Imagine your local police station referred you to a CA cyber-crime force, which would help you restore your systems and accounts, and also gather evidence, shut down local operations, and work to track down the culprits around the world.

    Today, our personal cybersecurity is left as an exercise for the reader, which is well beyond 80% of folks. We don’t expect our citizens to be fire-fighters, so why should we expect them to be cyber-security experts.
    California should become the leading protector of its citizens, and a global force for tracking down and imprisoning those criminals. Make California the place to live for people tired of being abused by internet attacks.

  3. 3.

    Boris Rasputin (The Evil Twin

    As far as I can see, the lizard people behind Trump will keep him propped upright for two years, long after it’s obvious to everyone that there’s a broomstick down his back and he’s totally out of it. 25th Amendment, and 10 years of J D Vance.

  5. 5.

    Pete Downunder

    @MobiusKlein: Excellent idea. Years ago my firm was victim of attempted scam (we avoided harm more by luck than skill) and I reported details to law enforcement including FBI but they did nothing so far as I know.

  7. 7.

    MobiusKlein

    @Pete Downunder:

    My wife fell prey to a scam this past week, and we are unwinding the consequences.  And I work at the company the scam email was posing as even!   I knew who to get in touch with, and how to unwind things on that side – but God help the rest of the folks scammed.

    So I imagine there can be a better approach, where victims can get the help they need without knowing the folks on the inside.  And maybe even track down the scum doing it.

  8. 8.

    MobiusKlein

    I’m going to start with all the VOIP fake caller ID stuff.   It boggles my mind that it’s still allowed to fake coming from Brentwood.

  10. 10.

    Ramalama

    @MobiusKlein: I love this idea. Experts should be doing the heavy lifting in helping people respond to cyber crimes. Would take away that huge psychological burden, too. Everyone thinking they should have known better.

    Also just throwing it out here but my life has gotten considerably easier and more secure using a password manager. Not closely relevant but adjacent.

  14. 14.

    Dangerman

    Damn. She’s 60? No shit. I’ve always been told that you divide your age by 2 and add 7. Sorry Elle. Too old for me. Plus I see you dated a vaccine skeptic. DQ.

  15. 15.

    Boris Rasputin (The Evil Twin

    @WaterGirl: Sorry, new computer, need to reset all the things I’ve forgotten about long ago. Yes to the second parenthesis, the lizard people are Steve Bannon (he of the Homeless Preppie” look,) Stephen Miller, and just about everyone behind Trump.

  18. 18.

    WTFGhost

    @WaterGirl: “the people really controlling trump” = lizard people, I assume.

    I thought of the same scenario, and, it would have to be done without Trump knowing it, because shoving him out would be the kiss of death. That’s what people who think they can “play” him keep forgetting – he’s still a child, living in a tinderbox, and he has a flamethrower.

  19. 19.

    catclub

    @Jay: So Israel helped the Syrian rebels by kneecapping Hezbollah.  But they also helped Assad by bombing an ammunition and supply dump that would have gone into rebel hands.

    So how conflicted are they over the recent turn of events?

     

    How much support does HTS have from Iraqis?

  21. 21.

    catclub

    @Boris Rasputin (The Evil Twin: 25th Amendment, and 10 years of J D Vance.

     

    Is this already giving up on elections ?( I guess not since you limited it to ten years).

     

    But Trump did not even get a majority of votes.

    I don’t see JD Vance getting as many.

  22. 22.

    different-church-lady

    New York Times Pitchbot
    ‪@nytpitchbot.bsky.social‬
    Bash Assad wants you to forget all about Bashar.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @WTFGhost: Someone wrote to me suggesting that lizard people can be an anti-semitic slur, so I thought I would check with the person who wrote it about what they meant by it.

    I have heard the phrase lizard people a hundred times, probably more, always as a derogatory comment, but I had never heard that interpretation before.

  26. 26.

    Fair Economist

    @MobiusKlein: I like that idea. Fighting cybercrime is not something ordinary police are good at and we need an easy to get government help now that it’s so prevalent.

  27. 27.

    Jay

    @Pete Downunder:

    Women in the US still don’t have equal rights, and y’all haven’t had a 13 year Civil War that just ended, with the future unknown, where rape and torture was a combat tactic.

    Keep an eye on the black areas, we know how ISIL treated women.

    https://xcancel.com/clashreport/status/1865811690815729829#m

    Clash Report
    @clashreport
    10h
    Timelapse of 13 years of Syrian Civil War:

    🟥 Assad Regime
    🟩 Syrian Revolutionaries
    🟨 PKK/YPG
    ⬛️ Islamic State
    Dec 8, 2024 · 5:32 PM UTC

  28. 28.

    Starfish (she/her)

    @WaterGirl: Here is Abbie Richards’s upside down pyramid. Lizard people lies at “Denver International Airport.”

    Now I am not sure what our airport has to do with lizard people, but it has something to do with it.

  29. 29.

    Aziz, light!

    It appears the reason Putin murdered tens of thousands of Syrians was to prevent the completion of a pipeline that would have delivered Saudi and Qatari natural gas to Europe, thus ensuring the gas monopoly that Russia had before invading Ukraine. I assume that Syria’s new leaders will want to get the pipeline built.

  30. 30.

    Jay

    @catclub:

    When the US Invaded an f’d up Iraq, looted arsenals in Iraq became a major source of weapons for conflicts in the Sahel and the Middle East, and we don’t know which militia’s were going to wind up in control of that area, so I can see Israel bombing arsenals anywhere near the Israeli Border, the Border with Lebanon and outside the Golan Heights DMZ they just occupied

    We don’t know how “popular” HTS is amongst the Syrian People, but they did control a large area of Free Syria, eventually worked well with other rebel groups and now control large area’s of Syria and seem to be the most powerful of the rebel groups.

  31. 31.

    Martin

    @MobiusKlein: the problem as I understand it is that the police, in aggregate, are not scaled for the sheer volume of internet crime that occurs. It’s not so much a question of jurisdiction and reach of resources (which is a problem – a local crime is local and the cops are good at local issues, the FBI is good at national issues, intent crime is quite often global) it’s also that the amount of daily internet crime is an order of magnitude or more as meatspace crime.

    So, it’s a good proposal, but I don’t think it’s a new idea. The CA AG is already responsible for a lot of this stuff and gets referrals.

    I think getting the scale of the problem down is the first step, and that’s hard. Section 230 removes all incentives to get the carriers to do that. And I think that needs to be tweaked in various ways. As a start I think anyone with Sec 230 protection needs to be a mandatory reporter. You can’t moderate crimes away – you have to report them. That would help us understand the scale of the problem and add pressure to build solutions. And I think systems to remove these bad actors via their endpoints would also be needed, which is hard, but we’re talking about shrinking the problem so that law enforcement actually has a chance to do something.

    I’ve spoken before of the problem of cognitive overload, where your brain just says ‘fuck it’ and gives up. Institutions have the same phenomenon, where the scale of the problem is so overwhelming that you just define the problem away. Maybe you say ‘not our job’, maybe you say ‘not a crime’, maybe you drop it in the shredder so it no longer exists.

  32. 32.

    NutmegAgain

    @Pete Downunder: I’m really glad you (and the Missus) mentioned that. I’ve seen the same in so, so many news clips from highly patriarchal societies. It’s always crowds of men protesting, cheering, whatever. No women to be seen. It ticks me off that that fact is never mentioned.

  35. 35.

    WTFGhost

    @WaterGirl:

    Thanks – thinking a moment, I should have recognized that it was a slur, but the “broomstick down his back” made me think of conquering lizard people for… reasons. And if anyone would think he was carrying America into a bright new future, with his bestest friends and their book, To Serve Man… well, not even W would have fallen for that, but Trump so totally would.

    Sometimes I’m too innocent. Apologies to anyone who thought *I* was thinking something else, I was thinking the OP was a joke about anthropomorphic lizards (and was wondering what the prob was – now I know).

  37. 37.

    Gin & Tonic

    @NutmegAgain: ​
    What was striking about the 2009-2010 “Green Revolution” in Iran was precisely the opposite – the massive numbers of women in the streets.

  38. 38.

    eclare

    @Starfish (she/her):

    Denver’s airport has some truly bizarre murals that easily feed conspiracy theories.  I thought that notion was nonsense until I flew into there, and I thought these are…weird.

  40. 40.

    WaterGirl

    @WTFGhost: I don’t think that was being used as a slur in this instance, and I’m not suggesting that he was.   I figure it’s best to let the person speak for themselves, but it appears he has left the thread.

  42. 42.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Another Scott: You see, they supposedly sell mattresses – they’ve got a store in every second-tier shopping center. Yet you never see any customers there, you’ve never bought a mattress there, and nobody you know has, either.

  43. 43.

    Lyrebird

    @Starfish: ​
     I hope I am reading you right bc that was funny, needed a laugh in these off-the-rails times
    @Pete Downunder: ​
      FWIW the clips I have seen have shown women, both the released prisoners and also among the people “shopping” in Assad’s former house.

    I would never move to Syria myself, and I have never traveled there, but I have coworkers from there & from Turkiye – To add to what Jay already said, the Syrian people have gone through decades of hell, the victorious rebels have distanced themselves from ISIS and built some impressive coalitions in that hell…

    imnsho today is a day for rejoicing with freed Syrians.

  44. 44.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Jay: ​
    We both know the answer. It was just very striking visually – my son was single then, and had/has an attraction to dark-haired women with that sort of appearance, so he commented on it frequently.

    Yeah, not great motives, but you can’t turn off human nature.

  46. 46.

    Lyrebird

    @Jinchi: I thought Lizard People was a reference to the1950s scifi trope. Ive never seen it used as an ethnic slur.

    It is a reference to an active conspiracy theory.

    I do NOT want to look up any data here, but I do wonder if a Venn diagram with “People who believe aliens control the world” and “People who believe in a vast Joosh conspiracy controlling everything” has some overlap.  (ETA: people holding both views would use it as a specific slur in accordance with their belief system.)  As a non-alien of that particular faith, I do not think of it as a slur except against government officials, but I am sheltered.  ETA again: Kalakal below has the facts!

    Thanks @WaterGirl: for being so thoughtful!

  47. 47.

    kalakal

    @Jay: Yeah, I always thought it came from the aliens in V.

    David Icke , really looney UK conspiracy theorist and charmless git managed to combine disguised Alien lizards with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion back in the 90s

  48. 48.

    H.E.Wolf

    @different-church-lady: ​
    Probably a tenuous connection with Wilmer the gunsel – a word which has come to mean either “gunman” or “catamite” – a minor character in “The Maltese Falcon”, who may or may not have an implied sexual relationship with Kaspar Gutman.

    ETA: He does indisputably have a gun. :)

  49. 49.

    Tony G

    @Pete Downunder: Back in 1979 a popular revolt in Iran replaced a corrupt, repressive leader with an equally corrupt and repressive — and very misogynistic — group of religious fanatics.  The same thing might have just happened in Syria.

  50. 50.

    WTFGhost

    @WaterGirl: Yes, my reply was inelegant – and I’m sorry to the OP if I did sound like OP’s post had something wrong. You’re free to delete my inelegant response if you would like – it reflects my *confusion*, and not any flaw in what the OP had said, so it could hurt feelings, but not provide new info.

  51. 51.

    MobiusKlein

    @Martin:

    The “Fuckit” factor is big, as well as the “Someone else’s Problem field”

    The mass amount of cyber crime of all severity makes it hard to even start.

    For me, problem one is how a person with a compromised system is already behind the 8-ball.  How do they even report a problem on line, or even find out the right number to call.   Folks are in a panic.  Getting those folks immediate help, would have such benefits.

    How many folks would California have to hire to have a useful citizen’s cyber police? And with scale, so all the banks, payment companies, and such could get notified when Joe Bob has reported they got scammed.

    It is possible – many of the individual financial companies have competent and funded departments tracking fraud.  Getting more scale and coordination is possible.    I fucking hate it when I see the attacks made on my user base, and know others do too.

    But there is no great way to apply that information beyond a single company.

  52. 52.

    Suzanne

    Is there any update about if they were able to get into the lowest levels of the prison? Last I saw, they were trying to cut or smash into the lowest levels.

  55. 55.

    karen marie

    @MobiusKlein: And pay for it with a tax on corporations that collect, use, and store personal info. It infuriates me that individuals have to fix problems caused by companies that have lax security because they are not held responsible for breaches.

  57. 57.

    Jay

    @Suzanne:

    They are trying to tunnel in, no word of success so far.

    @Suzanne:

    The “buffer zone” in the Golan Heights is basically a DMZ between Israeli occupied Golan, and Syria, patrolled and manned by UN Forces. It was established to stop Israel and Syria from shooting at each other and raiding each other.

  59. 59.

    Martin

    @MobiusKlein: They’d need national and global investigatory reach. We’d need one of our lawyers to help understand the feasibility of giving that to a state agency so they can reach out and investigate, arrest, get extradition etc. but that also comes with a lot of costs. It’s not cheap. If most of the crime is coming out of say, Russia, there isn’t shit you can do about it, really.

    And that’s a big part of the overall problem. There’s a cost mismatch. The cost to be a cybercriminal is essentially zero. The cost to stop it is high. The losses due to cybercrime may well be below the cost to stop it. That’s a hard economic square to circle.

    And if you try and do prevention – blocking IPs, tearing down access to VPNs, I don’t think the state has any authority there.

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @Jay: And given there is no Syrian government to object, I suspect that is now part of Israel, and possibly more land beyond it.

  65. 65.

    Jay

    @John S.:

    The reason the area is still a DMZ is because the locals drove off the SAA and rebel groups used it as a sanctuary zone.

    As with all of Syria, we will see what happens.

  66. 66.

    MobiusKlein

    @Martin:

    Yeah, California does not have a Seal Team to extradite from India.

    But any time the local phone system gets in touch with a Californian, they have a start of jurisdiction.  That phone company is doing business in CA, and has a Point of Presence.  Start with what is in reach.

    As for cost, the economic cost of cyber crime in general is high – from ransoms vs large companies, hospitals being locked out of their computer systems, all the way down to to the 25+ basis points added to EVERY transaction in fraud costs, we are already paying a ton.

  68. 68.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Jay: It would be monumentally stupid for Israel to try to de facto annex more Syrian territory. Given the current state of Israel & its government, that is no deterrent.

    Israel occupied Golan Heights to seize the heigh ground & serve as a buffer to potential aggression from Syria. That should have been enough of a barrier. Seizing more territory to buffer the buffer zone is how imperial creep happens.

    We’ll see. Israel may choose to eventually withdraw, as the IDF has in southern Lebanon, but continue to exercise military dominance over the region, in violation of Syrian sovereignty.

  69. 69.

    karen gail

    Just read the article where Stephen Miller said in first 100 days Trump is going to shut border, begin deportation, put in place massive tax reform and deregulate to point that fraud will become legal.
    What the plan appears to be is to allow “white collar” crime to become legal and at the same time strip away any and all protections that people need.

  71. 71.

    ColoradoGuy

    Part of what bothers me about Bitcoin is that it is the currency of choice for ransomware attacks, as well as Dark Web sales of heroin and machine guns.

    Of course, it’s also for money launderers and speculators, but that’s the political appeal for shady actors who really don’t like dealing in dollars or Euros. But any way you look at it, it is the tool of choice for international cybercrime.

    I’m starting to get the impression a lot of Trump’s base are people, particularly young men, who think they are living in a heist movie, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Reality is dull, boring, and goes on 24/7, so they’d rather live inside an action movie. Bitcoin has a magnetic appeal to these folks … a combination of important-sounding economic gibberish mixed with the thrill of criminal-adjacent activity, but without any physical danger.

  72. 72.

    Peale

    @karen gail: PE and VC are sitting on a lot of stuff that they want to shed but can’t because they either can’t hide the fact that these companies lose money and will lose money or they are so far out of compliance with bookkeeping let alone accounting that there’s no way they should have an IPO. So they are about to shoot the regulators again. Welcome to bubble 2025, this time with AI and FinTech.

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @ColoradoGuy: I’m starting to get the impression a lot of Trump’s base are people, particularly young men, who think they are living in a heist movie, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Reality is dull, boring, and goes on 24/7, so they’d rather live inside an action movie.

    Dan Olsen floated the theory that young men learned the lesson from 2008 – scamming people out of their saving won’t be punished, and the people getting scammed won’t be made whole.

    In this system, you’re a sucker if you play by the cultural rules.

  74. 74.

    sentient ai from the future

    @MobiusKlein:

    i’m only now reading through the comments, but for at least the last decade and a half i have been asserting to whoever would listen to me (not many) that cybersecurity is a public health discipline.

    even with the recent pwning of our telecom infrastructure by china, that doesn’t get around all the jurisdictional issues embedded there. but FUCKING NOBODY IS TALKING ABOUT THIS OUTSIDE OF THE VERY INCESTUOUS SILOED COMMUNITIES.

    if i’m being cynical, i must conclude that the click-based attention economy is so opposed to overt, frank discussion of that framework that they would permit a fascist to come to power even while threatening clearly and unambiguously to commit atrocities.

  75. 75.

    sentient ai from the future

    @ColoradoGuy:

    “currency of choice” in fact soft-pedals it.

    cyptocurrency’s existence itself enables ransomware attacks.

    this attack vector did not meaningfully exist before the widespread acceptance of cryptocurrency.

  76. 76.

    VeniceRiley

    I can update everyone with news on BBC, who sent in an older female correspondent by car into Syria (no border check guards at all) and they had several crowd shots with women in them.

    I’m too sleepy to further report

  77. 77.

    MobiusKlein

    @sentient ai from the future: ​
     
    I don’t quite grok what you mean about cyber security as a public health issue – but am willing to hear more.

    The silo thing is real. Professionals at companies have NDAs, plus if your company has an edge in security, it’s a competitive advantage vs the market. You do better the worse your peers do.

    Tragedy of the commons?

  78. 78.

    sentient ai from the future

    @MobiusKlein:

    cybersecurity is a public health issue because state actors, like russia or china, have no compunctions about weaponizing the information they have pwned from our own poorly defended infrastructure.

    2016 was the proof of concept, that illicitly-obtained demographic and social media data could be used to microtarget voter turnout efforts.

    the data that the tech companies collect might not be accessible directly by the government in question, but adversarial governments are seeking to access that data specifically so that they can use it to extend their own power.

    cybersecurity is public health because authoritarianism is fundamentally antithetical to public health.

  79. 79.

    Jay

    @MobiusKlein:

    I don’t quite grok what you mean about cyber security as a public health issue – but am willing to hear more.

    Hospitals are a key attack vector for data hijacking, ransomware and process blocking because peoples lives are on the line if a Hospital can’t access patient records, and everything going forward has to be on paper.

    They tend to pay up quick.

  81. 81.

    sentient ai from the future

    @MobiusKlein:

    put more simply, cybersecurity is a public health issue because lack of it permits state actors to inject health disinformation into our discourse, which is eagerly uptaken and spread by credulous nitwits.

  84. 84.

    Jay

    @Mike in Pasadena:

    The root of calling Bernie Saunders “Wilmer” on this site, is that from 2016 on, “Bernie Bots” would search this site for any mention of Bernie, or Bernie Saunders, and then flood the site with comments.

    Why “Wilmer”?

    It’s a trope name in US films and plays for a “hayseed” like character and as far from “Bernie” in search terms as possible.

  86. 86.

    sab

    @Yutsano: X links don’t work for me any more but I appreciate the effort.

    In the best of times Twitter was a major time sink…All those adorable kittens and ducks and baby moose…

    Nazis  not so adorable.

  87. 87.

    YY_Sima Qian

    It seems Bashir al-Assad had lost the confidence of his own regime elite & mass supporters. Damascus surrendered in w/o a fight in what amounts to an intra-regime coup & mass defection. Video through the link.

    Ragıp Soylu
    @ragipsoylu

    BREAKING — New Syrian flag has been raised to Syrian Embassy in Moscow. Diplomats chanted “free Syria” and “Syria belongs to all Syrians”

  88. 88.

    Jay

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Not sure, this counts as a “coup”.

    The poorly paid, poorly trained and poorly armed SAA refused to be meat cubes for the ruZZians and Hezbollah.

    With no meat cubes to exploit the ruZZians, (other than those surrounded and trapped) and the Hezbollah ran away.

    It would seem like what remained of the “Syrian Government” told Assad and his cronies to GTFO and not let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, and we might be able to avoid massive bloodshed and preserve some parts of the Government.

  89. 89.

    Bruce K in ATH-GR

    @sab: Y’know, it just struck me that in the wrong light, the new logo of the former Twitter bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a swastika.

    Or maybe I’m just tired from spending too long last night bludgeoning virtual fascists (Indiana Jones style).

  90. 90.

    sab

    An old question on middle east news. What does Juan Cole think, because very few others have the language skills and knowledge background to comment fairly and informatively. MSNBC has some but let’s not blow up their careers.

  91. 91.

    sab

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: I just hate that whenever I wanted to get out of the new Twat I would instinctively click on their x and that would get me deeper i stead of out.

    I have been yelling in caps on this site for almost a decade that twat=cunt and is completely unacceptable in American linguistic usage, but am finally admitted that I was wrong and that we need twit and twat as perjoratives.

  93. 93.

    sab

    @Bruce K in ATH-GR: That too ( swastika) but also how you click out of a site. So every time you mean to click out of elon’s sucky site you are instead affirming interest.

    I am still unsure whether Elon was a super rich idiot savant used by Thiel and others (my belief) or whether is his an actual business and political genius,

    I just know the Bushies really fucked up royally when they funnelled a huge fortune at this guy because of whatever US company he just bought.

    He didn’t develop anything, SpaceEx or Tesla and the others. He just used his money to leverage himself into control and then used his weird sales skills to expand.

  94. 94.

    sab

    @Jay: I do actually like the idea of this paricular Syrian (Syria has a warm sunny coastal climate) spending his last years in Russia. He could have staywd in the UK as an opthomologist but instead he chose to go home and demolish his country.

  95. 95.

    Geminid

    @Jay:

     

    @YY_Sima Qian: It would be monumentally stupid for Israel to annex more Syrian territory in the Golan Heights. That’s been one of quietest conflict zones in the region since the two nations finalized their ceasefire agreement following the October War of 1973.

    I expect Israel will return to their former positions once a provisional government is established in Syria, if not sooner. We’ll know for sure before too long. The Israelis already have what they need in the Golan; if they go for more they’ll be buying trouble for no practical gain.

    Speaking of Israel, their Prime Minister is scheduled to testify Tuesday morning in his corruption trial that has proceeded in fits and halts since April of 2021. The eel-like Netananyahu has been trying to wriggle out of taking the stand, but last I saw his court date is still on.

  96. 96.

    sab

    Woke up a while back (insomnia) and finally decided to go to the kitchen for a snack, and there was Solomon (one of our satby rescues) perched on top of the fridge. He is a huge cat. 17 pounds and very thin. I fed him some treats, got my snack, and went back to bed. His sister is asleep under my bed. My prior cats are jealous and annoyed.

  98. 98.

    Jay

    @Geminid:

    Israel hasn’t been “pragmatic” since Rubin was murdered, and has become less “pragmatic” now that his murderers are in Cabinet.

    The “buffer zone” for Israel has been “quiet” through out the Syrian Civil War, because the UN Peacekeepers are there and despite it being an enclave for “The Rebels”, it was the IDF and IAF that kept the SAA away.

  99. 99.

    Geminid

    @sab: I don’t trust “Bibi” to not be monumentally stupid. Netanyahu’s legal and political problems have made him a desperate man. But he does not have sole control of Israeli military and foreign policy.

    But like I said, we’ll know more about this move in the Golan before too long. I just don’t think they’ll stay.

  100. 100.

    sab

    @Jay: Rubin = Rabin?  Spellcheck.com.

    ( Not criticizing. Just trying to clarify. My stubby fingers hit the wrong key everytime I post a comment.)

  102. 102.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Jay: ​
     

    There is a longstanding Reich wing CT that all the rich and powerful people on earth are actually alien lizard people in human skin suits.

    Elon Musk sure makes this theory seem plausible. ;-)

  103. 103.

    Geminid

    @Jay: The buffer zone has been quiet since 1974. The Syrian Army has shown no interest interest in making it otherwise, They did in October of 1973, but they haven’t since.

    I don’t know why you are explaining to me how Israel has not been “pragmatic” since Rabin’s assasination. I did not assert that in my comment, and I did not imply it any more than you had in yours.

    But since you have, I’ll say I think Ariel Sharon showed pragmatism when he left Likud in 2001, formed a new party and coalition, and then withdrew from Gaza . We’ll never know how far Sharon would have taken his policy of “Separation” because of his stroke.

    I thought the Bennett/Lapid government that preceded the current one showed pragmatism. Arab governments in the region seemed to think so too, and they might know something.

    The government Naftali Bennet and Yair Lapid put together lasted only lasted 18 months, from June of 2021 to December 30, 2022. The last six months were as a caretaker government.

    They didn’t fight a big war, and they didn’t resolve the decades-old Palestinian problem, so a lot of people with a “general” interest in Israel and the Palestinian question never even noticed it existed. But I thought at the time that this was a promising development, in a pragmatic sense.

  104. 104.

    Geminid

    Syrian rebels are circulating a picture of a gaunt and haggard man they freed yesterday from the Sednaya prison. They’re asking anyone who recognizes him to get in touch, because the man no longer knows his own name.

  105. 105.

    Geminid

    Both Reuters and Al Arabiya report that the Syrian National Army (SNA) has taken control of Manbij, a city of ~100,000 residents northeast of Aleppo.

    The SNA is a proxy force controlled by Turkiye’s M.I.T. intelligence agency. They’d been fighting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which took Manbij from ISIS in 2016.

    The SDF was organized by US forces based in Northeast Syria as part of the Obama administration’s efforts to supress ISIS which had taken over large areas of Syria and Iraq. The Kurdish YPG militia is the largest component of the SDF, and that is why the Turks wanted them out of Manbij. Turkiye regards the YPG as a rebranded unit of the PKK which it has been fighting since 1984.

    The YPG still controls the enclave of Rojava, east of the Euphrates River and bounded by Turkiye on the north and Iraq on the east. Kurds there have a strong interest in acheiving some degree of autonomy in the new Syrian political system that has yet to be established.

  106. 106.

    Jay

    @Geminid:

    TRIGGER WARNING – graphic violence

    Did you see the vids of the “body press”?

    Assad forces would hang the condemned. Stick their bodies in a 100 ton hydraulic press with drains for the blood, break up the crushed and flattened bodies, load them in garbage bags, and dump them just outside the prison walls.

  109. 109.

    Geminid

    All the Risk players have gotten their maps out and are redrawing Syria. One popular map shows an Alawite country in northwest Syria along the coast, an Sunni Arab state in the middle, and an Israeli-sponsored “Freedom Corridor” running from the Golan Heights to Syrian Kurdistan. When one Israeli posted the map a Turk responded, “Nice. That will make us neighbors. We’ll come over for tea.”*

    Nothing of the sort will happen though. Every nation involved in the region has emphasized the necessity of maintaining Syria’s national integrity and sovereignity. So the Risk players will have to find other people to be counters in their geopolitical games.

    * Actually, Israel and Turkiye have had decent neigjborly relations ever since 1948, when Turkey was one of the first nations to recognize the new state of Israel. Turkey and Israel were allies throughout the rest of the century. The relationship has gotten rockier in the Erdogan/Netanyahu era, but they’re still not hostile despite the Gaza War. But both nations are much better off not sharing a common border, and so is everyone else.

  112. 112.

    Geminid

    @Jay: It’s a good thing most of Syria’s Kurdish people were able to stay out of Assad’s clutches. Now they’ll have to reach some sort of understanding with the other Syrian rebels, and win representation when a bew government is formed is formed.

    Syria’s Kurds may hope to achieve a semi-autonomous status like the Kurds next door in Iraq. There, four northern provinces are controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government as provided under Iraq’s constitution. Those provinces include six million Kurds, and this is the closest any large number if Kurdish people have come to an independent Kurdish state.

  113. 113.

    Geminid

    @Jay: I was thinking mainly of the nations in the Middle East. But it’s better for everyone that Benjamin Netanyahu and R.T. Erdogan aren’t close neighbors.

  114. 114.

    TBone

    Josey Wales of the Nicked Ear stopped eating again yesterday.  Will not touch the many plates of kitty tapas I prepare throughout the day, trying to tempt him. I’ve given all kinds/brands of soft cat treats, broths, every flavor of Fancy Feast. He did eat a few bites of my beef pot roast last night.

    He’s losing even more weight, is very lethargic, and seems to have given up despite the oral steroids (or because of them – he’s traumatized every time we have to hold him and put the plastic syringe in his mouth).  I believe he may be much older than we first thought.

    I’m not giving up yet, but am preparing myself for the worst.  Each time this has happened over the last few weeks, he surprised me and bounced back to eating (small amounts though) and perking up again.

    Calling vet today as she urged at our recent appointment.  I hope she has further, better intervention.

  116. 116.

    lowtechcyclist

    @ColoradoGuy: ​
     

    Part of what bothers me about Bitcoin is that it is the currency of choice for ransomware attacks, as well as Dark Web sales of heroin and machine guns.

    Of course, it’s also for money launderers and speculators, but that’s the political appeal for shady actors who really don’t like dealing in dollars or Euros. But any way you look at it, it is the tool of choice for international cybercrime.

    But for ordinary people, it’s like buying shares of a stock in a fictitious company that has no assets and does no business. If I buy shares of Ford or McDonalds or Amazon, there’s an underlying business there that the value of those shares is based on, and as long as the company is doing good business, there’s a limit to how much of a loss I might have to take if I have to sell my shares at an inopportune time. But with Bitcoin et al., there’s nothing there. You’re buying shares in nothing.

  118. 118.

    Doug R

    @catclub: ​
     
    I think any time you have less weapons floating around especially in the ME it’s a good thing.
    Plus it gave the Assad regime one less reason to fight and you never know when these jihadis will turn on you.

  119. 119.

    AWOL

    @H.E.Wolf: “Gunzel” is Yiddish for, from the lack of a better term, “a bottom.” Hammett snuck the joke into his manuscript to screw with his editor’s head to describe Wilmer (think Elisha Cook Jr) , a young gunman in “The Maltese Falcon,” who has aa crush on the Fat Man’s daughter but who is also being sexually harassed by the Levantine (think Peter Lorre), who is a male character. This leads to Wilmer making some hot-headed decisions that benefit Sam Spade (thing Bogie).

    So essentially “Wilmer” is a gay slur.

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