Ranxerox

Well, so much for American football then, the Bible really frowns on touching the skin of a dead pig....

Personally I think Israel fumbled the ball with this one.  The HAMAS attack was particularly heinous and broadcast across the world, everyone who did not watch in horror was giving themselves away.  It was something that serious pro-Palestinian nations could not actively endorse or excuse.  I think if Israel had played up the horrors inflicted upon it, called on the wider arab nations to condemn HAMAS, to expel them from their safe havens to face justice for the actions of their organisation and to force HAMAS to return the hostages they MIGHT have broken the back of the HAMAS organisation and potentially began a healing process.  I would have followed it up with a promise to release the non-HAMAS prisoners in Israel and a development promise to improve the infratructure of Gaza.
 
It seems so easy to sacrifice the lives of living soldiers and to excuse the sacrifice of innocent Palestinians when you can blame HAMAS for hiding behind them, but almost impossible to sacrifice the vengence owed to those already dead under horrific circumstances.  It is definitely an easier political line to take, to satisfy the short term demand for justice/vengence.  The current policy seems impossible to me - they will kill many HAMAS fighters, they will degrade HAMAS' ability to operate and attack Israel in the immediate future BUT they will radicalise a whole new generation of Palestinians both in the Middle East and beyond, they will provide "justification" for future horrors in what is a massively assymetric conflict, and the cycle will continue.
 
I think it is too late for a ceasefire - the Israelis are already too far in to withdraw now without significant victories, they have already damaged their credibility as victim and need to emphasise their ability, and willingness, to kill those who attack their citizens as a form of disincentive on future terror.  The disagreements are already too polarised into who you are for and looking for who is the real villain rather than looking for a longer term solution.
 
😞

They're very hard to keep track of when they multiply like rabbits. It's as if all of Trump's misdeeds over the past half-century are catching up to him at once.

I remember back when GHWB was campaigning for President, a news commentator described how Bush was in reality what Ronald Reagan had only pretended to be. Reagan wanted to hobnob with the social elite that Bush was born into. Reagan played a star athlete in the movies, Bush was captain of his university softball team. Reagan played a war hero, Bush commanded a bomber during WW II, was shot down behind enemy lines and led his crew to safety. Reagan played a cowboy, Bush owned and ran a working ranch.

Not a single Democrats needed to vote for McCarthy.  All that needed to happen is for a dozen Democrats to say that that the Republicans needed to sort out their own messes and refrain from voting.
 
The decisions to go all in for getting rid of McCarthy may bite them and the rest of us in the butt in 43 days, when the continuing resolution expires, and there is no one in the speaker's chair to negotiate with and the extreme right wing feels more empowered than ever.

Donald Trump tried to purchase a gun at the Palmetto State Armory in South Carolina. That matters more than you think.
 
 

Agreed. She was an accomplished representative of California and servant to the people. I prefer to recall that aspect of her career, which in my opinion overshadowed anything after. We all have moments when we stumble, she stood strong for many years and had major accomplishments in legislative service that none of her recent contemporaries can match. RIP Senator, condolences to her family.

A recent AP poll made up of 10,000 13th and 14th century Eastern/Central Europeans and Central/Western Asians voted Swifties as "Most Feared Menace You Don't Want to Piss Off" over  Mongolians and the Bubonic Plague.

I mean, it didn't say they'd grow in your mouth... 😁

So the war against knowledge and education may be turning from cold to hot.
 
"Replacement theory" is a ridiculous lie, but damned if some people don't make it sound almost appealing.

Which one?

This relates to a book I just finished and which I will recommend: The Shipwrecked Mind: On Political Reaction, by Mark Lilla. He argues that reaction is just as important a political force as revolution, though much less studied. They are in a sense mirrors of each other: The revolutionary hates the world as it is because it isn't the Golden Age to come; the reactionary hates the world as it is because it isn't the Golden Age that was lost. But while the revolutionary is driven by hope, the reactionary is driven by despair.
 
Despite the subtitle, not much of Lilla's book is about politics directly. He's a Humanities professor, not PoliSci, so he looks at philosophers, novelists, and other scribblers, not polirticians and activists; the people who provide the intellectual underpinnings and express cultural moods.
 
One chapter is, "From Mao to Saint Paul." Apparently the "apostle of the heretics" (early Church father Tertullian) has become rather popular with disappointed Marxists who sigh for the lost Golden Age of revolution. I won't even try to summarize the argument, but the Epistle to the Romans provides much to attract both Christian fanatics and secular revolutionaries:
 
One of St Paul's biggest recent fans is an unapologetic French Maoist who argues that the megadeath massacres of Stalin, Mao and other revolutionaries, Marxist and otherwise, are okay because revolutionary enthusiasm places a society "beyond good and evil," and "each revolution justifies the ones that came before" in a chain going all the way back to Moses. Though Judaism, he thinks, has become reactionary and so something must be done about the Jews.
 
Other topics include the perennial "Decline of the West" genre, Jihadists, French novelists, Jewish philosophers, Neocon fustian, and TradCaths sighing for the supposed "harmony and coherence" of the Medieval Catholic world. All in all, an interesting tour of people whose heads are in places I find very strange. Good inspiration for supervillains, too.
 
Dean Shomshak

He also said Love one another as I have loved you

Why Your Christian Friends And Family Members Are So Easily Fooled By Conspiracy Theories

Op-ed from conservative (but no fan of Trump) Jonah Goldberg, on Trump's continuing and bizarre hold on the Republican party. Main points: Republicans are in thrall to delusions of persecution from which only Trump can save them; and that for better or worse, democracy is working in that voters persistently ignore supposed kingmakers' attempts to control them.
 
Jonah Goldberg: Is there any way to shift the bizarre Republican conviction that only Trump will save them? (msn.com)
 
ADDENDUM: Point of clarification because of bad grammar: Republicans believe only Trump can save them from the persecution. He encourages their delusions.
 
Dean Shomshak

You've heard the story of Krypton, right?

Congratulations on the new job.  I'm at the far end; I retired effective a week ago.

This seems legally problematic from a Article IV, section 1 of the Constitution perspective.
 
Section 1.
Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. And the Congress may by general Laws prescribe the Manner in which such Acts, Records and Proceedings shall be proved, and the Effect thereof.
 
 So they can do that, but I’m not sure how it will play out (and honestly I’m not certain they’re sure about that either, this feels pretty political rather than a basis for legal proceedings).

Congratulations on your new job.

Congratulations on your new job.

Hmmm, I'm not sure if that is brag or a cry for help. 

Hmmm, I'm not sure if that is brag or a cry for help.