Wednesday, October 11, 2023
Tuesday, October 10, 2023
Never forget that the Baptist Jimmy Carter called for accepting the legitimacy of Hamas in 2014, but Hamas' solution has always been one state, not two
As if there were any doubt any longer.
Here:
And the US and EU should recognise that Hamas is not just a military force but also a political one.
It cannot be wished away, nor will it cooperate in its own demise. Only by recognising its legitimacy as a political actor – one that represents a substantial portion of the Palestinian people – can the west begin to provide the right incentives for Hamas to lay down its weapons. Ever since the internationally monitored 2006 elections that brought Hamas to power in Palestine, the west’s approach has manifestly contributed to the opposite result. Ultimately, however, lasting peace depends on the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel.
The president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Albert Mohler, condemned Carter at the time.
The Lutheran World Federation engages in reprehensible moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel
The Lutherans are "deeply concerned":
(LWI] – The Lutheran World Federation is deeply concerned about the attacks of Hamas on towns and the civilian population in Israel, and the subsequent actions of the Israeli army, which have claimed lives on both sides, and led to injury and mayhem in an already volatile region.
They condemn nothing.
The international justice committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops can't bring itself to mention Hamas, let alone condemn it
What a worthless lot they are.
"Launched from Gaza". By whom?
"On all sides" = moral equivalence for the animals of Hamas.
What's important is "the status quo of the holy places", not that defenceless Jews were literally butchered by the hundreds.
They want no war in response to war. All the Jews would die, then. Is that what Catholics really want?
“On October 7, the Feast of the Most Holy Rosary, the world watched the operation launched from Gaza and the rapid call to arms from Israel that ensued. Almost 50 years to the day of the launch of the 1973 Arab–Israeli War, once again war is spilling out in the Holy Land. With it brings the mounting casualties and hostilities unfolding on all sides, and increased threats to the Status Quo of the Holy Places among Jews, Muslims, and Christians further dimming any hope for peace.
“The world is once again shocked and horrified by the outbreak of ferocious violence in the Holy Land. Reports have surfaced indicating large numbers of wounded and dead, including many civilians.
“I join with Pope Francis in his call for peace and his condemnation of this widespread outbreak of violence. As he stated in his Sunday audience, ‘May the attacks and weaponry cease. Please! And let it be understood that terrorism and war do not lead to any resolutions, but only to the death and suffering of so many innocent people.’
“May all who love the Holy Land seek to bring about among all the parties engaged in the fighting a cessation of violence, respect for civilian populations and the release of hostages.
“As we pray urgently for peace, we recall especially all the families and individuals suffering from these events. We call on the faithful, and all people of good will to not grow weary and to continue to pray for peace in the land Our Lord, the Prince of Peace, called home.”
Here.
ADL complains Jews are just chopped liver to the American left compared to blacks
But where are the university presidents who gave clear statements about
all these other causes that mattered, Black Lives Matter . . .?
Why are they silent on dead Jews? Why is my inbox empty with messages from CEOs from major religious movements?
Why are they silent on dead Jews? Why is my inbox empty with messages from CEOs from major religious movements?
The gas and electric utility Consumers Energy here in Michigan is price gouging under Green Energy Joe, yours probably is too
Compared to November 2020, my new budget plan payment for combined natural gas and electric for the coming winter will be 42% higher than it was three years ago, despite the fact that natural gas prices have normalized almost to the penny.
Electricity is up 25% since Green Energy Joe got elected and isn't coming down, but that can't account for it since I consume far less electricity than natural gas on an average basis. More than 65% of my energy consumption in kWh is from natural gas in the last year, as it is every year, less than 35% is from electricity.
A 25% increase to 35% of my old bill would result in a total payment today less than 9% higher. Instead it's 42% higher.
Remember that the utility uses natural gas to generate the electricity, too, and it's paying normal prices today for the gas, not the inflated prices of the recent past.
There's no excuse for the extra cost I'm paying.
The utility is price gouging.
31 Harvard University organizations sign letter holding Israel entirely responsible for Hamas' attack
“We, the undersigned student organizations, hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all the unfolding violence.” ...
[Larry] Summers tweeted: “In nearly 50 years of @Harvard affiliation, I have never been as disillusioned and alienated as I am today.”
Recent Harvard graduate, gun control activist, and president of Leaders We Deserve David Hogg has absolutely nothing to say about hundreds of slaughtered, gunless Israelis on his feed.
He is indeed the Leader We Deserve from America's premier university.
Monday, October 9, 2023
Americans have been killed by Hamas in Israel, Israel's ambassador says Americans have been taken hostage, but Joe Biden has nothing to say today
"We have reports that several Americans may be among the dead. We are very actively working to verify those reports," the U.S. secretary of state said on "Meet the Press." ...
Meanwhile, in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation," the Israeli ambassador to the U.S., Michael Herzog, indicated that Americans are among Hamas’ hostages.
Sunday, October 8, 2023
Saturday, October 7, 2023
John Judis finds 49% of adults now identify as independent, 25% Democrat and 25% Republican
From 31%, 35%, and 33% respectively two decades ago.
Growing percentages of the electorate are alienated from both parties.
OMG, the primus refers to the singular bloody dictator Augustus Caesar, the pares to the supine aristocrats of the Roman Senate whom he had subdued by murder
Joe Lonsdale, here:
The founders set up a country in which aristoi would rule alongside and with the people, first among equals, primus inter pares, but not over them in the monarchical or oligarchic sense. Nobody would have a permanent or divine right to rule in the United States. The founders had had a sense of duty to rule honorably, and a sense of humility that their governance wasn’t an end in itself — but a means of preserving the rights of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This man is a small sea of confusion, who writes that aristocracy is "rule by the few".
The oligarchs laugh at Fugazius.
Um, excuse me, America was founded by people who had given up . . .
. . . on England, and on Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the rest.
The libertarian impulse to go Galt, to run away, is a feature of America, not a bug, a built-in self-destruct mechanism which went off most spectacularly and destroyed the root in 1861.
The rest of the plant has been withering and dying on the vine ever since, overtaken by tenacious weeds.
Freedom for Christian religion combined with plenty of Lebensraum, home country memory, and time made it seem otherwise in the face of the steady decline, but here we are with Scylla and Charybdis for choices come November 2024.
The Declaration of Independence was a repudiation of politics. Two thirds of the country was not down for the struggle. Secession was a repudiation of politics. There was resistance to military conscription everywhere, but especially in the Confederacy. We were content to let the world burn for more than two years before the Japs forced our hand on December 7, 1941. We have right now the unthinkable European land war in its 20th month and sports is what trends on Twitter day in and day out. Mao killed by the tens of millions during The American Century. Americans quietly go to church every Sunday while tens of millions are aborted. It all began with migration, the most basic form of repudiating politics.
We do not need, in short, to relearn to think politically. Most of us have never thought politically in the first place. Apolitics is our politics, but this horror vacui is why the left seems to have won and why we hate them. We hate politics. As polarized as we think we are, as rigged as our politics is, 100 million eligible Americans still did not vote in 2020.
You do not get political blood from this turnip.
Ultimately, nothing could be more un-American than to give up on America.
The American idea, alas, is precisely to stay out of it.
Here.
Friday, October 6, 2023
Nature is self-correcting
A study published in the European Journal of Endocrinology showed that all trans people were at a “significantly higher risk” of a host of serious and potentially deadly medical conditions, including heart attacks and strokes.
More.
LOL: Biden promised in 2020 that there would not be another foot of wall built under his administration
The campaign ads for Trump write themselves.
What Henry Cuellar doesn't appreciate is that the illegal aliens have a 4 million year old solution called walking
In the Grauniad, here:
“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressman Henry Cuellar said. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.
Full time employment remained strong in September 2023 at 50.3% of population
Full time also still averages 50.3% for the first nine months of 2023.
Recession delayed, again.
Compare previous full year averages:
Thursday, October 5, 2023
ROFLMAO: Republican governors bussing illegal aliens to liberal states makes Joe Biden reverse his promise not to build another foot of wall
The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas
FILE - A border wall section stands on July 14, 2021, near La Grulla, Texas, in Starr County. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, the Biden administration announced that they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers — a tactic used often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement on the U.S. Federal Registry with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
Related stories
Although no maps were provided in the announcement, a previous mapshared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area.
“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the highest-elected official in the county, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
Starr County is home to about 65,000 residents spread over about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that includes ranchland and part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental advocates say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and animal species like the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
“A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
During the Trump administration, about 450 miles (724 kilometers) of barriers were built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts as part of his ongoing immigration enforcement from the state level after the Biden administration initially halted them at the start of his presidency.
The DHS decision on Wednesday contrasts the Biden administration’s posturing when a proclamation to end the construction on Jan. 20, 2021 stated, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment.
The announcement prompted political debate by the Democratic administration facing an increase of migrants entering through the southern border in recent months, including thousands who entered the U.S. through Eagle Pass at the end of September.
“A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
“After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
Ugly American news
An American tourist, 40ish, destroyed two second century AD Roman statues at the Israel Museum because they violated the Torah.
Sad story.
OK who does that other than ISIS and the Taliban?
Average protein prices per pound August 2023 vs. 2019 annual average
Ground Beef: $5.076 / $3.807, up 33.3%
Pork Chops: $4.359 / $3.339, up 30.5%
Bacon: $6.502 / $5.613, up 15.8%
Chicken: $1.958 / $1.495, up 30.97%
Dozen eggs: $2.043 / $1.396, up 46.3%
Dried beans: $1.702 / $1.344, up 26.6%
Gallon milk: $3.927 / $3.036, up 29.3%
Cheddar cheese: $5.897 / $5.308, up 11.1%
Cup of yogurt: $1.576 / $1.115, up 41.3%
One mechanism was a foreign remittances tax, but Paul Waldman and Donald Trump just leave that out
Here:
When he ran for president in 2016, few of Donald Trump’s promises thrilled his supporters more than his pledge not just to build a wall on the southern border, but to force Mexico to pick up the tab. “And who’s going to pay for it?” he’d say at his rallies. The crowd would shout back joyfully, “Mexico!” It wasn’t about the money; the point was to conjure a fantasy of America standing tall and dominating our neighbor; their humiliation would be our glory.
A fantasy is just what it was, as Trump now admits. At a speech in Iowa on Sunday, he blurted out the truth. “When you hear these lunatics back there,” he said, pointing at the news media, “say, ‘Trump didn’t get anything from Mexico,’ well, you know, there was no legal mechanism. I said they’re going to help fund this wall, but there was no legal mechanism. How do you go to a country, you say, ‘By the way I’m building a wall, hand us a lot of money.’”
Of course it was about the money. Everything is about the money.
It wasn't a fantasy to neoliberal Bush 43 pal Vicente Fox, who took it seriously enough at the time when Trump first proposed to make Mexico pay that he wouldn't fucking pay.
This is revisionist history by Trump and by Waldman, which pretends there was no Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, nor serious elite opposition to its provision for a foreign remittances tax.
Trump would simply like to erase the history of his phony immigration promises, and Waldman would simply like no one to entertain seriously the particulars, which show there is a giant pot of money easily taxed to pay for border security.
Foreign remittances to the Latin South reached $142 billion in 2022, and Mexico's share was $60 billion.
The government of the United States farts away billions of dollars every minute of every day. Funding a $25 billion wall is a flea on that elephant's back. The fierce opposition to it is the thing of real size.
Wednesday, October 4, 2023
Wanting-it-both-ways DeSantis strikes again
At the same time, though, I look at guys like Chip Roy, Tom Massie, Jim
Jordan, and they’re basically saying there’s not a plan to go forward
with whatever Matt Gaetz is doing.
Tuesday, October 3, 2023
Republicans barely control one half of the legislative branch and eight of 'em decide to eat each other instead of to live to fight again in 45 days
Brilliant, just brilliant.
McCarthy removed as speaker 216-210.
The roll call vote is here.
Eight Republicans joined 208 Democrats to depose McCarthy as Speaker.
 |
| the eight Republicans who voted to oust McCarthy as Speaker included that slut Nancy Mace |
 |
| not even that Scrooge Thomas Massie voted to depose McCarthy |
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| Nancy Pelosi had just enough class not to vote at all |
How many Congressional Democrat carjackings have to occur in DC before they call it an insurrection?
Texas congressman carjacked in Navy Yard by 3 armed suspects, staff says
There have been 750 carjackings in D.C. so far this year, according to police data. That is nearly double the number of carjackings at this time last year.
Monday, October 2, 2023
Congressional Black Caucasians most hurt
The Congressional Black Caucus had urged Newsom to appoint Lee, saying she was the "only person with the courage, the vision, and the record to eradicate poverty, face down the fossil fuel industry, defend our democracy, and tirelessly advance the progressive agenda.
Sunday, October 1, 2023
Fox Business' broad inflation report contained an error
Here's Megan Henney, September 29th :
An inflation measure closely watched by the Federal Reserve ticked higher in August as steep prices continue to squeeze millions of U.S. households.
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index showed that consumer prices rose 0.4% from the previous month, according to the Labor Department. On an annual basis, prices climbed 3.5% — up from 3.3% recorded the previous month, underscoring the challenge of taming high inflation.
She's referring to PCEPI.
That measure isn't up from 3.3% the previous month. It's up from 3.4%, and 3.2% the month before that.
Jeff Cox at CNBC got it right, same day, as usual:
Including food and energy, headline PCE increased 0.4% on the month and 3.5% from a year ago. Headline inflation has been creeping higher in recent months after hitting 3.2% in June.
Forbes also had it right, because it actually checked the most recent data, which Fox evidently did not:
The most recent PCE price index data was released on September 29, 2023, covering the month of August. The
headline August PCE inflation figure was +3.5% year over year, which
was up slightly from the revised annual rate of +3.4% in July.
Three of 9 Target store closings are in progressive shit-hole Portland OR, CNN story gives them just 4 paragraphs at the end
Here.
Nobody wants to talk about the shit-hole progressives have made out of Portland, which first came to light nationally when the place erupted after the death of George Floyd.
The hallmark of progressive rule in Portland is that the justice system in their hands won't prosecute crimes, so the police are demoralized and now have interminable staffing problems. Who wants to arrest the same people over and over again knowing they'll just have to arrest them again over and over?
The murder rate in Portland is 1.85 times the US rate.
The robbery rate is 2.85 times the US rate.
The assault rate is 1.8 times.
The burglary rate: 2.56 times.
The theft rate: 2.7 times.
The motor vehicle theft rate is 5.3 times the US rate.
There are nearly 11 times the crimes per square mile overall in Portland than the national median.
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