Saturday riff

The beautiful Fallbrook Spring is definitely in our rear view mirror and we are getting into the time of serious summer heat. Still every season has its charms and the Santa Margarita River Valley is beautiful any time of the year, even without the purples of spring.

I was driving home the other day and I saw a blue bird hopping along the high canyon road that I travel on every day leaving and coming home. I wasn't sure if it was a small scrub jay or a bluebird (could have even been a blue grosbeak I suppose) but it had a big blob in its mouth.

I slowed down to take a gander and a big toad jumped out of its beak, free, the bird flew away. I laughed, the bird was definitely fighting outside of its weight class and pay grade. Fight in the dog, not the dog in the fight.

I came home the day before yesterday and there was an osprey on the power pole with a huge fish in its mouth. The sea eagle is such an expert hunter, with its gigantic sharp talons.

I stopped and grabbed my phone but couldn't catch the fish from my angle.

Shame.

The truth is I haven't carried my camera around for about three months. I've been busy and on sabbatical. I am ready to bring it home. Miss shooting, I have missed a lot of good captures.

When I hear people say their cell phone is plenty I have to laugh.

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My bromeliad ballansae is starting to bloom again and fluoresce, three of them right now.

The plant is so happy and spreading like visual wildfire.

Just starting to get the flower spike, which will turn into a giant peppermint tower in a matter of weeks!

Yesterday the cereus started with its beautiful giant blooms under the Pindo Palm.

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My arborist dug this rock up in Rainbow the other day. 

Anybody know what it is? 

I am guessing tourmaline of some kind. Or quartz. But I am not a rockhound.

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This little fellow is popping up in my garden too.  Not quite sure what, yet.

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Todd has been trimming my palms and the place feels good.

I am going to stay home tomorrow and hopefully catch some pictures of birds.

The quail are taking over.

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I walked Los Jilqueros today and tried to recognize the calls of the oak titmouse and bewick's wren,

I respect those people with ears for bird identification.

I don't have it.

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Some current events stuff.

How did an alchemist in the sixteenth century have shards of a mineral that nobody had discovered or had a name for yet?

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Astronauts stranded in space.

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Here's a beauty. Customers who save on electric bills could be forced to pay utility company for lost profits

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At the Burlingame High School Library, a place that is for everything but books apparently.

According to school records, only about 50 books were checked out by students during the 2023 fall semester. In response, the administration has decided to take a different approach, rebranding the library as a student union—a communal space for students to interact and complete school work.

At the beginning of this transition last year, the school moved the College and Career Center into the library. This year, this school is removing any book that has not been checked out for over a decade.

While school officials say the change is meant to cater to student needs and interests, it also feels like a capitulation to the basic fact that many in my generation simply don’t read much anymore...

Fifty books? Why do I find this horrible?

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Speaking of this, some of you know but many do not know that I write educational curriculum for teachers and have been doing so for about twenty years to supplement my income. 

My last course was called Pushing too hard, Fighting Toxic Perfection. It is based on a recent book about how many parents are pushing their kids to excel so much that they are developing mental health problems when they get to college.

I was talking to the college dean I work for the other day and asked how the course was being received? He said that the response was lukewarm, frankly it has not been selling well. I asked him why and I got my own wake up call.

He said that many of the teachers come from public schools in underprivileged areas. If they can get a kid to graduate high school it is a success. Toxic parents pushing kids to overachieve is not a problem there.

I was a scholarship prep school student whose parents valued learning and pushed us to read, from a voluminous home library. But I forget that everybody is not like me. And stupid and ignorant parents tend to raise stupid and ignorant kids, we see it every day.

And it looks like the kids have stopped reading. I am such a dinosaur, I am still pissed off about people talking loudly in the library. State of education is very sad.

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Blond man in ancient Chinese tomb.

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I don't care which side of the aisle you lean politically, we are all sick of the text messages from the national committees looking for money. I made one donation, to Jon Tester and now they won't let me alone, no matter how many times I text STOP. Same with Leslie. This sucks.

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Biologist says evolution moves faster than Darwin. How long ago was Rupert Sheldrake saying this?

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I don't want to get political, there is enough of that out there and you know where to find it. I will say that Netanyahu has no business talking about American protests and calling Americans idiots. I love Israel, want them to exist and survive but he has created a lot of the problems there by not treating the Gazans like human beings. You can't kill a whole people to take care of Hamas. You create a stronger Hamas by doing that. Time for a cease fire and hostage return and you can go back and kill again another day, Bibi... But you might think about a workable solution for both peoples. This one is untenable. And your continual pandering to the uber religious right in this country is both nauseating and divisive.

I don't know where Kamala Harris really is on Israel, I hope she is not a progressive. And I am not sure if she will be elected. But I think she will be tougher on Israel than Biden and I hope she will be smarter than Obama, who was completely clueless on Iran. In any case I hope that Netenyahu stops interfering in our country's political process with his Trumpy crap, he is alienating a lot of Democrats, including many Jewish democrats who love Israel.

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Supervisor Desmond sent out an email yesterday about two battery storage fires in the county unincorporated area. Would be nice to know where and why? And I would feel a lot more comfortable if it was not a private mitigation company in charge of response. Nothing to see here...

Businesses in the surrounding area were put on standby for evacuation while firefighters maintained a 600-foot safety barrier due to dangerous levels of hydrogen. A shelter in place order was also issued to Donovan State Prison, located about half a mile from the storage facility“We went into defensive action. We knew this was a battery storage facility. There’s some toxic gases and high heat that are attributed to that, so we called in extra support with the hazmat unit and the bomb squad to give us the extra tools,” Cornette explained.A special device was used to help monitor air quality levels. Cal Fire and other crews pumped water into the building’s fire suppression system to help douse the lithium-ion batteries.The 250-megawatt Gateway Energy Storage facility is owned by LS Power and operated by subsidiary Rev Renewables. Neither company returned our request for comment as of Thursday.

This is an asterisk point for a future I told you so if I ever saw one. People will be pointing at each other and saying, they were in charge...

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Last night's puff pastry. Spinach mushroom and sausage and apple currant, thanks to RoxAnn for her Dorset apples.

Tuesday Shpiel

I saw the woman across the street this afternoon. She used to be a regular in my wife's shop, nice person, easy laugh, where the heck had she gone? 

I called her name and she looked through me as if I didn't exist, perhaps she hadn't heard me or recognized me?

I asked Juleen about her and she said, "Oh, she hasn't been in since the woman in the Trump mask punched your wife in the face. She is a Trump loving Christian and now she won't have anything to do with the store. She won't even talk to me."

I mention this because I really haven't felt like talking politics of late. Trump or anything else. Our country has a hair trigger right now and I don't feel like priming the explosive. We have serious warring factions and my sentiments lie somewhere in the middle.

I know Jews that hate Israel right now and gentiles that love them. One of them has been trying to goad me into a response to the current situation but I have not really felt like spilling. Israel has a narrative about winning a war and achieving "victory" and doesn't seem to care if the people they have long held captive in Gaza are vanquished in the attempt. Don't we bear extra responsibility to our prisoners?

I saw an Israeli woman in a video say that she wouldn't give the Gazans a loaf of bread at this point. And I understand that too. 1200 to 1500 unarmed people killed October 7th, babies and the elderly murdered and the world shrugs their collective shoulders as if  "They had it coming." All about the glorious armed resistance I suppose. Israelis are human too and they also can experience the emotion of hate. There doesn't always have to be a good guy and a bad guy, more often than not, both sides are culpable.

A liberal Jewish friend says the massacre was predictable. I agree with that. But that does not mean that it was justified. I worked in Israel in 1990 to bring Palestinians and Israelis together to talk, something that rarely occurs anymore. The authorities were none too happy with me and nothing really came of it. 

The Gazans teach their children to hate Israel in nursery school and the Israelis now see them as nothing more than murderous scum. I don't have the answer. But starving the Gazan population, many of them under twenty, does not seem like the answer to me either.

Whatever constitutes an answer to the middle east conundrum has probably long since passed, with Netanyahu talking out of both sides of his mouth about a two state solution, all the while destroying any geographical hope of a contiguous state by surrendering to the ultra right racist religious settlers. A prime minister who promoted Hamas in order to denude the Palestinian Authority. His plan worked only too well.

I probably owe my life to my grandfather making it to Israel from Poland but he couldn't handle the religious extremists and I can not either. I lost over ten great aunts and uncles in the ovens at Auschwitz, my tribe had literally nowhere to go.

Having said that, I would hate to live in a Jewish state or a Nazi state or Muslim State or a Hindu or Christian state or even a land ruled by adherents of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. All that old testament smiting and killing because Yahweh told us to always rubbed this reform jew the wrong way.

Because religion is too easily co-opted into a form of tribalism and nationalism, be it Buddhists in Burma or Sri Lanka or what is now happening with Modi in India or  the west bank and Gaza and a thousand other examples.

Your God, my god (if I believed in such a thing) anybody's god, is not a real estate agent and no holy book grants people title to eradicate their neighbors, no matter how florid and divine the holy text might read. 

Trump likes to talk about American Jews being disloyal to Israel but I think they should be better characterized as more interested in the whole human race, not just a xenophobic and sexist bunch of orthodox from Brooklyn who favor Amish clothing or West Bank settlers that like to wreak violence on Palestinians.

While those Palestinians may not have inhabited Israel around the time the Romans threw us out, they don't feel any better about being dispossessed than we did. And yet on at least three occasions, rather than accept a partition or two state solution, they instead went about trying to eradicating Israel, from the river to the sea.

They also bear a huge amount of blame, as do the Iranians who have commandeered Lebanon and Syria and Iraq and are seriously committed to Israel's destruction and helped along the way by people like Barack Obama, who failed to see that his rapprochement spelled near certain doom for Israel.

My friend Paul got on me for my empathy for the Palestinians, said I must not have backed bombing Nagasaki or Hiroshima or Dresden. Sorry Paul, that was all before my time. Way above my pay grade. I want peace in the middle east but I am not foolish enough to not know that if Hamas, Iran or Hezbollah had the ability they would destroy Israel.

And neither Jose Andres, UNRWA or the U.N., or any of those enlightened European countries would utter a peep, because let's face it, they never gave a shit about Jewish blood either. They mention October 7th like it is now a forgotten asterisk. It was bad, but...

Netanyahu can not prosecute this thing to the end, there will be nothing left and he will only breed more hatred towards Israel. Time to dial it back, you can't kill all the Palestinians to save them. He has made a bad situation so very much worse and he has lost much of the dwindling global support Israel could still muster. Civilians and aid workers get killed, he shrugs his shoulders and says, "These things happen in war." Despicable.

I am worried about Israel and I am worried about the Palestinians. I am worried about humanity. How about that?

Not woke, not asleep

I went to the basketball game with Kent the other night and he remarked that I had been pretty restrained on the political front lately on the blog. He is right. I really haven't felt like wading in. 

The truth is that I have always been about policy and not party and I feel even more so today. I don't have a party any more. I block all the texts and requests for money from the democratic party. And I abhor the lion's share of the policies of the GOP.

I am a man without a party. I hate the extreme right and I hate the extreme progressive left. Pretty equally. I am this close to becoming an independent. Was afraid to vote the ticket the other day, not really knowing who was pushing what radical progressive agenda anymore.

The roots of my dissatisfaction with the left started with Barack Obama. Because it was so evident in his rapprochement with Iran that there was a fall guy in all of his grand global schemes, Israel. It was always destined to take the hit. See Blue Heron Blast Obama Iran. File damage to Israel and Jews under acceptable collateral damage in Obamaspeak.

Barack beget AOC and Bush and Omar and Tlaib and Presley and now you have a whole cadre of progressive leftists who think it is acceptable to invade a country, kill babies and students enjoying a rock concert, behead the elderly and take hundreds of hostages.

Excuse me if I don't sign on. I don't give Israel a free pass here, I despise Netanyahu and the Settler movement but blaming Israel for responding to such terroristic atrocities is a bit like killing your parents and crying about your orphanhood. Both Israel and its captives are engaged in a very dark dance and death spiral. But I have talked about the situation too many times and don't have a lot to add at this point.

What do I believe in? Choice, protecting the environment and being loyal to countries being threatened and attacked by murderous dictators like Putin and Xi Xinping. Democracy. Our constitution. Strong borders. 

I think that Donald Trump, if re-elected, will maneuver to become a President for life like his cronies in Russia and North Korea and the thought nauseates me.

Who knows what Trump will do on the first day in office, who he would jail? But I heard a similar story on the left the other day, about the need for a no longer favored leftist leader to be re-educated. The gulag door obviously swings both ways.

Did you read about this guy?  A Venezuelan influencer who lives on the American dole and wants his countrymen to support the thugs who roll people in Times Square. 

Venezuelan migrant Leonal Moreno posted a video to his social media urging his over 300,000 followers to "unite" and pay the fines of a 15-year-old migrant who allegedly shot a tourist in Times Square earlier this month. 

"I invite you to find [his] mother and [for] all of us to unite to pay the fines [so] that the young Venezuelan feels that he’s not alone during difficult moments. Remember that up there there’s a God who sees everything [down here]," the Venezuelan TikToker said. 

He continued," An entire nation [is] on top of him instead of helping him - remember that the young man is going to be released. And he will be released, do you know why? Because he’s underage."

There may well be in fact a god up there who sees everything but many of us mortals do too. And not only do we not feel it is our duty to support your criminal asses, we would like to send you  and your fellow parasites and criminal countrymen on a boat back from whence you came, to the consternation of people like AOC. More from Moreno:

"You came to the United States to work, and I came to vacation, look at the difference. You and I didn’t come with the same purpose. You came to the United States to pay the taxes that you didn’t pay in Venezuela."

The same day, the migrant posted another video, admitting, "I confess that I don’t like to work because it gives me allergies. You work, I don’t, but in the end, neither of us have money. They keep criticizing us because I live off of taxes that you pay monthly."

Party is over asshole. Feel free to throw me out of the club.

Mid east watch

I have always had Palestinian friends, both in Israel and in Fallbrook. If anything, in the past, they have been more pro Israel than I am. I have always had mixed and conflicted feelings about Israel, the land of my father and grandfather and have always tried to remain objective. I try to treat human beings like human beings, regardless of their clan or creed.

Ironically, my Palestinian friends had better and more positive feelings about the country than I do. Until now.

I met a Palestinian friend the other night and was a little taken aback. For the first time, I felt his sorrow and some condemnation of Israel. Another one of our friends had lost fifty family members in Gaza. What a terrible tragedy. I feel very sad for them. These are good people.

I can not and will not vilify the Israelis for going into Gaza. They are going to do what they have to do in order to root out the Hamas tunnel system and stop the existential threat to their survival. And I think we can establish some truisms here. It is impossible to process a war against guerrilla fighters who hide among a civilian population in a clean way that will not cost lots of innocent lives. And that too is a tragedy, the collateral damage will be horrible. You can't kill with clinical precision.

But if Israel had done nothing after the kibbutz murders, if they allowed the tunnel threat to fester, the massacres would only happen again and again. The talk of a cease fire would only help Hamas attain their goals. They have no plans of stopping. I do not blame Netanyahu for saying no cease fire talk until the hostages are returned alive.

Good for him.

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My Palestinian friend told me that we are not getting a lot of straight news from Israel, where jew and arab are marching together in the streets pleading for a cessation to the conflict. His family is from the West Bank and they happen to view the Gaza fighters with intense derision.

He also rightly points out that Hamas was a creation of the Israeli right who felt that they would destabilize the PLO. It would be hard to argue with that. He thinks that there should be one state, where Jews and Arabs live together. It is also hard to argue with that too except for the fact that it is a numbers game and ultimately the jews could be supplanted by an arab majority that could try to instill Sharia law. Sort of like Dearborn. I  actually find the concept of a Jewish state as oppressive as a Christian state or a Muslim state but that is just me.

I don't know what the good answer is I really don't. I do know that the right wing push into Judea and Samaria has been an absolute disaster for any hopes of a future peace and two state solution.

arab red - then and now...

A friend on the right sent me this old Prager video on Israel and asked for my comment. Was it true? In my opinion, yes, unfortunately it is true. And incomplete. The local arab population was offered statehood repeatedly and they chose to fight for everything instead, to deny the jews a right to exist in a land where they had roots for over five thousand years. 

The Muslims built the Mosque of Omar right on top of our second temple, as squatters and conquerors tend to do. And what they could not win on the battlefield in the years since Israeli independence, they have tried to win through playing the poor victim card and by engaging in acts of terrorism, from Munich to the Achille Lauro to 9-11.

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I lived a half mile from the border in 1976, on a kibbutz between Lebanon and Nahariya. Although not technically in a war, it could get pretty intense.

One night a volley or powerful Russian Katyusha rockets came down on our kibbutz. If you have never been in a rocket attack, it is incredibly frightening, the sound and screech of the missiles. One landed not a hundred yards from my home and a large piece of shrapnel came right through the wall. I touched it and burned my hand.

My roommate was from Australia. A big guy, he was on the next plane out of the country, completely freaked out.

I was working as an electrician back then, building new multi story apartments at the guest house. With a bunch of Palestinian guys, pouring the poured in place 18" thick concrete walls. And I said something stupid. "Wow, that was close last night."

The workers gave me a weird glance but later I caught hell from my boss. He told me that they were trying to calibrate their targets to hit Nahariya and any information I gave would help them lock in.

Probably the first time I realized that I was in a life or death drama and I had better keep my mouth shut. This was for real. We had ammonium nitrate stored on the farm that could be used for bombs, the soldiers would grade the perimeter with tractors every night in order to find footprints of infiltrating attackers in our orange groves. They found three the year I was there. The hostility never stopped.

We had three tanks installed on the kibbutz, everybody was in a constant state of alert. I went back for the entirety of Desert Storm, it was even worse. Numerous Scud attacks, slept in a sealed room with a gas mask. Story for another day.

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Obama gave his normal, both sides have blood on their hands speech today. 

“What Hamas did was horrific, and there’s no justification for it,” former President Barack Obama said on Friday. “And what is also true is that the occupation and what’s happening to Palestinians is unbearable.” 

We need to take in the whole truth, he says. Sen. Tim Scott said something interesting today. 

“From Obama to Biden, Democrats have a problem: supporting Israel always has an asterisk,” the South Carolina senator and presidential contender said in a statement to POLITICO.

I don't think it is really fair to take a shot at Biden here but I think Scott is fairly correct on Obama. There always is an asterisk. Jewish blood was always very cheap to him. His whole Iran rapprochement was calculated to leave Israel helpless in the face of the most horrible jihadists and he really didn't care. He can try to hide it but it comes through.

He liked to priggishly lecture jews on proper moral choices because it gave him a sense of moral superiority. And if he was wrong about re-arming the Iranian? Oh well. Bibi was never very nice to him, too bad. I know most liberals love him but to me Obama's mideast approach was an unmitigated disaster, always a finger on the scale, showing favoritism to the arabs and divulging secret Israeli intelligence to their adversaries.

Obama likes to talk about genuine security for Israel as part of a two state solution but there is nothing genuine about his talk. Unfortunately it has always been lip service. I will never forget Obama Spokesman Jen Psaki refusing to label the Hamas supporter throwing molotov cocktails at Israeli citizens a terrorist. I forgot, he was a freedom fighter.

I have long said that if the progressives ever take the reins of power in the Democratic party that I am gone. I don't know where I will go, I will certainly not be a Republican. But it could be happening faster than I ever expected. Today I saw a Gallup poll that said that Democrats now have greater sympathy for the Palestinians than the Israelis.

So let's get this straight. We support the the people who paraglide into rock concerts and kill unarmed kids, slaughter babies in their cribs and old people in their wheelchairs and vow to repeat the actions until they have rid the country of the vile usurpers from the "River to the Sea."

Why in the heck can't the Israelis make a deal with such fine people?

Credit...

Vai en shalom?

Several friends have asked me what my thoughts are regarding Israel and Hamas. Honestly, it is very hard for me to sum them up today, the situation makes me sick to my stomach. This attack occurred exactly fifty years after the Yom Kippur War, to the week.

...unlike in 1973, this is not an attempt to occupy and hold territory. It is essentially a large-scale deadly raid, aiming to kill, destroy, and take prisoners and hostages back to Gaza. It resembles the Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s attacks in the 1970s, only on a far larger scale. Current numbers suggest that more than 600 Israelis have been killed – the overwhelming majority of them civilians. Many families were gunned down in their homes. Thousands are injured. This was by far the deadliest day in Israeli history, surpassing the worst moments of the 2000s suicide bombings or the 1948 war. About 100 Israeli hostages are believed to be now within Gaza.

The initial attack was directed at young Israeli kids, many wearing tie dye, at a trance rave, trying to have a good time and live a quasi normal life. 

The attackers reportedly entered the festival in para-gliders.

Hundreds were slain, women and children kidnapped. Who does this? Why target youth? Is it because they are defenseless?

I was thinking about being a kid myself at a dead show in Las Vegas, imagining myself tripping and joyful and suddenly coming under a rocket attack or machine gun fire. 

Unfathomable.

But over 260 young Israelis trying to have a good time are now dead.

And the Democratic Socialists of America taunted the casualties at a parade in New York today, chanting "700" and mocking crying motions. Congressional Representatives and "squad" members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), Cori Bush (Mo.), Ilhan Omar (Minn.)  Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.) and Greg Casar (Texas) are all part of this organization.

The place where this awful event took place, Urim, is 40 km from my cousins' kibbutz, Revivim.

Iran's hand is all over this, with coordinated attacks from Hezbollah in the north. Blinken may deny it today but it is obvious. [ed. Hamas has now admitted it.]

Hamas's attacks on Israel, which began Saturday morning, were planned weeks in advance with assistance from Iranian security officials, according to a Sunday report from The Wall Street Journal.

The report, citing senior members of Hamas and Hezbollah, stated that the Iranian officials "gave the green light" for the attacks during a meeting between them and Hamas in Beirut last week.

IRGC officers worked with Hamas since August to plan incursions from the "air, land, and sea," the report noted. Officers of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were also at the meetings in Beirut.

Let's look at Iran; last week a young Kurdish girl was beaten into a coma on a subway train by the morality police for failing to wear a head covering. The perfidious authorities say it was merely a case of low blood sugar. Witnesses, journalists and family members are suddenly disappearing. The usual.

I said it then and I will say it again now. Obama's attempt at realpolitik with Iran was misplaced then and any continuation of such a rapprochement by Biden is a mistake now.

...even were we to indulge the fantasy that the revolutionary Shiite sharia state would conscientiously abide by American-dictated restrictions (no doubt between chants of “Death to America!”), money is fungible: $6 billion in new funds supposedly earmarked for food and medicine equals $6 billion in existing funds that can be shifted to Iran’s main export: jihad – like what’s happening in Israel right now. But just as notable is the Biden administration’s precious assurance about how Qatar can be trusted to make sure all is well. Qatar just happens to be the longstanding home of the political leadership of . . .  wait for it . . . Hamas. 

Like it or not, the middle east is engaged in the latest chapter in a longstanding theological, military and cultural war. The Muslims have a long game plan and the loss of their people in this battle means little to a group who prize martyrdom above all else. No matter the result, and the amount of death and suffering their own people will endure, they will look at this provocation as a victory.

My heart hurts. My father was born in Palestine in 1926, twenty two years before Israeli Independence. In some ways I am the son of a Palestinian. I see the conflict from both sides. They say that the Palestinians never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity, in regards to peace accords, well, you can say the same about Israel. The people are more similar than either side would like to admit. Both sides are consumed by the end game and winning.

The Israelis feigned allegiance to Oslo and the initial conceptions of a two state solution and then riddled the second state with settlements, ruining any possibility of a contiguous homeland. They allowed right wing religious ultranationalists to start a campaign to reclaim biblical Judea and Samaria and here we are.

You want a religious war, you've got a religious war. Recently actions in Jerusalem brought things to a head.

Hamas leaders said Saturday’s operation came in response to a series of provocative moves by Israelis, including the storming of the al-Aqsa Mosque complex in East Jerusalem — a site known to Jews as the Temple Mount — by ultranationalist Israeli settlers.

Leaders in Israel’s far-right government have pushed for a greater Jewish presence at the site, which holds religious significance for Jews, Muslims and Christians. It has long been a flash point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over Jerusalem, and a symbol of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination.

So stupid and avoidable, but Netanyahu is beholden to these people for support for both his coalition and his push for judicial overhaul. 

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I have lived through several war situations in Israel and personally been through the rocket attacks many times. But I also had Palestinian friends during my times there and noticed that communication between arabs and jews got much worse in the interim and over time. Both sides demonize each other and then compartmentalize each other and finally fail to see each other as human beings.

I have visited the West Bank. It is like a giant jail cell. And people in jail get very angry and at times they boil over and blow up, especially when they have no hope. That is when they turn to religion, in this case, extremely cruel religion that allows its adherents to engage in unspeakable acts. Hopelessness turns normal people into terrorists. Eight in 10 Gazans live in poverty, according to the United Nations, and 95 percent of the population lacks regular access to clean water.

The Israelis had some time to do something about the jail cell and they did not. And now that opportunity has passed and we are left with murder and hostages and unspeakable cruelty directed at men, women and children.

Many Israelis pretend that the Palestinians never existed, that there is no such thing. That Israel was promised by G-D 5k plus years ago and that is that. But I can guarantee that when Herzl got there, when my grandfather arrived from Poland, there were real human beings living there. 

And many of those people had been working their olive groves and tending their goats there for hundreds of years, since time immemorial. They existed and it is Israeli hubris to pretend that they did not. Conversely, the Jews have lived there for over five thousand years and the Muslims built their temple right on top of the Jewish Second Temple.

Some like to say, "Well, Israel is so small and the Arab world so big, let them move somewhere else." Sort of like we did to the native Americans. Can you imagine someone saying that to the people of your original homeland, how do you think they would take that? And so we had the nakba, the uprooting.

Now it is true that a Palestinian state was created by the Balfour Declaration and the Sykes Picot Agreement in 1914. It was envisioned to encompass much of present day Syria and Jordan. But Winston Churchill needed to throw his Hashemite allies a bone and so created Transjordan in 1924.

It was unfortunate because the population was over 97% what we would call Palestinian and the Hashemites represented less than 3%. But they continue to rule modern day Jordan (which was renamed when King Abdullah occupied the West Bank in 1948) and the Palestinians got the shaft and were also deprived of a true homeland.

And now we are left with Hamas, which calls for the destruction of Israel in its charter and like its benefactors in Tehran, wants to wipe out the presence of Jews in the middle east and throughout the world.

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So here we are. The Israelis are going to extract their tooth for a tooth, with understandable vengeance. Gaza is going to be flattened and a lot of people, both innocent and culpable, will lose their lives.  The Arabs will get nowhere and the Israelis will even have more antagonism and hatred towards these inhabitants who will not allow them to lead normal lives. Iran will continue to use both Hezbollah and Hamas as a proxy against their sworn enemy Israel.

And the entire area will be no closer to a solution that respects the well being and territorial integrity of all parties involved.

Am I making a claim of moral equivalence here? No, I am not. These horrific actions against innocent Israelis, many children and women, are inexcusable. But they were not unforeseeable. Israel is surrounded by mortal enemies committed to its destruction, Iran being the principle antagonist.

People in the middle east do not get to have normal lives.

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Shalom, shalom, vai en shalom? (peace, peace, where is the peace?)

Unbelievable!

I saw a statistic the other day that roughly 21% of adults believe that there is an actual Santa Claus. 

This is a bit sobering, most people figure the whole thing out by the time they are six or seven. Do these adults feverishly wait with their kids for Kringle to come down the chimney on Christmas Eve? Awesome.

But it got me thinking about just how stupid we humans are, one of my favorite topics of conversation and led me back to my favorite quote from Ken Kesey. 

This is a quote I was lucky enough to hear first hand; never forget that in any given situation there will be more stupid people around then smart ones. Helps to repeat that often when you are driving.

And it also led me down the "just how stupid are we?" rabbit hole.

And I came up with this:

Over one in four Americans (26%) thinks the sun orbits the Earth, according to a National Science Foundation study.

In the same survey, just 39 percent answered correctly (true) that "The universe began with a huge explosion" and only 48 percent said "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals."

Just over half understood that antibiotics are not effective against viruses.

Forget the flat earthers for a moment. 34 percent of Americans reject evolution entirely and believe humans have existed in their present form for thousands or tens of thousands of years, according to a Pew Research Center Religious Landscape Study. Pew said 62 percent of U.S. adults believe humans evolved over time. 

40% believe that man is less than 10,000 years old in present form.

Furthermore, you would be astounded how many people think that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time.

YouGov’s latest research shows that 41% of Americans think that dinosaurs and humans either ‘definitely’ (14%) or ‘probably’ (27%) once lived on the planet at the same time. 43% think that this is either ‘definitely’ (25%) or ‘probably’ (18%) not true while 16% aren’t sure. In reality the earliest ancestors of humans have only been on the planet for 6 million years, while the last dinosaurs died out 65 million years ago.

20% do not believe that climate change is occurring.

A YouGov survey showed 51 percent of Republicans still think Obama was born in Kenya, compared with just 14 percent of Democrats. Trump supporters were mostly likely to believe the false claim, with 57 percent saying it was “definitely true” or “probably true” that Obama was born in Kenya.

Some people apparently still believe that sex positions can determine a baby's gender. Or that condoms can be washed and re-used. 

And then there's geography.

In the midst of the Iraq war in 2006, six in 10 young adults couldn’t find Iraq on a map of a Middle East. The Roper survey also found that 75 percent of those surveyed could not identify Iran or Israel.They’re not much better at U.S. geography. Only about half could find New York State on a map.

From the National Geographic:

About 11 percent of young citizens of the U.S. couldn't even locate the U.S. on a map. The Pacific Ocean's location was a mystery to 29 percent; Japan, to 58 percent; France, to 65 percent; and the United Kingdom, to 69 percent. ...Particularly humiliating was that all countries were better able to identify the U.S. population than many young U.S. citizens. Within the U.S., almost one-third said that population was between one billion and two billion; the answer is 289 million.

Let that sink in. Over one in ten young Americans could not find the U.S. on a map. You are sharing the road with these people, breathing the same oxygen and interacting with them every day. Be careful.

Over at Psychology Today, they tell us that we should not equate stupidity with anti intellectualism. I still think there is a surfeit of stupid. Plenty to go around.

Report Card

I am a centrist democrat and in general a Biden supporter, especially after what we just went through with the last guy in office. I am pro choice, pro gun (not assault weapons), pro capital punishment, pro gay, pro environment and anti amnesty for people who come to this country illegally.

Joe is doing his best with the tough hand he was dealt and the fact that the nation and world are coming out of a pandemic period that has taken 6 million lives and turned the rest of them upside down. So I give him somewhat of a break, especially when the right wing media machine is out to assassinate him 24-7.

Still there are things he and his administration is doing that infuriate me, principally his intention to continue foolish Obama era policies on Iran. To be fair, I need to point out what I believe are his deficiencies with the same vigor I went after his predecessor.

Here are a couple interesting articles for your perusal. They are worth a read:

With America's Eyes on Ukraine, Biden Made Biggest Concession to China Yet - Ben Weingarten

Biden shatters Israel's delusions - Caroline Glick

Hope for Ukraine is not a strategy - National Review

Biden over promised and under delivered on climate - Lisa Friedman

Biden DOJ will keep defending Trump on rape defamation case - Daily Beast

Garland’s first year leading Justice Department clouded by questions of investigating Trump - CNN

Loose lips

News today that John Kerry was ratting out the Israelis to the Iranians during the Obama administration, while acting as Secretary of State. Not surprising, his animosity to Israel is palpable and legendary. The question is if this was done at the behest of his boss or not, which also would not exactly surprise me.

Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif claimed in recently leaked audio that John Kerry, when he was serving as Secretary of State during the Obama administration, informed him of more than 200 Israeli operations in Syria.

Kerry has previously been accused of colluding with Iranian leaders to undermine the Trump administration. Kerry is now a part of the Biden administration and has a seat on the National Security Council as the special presidential envoy for climate.

Like Israel or not, and I am not a big fan of this particular Israeli government, they were an ostensible ally of ours at the time and the disclosure of over two hundred actions in Syria seems intemperate to me. And I certainly do not like or trust the Iranian regime in any way. We know what they want to do, they have been quite honest about it.

Kerry is currently serving on the NSC. What else will he be disclosing to the Iranians? I hope that Biden tries to have a more evenhanded approach to Israel and Iran than Obama did.

Party lines

I've been trying real hard to steer clear of politics of late. So divisive. So pointless. I have worn out the nation's crappy marriage metaphor from overuse. But it does seem that we are at that point in the breakup when we just want to impact maximum damage on each other if given an opening.

Take Biden's stumble. My god, you would think the guy was a senile dotard getting spoon fed gruel the way they jumped on that. He slipped. It happens. I have slipped. Trump slipped. So did Gerald Ford. But Biden did it and he is ready for Bingo and the shuffleboard courts. 

Of course liberals were every bit as reflexively willing to blast Trump at every opportunity so I guess it is payback time and I don't see it stopping anytime soon. Ready, fire, aim.

The two camps just snarl and talk past each other, I see little hope for anybody finding middle ground anytime soon. People are perfectly happy to live in their own respective camps and watch their own slanted media and rather than get anything accomplished, wait for their side to have the upper hand again.

I am lucky. My friends are distributed about 50/50 across the ideological spectrum. I even agree occasionally regarding points of policy with my more conservative friends. And this is not new. Go to the blast search box and put in the words Iran and Obama and you will see that I was quite angry with him often on both matters of foreign policy and civil liberties. 

I mention that to my conservative cronies and I hear that my negativity towards liberal is gratuitous, or for show or just not nearly enough. You can't please some people, it is easier for the world to deal in black and white than deal in matters of nuance and degree.

I got a funny call from my friend Bruce last week. Bruce is a conservative but one with a very good sense of humor. "Bobby," he says. "You've been awfully quiet on Joe Biden lately. Quite the love affair. Just think how hard you were bashing Trump at every turn. What happened?"

I said something sort of unprintable about trying to get a whiff of Joe's holy flatulence that will go unwritten right now. But I get his point. It is important to try to keep balance and intellectual integrity and I would like too think I still have some.

I read two things this week that gave me pause. The first was Sidney Powell's statement that no reasonable person would confuse her Dominion Systems statements with the truth. See No reasonable person would take her voter fraud claims as fact. Which is sadly funny because so many stupid people obviously bought her crap hook, line and sinker. And she obviously has no qualms with being outed as a despicable liar.

And the second thing was this article at Politico - How "owning the libs" became the GOP's core belief by Derek Robertson. I think that it is worth the read. Because it is clearly true that it has been a favorite conservative pastime of late to say something with racist or misogynist overtones and then watch liberal heads blow up. They take great pleasure in that and I get it. Because ultra political correctness makes me want to hurl too. The perpetually woke also have their periods of nauseating deafness to reality, obviously. 

I got a couple good responses when I sent the article to my mostly conservative friends. My lead in question was "Is this really what it is all about?" I hope it is okay to anonymously print a few comments:

Hi Robert, this is interesting, but as a conservative Republican, I can tell you there is a lot of mischaracterization. I don't believe "lib-owning" is even a thing, except for the ability to debate the issues and get your point across and sometimes that is funny, or uncomfortable or whatever. This writer is carrying through with popular rhetoric and narratives highlighting the most outrageous things instead of what is mainstream. It would be interesting to have a conversation with this writer. Many many many of Trump supporters are uncomfortable with his brash and sometimes rude comments. I can't tell you how many times Republicans have commented at how they miss the charisma of Ronald Reagan or John F. Kennedy (I know he was a Democrat). They were people who spoke their mind, including the evils of big government, but were able to do it with class. Reagan talked a lot about big government and think about how JFK talked about even dismantling the CIA. However, it is also discussed how they don't think a more reserved or sensitive person could have withstood the constant attacks like Russia, Ukraine, etc. that he has had to fight while being leader of the free world. A weaker man could not have withstood the pressure. 

While Trump was not my first choice, what people like me appreciated about him was that he was a businessman, an outsider (like Obama) who had a specific plan with measurable goals and in the first 100 days he got an amazing amount of them done. It was backwards. He made his money before he got into office. He angered both Democrats and Republicans with his outsider ways and brash behavior. When I asked people like J----- what he thought about the accomplishments of Trump, he said, "what accomplishments?" That was an epiphany for me because he really didn't know anything that Trump's administration got accomplished. All he knew about was the false accusations about Russia and "yellow man bad" So, it's hard to have an intelligent conversation with people who don't know both sides, and are so steeped in the rhetoric (and that's both Republicans and Democrats) that they can't have an honest open conversation. 

That's what this Politico piece screams. There's no mention of how conservatives have been targeted, not only by the IRS, shootings at baseball games, efigies of Trump's bloody head or him on fire, the congressmen and people being bullied and threatened leaving the Rose Garden, death threats to Senators by members of the Press for changing parties. And because the media is so biased, it's not at all surprising. It's to be expected if a group of people is constantly mischaracterized by a non-stop media campaign of smears, lies, and demonization. 

I believe we have to understand that the majority of people on both sides of the fence are honest and most likely want the best, although they may have different paths for reaching the goal, whatever it is. And that is why free speech is so important. If we keep trying to shut each other up and cancel each other we can't learn from each other. When we start to get lost we have to remember the age old principle of treat people the way you want to be treated. That's what Trump doesn't do.

This is why I take so much time to answer the nasty letters about me in the paper. It's out of respect and I honestly want to have the conversation. Now there's a few people saying I need to be canceled. It's just such a ignorant and weak position for them to "cancel" people. But that's the way things are going. We're so worried about Mr. Potato Head and Pepe LePew, but we celebrate Cardi B crawling all over the stage and singing about Wet Ass Pussy and how she gets cars, rings and money for it on national TV. IT's just so weird, but they have the right to free speech too. Everything is just so weird right now. 

Sorry to ramble on. 

Thanks for sharing,

J

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The publisher of Politico has said he is trying to “reshape” the way people think. The hate just needs to stop. It’s worse than ever. Both parties. 

D

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It clearly is about owning to some people.  But I think the author makes an unfortunate mistake of commingling baiting and trolling a la Trump with serious intellectual policy debate a la Buckley (thereby weakening his argument).  

Buckley was an entirely different animal.  Agree or disagree with his views, he tried to intellectually dismantle 

liberal policy positions.  And the fact that he was very good at it, made him dangerous to especially those 

liberals who could not match his debate skills.  This he had in common with other conservative thinkers 

like Kristol, Krauthammer, and Will, none of which supported Trump. 

There are some people who are somewhere in the middle.  They can be intellectual but also love trolling.

I think that Ben Shapiro falls into this category, for example.

 

A

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Unfortunately, yes.

It’s about the bullies taking over the playground and bossing others around.

Juvenile instincts.

JJ

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I saw a good conservative friend at the Post Office the other day, a woman who I honestly love. She said the same thing I have heard from several people lately, I am a conservative but I do not like or support Trump. Now I believe that current polls show that at least 64% of Republicans do support him but I take it as a good sign that many do not. 

This makes me at least somewhat hopeful. Of course I hated Trump on pretty much every level and on every policy but I made my feelings quite clear. It is possible that I will also come to dislike many of Biden's policies, his purge of pot smokers in his administration was not a good sign and any talk of rapprochement with Iran would be dangerous and foolhardy. 

My friend said that the political tension is so bad in our country and in her own family that her brother will not let liberal family members come to the house for family gatherings and celebrations. And the opposite is obviously occurring too, with many of us divorcing or unfriending those with differing political beliefs.

But at least we are free of the daily invective of the ex narcissist in chief, the man who stood for nothing but himself and his seedy band of grifters. A man with no real convictions except faith in his ability to manipulate his flock.

I had a conservative friend from Colorado show up yesterday. He and his new girlfriend are avid Trumpers. She needed to use my restroom and mentioned the Obama book near the john, which John Morris sent me and I have not yet read.

She said something like "Isn't is a shame that the President is so senile and out of it and soon we will have that marxist Kamela running the country?" And I had to choke, told her that the only Marx that mattered to me was Groucho and that it was none of my business who Willie Brown slept with. I stoked the partisan fire as they left. "You know how bad you hate Biden right now?" That is how I felt the last four years." They looked at me in amazement, our narratives so different.

If you look at Fox news right now, they have dropped any semblance of objectivity and it is just blast the Biden administration at every turn, create a false furor about the border and keep the right wing attack machine on constant red alert. Republicans in Congress will be against anything Biden does, even if they were supporting identical policies during the last administration. Because people are dumb and they have short memories.

And maybe the left wing press wasn't much if at all better but this is one damn nauseating way to run a country into the ground and it makes me sick. I agree with letter writer D. Both sides are guilty and one can only hope that one day we can start speaking to each other like adults again.

6/18/19

Last year Donald Trump reneged on President Obama's 2015 nuclear JCPOA deal with Iran. He reinstated heavy financial sanctions, broke with his international allies and called it the "worst deal ever." Tehran has largely held to the deal but has just announced that it would soon exceed the nuclear enrichment limits.

And wouldn't you know it, Trump is pissed at Iran and demanding that the allies pressure them to hold to an agreement that he himself breached. I don't know the farsi word for chutzpah but that definitely rates the farsi word for chutzpah.

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When Hong Kong ended the 99 year old lease with Britain in 1997 and Beijing instituted the "one country, two systems" policy the place was giddy and the nationalism was as thick in the air as Chinese fireworks. Mainland China promised not to interfere, to let Hong Kong do its thing until 2017. The Basic Law was supposed to protect peoples' rights.

I was worried at the time, having seen what the Chinese have done in Tibet and to the ethnic minorities in the Western provinces. And there has been a steady erosion in those Hong Kong people's rights ever since. Things have obviously come to a head in Hong Kong this week, with demonstrations bringing out a reported two million protesters.

The people of Hong Kong have received an apology this week from Carrie Lam, the mainland appointed titular head of Hong Kong. But they should not get too giddy. This is the most ruthless dictatorship in the world this side of North Korea. The iron hand awaits to swoop and I fear for these people. Beijing brooks no opposition and an incorrigible Hong Kong would be a signal to an even more hated Taiwan. Tiananmen Square would pale compared to the horrors they could rain down on these people.

I have written before about the horrible treatment of the Uighers. I was sick to my stomach today reading about how the Chinese government is now killing and harvesting its enemies and political opponents' organs. Is there a more perfidious and reprehensible regime on this earth? And yet we do business with them and turn a blind eye. They need to be reproached and isolated.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right...

"Dictatorship is dictatorship whether from the right or left." Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.)

I was reading a rather scary article today about Venezuela. According to the article, which is a product of Fox and so not entirely above suspicion, certain far left democrats are agnostic if not outrightly pro Nicolás Maduro, the country's socialist dictator.

These people include Alexandria Ocasia-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ro Khanna, Rashida Tlaib, Tulsi Gabbard and Bernie Sanders.

As the country’s problems worsen, Democratic Venezuelan-Americans question whether their party’s actions go far enough. A growing number of exiles say they feel forgotten by a new generation of outspoken, progressive Democrats, leaving them less beholden to a party they had long supported.
Issues that for years were hotly debated in an area of Miami known as "Doral-zuela" due to its vibrant Venezuelan community, have made their way to the ears of some of the most powerful lawmakers in Washington, D.C.
The Venezuelans are angry that, as the country continues to spiral, some Democrats keep calling on the U.S. to pull out of Venezuela and lift all sanctions against the government.
“This is where the Democrats have consistently dropped the ball…they have never felt like it was an important issue…it's very difficult to feel and coexist in the same party that is saying these things are so ignorant about my homeland,” said Venezuelan immigrant Helena Poleo.

This new rapprochement from the American left towards Maduro makes me feel very ill. I sympathize with these emigrants. This Venezuelan government and its predecessor have been a disaster for their country and the western hemisphere in every way. Chavez and Maduro have established a beachhead for Iran and international terror in the west. They are now a  bastion of anti-semitism.

They are also regularly using death squads against their own people. Amnesty International accused Maduro of being responsible for at least 8292 extrajudicial executions in his country, a number that is now surely much higher.

Hugo Chavez silenced the opposition and the media, nationalized all the productive industries and declared himself President for life. Maduro has made things even worse. I have written about the disaster that is Venezuela for many years. Unfortunately much of the worst of it was under Obama's watch and enabled by his laissez faire attitude towards the socialist dictatorship.

Bernie Sanders has hired Hugo Chavez's own speechwriter apologist David Sirota, as a Senior Advisor. This is where I get off the bus. The new progressive radical wing of the Democratic party is going to lose this stalwart centrist in very short order if this is the way things are going to be.