Post 1,004
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It Never Went Away
Cowboy George W. Bush and his posse are back and that isn’t good.
President Biden counseled Israeli leaders not to be consumed by rage because otherwise there will be horrible consequences. All of which is to say that there aren’t any good options for Israel; only various degrees of bad options. ‘Twas ever thus. Nevertheless, Biden did the statesman thing and counseled properly.
In contrast, Bush and his frontal-lobe-addled cowboys are advising extreme violence. (Read this one.)
Ari Fleischer, Dubya’s press secretary, was asked about Biden having counseled restraint.”Who the hell does he think he is?” said the dissembler. “How dare Biden, with no skin in the game, tell Netanyahu to hold back?” he seemed to say. He didn’t say it so that I could hear it, but I think Fleischer might be just a little bit consumed by rage over Biden’s having alluded to Dubya’s blunders following 9/11. He’d have us know that our longest wars, unwinnable and with constantly moving goal posts, with lie stacked upon lie and with dead and displaced people everywhere were good things. Just look at how stable the Middle East is, now that Dubya got rid o’ that varmint Saddam.
Fleischer’s boss, Cowboy Dubya himself, decided that Hamas is a bad actor and said, “We’ll find out what [Netanyahu’s] made out of.” Does Netanyahu have the right stuff to kill and displace millions of people like Dubya did? Can he lie his country into a multi-front war and leave to others the job to clean up the carnage he created? Does he have what it takes to be consumed by rage and mindlessly seek revenge regardless of all the terrible consequences and the enormous body count – like Bush did? We’ll see.
I want to call Dubya stupid (“Is our children learning?”), but in part he’s brilliant. He managed to steal two presidential elections with dishonesty, with in-plain-sight Supreme Court manipulation of one of them.
It must be just great to be a political cowboy and now a terrible artist. Maybe he isn’t stupid after all. He’s just a really bad person who managed to fool half the country and wants to see Netanyahu act as brainlessly and homicidaly as he did.
Stupid.
What Speaker?
Many Republican representatives who present themselves as rational traditionalists, practical let’s-get-the-job-done people, bemoan the suicidal no-speaker dance. That’s good, but there’s just one thing,
It’s a MAGA talking point that eight Republicans were joined by all the Democrats to oust Kevin McCarthy from the job he lusted after and for which he sold his soul. The reason we’re in the fix we’re in, they’re saying, is because of the Democrats, this from MAGA extremists and so-called traditional Republicans alike. Really?
It isn’t the Democrats’ job to save Republicans from their self-imposed dysfunction and boundless stupidity. The Republicans are in the majority and can do pretty much whatever destructive-of-democracy thing they want to do – even seriously consider Constitution burning, legislative terrorist Jim Jordan to be speaker. Blaming Democrats and calling on them to save Republicans at the eleventh hour won’t change the Republicans’ accountability. Plus, it’s really stupid.
Fortunately, I have a solution. For the next roll call vote for speaker we need four or five Republicans to vote for Hakeem Jeffries to be speaker. That will end the current contest to see how many ways the Republicans can screw things up. Plus, it just might result in getting done the critical and urgent tasks that are before our nation.
Wait! I have another solution. Elect me to be Speaker of the House.
How Many?
What is the minimum number of dead Palestinians in Gaza for the world to get past blaming Israelis and at last face up to the reality that Hamas set those people up to be killed? What is the number of broadcasts, headlines and videos of bereft, suffering Palestinians that the public needs in order to see what is in plain sight, that the Israelis have to protect themselves, which means they have to stop Hamas? But Hamas embedded themselves and all their war making capabilities in civilian, non-combatant Palestinian neighborhoods, which means that the Palestinian people are living in the center of the bulls eye of war because Hamas set it up that way. And Hamas likes when Palestinians are killed, wounded and orphaned because that draws the world’s sympathies and stimulates enmity toward Israel.
Key question: If your family lived in Buffalo, NY and had been viciously attacked by fighters from Fort Erie, ON Canada, how would you feel and what would you do? Would you just sit and accept the brutality visited upon your people? Or would you step up to make sure those attackers are both made to pay the price for their murdering and made incapable of ever again attacking your people?
Message to sensationalist media people: Get past your need to show what’s sensational. Report on the cause more and the effect less.
I’ll make it plainer. Start reporting on the outrages and abuses done by Hamas on both Palestinians and Israelis instead of attacking Israel for working to protect its citizens.
Stop being stupid. Willfully stupid.
Gratuitous
Molly Ball wrote in the Wall Street Journal: Matt Gaetz Tore the House GOP Apart. He Isn’t Sorry. Steve Schmidt continued:
Certainly, he desecrated the House when he helped incite an insurrection that saw the Confederate battle flag finally breach the Capitol Rotunda 156 years after Appomattox. It’s absolutely true that he betrayed his oath, and carries himself like a graduate of an “affluenza” academy that turns privileged and spoiled young men into irredeemable punks. Beyond that, he is petulant, arrogant, dishonest, unserious and an avatar for this age of lightness, decay and political rancidity.
That was included just for the gratuitous ridicule value of one worthy of ridicule. Schmidt went on to say the important part:
He is a luminescent beacon of our national decay and political crisis, but he did not break the House.
Cowardice did.
There’s a lot of political cowardice and stupidity in the Republican Party by those too self-obsessed to stand up and do what they know is right. Governing to produce the best for our nation is supposed to be the goal. But for them, it’s not.
That, too, is willfully stupid.
Today is a good day to be the light
______________________________
- Our governance and electoral corruption and dysfunction and our ongoing mass murders are all of a piece, all the same problem with the same solution:
- Fire the bastards!
- The days are dwindling for us to take action. Get up! Do something to make things better.
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