Just an old-fashioned open thread

by liberal japonicus

Been a bit, so here you go. Altman and OpenAI, possible ceasefire in Gaza, right wing rising in the Netherlands and Argentina, Have at it.

Comments

[CharlesWT]

Hmmm???...

"Milei, by contrast, is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists."
Maga’s foolish embrace of Javier Milei: If this is all it takes to be a populist, then populism has no meaning.

[JanieM]

For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. :-)

Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps. Turkey in the offing, for tradition's sake.

[wj]

And a perspective on what else the family could argue about:
https://xkcd.com/2858/

Glad my family doesn't celebrate by arguing.

[nous]

Disney has so oversaturated their franchises that I cannot be bothered anymore. They are making the same mistake that the Wachowskis made with the second two Matrix films where they try to spread the love across many different media and then use the feature films to draw it all together in one epic showpiece. There ends up being too many threads going, and even though those threads are not essential to the main plot, they affect the feel of the film because the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.

Business model getting in the way of narrative sense. So disappointing.

[wj]

the emotional cues are all set high for the core fans, but feel underdetermined and a bit bewildering for the casuals.

I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market. It can, admittedly, be a viable business model. But Disney used to know better than to limit themselves that way.

[Michael Cain]

Sunshine here after a sloppy snow/rain yesterday, and mild temps.

Gray here. Looks like we've already had our high for the day at 38 and started back down. Snow isn't supposed to start seriously until mid-afternoon, then last until Saturday morning. Well, a bunch of time to start a complicated little Christmas drawing.

The last 24 hours nicely illustrates the progress and remaining problems the local power authority has for meeting its 100% no-carbon electricity by 2030 goal.
http://mcain6925.com/obsidian/last24.png

[Girl from the North Country]

For those celebrating it, Happy Thanksgiving. :-)

Yes, from me too. I meant to say it earlier than this.

[CaseyL]

My Thanksgiving meal is tomorrow, at a friend's house. The roast is now roasting. When it's done, I have a couple sides to work on. My contributions will join turkey, potatoes, and many desserts at the hosts' place.

At least two people who were expected will not be able to join us, so there will be So. Much. More. Food. than there will be people to eat it. I hope we can send folks home with doggie bags.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

[liberal japonicus]

Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?

[CharlesWT]

Charles, not sure what the hmmm is about. Are you arguing that you have to be populist to be right-wing?

The article is right in saying that Milei has little in common with the various populisms in the US and the rest of the world. But his fantasy about Milei being a product of the Koch brothers and "extremist" Reason is both puzzling and a bit amusing. Reason is pretty moderate compared to other libertarian publications and organizations.

Reason's response:

"Milei, clucks Ahmari, "rejects nearly everything 'Maga' populists in the United States, and analogue movements across the developed world, claim to stand for…. [He] is a doctrinaire Hayekian seemingly grown in a secret laboratory funded by the Koch brothers, with the editorial staff of Reason, the extremist libertarian magazine based in Washington, serving as the scientists."

That's flattering, really. Milei's perfidious agenda includes such horribles as reducing tariffs in a country that is battling 140 percent annual inflation and has seen poverty climb from 5 percent a decade ago to over 40 percent. Milei—who does indeed quote libertarian economists such as Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, and Murray Rothbard—also wants to "dollarize" the economy as a way of hemming in an incompetent central bank and spendthrift government. This is bad, Ahmari says because it "would leave the country without its own central bank and at the mercy of the US Federal Reserve System." Maybe, but such a complaint simply ignores the existing reality, which is beyond untenable."
Is Javier Milei a 'Doctrinaire Hayekian' and a Secret Reason Science Project?: Catholic New Dealer* Sohrab Ahmari denounces Argentina's new president as a faux populist. Good for Milei.

[nous]

wj - I would interpret that as a business model aimed strictly at a niche market. While dismissing any interest in broadening the market.

Well it certainly seems to work that way in practice as they put out too many titles for each franchise and oversaturate the market. The intention is to try to win fans of particular characters via all the different media (film, tv, video games) and try to keep them hooked enough to chase the storylines across more titles and media. But what you get in practice is films with too many characters shoehorned in and not enough plot to go around.

It's happened in comics, it happened with the Matrix across those same media.

I think Disney's biggest goal was to try to lure the casuals to subscribe to Disney + so that they could get a steady income and not have to worry about any particular title bombing. I don't love any of their franchises enough to do this. I'm even more disinclined to do this based on how poorly The MarvelWars Mouse treats its writers.

[liberal japonicus]

Thanks for the clarification, Charles, I thought the hmmm was for me classing Milei as right wing.

[CharlesWT]

When your reveal party goes sideways. (YouTube)

[GftNC]

For anyone who was interested in the story of the Bulstrode paper (I know Pro Bono said he brought it to the attention of the Vice Chancellor of UCL), this further development makes depressing reading:

If you haven’t read my post, give it a go. It’s about a paper by a UCL historian called Jenny Bulstrode which claims that the English industrialist Henry Cort stole his innovative method of iron production from a group of black slaves who worked in an iron foundry in Jamaica - despite the fact that Cort never visited Jamaica, or had any established contact with anyone who had anything to do with anyone in the foundry, and despite there being no evidence that these slaves did invent a new process, or that the foundry ever used anything resembling Cort’s process. Honestly, if you think I’m exaggerating, read my piece and follow the links, and/or read Anton Howes’ first piece on the paper’s gaping holes.

https://www.ian-leslie.com/p/the-end-of-history?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=54748&post_id=139074568&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=w2vx&utm_medium=email

As someone quoted in the article, about this and similar stories, tweeted:

As a black woman, a million times this. A single byte of empirical evidence is worth all the "emancipatory stories in the universe".

[Pro Bono]

I heard no more from Professor Rees. UCL has declared that Bulstrode's paper has been fully vindicated.

[Pro Bono]

Leslie's post is mainly about another paper, not yet published but previewed by the BBC. According to the BBC's article, the paper asserts that "race is a social classification" but claims to be able to identify whether 14th century skeletons are of black Africans. I have no idea how both propositions could be true.

[Michael Cain]

A23a, the current world's largest iceberg, is about to reach the open ocean. 3,900 square kilometers, 400 meters thick.

[wj]

I have no idea how both propositions could be true.

Perhaps they take the position that "race" as a physiological/genetic characteristic exists. But is only peripherally related to "race" as it is used in everyday (i.e. social) situations.

Still, the authors would do well to unpack their position as a matter of transparency for readers.

[Girl from the North Country]

Pro Bono, I think in more than half Leslie's post (admittedly the second half) he circles back to the Bulstrode piece and discusses the (seemingly absurd) claims that it has been vindicated, going on to worry about the effect that this sort of thing has on the respectability of academic history.

[GftNC]

On an entirely different subject, some in other countries may know that we have been hearing the revelations of the independent public inquiry into Covid, and the government's actions during the pandemic. We have grown used to many extraordinary findings in the testimony of the various scientists, political advisers etc, most recently that both Sunak and Johnson (who are due to testify soon) at different times expressed the opinion that the infection should be let rip through the population and kill off the old who, according to BoJo, had in any case had "a good innings" (a cricket term). In yesterday's Guardian there was a poem by Michael Rosen, the poet, who spent more than 48 hours in intensive care with the virus. I hope that this is much anthologised in the future, and lives on to shame that scoundrel:

Out of bedrooms and wards

long lines of the dead walk towards you

asking you,

‘Who were you to decide

that our innings was over?

Who gave you the umpire’s white coat

and upraised finger?’

Did you think we would never speak

from the graves you gave us?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/24/who-were-you-to-decide-that-our-innings-was-over-michael-rosens-covid-inquiry-poem

[nous]

I only have time to respond to the Bulstrode debate with short points as my time has been swallowed by holidays and end-of-quarter grading.

- I do not disagree with any of the points made in the defense of Bulstrode's papers. Her research went through the proper steps and followed acceptable historical practices. I believe them when they say there were no lapses in scholarly practice during the writing or the reviewing of the paper.

- The defense never makes the claim that Bulstrode's interpretation definitively proves that Cort stole the processes and the credit from the workers at his Jamaican holdings. All they say is that the sorts of suppositions and against-the-grain assumptions she makes in the paper are within the realm of legitimate scholarly practice -- especially when they are intended to push back against older readings of the same history that rest on similarly unexamined and unestablished narratives.

- A more thorough and definitive account that introduces new information into the archive might lend weight to an alternative view and vindicate Cort's innovation, but that would not undercut Bulstrode's work, it would just shift the weight we give to some of her conclusions.

- I disagree with wj's assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren't writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.

- In all of these cases, the argument is not about facts, but about paradigms and methodologies, and treating these disagreements as matters of factual accounting misses the point of contention.

I remain unconvinced by Bulstrode's conclusions, but I don't think that means that her work needs to be held up as an object of public disapproval. I think the debate she is pushing with her reading is an important one. I just wish that the "fan community" on either side of the historical debate would step back a bit and learn better how to read the debate more critically.

[Pro Bono]

If Dr Bulstrode were to make a convincing case that it's plausible that Cort's techniques originated in Jamaica using sugarmill rollers, she should at least demonstrate that some sugarmill rollers of the time would have been suitable for rolling iron. She, and her defenders, don't even try. It's the lack of interest in the technology which irks.

Regarding the plague skeletons: yes, race in the "one drop of blood" sense is a social construct. Race in the "we can tell by measuring skeletons" sense is not.

[nous]

Hard to say what data was used for those skeletons if the article is pre-print, but similar research done recently on skeletons in Germany used DNA extracted from teeth and isotopic comparison of the tooth enamel to determine genetic heritage and geographical origin. If the study in question used similar methods, then that should lend some certainty to the conclusions. I'd want to know something like that before I started poking at the conclusions the way that Leslie does.

From there, though, the way that geographical origin, and genetic heritage, and phenotype play into our messy taxonomies of "race" surely does deserve scrutiny. We have, however, never been particularly good at constructing any objective basis for what race consists of beyond a few overlapping forms of degrees of resemblance that get freighted with a lot of social meaning and social hierarchies. It all gets very fuzzy very quickly, and to fight that fuzziness the language usually ends up becoming both less accessible, and fraught with unrelated disciplinary politics.

Good luck untangling.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.

Might work for 10-20 years, until the terms become widespread and politically loaded again. UNLESS the terms can be made so very complex* that only experts can tell them apart.

(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)

[wj]

I disagree with wj's assertion that the authors need to do more unpacking. They aren't writing for an audience that needs these things unpacked. The fault in this lies with The Guardian and other popular media who report these things without working to contextualize them for the new audience.

Which is to say, the Guardian's authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.

[wj]

CLEARLY what is needed is a new set of terms for racial groups, completely disconnected from all previous terminology, to defuse the political/racist connotations.

I'm not seeing an actual need here.

Increasingly, people are born with ancestors from all over the world. So, whatever "race" is taken to mean, increasingly the only category which fits is "mixed". So why bother?

[nous]

Which is to say, the Guardian's authors needed to unpack it. Since they were the ones writing for a general audience which needed it.

Or the academy needs to figure out that it has a big problem with translating its work in ways that can actually influence popular thought, and start rewarding work that is aimed at a non-academic audience and that scaffolds the more difficult concepts without losing too much nuance.

Neither side is bridging that gap very effectively.

[JanieM]

(*my suggestion, which is mine, is to put them on the complex plane; based on DNA sequences)

I have been thinking about something vaguely like this in relation to gender for decades. I've never really tried to work it out in writing or in detail, and I think what I'm groping for would work fine on a regular plane, but a line or spectrum certainly isn't adequate.

("Spectrum" in one of the senses Google tosses up:

used to classify something, or suggest that it can be classified, in terms of its position on a scale between two extreme or opposite points.
"the left or the right of the political spectrum".)

[Pro Bono]

The fault in this lies with The Guardian...

The Guardian has its faults, but it's not to blame for the BBC's reportage.

And whatever the merits of the BBC's account, I'd be grateful if someone could explain to me how something which can be determined by scientific measurement of skeletons can be a social construct.

In fairness to Leslie, I point out that his main problem with the (unpublished) paper is that its numbers are highly implausible.

[nous]

Race can be both a social construct and something that can be determined by forensic evidence in the sense that the same word is used to denote different definitions and usages. We can know that the skeletons come from a particular place of origin and have genetic markers consistent with particular populations and call that taxonomy a race in the older sense of the word that indicates a people. And we can also claim that the commonly held notions about groups of people who share a particular phenotype, geographical origin, or heritage is a product of public discourse and prejudice without any natural basis. Two stable and separate definitions belonging to the same word, with problematic slippage in their overlapping usages.

[Pro Bono]

Thank you. But that's not what the quotes from the paper are saying.

[Donald]

New topic, sort of, but Gaza related.

I’ve been and will remain a lesser evil voter since 2000. I lived in New York then and now, so it was safe to vote for Nader. I wouldn’t have done that in a swing state.

So my third party voting theory back then was not purity politics, one of those silly dismissive terms people use. They also say Sanders supporters are a personality cult— you should see what Sanders supporters including me have said about his unwillingness to support a ceasefire. A cult we may be, whatever that is, but it is an issues cult and we turn on our “ heroes” in a heartbeat. So that could be purity politics, except many of us do in fact vote lesser evil and make the sort of calculation I made in 2000– vote third party but not in safe states.

My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)

Gore lost, I think mainly because of Republican shenanigans in Florida, but Nader contributed. The “ send a message” theory of voting I had was a total disaster. Years later saw some commenter at Balloon Juice defending Hillary Clinton ( who supported the Iraq War and practically every war and who is cheering for the Israelis) who then blamed Nader a few sentences later for the Iraq War which so many leading Democrats had supported. The cognitive dissonance was awe-inspiring, but he also had a point. The history of the next 20 years in the Middle East might have been very different with Gore there. He was a leading Democrat who spent the run up to the Iraq invasion urging caution. It wasn’t exactly a moral argument that he made, it was very D.C. technocrat as I recall, but I will take caution over hubris.

So anyway, I stopped thinking of voting as a tool for sending messages. Voting is an extremely blunt instrument and something we have to do, but everybody makes it into something it is not. Don’t get overly excited by candidates. In fact, if you get excited you are probably setting yourself up either for disappointment or you might become the sort of person who starts filtering how you see every issue in a way so that your hero is always right.

Otoh, Gaza is front page news. Israel attracts both more support and more criticism than other countries ( for often bad reasons on both sides) which commit massive war crimes, but that means that unlike, say, Yemen, a President has to take an open stance that everyone sees. And it appears to be that, despite some advice to be more careful, Biden is going to support Israel’s ostensible goal in wiping out Hamas, which apparently involves literally turning all of Gaza into a pile of rubble.

I think voting for Biden sends the message that there is nothing you can’t do, so long as the other guy is worse. That is bad. With something like Yemen you could say a vote sends no obvious message because most people don’t even know about it.

I am still a lesser evil voter, but that’s been the problem all along with lesser evil voting. The word “ evil” is literally true on some issues. Voting for candidates is very important, but it just doesn’t capture everything you are supposed to care about and there is a problem in reducing politics to which side you support in the voting booth. On many issues there is a clear choice, but on some both candidates are terrible and people have to think about how to handle those issues. I don’t have any great ideas. Michael Cain mentioned voting on propositions, which will work on local environmental or other issues, but not as well on foreign policy. ( Though of course there has been a lot of voting against BDS on the local scale, so I guess you can do it, even if the actual results on that are not what I favor.)

[JanieM]

Donald -- we have a two-party system. No one is going to get everything they want out of either party. I think you're right that voting third party doesn't "send a message" the way people think it might, but also, by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don't vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn't feel right. Does it?

My immediate thought is that anyone who really cares about an issue, especially one involving "evil" and a choice (in a 2-party system) of lesser or greater, has to get involved beyond voting. Donate money. Donate time. Protest. Write op-eds. Write blog posts or comments! There are a lot of ways to (try to) exert influence on politicians/officeholders besides voting or not voting for them.

It's slow, dirty, dishearteningly endless work. But I don't see any other way.

Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn't work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it's relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it's also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can't govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail ... as usual.

[CharlesWT]

For the coming election, the two-party system seems to be working hard to turn out the third-party vote.

[wj]

My third party voting theory was that it was a way of sending a message to the Democrats— take our issues seriously. I actually thought Nader’s campaign would do that. I very naively found it shocking that it did exactly the opposite— people seemed to go out of their way to ignore the issues that made Nader better in my view and emphasize the ones that made Gore better than Bush. ( There was also the extreme contempt that flowed back and forth between the two sides— politics as usual.)

I think this is a classic case of "The message you are sending is not the message they are receiving." You were trying to send "Pay attention to my issues." What they heard was "We won't support you" -- leading to a, rather predictable, reaction of "Why should we bother with your issues, since you won't support us?"

That is IMHO the problem with "protest voting." (Something I have done myself on occasion.) It is at least as likely to drive potential allies away as to motivate them to move in your direction. And allies are critical to get from fringe view to established policy.

[Donald]

WJ—

Yeah, protest voting doesn’t work. Found that out in 2000-2001. I still remember my genuine surprise at how it all backfired.

Jamie— Also agreed.

Charles— I actually agree with you as well, though I won’t be one of them.

[Girl from the North Country]

Donald, I really liked your 10.55, which I found very thoughtful and reasonable. It also made me realise how rarely we see someone come out and say "I was wrong, I made a mistake." I also agree with Janie's

by definition, if you have two choices, and you choose to vote, then if you don't vote for the lesser evil you are ending up voting for the greater evil. Which also doesn't feel right

which essentially lays out the reasoning for a lot of my voting.

[Donald]

Gftnc—

I wouldn’t give me too much credit. I was just confessing to a tactical error or misunderstanding regarding how politics works. Also, of course, a miscalculation of one person in a very large country has a tiny tiny effect. My vote in NY made no difference. I probably contributed something like 50 dollars to the campaign, which might have made a nonzero but still tiny difference. But yeah, not doing that anymore.

If my actions had a huge impact in a negative way, that would probably be very difficult to confess, even to myself, which is presumably why there is so much denialism in the world.

[Nigel]

..You can't govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million...

Seems to work fine in Switzerland, but they are something of a special case.

[Hartmut]

But it took significantly longer for women to get the right to vote in Switzerland. The first Kanton got it in 1959, the last in 1990. On the federal level it was 1971.
And (as with the Brexit in Britain) xenophobes* have been quite successful in demagoguing issues for their advantage**. I get the impression that the parliament is more moderate on those issues than the direct democratic votes.

*I'd say Switzerland has at least two distinct strains of xenophobia (three, if one counts the internal prejudices against the Italo-Swiss minority): the common one against those looking different (these days mainly Muslims) and the one against the 'great Kanton to the North' (Germany) that seems to have replaced the traditional against Austria. In a way the Germans are to Switzerland what the Mexicans are to the US: "they steal our work and s(p)end the money home (and would love to take over, if they were strong enough)"
**and the campaigns were extremly nasty, almost Austrian (I mean the patented "Why are you so intolerant to call me an antisemite just because I hate the Jews? WE were Hitler's first victims after all" shtick or the [propagated but never executed] idea that every Austrian should have to bite into a piece of pork in front of witnesses once a year***)
***which I guess got inspired by the old Japanese mandatory trampling of the crucifix but aimed at Muslims

[Donald]

I meant to get back to this but will keep it short. I wasn’t just indicting third party voters. I was also indicting people who ignore the issues that sometimes motivate third party voters.

Might come back to this later if I have time.

[JanieM]

@Nigel -- thanks for bringing Switzerland up -- it's fascinating, and I didn't know much about it. But it's still not remotely like having a national referendum for every little decision.

https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system.html

https://www.eda.admin.ch/aboutswitzerland/en/home/politik-geschichte/politisches-system/direkte-demokratie.html

In Switzerland the people play a large part in the decision-making process at all political levels. All Swiss citizens aged 18 and over have the right to vote in elections and on specific issues. The Swiss electorate are called on approximately four times a year to vote on an average of fifteen such issues. In recent decades, voter turnout has been a little over 40% on average.

Citizens are also able to propose votes on specific issues themselves. This can be done via an initiative, an optional referendum, or a mandatory referendum. These three instruments form the core of direct democracy.

In the 130th Maine Legislature, 2021-2022, 2301 bills were introduced and 639 were completed. Fifteen is not like 2301, or even 639. (see here).

(Sorry for the bare links. I haven't had breakfast yet, or more relevantly, caffeine.)

[JanieM]

A more relevant comparison might be with how many bills (or whatever they call them there) are passed in Switzerland by the council/assembly, i.e. the indirect/representative levels of government.

Also thanks to Hartmut for the info about some women not getting the vote in Switzerland until 1959 and then ... 1990?!?!?!? So much for direct democracy.

[JanieM]

Or "democracy."

[Michael Cain]

Also, as you say, making decisions by referendum doesn't work very well on foreign policy. But speaking as someone who lives in a state where it's relatively easy to get an issue on the ballot for a statewide vote, it's also a pretty blunt and unreliable instrument. You can't govern a state of 1.3 million people (Maine) by making every little (or even every big) decision that way, much less a country of 330 million. Legislators may be overly influenced by lobbyists and prejudices, but ordinary people are in an even worse position for staying/becoming informed enough to be voting on some things (even if they wanted to and had the time). And as we have seen in Maine, moneyed interests tend to prevail ... as usual.

In the western states, where initiatives and recalls were widely incorporated into the state constitutions over a 15-20 year period, state legislatures were almost completely out of control. Simplifying grossly, no matter who you voted for, they were going to pass laws that favored eastern business interests. TTBOMK the story about legislators showing up on the first day of the session and finding envelopes full of cash on their desks didn't actually happen, but at the time it seemed like it could.

Initiatives are at their best when there's an inflection point happening with policy. For example, in the 2000s in Colorado neither party wanted to touch the idea of a state mandate guaranteeing generation and delivery of renewable electricity. Once an initiative putting one in the constitution passed comfortably, the Democrats have expanded it while the Republicans have dug in their heels and claimed (despite data) that rural Colorado is too poor to afford renewable power.

Regardless of claims, it's a lot of work to get an initiative on the ballot. Colorado has relatively low hurdles and allows paid signature collectors. That got six issues on the 2022 ballot. Three of them could have been one item except for the single-subject rule. (Allowing groceries to sell full-strength beer and wine, with limits to protect the mom-and-pop liquor stores. Another example, IMO, of the people telling all of the legislators, "Quit being stupid.")

[Priest]

This afternoon on Balloon Juice:

https://balloon-juice.com/2023/11/27/open-thread-more-like-this-please/

[Girl from the North Country]

Priest, thank you for that. I don't know why I don't look at BJ more often. What a mensch that George Takei is.

[Michael Cain]

Too many mensch stories about George Takei to pick one.

My favorite fun Takei story is that when he interviewed for the Sulu role, Gene Roddenberry asked him for something unique about himself. Takei said that he fenced. Sometime during the first season one of the writers stopped Takei and said, "You told Gene that you fenced? We worked that into one of the stories..." So Takei ended up working 12 hours a day on set, then going to one of the Hollywood fencing schools and learning some basics: classic en garde position, simple salute, baby lunge with recover forward.

[Girl from the North Country]

Michael, I've probably asked you this before, but just in case not: have you read the Mick Herron Slow Horses books? Spy stories, Jim, but absolutely not as you know it. Highly recommended.

[Donald]

I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.

Imagine a situation in some parallel earth where we supported Hamas. It wouldn’t be the worst set of “ freedom fighters” we ever backed. Rather typical, frankly. We were supporting Hamas’s ideological brothers in Syria and there was a genuine fear of what people called a “ catastrophic success” if they had toppled Assad, because it likely would have resulted in a genocide of some religious minorities. Anyway, on parallel earth I think you could expect to lose a pretty big chunk of the Jewish vote if geopolitical calculations had us supporting Hamas against Israel.. And I wouldn’t try to change their minds with lesser evil arguments. People losing family members tends to outweigh these political calculations..

I vote lesser evil as I have explained but one of the bad things about this whole lesser evil thing and the third party illusion too, is that almost everything immediately gets turned into electoral politics. I think there should be room to make harsh and even bitter criticisms of the people in power even if one also thinks that later on, they are the least bad choice in the voting booth, But way too often one goes from criticizing US policy to electoral politics. Not here, it not so much, but very often. It is a flaw in our system and maybe one that can’t be fixed, but it seems like people can’t think of a way to pressure politicians except by threatening not to vote for them, and then we are back to the lesser evil thing.

[wj]

I wouldn’t try to tell Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden. The feelings there are too deep. In some cases they are losing family members, quite possibly to weapons supplied by the US.

I wouldn't try to tell them either. But I would suggest that they consider what TIFG's approach to the situation would be. Considering his demonstrated views of Muslims (meaning, since he is an ignoramus, pretty much anybody in the Middle East). Yes, it would be a very painful "lesser evil" choice. But it would be a much less evil one.

[nous]

My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge. I half wonder if some Palestinians cynically wonder if that might be the case.

Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.

[wj]

Which is to say it’s the domestic abuse household strategy for not setting off the abuser’s temper.

And is likely to work about as well. Sadly, it seems to be a lesson that is hard for some to learn. Either personally or en masse.

[Pro Bono]

My former housemate who has dual Israeli/US citizenship supports the enfant terrible over Biden because she believes Hamas would never have dared try that attack if The Orange Menace were in charge.

I don't understand that at all. How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?

[wj]

How would the Israeli response have been different with Trump in the White House?

My expectation is that, rather than trying to rein in the Israelis, Trump would have encouraged Netanyahu and his ultra-Orthodox cabinet members to go with their preferences and go whole hog. And if that ended up killing everyone in Gaza, he'd have been OK with that.

[nous]

By her way of thinking, Hamas would not have dared launch the glider attack in the first place for fear of The Great Spraytan going all in with his support. Hamas would have known they were in for a whuppin' and would not have tested us.

I know...madness.

How fortunate for us all that she is now an RFK Jr. supporter, with Nikki Haley as her backup plan.

[Hartmut]

RFK Jr. sounds like an advanced case of throat cancer to my ears. Apart from his unhinged views I could see that as a real handicap in a campaign

[hairshirthedonist]

I tend to think that a good number of RFK Jr. supporters gain a sense of satisfaction from the notion that they're going against the grain and aren't falling for the baloney coming from either party's mainstream. They're edgy and special and different.

[JanieM]

@Hartmut: Like Susan Collins and former NPR radio host Diane Rehm, RFK Jr. has spasmodic dystonia. (Google it if you care. There are plenty of references.)

Rehm's wiki says: In 1998, Rehm began having difficulty speaking normally. Eventually, she was treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital and was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a neurological condition that affects the quality of her voice. The condition is treatable but not curable.

I enjoyed Rehm's show back in the day. As for the other two, I would enjoy it if they would disappear from public life and never be heard from again.

[Hartmut]

I meant it more as an impression not as a medical diagnosis. For a job that requires lots of public speaking (and even more of it to get in the first place) having such a voice is not ideal. It should not matter (there are enough demagogues with pleasant voices and honest guys with unpleasant ones) but from a practical standpoint it does. Like (old) Kennedy's hair won over Nixon's sweat.
But, hey, in this case we should be happy about any handicap.
I wonder what a debate between Tricky Dick and the Orange One would have looked and sounded like.
But this could become the first modern POTUS campaign without the final candidates meeting each other in debate. The RNC seems to have preemptively excluded the ususal one organized by the commission on presidential debates, i.e. they will not accept a non-rigged setting.

[novakant]

The trouble is that Biden doesn't seem to get it:

According to a 2022 survey by Pew Research Center, 58 percent of people aged 18 to 29 have an unfavorable view of Israel, versus 28 percent of Americans older than 65—a divergence that has only become sharper in the past few weeks.

An NBC News poll released on Sunday found that between September and November, Biden’s approval rating among voters aged 18 to 34 fell from 46 to 31 percent. It’s no mystery why: A stunning 70 percent of voters in this age group disapprove of his handling of the war in Gaza.

More bad news for Biden: Young voters tend to be loyal not to a party or candidate but to their preferred policy objectives, often voting on a single issue. (...) if these voters’ sentiments toward Biden turn negative from neutral as a result of his stance on Gaza, a considerable amount of the Trump-repellent effect may be neutralized, resulting in a considerable portion of young voters either supporting a third-party candidate or sitting the election out. Faced with two candidates whose agenda they oppose, many Gen Zers will simply stay home.

But it’s not just young voters Biden has to contend with on this issue: 68 percent of all voters favor a cease-fire in Gaza, versus the 31 percent who support sending Israel weapons. And yet Biden continues to refuse to call for an enduring cease-fire.

It's a two-way street - voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there's a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.

[novakant]

Article with links to polls:

https://newrepublic.com/article/177048/biden-israel-ceasefire-young-voters-save-democracy

[Girl from the North Country]

Speaking as someone who not only favours a cease-fire in Gaza, but also thinks Israel should face consequences for what seems incontrovertibly to be war crimes, I can only say that anyone who agrees with this, but in any way votes (third party, sitting it out) against Biden in a Biden /Trump fight, will reap the whirlwind if they do not realise how very much worse that situation (among many, many others) would become under the Orange horror. At least Biden is trying, behind the scenes and with strictly limited success, to restrain Bibi. Despite Trump's current dislike of Bibi, he would probably be perfectly content with (maybe even excited by) e.g. a tactical nuclear strike against Gaza.

[JanieM]

It's a two-way street - voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there's a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.

I'm sure there's a breaking point, but I notice you said "preferences" plural.

There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza -- the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change....

But Israel/Gaza has dominated -- or okay, not dominated, because metaphorical usage or not, that suggests that the issue itself has agency, and I want to be clear that the agency is with some human being(s) -- it has been MADE to dominate the top headlines of one of the main sources I go to for headlines -- nbcnews dot com -- EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. since October 7. Ukraine has never gotten remotely that kind of treatment. Abortion, voter rights, climate change -- eh, barely back page news.

Practical politicians no doubt have to take into account the tendency of people to cut off their noses to spite their faces, which I would say is what you do if you vote for the greater evil candidate to spite the lesser evil one. But it also gets entwined with the question of how many voters are single-issue voters. I'm not. If people want to vote for Clickbait or any R in this country at this moment, for that matter, and for *whatever reason on earth* -- then we are doomed regardless.

[JanieM]

GftNC said it better.

[JanieM]

I think my comment jumbled up two things that are really separate: so-called "lesser evil" voting, and single issue voting. Maybe that's fair, because they seem to be jumbled up in this particular situation.

Maybe I'm a pessimist, but I don't see life on earth as any better than "lesser evil" a lot of the time. It's like that old story of the man who went looking for the perfect woman, and finally found her, but alas, she was looking for the perfect man.

Also, sometimes -- at least in theory, though certainly not in our presidential politics in this era -- the options are so alike, or so mixed up as to a voter's policy preferences, that there's something to weigh. I don't see how anyone could look at Biden and Clickbait and see that. I guess not voting at all is another approach, but that seems equivalent to saying: there's nothing to choose between them, and/or our system is so broken it doesn't matter. I get that a little more than I get imagining that voting for Clickbait is a "solution" to Biden not giving you what you want on a particular issue. It's not like better candidates are littering the streets, policy-wise.

[Girl from the North Country]

There are dozens of issues that matter to me at least as much as Israel/Gaza -- the threat of fascism in our own nation, abortion rights and the treatment of women, voter rights, the fact that the country is carpeted in guns, climate change....

I just want to say how passionately I agree with Janie on this. And there isn't a thing, not any of the above, or Russia/Ukraine, or anything regarding foreign affairs anywhere in the world, which would not be made immeasurably worse if Trump were once again to win the presidency. God (in whom I do not believe) forbid - and may anybody who has access to whoever is flirting with the idea of enabling that cursed event please try to convince them otherwise, for the sake of their own issues and many others.

[JanieM]

It's a two-way street - voters may have to vote for the lesser evil, but there's a breaking point if leaders take their voters for granted and simply ignore their policy preferences.

Back to this. I have been going on from the point of view of how strange I think "lesser evil" voting is when (IMHO) life presents us with an endless menu of greater vs lesser evils, usually in rather complex ways, and we have to thread our way through the mess as best we can.

But insofar as novakant's comment has to do with how "leaders" respond to one-issue or lesser evil voters, well, they, the "leaders," have a dilemma too. In a huge, diverse democracy, voters are all over the map. Satisfy one group (and there are so many ways to slice the electorate it boggles the mind) and you'll wake up to find another voting bloc furious at you from another direction.

I had never heard of the Quincy Institute, but I did follow novakant's link. Yet another pundit with an opinion.... Everyone seems to want to prove they're smart these days by explaining how deep the trouble is that Biden's in. You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he's a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he's competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no....is this what's called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don't think that's going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.

As a footnote, what are polls worth these days when no one will answer the phone to an unknown number? I don't know, but I guess we'll gradually find out.

[wj]

You would think that all Biden would have to do to show that he's a better choice for president than Clickbait would be to make it clear that he's competent enough to take out the trash without spilling it. But no....is this what's called heightening the contradictions? Somehow I don't think that's going to work, in the sense of making the world a better place anyhow.

I think basically they are living in a dream world.

In their dream world someone (almost always carefully unspecified) that they prefer could just step up and replace Biden. With no hard feelings, either from people who like, and vote for him in the primaries, nor from those with a different imaginary replacement. And that imaginary person would be a sure thing to beat Trump -- because they hate Trump, and can't imagine that people exist who prefer Biden to Trump, but would not prefer their white knight to Trump. Even though I'd give long odds that, whoever they imagine replacing Biden would push more low information voters towards Trump than she would attract.

Or, to be (sort of) fair, perhaps them somehow imagine that, if Biden was replaced, Trump voters would magically see the light and abandon him for a different Republican. In what universe???

[Pro Bono]

If I had a vote in the next US presidential election, I would be a single-issue voter opposing fascism.

[nous]

I wonder how much of what the pollsters are seeing here is people treating their polls as a chance to give feedback about policy decisions that they hate, and not about how they will actually vote come election time? I think a lot of this is less about actual choices and more about trying to signal a shift in public opinion.

I don't know that Biden is in deep peril. He's likely in some peril. Where I think we'll really see this play out, though, is in the House races, where reps that toe the Biden line may find themselves dropped in favor of a younger candidate that expresses more frustration with Israel. I think we'll see a lot more tension between the pro-Israel and the Israel-critical caucuses on the left. I see a whole lot of this sort of infighting going on in social media posts.

It will be interesting to see if there is any sort of knock-on effect with other issues based on the caucuses becoming more divided. There will be a lot of other issues that shift based on the long tailcoats of I/P.

But I remain unconvinced that this all translates into deep electoral trouble for Biden. I think it actually translates into greater uncertainty, and how much trouble that translates into depends on whether we have Spraytan as the opponent again, or if someone like Haley ends up sneaking into the frontrunner's position.

[Donald]

I think Ukrainian war got tremendous amount of attention in the early days. It gradually receded as time passed. Gaza is getting more attention because Israel is involved and they are treated as practically part of Amerca, which means both an enormous amount of support and also the antiwar types ( like myself) who focus on the crimes of our own country also focus on it. But I think the news coverage will lessen if Biden succeeds in making it a kinder gentler war. But it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.

[wj]

it has been one of the most intense bombing campaigns in many years, triggered by one of the largest terrorist attacks in many years, which combined with the fact that it is Israel means obsessive coverage.

Given today's short attention spans, even though Israel is involved it seems likely a new obsession will surface in a couple of months at the outside. Or maybe an old one (Biden's age, perhaps?) will get recycled.

My personal preference (about which the universe cares not at all) would be a spate of headlines on Ukraine's sudden, and unexpected, big gains. With second choice being TIFG getting tossed in the slammer for contempt of court. That would distract the media totally!

[Hartmut]

Well, to-day the media will be all over the death of the original 9/11 guy - the one from/in 1973.

[hairshirthedonist]

I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low (a phrase which could be taken a number of ways in his case).

ISTM that the mushy middle has a short memory and that his numbers improve the less he's seen spewing his bile on major news networks as he was while "serving" as POTUS.

The election is a year out. Who knows what sort of public antics he'll pull in the meantime to turn off people who aren't hardcore MAGA? I could see him running a campaign that's negative for himself, at least for some portion of the electorate that isn't already unequivocally opposed to him.

I'm not generally a big fan of negative campaigns, but I think the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words. Make damned sure everyone who is at all persuadable has it as fresh in mind as possible what a horrible POS the man is.

This presidential election is a contest to be the more abstract alternative to the candidate you can't stand.

[wj]

I think the best thing for Rump would be to stick to the outlets that cater to his core supporters and otherwise lie low

But, as with taking advice from his lawyers, it's something he is basically incapable of doing.

the D machine as a whole should run lots of ads that are simply clips of Rump speaking his own worst words.

The trick there being to select a few, out of the vast array of possibilities, and hammer them repeatedly. Specifically, his pushing for something which will motivate people who are not MAGA to turn out and vote against him.** Repetition is what sells.

** Maybe a nice "ban contraceptives" rant (if a good one is available) -- something which reflects taking away stuff from the public.

[Hartmut]

One could revive the old "X vs. X" interview format with completely opposite statements from the same guy.
(Iirc Colbert did that at least once)

[Donald]

Power targets--the reasoning behind why so many high rises are being blown up. Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There's a word for that which starts with a t.

https://www.972mag.com/mass-assassination-factory-israel-calculated-bombing-gaza/

[GftNC]

Ah, RIP the wonderful Shane MacGowan. I link the clip from the documentary on Danny Boy I have mentioned on ObWi before. I love how he thinks his eyes can't be seen because of the sunglasses, but they can of course, and you can see how moved he is by what some (but not me, for sure, and not him or the other wonderful artists in the documentary) consider a corny old song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEKs2v5dF9M

[nous]

MacGowan just wanted to get into the queue early to punch Kissinger in the face.

[GftNC]

This is worth reading on him, from today's Guardian.

I think it's slightly misleading about his background: his parents might have been middle-middle class, but he was brought up for his first 6 years on a farm in an extraordinary version of rural Ireland - he said that he was given his first alcoholic drink before he was 6, and was drinking regularly. However, the fact that once back in England, even after going to prep school, he won a scholarship to Westminster shows how very clever he must have been. I once had a ward at Westminster, it is the most extraordinary school, at times I found it almost more like a good university. Unsurprisingly, he only lasted there just over a year before being expelled for drugs.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/nov/30/shane-macgowan-the-poet-musician-of-dereliction-who-became-a-mythic-figure

[wj]

Basically, it is an attempt to pressure Hamas by hurting civilians. There's a word for that which starts with a t.

There's also a word for that which starts with an F: futile. Since civilians, and civilian lives, are way, way down on Hamas' list of priorities.

[Girl from the North Country]

From another piece on Shane MacGowan, by Will Hodgkinson who interviewed him several years ago in the same tumbledown cottage referred to. I was wrong, he was 4 when he had his first alcoholic drink:

It was at the tumbledown cottage that MacGowan discovered drinking — at the age of four. Four years later he was conducting animated conversations with the farmyard animals after getting hold of a bottle of whisky. “I couldn’t wait to grow up,” he said of throwing himself toward alcoholism. “I was going to the pub when I was a kid. My uncle who looked after the farm would bring me bottles of Guinness from the boozer. I would drink them very slowly as the night went on.”

MacGowan’s stroke of genius, which led to beloved Pogues songs such as Sally MacLennane, A Pair of Brown Eyes and, of course, Fairytale of New York, was to combine a thoroughly Irish literary, mystical, boozy spirit with the raw anger and energy of punk. As the Pogues took off, first in the Irish pubs and clubs of London and then across the world, and in America in particular, MacGowan got the adventure he had been waiting for. “Everything was exciting,” he told me in Dublin. “The first time we stayed in a hotel and discovered room service — that was exciting. We took Irish music and speeded it up a bit, which you can hear in A Pair of Brown Eyes — exciting. It changed our lives.”

Something about MacGowan was resistant to the charade that showbusiness inevitably brings, though. “Once Fairytale got big it was really boring, and you get real sick of it. You’re walking out on stage and they’re applauding like mad before you’ve done anything, yeah? It gets to be frightening.”

[novakant]

Morality aside, from a marketing point of view, it's probably not the most effective strategy to ignore or belittle the concerns of voters who are on the fence, especially if they are mostly young people.

And if we don't expect Palestinian Americans to vote for Biden, we should ask ourselves what the Democrats could do to change that - hint: change tone and policy.

I'm still confused why everybody should just accept Biden's outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him - his own administration is doing it:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/dissent-generation-gap-biden-administration-israel-hamas-war-rcna127358

[JanieM]

novakant: either we're talking past each other, or you need to clarify what you mean by "challenge."

I don't have time to reread the thread, but I don't remember anyone saying Biden shouldn't be challenged on his ME policy. Nor, in my reading of people's comments, did anyone suggest accepting the ME policy on its own as the "lesser evil."

I thought we were talking about whether to vote for Biden or not, especially given the likely alternative. I.e., "lesser evil" means which candidate you choose, explicitly relating to a whole constellation of policies, and not just one. As I tried to say already, there's inevitably going to be a mix of greater and lesser evils in relation to any particular voter's mix of policy preferences. Or to put it a different way, ME is not the only policy implicated in who you vote for.

Of course, it depends on what you mean by "challenge." Speak out, pressure the administration, protest in the streets if you want to "challenge" a specific policy: I certainly never intended to say (I think I explicitly said the opposite) that people shouldn't make their displeasure with a particular policy known.

But if by challenge you mean a primary challenge, I think that gets the same result as not voting for him in a two-way contest, by a different pathway: it hands the election over to Clickbait.

[JanieM]

Shorter me:

novakant: I'm still confused why everybody should just accept Biden's outdated ME policy as the lesser evil and not challenge him - his own administration is doing it

Nobody said this.

[Donald]

I would have favored someone challenging Biden if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer and then other Democrats would be competing to be the nominee. Too late now.

I am not sure, supposing a primary challenge from a serious candidate were possible, if it would increase the chances of Trump winning, but since it can’t happen, it’s just a theoretical debate. Carter was challenged by Ted Kennedy, but Carter was presiding over very high inflation and interest rates and there was the Iran hostage crisis ( probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory) and I don’t think Kennedy’s challenge made the difference.

[wj]

if I had a time machine and could go back far enough to make it practical or far better, I wish Biden had decided right from the start to be a one termer

I'm thinking that, if he had, it would have made his dickering with (arm twisting of) Congress to get things done notably harder. I'm not a political guru, heaven knows. But my sense is that it makes a difference. Especially if you were to say that you are going to be a single term President.

[Donald]

I have heard things like that before and it seems weird— people also say the same about second term Presidents, as though they win and instantly become lame ducks. But it is supposed to be the party and whatever it loosely stands for that one is supporting. So Biden is in the WH pushing for a Democratic agenda with the understanding that his successor , whoever that is, will have the same agenda, roughly speaking.

Again, of course, water under the bridge. But I think I remuneration people looking at Biden’s age in 2020 and saying that he could be a 1 termer, saving us from Trump and then passing the baton and in the early days it was not certain he would run for a second term. Bernie even said when this was discussed that if Biden chose to run again, he would not run and Biden was grateful. I wouldn’t want Sanders to run again myself— I do have a concern about all these very old politicians sticking around and while Bernie is still in good shape and I think should stick around as Senator if he wants, until he starts slowing down, as far as Presidents are concerned I wish the baton would get passed.

Too late now.

[Donald]

“ Renumeration” in my previous post was the iPad’s way of correcting whatever typo I made when spelling “remember”

[Girl from the North Country]

probably made worse by sabotage from Republicans— I believe that conspiracy theory

I thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren't released til after the election - is that not so?

Also, Janie, novakant might be referring to my saying that at least Biden's policy with Israel was producing a certain, very limited amount of restraint (although obviously the hostages' relatives have also been instrumental), whereas Trump would only make things worse. But yes, this certainly was only one way, and far from the most consequential, in which I was proposing Biden as the lesser evil.

[nous]

I'm getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.

[Donald]

“ thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren't released til after the election - is that not so?”

I think so, but can’t remember for sure. I’m feeling too lazy to look. It was a conspiracy theory for a long time, but i don’t reject CT’s simply for being CT’s. I just reject the ones which seem clearly idiotic, remain agnostic on some and embrace a few others.

[JanieM]

I'm getting pretty tired of this modern adaptation of King Lear.

Yep.

[Hartmut]

But Lear was - despite his 80 years of age - still very fit. His daughters complained that he always made too much noise when coming home in the evening from wild boar hunting. And in the end he is still capable of carrying his fully grown dead daughter in his arms (not over his shoulders). It's an old stage joke that the most important thing for an actor to play Lear is to find out how heavy his Cordelia is.

[Girl from the North Country]

Well, well. Not before time:

The Biden administration has informed Israel that Washington will impose visa bans in the next few weeks on Israeli extremist settlers engaged in violence against Palestinian civilians in the occupied West Bank, a senior state department official said.

Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, in his meeting with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, and his war cabinet have let them know that the United States will take its own action against an undisclosed number of individuals.

The West Bank, among the territories where Palestinians seek statehood, has experienced a surge of violence in recent months amid expanding Jewish settlements and a nearly decade-old impasse in US-sponsored peacemaking.

The violence, at a more-than-15-year high this year, surged further after Israel hurtled into a new war in Gaza in response to Palestinian militant group Hamas unleashing the deadliest day in Israel’s history on 7 October.

Asked for a response, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy said he had no comment on the matter but said that Israel firmly condemned any vigilantism or hooliganism or attempts by individuals to take the law into their own hands.

The United States has repeatedly expressed its concern over the rising violence in the West Bank, saying it must stop. Joe Biden, in an 18 November Washington Post opinion piece threatened to take action against the perpetrators.

“I have been emphatic with Israel’s leaders that extremist violence against Palestinians in the West Bank must stop and that those committing the violence must be held accountable. The United States is prepared to take our own steps, including issuing visa bans against extremists attacking civilians in the West Bank,” the US president wrote.

The state department official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, said Washington wanted Israel to prosecute perpetrators but had yet to see such a step. The bans could come in the next few weeks, the official said.

Daily settler attacks have more than doubled, UN figures show, since Hamas, which controls the coastal enclave of Gaza to Israel’s southwest, killed 1,200 Israelis and took about 240 hostage. Israel has since bombed and invaded Gaza, killing more than 15,000 people.

[Michael Cain]

...thought this was established fact? Proof that Reagan catspaws made sure that the hostages weren't released til after the election - is that not so?

IIRC, lots of allegations and circumstantial evidence but no "smoking gun". My own favorite theory is that the Iranians did it on their own, along with a back-door message to the effect of "Let's talk about ways to get around the arms embargo."

[JanieM]

But Lear was - despite his 80 years of age - still very fit.

"But"? I thought that was the point of nous's comment.

[JanieM]

I.e. that Biden is quite fit for the job he is doing and wants to keep doing. This is in the back of my mind every time someone brings up his age, or that he should have just done one term, or etc. I am not sure anyone else living could have handled Congress the way he has, and there's a lot else that I think he's been doing right as well. But it's all bitching and moaning in every direction, depending on what people's personal hobbyhorse is.

But enough. If Mr. Bumble wants to say "the electorate is an ass," I won't disagree with him. Instead I'll go cook dinner.

[JanieM]

Pretty recent (May 2023) return to the subject of the Iran hostages.