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Home » Open thread 7/20/22

Open thread 7/20/22

The New Neo Posted on by

A demonstration of the art of partnering, from one of the finest practitioners of that art, Anthony Dowell:

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Open thread 7/20/22 — 33 Comments

  1. The “art of partnering” indeed!
    “Pelosi’s Husband Bought Millions in Chip Stocks Before Subsidy Vote”—
    https://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/nancy-pelosi-husband-insider/2022/07/17/id/1079136/
    – – – – – – –
    And the koan of the day:
    “Judge in Bannon trial warns defense team about turning court proceeds into ‘political circus’ “—
    https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/day-two-bannon-contempt-trial-begins-more-testimony-top-jan-6-committee

    (Put another way, how can one possibly turn a circus into…a circus?)

  2. At the NSCD in England (a nation decaying even faster than our ailing republic), the “wokeness” infecting the organization has caused it to declare that ballet is too “white” and “elitist”, too “gendered” , as well as constructed around ideas far too European.

  4. Not sure why this is so artful… He certainly hits the unconventional lifts, swings, and twists. But it seems rather perfunctory – or perhaps the dancers are preoccupied with the complex choreography. He could be spinning a top at 4:29.

  5. Caroline Glick, JNS: “The strategic fallout of Biden’s failure”

    […] Biden’s envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, effectively told America’s allies during an interview with NPR on July 5 that the administration has betrayed them. Malley said that Iran already has sufficient quantities of enriched uranium to assemble a nuclear bomb in a few weeks. Israel, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain wanted to hear from Biden how the United States intends to block Iran from becoming a nuclear armed state now that his own envoy has confirmed that thanks to Biden’s policies, Iran has become a nuclear threshold state.

    Rather than outline such a policy, Biden told Israel and the Arabs that the United States is staying the course with nuclear appeasement. That is, Biden told them that they are on their own. And worse, he told Israel that the United States opposes any military attack on Iran’s nuclear installations. In other words, not only will Biden and his team do nothing to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons, they will protect Iran from an assault by U.S. allies. […]

    But rather than walk away, the administration has doubled down. They have sought to bring Iranian allies and proxies Qatar and Iraq, as well as Jordan, into the regional air defense alliance that the United States seeks to create through CENTCOM. But bringing Qatar and Iraq into the alliance means emptying the alliance of all meaning. Similarly, Biden seeks to bring Jordan and the P.A., which oppose the Abraham Accords, into the summits of Abraham Accord partners, a move that would, again, gut the accords and reduce them to strategic incoherence, at best. […]

    All of this, of course, is devastating for Israel, on every level. The move Israel has to make is fairly obvious. Israel needs to pander to the Biden administration just as emptily as Biden and his hostile advisers pander to Israel. And then they need to pursue policies that actually defend Israel’s interests.

    Unfortunately, our caretaker leaders, Prime Minister Yair Lapid and Defense Minister Benny Gantz, are doing no such thing. […]

    Israel has apparently no plan to attack Iran’s nuclear installations, despite the fact that we are at crunch time. We have no policy to defend or preserve the Abraham Accords. Indeed, both Gantz and Lapid seem to have no clear understanding of the accords’ purpose or rationale. It’s hard to know whether their positions are based on ideological blindness or simple incompetence. Both men have demonstrated both, and in similar ways.

    But all the same, Biden’s cataclysmically failed visit, which was followed immediately by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s triumphant visit to Tehran on Monday, means that Israel has no time for its leaders to learn remedial statecraft.

    Biden’s pandering was irritating and insulting. But it’s the devastating substance of his policies that is truly alarming. Israel has to stand up for itself now, because nothing it says, no pandering on its part, will change America’s trajectory.

    https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-strategic-fallout-of-bidens-failure/

  7. To be sure, what Caroline Glick refers to as “Biden’s failure” is, in fact, “Biden”‘s GREAT SUCCESS.

    And surely planned as such…since 2009 (with an, um, truly “unfortunate” gap between 2016 and 2020—a brief hiccup along the way that had to be rectified by all means necessary)….

    (To think that America could not be relied upon by its ally in Teheran…was simply unbearable to even contemplate…a deep stain upon the country that had to absolved.)

    And so…
    More crises.
    More chaos.
    More carnage.
    The plan is going swimmingly.

  8. What do you think Erdogan was up to meeting with Khamenei and Putin in Iran, Barry? I for one have no idea.

  9. Ben David:

    Partnering is hard when the man doesn’t have much choreography to do in certain passages. This is one of those passages. I was praising his partnering here, not his dancing (he was, however, a very great dancer, although that doesn’t show here). His every gesture subtly shows off the woman and yet he imbues it all with feeling, always expressing the emotions appropriate to Romeo, while he hauls her around and interacts with her. You believe – at least, I believe – that this character is in love with her and having a lot of trouble saying goodbye (this is after they were married and spent the night together for the first time). He never looks wooden or like he’s just there to lift her as some sort of assistant, which is common during partnering. To do everything he needs to do technically here, while remaining wholly in character in every move, and to show exquisite musicality and timing as well – that is partnering genius, in my opinion.

  10. Related:
    “HOW BIDEN BLEW UP THE ABRAHAM ACCORDS…”
    https://instapundit.com/531337/
    …which links to
    “How Biden Blew The Chance For Middle East Peace;
    “Biden’s Debasement Of The Abraham Accords”
    https://lidblog.com/abraham-accord-negotiations/
    Alas, Jeff Dunetz is, for all his insights, a bit confused here…since for “Biden”, “Middle East Peace” means something altogether different from what Dunetz conceives….

    (IOW, “Biden” did NOT “blow” anything.)

  11. Long ago, a client who ran a dance school for kids presented “Bolero”. Don’t know who choreographed it. It was upper high school age group.
    Could have taken that one on the road.
    I commented afterwards that the guys looked burlier than the usual ballerinos or whatever you call them. And there were more, one per girl dancer. Rarely happens in neighborhood efforts.
    She said she’d had the girls get their boyfriends to join and taught them to “partner”. “And I bet you didn’t notice they weren’t dancing.” She was right. No clue.

    Wondered afterwards if the thing introduced the guys to another part of the world, after football practice or something. Made a difference?

  12. Correction:
    “…between 2016 and 2020…” (above) should be (of course) “…between 2017 and 2021…”
    – – – – – – – – –
    As for the the meeting between those three lovelies, I have no idea…but one might assume they’re up to no good.
    Coordination (or seeming coordination?) of some kind?
    Giving “Biden” an excuse to express “concern”.
    Making Israel a tad nervous? (Should be, “…a tad more nervous?”)
    Demonstrating that Putin is NOT alone?
    Demonstrating that Iran is NOT alone?
    Demonstrating that Erdogan is still a loose canon (and will always be…unless his feet can be kept to the fire).
    Who knows?
    But with Hezb’ullah’s latest chomping at the bit in Lebanon with all this offshore nat-gas “business” (along with everything else); a tyro who thinks quite a bit of himself in charge, as it were, of Israel’s current caretaker government; Putin’s warning to Israel vis-a-vis its recent deterrence raids in Syria; and with “Biden” basking in the chaos with which “he” seems so besotted…well, who knows?— maybe they’re trying to decide whether the current situation presents a golden opportunity that should not be passed up.
    (IOW, is the proverbial iron hot enough for them to strike or at least explore rather provocative, do something somewhat adventurous…)
    It’s all speculative…but anything that makes Israel nervous has got to be a net positive (unless Israel gets TOO nervous; however, “Biden” may have sufficiently neutralized “I’M NOT BIBI” Lapid from engaging in anything too precipitous.)
    Who knows?

  13. well since kissinger, it was surrendering lands to the so called palestinians, this was something even Reagan considered until beirut blew up, they did recognize the plo, at the tail end of the administration, precursor to the big handshake with arafat, which happened on the qt

  14. among the three, putin is the outlier, not outwardly antisemitic like erdogan or khamenei, but for convenience sake, he has allied with both, because of syria, who the former wants to take over,

  16. To be sure, it’s more than Israel who’s concerned here.
    The Saudis, the Emirates, Bahrain…will also be quite a bit apprehensive—which apprehension “Biden” would probably enjoy quite a bit…given “his” twisted sense of humor…and given the general Arab luke-warm (to be kind) response to that recent presidential visit to the ‘hood, IOW a bit of sweet “pay-back”.
    Which, if so, might well mean that that Putin-Khameini-Erdogan tete-a-tete-a-tete has “Biden”‘s blessing as a counter-weight to (and bit of sweet revenge for) the recent brush off that was so well noted by anyone who was paying attention (and not enslaved to the Narrative).
    That is, a kind of “You don’t trust ME? OK, I’ll show YOU not to trust me” sort of ridiculous response (but distinctly reflective of “Biden” and “his” vindictive M.O.)
    Once again, purely speculative…

  17. this is why I stick with the celentano videos, malley tells blinken how high to jump, he cries over khashoggi, like the rancor’s master (I know I used that reference for cheney, prince salman knew to keep the pistol under the sink, like michael corleone,

  18. Let’s start a pool: when the IRGC lets slip their nuclear weapons are operational how long until Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Japan, Taiwan, and RoK declare their heretofore covert concerted efforts at nuke capabilites are complete? Hours? Days? Weeks?

    *wink*

  19. Richard Aubrey.
    Great story.
    Would make a good movie…or maybe, once upon a time…
    (There’s an awful lot of athleticism involved and strength required, which might be appealing/challenging to football players…)

  20. point taken, the revolutionary guard has been at this for thirty years, and even with pakistani imput, they have been slow to make a bomb (the fatwa fails because who would defy the grand ayatollah) the libyans had made the most progress around 2003, with some of the same scientists, along with technicians from south africa,

  22. This morning on Amazon Music I was listening to the 1984 HARP concert. HARP was Holly Near, Arlo Guthrie, Ronnie Gilbert and Pete Seeger. IOW a New Left and Old Left, hands-across-the-generations, folksinger effort.

    Back in the mid-80s HARP was a must-have album for leftist activists, as I was then. So I’m sentimental about the record and I don’t expect anyone else here to be.

    I bring it up to compare and contrast the Left then with the Left now. What’s most striking, shocking even, is that the working class, once the centerpiece of the Left, has vanished as a concern.

    Would any young radicals today comprehend songs about Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, and the Spanish Civil War? I doubt it.

    Yes, I know those causes weren’t what they were cracked up to be, but they were very much a part of the Left’s mythology then.

    Some older Democrat political consultants — Ruy Teixeira, Pat Caddell and James Carville — have noticed this too and are ringing alarms that losing the working class is political suicide for Democrats.

    Not that their alarms have made any difference. Just recently, Teixeira has moved from the left-wing Center for American Progress to the free market American Enterprise Institute.
    ___________________________________

    “I’d say they have been affected by the nature and inclination and preferences of their junior staff,” he says. “It’s just the case that at CAP, like almost any other left think tank you can think of, it’s become very hard to have a conversation about race and gender and trans issues, even crime and immigration. You know, ‘How should the left handle these?’ There’s a default assumption about how you’re supposed to talk about these things, even the language. There’s a real chilling effect on all of these organizations, and I think it’s had an effect on CAP as well.”

    Like a lot of older and whiter veterans of liberal think-tanks and foundations, he also says he’s exhausted by the internal agita. “It’s just cloud cuckoo land,” he says. “The fact that nobody is willing to call bullshit, it just freaks me out.”

    https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/07/15/capital-city-ruy-teixeira-american-enterprise-institute-00045819

  23. there is a sublime elegance to that performance,

    yes on balance they focused on real injustices, one might argue with sacco and vanzetti,

  25. “…political suicide for Democrats…”

    Except that “Biden” doesn’t seem to think so.

    Wonder why that might be…

  26. Apropos of JoJo, he evidently said that he “has” [present tense] cancer, and blames it on the oil industry:

    “The remark initially appeared to be a stunningly casual health announcement during a speech about global warming in which he described emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Claymont, Del. ‘That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation,’ Biden said. . . . The president said that he has cancer while speaking near a former coal power plant that’s being converted to support offshore wind farms in Somerset, Mass.”

    https://nypost.com/2022/07/20/joe-biden-says-he-has-cancer-in-possible-gaffe/

    Brandon doesn’t “have” cancer, he is a cancer on the body politic.

  27. https://rumble.com/v1abcmg-arizona-forensic-audit-presentation-featuring-jovan-hutton-pulitzer.html

    This is from June 28, and I’m not sure what to make of it. This is a report of the forensic audit in Arizona, led in part by Jovan Pulitzer.

    This group has either been ignored or denigrated by the media. There is a lot to process, and I’m not sure it is the kind of evidence that courts would accept as evidence of fraud– since fraud has to associated with particular ballots, not groups of ballots or processes.

    It’s a long presentation, about an hour of presentation then another hour of Q&A.

    One example was the rejection of provisional ballots. In 2016 about 1/3 of provisional ballots were rejected. In 2020, 70% of provisional ballots were rejected. How does this show fraud? I don’t think the dots were connected, but I assume it shows that these ballots were rejected because forged ballots were already in the system for the people casting the provisional ballots. Just the difference in rejected ballots was greater than the difference between Trump and Biden totals.

    There is a good explanation of the various ways that ballots are introduced into the system.

    This video has only been viewed 2,000 times, showing how hard it is to get the information out.

  29. Huxley…”I bring it up to compare and contrast the Left then with the Left now. What’s most striking, shocking even, is that the working class, once the centerpiece of the Left, has vanished as a concern.”

    And, relatedly, the Old Left were strong supporters of power technologies…both the Soviet communists and the American New Dealers were very proud of their respective hydroelectric dams. Many on the present-day Left would like to tear them down.

    See the praise of the ‘machine age’ from Fabian socialist Sidney Webb, excerpted here:

    https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/63059.html

  30. That was beautiful. The pace and tone of their movements perfectly matched, like one brain controlling two bodies. A lovely reminder of how wonderful human beings can be.

  31. David Foster:

    True. That was very much the Old Left.

    The New Left soured on power technologies. They killed nuclear power in the US. Now the current Left is doing their best to finish off fossil fuel power.

    What do we call today’s Left? The Postmodern Left? The Diversity Left?

    The Democrat Party?

  32. Another big difference between the New Left and today’s Left is cultural and emotional. I suppose it falls partly under the heading of Kundera’s “Circle Dancing”, but IMO that’s more today’s Left — after the Great Victory of the Annointed — as in the USSR and today’s Semi-Sovietized America.

    The New Left was in no small part an underground movement. Guerrilla politics. Get in, make a splash, get out, don’t get caught. Big Brother was watching us and pursuing us.

    It wasn’t a joke. It got paranoid, but it wasn’t entirely paranoia. Kinda like what conservatives are experiencing these days.

    When you became part of the New Left you joined a Secret Family. There wasn’t a top-down party which ran things. It was a loose confederation of small groups — affinity groups. You got to know the people in your group and eventually other groups. You vouched for people and people vouched for you.

    It was intimate and exciting. You were engaged at a deep level with others in noble goals. You shared dreams and pluck. That it often looked hopeless was half the fun.

    And fun was half the point. We took Emma Goldman (“It’s not my revolution if I can’t dance to it.”), Abbie Hoffman (“Revolution for the hell of it”) and the hippies to heart. It could get serious and nasty. But we did look for the fun when we could and we laughed a lot.

    If today’s Left is having fun and laughing, they keep it pretty quiet.

    I’m not offering the above as a justification for the New Left, just a few observational notes from a minor veteran.

  33. “What do we call today’s Left?”

    The “Destructive Democratik Resistance”

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