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Open thread 4/19/24 — 48 Comments

  1. Scott Johnson at Powerline [ https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/04/israel-strikes-isfahan.php ] cites (with apparent approval) a JPost article on the Israeli strike containing this “message” proposition:

    The message was unmistakable, ‘we chose not to hit your nuclear sites this time, but we could have done worse right here,’ sources told the Post.

    In other words, the attack at Isfahan was designed not only to hurt Iran but also to make it eminently clear how vulnerable to attack its nuclear sites are.

    Perhaps.

    Yet, if so, how strategically stupid a thing to do! Point out an enemy’s vulnerability prior to using it to proper effect? Is that to aid the enemy to see and thereupon correct said “vulnerability”? How moronic is that?

    So moronic as to cause grave doubts that any such thing was either intended or for that matter, had taken place at all.

  2. I’m Alive, I’s Alive!
    Well, maybe, I am only on my first cup of coffee. Last night after the attack by Israel on Iran, it is good to be around today. Tongue in Cheek, maybe, but there are enough bad actors out there that some days it is a toss up.
    I am sure the Biden/Obama White House is in a tizzy this morning. More is surly to come though.

    Yesterday we had Rain/Snow mix most of the day, gloomy day. This morning cloudy and it Rained some last night. We need the moisture, so no complaints. Except, I hope it didn’t get too cold for the Fruit Trees. They are flowering out, don’t want to lose all the fruit.

  3. The jerusalem post is not any better on these questions so johnson cant be faulted for
    that except he picked the jerusalem post

    Wait for carolyn glick to give the real magillah

  4. I may initially doubt the truth of the proposition, miguel — on account of its absurdity — but by no means can I rule out the possibility it’s both happened and was intended as described. For what have we seen? We’ve seen utter strategic failure on Oct. 7, and then the subsequent retention in office of the very idiots who crafted that strategic failure ab initio, with their appointments of “military leadership” in the follow-on, with dismissals of effective junior officers in opposition to them! So I don’t put it past the Israeli command to conceive such idiocies, not in the least. It’s entirely possible. On the other hand, it’s equally impossible to overlook the round stupidity of it all.

  5. yes halavi who failed in his role in military intelligence gantz, who was a tent pole of the Arab sleeper faction in the knesset, that kept the previous caretaker governments in power

    the whole mechanism of lawfare and direct action run by soros the al thanis and other members of the continental system, this is all the result of the stolen election, that put this doddering duffuss in power,

  6. Gabriel Noronha’s 9 points on Israel’s strike on Iran:

    1- Great to see Israel didn’t let itself be bullied by US/European demands at unilateral appeasement.

    2- the Iranian regime couldn’t defend their airspace. Israel has freedom of operation inside Iran.

    3- the Iranian regime didn’t have regional help shooting down munitions coming their way either.

    4- Iranian officials are already downplaying Israel’s attack and claiming they shot down drones.
    Good – means they’re trying to pretend nothing happened so their response can be weak

    5- great day for the Abraham Accords – the Gulf countries saw their top enemy humiliated by Israel. Good incentive for Saudi to open relations with Israel so they can do more of this.

    6- Iran sees Israel can strike them with or without US blessing. Bad news for Tehran.

    7- Israel didn’t think it made sense to take half-measures against Iran’s nuclear program and didn’t touch it today.

    This shows Israel wasn’t interested in actually escalating, contrary to claims. They wanted to demonstrate dominance and freedom of action. They’ve succeeded!

    8- No, Israel isn’t starting a war. They’re not escalating either.

    This is much lower on the escalation ladder than Iran’s assault on Israel.

    This is a responsible act to demonstrate deterrence.

    9- We are rapidly seeing how Iranian officials are already downplaying this attack, lying, and saying that nothing has hit them.

  7. Short version of Israeli response: shot across the bow of Iran executed with impunity. Will the Mullahs listen?

  8. Given that the mullahs have been shouting “Death to America” since 1979, the best we can hope for is a temporary standoff. Iran needs to throw off the radical leadership for any real progress to be made.

  9. An off topic comment by me: These people who “get their news from the TheNYT, almost seem to use the Times as a talisman that they wave in front of themselves to ward off ” evil spirits “.

  10. Given that the mullahs have been shouting “Death to America” since 1979…

    –Kate

    Will the Americans listen?

  11. My Opinion, Mike Johnson is getting a raw deal from “right wing republicans”. They want the border secured, I agree, but Biden can do that right now. Any money for the border doesn’t mean that Biden has to spend it. Israel and Ukraine do need the aid. MTG wanting to replace Johnson is her right as a Rep, but just whom would she replace him with? Rep are forgetting this is an election year, and people watching them are not impressed. You cannot find someone that pleases everyone all the time.

  12. people want the border secured, like Democrats want to destroy the energy infrastructure and the traditional family, the dems grovel to the Hamas caucus, that is the fundamental difference, and they silence everyone else, because that was their margin,

    all of the New York delegation that had to virtue signal about George Santos, why as a fake congressman, he did better than most of the certified fresh ones* as Rotten tomatoes would put it, they were loath to admonish Mayorkas even though he is committing treason imho,

    because they jury rigged the census count, and then flooded the swing districts with loads of ballots, we were down to four, then Elias had three more delegations redrawn,

    so then they vote for another round of panopticons to the people who are putting preachers in prison, and then going for Hunter’s favorite charity, not Only Fans thats his favorite hobby,

  13. Re: Nonapod link — pronouns, again
    ____________________________________________

    The person set themselves on fire in the protest area near the courthouse, Fox News reported. Reporters from Fox News called to each other to bring a fire extinguisher from their van.

    The person fell to the ground and CNN reported that they lay there motionless, although paramedics were tending to him at the scene. Many papers were scattered around him. As he was being treated, he was moving his arms, Fox News reported.

    https://thepostmillennial.com/breaking-person-sets-self-on-fire-outside-of-nyc-trump-trial-courtroom
    ____________________________________________

    WTF? This had all better be a bad dream and we get American English or any proper English back again soon.

    Actually, CNN has been lying there motionless for some time. Perhaps I’ve been hasty.

  14. move over to the next corner of the multiverse, but you know maga they are the dangerous ones, sarc

    they are going on CNN script, which is full of bad code, so you can’t fault that,

  15. I hadn’t noticed that they used the “he” pronoun in the article. Initially I thought it might’ve been difficult to tell due to him being… you know… on fire and then a crispy husk after he was put out. I wonder how many woman have ever self-immolated. Seems like more of a guy thing.

  16. Farther into the Post Millennial article it clearly says “a man” set “himself” on fire. Maybe they have an AI assistant which changed the headline?

  17. With the MAGA GOP pro-Russia, and the Democrats DNC pro-Iran—w/ their recent “Turn on Israel” it is amazing that Speaker Johnson may be about to get some help to Ukraine & Israel. Don’t voters know that Russia & Iran are allies?!

  18. Apparently cannibals are offended by Biden’s story, who knew cannibals have taste!

  19. Karmi on April 19, 2024 at 3:38 pm said:
    “With the MAGA GOP pro-Russia” Only a fool or an imbecile thinks MAGA Americans are pro-Russia. HILLARY is pro-Russia. Obama is pro-Iran. Trump is pro-America. You’d see that if you pulled your head out of your ass.

  20. No hes a left wing nut imagine going through the panoply of ponzi finance and ignoring the lefties behind ftx and svb the mindset of those involved etc

  21. Re: Katherine Maher, current CEO and President of NPR
    ____________________________________________

    EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a “free and open” internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a “white male Westernized construct” and “did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.”

    As Richard Fernandez comments:

    Wikipedia had to censor its encyclopedia to make it more free.

    https://twitter.com/wretchardthecat/status/1781124505282506986
    ____________________________________________

    The jargon brilliance of “those principles recapitulated a white male Westernized construct and did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be” is breathtaking.

    Orwell was damn good, but he had no idea of how slimy propaganda could become with a stiff dose of postmodernism.

  22. huxley, I am so tired of “living into” and “lived experiences.” Maher seems to string these phrases together like a random speech generator.

  23. Re: …living into the intentionality of what openness can be…

    Back in my Neuro-linguistic Programming (NLP) days, that was called Trance Language. (I will have you know that I am a Certified Master NLP Practitioner, which … I don’t take all that seriously. Still, there was good stuff in NLP.)

    The idea behind Trance Language is that the Practitioner says something which the Subject can’t easily process and puts the Subject into a light trance. Then, while the Subject is entranced, the Practitioner sneaks a suggestion directly into the Subject’s subconscious.

    Yes, NLP is openly manipulative. It’s more responsible members debate the ethics. Then again, humans are putting each other into trances and manipulating each other all the time.

  24. Fascinating. I never heard of that. So, emit a stream of meaningless psychobabble and then slip in something that sticks. I read a lot of that on progressive sites these days, except they forget the part that sticks.

  25. huxley, I am so tired of “living into” and “lived experiences.” Maher seems to string these phrases together like a random speech generator.

    Kate:

    She had me at “intentionality.” 🙂

    Yes, I understand what you are saying. Though I would argue it’s not really random.

    Learning to use the language of a group is to obtain membership in a group. There is a logic to it and half the fun is decoding the language so you can be an insider. (Consider teen slang.)

    Joining groups is existential for humans. I think conservatives way underestimate this.

  26. Max the human candle outside the Trump Trial in NYC carefully wrote a manifesto about the totalitarian L-R ponzi scheme to benefit the rich and the well-connected, that will wipe out half the stock market via bitcoin/cryptos.

    And like a little Lisa Simpson, he wants to be your voice of conscience in insane times — yet he knows, like her, who notices me? No one. (Yes, grandiosity abetted by sometimes clear thinking, albeit with mad gaps in evidence between the villains he finds confirmation through.)

    Hence, his thoughtful self-immolation. But he he not only blames the rich, but, too capitalism for destroying the planet, and us all for making climate Hell inevitable.

    Lots of lefty things wrapped up in a totalitarian fascist duopoly near future! His Prophecy sings — never mentioning the out-in the open Congressional Dem-Pubbie debt service slave trap or Weimar catastrophy coming… NOW! That’s the real bonafide Roman Candle of decline we face.

    Somehow this “Righty” — as painted by the Praetorian Guard media — who missed the fact that this definive reality-based threat to us goes entirely missed by the coverage of really Leftist-TDS sad sod.

    For those interested in another primer on his Mad Max Manifesto, the Not The Bee has you covered best:
    https://notthebee.com/article/this-is-reportedly-the-man-who-set-himself-on-fire-he-left-a-long-manifesto-talking-about-the-evils-of-capitalism-climate-change-and-government-corruption

  27. On the NPR president’s Woke skeeviness, you’ll find a richer narrative and more fully contextualized wrapper over at HotAir.com

    HT/Instapundit

  28. T J:

    TLDR: Max Azzarello was a self-declared Anarchocommunist, whatever that is, but he is certainly not a Mega-MAGA-Trump guy.

    I try not to point fingers, but I think Azzarello had issues.

  29. he’s a stark raving looney, who misses the main points, maybe he’s a member of robert anton wilson’s church of the subgenius, which occasionally is just slightly less strange than reality, of course why did he flambe’ in front of the Courthouse,

    his architecture of madness, resembles steve kangas another nutball stalker, in this case the mellon scaife’s also the one who floated bizarre stories about W,

    there are parallels with daniel sheehan’s christic institute, (he since reinvented himself with the pipeline protests) who glommed on to first the Karen Silkwood death,
    then followed from an odd incident in Nicaragua in 1984, where a Nicaraguan resistance leader was the subject of an assasination attempt, but the lead reporters leslie Cockburn, yes one of the lead British
    red diaper baby clans)the crazy mother of olivia wilde, got the story almost entirely wrong from the beginning, and went down the rabbit hole,

  30. ” She had me at “intentionality.”

    She was having trouble herself, in trying to recite what was obviously a mentally rehersed, yet still inchoate jumble of themes larded with terms poached from Phenomenology and Lebenswelt philosophy. Which I guess, pretty much describes postmodern thought if you add a pinch of collectivism and a dash of will to power theorizing, and maybe a touch of Freud if you are inclined to hydrostatic theories of “the body” as appetite machine as opposed, say, to evolutionary psychology style explanations.

    See Wiki and Lebenswelt. Subsection sociology, with specific reference to Jurgen Habermas.

    The reason to put it bluntly, that the postmodernist will to power and control is totalitarian, despite all the jabber about diversity and equality, is that it is inevitable that when they do finally persuade listeners that reality is not objective, it follows that neither is morality. And that a good portion of humanity will experience and express their personal psychological liberation and self-deification not in the form of ever deeper committments to social bondage to the uncongenial, but in the taking up of the tomahawk and applying it to the annoying, with an assurance and conviction that they are right as right can be to do so, if they just feel like it.

  31. shes not very smart, jeff goldstein actually understands intentionality, thats why a psycho named deb frisch went after him, he has a substack now, with his brand of gusto,

  32. Alan+Colbo on April 19, 2024 at 6:15 pm said:

    “With the MAGA GOP pro-Russia” Only a fool or an imbecile thinks MAGA Americans are pro-Russia. HILLARY is pro-Russia. Obama is pro-Iran. Trump is pro-America. You’d see that if you pulled your head out of your ass.

    You sound like a progressive far-left Democrat who can’t keep up w/ the conversation and has to resort to name calling & foul language.

    OK — maybe referring to Trump & his MAGA GOP mob as “pro-Russia” was a tad harsh, so I’ll go w/ a description that Frederick W. Kagan, Ashka Jhaveri, Annika Ganzeveld, Nicholas Carl, and George Barros used instead of pro-Russia.

    The Trump & MAGA GOP stance is like that of a Russia Dove. Better?

    Why You Can’t be an Iran Hawk and a Russia Dove

  33. huxley, that was a fascinating little description of NLP. It sounds almost like spellcasting. The question that immediately arises, of course, is: how to resist this?

  34. miguel+cervantes on April 19, 2024 at 8:25 pm said:
    shes not very smart, jeff goldstein actually understands intentionality, thats why a psycho named deb frisch went after him, he has a substack now, with his brand of gusto,

    miguel+cervantes on April 19, 2024 at 8:40 pm said:
    a recent offering

    https://jeffgoldstein.substack.com/p/revenge-of-the-kkk-nerds

    I’ll have to give the Goldstein essay a second more considered reading tomorrow, it seems to ramble a bit thematically, although the trigger event, the issue, the diagnosis, and his rejoinder reasoning are clear enough.

    Now, I’m as chauvinistic and insensitive as the next guy, but I don’t get the identitarian or “Christian nationalist” business.

    I mean, even if you are perfectly happy with a lack of diversity, it does not mean that you will therefore have some affinity for others just because they have the same skin color or use the same place settings. Heck, our best duellists operated in a more or less monocultural setting. Or as if I am supposed to care if Swedish socialists, or English ponces are turned into worm food because they have fair hair.

    So I don’t really get the set up in the first place. The song sounds a little homoerotic to me. An invitation that makes one grimmace.

    The only part of “the attitude” I can construct a plausible scenario out of as regards the ideological hostility to “Jews”, follows along the “it serves ’em right, let them reap what they have sown” attitude Neo mooted as a stance she thinks some may have toward left leaning social justice Jews becoming victims of their own kumbaya ideology.

    Being myself as hostile toward “Talmudism” and crypto Marxist Tikkum Olam pretentions as I am to Catholic Social Justice Theology, or old Irish ” face saving” laws, or the French ideas of fraternity in laicite crap, that is the only rationale that seems comprehensible to me. But it does not really fit Israel per se.

    And unlike Goldstein, although I agree we should not enter into foreign entanglements, I have no problem whatsoever with what we did in Iraq. And if our forces had whacked a hundred thousand rapist miscreants on the highway of death, I’d be fine with it.

    As far as I am concerned, the principle of not killing tyrants is not based on respect for some bullshit sovereignty business, but is a matter of prudence and feasibility and minimal cost to us.

  35. huxley

    EXCLUSIVE: Katherine Maher says that she abandoned a “free and open” internet as the mission of Wikipedia, because those principles recapitulated a “white male Westernized construct” and “did not end up living into the intentionality of what openness can be.”

    Listening to her is painful. Gobbletygook. Sociology-speak. Intentionality, construct…..(Tell me another cowboy tale, as they say in Ven-land). Also note that she speaks very quickly, as if she is reciting something from memory- not from understanding. She is speaking stuff which, from its inherent incoherence, is very difficult to understand, and by speaking it in a fast monotone, makes it yet more difficult to understand.

    (Actually, once looking at it in written form, you realize that comprehension is impossible, as it is total nonsense.)

    As if she is saying, “I don’t care if you understand this or not. I need to recite this catechism in order to show I am still on the side of the Woke Gods. And the faster I recite this, the sooner I am done with this.”

    The medium is the message, and the message is delivered as an incoherent word salad.

  36. If you love this country and are a christian you are a christian nationalist you are supposed to despise this countrys founders and deride the Cross

    As for Judaism it is foundational to Christian understanding so you cannot dismiss one without the other
    Yes there is a tiny subset of wackoes like turner diary afficionadoes but they dont matter half of them are on the bureau payroll like the atomwaffen

    Well we ever we did in iraq didnt work so what was the result of dead and maimed worth it is Iraq a freer society after october 7th you cannot say that, this is why we give the gimlet eye to kristol and others well there are many other reasons
    No miss maher is a deeply ignorant woman who shouldnt allowed near any writing instrument
    Like giving a kitten a lighter

  37. huxley, that was a fascinating little description of NLP. It sounds almost like spellcasting. The question that immediately arises, of course, is: how to resist this?

    Philip Sells:

    Spellcasting is not far off. Two of the first NLP books, written by the founders, were titled “The Structure of Magic (1975) and “Frogs into Princes” (1979).

    The magic Tony Robbins does in his workshops comes out of NLP. He still pays the NLP founders, Richard Bandler and John Grinder, a cut.

    As human beings, we are not that hard to manipulate. One of the best things I read was from a Haight Street hippie teacher, who saw it happening in that scene:
    ____________________________________

    I began to teach, out loud, that there was such a thing as head cop, and that you could get your head copped, and that you ought to be sure you weren’t getting your head copped, and that you ought to know what the symptoms of head cop were….

    I tried to teach a little head-cop prophylaxis in the scene. Some of my earlier stuff was on account of seeing the outstanding potential, not just for institutional, but for personal mind control. And I realized that this was the real level of magic, and that people who were dishonest at this level were who the real black magicians were. I learned that there was such a thing as black magic.

    If someone cops your head so bad that they send you on another whole chain of life that leads you down a lot of bad things and ruins your potential and you don’t ever recover, they’ve got your soul. Copped your head and got your soul.

    –Stephen Gaskin
    ____________________________________

    Stephen’s first recommendation was always to remember that you have your Yes and your No. It has served me well.

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