At the outset, I would like to announce that I hereby refuse to resume my low-calorie diet and more intensive exercise regime until Palestine is free. And no Brussels sprouts, not one.  I may even order a large pizza with extra cheese tonight—Take that Netanyahu!

The unreality and pomposity of Ivy League tantrum throwers continue to amaze. It turns out that broad allegations of genocide are morally equivalent to the outrageous refusal of universities to deliver food to the barricades or to provide physicians to monitor hunger strikers lest they become immunocompromised:

https://x.com/breeadail/status/178825349021032046

From Jonathan Turley:

The backlash over the settlement of Northwestern University with pro-Palestinian protesters continues to mount. In a letter acquired by The Daily Northwestern,  seven out of 11 members of the “President’s Advisory Committee on Preventing Antisemitism and Hate” resigned this week in protest.

I guess I’m mystified a bit by the shock and outrage at Biden’s betrayal of Israel. Biden has always been a slug, and one who associates with slugs. He and all of his associates continually traffic in lies. I don’t want to burst anyone’s bubble, but this aspect of Biden and his cronies is not exactly some kind of national secret. So what wise national leader is there, anywhere, who would ever actually trust Joe Biden for anything?

I have to believe that Israel is not surprised by these events. At all. I suspect they have alternatives. If they went into Gaza wholly dependent on Joe Biden, of all people, to achieve their strategic goals and without any plan B, then they are both incompetent and infantile. I don’t think they’re either of those things.

The history of hatred for Jews can be distilled into hatred for one thing: accountability. As John Lennon sang: “Imagine no religion” — that is, no God, no accountability.

Think about paganism-hedonism (whose contemporary expression is acted out at the annual Burning Man festivities) and what it represents: unbridled satisfaction of every desire with no accountability.  That’s how spoiled brats live too. Especially the encampment kids: rich college students from foreign lands and too many pampered American students too.

We had some weather alarms last evening that sent us to our basement for shelter.  We need to be highly motivated to go to our basement, as the place is accessed through exterior steps, which means going out into the rain and lifting open the weather door to get into the basement. It’s not a particularly pleasant place. The walls were built of local stone in the 1850s, and even though it does have an ancient poured concrete floor of sorts, it’s not particularly mouse-proof, spider-proof, or airtight.

We took our phones and devices with us so we could listen to the weather reporting.  Even after the local township people turned off the sirens, the weather station people were still urging people in our area and others to head for shelter, immediately.  From the radar maps on our devices, it seemed that the storm cell that was coming our way would go around us to the south, and another would pass to the north.  The radio weather people were still expressing considerable urgency, and our son remarked that this was probably the most excitement they had had all day.  To my thinking, they were not distinguishing well between actual tornado sightings and storm cells that might produce tornados.

It is quite clear to me that the testimony by Stormy Daniels proves without a doubt that the current trial of Trump has nothing to do with a lasting conviction, and is only out to damage Trump. As Andrew McCarthy notes:

For nothing more than the purpose of humiliating the Democrats’ political nemesis and their opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Manhattan’s elected progressive Democratic district attorney, Alvin Bragg, has proffered Stormy Daniels’s sensational story of a sexual encounter with Donald Trump in the unprecedented, media-saturated first-ever trial against a former U.S. president.

Israeli forces have moved into the city of Rafah and taken control of a key border crossing after carrying out a number of airstrikes, and the IDF continues to engage in military activities in the city in southern Gaza. Hamas announced its willingness to accept a cease-fire, but only if Israel stops hostilities, withdraws its troops, and releases prisoners in exchange for hostages. This deal, an obvious nonstarter, is the fruit of the unwise and prolonged efforts of the Biden administration to push too hard for that elusive cease-fire. Secretary of State Antony Blinken insisted that the “time is now” for a “pause” in the underlying hostilities, but he had already given up too much ground by trying to broker a hostage deal without demanding that all hostages be released unconditionally before any further negotiations took place—a release that won’t happen now. Indeed, the Biden administration had already made it much harder to reach a deal by apparently letting it be known that it had put a hold on an arms shipment to Israel.

All parties have been down this road before. At this point, I agree fully with the Wall Street Journal that taking Rafah is necessary for the Israelis to achieve, as a minimum condition for success, the elimination of Hamas as a political and military force. No cease-fire can attain that objective so long as Hamas insists the Israelis withdraw entirely from the area. That demand is now facilitated by the United States, which seems to have lost sight of the atrocities of October 7 and is extending the war by blocking any decisive Israeli response. Biden and Blinken seem blind to the simple fact that there is no stable middle ground.

With commentary:

Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about fourteen months old, and she had come to us from a home that struggled with her aggressive personality. I was sure she’d learn a lot going out with our older dogs that day. I was wrong.

Well, at least there’s some sort of first–and I believe last–acknowledgment of fault on her own part, one which doesn’t seem to have made it into any subsequent discussion of the matter.  She was wrong.  She had no control over this dog, and the thought that Cricket would “learn a lot'” by going out with other trained dogs was wrong.  (Not to mention that–in the opinion of dog handlers and professional dog trainers–putting a dog with questionable credentials to the test in this way is the height of idiocy and irresponsibility.)

I have a kid at Rutgers. The daily intimidation is real. It makes no difference what he thinks about Israel: nobody is asking. They just want to attack Jews. I am not actually afraid for #5’s physical well-being on account of his size and training – but if he was a more likely target (or a petite girl), then I may have done what other parents have done, and forced him to transfer or otherwise drop out.

VDH put it well:

These campus Hamas protesters are totally helping to get President Trump reelected.  And it’s delightful to watch.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/trump-fined-again/

I really like this line:

Lawrence of Arabia was one of my all-time favorite movies.  I took two semesters of Islamic History and Culture at Georgetown from a professor in the Foreign Service School many years ago.  I regarded Muslims as natural allies against Soviet Communism. But none of that interest and sentiment changes my understanding that the Islamic political and cultural vision is a stagnant anachronism whose sheer inapplicability can only result in futility and violence.  The recent “caliphates” created in chaos are the political and cultural equivalents of Jurrasic Park and unfortunately completely consonant with the essence of Islam.

John Kennedy had to make a strong speech in front of a convention of Protestant ministers to assuage suspicion of

We used to own goats. We had one goat, named “Gali Gali,” who had its ear torn off by a pit bull who lived next door. Gali Gali promptly earned the monicker “Gali Gali Van Goght.” (My father shot the pit bull with a shotgun the next time it came over, and the dog made it home to bleed out on its owner’s front porch.)

I loved that goat. He was smart, headstrong and inquisitive. He also liked to dance, kind of a “watch me look like I am going to flip over sideways” kind of dance. Specifically, when my grandfather would come up to our house in his fine Lincoln Continental, Gali Gali would take one look at that shiny car, and promptly skip onto its long hood and prance away, leaving lots of little devilish footprints. My grandfather did not think it was as funny as we did.

While perusing the news this morning I happened upon a story from Sweden wherein a 39-year-old father and his 12-year-old son were fishing together when a roving gang of illegal immigrants converged on them and began harassing them. When the father stood his ground and told the gang to stop harassing him and his boy, these paragons of diversity responded by shooting him in the head, killing him instantly. It fell to the son to call the police himself, and then call his grandmother to tell what happened. 

In assessing the incident, a Swedish gentleman allowed as how politicians are confessing their own naivete. “No, you haven’t been naive,” he responds, adding, “instead of listening, you attacked the guys who were telling you these uncomfortable truths.”  

The only thing worse than an ignorant person is a person who does not know they are ignorant: they think that they are wise and intelligent, philosopher kings in all things. It is one reason why I hate politicians so deeply: they are so very certain of their wisdom and expertise as they shove it down our throats as if it were all really “for our own good.”

I have this same problem with people who were born into Jewish families, but know less than nothing about Torah Judaism – which does not stop them from dismissing the Torah as “foolish and superstitious.” They grow up secure in the knowledge that they are more enlightened than all their forebears: that they are, in fact, too enlightened to believe in anything at all, except their own intellectual greatness.

I spent the weekend at a medical conference in Washington D.C., which I lovingly refer to as Mordor.  Flying out of DCA this morning, I stopped at a burger place near my gate to get lunch before boarding my flight.  As I walked up, the short Middle-Eastern-appearing man behind the counter told me, in heavily accented English, “The Barbeque Bacon Burger really hit spot.  Thick slabs bacon.”  Appreciating his obvious concern for my anorexic appearance, I said sure, why not.  As I’m leaning over to get a drink from the fridge next to the cash register, he says, “Our Elevation Chicken Sandwich has organic chicken!”

Wondering why he’s telling me about other options after I’ve already ordered, I look up from the fridge.  He’s looking past me, to a slender 60ish-year-old woman with her gray hair pulled back into a ponytail.  She’s wearing a Native American-styled narrow headband, and a blue surgical mask.  Her blue eyes light up, and she says, “Really!?!”  Really.  I’m not making this up.