Israeli officials are saying that a terrorist killed in a mortar attack in Gaza has a “high likelihood” of being Yahya Sinwar.

The terrorist has been taken to an Israeli hospital for DNA matching to determine his identity.

Source: Twitter

The beliefs of conservatives are fairly simple.  We tend to believe in limited government, personal liberty, personal responsibility, equality before the law, property rights, freedom of speech, strong national defense, and so on.  We argue about the details, of course.  But in general, most conservatives would give similar answers to questions about their belief systems.

Why not apply the Martha Raddatz maneuver to all of our issues and problems? Wouldn’t the world seem like a nicer place?

• Biden-Harris alien invitees commit only a handful of rapes and murders in a handful of cities.
• Inflation is just a handful of percentage points.
• Only a handful of convicted felons would get transgender surgery in a Harris Administration.
• Iran would never use more than a handful of nukes pursuant to Obama-Biden-Harris policies.
• Only a handful of constitutional rights would be curtailed under a Harris administration.
• Only a relative handful of stores in chains like Walgreens, 7-Eleven, CVS, or Target will shut down because of a bad business climate and crime.
• Only a handful of terrorists, drug dealers, murderers, and child traffickers cross the border each day.
• Only a handful of new justices would be added to SCOTUS under proposed Democratic reforms.
• Only a handful of public high schools graduate entire classes of illiterate, innumerate students.
• Only a handful of remaining viewers would care if all ABC news slots were replaced with Real Trailer Park Housewives,  the Home Shopping Network and/or just random puppy and kitten videos.

One thing I haven’t seen reported in the media/news related to Hurricane Helene is the critical shortage of IV fluids due to the shutdown of a Baxter plant in Marion, NC, due to the hurricane. Baxter is a principal supplier of IV fluids to medical facilities. It appears to be the only source of certain staples of medical care including 0.9% saline (normal saline), D5W, D10W, sterile water, and peritoneal dialysis fluid. The shortage has caused hospitals to take extreme measures to ration these IV fluids, including postponing elective surgeries; curtailing the use of the IV fluids by removing orders for them from standard order sets for patients, requiring doctors to add them to the orders only if there is an absolute need; administering the meds via IV push rather than hanging them in a small infusion bag; and changing patients to oral hydration as soon as possible after surgeries or for disorders requiring IV hydration.

It is not clear when the shortages will be alleviated. Such fluids are FDA-approved for use, so alternatives cannot be imported from abroad to make up the shortfall. Other plants cannot be adjusted to produce these products because they have to be cleared by the FDA to produce the IV fluids.

With the exception of Comet Neowise a few years ago, comets invariably disappoint me.  Or sometimes the weather is the cause of disappointment.  Sunday night I was able to see Comet Tsuchinshan with the naked eye, which is a second in my lifetime.

The most important factor is proper pronunciation of the name Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, which, according to Sky and Telescope, is pronounced choo-cheen-SHAHN.

Have Americans entered a new era in terms of what it means to be conservative, a person on the right of the traditional political spectrum, or a patriot?

I once thought of myself as a part of the political right — typically voting Republican, socially and fiscally conservative, and an advocate of small government with a focus on the local for most issues.

The past two years have witnessed sustained and bitter differences between the Biden administration and two Western democracies that it has pledged to protect against foreign attack and invasion: Israel and Ukraine. The differences in these ongoing conflicts are not over ends but over means. Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, about six months after the Biden administration executed its botched withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, a move that went against the advice of all the president’s military and civilian advisers. And then, on October 7, 2023, Hamas broke its tenuous cease-fire with Israel with a full-scale assault on both Israeli settlements and the Nova music peace festival near the Gazan border. The one element that links these three conflicts is not just the perceived weakness of the three target nations, but also the inescapable perception that the United States cares more about short-term peace than long-term security in these vital theaters of war.

That perception has hardened over recent years as it becomes possible to extract a consistent, if disastrous, policy pursued by the Biden administration. The dominant impulse is to make sure that these localized conflicts will not expand into an open war that will lead to intensification of the current hostilities, followed by further entanglements with other nations, followed by an increase in the amount of death, injury, and property destruction. To achieve that end, the consistent Biden trope is to always play defense, never offense. The supposed logic of this position is that it will prevent Russia (along with, as it turns out, its allies China, Iran, and North Korea) from taking over Ukraine, even though it will not be enough to stop the continued bloody encroachment into key towns and cities in the Donbas, located in the far southeast of Ukraine. Similarly, the Biden administration has put a go-slow sign on Israel, seeking to delay its military efforts to remove the last elements of Hamas from Rafah by negotiating a cease-fire that could not, definitionally, result in the decapitation of Hamas, which would have to be a signatory to any such agreement. Any proposed deal might be for a short hiatus, or, as seems more likely, one that would insensibly morph into a permanent arrangement—at least until a rebuilt Hamas renewed its efforts to obliterate Israel and its citizenry.