Joe Biden: Craven on Israel to the very end

Joe Biden has been cravenly subservient to whatever the Israeli government does. Nowhere has this been more apparent that his non-response to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza and their additional brutal assault on Palestinians in the Occupied West Bank and their attacks on Lebanon. Kamala Harris’s failure to distance herself from those policies and refusing to even allow a Palestinian speaker at the Democratic convention hurt her with many Arab-American voters and also those who are outraged at what is going there, though whether it was decisive in her defeat is unclear.

The one tiny step that Biden took was to say in October that he would cut off military aid to Israel if they did not increase the supply of food, water, medicine, and other essential items to Gaza where they have been deliberately starving the population, a war crime of staggering proportions. The target that Israel had to meet to prevent this cut off was very modest, just an increase from the almost zero that was going in at the time of the ultimatum. Biden also conveniently put the deadline to be after the election.

Well, that deadline finally arrived with Israel not doing anything close to meeting the targets and, to no one’s surprise, Biden decided not to carry out his threat.

Jonah Valdez writes about what happened.
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How Nextdoor might react to the Rapture

I have written before about how the neighborhood app Nextdoor seems to be an outlet for people who like to complain and go off on tangents responding to other people’s posts.

Jay Martel writes about how people might react on the app if the Rapture signaling the End Times was to occur and the chosen were suddenly whisked up into heaven.

Does anyone know what’s going on in the Smithfield area? People flying around, hellfire, terrible traffic.

Inconsiderate driver partially blocked my driveway with his car, then flew up into the sky before I could get him to move it. Super annoying! What is wrong with people???

Anyone else experiencing a power outage? And hundred-pound hailstones?

These three suspicious men dropped out of sky in front of my house, on the 400 block of North Jones, hung out there for a bit, then ran toward my driveway blowing horns and flew off, heading toward Oakwood. They were wearing white hoodies, feathery wings, halos. Doorbell camera fortunately caught the whole thing. Be on the lookout—they may be the porch pirates who’ve been stealing our Amazon packages.

Anyone know of a reliable house cleaner? Can’t deal with flakes.

Have this ongoing dispute with my neighbor about his tree growing out of control over my fence, dropping staining seedpods all over my newly tiled patio (see photo), and he finally agreed to meet about it. But then he doesn’t show up! I go over, and his wife says he “ascended to Heaven.” Seriously? Some people will do anything to get out of their obligations! #neednewneighbors

Very suspicious man with wings seen on North Elm yelling about end of the world. Hate that mental patients are just free to harass whomever and the police can’t do anything about it.

Anyone notice the lake of fire blocking access to the park? You’d think the crazy property taxes we pay would be enough to keep a damn lake from burning!
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Irresponsible motorists floating away have left their cars in the middle of my street, causing endless traffic jams. Tried calling city to get them towed but spent twenty minutes on hold. Typical.

The complicated history of Tulsi Gabbard

Jeremy Scahill over at Drop Site reviews the history of Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence, who transitioned rapidly from being antiwar and supporting Bernie Sanders, running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020 and then endorsing Biden that year, to becoming an ardent Trump supporter.

Scahill writes that she will be a shock to the US intelligence system but that the charges that she is an undercover agent for Vladimir Putin, or at least an apologist for him, are oversimplified.mIt is a long analysis and well worth reading in full.

Here is part of it.

If confirmed as the next Director of National Intelligence, Gabbard would represent one of the most unorthodox political figures to hold such a senior national security post in U.S. history. A veteran of the war in Iraq, Gabbard was elected to Congress in 2012 and emerged as a sharp critic of the U.S. forever wars launched in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. She denounced U.S. regime change wars, including the 2011 overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and consistently opposed U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s scorched earth war against Yemen, which extended from Barack Obama to Donald Trump. On multiple occasions, she accused Trump of being “Saudi Arabia’s bitch,” taking orders from his Saudi “masters,” and of supporting Al Qaeda. She has called for pardoning whistleblowers Julian Assange and Edward Snowden and fought to change U.S. laws permitting domestic surveillance of Americans.
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Why would anyone own dozens of watches?

As part of the defamation verdict against him Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to hand over his assets to pay the amount he owes to two Georgia election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Rudy Giuliani has relinquished dozens of watches and a Mercedes once owned by movie star Lauren Bacall to two former Georgia election workers who won a $148m defamation judgment against him, his lawyer said.

Joseph Cammarata said in a letter filed late on Friday in Manhattan federal court that the trove of watches and a ring were delivered by FedEx to a bank in Atlanta, Georgia, in the morning.

The 1980 Mercedes-Benz SL 500 was turned over at an address in Hialeah, Florida, and an undisclosed amount of funds from Giuliani’s Citibank accounts were also surrendered to the two women who won the judgment, according to the letter.
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What unified government control by the GOP means

As a result of the elections, Trump and the GOP will have control of both houses of congress. So far, Republicans lead 220-213 in the House of Representatives with two races still to be called. Trump has picked three house members – Matt Gaetz, Elise Stefanik, and Mike Waltz – to be part of his administration so special elections will have to be called to replace them but since they represent districts that have been Republican for years, those are not likely to change the balance. Gaetz has already resigned, no doubt to end the congressional ethics inquiry into allegations of his behavior towards underage women and other malfeasances. It is not clear if the report that has been compiled will be released.
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Can the US follow Sri Lanka’s new example?

I have written in the past about Sri Lanka’s deteriorating democracy, with corrupt, nepotistic family dynasties that enriched themselves while pursuing chauvinistic policies that discriminated against minorities and brutally suppressed both an insurgency and a separatist movement. Those governments also systemically undermined the institutions that underpin democracies such as an independent judiciary, police force, the media, and other non-governmental institutions, and using thugs and other means to intimidate opponents and critics. I have written that I observed the US heading in that same direction, and Trump more than anyone represented that trend towards creating a government that merely paid lip-service to democratic governance while in reality making it into a corrupt personal fiefdom.

The situation has now reversed itself.

In September, the Sri Lankan presidential elections saw Anura Kumara Dissanayake (known as AKD) get elected, defeating two candidates who belonged to the past nepotistic dynasties while AKD came from very humble origins. AKD had been a member of parliament but his party held only three seats. After his election, he dissolved parliament and in the new elections held yesterday, his party won 159 seats in the 225-seat parliament, with 62% of the vote.
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Trump sends in the clowns

Trump has started nominating people to fill his administration and so far they are startling, even considering the low expectation that I had. He seems to have decided to populate senior posts with people who have little or no experience in the areas they are supposed to be dealing with or with the kind of administration skills required to run large organizations.

The most startling is the nomination of Florida congressman Matt Gaetz as attorney general. Gaetz was federally investigated on sex-trafficking charges for pursuing underage women and while the justice department finally declined to press charges, the congressional ethics committee is still investigating him. I suspect that Trump appointed him knowing that this would disgust many of the senior professionals in the justice department and they would resign, sparing him the trouble of firing them. He can now fill those positions with loyal hacks who will carry out whatever Trump wants them to do, and especially go after anyone who opposes him on anything. He promised revenge on his ‘enemies’ and there is no reason to think that he will not do just that, with an ‘enemy’ being defined as anyone who opposes or criticizes him.
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Book review: Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz

I will start the review by saying I really disliked this book. There were many times when I wanted to give up on it but I persevered, expecting a twist at the end that would explain why it was written the way it was. And there was but the explanation was farcical and left me with an even greater distaste. The rest of this review will discuss the book and my feelings more without giving away any major spoilers.

The best-selling author Anthony Horowitz was commissioned by the estate of Arthur Conan Doyle to write more Sherlock Holmes novels. The first one was called The House of Silk and I gave it a very good review. This was the second one and is called Moriarty and to be quite frank, I was not looking forward to it despite my enjoyment of the first one.
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Reclaiming slurs

Kevin Drum stirred up a hornet’s nest in his comments in a post asking what exactly the term ‘queer’ meant these days when applied to issues of gender and sexuality. He thought that it had become an umbrella term for anyone who is not cisgender and heterosexual. It is simpler than listing all the categories like LGBTQIA+. Using queer as an umbrella term for those categories risks circularity since Q in the list stands for queer or questioning. But that can be dismissed as a quibble that will only worry language pedants and also by reserving Q only for ‘questioning’.

That seems to be a common understanding of the term. Unfortunately, Drum phrased it in a way that, while attempting to be amusing, was seized upon by some of his commenters to take offense and the conversation veered off in an acrimonious direction. We know that when it comes to comments on the internet, that is inevitable so we should not be surprised that it happened.
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Can a passenger stop a self-driving car?

The above question was prompted by a strange dream I had last night. I was in the front passenger seat of a car that supposedly had self-driving capabilities. The owner of the car was in the driver’s seat and at one point got out to do something or other. The car started off without him and proceeded to go somewhere unknown to me. In the dream, I was wondering how to bring the car to a halt but had no idea what to do. In my dream, I looked for the steering wheel and brake pedal and other standard control features of ordinary cars but since I have never been in a self-driving vehicle, my dream did not have that specific information.
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