This is one of the most surprising articles I’ve read in the NY Times in a long while. It’s about the Israeli military’s total lack of preparation for the October 7th attacks. I can’t really believe how bad it was. This was just not something most people ever thought could happen. They’re supposed to be the best military with the best intelligence in the whole region. My God.
Here is a gift link for you to read the whole thing which I highly recommend you do. The administration just approved a$147.5 million emergency shipment of military aid. Wherever you come out on this issue, I think everyone can agree that the US should be very concerned about its ongoing military support for the country. And I would hope that it would convince even the hawks in both countries that Netanyahu has got to go. The buck stops with him.
A short excerpt:
The full reasons behind the military’s slow response may take months to understand. The government has promised an inquiry. But a New York Times investigation found that Israel’s military was undermanned, out of position and so poorly organized that soldiers communicated in impromptu WhatsApp groups and relied on social media posts for targeting information. Commandos rushed into battle armed only for brief combat. Helicopter pilots were ordered to look to news reports and Telegram channels to choose targets.
And perhaps most damning: The Israel Defense Forces did not even have a plan to respond to a large-scale Hamas attack on Israeli soil, according to current and former soldiers and officers. If such a plan existed on a shelf somewhere, the soldiers said, no one had trained on it and nobody followed it. The soldiers that day made it up as they went along.
“In practice, there wasn’t the right defensive preparation, no practice, and no equipping and building strength for such an operation,” said Yom Tov Samia, a major general in the Israeli reserves and former head of the military’s Southern Command.
“There was no defense plan for a surprise attack such as the kind we have seen on Oct. 7,” said Amir Avivi, a brigadier general in the reserves and a former deputy commander of the Gaza Division, which is responsible for protecting the region.
That lack of preparation is at odds with a founding principle of Israeli military doctrine. From the days of David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister and defense minister, the goal was to always be on the offensive — to anticipate attacks and fight battles in enemy territory.
In response to a series of questions from The Times, including why soldiers and officers alike said there had been no plan, the Israel Defense Forces replied: “The I.D.F. is currently focused on eliminating the threat from the terrorist organization Hamas. Questions of this kind will be looked into at a later stage.”
This isn’t the first time he’s said this, of course. He claims he actually won the popular vote in 2016 because of all the undocumented immigrants who voted for Clinton. He even created a commission to investigate it and, of course, they came up with nothing because it’s utter nonsense.
But today this actually refers to the Great Replacement Theory, which is much more pernicious. Sure, he’s laying the groundwork to claim he actually won again. And his people will be convinced of it, of course. But the Republican Party has now adopted this white supremacist theory and it’s inspiring people to take matters into their own hands. Example: The Tree of Life and El Paso mass murders, which were clearly inspired by this grotesque, racist propaganda. Trump may be doing it for his personal purposes, but a whole lot of people are absorbing this idea as a major threat to their way of life. It’s bad.
The Hill interviewed Marjorie Taylor Greene who has obviously feeling irrelevant since she bet on the wrong horse in MyKev. She’s loaded for bear:
In an extensive interview with The Hill, Greene did not hold back when asked about Johnson’s early Speakership record — “terrible” — or his need to earn her trust.
“He went from having a voting record to literally a month later … going against his own voting record and being Speaker of the House,” Greene later added. “Literally all of a sudden talking about doing things that he had literally voted against only a month before that. And, you know, that was unacceptable to me, and it still is.”
In the first two months of the Johnson era, Greene moved to force votes on a pair of politically prickly issues that split the Republican conference, hurled sometimes explicit insults at GOP colleagues who opposed those efforts, and frequently criticized the Speaker’s strategy on major issues including government funding, Ukraine aid and the annual defense policy bill.
While the role of rabble-rouser is nothing new for Greene, her reversion to that position has exacerbated the problems facing Johnson as he works to unite the GOP conference through a series of legislative landmines.
Greene maintains that despite her dramatic change during the McCarthy era, she is still the same antagonist deep down.
She insists that she has never been a team player and never will be, despite her alliance with the ultimate establishment player, MyKevin. No, she just didn’t make the smart decision and she needs to change the story line so she’s going back to her bomb-throwing ways.
She’s going after Johnson and will do everything she can to destroy the country. Good old Marge.
Greene has dialed up her criticism of Johnson since he won the gavel on Oct. 25, sharply critiquing his strategy on a handful of policy pushes — including his call to pair Ukraine aid with border security.
As a growing contingent of Republicans oppose support for Kyiv, Johnson said any assistance must be coupled with substantive border security policy, a move that was viewed as an attempt to find common ground between Ukraine allies and conservative skeptics. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), a top supporter of Ukraine, got behind the play.
“Mike Johnson comes in and first thing he starts talking about is passing another CR, and I’m like, wait a minute, what? You just voted against it. That was the whole reason why Kevin McCarthy got ousted, was working with Democrats and passing a clean CR. And you know, for me I was like, what a hypocrisy,” Greene told The Hill.
“And then the next thing he starts immediately talking about is funding Ukraine, that shocked me,” Greene later added. “I was like, why would he even be talking about that? He voted against it.”
But Johnson had told GOP lawmakers in a “dear colleague” letter hours before his election as Speaker that he would put a short-term stopgap bill on the floor if needed to avert a shutdown — and Greene supported his candidacy despite that plan.
[…]
“Speaker Johnson worked with [Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)] to cut a deal that removes all abortion and trans surgery prohibitions we passed under Speaker McCarthy,” Greene wrote this month on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “No member of the NDAA conference had any influence on this process. It was done in secret meetings with no input from conferees,” she continued, referring to the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).
The criticisms might be easily dismissed coming from another second-term lawmaker. But Greene has quickly made herself into a national brand — a fundraising juggernaut and close ally of former President Trump, who leadership can ignore only at their own peril.
They can and should ignore her but they won’t. She’s popular with the fascist right. We know what that means.
And she’s learned how to use the procedural levers to gum up the works. She forced a vote to censure Rashida Tlaib right out of the gate which Texas congressman Chip Roy called “feckless.” (Now we know why Trump has been ragging on him for the last month.) Then she got into it with Darryl Issa over her stupid move to impeach DHS Secretary Mayorkas, calling Issa a pussy on twitter.
She has basically declared war:
“It’s still early in his Speakership, so I have given him — I’ve been patient, but the honeymoon’s over,” Greene said of Johnson minutes after she moved to force a second vote. “So at this point, yes, I’m frustrated.”
Her colleagues aren’t impressed. “I don’t know how that helps,” another House Republican, who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic, said. “I truly don’t see how that helps.”
She doesn’t care.
When asked if she’s trying to force herself into Johnson’s inner circle by being a shrieking harpy, she says no, that she has more than one playbook.
No she doesn’t. She’s a crude bully and that’s all she knows.
She says she’d love to help Johnson but there are conditions:
“He’s got to earn it. But would I help him? Of course I would. If he listened,” Greene said. “See, there’s a difference. Kevin McCarthy would listen. Kevin McCarthy would, you know, he would take ideas, he would take suggestions, he would take help because he was willing to take it, and he didn’t try to do everything on his own.”
She’s such a horrible monster that others in the caucus are telling Johnson that he needs to appease her.
“She’s a good example of how she had influence and was highly effective. And she was able to do that behind closed doors. Now, in order for her to get the same effect, she has to do it publicly. Same set of goals. This is stuff that she’s worked on. So I don’t I view that as you know, no one in current leadership having an effective relationship with her, how it’s more a statement of our current leadership than it is about a change in her,” the lawmaker added.
What drivel. She’s nothing but a shit-disturber whose only agenda is to screw over her enemies which includes many Republicans and all Democrats. There is nothing else for her but dominance.
“Trust is earned and that’s based on actions, not on promises or intentions or saying, ‘I’m brand-new here,’” Greene told The Hill. “Honeymoon is over; it’s all about actions from here on out.”
Like Dear Leader, it’s all about boot licking. It will be interesting to see how Johnson handles her. I can’t stand the guy but this almost makes me pity him.
Over the holiday I heard a few people saying that we liberals really should get behind Haley and help her beat Trump because even though she polls better than Biden we should do what we can to defeat him even if it means losing the general election. My response (in my head) was “wtf are you smoking? Haley is horrible!” Sure, maybe she’s not as bad as Trump in some ways but we don’t really know that because she is an empty vessel and nobody knows what she really thinks about anything.
After evading attacks for weeks from her Republican rivals, it was a town hall question about the origins of the Civil War that finally seemed to stick.
And it couldn’t have come at a worse time. With weeks to go before voting starts, Haley is now facing the first major test of her ability to withstand a maelstrom in the presidential campaign. It is a significant moment not only for the former South Carolina governor, but for the broader effort among Republicans hoping to stop Donald Trump from steamrolling to the nomination.
“This is Haley’s first time under the bright lights, and she must power through this and tackle Trump now,” said Scott Reed, a veteran GOP strategist. “Or else.”
Haley’s rivals treated her Civil War comments as a lifeline for their own dimming prospects in the race. DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie quickly condemned her answer at their own campaign events this week. And Haley, the former U.N. ambassador, spent much of Thursday addressing questions about her remarks, putting her in the position of explaining rather than selling her candidacy.
For nearly a year — from her beginning as a long shot to her recent rise in polls — Haley went relatively unscathed. Her opponents have highlighted, with little effect, her evolving answers on issues like abortion and transgender rights. But they spent less money against her, too. As of Wednesday, Haley had $14 million spent against her in negative advertising, compared with nearly $37 million for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and $19 million for Trump, according to Rob Pyers, a nonpartisan data analyst. Trump has focused his hammer-like attacks on DeSantis, not Haley. And much of the media scrutiny over the past year focused on the Florida governor’s campaign missteps and policy proposals.
But that changed Wednesday night in Berlin, New Hampshire. Haley’s halting and convoluted response to a town hall questioner — and her ensuing attempts to clarify her comments, later acknowledging slavery as a cause of the Civil War after first declining to do so — put a harsh spotlight on her, arguably for the first time during the primary. Within hours, news outlets had begun digging into her past remarks on the issue, resurfacing an interview she’d given in 2010 in which she offered similar beliefs about the root causes of the Civil War.
And for Haley, the timing and location carried outsize significance. With Trump building wide leads in the three other early primary states — Iowa, Nevada and South Carolina — New Hampshire has emerged as the key battleground in the effort to slow Trump’s momentum. Polls there have shown Haley moving into second place and gradually creeping up on Trump ahead of the Jan. 23 primary.
“The answer itself doesn’t have to be a huge problem,” said Liam Donovan, a former National Republican Senatorial Committee official. “But the media response tells you the free ride is over, and she’s in for her first taste of adversity.”
The controversy has given particular oxygen to Christie, who in recent weeks has faced questions about whether he will remain in the race. The former New Jersey governor is polling third in some recent New Hampshire surveys, and many top Republicans in the Granite State say he is potentially siphoning off support that could otherwise go to Haley. Christie has insisted he won’t drop out of the race — he released a direct-to-camera ad this week in which he said as much — but the firestorm could give him added incentive to stay in.
“The problem for Haley is that her path to the nomination already amounts to an early state Triple Lindy, and anything that stands to stunt her rise — or, perhaps worse, breathe new life into somebody like Chris Christie — is something she can ill afford,” said Donovan.
Haley was already starting to face a barrage of attacks from her lower-polling opponents in the days leading up to her Civil War comments. DeSantis and Christie have highlighted her seemingly shifting position on the issue of transgender medical rights for minors. After a clip resurfaced earlier this month of Haley in June saying “the law should stay out of it” when it came to underage children seeking gender transitions, Haley told the Christian Broadcasting Network last week “there should be federal involvement” to block anyone under 18 from undergoing gender-altering procedures.
Christie in recent weeks has likewise hammered Haley on her position on abortion, accusing her of speaking differently about the topic in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Officials from rival campaigns have privately expressed frustration about a lack of scrutiny by the media on Haley’s policy positions. Haley, throughout much of her campaign, declined to make herself available for media gaggles at campaign events, instead choosing to grant occasional one-on-one interviews with select reporters and to sit for television spots.
That’s in contrast to other Republicans in the field. Even Trump, the overwhelming frontrunner, has answered questions from mainstream news reporters on his plane and spoke with the press this fall outside a New York City courtroom. In the fallout of her Civil War comments, Haley on Thursday did address reporters while standing next to New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
It didn’t go well.
I don’t know how much this will hurt her in Iowa and New Hampshire. Most people in those states have already made up their minds. I suppose it could hurt her in Iowa where there’s no Democratic primary and some Democrats may have been planning to register for the caucuses to foil Trump. In New Hampshire she might have offended some of the Independents who were fueling her rise. Who knows?
But this whole thing has almost certainly dinged her image as the person who could best beat Biden. That idea depended on the notion that she could appeal to those suburban moms” who have defected from the GOP because of Trump. A controversy of slavery and abortion isn’t really going to help her there.
I’ve never respected her. She’s slick and craven and always has been. And she will follow the new fascist Republican Party wherever it wants to go. Just because she isn’t insulting everyone who crosses her in crude junior high school terms doesn’t mean she isn’t dangerous.
Here’s yet another disturbing story about the malign influence of Leonard Leo, Federalist Society founder and architect of the conservative Supreme Court we are now stuck with for a generation or more:
Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, are working to promote a publicly funded Christian school in Oklahoma, hoping to create a test case to change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.
At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.
Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions. He said the justices have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he said there should be a wall separating church and state, but that the current conservative-dominated court seems prepared to change course.
“Jefferson didn’t mean that the government shouldn’t be giving public benefits to religious communities toward a common goal,” he said. “The court rightly over the last decade or so has been saying, ‘No, look, we’ve got this wrong and we’re gonna right the ship here.’ ”
Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.
Leo’s network organized multi-million-dollar campaigns to support the confirmation of most of the court’s six conservative justices. Leo himself served as adviser to President Donald Trump on judicial nominations, including those of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Leo’s multiple hats in recruiting judicial nominees, using his nonprofit war chest to promote their confirmations and then funding legal organizations to craft challenges to longstanding court precedents, has drawn increasing criticism.
“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”
Leonard Leo supports Trump — and any other Republican leader — because he sees them as instruments to achieve his goals, nothing more. He and his henchmen will use MAGA to obtain and maintain power but it’s not the agenda in itself. Destroying the public education system is one of his fundamental goals.
In many ways, it’s hostile to much of the economically populist side of the cult except to the extent it seeks to shrink government (Bannon’s “deconstruction of the administrative state.”) Leo takes the long view. His tool is the Republican Party, no matter who is in it.
Up is down, black is white, in is out, and wrong is right
The Bizarros at Fox News stand reality on its head every day and make money for the Murdoch family doing it. The Fox audience tunes in to lap up bald-faced lies. Here their talking heads claim that Donald Trump turned aound the “miserable” Obama economy (that crashed under George W. Bush). Joe Biden’s looks the same to them, dontcha know?
“Look how long it took President Trump turn the country around after Obama’s miserable economic state” pic.twitter.com/CNtr6VkDaX
Alice’s Looking Glass World was at least fanciful and fun. Fox’s world is just a Bizarro version of the real one. The least Fox could do is give Bat Boy his own primetime show. He’d be as credible as the rest of these clowns.
I’m ripping this off wholesale for the reading enjoyment of those not on Blue Sky.
First replace Trump with Obama and the 14th Amendment with the 22nd, says Pwnallthethings:
Now do it everywhere:
If you know, you know:
Naturally The Wall Street Journal gets in on the act:
One Connor Lynch comments: These rewrites really capture the solipsistic pedantry of the highly implausible counter arguments that keep popping up in editorial pages.
It’s fun applying their “ah, yes, the constitution says X, but they mean X in a special secret way that only I with this decoder triangle can parse for you” logic to similarly basic provisions elsewhere
When the 22nd Amendment says “elected only twice” the etymology of the latin prefix “bi” means “two”, but “biannual” might mean every two years, or twice per year, up to a total amount of four, and for that reason, “twice” here should be understood to permit “three”, a number less than “four” …
Imagine the remaining dialogue read as a Monty Python skit:
Connor Lynch: The 22nd Amendment’s use of “shall” here is not a mandate for courts and legislatures but merely predictive. It is guidance for voters, its enforcement and interpretation left exclusively to them.
Pwnallthethings: While the 22nd Amendment says that “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice”, it is not clear that the Presidency is an office at all; and consequently nobody has ever been elected president even once, and Obama can be elected a third time. In this essay I shall
Connor Lynch: “The 22nd amendment isn’t self-executing” would be a fun one. Being elected three times isn’t a crime, so it must be permitted
Pwnallthethings: No jury has convicted president Obama of having held two terms, nor has any prosecutor indicted him for it. Consequently denying him the ballot on 22nd Amendment grounds would be a gross violation of both his and our due process rights. As Professor of Law for the University of Tesla, I will show
And so on.
Real pundits get paid to write this. Remember that.
I think the most viral animal videos this year came from Mo Mountain Mutts which is a dog sitting and training outfit in Alaska that picks up the “students” in its puppy bus every day. It’s just the cutest series ever:
Here’s the former Great Whitebread Hope still flailing around trying to prove that he’s just as much of an authoritarian monster as Donald Trump:
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said in a Thursday interview that, if elected president, he would fire special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two indictments against former President Trump, on “day one” of his hypothetical term in office.
DeSantis made the case for why he was the best candidate to win the GOP nomination in 2024 in a Fox News interview with Jason Chaffetz. After referencing Trump’s legal battles in the upcoming year, DeSantis said he would be able to keep focused on holding people accountable, including Smith.
“I think that a guy like me as the nominee will be able to keep the focus on Biden, keep the focus on the Democrats’ failures,” DeSantis said, “but then, more importantly, after you win the election, start holding these people accountable, who have weaponized the legal system to go after their political enemies.”
“And that starts with day one, firing somebody like Jack Smith. That goes to dealing with people who are violating constitutional rights at the state and local government area,” he added.
I’m not sure what he thinks he’s doing these days but I don’t think this is going to convince anyone. The best guess is that he’s waiting to see if Trump falls face first into the omelette bar at Mar-a-lago before the convention and the party will be desperate for someone who is a much of a vengeful monster as he is.
Meanwhile, here’s the supposedly moderate choice (who happens to think the civil war was about freedom from big government) said yesterday:
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley says she would pardon former President Trump, if he were found guilty, saying that it wouldn’t be “in the best interest of the country” for him to be imprisoned.
So basically, Republicans all refuse to hold Trump or his henchmen accountable for what they’ve done but they promise to go after all of his political enemies on his behalf.
Catherine Rampell has done a good service by laying out for her colleagues what they need to do to fulfill their responsibilities in 2024. Here are the two I think are most important:
Spend less time reporting on who’s likely to win an election and more on what they’d do if elected.
The point of winning elections is, ostensibly, to govern. Yet a voter could spend hours watching or reading presidential election coverage and come away with only a vague understanding of what any of the contenders would do as president. Too often journalists ask candidates questions like “Why are you so far down in the polls in Iowa?” rather than “What would your position on [food stamps/tariffs/banking] mean for Iowans?”
Jay Rosen, a New York University journalism professor, has pithily boiled down our mission as “Not the odds, but the stakes.” These days, Rosen’s refrain is usually quoted in the context of the stakes for democracy (specifically, under another Trump administration), but it’s a good principle for any substantive matter that affects the lives of everyday Americans.
We must produce more coverage of what, say, the health-care system would look like under different candidates’ platforms. Also climate, working conditions, immigration, civil rights, taxes, nutritional programs and so on. This is harder to do than just covering the horse race, but it adds more value.
People need to understand the stakes.There’s so much cynicism and disinformation out there that a whole lot of people just buy into the fatuous notion that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them.” And then there are the “lesser of two evils” and the “heighten the contradictions” excuses and this is what we end up with:
I can’t imagine how anyone can come to that absurd conclusion but it’s sadly not uncommon. Making the Democrats “learn their lesson” isn’t going to keep immigrants from being deported or Netanyahu and Putin from pursuing their violent goals.
Report the important positive news and not just the important bad news.
Journalists are often accused of having a “bad-news bias.” That’s partly because alarming or infuriating stories sell in a way that positive ones often don’t — particularly in an era in which the public seems addicted to outrage. This addiction manifests in many ways, including in how politicians talk, how regular people converse with one another, and what newspeople decide to report.
There’s also a cover-your-rear impulse that disproportionately discourages positive news coverage. If we write about a policy/company/person/study/whatever in a way that emphasizes the good things, and it turns out we missed some significant problem, we look like fools. If we write something broadly critical and miss something good, audiences rarely care.
But our job is to give the public a truthful portrait of the world around them. Positive developments are part of that too.
I don’t think I need to tell my readers how important I think this is. I feel as if you are well aware of all the bad news out there. We’re inundated with it. I try to highlight the more positive news that doesn’t get as much exposure. But it’s really important that the mainstream media shifts their attitude and starts reporting the facts without all the editorializing about how none of it matters.
She also has a resolution for us and it’s important:
But my key resolution for news consumers is this: Help news organizations stick to the pledges above. You can do this by actually consuming the nuanced, balanced, thoughtful news coverage you say you want.
One reason journalists disproportionately cover polls is that doing so is relatively easy; another is that audiences appear to prefer simple, digestible “who’s ahead?” summaries to nitty-gritty policy issues. They don’t seem to care much about local elections (as evidenced not just by audience ratings but by voter participation). And they love to rage-click. Those who hate on media claim to want more balanced, meaty coverage and fewer inflammatory headlines. But virtually any journalist can tell you that these stated preferences are not borne out by our traffic numbers.
And those numbers matter. They especially matter in an era of ultra thin budgets and media layoffs, in which complex investigative work that almost no one reads or watches becomes an unaffordable luxury.
So if substantive coverage matters to you, reward it with your attention. Vote with your eyeballs, your ears, your clicks, your shares, your paid subscriptions. That can mean here at The Post or at any other organization whose work you like, and, through your news-consumption habits, resolve to make better in 2024.
I resolve to try to circulate the good journalism that I come across all year long and help my readers find the good journalism that’s being done in the big media and also the blogs, substacks and other newsletters that deserve our attention. It’s never been more important to be informed.
