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Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Trump’s Church of the SubGenius

With apologies to  J. R. “Bob” Dobbs

Donald Trump must be really pissed that the Hamas attack on Israel over the weekend knocked him off the front pages. Of course, The Gray Lady had seen fit the day before to bury on Page A13 news of Trump blabbering U.S. submarine secrets to his Mar-a-Lago guests.

Digby’s comment on this mental midget is so good you should see it again:

We are in the midst of an international crisis and the putative nominee for the Republican nomination is whining about Forbes Magazine, Stormy Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell. That’s the man Republicans want to put back in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal (which he is blabbing about to his Mar-a-Lago customers.)

The point can’t be made strongly enough. (See what I did?) Thank heavens, Joe Biden is president at a time like this.

Donald “very stable genius” Trump lugs around a visceral fear that somebody, somewhere is laughing at him. Thank the Writers, someone is laughing at Trump once again in late night:

Coming to grips

Americans can imagine themselves there

Accounts of the killings and kidnappings from the Israeli border with Gaza are horrific. Especially from the attack on unarmed civilians at a music festival. Americans can easily imagine themselves in a similar situation. Americans were in a similar situation in October six years ago in Las Vegas when a lone gunman murdered 60 concertgoers and wounded over 400. The New York Times has video shot as the attacks began. One striking image from TV accounts shows a destroyed car shot full of holes like Swiss cheese.

Israeli retaliatory airstrikes on the Gaza side of the border are killing and wounding unarmed civilians there, don’t forget. With the district locked down and out of power, Palestinian victims’ stories are trickling out more slowly. Their stories will likely never be told.

I’m not qualified to do more than react. But this clip of retired United States Navy rear admiral John Kirby of the National Security Council choking up on live television is arresting. It’s a sobering image. Why, given daily events in this country, is hard to express.

Terrorists are not entering our houses, taking us hostage, and murdering us at point-blank range. But they are by the hundreds shooting up our schools and malls and parades and terrorizing public officials so often that the daily slaughter on our own streets has become background noise.

Jeff Sharlet calls it a slow civil war. He’s not wrong.

A final blow to the Kennedy Dynasty

Bobby Junior shows how to destroy a legacy in one easy step

This would be sad if it weren’t so dangerous:

In a move that could alter the dynamics of the 2024 election, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on Monday that he would continue his presidential run as an independent candidate, ending his long-shot pursuit of the Democratic nomination against an incumbent president.

“I am here to declare myself an independent candidate for president of the United States,” Mr. Kennedy told a crowd of supporters outside the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Since announcing his candidacy in April, Mr. Kennedy, 69, has been a sharp critic of Democratic leadership, which he has accused of “hijacking the party machinery” to stifle his challenge to President Biden. He has also said, in interviews and in public appearances, that the party has abandoned its principles and become corrupted.

Running as an independent will entail an expensive, uphill battle to get on the ballot in all 50 states. Last week, Cornel West, a liberal academic and presidential candidate, said he would run as an independent, abandoning his efforts to secure the Green Party’s nomination.

The scion of a liberal political dynasty, Mr. Kennedy has alienated family members and many Democrats with his promotion of conspiracy theories, his rejection of scientific orthodoxies and his embrace of far-right political figures.

Mr. Kennedy, an environmental lawyer, has been lionized by a movement that has expanded beyond anti-vaccine sentiments, including opposition to the mandatory vaccination of children, to push back more broadly against state public health measures. In recent years, his open suspicions about the government’s handling of the coronavirus and his criticism of lockdowns and vaccine policies gave him a new platform and earned him popularity among many Americans who wearied of the pandemic.

As a candidate, he has built a base of support made up of disaffected voters across the political spectrum, but some Democrats have worried he poses the biggest threat to their party, fearing that any third-party candidacy could peel off voters from Mr. Biden.

Shortly after Mr. Kennedy entered the race, some polls showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support — which was in large part a measure of the desire among some for an alternative to Mr. Biden. Mr. Kennedy’s numbers have sagged in recent months, though his campaign, which dwells as much on nostalgia for his political lineage as it does on skepticism about the scientific and political establishment — continues to appeal to a particular cross-section of skeptical Democrats, political conservatives and independents.

Polls show that he takes more from Democrats than Republicans. But I’m not so sure. Still it’s a needless risk and he and Cornel West and any of the others runningfor third party should step aside. This is a moment that requires people to make a clear choice between the two candidates who have a chance to win not voice a protest.

Just be glad we have the president we have

A sane, experienced hand is what the world needs, not a narcissistic imbecile

Note the date of that Truth Social post. He wrote that today. That’s what he’s thinking about right now.

We are in the midst of an international crisis and the putative nominee for the Republican nomination is whining about Forbes Magazine, Stormy Daniels and Rosie O’Donnell. That’s the man Republicans want to put back in charge of America’s nuclear arsenal (which he is blabbing about to his Mar-a-Lago customers.)

******

I highly recommend history professor (and OG blogger) Claire Potter’s newsletter Political Junkie and you should subscribe if you want to read some great political commentaryfrom her and any number of great writers and analysts who write for her. Today she is featuring a great piece about Joe Biden and the “age problem” by Peter Drier the E.P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics at Occidental College:

Many voters, including Democrats, think that 80-year old President Joe Biden is too old to run for re-election. A recent poll from the Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs found that 77% of Americans (89% of Republicans and 69% of Democrats) thought that, if Biden won re-election, his age would be a problem. In contrast, only 51% of Americans, and 29% of Republicans, said that Donald Trump’s age was a concern. Republican leaders, such as former South Carolina Governor and presidential primary candidate Nikki Haley, are pushing that talking point. They warn that Biden might not be able to serve his entire second term and that the less popular Vice President Kamala Harris would wind up in the Oval Office.

Trump has been more direct, echoing online conspiracists who doctor videos to “prove” that Biden is already too old to be President. Speaking to a group of conservative religious leaders in Washington, D.C. on September 15, Trump called Biden “cognitively impaired.” Then, ironically, he warned that, if re-elected, Biden would lead the country into “World War II.”  At another point, he boasted that he was beating President “Obama” (rather than Biden) in the 2024 election polls.

Unintentionally, Trump’s bizarre speech helped illuminate the debate over the two candidates’ ages.

Yes, Biden is the oldest president in American history. And he’s only going to get older. There is no younger candidate emerging, so in November 2024, voters who worry about Biden’s age will likely have to decide between him and Trump, who is three years younger and turned 77 in June. The good news? All signs suggest that Biden is still the best candidate. He is healthier, more vigorous, sharper, smarter, more mentally stable, more knowledgeable about how government works, has a clearer grasp of issues, and is more effective at getting things done than Trump.

First, Biden is healthy. In February, after he underwent a physical exam at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, his personal physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor issued the president a clean bill of health and cleared him to continue fulfilling his duties. 

“The president remains fit for duty, and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” O’Connor wrote in his report. An echocardiogram showed that Biden’s heart is not only operating normally with no signs of failure, but also showed “excellent functional capacity.”

Like many older people, Biden staves off the effects of age by taking care of his body. During the 2020 campaign, Biden biked regularly on both a traditional bike and a Peloton. Since becoming President, he starts his mornings by working out with weights—often with a trainer, according to the Washington Post. Although Biden likes to indulge in ice cream and chocolate chip cookies, he closely watches his diet.

Of course, this doesn’t stave off everything associated with aging. Before he took office, Biden had several localized non-melanoma skin cancers removed, a result of spending a great deal of time in the sun. And from time to time, he falls. In June, after handing out diplomas at the United States Air Force Academy graduation ceremony, he tripped over a black sandbag, got back up and walked back to his seat. Although the incident generated a flurry of media stories, encouraged by the Republican operatives who want to highlight Biden’s age, by all accounts, he was fine. 

Of course, many younger Americans also have cancerous cells removed. Similarly, many people across the age spectrum occasionally trip and then get up, but few do so in the national spotlight. Gerald Ford, who was much younger and was an All-American football player at the University of Michigan, tripped a few times while serving as president, including tumbling down Air Force One stairs in 1975 when he was a spry 61-year-old. On Saturday Night Live, comedian Chevy Chase frequently made fun of Ford’s mishaps. But the joke was about Ford’s alleged clumsiness, not his age, whether he was too physically infirm to govern, or unlikely to finish his term of office.

Many Americans have also noticed that Biden sometimes slurs his words when he speaks, but attributing this to his age is a mistake. In fact, it is a feature of his long battle with stuttering, not a symptom of any decline in mental or physical capacity. Most stutterers outgrow the disability in childhood, but others, like Biden, continue to struggle with it in adulthood. This is a topic he’s been very candid about and has used to mentor and encourage young people with the same speech disorder.

Biden’s occasional verbal gaffes also have nothing to do with his mental sharpness. Throughout his political career—he was elected to the Senate in 1972, at the age of 29—he’s been prone to blurting things out that he later regrets, often in response to a question that he answered too quickly.

Biden’s capacity to navigate an executive schedule should also not be a concern. During the 2020 campaign, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he didn’t travel often, but since taking office he’s had a rigorous travel schedule at home and abroad. He’s already been doing a lot of traveling for his current campaign. Yes, Biden’s gait is slowing, but he has extraordinary stamina. He works long hours in a high-stress job and remains sharp when talking to members of Congress, his Cabinet, and the media about complicated issues. He reads his briefing papers carefully and often asks his staff to provide further information.

Trump, on the other hand, may be a few years younger, but he is truly an old man.  He’s significantly overweight. He’s a fanatic for unhealthy fast food. While speaking, he often gasps for breath. He doesn’t do aerobic exercise, and even when he’s playing golf, he doesn’t walk the course; he rides on a cart. And reading? Forget it. Even as president, he boasted that he didn’t read his staff’s daily intelligence briefs. This is, in part, because he has a short attention span. “I like bullets, or I like as little as possible,” he said.

Yes, the public occasionally receives an update that certifies Trump’s “superb” physical condition, but like much of the information that comes from his orbit, it’s hard to trust those reports.

The former President’s mendacity began early. In 1968, a New York City podiatrist claimed that Trump had bone spurs in his heels, providing him with the excuse he needed to get a medical exemption from military service during the Vietnam war. Dr. Larry Braunstein, the foot doctor who diagnosed the “bone spurs,” rented his office from Fred C. Trump, the former president’s father. Braunstein died in 2007, but when the New York Times looked into the matter, his daughters said that their father often recounted how he helped Trump avoid the draft as a favor to Fred. “I know it was a favor,” one daughter, Dr. Elysa Braunstein, told the Times.

Later, during the 2016 campaign, Trump rolled out obviously false assertions about his physical fitness, even as Republican conspiracists disseminated disinformation that Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton had a degenerative disease. Trump’s personal physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, wrote one report filled with hyperbole. “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency,” Bornstein wrote in December 2015. Trump’s “physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” he claimed, and his bloodwork was “astonishingly excellent.”

Three years later, Bornstein confessed that Trump had dictated the letter himself. “I didn’t write that letter,” Bornstein told CNN. He also said that Trump’s bodyguard had conducted a “raid” on his medical office in February 2017, taking all of Trump’s lab reports and medical charts.

Similarly, in 2018, the White House physician, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson, declared Trump to be in “excellent” overall health and in possession of “incredibly good genes” during a White House press briefing (although Trump talks about his genes constantly, medical doctors rarely do.) Jackson also announced that Trump was 6 foot, 3 inches and weighed 239 pounds, conveniently putting the President’s body mass index at 29.9—just below the 30.0 threshold be officially described as obese, rather than merely overweight. But photos of Trump with others have raised questions about whether he is actually 6’3” (he’s actually 6’2”) or that he weighed only 239 at the time (estimates ranged as high as 267.)

Actual good health in one’s seventies requires effort, of course. Yet, Jackson acknowledged that Trump didn’t have a daily physical fitness routine. He said he would encourage Trump to exercise and eat better. There’s no evidence that Trump ever took that seriously. In fact, he is apparently opposed to exercise on principle. In 2016, the Washington Post revealed that Trump gave up athletics after college because he “believed the human body was like a battery, with a finite amount of energy, which exercise only depleted.” Experts, of course, understand that the human body actually becomes stronger with exercise.

But lying about Trump’s physical health has its rewards, whether it is a sweetheart office lease or a big career move. Two months after his 2018 physical exam, Trump nominated Jackson, who had no administrative experience, to be Secretary of Veterans Affairs. That nomination blew up after Senator Jon Tester (D-Mont.) released allegations that Jackson had overprescribed pills and drank on the job. So, in 2020, with Trump’s support, Jackson ran for and won a race for Congress from Texas’ 13th Congressional District.

Despite Jackson’s assurances, journalists have provided concrete evidence that it is Trump who may have serious health problems. In May 2017, at the G7 summit in Taormina, Sicily with world leaders, the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan walked 700 yards to take a group photo at a piazza in a hilltop town. Trump chose to wait until he could ride in a golf cart, keeping the others waiting.  And during a 2020 commencement speech at West Point, which he delivered haltingly, Trump needed two hands to lift a water glass to his mouth, suggesting some kind of tremor. After the speech ended, Trump walked very slowly down a ramp, keeping his eyes on his feet. That night he explained that for the “final ten feet I ran down to level ground. Momentum!” But videos reveal that Trump did not run the “final ten feet” to the ground. He walked at a normal speed for the last three or four steps.

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In contrast to the many hours Biden spends on the job, Trump has also never been known as a hard worker. While campaigning for president in 2016, he said “I would not be a president who took vacations. I would not be a president that takes time off.” Once in office, however, he took more vacations than any of his predecessors. He spent 307 days, almost a full year, golfing during his presidency, mostly at his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, and his club in Bedminster, N.J. 

Fun fact: this is the most golf played of any president in history.

And when it comes to mental health, is there any real controversy over which politician lacks the emotional stability to serve as president? While Biden is well known for privately upbraiding those who haven’t met his standards, he listens, is publicly affectionate, polite, and tirelessly greets the Americans he encounters. But numerous accounts of Trump reveal him to be thin-skinned, addicted to flattery, a megalomaniac, demagogic, impulsive, vindictive, a sociopath, and a narcissist who lacks empathy or a social conscience. During his presidency, two booksTwilight of American Sanity: A Psychiatrist Analyzes the Age of Trump, by Allen Frances, former psychiatry department chairman at Duke University School of Medicine, and The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President, edited by Bandy X. Lee, a forensic psychiatrist at Yale School of Medicine—heightened public debate about Trump’s psychological fitness to be president.

And what about the basic intelligence of these two men? Biden, like most people, rarely discusses his intelligence. But, on many occasions, Trump has claimed that he’s “really smart” and even a “ super-genius,” pointing to his undergraduate degree from the University of Pennsylvania. “My I.Q. is one of the highest,” Trump tweeted in 2013. During a CNN-sponsored Republican town hall in Columbia, South Carolina in February 2016, he reminded the audience that “I was a good student and all of this stuff. I mean, I’m a smart person.” In 2018, Trump wrote, “Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.”

Yet, anyone who feels compelled to boast about how smart he is clearly suffers from profound insecurity about his intelligence and accomplishments. In Trump’s case, he has good reason to doubt himself. Although he grew up in a wealthy family, he was not a good student.  After high school he attended Fordham University, at the time a respected but not very selective Catholic institution, and certainly not where the sons of the super-rich expected to wind up. After two lackluster years at Fordham, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school. 

But according to Gwenda Blair’s 2001 biography, The Trumps, Trump’s grades at Fordham were not good enough to qualify for a transfer to Penn. Blair wrote that Trump got into the university as a special favor from a “friendly” admissions officer who knew Trump’s older brother, Freddy. The college’s admissions staff also surely knew that Trump’s father was a wealthy real estate developer and a potential donor.

After graduating in 1968, Trump exaggerated his academic accomplishments at Penn, statements that no one fact-checked for decade: on at least two occasions in the 1970s, The New York Times reported that he “graduated first in his class.” Trump is the likely source for this assertion, and it isn’t true. He didn’t even make the Dean’s List, as the campus newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanianreported it in 1968.

Many years ago, Biden also exaggerated his own academic credentials, but his long political life and several presidential runs meant that these statements were quickly debunked. The facts are admittedly unimpressive. Reporters discovered that at the University of Delaware, Biden graduated with a C average and was ranked 506th in a class of 688. At Syracuse University’s law school, he ranked 76th out of 85 in his graduating class. Perhaps because this is now public knowledge (Trump’s academic records have remained private) Biden has mocked Trump’s habit of boasting about his intelligence. “I’m clearly not as smart as Trump,” Biden said sarcastically in 2018, “the smartest man in the world.”

Of course, college grades and class rank aren’t the best test of someone’s potential to be an effective president. Good presidents have judgement, the ability to think strategically, to understand complex issues, and be adept at surrounding themselves with knowledgeable people. They hire, utilize, and keep good staff.

That’s Biden—not Trump. According to Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury[CP1] “100 percent” of Trump’s closest White House aides questioned his intelligence and fitness for office. According to Wolff, both Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and former Chief of Staff Reince Priebus derided Trump as an “idiot;” chief economic advisor Gary Cohn said that Trump was “dumb as shit;” and national security advisor H.R. McMaster considered Trump a “dope.” This came on top of early reports that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called Trump a “moron.” 

It’s no wonder that the Trump White House was a revolving door.

Other observers have noted that Trump has a difficult time expressing himself and speaking in complete sentences. Tony Schwartz, who spent a great deal of time with Trump while ghostwriting his 1987 book The Art of the Deal, noted that Trump has a very limited vocabulary. A linguistic analysis by Politico found that Trump speaks at a fourth-grade level. A When researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University compared the Republican and Democratic 2016 presidential candidates in terms of their vocabulary and grammar, Trump scored at a fifth-grade level, the lowest of all the candidates.

More important than grades, IQ or vocabulary is the elusive quality of judgement. That involves learning from experience, sorting out what’s important and unimportant, hiring people who will question your ideas, making decisions when none of the decision are very good or when the available data is incomplete, and having a keen moral sense of right and wrong.

Let’s see a show of hands when it comes to Biden or Trump in this category.

Finally, let’s compare Trump’s record of achievement between the ages of 70 and 74 to Biden’s between the ages of 76 and 79. Biden has passed more major pieces of legislation in two and a half years than Trump did in four years in the White House.

Granted, our 2024 candidates are both old men. But only Trump is physically, emotionally, and mentally unfit to be president. As Biden likes to say, “Don’t compare me to the almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

Haaretz on who’s responsible

The editors of Israel’s top newpaper don’t mince words

The disaster that befell Israel on the holiday of Simchat Torah is theclear responsibility of one person: Benjamin Netanyahu. The primeminister, who has prided himself on his vast political experience and irreplaceable wisdom in security matters, completely failed to identify the dangers he was consciously leading Israel into when establishing a government of annexation and dispossession, when appointing Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir to key positions, while embracing a foreign policy that openly ignored the existence and rights of Palestinians.

Netanyahu will certainly try to evade his responsibility and cast the blame on the heads of the army, Military Intelligence and the Shin Bet security service who, like their predecessors on the eve of the Yom Kippur War, saw a low probability of war with their preparations for a Hamas attack proving flawed.

They scorned the enemy and its offensive military capabilities. Over the next days and weeks, when the depth of Israel Defense Forces and intelligence failures come to light, a justified demand to replace them and take stock will surely arise.However, the military and intelligence failure does not absolve Netanyahu of his overallresponsibility for the crisis, as he is the ultimate arbiter of Israeli foreign and security affairs. Netanyahu is no novice in this role, like Ehud Olmert was in the Second Lebanon War. Nor is he ignorant in military matters, as Golda Meir in 1973 and Menachem Begin in 1982 claimed to be.

Netanyahu also shaped the policy embraced by the short-lived “government of change” led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid: a multidimensional effort to crush the Palestinian national movement in both its wings, in Gaza and the West Bank, at a price that would seem acceptable to the Israeli public.

In the past, Netanyahu marketed himself as a cautious leader who eschewed wars and multiple casualties on Israel’s side. After his victory in the last election, he replaced this caution with the policy of a “fully-right government,” with overt steps taken toannex the West Bank, to carry out ethnic cleansing in parts of the Oslo-defined Area C, including the Hebron Hills and the Jordan Valley.

This also included a massive expansion of settlements and bolstering of the Jewish presence on Temple Mount, near the Al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as boasts of an impending peace deal with the Saudis in which the Palestinians would get nothing, with open talk of a “second Nakba” in his governing coalition. As expected, signs of an outbreak of hostilities began in the West Bank, where Palestinians started feeling the heavier hand of the Israeli occupier. Hamas exploited the opportunity in order to launch its surprise attack on Saturday.

Above all, the danger looming over Israel in recent years has been fully realized. A prime minister indicted in three corruption cases cannot look after state affairs, as national interests will necessarily be subordinate to extricating him from a possible conviction and jail time.

This was the reason for establishing this horrific coalition and the judicial coup advanced by Netanyahu, and for the enfeeblement of top army and intelligence officers, who were perceived as political opponents. The price was paid by the victims of the invasion in the Western Negev.

Netanyahu bears responsibility for this Israel-Gaza war

Now imagine what the US would be doing right now if Donald Trump had won the 2020 election. I’m pretty sure we would be at war with Iran right now.

Too awful to contemplate

I always find the Israel-Palestinian issue incredibly difficult to comprehend or write about in an intelligent way because I have deep, reflexive sympathy for both sides and yet so often abhor their behavior toward one another. This war is more complicated than any other war —religion, power imbalance, racism, territorial dispute, ancient historical animosity, oppression, colonialism all of it is present here. I’ve always thought it was the most difficult problem in the world and I have nothing enlightening to say about it.

The best I can do right now is offer for you some of the best best that I’m reading around the web and to try to see where American politics are going and guage as best I can what our government and its allies are doing in reaction.

Jill Filipovic in her newsletter today speaks for me.

I’ve been struggling with what to write today, because the news out of Israel and Palestine is so overwhelming, and so awful, and every time I open my laptop it feels silly to try to write about anything else. But I’m very, very far from an expert on this particular topic, and like a lot of people, I feel quite anxious wading into it — sure I will say the wrong thing, worried that there is no “right” thing to say. So I will just say this:

Human life is so precious, and so many people are so quick to disregard it when the lives in question differ from them in some key way that seems to put them outside the scope of humanity.

Many, many of the world’s most vulnerable people are treated as pawns in much larger power struggles, and sometimes they are a pretext for other people’s actions, and sometimes they pay with their lives for other people’s choices. Often that’s invisible. Right now, it’s painfully obvious.

There is never a justification for murdering, raping, kidnapping or attacking innocent civilians. There is never a justification for collective punishment. If you find yourself starting to justify or explain away war crimes, including the murder, rape, kidnapping or attack on innocent civilians — especially if you find yourself justifying it based on some principle of justice or anti-oppression — you’ve really lost the plot.

This moment is such a profound devastation. More than a thousand people have been killed. It seems guaranteed that those numbers will grow exponentially. Millions of people today are grieving lost loved ones; millions more are fearing for the future. Maybe you are one of them. Wherever you sit, remember that there is no limit to human empathy, and no cost to extending yours broadly.

If you are one of those people who is grieving today, or fearful today, I am sending you my love.

Now, some readings. These are from a range of perspectives, and I share them not to endorse every word, but to hopefully deepen our collective understanding.

A Message from Iran, by Kim Ghattas

A Massacre at a Music Festival in Israel, by Ruth Margalit

Could the attack on Israel spell the end of Hamas? an interview by Isaac Chotiner

How the Al-Aqsa Mosque became a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, an NPR interview with Yousef Munayyer.

We feel fear, anger and helplessness: all of Israel is in a state of war. But revenge is not the answer, by Orly Noy.

In the midst of war, Benjamin Netanyahu is a liability who can only make things worse. He must go, by Simon Tisdall.

Why Hamas Attacked — And Why Israel Was Taken by Surprise, a conversation with Martin Indyk in Foreign Affairs.

All I know is that the footage of this terrorist nightmare — the killing and kidnapping of children is so shocking, so immediate, that it’s the only thing I’m seeing when I close my eyes.

Update: I just saw on television that Hamas says they will begin killing the hostages if Isre=ael continues to bomb civilian buildings in Gaza. Oh god.

The Last Thing We Need

Right wing disinformation is starting to run wild and it’s very dangerous

It’s bad and getting worse. And among the worst are Donald Trump and his misbegotten offspring:

Within minutes of circulating the first images of the horrific Hamas-led terrorist attack on Israel, the Right Wing disinformation apparatus sprung into action. Right Wing accounts began spreading false information to score political points against President Biden and the Democrats. Donald Trump and the other Republican candidates are weaponizing the information as it spreads like wildfire across social media.

Fast-moving, real-time events are the most fertile ground for disinformation and propaganda. The public is tuned in, the traditional media hasn’t yet had time to get all the facts, and people are sharing information without context or confirmation. The problem worsened after platforms conceded to wave the white flag against stopping disinformation. Elon Musk encouraged his 159 million followers to get their opinions from an account that has spread anti-Semitic disinformation.

With reports that American citizens may be among the victims and hostages, the ongoing conflict will dominate the political conversation for the foreseeable future.

The disinformation problem that was so bad in 2016 and 2020 will be much worse in 2024. Democratic campaigns and progressive media must play a major role in fighting back. Providing information to my readers so they can push back on Right-Wing BS to the people in their lives is going to be a major priority for Message Box this election cycle. Here is some advice to help you push back on the current Right Wing talking points.

Good Information for Context

President Biden delivered a statement from the White House on Saturday, laying out his Administration’s response. The statement is strong and worth sharing with people in your network.

Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes recorded an emergency episode of Pod Save the World that helps explain what is happening, how the U.S. is responding, and providing factual pushback against Right Wing lies. 

Here is a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister thanking President Biden for his support:

The U.S. Did NOT Fund the Attack

As part of a recent deal to bring home U.S. citizens imprisoned in Iran, the United States unfroze $6 billion and struck an agreement with Iran to bring American prisoners home. Republican politicians and MAGA media accounts used this fact to claim that the Biden Administration funded the attack.

This claim is not true. The money is earmarked for humanitarian assistance and every penny of it remains in the bank account in Doha. But don’t take my word for it. Here is Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin pushing back on the false claims circulating on her own network:

“The $6 billion is still currently held in a Qatari bank account with U.S. Treasury oversight, I’m told. The money came from Iranian oil sales to South Korea and did not include U.S. taxpayer dollars. NK spokesperson Adrian Watson said in a statement, ‘Not a single cent from these funds has been spent and when it is spent it can only be spent on things like food and medicine for the Iranian people. These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.’ In fact, the US has pre-positioned $2 billion worth of weapons stored in Israel. I’m told the US will likely release some of these pre-positioned weapons to assist Israel in the coming days.”

U.S. Weapons were NOT Used

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump Jr. and others shared a photo as “proof” that the U.S. weapons abandoned in Afghanistan after the U.S. withdrawal were used in the attack.

Image

This claim is also false. The photo being circulated is from 2021, not 2023; it was taken in Afghanistan, not Israel, and the people in the photo are members of the Taliban not Hamas.

It is clear that the Republicans see a ripe political opportunity to paint President Biden as weak. And it is also clear that we must push back on the flood of disinformation.

More Bad Takes:

And the ALL-CAPS bleat: “THE HORRIBLE ATTACK ON ISRAEL, MUCH LIKE THE ATTACK ON UKRAINE, WOULD NEVER HAVE HAPPENED IF I WERE PRESIDENT – ZERO CHANCE!” Trump posted to Truth Social.

Don Jr., who used the incident to display his inveterate ignorance once again:

“How is it possible that I’ve seen more videos out of this war in Israel in a few hours than I have from Ukraine in almost 2 years???”

Laurence Tribe (in since deleted post)Is Netanyahu wagging the dog of war to take attention away from his own war on the independent judiciary? Can anyone put that past him?”

J.D. Vance, who blamed America first: “As we watch this horrible situation in Israel unfold, Americans must face a stark truth: our tax dollars funded this. Money is fungible, and many of the dollars we sent to Iran are being used to now kill innocent people. This must stop. Israel has every right to defend itself. I wish our friends well, but most of all I wish they weren’t fighting against weapons bought with our money.”

The Democratic Socialists of America. Here’s Democratic Congressman Ritchie Torres, denouncing the DSA:

Rona McDaniel Romney: “I think this is a great opportunity for our candidates to contrast where Republicans have stood with Israel time and time again and Joe Biden has been weak,” McDaniel said on Fox News on Saturday.

Senator Rick Scott: “@JoeBiden funded this attack when he bowed to Iran and gave $6 BILLION to this evil regime that starts every day plotting to destroy Israel. While Biden is silent, his appeasement of Iran and Hamas terrorists is heard in every siren blaring across Israel.”

Senator Tim Scott: “The truth is though, Joe Biden funded these attacks on Israel. America’s weakness is blood in the water for bad actors, but this is worse than that. We didn’t just invite this aggression, we paid for it. Iran is the biggest funder of Hamas. This is the Biden $6 billion ransom payment at work.”

There’s more, some of it even more outrageous. The macho, dick-measuring coming from these erstwhiloe peaceniks (when itcomes to Russia anyway) is overwhelming. Evenfrom the leading women:

I guess she’s agitating for a massive manhunt and deportation program? Because we’re like Israel?

It gets even dumber than that. I will spare you the further details. Just be aware that they are out of their minds. As usual.

Slouching towards autocracy

“Bleaching” Black residents from S.C.’s 1st District

An example of Rubin’s vase.

Bishop William Barber of the Poor People’s Campaign regularly invokes the fusion movement that allowed formerly enslaved citizens (men, anyway) joined by white allies to vote and win public office in the post-Civil War South. Nineteenth-century Supreme Court rulings backing white backlash to fusion politics set the stage, Politico Magazine reports, for “the American slide toward autocracy.”

The backlash to Barack Obama’s 2008 election provided the jolt of momentum autocrats needed, particularly in the former Confederate states, for resurrecting the not-yet-cold corpse of Jim Crow.

Georgetown University law professor Sheryll Cashin recounts recent history with which Hullabaloo readers are already familiar, plus Alabama’s recent insistence on defying court rulings to preserve white dominance of the state’s congressional delegation:

In 2022, a three-judge district court found that the state’s proposed redistricting map diluted minority votes, in violation of the Voting Rights Act. It ordered Alabama to create a second majority-Black congressional district or “or something quite close to it” so that Black voters would “have an opportunity to elect a representative of their choice.” In a 5-4 ruling, the court in Milligan rejected Alabama’s arguments for a reinterpretation of the Act and ordered it to follow the lower court’s decision.

Instead, this state — where “Heart of Dixie” is still required messaging on all license plates — defied the court with a new map that did not create a realistic possibility for Black voters to elect a second congressperson. That led the annoyed lower court to direct an independent expert to redraw the map. Then Alabama filed an emergency request with the Supreme Court it had just defied, asking it to stay the independent expert’s work while it pursued yet another appeal.

Last month, the court denied this emergency request, clearing the way for a fairer map to be put in place by the 2024 elections.

The same happened with Republicans in North Carolina in 2022. They are rolling out new gerrymanders again in just weeks.

Old times there are not forgotten

In the state where Confederates fired the first shots of the Civil War, South Carolina Republicans are at similar work:

After an eight-day trial, the district court found that the legislature had imposed a racial target of no more than 17 percent African American for the 1st District and cut 62 percent of Black residents of Charleston County — more than 30,000 people — out of the district to meet it. The district court called this a “stark racial gerrymander.” The court found the South Carolina legislature abandoned traditional redistricting principles, instead “bleaching” Black voters from their former district. Those changes, the court concluded, were not required by any population shifts identified by the 2020 Census.

Yet South Carolina argues that the Supreme Court should presume it acted in good faith, for partisan not racial reasons. The court should reject South Carolina’s plea to “disentangle race from politics” because the southern history of race-infused partisanship explains why Blacks were excised, regardless of the legislature’s professed intent.

Tacitly acceptable partisan gerrymanders are Rubin vase illusions southern states expect us to accept on good faith are not racially prohibited districts. Roberts court conservatives may well prefer to see it Republicans’ way. Past courts have set the precedent, Cashin concludes.

As autocracy rises on the constructed divisions that politicians foment, the court has much repair work to do — lest we return to the anti-democratic despotism of 1883.

The jury of nine is still out.

Israel plans ‘full siege’ of Gaza Strip

U.S. sends carrier group to eastern Mediterranean

UN News/Ziad Taleb A building is engulfed in flames in central Gaza.

Israel formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday after a surprise attack that killed over 700. The Israelis are massing troops for a ground invasion.

The U.S. State Department said in a statement this morning that at least nine Americans died in the Hamas attack.

NBC News:

“This is Israel’s 9/11. Not since 1973 has there been such a catastrophic intelligence failure in Israel,” said Marc Polymeropoulos, who worked for 26 years for the CIA, where he specialized in counterterrorism, the Middle East and South Asia.

Israel’s intelligence services have long been seen as some of the most capable in the world, with an array of human intelligence, eavesdropping and other technical means blanketing the West Bank and Gaza.

“It is almost inconceivable how they missed this,” said Polymeropoulos. 

As with early reporting from any war zone, statistics and accounts will be revised. Be careful where you get your news and note reporters’ sources.

Patrick Kingsley, the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, and two others report (relying in part on “two senior Israeli officials”) that a large portion of those 700 reported casualties in Israel came in attack by Hamas militants on an outdoor music festival. They bulldozed their way through border barricades and sped toward the festival still underway at dawn. It’s a chlling account:

The militants gunned down more than 100 ravers and abducted others, according to two senior Israeli officials, as they sprinted through the open fields. Video verified by The New York Times showed militants driving off on a motorcycle with an Israeli woman squeezed between them, screaming as her boyfriend was marched off on foot, his arm wrenched behind his back.

Those who survived often did so by hiding in nearby bushes, some of them for hours.

Bullets whistled overhead and shots resounded all around, said Andrey Peairie, 35, one of the survivors. He described crawling up to the top of a nearby hill to get a better sense of what was happening.

“Smoke and flames and gunfire,” said Mr. Peairie, a tech worker. “I have a military background, but I never was in a situation like this.”

Based in Tel Aviv, Ruth Margalit is a former member of The New Yorker’s editorial staff. Her account of the music festival attack is similar:

As partygoers scrambled toward their cars or lay on the ground waiting for the barrage to pass, another kind of fire began. [Hanoch Hai] Cohen watched as four pickup trucks filled with armed militants and gunmen on motorcycles encircled the road leading out of the event venue, which was bottlenecked with cars attempting to flee the area. “They were shooting at people just a metre away,” Cohen told me over the phone on Sunday. “These were executions. We were like ducks in a firing range.”

The music festival was one of the first sites targeted by the unprecedented Hamas ground incursion into Israel. It is also perhaps the deadliest. At least two hundred and sixty had been killed there, according to Israel’s search-and-rescue organization.

Militants also raided nearby communities, going from home to home, killing and taking residents—in some instances, entire families—hostage. On Sunday evening, the Israeli military was still engaged in battle with Gaza militants in several locations, more than a full day after the invasion began. The death toll in Israel climbed to seven hundred, and more than three hundred were seriously or critically wounded. Around four hundred Palestinians had been killed in Israeli air strikes on Gaza.

The attack at the festival appeared to be not only premeditated but also highly coördinated. Videos uploaded by attendees showed the sky above them suddenly dotted with militants on hang gliders. “Nothing there was arbitrary,” Cohen said, adding that the road to the event was ringed. “They showed up in an organized formation.” As the gunmen emptied rounds of live ammunition on the attendees, including hand grenades and mortar fire, Cohen and a friend broke off from the main road into a nearby field; from there, they navigated their jeep through dirt roads until they reached the main highway, which, Cohen said, was itself charred, with an eight-foot rocket strewn on the bank.

Kibbutz Nahal Oz lies adjacent to Gaza. People hid in their family bomb shelters only to realize there was more happening above than rocket fire. This time Amir Tibon also heard gunfire (New York Times again):

“There were terrorists inside the kibbutz, inside our neighborhood and — at some point — outside our window,” Mr. Tibon recalled. “We could hear them talk. We could hear them run. We could hear them shooting their guns at our house, at our windows.”

On the village WhatsApp group, neighbors were posting frantic messages. “People were saying, ‘They are in my house, they are trying to break into the safe room!’” recalled Mr. Tibon, a journalist for Haaretz, one of the country’s most prominent news outlets.

Messages from fellow reporters revealed even more terrifying news. They said that Hamas, the militant group that controls Gaza, had infiltrated scores of Israeli border towns, and that it would take time for the Israeli Army to reach the village.

The U.S. is scrambling to prevent (if it can) the fighting from spreading (Washington Post):

The Biden administration on Sunday scrambled to prevent Hamas’s assault on Israel from escalating into a multi-front, regional conflict, deploying a U.S. aircraft carrier group to the eastern Mediterranean and rushing arms to the Israeli military in a bid to deter the Lebanon-based Hezbollah and other actors from attacking.

The effort came amid close consultations between President Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government formally declared war on Hamas on Sunday. U.S. officials expect Israel to unleash a broad-based ground assault against the militant group within the next 24 to 48 hours, following the sophisticated Hamas attack on Saturday that killed more than 700 Israelis. Israeli reprisals have killed more than 400 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

American citizens are probably among the hostages that Hamas is holding inside Gaza, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday. At least several Americans were killed in the attack, a senior administration official confirmed.

Politico Magazine sought out Matt Duss, a former foreign policy aide to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), for comment on how this assault will affect the left’s view of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Duss is now executive vice president of the Center for International Policy. 

“This is something on the scale of the Yom Kippur war in terms of people’s perceptions,” Duss said. Yet the Palestinian issue will not go away. The attack “has destroyed this whole premise that we can just bottle up the Palestinians and it won’t matter.”

Duss tells Politico:

On the progressive left, you have a recognition and a respect for the rights of all people to live in security and dignity. That includes Israelis and Palestinians. I think the statements you see from most U.S. officials, including from the White House, are overwhelmingly focused on one side. It is of course quite true that Israel has the right to defend itself. Its people have a right to live in peace and security. The Palestinians have that right as well. The Center for International Policy put out a statement responding to the events of the last few days, making this point — that what Hamas has done is awful. We condemn it unequivocally. We also note that Palestinians have continued to suffer under an occupation and blockade that is decades old. That is absolutely necessary context. That does not excuse what Hamas has done. There is no excuse for that. But there is an important context of understanding where this violence grows from.

Mr. “I can fix this very quickly and very easily” will kindly STFU and tend to his multiple criminal indictments.