Diversionary Tactics

In today’s New York Times, Bret Stephens and Bari Weiss begin their opinion piece (“Why Is Israel Scared of This Young American?“) by admitting the partial truth of Andrew Sullivan’s description of them as “Zionist fanatic[s] of near-unhinged proportions.” “It was cheap shot,” they contend; the description should not have contained the word “near.” Otherwise, they say, “we happily plead guilty as charged.”

     They go on to say that “even unhinged Zionists can level criticism at Israeli policies,” and they proceed to do so but with great, and illogical, reservations. Consider this paragraph, which makes use of a form of Schopenhauer’s 18th way to win an argument: Divert, divert, divert.

Israelis have good reason to see the B.D.S. campaign as a thinly veiled form of bigotry. Boycotts of Jewish businesses have a particularly foul pedigree in Nazi Germany. And the same activists who obsessively seek to punish and isolate Israel for its occupation of the West Bank rarely if ever display the same passion for protesting against China for its occupation of Tibet, or Russia for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine.

Let’s take the last sentence here, because I see this kind of argument used over and over and over and over again. That someone isn’t making another argument says nothing about the argument that they are making. That Stephens and Weiss themselves don’t argue that Russia should be excused for its occupation of Crimea and eastern Ukraine or China for its occupation of Tibet - that they wouldn't make such arguments - doesn’t mean in any way that any argument they might wish to make for Israel’s continuing occupation of the West Bank is suspect.

Headline:  

Senate Republicans face their own divisions in push for health-care overhaul

from the Washington Post online. Find it here.

Amended by Tom Nashe. Illustrated by m ball.

Lamar Alexander

“We’re going to take the time we need to get it right,” Lamar Alexander (R-TN), who heads the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, said this week when asked whether the White House was pressuring him and others to move swiftly. 

    “But I want to assure donors,” Alexander added, “that their tax cuts are not in jeopardy and part of taking time to get it right will include making sure those cuts are retroactive to the hour and minute the House of Representatives passed the bill.”

Arkansas legislature proposes new flag

design by m ball

Sucking the sugar-coating off the midazolam-vecruonium bromide-potassium chloride pill

Alito: “We’ve put this thing off long enough.
          Man’s gotta go down.”

Roberts: “Agreed.”

Thomas: “Fry him.”

Kennedy: “It’s not frying, but . . . whatever.”

Gorsuch: “That’s what I’m here for.”

[Handshakes all ‘round.]

Effin' Mitch McConnell

Seventy-one days and I haven’t stopped puking – 18 pounds I've lost. But I’m down to morning,  noon, and night. I can write three paragraphs, if I pick the right time of day.

current approval rating - 19%

They’ll tell me I misheard. I hope so.

     I was listening to “Political Gabfest” this morning – David Plotz, Emily Bazelon, and Jamelle Bouie (sitting in for John Dickerson) – and the panelists were praising – at least, they were not damning – Mitch McConnell. The great political strategist. But he isn’t a strategist at all. He’s an obstructionist, without politics. His only goal is not political, it’s to get his own way whatever the reasons or no reasons: eff anyone that may disagree, eff protocol, eff the institution of the Senate, eff what is right, eff the United States of America.  So,

     never give him any credit, even indirectly, for any thing. Eff him and the horse he rode in on, and the voters of Kentucky, who apparently care no more about what is right and proper or in the national interest than he does. Finally, eff the myth of Mitch McConnell, the political strategist. Look at the hard, crass, crooked, unprincipled man.