Amsterdam again

From an opinion piece in The New York Times today by Brett Stephens ...

A Worldwide ‘Jew Hunt’

If any doubts remained about the motives of the Amsterdam thugs who last week terrorized and assaulted Israeli soccer fans in droves, an investigation in The Wall Street Journal should settle the questions.

It wasn’t merely a reaction to provocative behavior by some of those fans. It wasn’t just overflowing anger over the war in Gaza. It was something altogether darker ....

Which makes it even more remarkable how strenuously some people initially tried to obscure the nature of the Amsterdam pogrom. The media are rarely shy about calling out certain kinds of hate crimes as racist. Yet for days the word “antisemitic” was either put inside quotation marks or attributed to Dutch officials when talking about the violence. The identity of the attackers has been treated as a mystery, or a secret, beyond delicate references to people with “a migration background,” in the words of Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof ...

Bernie on why we lost

Bernie was on Meet the Press today and he really told it like it is for many of the "lower class". I share his opinion that this is how the Democratic party failed to win the election ...

The political autopsy

- my grandpa

After a terrible defeat, political parties often have an "autopsy" to figure out what went wrong ...

More Democrats fear the party’s image isn’t just damaged – it’s broken

Some Democrats are saying the party went to far to the middle or right, with trying to win over disaffected Republicans. Some say Harris didn't try to appeal to working class and lower class voters. Etc, etc, etc.

When I think of what the Democratic party should be, I think of how it was when my grandfather was a Democrat, and what it was like when I was a kid.

Back then, the Republican party was the party of educated wealthy conservatives, business interests, with a touch of nutball (John Birch Society).

But the Democrats were for the working class, unions, the poor, women, racial minorities (civil rights) and religious minorities (Jews, Catholics). It was what they called the New Deal Coalition, and they tried to help people after the Great Depression with programs like the New Deal ...

The New Deal was a series of domestic programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1938, with the aim of addressing the Great Depression, which began in 1929. Roosevelt introduced the phrase upon accepting the 1932 Democratic presidential nomination, and won the election in a landslide over Herbert Hoover, whose administration was viewed by many as doing too little to help those affected. Roosevelt believed that the depression was caused by inherent market instability, and that massive government intervention was necessary to rationalize and stabilize the economy.

The Democratic party of today has changed a lot. Now we are (also) the ones affiliated with the rich, with Ivy League universities. I assume (hope) Democrats are still trying to help the poor, the elderly, the homeless, but they act as if they are ashamed of doing so, and politicians like Harris leave those groups completely out of their speeches and promises - they don't believe those people vote, and they don't want to estrange the "working middle class".

And the Democratic party has adopted stances that seem extreme to me ... why must every person who wants to liive in America be able to? We have more than 600,000 homeless people here living in terrible conditions who never get a word from Democrats (except Bernie) ... shouldn't we be helping them first?

And why does being a Democrat now mean we would rather side with Middle Eastern terrorists than with Israel?

Oh well, I'm sure there's a lot I don't understand about all this, and of course times have changed. But I just remember that I used to be proud to be a Democrat like my grnadfather. I don't feel that way anymore.

Amsterdam

Amsterdam is in the news. I've actually been to Amsterdam but it was long ago, on my family's one trip to Europe in 1976. What I recall ... the houseboats, the Heineken museum, and especially the Rijksmuseum ...

- The Night Watch by Rembrandt van Rijn

But I digress.

People in the press have been noting the history of Amsterdam's mistreatment of Jewish people before and during WWII (Kristallnacht, Anne Frank), and connecting that to this recent attack.

But the attack after the game does not seem to have been by right-wing Dutch people (neo-nazis). The attacks were carried out by pro-Palestinian Middle Eastern immigrants living in Amsterdam. I guess it's not politic to mention that, but it is relevant.

Women and the election

Yes, a rapist is soon to be our president, voted in by a majority of men.

I feel like all that women have been trying to do sicne the dawn of time is to just be seen and treated as people in the same way men are. And we've never gotten there. Maybe we never will.

And men don't have to do all the work of keeping us down. Many women project themselves as meat puppets in order to get ahead in this world ... think of Kim Kardashian, wealthy and famous, whose main "achievement" in life is that she has an unusually huge butt.

I despair.

Trump and Israel

The Times of Israel's editor, David Horovitz, talks about Trump winning the election.

What do the Israelis think of Trump winning? They are mostly happy. Why? When he was president before, he did a lot of stuff they liked, including moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, being ok with the settlements, and doing the Abraham Accords.

There is a reason, though, why almost 80% of Jewish Americans voted for Kamala Harris - they live here and they know the damage Trump has and will cause to the US.

I hope more Israelis realize that Trump doesn't actually care about Israel, that he has helped them in order to help himself, and that he could turn on them in a minute if it made his own outcomes better.

The news that's fit to print

All the News That's Fit to Print

The press is reporting that the IDF is ordering evacuations from northern Gaza and that civilians will not be allowed to move back to their homes afterward ... The Guardian: Palestinians will not be allowed to return to homes in northern Gaza, says IDF ... CBS: Israel expands offensive in northern Gaza with new ground operation, says civilians won't be allowed back

But that's not true.

The truth is ...

UK’s Guardian appears to muff general’s quote on return of north Gaza civilians

Contrary to a Wednesday report in The Guardian, the commander of the IDF’s 162nd Division did not say that Palestinian civilians will be prevented from returning to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip and that no humanitarian aid will be delivered there.

The British newspaper appears to have mistakenly taken a somewhat inaccurate paraphrase of comments by division commander Brig. Gen. Itzik Cohen from a report in Israel’s Kan public broadcaster, presenting it as a direct quote from the general ...

I offer this as an example of the predjudice against Israel which seems to inform most of the European and American press. They have a belief about Israel and the war, and appear more open to stories that will support that opinion. That isn't "news". The press is supposed to be impartial.

Time to save the country

Rachel Maddow points out that those of us who didn't get the election result we had hoped for now have a lot to do.

We could spend time trying to figure out why we failed ... what was wrong with our party, our candidate. I do have my opinion ... that the party has ignored the underclass, the disabled, the elderly, the homeless. All the campaign events with the rich and the famous bothered me.

But maybe we should also figure out how we can try to protect what we fear a Trump presidency will damage or destroy. I myself worry about the environment and the animals most. Trump will roll back every environmental protection he can, and I recall him promising to open the national park system to hunting, mining, and drilling. Maybe it's time for me to join The Suerra Club or The Human Society.

As Rachel says, it's time to save the country.

Trump wins

I'm stunned. I knew it was possible but somehow still didn't believe it would happen.

Goodbye vaccines, goodbye environment, goodbye Ukraine.

Who to blame? People the Democratic party has depended on for decades ... racial minorities and young people.

Trump eroded Democrats’ traditional advantage among key groups

Trump picked up a small but significant share of younger voters, Black voters and Hispanic voters, many of whom were feeling down about the economy. Majorities of younger Black voters and Latino voters said the economy is not working well.

Yes, the economy. As I mentioned in many past blog posts, the Harris campaign seemed to only care about the middle and upper classes but seemed to ignore those who actually most needed help. Did they just not know we existed or is it that they didn't care?

The sad thing is, Trump will not help the poor and he has no idea how to fix the economy. The stupid selfish people have voted for a terrible candidate in order to get more for themselves. They will be disappointed, and the rest of us will have to suffer along with them.

Election eve

Worth watching for the end, in which Seth catalogues all the awful things Trump has done since he became president in2016. People really need to remember this stuff.

Trump in Michigan

- Dearborn, Michigan

Trump courts divided Arab-American voters in must-win Michigan

One might wonder why Trump would bother courting Arab American voters, he being the originator of the Muslim ban and constantly voicing his support of Israel.

But we know that Trump doesn't have any true religious convictions and has been on Israel's side in order to get conservative Christian approval. And we know that he has often been on the side of anti-Semitites, from Kanye West to the marchers at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. And we know that he is an opportunist, who is buddies with wealthy Arab leaders like MBS who can enrich him. And we know that the father of his son-in-law, a Lebanese American businessman, has been helping Trump with voters in Michigan ...

Trump’s In-Law Is Trying to Exploit Democrats’ Weakness With Arab American Voters

[...] Since early this year, a pair of unofficial Trump emissaries — Massad Boulos, a Lebanese American businessman and an in-law of Mr. Trump, and Richard Grenell, Mr. Trump’s former ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief — have been crisscrossing Michigan, trying to repackage and sell Mr. Trump to skeptical Arab American and Muslim voters there ...

As weird as it may sound, I thiink that Trump and the Republican party is actually a better fit with many Arab American voters ... the shared emphasis on a social and religious conservatism that restricts women's rights and condemns gay people is just one example of why.

Nooooo

Just watching the news, where Trump is in Michigan meeting with Arab Americans. And who is by his side? RFK Jr., crazy as a bedbug and the soon to be head of everything health and science in the government, if Trump wins. God help us all.