Recent Comments

1. about 19 hours ago on Lisa Benson

   This morning’s Los Angeles Times includes the report of an interview with (my governor) Gavin Newsom by a Times reporter several hours BEFORE the “debate.”

   The reporter asked Newsom why he would agree to “debate” Ron DeSatan in a forum controlled and moderated by Sean Hannity on Faux “News.”

   Newsom responded that he knew the “debate” would be rigged, with softballs for DeSatan and questions that were targeted and framed with loaded language that includes assumptions rooted in right-wing extremist talking points. You know, questions of the “Have you stopped beating your wife yet? … answer ‘yes or no’” variety. He said it would be like a high-profile Republican candidate facing off in a “debate” against liberal Jane Fonda on MSNBC hosted by Rachel Maddow.

   Newsom said he was going to go out and take a beating, and he was going to achieve exactly what he wanted. This was hours BEFORE the “debate.”

   And what did Newsom want? He said DeSatan is the top front-runner challenging Trump, but the DeSatan in a general election is a bigger threat to win. He wanted to hurt DeSatan. Gavin Newsom is not running for anything. DeSatan is supposedly running for president of the United States. Instead of debating at the level of fellow serious candidates, Newsom baited him into lowering himself to the level of debating someone who is not running for anything instead of debating at the level of presidential candidates. And he baited DeSatan into losing his cool, looking like a screaming madman bully and lowering his stature.

   That is why DeSatan kept trying to FIBricate the lie that Newsom is really running a shadow candidacy (he’s not) and Newsom repeatedly made the point that “neither of us will be the nominee of our party.”

   Newsom had an objective: to undermine DeSatan. He took a beating, but achieved his goal.

2. about 22 hours ago on Mike Luckovich

   The poll notes the discrepancy between the reality of the economic and financial data and the perception, as many people have not yet begun to fully feel the benefit of the improved economic situation (a lagging economic indicator). Fortunately, there is a year left in which that lag — the gulf between reality and perception — has a chance to catch up.

3. 2 days ago on Mike Luckovich

   I did a search on New York Times polls.

   No such poll was found. So @Old recluse should either provide a link (or at least more specific details, such as dates and how, where and what the poll included) or admit he is either making stuff up, regurgitating made-up stuff from Faux “News,” NoiseMax or other lying right-wing made-up disinformation, or his memory is failing.

4. 2 days ago on Rob Rogers

   — As Pope Francis (not a person whose moral views I usually agree with) recently stated, to respond to terrorism with terrorism is to be a terrorist. He has essentially called Netanyahu a terrorist.

   Your comment is extremely one-sided and does not respond to a single point I have raised. Gee, it’s almost as if you are just lashing out without actually reading the content you pretend to reply to.

   The “backlash” that was “over the top” was by Hamas when they committed war crimes, crimes against humanity and acts of brutal terrorism which I unambiguously condemned.

   What YOU overlook is that, as extreme and “over the top” as Hamas’ terrorism was, IT WAS NOT UNPROVOKED. For years, Netanyahu has been provoking the Palestinians. He has encroached on their sovereign territory, occupied their villages, allowed Israeli “settlers” (actually, land thieves) to evict Palestinians from their homes ON PALESTINIAN SOIL and, if they resisted, arrested them. Some, including small children, have been held for years without charges. (Those are the civilian “prisoners” Israel has been releasing back to the Palestinians.) And yes, as we saw just yesterday (caught on tape), Israeli officers shoot unarmed small children in the street.

   To cast all the animus on the Hamas terrorists and close your eyes, stick your fingers in your ears and ululate “la-la-la-la-la” when it comes to Israeli terrorism, you are aiding and abetting those terrorists.

   Netanyahu and Hamas are the same in that both demand a single state in the land of Canaan. Where they differ is who should be in charge of that single state.

   I condemn ALL terrorism and call for peaceful solutions to protect the peace and full sovereignty of a two-state solution, enforced by an international peace keeping force if necessary.

5. 3 days ago on Rob Rogers

   The path towards a solution, which I don’t expect to happen any time soon, is that borders reflecting true sovereign independence and a keeping of the peace has to be enforced by an international peacekeeping force.

   Such a force should include Britain (which occupied and controlled the land of Canaan as a colonial power prior to 1948), the United States (which is the nation most trusted by Israel and on which Israel depends for military and economic support) and the other neighboring Arab countries which have credibility with the Palestinians but who also want a viable peace, including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and who have born the brunt of the responsibility for taking in Palestinian refugees.

   The full sovereign and autonomous rights of Palestine as a state and the full sovereign and autonomous rights of Israel as a state need to be respected and, until they can do so themselves (which is not in the foreseeable future), it needs to be externally imposed.

6. 3 days ago on Mike Luckovich

   @Old recluse admits that his only concern is not about “we the people” as a whole — the big picture of the economic and financial condition of the country in its entirety — but it is only about himself, and his own individual financial condition which, conveniently, none of the rest of us have any way of verifying.

   ::: rolling eyes :::

7. 3 days ago on Rob Rogers

   Religion is what allows otherwise good, decent people, to commit horrific atrocities.

   Yes, gullible suckers who blindly accept whatever they are taught without questioning and challenging it and demanding evidence are the problem.

   But the religious justification of those atrocities is also the problem.

   .

   Drug addiction is a problem.

   The illness or susceptibility of the addict is a problem.

   The drug dealer is also a problem.

   “Religion is the opium of the people.”

   And the addicts are fighting and killing each other over which is most peaceful manifestation of God / YHWH / Allah.

8. 3 days ago on Rob Rogers

   Give me a break. It was actually 2006 when Palestinians elected Hamas. That was SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO. There have been no elections since because Hamas knows the people no longer want the brutality they have invited and would vote them out. More recent polls show that about 70% of Gazan people want Hamas out. While I recognize the enormous difficulty of conducting an objective poll in Gaza, if anything that difficulty would work in Hamas’ favor because people may be afraid to speak out against them.

   To say that a choice they made SEVENTEEN YEARS AGO (or sixteen if you use your number) reflects how Gazans feel today is as nonsensical as saying that Americans still wanted George H.W. Bush as president in 1992 or Trump in 2020 just because they had won four years earlier (they both got soundly defeated when they ran for reelection.

9. 3 days ago on Rob Rogers

   — If we want to say that either Israel or Palestine has a claim to sole occupancy and control of the entirety of the land of Canaan based on prior history of occupancy, then the entirety of both the South and North American continents must be parceled back to the descendants of the indigenous original occupants.

   The reality is that Europeans have been on the continents going back 500 years and we cannot undo that.

   The reality is that both Israelis and Palestinians have shared ownership of portions of that land for 75 years, and even before that, under British colonial occupation, the land was occupied by both Palestinians (about 2/3 the population, prior to the influx of European and American Jews after World War II) and Jews (oh yeah, some Christians too).

   We cannot undo the reality of what has become the established present order.

   Both Palestinians and Israelis have a right to exist in their own fully-sovereign borders (as determined by the 1948 partition, perhaps amended for a southern band to allow a contiguous Palestinian state) without intrusion from the other, even if those boundaries have to be enforced and peace maintained by a force made up of American, British, Egyptian, Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari peace-keeping forces.

10. 3 days ago on Rob Rogers

    — Your statement is FALSE and reflects Islamophobic stereotyping.

    NO. “ALL” Palestinians do not have the goal of obliterating all the Jews any more than all Jews have the goal of obliterating all the Palestinians.

    There are those in the extreme far right elements of both Israelis and Palestinians who do want to obliterate the other, but they are not reflective of the whole.

    The extremist terror organizations of Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad do want to wage genocide against the Jews. And there are Jews — likely Netanyahu himself — who want to completely obliterate Palestinians and claim the entirety of the land of Canaan as the Jewish state of Israel.

    Without pressure for restraint from the United States, it is probable that Netanyahu would simply take over the entire West Bank for settlements and completely decimate Gaza without regard for the destruction of all Palestinians. For sure, terror groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad want the same for Israel.

    (By the way, there are also genocidal American neo-Nazis and white supremacists who also want to obliterate ALL Jews, as well as all Blacks, all gays and all leftists.)

    As I CORRECTLY stated in my original comment:

    Palestinian civilians are not Hamas (or, I would add, Hezbollah or Islamic Jihad).

    Israeli civilians are not Netanyahu.

    Any attempt to conflate what is not the same represents either anti-Semitism or Islamophobia.