Saturday Morning Coffee (May 18, 2024)
What happens when Nancy Pelosi pits herself in a battle of wits against a banjo player? Come grab a cup of coffee, relax, and enjoy.
Are we really surprised that X’s “Community Notes” feature has been corrupted?
Jimmy Dore had an interesting segment on X’s “Community Notes” feature.
It seems a single “contributor” to the Community Notes has managed to make about 70 notes a day, which seems impossible, and they’re all in defense of things like the COVID vaccine or whatever the dominate narrative is at the time. The account even goes so far as to put a note on the account that pointed out the unbelievably high amount of activity.
If you want to watch the video ChrisLittleWoo8 made, here is the link. It’s a half hour long just scrolling through ten days of community note proposals from a single account.
The old saying goes, the greatest trick the devil ever played was making people think he didn’t exist. The greatest trick the government and corporations ever played was making you think their ideas are your own.
I don’t know how you solve this other than to be aware it happens and to always be skeptical. But what do you think?
Is this really good news?
Axios thought it was . . .
It wasn't that long ago that experts were worrying that women, especially moms, would never recover from the shock of 2020. But when it comes to the job market, they turned out to be wrong.
The big picture: More mothers are working now than before the pandemic began.
Despite its definite leftward lean, usually Axios provides a caveat. Will they this time?
Reality check: Progress has been uneven. Mothers who do not have a bachelor's degree haven't quite gotten back to their pre-pandemic levels — likely because they're less likely to work in remote-friendly industries.
That actually would not have been my “reality check.”
Here’s my “reality check”: How many of these women are going back to work because they want to and how many are going back because they have to?
That’s the real question I’d like an answer to.
Is populism a threat to democracy?
That was the question put before the Oxford Union Society. Nancy Pelosi, yes, that Nancy Pelosi went up against ex Mumford and Sons guitarist and banjoist Winston Marshall who was cancelled for tweeting about the book Unmasked, by Andy Ngo.
Winston Marshall’s closing argument went viral, not only because Nancy Pelosi interrupted him a couple times, proving his point once, but because it is an elegant defense of populism and the strange way it has been twisted by elites.
Just for fairness sake, here is Nancy Pelosi.
I encourage you to watch both. I put myself through Pelosi’s fifteen minutes after I had watched Marshall’s closing. It was bearable because it was so transparently ridiculous especially adjacent to his closing.
I think the thing that struck me most is the difference between a regular person passionately defending a philosophical idea and a wrinkled old panderer just spouting the same tired old lines desperately trying to hang on to power.
Beyond that, Nancy Pelosi attempts desperately to redefine populism as this sort of redneck, white supremacist ethno-nationalism. In her babbling, bumbling way, she tries to characterize Trump voters (though she doesn’t call them that) as rubes that are manipulated to vote against their best interests by focusing on “guns, gays, and God.” (Yes, she said that.)
As I watched her, my only conclusion was the “western” world is rapidly approaching a Marie Antoinette moment.
But have a gander and tell me what you think.
Egypt joins the case against Israel at the ICJ: What is the bigger picture?
This week Egypt announced it will support South Africa in its case against Israel at the ICJ. Why is this important?
Anya Parampil had an explanation that made sense and doesn’t bode well for either the US or Israel. The gist is that Egypt has been the cornerstone of US policy to keep Israel safe and intact, but its alliances are shifting with its inclusion into BRICS, and Israel and the US can no longer count on it to continue the status quo and that we are seeing a world realignment.
The world doesn’t remain static, and for too long the US under the guise of making the world safe for “democracy” has instead made the world safe for its own oligarchs’ interests and become little more than a mercenary force feeding on its own taxpayer money while reshaping the world in a way that keeps enriching its political donors.
A system like that doesn’t last. It will always inspire one enemy or several, and eventually they will band together and the dynamics will shift.
So is this that moment? *shrug* You tell me.
John Mearsheimer on Israel, the US, and Iran
This is a long video, with a fifty minute lecture and another 40 minute Q&A, but John Mearsheimer did a presentation in the Greater Middle East Debate series for the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia. It’s not a hair-on-fire video. In fact, he’s almost brutally realistic and pragmatic. He’s very much about what is (at least the way he sees it) and not what “should be.”
Mearsheimer laid out the four “solutions” he sees for Israel:
(1) A one-state solution with a liberal democracy, where Arabs and Jews have equal rights. He says this one isn’t realistic because Israel will no longer be a solely Jewish state as there are roughly equal numbers of Palestinians/Israeli Arabs and Israeli Jews, and the birth rate among the Palestinians means they will soon outnumber the Jews, meaning their electoral power would be greater. (Also, I did not know this, but according to him, half a million Jews left Israel after October 7th and Poland has seen a dramatic increase in the number of Israeli Jews seeking Polish passports.)
(2) A two-state solution, which he said is virtually impossible after October 7th, because both Hamas nor Bibi (or any of his likely successors) want to rule “greater Israel” (“from the river to the sea”), and nobody will sell the Israelis on having an armed Palestine right on their borders. Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, actually does want a two-state solution, which is why Netanyahu propped up Hamas to undermine him and why Bibi rejected outright the possibility of the PA taking over governance of Gaza once the war is over.
(3) Apartheid, which is basically what they have now. Palestine is not a separate state. The people are wholly dependent on the goodwill of Israel for the continued functioning of their infrastructure (not out quickly Israel cut off communication and supplies). And they are limited in their movements. They don’t have equal rights to the Jewish population. But Mearsheimer says Netanyahu thought he had the situation under control (and Mearsheimer himself said he thought it was holding), and then October 7th happened and, Mearsheimer claims, even Hamas was surprised by how effective the attack was.
(4) Ethnic cleansing, which is the solution Israel seems to be pursuing at the moment, at least in Gaza. As Mearsheimer brutally points out ethnic cleansing ends the question of the apartheid state because if you have a single people (the Jewish population), there’s no apartheid, but it is the only way, at this point, to rid themselves of Hamas, who, despite the best efforts of the IDF, are already re-surging in northern Gaza. Ethnic cleansing is also not working because the Palestinians are refusing to leave, no matter how inhospitable Gaza becomes.
His analysis is pretty dispassionate, even though he himself is not really. For example, this is held in Australia, and one of the students asked him who they should support. He said, “If you’re given a choice between Hamas and Israel, it’s obvious who you support.” He also said, before that something to the effect of you can support the Palestinians and not support Hamas, which is true.
Another person seemed upset that he dismissed the two-state solution, to which he replied that he hadn’t dismissed it. It seemed impossible under the circumstances. Neither the Israelis nor Hamas were going to agree.
In fact, his finally conclusion was that he can see no good way out.
He actually talked a lot about the dynamics in the region. I found most particularly interesting his claim that the US worked behind the scenes through an intermediary with Iran to limit the scope of the conflict with Israel in early April because neither country wants a war in the region.
In the middle of June, Bret Stephens, a writer at the New York Times, will give a lecture on the opposing side. I’ll be watching for it and I’ll post it here if you’re interested. I knew who John Mearsheimer was from a few other interviews I’ve caught of him on Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Napolitano’s shows on YouTube, but I’m curious what someone would say in good faith, to rebut him.
Who’s the worst Republican senator?
I know, where else can you jump from Jimmy Dore to Jesse Kelly?
Anyway, I laughed at this segment from Kelly’s show. The screenshot links (hopefully) to Rumble. Who do you think is the worst Republican senator? Or worst Republican? Or worst lawmaker?
I can’t really decide. I tend to hate them all equally, though there are definitely some that irritate me more than others (Lindsey “Porky Pig” Graham was my pick this week, if you couldn’t tell). But how about you?
Escapism
Every year Book of the Month lets everyone vote to pick the members’ favorite book of the year, which receives a “Lolly Award.” But people can order one of the five finalists for free.
This year, I had read only one of them and wasn’t much interested in the rest, but who can refuse a free book, right? So I finally picked out this one, not really having any great expectations. It seemed like what I think of as an MFA project gone wrong.
The book is fantastic realism, which means the world is the world we live in with one little thing tweaked: in this case, people occasionally mutate into animals. The main character of the book, her husband, over the course of a year, mutates into a great white shark. Later you find out that her mother mutated into a Komodo dragon, though that one took twenty years and encompassed her childhood.
I know, it sounds crazy, but honestly it ended up being much better than I thought, and I’m glad I read it. As an ex-lit major, I’d describe it as a really well done creative way of depicting losing someone to mental illness. The characters are all well drawn and relatable and I got really invested in their feelings and how they were dealing with what they were going through.
So if you’re interested in a strange but good read . . . there you go.
Sorry if this is a bit more jumbled and a bit less eloquent. We have the niece’s puppy (now seven months old and over sixty pounds) for a few days, and I am running back and forth to the other side of town to look in on my mother, so time is a premium . . . and I’m tired. But the puppy is still cute, even though she’s now a pretty much full grown golden retriever, it’s good to spend time with my mother, and my niece and sister are having some quality mother-daughter time on the road going to rodeos. So it’s all good, except for maybe the writing, which gets a little shortchanged.
As always, feel free to talk about the above or anything else you have on your mind, and enjoy the spring weather.
The BRICS group is a myth that will have minimal effect in the long term. South America, China and Brazil and possibly Russia have greater financial pressures than the bumbling US economy. We created the smoke and mirrors financial system and will continue to control it for the foreseeable future. As to Egypt, they are in an impossible situation. There are literal vipers everywhere there. They have been playing every side of the political octagon for years. Israel in a no win situation. Expect the solution will sadly be nuclear.
"What happens when Nancy Pelosi pits herself in a battle of wits against a banjo player?"
She's braver than I thought, going into a battle of wits unarmed.