Buttermilk Sky

 According to a tradition which I just invented, this blog hosts random thoughts, passing ideas and things that go bump every October 31.  As George Ade observed, "Don't try to Figure it out." When Hamas came over the fence on October 7 armed to the teeth, why did Israelis on isolated kibbutzes have so few guns?  Maybe this is the perspective of someone in the most gun-clogged country on earth, but since all Israelis are reservists, shouldn't they keep their weapons at home?  That's what the Swiss do and nobody has attacked them for centuries. Never thought I'd be glad of Mitch McConnell but he's standing firm for Ukraine against the new Speaker in Tongues.  Go get him, Mitch. Speaking of speakers, this guy Johnson gives off the vibe of someone whose future will involve either a live boy or a dead hooker, as they say in Louisiana.  Mostly it's the smile. Congratulations to the MLB owners, who have reduced the World Series to a contest between two medio...

  On Sunday  Malcolm Nance  wrote about the growing protests, especially on campuses (the picture above was taken at New York University), supposedly supporting the Palestinian people but often not even veiled expressions of antisemitism.  Threats to shoot Jewish students at  Cornell  led to a man's arrest this morning.  Jewish students there and at  Harvard  are considering lawsuits against the universities for not doing enough to protect them.  A student at  Cooper Union  looked up from the library to see a mob shouting threats.  This is the northeast.  It's not hard to guess what's going on elsewhere.  (No need to guess -- a student at Tulane was punched in the face and his nose broken.) The title of Nance's article -- "Ask yourself, are you really for Palestine or do you just hate Jews?" is deliberately provocative and well asked.  As  Jonathan Greenblatt  of the Anti-Defamation League put it, ...

  OUT :  Saying "This is not my time,"  Mike Pence  has "suspended" or "ended" his presidential campaign, depending on what source you read.  The people who wanted to hang him on January 6, 2021, want to hang him today, and they outnumber the people who just don't like him.  Already his brand of Christofascism has been superseded by Mike Johnson's.  So long, Mike Pence.  IN :   Rep. Dean Phillips  (D-MN) has announced that he will challenge Joe Biden for the nomination because, although he has fully supported Biden's agenda, the president is just too old.  All the news media say so, and are they ever wrong?  Phillips compares himself to Eugene McCarthy, the Minnesotan who challenged Lyndon Johnson in 1968 and finished second in New Hampshire, which nevertheless led Johnson to announce the end of his candidacy.  A few small differences:  Johnson and McCarthy had one serious point of contention, the war in Vietnam,...

 I awoke to news of America's slow-motion  nakba.  It takes so little to sweep two full-scale wars and a sharp turn toward fascism from our screens -- eighteen dead and at least a dozen wounded in  Lewiston, Maine , a "person of interest" still at large.  There are good pictures of him and his assault rifle because he didn't even bother to put on a mask in the bowling alley.  He couldn't wait for the Australian prime minister to go home, he had to embarrass us in front of company.   Australia famously banned big guns in 1996, buying back 650,000 of them from a population that is now a lot less murderous and suicidal.  Sorry to "politicize" it, but I keep missing the hour-long window between "too soon" and "old news."  The discussion usually ends when Ted Cruz tweets about how "Heidi and I" are praying on it.   Eighteen families planning funerals and flags at half-staff -- this is something I'm used to.  The bottomless c...

  It only looks like the House Republican caucus.  It's a 158-vehicle accident in Louisiana caused by dense fog and smoke from marsh fires.  The confusion is understandable. Just when we were all learning to say "Speaker Emmer," the Minnesota (comparatively) moderate announced that he is dropping out.  Yesterday he thought he had made merit with King MAGA but  today  it seems he is a "Globalist RINO" who "actually spent more time defending Ilhan Omar, than he did me."  By "defending" he means trying to prevent the certification of Joe Biden's election, of course, as any patriotic hero would.  Down goes Emmer!  Down goes Emmer! Trump can't remember the names of his lawyers or his children, he thinks  Viktor Orban  is the president of Turkey, he insists he was "never indicted" and he compares himself to Nelson Mandela because he wants to claim he's a political prisoner, but the Gang of Putin still fears and obeys him as it...

 Gaza has been called "the world's largest prison camp" and it's not inaccurate.  But if you are tempted to think that excuses in any way the atrocities committed by Hamas, I have a corrective.  Take a Valium or a stiff drink or whatever you need to suppress your gag reflex and look at this article on  The Media Line  about the pathologists struggling to identify some of the human remains.  I won't blame you if you don't.  (Warning:  it's illustrated.) Burning people alive is beyond even the depravity attributed to the Wagner Group in Ukraine.  When the Greek prime minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis says "It's civilization against barbarism," I don't feel like pointing out that there are barbarians on both sides.  Not today. In the circumstances, it's hard to be impressed that two Israeli  hostages  were released today for reasons of poor health.  That leaves at least two hundred, with an IDF ground invasion apparently imminent....

 Noted without comment, or not much. Republican bankroller  Steve Alembik  shot his wife and then killed himself in the parking lot of a Delray, Florida, restaurant.  Alembik briefly rose to prominence because he claimed the same right as Chris Rock to use racial slurs, although Rock never called Barack Obama a Muslim n-----.  He donated to the campaigns of Trump, Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis; Scott and DeSantis returned the money.  Sharp dresser. The New York State Court of Appeals has removed  Robert J. Putorti , Whitehall Town and Village Court Judge, from the bench because he pointed a loaded handgun at a Black litigant in his courtroom, and it only took eight years.  Far from expressing remorse, Putorti bragged about the incident, exaggerating the man's height and weight.  Here is charming Whitehall, New York: La factura, por favor:  Aidas J, a Lithuanian resident of Alicante, Spain, has been arrested after faking a heart attack at l...

  Cheese & Kraken!  Right now Kenneth Chesebro is standing in front of a Fulton County judge as the clerk asks him if he knows exactly what his guilty plea entails.  He says he does.  That's three.  I just can't get enough of the phrase "co-defendant Donald John Trump."  I may get it as a ringtone. Several hundred miles away  Jim "Thank you sir please may I have another"  Jordan decided to lose a third ballot for Speaker, so that happened.  I can't understand it.  People who voted against him and their wives are getting feedback like this:  "We're at war.  Israelis being killed.  And your dumb husband is acting like a fucking two-year-old?  He's a fucking war-mongering piece of shit...I'm putting all your information over the internet now...you will not be left alone because of your fucking faggot husband...you're going to be fucking molested like you can't ever imagine..."  It's outrageous until you remember...

 American democracy -- best in the world!  We've had a glimpse into the way the Republican majority whip votes and it's astonishing more doesn't get done.  Jim Jordan has apparently decided not to invite a third humiliation and wants to keep Patrick McHenry as  interim Speaker until January.  I don't know what he thinks will happen then.  Maybe Rep. Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA) will forget she got "credible death threats" after switching her vote from Jordan to Kay Granger of Texas on the second ballot.  "One thing I cannot stomach or support is a bully," she wrote.  Granger chairs the Appropriations Committee and she really does not like Jordan.   (Could she become Speaker?  She is eighty, too old to be president according to the Republicans and most of the media.  This is intriguing.)     What exactly is an interim Speaker?  Has there ever been one before?  What powers would he have, apart from co...

 If you hold a small coin close enough to your eye, it will blot out the sun, says an old proverb.  It's not surprising that some people choose to concentrate on their own petty concerns when the world seems to be spinning out of control.   Cher,  for example, told the Guardian, "My life seems to be longer than any other human being ever."  Or maybe it's just her face that's longer. She's promoting her Christmas album and can't believe she's 77.  Maybe Joe Biden should book some time with her plastic surgeon. Show people don't have a monopoly on obliviousness, of course.   Russell Rickford,  a history professor at Cornell University, pronounced himself "exhilirated" by the Hamas attack on Israel.  In a further statement which clarified nothing, he added, "Hamas has challenged the monopoly on violence...even as horrific acts were being carried out, many Palestinians of conscience who abhor violence, as do you, as do I...who were able...

Did you ever think your gastroenterologist would belong to the same union as the barista who just sold you a coffee?  Doctors who work for  Allina Health System,  a "non-profit" in Wisconsin and Minnesota, have voted to join the Service Employees International Union, which represents food service workers and janitors as well as low-paid health care providers (nurses, nursing home and home care workers).  Their chief complaint is understaffing which forces them to deal with lab results, prescription refills and even having to take phone calls from customers  patients.  I imagine they'd like a bigger share of the (non-) profits as well.   Understaffing was also an issue in the strike against  Kaiser Permanente  in California, where a coalition of unions won a 21 percent wage increase over four years after a three-day strike by technicians, nurses and pharmacists.  Labor is flexing its muscles for the first time in decades, from auto w...

 I don't pretend to any special knowledge, but I woke up last night with one of those insights that make further sleep impossible.  Trump called Hamas "smart." Eight years into this national nightmare (not counting the decades he was a localized infection for New Yorkers) I know what Trump means when he calls someone or something "smart" -- either they praised him or they paid him.  I have not heard Hamas praise him. I believe as fervently as I believe anything that Hamas paid him well for intel about Israeli defense.  The intel he shared with  Lavrov for nothing (if installing him in the White House is nothing.)   That's probably it under Kislyak's arm.  Subtle. How did Hamas disable the alarms at the Gaza fence?  A woman who lives nearby said the alarms go off "if a donkey bumps into it."  That Saturday morning there wasn't a sound until the shooting started.  Somebody had the schematics and knew just where to strike, and how....

  The Republiclown Caucus continues to not choose a Speaker, with Steve Scalise withdrawing from competition and someone called  Austin Scott  throwing his propeller beanie in the ring.  Scott is described as "the dean of the Georgia delegation," meaning he can put the rest of the clowns on double secret probation if they cross him.  He has the support of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who says she can't vote for  Scalise because he has multiple myeloma, a form of cancer.  (She prettied it up a little, but she'd vote for Trump if he were already embalmed.)  George Santos won't vote for Scalise because he didn't get a call asking for his vote.  To which Dan Crenshaw retorted, "What do you want, a fucking massage?"  Because I know shiatsu if it comes down to a fifteenth ballot, he did not add.  Nancy Mace was put off by Scalise's self-description as "David Duke without the baggage."  ("I meant David Dukes, the actor!" he should have s...

 Twenty-four hour cable news is incapable of covering more than one story at a time, so the Organization brings you up to date on the rest of the world.   The telecommunications cable and natural gas  pipeline under the Baltic connecting Finland with Estonia have been damaged, and the Finns suspect a "state actor," not naming any names.  Finland joined NATO earlier this year. As if climate change wasn't devastating enough, a study by Cambridge University and the Czech Academy of Sciences warns that a shortage of  hops  could ruin the flavor of European beer.  Drier, hotter conditions are blamed. The Russian  Olympic Committee  has been suspended by the IOC over Putin's invasion of Ukraine.  This might not be such a punishment, as Paris is experiencing an outbreak of  bedbugs. Did you know that Hester Prynne was a feminist who stood up to the establishment?  Such is the interpretation Rep.  Nancy Mace  took from ...

 There are many reasons to criticize Benjamin Netanyahu over the attack of last Saturday and the atrocities which followed -- Israeli papers like  Haaretz  have done so even as the first rockets fell.  Did he ignore intelligence shared by Egypt about an impending attack from Gaza, or even move forces to the West Bank?  Did he secretly welcome the attack as a distraction from his own legal troubles, underestimating the ferocity of it?  These are questions that will have to be gone into after the shooting stops.  For now all parties have joined in a  unity government,  so grave is the situation. Of course, thanks to the GOP (Gang of Putin), we barely have a government at all.  The House Republicans -- what Charlie Pierce calls the Angry Children's Caucus -- can't agree on which awful choice they want to succeed awful Kevin McCarthy as Speaker.  As the Gerald R. Ford carrier group steams toward the Middle East there is no Chief of Nava...