As IF Times

link UN Condemns Israels Latest War Crime: Not Sharing Iron Dome with Hamas.

Again, you can’t make this up.  Most news headlines now are consumed with the war that’s going on between Israel and a radical wing of the PLO, Hamas.  Technically, it isn’t really a war, since a war will have identifiable combatants on either side.  In this case, the Israeli military or IDF are readily identifiable with uniforms whereas the Hamas fighters are shown in videos with the standard face coverings and head wraps, your standard terrorist garb.  To the degree that warfare has rules at all, in standard conflicts, combatant A fires at combatant B as per the Marquess Of Queensbury rules of conflict.  In this case, combatants B are hiding in plain clothes, using hospitals, schools and mosques as cover.  While this does guarantee that collateral civilian non combatants will be victimized, it also means the battle fought in the sphere of public opinion is won.  Nobody likes to see images of injured and crying kids.

As the old saying goes, the first casualty in any war is truth.  And so the truths that are emanating from the general media on this conflict are as grotesque in distortion as images found at the house of mirrors at an amusement park.  Doing some quick research on the number of instances of a military giving citizens advance warning of a bombing raid yields zero results.  As far as the war racket goes, that’s about as polite as you can get. The U.N., the omnipotent arbiter of fairness and humanity has predictably condemned Israel’s actions but without condemning Hamas for specifically placing their people in harm’s way.  Whereas one side shows the utmost respect for human life, the other side considers human lives as merely shields to hide behind, as dispensable as Kleenex.  But regardless of this fact, the U.N. wants Israel to share their missile shield defense with the very people that are firing at them.  This is as if your neighbor flung dog poop into your yard and you flung it back with a hockey stick.  Well, now they want hockey sticks too.

When you look in perspective at the predicament of Israel and their relative position in the Middle East, you can’t help but think that something’s out of whack as far as reporting.  The population of Israel is about 8 million.  The population of the Middle East, North African Arab states is about 380 million.  The land area of Israel is about 8000 square miles; the collective Arab states many, many times that as shown in the diagram below (taken from Iris.org ). Modern warfare it seems, is fought as much with ink as it is with bullets.  

link With liberals pining for a Clinton challenger, ambitious Democrats get in position – The Washington Post.

And so the farce continues.  Anxious to show that the Democratic buffet has more than just Hilary to serve, they are pushing possible contenders to be alternate menu items to the devoted faithful.  As of now, the choices are, leftover meatloaf, pemican or a pick of a duo of mixed nuts.

The only thing delicious about this tortured analogy is the irony since there is nothing on the Democratic table that is remotely fresh or new considering that the barb most often hurled at the Republican party is that they are the party of old white men.

Like most positions that emanate from the Democratic party, their presumptive candidates are hopelessly out of touch and lost in the past.  Clinton, Warren and Brown are relics of the hippie past in America, holdouts from the 60’s in their mindsets and worldviews.  Biden, if he is a contender, is a relic of Archie comics.   These people have as much in common with the sensibilities of  the present generation of voters  as cheese does to head cheese.  The fact that the party is unable to attract anyone to be their standard bearer who isn’t already collecting a seniors’ pension is very telling.  The contrast with the core values of the party of “old white men” couldn’t be more stark.

Whereas one party harps on the tired core values of entitlement and fantasy, the other party has a plethora of young capable leaders whose visions have an arm’s reach connection with reality.  Most could be the children of the aged Dem candidates.  Many have already proven their talents in actually running state governments with effective results whereas on the Dem side, most of them are professional politicos.  There is enough range in the positions of those on the Republican side that there is not just one tired monolithic message that followers are obligated to subscribe to as if in a moonie cult.

If I were looking to dine at the Democratic buffet table, I’m not sure I’d be all that excited about the addition of Jerry Brown to the offerings.  The stuff that’s on the table now has been there a long time, some of it passed over and adding more leftovers doesn’t make it more attractive.  Of course that doesn’t mean that there’s no appetite for this.  America loves buffets.  It perpetuates the myth that you can get a lot for very little.