The people in that tree (Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith) confessed to murdering a young man and raping his fiancee. A third member of their stickup crew fled prior to the murder because he didn’t want to attack a man he knew. He was not hung and served a sentence in prison for accessory to murder. He confirmed these men committed the murder and rape as well.
No one expected Pratt to win
But they were surprised that he cleanly beat the second place Dem on election night only to have her win the late ballots so hard that they look like two completely different elections
I consider Eisenkot's rise in the opposition bloc a terrible development, an ominous testament to Israeli voters' immaturity.
Israel faces two long-term guaranteed challenges: the Israel-Palestinian conflict and Haredi integration. Iran is a significant challenge, but it's not guaranteed; the Iranian regime might fall in 5, 10 or 15 years, and if Israel muddles through until then, the problem might just sort itself out. But the I/P conflict and Haredi demographics won't go anywhere.
Eisenkot is a unique character in Israeli politics. There are very few people as closely associated with the much-derided "kontseptsiya" that collapsed on 7/10/23 as Eisenkot: he was Chief of Staff between 2015 and 2019, the final years of the "Pax Netanyahu" era. He presided over the hollowing out of the ground forces, and he was a true believer of the "smart and small army" and the illusion that the era of big wars was over.
But if this is not enough, Eisenkot is *also* more or less openly apathetic to the challenge of Haredi integration. He basically admitted that he would sit with them in the same coalition if that's ony way to oust Netanyahu. He doesn't really care about implementing any significant change to the existing (intolerable) status quo.
On a personal level, the upcoming election presents me with a painful choice. I consider the question of Haredi integration a burning, existential issue, and I know that if it's up to him, Netanyahu won't do anything about it. At the same time, I'm even more wary of trusting the country on a center-left coalition 2.5 years before a Democrat might retake the White House. In 2029, Israel's prime minister must be someone who will resist pressure to "revive the diplomatic process", and eventually agree to additional territorial concessions, at any cost. Someone who won't even blink at UNSC resolutions.
In light of the danger of a Democratic POTUS who smells blood and sees a center-left government as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bully Israel into letting a Palestinian state come into existence, I consider another right-Haredi coalition the lesser evil. But I still understand voters who weigh their priorities differently and want the Haredi parties out of power at any cost. I hear where they are coming from.
But the fact that a third of the country wants someone to be the prime minister who is not only one of the chief architects of the discredited pre-Oct-7 security doctrine, but is also just as terrible about Haredi integration as Netanyahu, is a dark sign that we learned nothing from the past three years.
Over the coming decades, there will be a huge culture war in the US over who is a Jew. Already today, around half of all Jewish babies in the US are born to Orthodox mothers.
The share of Orthodox Jews in the US won’t stay 10% forever, and it’s probably already higher than that.
However, don’t expect the non-Orthodox establishment or pseudo-Jewish Palestinian irredentist lobbies to acknowledge this fact. They are going to insist on a one-drop definition of Jewish identity, and as far as they are concerned, American Jewry will balloon from 7 million (already a fake number) to 8 and then 10 million people. Reform and Conservative synagogues will close one after another, but the Orthodox will magically remain 10% of American Jewry forever.
Don’t go along. Call out the cynical engineering of non-existent future Jewish majorities while it’s in the making. Expect many more astroturfed polls like this.
@wigger Spanking has terrible effects on children, which is why we notice how much more articulate and better behaved today's 10 year olds are than their equivalents 60 and 100 years ago.
@oteycoueye Born too early to treat Arabs with patience in anticipation of their upcoming enlightenment
Born too late to treat Arabs with patience in anticipation of their upcoming enlightenment
Born just in time to treat Arabs with patience in anticipation of their upcoming enlightenment
What Bukele showed is that if you put everyone who looks like this in a big prison complex where they do menial labor, and throw away the key, like 99% of problems go away immediately
BTW, the Strait of Hormuz blockade and the Iranian threat to cut the undersea cables will force a mass reshoring of American industry out of India and create jobs for actual Americans.
Whoops, spiraling energy costs and shortages make it too expensive to do business in India. Whoops, we can't have vital data infrastructure in India when a rogue terrorist state is trying to cut the cables, causing worldwide economic damage. Those Global Capacity Centers in Hyderabad are suddenly massive money sinks and security liabilities.
And oh whoops, multinationals can't bring their Indian workforces to the U.S. anymore due to the $100k H-1B fee and the persistent slow-walking of visas at American consulates in India. Guess they'll have to put those jobs back in America and hire Americans because it's now cheaper to do so.
Got what I voted for...AGAIN!
This is an incredible tactic that Red states should be employing everywhere.
Honestly, just dissolve local governments at this point for most Blue cities. They've repeatedly proven that they can't govern themselves.
There's literally zero reason for cities like Memphis or St. Louis to still have city councils or mayors that serve as nothing more than patronage machines to prop up Leftism in a state where it would otherwise cease to exist.
Dissolve the city councils, abolish the office of mayor, and have the Governor directly appoint a Viceroy to rule these cities with an iron fist.
It's just like our Jewish communal institutions keep telling us: It's very important that we, as Jews, support immigration, especially those immigrants dedicated to killing Jews. And it's very important that we vote Democrat, so we can have more judges that give a Jew-killer the same sentence as a shoplifter or a drunk driver.