DL Open Thread: Thursday, April 25, 2024
One Journalist Explains The Link Between Rethugs And Manufactured Outrage Over ‘Anti-Semitism’. I was thinking it, should’ve written it:
In early December, the House Education Committee held a hearing considering antisemitic incidents on college campuses. This was the hearing in which the presidents of Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania offered fumbling responses to a question about antisemitic rhetoric, earning national headlines.
That result was a bonanza for the Republicans running the hearing and for Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) personally. As Politico wrote at the time, the situation helped drive a wedge between factions of the political left — widening a divide still obvious in Democratic politics.
But this was a fortunate (if not lucky) effect of the hearing. It was intended not to catch university presidents making tone-deaf comments about antisemitism but, instead, to present those presidents as out of touch and hopelessly liberal, echoing a line of argument that’s become increasingly common on the right.
Consider how committee Chair Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) described the reason for the hearing as it began.
“After the events of the past two months,” Foxx said, “it’s clear that rabid antisemitism [and] the university are two ideas that cannot be cleaved from one another. A prime example of this ideology at work is at Harvard, where classes are taught such as DP 385, ‘Race and racism in the making of the United States as a global power.’”
The point was to use incidents of antisemitism as a criticism of elite institutions’ approach to education, in keeping with Republican rhetoric on the subject. As the debate over colleges has shifted to student protests in opposition to Israel’s military response to Oct. 7, the idea that colleges are incubators for left-wing ideology remains a subtext to the response on the right.
It’s the Sixties all over again. I know. I was there.
By The Time They Get To Phoenix, They’re Indicted. Yep, the usual suspects, with Le Grand Orange as an unindicted co-conspirator.
An Arizona grand jury has indicted former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows and lawyer Rudy Giuliani along with 16 others in an election interference case.
The indictment released Wednesday names 11 Republicans who submitted a document to Congress falsely declaring that Donald Trump beat Joe Biden in Arizona in the 2020 presidential election. It shows seven other defendants whose names were not immediately released because they had not yet been served with the charges.
The Associated Press was able to determine the identities of the unnamed defendants based on their descriptions in the indictment.
One is described as an attorney “who was often identified as the Mayor” and spread false allegations of election fraud, a description that clearly describes Giuliani. Another is described as Trump’s “ chief of staff in 2020,” which describes Meadows.
Your electric bills are about to go down in Delaware, but not by as much as some state officials think is fair.
A settlement agreement with utility company Delmarva Power — approved last week after an often-contentious, hourslong meeting — will offer a small rebate to Delawareans who’ve been paying higher rates on electricity since July of last year. Ratepayers will also pay slightly lower rates going forward.
The settlement was approved this month after more than a year of legal wrangling among Delmarva Power and a disparate gallery of players who challenged the utility’s rate increase plan.
Here’s why regulatory staff think the agreement was insufficient:
But the staff of the state Public Service Commission, which oversees utilities, vociferously opposed the deal. Their lawyers argued that small businesses were poorly represented and will suffer for it, that the state has disrupted precedent in damaging ways, and that, as a result, we’re all overpaying by about $6 million.
DPC staff argued that the “black-boxed” figure of $42 million was too high and against commission precedent, and that calculating the appropriate rate increase was a matter of previously established procedure and simple math.
“The proposed revenue requirement in the Settlement Agreement represents 79% of what the Company was seeking in rates ($53.7 million),” wrote DPC staff in a firmly worded rebuttal to the settlement agreement. “When compared to other recent settlements before this Commission, as well as litigated decisions involving this utility, the settlement amount presented is abnormally high with no justification or basis in fact.”
The figure should instead be $36 million, according to DPC staff, about $6 million less than the settlement agreement. DPC staff also argued that small business owners were ill-represented by the Delaware Public Advocate, and received rates that are too high under the agreement.
You know who lobbies for Delmarva? If you think you’re getting f***** wait until BHL puts Anne Farley in charge.
Yep. Joe Farley lobbied for Delmarva, or whatever incarnation of Delmarva was in charge, at the same time he was the Democratic State Chair.
Just because Republicans have hijacked the antisemitism issue for their own twisted ends doesn’t mean campus antisemitism isn’t real.
I have been genuinely schooled by years of consuming liberal media (including this blog) that the person affected gets to decide what is or isn’t offensive. I have dropped many words and tropes from my vocabulary that I didn’t think were offensive. Even though my initial curmudgeonly instinct is to bristle and argue that it isn’t offensive.
It is unseemly to now bristle and argue that a substantial number of current protesters aren’t anti-semitic.
Most of the slogans and chants seem plausibly innocent on the surface but are code for eliminationist aspirations against Israel. I hear the rhetoric is far worse in Arabic, which most Western ears don’t hear.
A LOT of the supposed anti-semites are Jewish. Which you know.
The Venn diagram has a rather large intersection with anti-Semites in the middle. A lot of people don’t believe they are in the middle. Nobody is protesting for a two-state solution.
Gotcha. Many Jewish people are anti-semites, they just don’t know it.
Those secret Arabic slogans have permeated our thinking.
Here are the plain English slogans and their second-order effects:
“river to the sea” – eliminationist slogan from both sides
“ceasefire now” – leave Hamas in charge of Gaza to re-arm
“stop US aid” – let Israel be destroyed by petro-state enemies
“Hamas surrender now” – wait, I haven’t heard that one.
No wonder the antisemitism of these anti war protesters have eluded me……it’s all in code or Arabic!
“Most of the slogans and chants seem plausibly innocent on the surface but are code for eliminationist aspirations against Israel. I hear the rhetoric is far worse in Arabic, which most Western ears don’t hear.”
Two words for you, Puck: MEDS, STAT!
A lot of the sloganizing sounds pretty eliminationist to me. But I’m not sure most of the protesters have a deep understanding of the politics. (Not really sure I do either.) And do we actually know what the Arab protesters are saying?
“But I’m not sure most of the protesters have a deep understanding of the politics.”
Most of them don’t know or don’t care.
Based on this week’s coverage…. Many of the protesters think Israel was always strong and always had gobs of arms from the US, and couldn’t explain the basic facts about how Israel ended up with the West Bank and Gaza.
Most of them have little knowledge of the Cold War or current regional geopolitics and could care less to know.
Hey Puck, you’re full of shit
Because I know my history, from Hertzl and Jobotinsky, through the British mandate, the ethnic cleansing by Zionist terrorists during the Nakba and 75 years of violent apartheid, I support a free Palestine from the river to the sea.
Of course as El Som said, the vanguard of this effort are Jewish people who understand this history as well.
Also, what John said. Lol
Eric Blair – I think you might know enough of the history to find things to cite that support a point of view you already had.
Do I not know the history or pick the wrong history? Which is it?
Trick question. It’s neither.
I curated and developed my view through 30 years of reading. Madela was extremely influential for me as well as Khalidi, Ilan Pappe, and Ari Shlaim. Of oourse former President Carter holds my view as well.
So fellas I don’t what to tell you. I know the history and international context thoroughly. I know you don’t like it. But as mass graves are being discovered with corpses in handicuffs and still attached to medical equipment, People buried alive, I guess we’re just at an impasse.
Carter supports a two-state solution, as do I. Not the eliminationist “river to the sea” slogan.
Wow, You got my ass there.
By the way, Palestinian freedom doesn’t eliminate Jewish freedom from the river to the sea. Not zero sum. Made up so Zionists have a victim mentality
It does eliminates Jewish supremacy.though. So.
And please don’t reply about Hamas charter or Death to Israel chants. I really don’t have the time for nonsense today.