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How can Israel and the Arabs live next to each other in peace if an “Islamic scholar” cannot sit in the same room in NYC with a Jew?

So many good and kind Americans believe that the solution to the strife between the Israelis and their Arab neighbors is a simple one: an independent Palestinian nation, living in peace, side-by-side with Israel. What could possibly the objection to that?

Well, Yassir Arafat, then President of the so-called ‘Palestinian Authority,’ objected, because even though President Bill Clinton had gotten Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to agree to an independent Palestine in 97% of Judea and Samaria, as well as Gaza, and a land swap from Israel proper to make up for the 3% in the ‘West Bank’ which had Jewish settlements, it didn’t include the ‘right of return’ for displaced ‘Palestinians’ to return to their homes in Israel. That, at least, was his stated reason, though the real reason was that he knew he would be assassinated by the irredentists who would never agree to allow Israel a single foothold in the Levant.

In 2005, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon forced all Jewish settlers to evacuate Gaza, turning it all over to the ‘Palestinians’ to do with it what they would. What Israel and the rest of the world hoped they would do is create a peaceful enclave, the type of thing which would prove that the Arabs could and would live in peace beside Israel. Instead, Hamas took over governing control of Gaza in 2007, and what was built were tunnels from which to attack Israel.

Still, that was all seven time zones away from the United States. Arabs and Jews could live side-by-side in peace here, right?

‘Imam’ tells CUNY Muslim students to leave interfaith event because a ‘Zionist’ is present

By Carl Campanile | Wednesday, November 19, 2025 | 6:54 PM EST

So much for kumbaya.

A self-proclaimed imam speaking at a CUNY City College interfaith event went into a Jew-hating tirade, urging Muslim students to leave in protest after complaining that a “Zionist” was present.

The City University of New York said it is now investigating the shocking incident last week that targeted Ilya Bratman, an adjunct lecturer at Baruch College and the director of the Hillel Jewish campus organization.

“I came here to this event not knowing I would be sitting next to a Zionist and this is something I am not going to accept,” said the Islamic scholar Abdullah Mady, referring to Bratman, according to an audio recording obtained by The Post.

Gaza is 5,689 miles away from New York City, but Mr Mady couldn’t sit next to a Jooooo who was in no way threatening him.

“My people are being killed right now in Gaza,” he said. “If you’re a Muslim, out of strength and dignity, I ask you to exit this room immediately.”

About 100 students in attendance took up the call and walked out, leaving about 20 Christian and Jewish students who remained in the room stunned, Bratman said.

The New York Post story does not tell us how many of the 100 or so who walked out were Muslims.

Campus security then escorted the remaining attendees, as the whole thing broke up, outside, to protect them from any hostile demonstrations from the ones who had walked out.

The advertising poster for the meeting, pictured above, uses the silhouette of a Jewish menorah as one of the various religious symbols, but Mr Mady was surprised that there was a Jew there? If an “Islamic scholar” could not sit beside an adjunct lecturer from a Jewish college, a quarter of the world away from the scene of the war, how can anyone ever expect Israel and an independent ‘Palestine’ to share a border in peace?

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The slow growth of the Catholic Church

Stations of the Cross, St Elizabeth’s Church, Lent 2024.

Our own parish, St Elizabeth’s, is too small to draw any conclusions from seeing new members, but we currently have two new attendees taking OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation for Adults, classes, and a third young man showed up last Sunday and is interested. For a parish with only 24 families, this is a very big deal, but statistically invalid as far as any big picture is concerned.

But our parish isn’t the only one seeing new members:

Young people are converting to Catholicism en masse — driven by pandemic, internet, ‘lax’ alternatives

By Rikki Schlott | Thursday, April 17, 2025 | 11:00 AM EDT

Sydney Johnston grew up in a nondenominational Christian household — but now the Upper West Side millennial is a devout Catholic.

“There’s just something so beautiful and transcendent about the rituals and the ancient history in the Catholic Mass that’s been preserved,” Johnston, 30, told The Post. “The church really communicates a degree of reverence that I didn’t find in the more liberal, laissez-faire approach of nondenominational churches.”

Confirmed in December 2024 at the Church of Notre Dame in Morningside Heights, Johnston is one of a growing number of young people turning to the Catholic Church from other denominations, religions and even no faith at all.

According to the National Catholic Register, some dioceses are reporting year-over-year increases of 30% to 70% in new converts. The Diocese of Fort Worth, Texas, for instance, experienced a 72% jump in converts just from 2023 to 2024.

There’s much more at the original, and the New York Post, our nation’s second oldest continuously published daily newspaper, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton, is not hidden behind a paywall, so you can follow the link freely.

Yes, I had heard, anecdotally, of a surge in Catholicism, which some have attributed to the assassination of Charlie Kirk and the accession of Pope Leo XIV, an American from Chicago, but the Post article predates both of those events. But it was the following article which really caught my attention:

More than one in three Catholic ordinations are former Anglican clergy, says new report

More than one third of priestly ordinations in the Catholic Church in England and Wales from 1992 to 2024 were former Anglican clergy, according to a report published today.

Ruth Gledhill | Thursday, November 20, 2025

Around 700 former clergy and religious of the Church of England, Church in Wales or Scottish Episcopal Church have been received into the Catholic Church since 1992, including 16 former Anglican bishops and two “continuing” Anglican bishops. From 1992 to 2025, five Anglican permanent deacons and 486 Anglican priests were ordained in the Catholic Church.

The report shows that 29 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy, while 35 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 1992 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.

Convert Clergy in the Catholic Church in Britain: The role of the St Barnabas Society by Stephen Bullivant, Fernanda Mee and Janet Mellor is published by the St Barnabas Society and the Benedict XVI Centre for Religion, Ethics and Society at St Mary’s University, Twickenham.

Hyperlink not in the original, but added by me. The original is a 24 page long .pdf file, and is available without charge.

It reveals that by comparison, just 9 per cent of diocesan priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy and 19 per cent of combined diocesan and Ordinariate priestly ordinations from 2015 to 2024 in England and Wales were former Anglican clergy.

The Church of England General Synod voted to ordain women priests in 1992, and the first women were priested in 1994

In the foreword, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Vincent Nichols, acknowledges that the movement of clergy from the Church of England into full communion with the Catholic Church in recent times is a story of many parts and says that until now, those parts have not been drawn together.

In July of 1980, His Holiness Pope St John Paul II issued the Pastoral Provision, allowing Anglican/Episcopal priests who convert to Catholicism to be ordained as Catholic priests, even if they are married. The Anglican/Episcopal female priests can convert to Catholicism, but cannot be ordained as Catholic priests.

The Church of England has been falling and failing for a long time now. The Catholic Herald reported, last April, that, driven by younger churchgoers, Catholics were on a pace to outnumber Anglicans in England, for the first time since King Henry VIII forced the Reformation on the island nation. Somewhere in Heaven, St Thomas More is smiling.

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Kristallnacht in New York City? It’s not so far-fetched! As long as their protests remain peaceful, they are protected by our First Amendment, and its provisions protecting freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. But make no mistake about it: these people are total scum.

The hatred for the Jews continues in New York City. Whether they were encouraged by the election of Zohran Mamdani to become the city’s next mayor is speculative, but it certainly seems probable. They don’t want American Jews to emigrate to Israel, calling them “settler colonialists,” but they also try to make life miserable for Jews in the United States.

From The Times of Israel:

Anti-Zionist groups announce protest outside Manhattan synagogue

By Luke Tress | Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Anti-Zionist groups announce a protest for tomorrow at New York City’s Park East Synagogue.

The protesters are demonstrating against an event at the synagogue hosted by Nefesh B’nefesh, an organization that helps Jews immigrate to Israel.

Internal hyperlink not in the original, but added by this site.

“No settlers on stolen land,” say advertisements for the protest on social media, branding the event a “settler recruiting fair.”

Nefesh B’nefesh does not direct immigrants to settlements; anti-Zionist activists often brand all Jewish Israelis as “settlers.”

Yet the protesting groups are here, in the United States, in New York City, which is land taken from the Indians by our settler colonialist ancestors.

The protest is led by the Pal-Awda activist group and is shared by other anti-Zionist organizations such as the city’s branch of Jewish Voice for Peace, Writers Against the War on Gaza, student groups from around the city and individual activists with large followings.

Pal-Awda is a group calling for the so-called “right of return” for Palestinians to lands within Israel proper, the same excuse given by Yassir Arafat for rejecting the 2001 initiative by President Bill Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak to create a ‘Palestinian’ state in Gaza, Judea, and Samaria. Like so many of the irredentists, they want their “From the River To the Sea” ‘Palestine,’ with the Jews expelled . . . or just plain slaughtered.

The hyperlinks were not in the original, but were added by us.

The National Lawyers Guild, a nonprofit, sent an email to its members asking for volunteer legal observers to attend the event. The observers serve to provide legal defense for protesters against police. The guild is anti-Israel and put out a statement in support of the October 2023 Hamas invasion of Israel, the day after it happened.

The image to the left was attached to the National Lawyers Guild statement.

Who are the “National Lawyers Guild”? They are just another leftist ‘progressive’ group who hate the United States — despite being headquartered here — as they tell us in their About Us page. But one wonders: did these oh-so-progressive people, saying that they “actively educate, litigate, and truth-seek toward the end of social justice,” and “reaffirming the legitimacy of the struggle of people for independence, territorial integrity, national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed struggle,” mean to include the rape, murder, and kidnapping of unarmed people, including children?

Their statement was issued on October 8, 2023, the day after the massacre of 1,199 innocent people and the kidnapping of 251 others.  The numbers hadn’t firmed up on that next day, but The New York Times had several different stories on the attack dated on the seventh. The “National Lawyers Guild” cannot have been unaware of just what the attackers had done. And, of course, they chose to post their support for the ‘Palestinians’ before the Israel Defense Forces had moved into Gaza to respond to the Hamas attack

There have been thousands of anti-Israel protests in New York City since the Hamas attack, the NYPD has said.

Demonstrations outside synagogues and in heavily Jewish neighborhoods are rare, but tend to be especially vitriolic. Park East is a prominent synagogue in an area with a large Jewish population.

Yup, anti-Semitism. These fine people could have held their protests anywhere, but they chose to protest in heavily Jewish neighborhoods, around the synagogues which are the most visible symbols of Judaism. They deliberately chose locations to try to intimidate Jewish Americans.

As long as their protests remain peaceful, they are protected by our First Amendment, and its provisions protecting freedom of speech and peaceable assembly. But make no mistake about it: these people are total scum.

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For today’s left, there can be no compromise with us evil reich-wingers!

Our good friends on the left are doing everything that they can to express their disgust, and try to score political points with far-left voters, over the eight Senate Democrats who agreed to end the filibuster and allow the continuing resolution to reopen the government to be passed. Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA) is trying to tell us that he’d have gotten a better deal to reopen the government, because he finally got the state budget passed, a mere 135 days late. 🙂

Gov. Josh Shapiro says national Democrats folded in the federal shutdown, while he stayed ‘at the table’ for Pa.’s late budget deal

As Shapiro portrays the outcome of Pennsylvania’s 2025 state budget as an across-the-board victory, the path to get there was harder, messier, and longer than anyone in Harrisburg would have liked.

by Julia Terruso and Gillian McGoldrick | Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 5:00 AM EST | Updated: 10:08 AM EST

The turning point in Pennsylvania’s budget impasse, by Gov. Josh Shapiro’s telling, came just before Halloween, when he and leaders in Harrisburg gathered in his stately, wood-paneled office to meet twice daily to hash out a deal to end the bitter, monthslong stalemate.

The long grind eventually led to compromises 135 days in, and a deal Shapiro said he thinks is far better than what national Democrats, hoping to extend healthcare subsidies, got in Washington at the end of the federal shutdown.

“Sometimes you’ve got to show that you’re willing to stay at the table and fight and bring people together in order to deliver,” Shapiro told The Inquirer in an interview Friday, touting the state budget agreement finally signed that week.

“I think it’s a stark contrast, frankly, with what happened in D.C., where they didn’t stay at the table, they didn’t fight, and they got nothing,” he said.

Let’s tell the truth here: the Democrats in Washington weren’t “at the table” because Republicans wouldn’t negotiate with them, and that’s because Republicans had most of the power. Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House in Washington, while they control only the Senate in the Keystone State.

As Shapiro portrays the outcome of Pennsylvania’s 2025 state budget as an across-the-board victory, the path to get there was harder and messier than he would have liked: a nearly five-month slog that strained his dealmaker image and forced concessions to get the deal across the line — including no new money for mass transit. The absence of a new funding stream in the budget marked a final blow in the saga to Southeastern Pennsylvania commuters who rely on SEPTA — and who are likely to be reminded of the beleaguered agency’s funding woes as delays, staffing issues, and needed repairs persist.

Critics are quick to note it took the self-proclaimed dealmaker so long to get a deal. Counties, school districts, and nonprofits struggled through four months without state payments while officials remained at loggerheads. Pennsylvania was the last state in the nation to pass a spending plan for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The failure of the budget to include new money for SEPTA is the big bugaboo for Philadelphia-area Democrats. They certainly don’t like the apparently horrible idea of raising fares to have the people who use SEPTA pay more of SEPTA’s expenses.

At the federal level, all the Democrats had was the power to keep the Senate from voting on the Continuing Resolution via the filibuster . . . and the Republicans who control the Senate could have used the so-called “nuclear option” to end the filibuster rule, something the President urged them to do.

But things were worse for the Democrats at the federal level than Republicans in Pennsylvania. Sure, many “counties, school districts, and non-profits struggled,” but at the federal level the 42 million SNAP recipients were having to go without their ‘food stamps,’ their EBT cards being refilled. How much longer could the Democrats have held out?

We have previously reported on how Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch and the newspaper’s Editorial Board were just spittle-flecking mad that the Democrats ended the filibuster, and now the Working Families Party — which is a complete misnomer, since so much of their support comes from non working families and welfare recipients — have decided that they are “committed to recruiting and supporting a primary challenge to him in 2028.”

Earlier this year, Fetterman was the first Senate Democrat to support the Laken Riley Act, a Republican immigration bill that requires U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain and take into custody individuals who have been charged with theft-related offenses, even without a conviction. Critics of the law say it severely cracks down on due process for immigrants.

Fetterman was the sole Senate Democrat to vote to confirm Attorney General Pam Bondi, who was one of Trump’s attorneys when he tried to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

And he has been the Senate’s most outspoken defender of Israel during its war in Gaza, sponsoring a resolution with Sen. Dave McCormick (R., Pa.) against antisemitism and appearing for the first time since his fall at an event hosted by the Jewish Federations of North America in Washington on Monday.

He also received recognition from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called him the country’s “best friend” and gifted him a silver pager inspired by Israel’s attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon that exploded pagers.

“He has repeatedly shown disregard for the rights of Palestinians,” the Working Families Party release said. “Refusing to support a two-state solution and breaking with the rest of the Democratic caucus on Israel’s illegal annexation of the West Bank.”

Translation: Senator Fetterman does not hate Jooooos enough.

You know who else do not “support a two-state solution” for the ‘Palestinians’? The ‘Palestinians’ themselves, along with their fellow travelers who chant “From the River To the Sea” in support of them.

The Pennsylvania (Non)Working Families Party hates things like law enforcement, rejoicing over the re-election of Philadelphia’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police hating District Attorney Larry Krasner, and of course they support the blood-thirsty ‘Palestinians’. Mr Fetterman is a surprisingly good Senator, a Democrat to be sure, but a moderate Democrat rather than a wild-eyed leftist.

So, apparently Senator Fetterman will have a challenger from the far-left in the 2028 primary, assuming that he even runs for re-election; he’s not in the best of health, despite being only 56 years old.

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Another victory for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner!

Another victory for Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner! Mr Krasner just loves to put Philadelphia Police Officers in jail, and to release bad guys who are in prison.

Homicide detective Philip Nordo was clearly a bad cop, as The Philadelphia Inquirer reported:

A former Philadelphia homicide detective was arrested Tuesday and accused of grooming and sexually assaulting male witnesses during criminal investigations, then intimidating them to keep them silent — part of what prosecutors concluded was a pattern of misconduct during nearly a decade in one of the Police Department’s most prestigious units.

The accusations against Philip Nordo, 52, who was fired in 2017 after 20 years on the force, were unveiled in a grand jury presentment following a long-running probe into the ex-detective’s conduct. The charges include multiple counts each of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and sexual assault.

Mr Nordo was convicted on multiple charges and then sentenced to 24½ to 49 years in prison, which at his age 56, at the time of sentencing, is effectively a life sentence.

The District Attorney then began investigating convictions in which Mr Nordo had been involved, including the conviction of Arkel Garcia, then 21, for the murder of Christian Massey. Mr Krasner then got that conviction overturned:

A Philadelphia judge on Friday overturned a 2015 murder conviction after prosecutors said they believe the lead detective — who has since been charged with raping and sexually assaulting male witnesses during his time on the force — built a questionable case while also attempting to groom potential witnesses as sexual targets.

The District Attorney’s Office said in court documents that it no longer believes the defendant, Arkel Garcia, is guilty of killing Christian Massey, a 21-year-old man with special needs who was shot dead in Overbrook in 2013 over a pair of headphones.

Instead, prosecutors wrote, they believe ex-Detective Philip Nordo obtained a false confession from Garcia — the main piece of evidence supporting an otherwise weak case — as he simultaneously tried to pursue sexual relationships with two men he interviewed as part of the investigation.

“Nordo had ulterior motives during this investigation that had nothing to do with solving this murder,” Assistant District Attorney Michael Garmisa said in court Friday.

So, Mr Garcia was freed after 11 years in the big house. Great thing, right? Well, maybe not so much.

A man whose murder conviction was overturned for its connections to a disgraced ex-detective is now wanted for another murder

Arkel Garcia is suspected of beating an elderly acquaintance to death inside an apartment in Northwest Philadelphia.

by Ryan W. Briggs and Chris Palmer | Saturday, November 15, 2025 | 11:01 AM EST | Updated: 1:45 PM EST

A man whose murder conviction was overturned because of its connection to disgraced former Philadelphia homicide detective Philip Nordo is now suspected of committing another homicide, according to police.

Authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Arkel Garcia, 31, for the fatal beating of an elderly acquaintance on Wednesday inside a fourth-floor apartment in the city’s Stenton section in what authorities believe was a robbery, according to law enforcement sources.

Shortly before 11 a.m. Wednesday, 35th District officers responded to a report of a person with a weapon at an apartment unit on the 4900 block of Stenton Avenue, according to a police report. After a maintenance worker let officers into the unit, they discovered David Weinkopff, 68, in a wheelchair, with blunt force trauma to his face and stomach, his apartment ransacked.

Paramedics pronounced him dead a short time later.

Further down:

After Krasner’s office charged Nordo with sex crimes, it began reinvestigating more than 100 cases the detective helped build, and prosecutors later moved to overturn at least 15 convictions tied to him. Some reversals were considered exonerations — instances in which a conviction was overturned and charges dropped — while others were overturned and resulted in guilty pleas to lesser charges.

The District Attorney decided not to prosecute Mr Garcia again after the conviction was overturned.

Garcia’s impending arrest marks at least the second time that a person whose case was overturned due to Nordo’s misconduct was accused of committing another crime.

James Frazier was sentenced to life in prison after he confessed to being an accomplice in a 2012 ambush slaying of a man and his girlfriend. But he later appealed, arguing Nordo had coerced him into signing a false statement of guilt.

Frazier’s conviction was overturned in 2019. But he was later charged with shooting a man twice in the leg in 2021, apparently as part of a botched drug deal. He pleaded guilty the next year and was sentenced to 11½ to 23 months in jail, court records show.

If Mr Garcia is actually the man who murdered Mr Weinkopff — and he is presumed innocent until proven guilty — then it is obvious: the criminal-loving prosecutor’s efforts to release Mr Garcia are directly responsible for Mr Weinkopff’s death. Mr Garcia had previously confessed to assault in the killing of Mr Massey, a young man with ‘special needs,’ though he denied being part of the killing, but the throwing out of the convictions meant the assault to which he had confessed was also thrown out. He did assault several sheriff’s deputies in the courtroom, witnessed by the judge and everyone else in that room, and was sentenced to 5 to 10 years for aggravated assault, which is why he was not released from prison until about a year ago.

That former Detective Nordo is a bad guy does not mean that all of the cases he investigated were bad ones. But when the city’s chief prosecutor apparently believes all non-police officers are helpless and innocent little lambs, that’s what the City of Brotherly Love gets.

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These fine people were demonstrating in support of a government which forced them to flee their home country!

That Donald Trump sure is a malevolent, four-dimensional chess master evil genius. Who would ever have thought that he could get the American left out on the streets, protesting in favor of street crime, of criminal illegal immigrants, and drug dealers? But here we are. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

‘Hands Off Venezuela’ protesters in Philly call for a stop to U.S. aggression amid attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats

The U.S. has been conducting military strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean since September.

by Michelle Myers | Saturday, November 15, 2025 | 4:59 PM EST

More than 60 people gathered on the north side of Philadelphia City Hall Saturday afternoon and then marched through city streets to protest what they called the U.S. war on Venezuela.

“Long live Venezuela, long live the Venezuelan people, enough Yankees, enough, Venezuela will live on,” the protesters chanted.

Well, of course they did!

In response to the newspaper’s advertising of the article on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — George Tausell commented, “Philadelphia doesn’t want any disruption of drugs coming into their city.” The good people of the city, having just re-elected the George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, it seems to me that Mr Tausell’s comment is right on target. We previously reported on Mr Krasner’s displeasure with Mayor Cherelle Parker Mullins’ plans to try to clean up Kensington, the infamous Philly neighborhood that’s been destroyed with homeless junkies sleeping in the streets and SEPTA’s Allegheny Station.

The “Hands off Venezuela” demonstration comes two days after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth put a name to the military strikes against suspected drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean that the U.S. has been conducting since September: Operation Southern Spear.

“This mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Hegseth announced on X. “The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood — and we will protect it.”

So, the protesters are appalled that the Trump Administration is trying to reduce the flow of narcotics into our country. Skipping down a couple of paragraphs:

Calling for a diplomatic solution and the respect of Venezuela’s right to self-determination, a coalition of local peace organizations marched in Center City Saturday afternoon to protest the Trump administration’s escalation of military aggression.

“CodePink Greater Philadelphia proudly adds our voice to the call to end the U.S. government’s attempt to meddle in the affairs of yet another sovereign nation, militarily or otherwise,” CodePink Philadelphia organizer Steve Malloy said in a statement.

What “self-determination” by Venezuela does Mr Malloy support? What “affairs of yet another sovereign nation” does he want left alone? The ‘right’ of Venezuelan gangs to ship illegal narcotics to the United States?

A few decades ago, Venezuela was the most prosperous country in South America. Then the ‘Bolivarian Socialist’ Hugo Chavez was elected President, and started destroying everything. Who knows? Perhaps Señor Chavez really believed that socialist bovine feces he spewed, but he, and later his successor — President Chavez died in 2013 following a years-long battle with cancer — Nicolas Maduro have transformed Venezuela from a prosperous, capitalist nation into a militarily-backed authoritarian dictatorship, wracked with poverty. The United States should stay out of Venezuelan affairs to the extent possible, but we do need to defend ourselves from drug shipments, and I have yet to figure out why anyone enjoying the fruits of American freedom and society would be defending the authoritarian dictatorship that Venezuela has become, unless it’s just a reflexive response generated by #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.

Even the Inquirer couldn’t ignore it:

Some of the protesters expressed support for the Venezuelan militia, the very forces that have prompted many Venezuelans to flee the country over the years, and were critical of U.S. capitalism.

These idiots fine people were supporting a regime that forced them to flee their own country! Can someone make sense of that?

Well, fine! ICE should arrest any of the demonstrators who are here illegally, and ship them right back to Venezuela, since they love it so much. Venezuela would doubtlessly refuse to take any of them back, so the US should simply put them on a boat, beach it, and just push them ashore.

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Poor, poor #Hamas terrorists, trapped in their own tunnels I can't put into words just how sorry I feel for them!

Last Sunday, The First Street Journal reported on the approximately 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists trapped in one of the organization’s tunnels. And, unless there has been a breakthrough too recently to have been reported, they’re still trapped down there. As was said then, these aren’t holdout Japanese troops isolated on some Pacific island, who didn’t know the war was over, and were determined to fight on for their Emperor, but simply trying to stay alive in the jungles. Rather, these are Hamas fanatics, who can, and will, and already have tried to continue the war. From The Jerusalem Post:

Hamas terrorists intentionally stayed in IDF zone, security expert claims

National Security researcher Kobi Michael: ‘Hamas is trying to insert a new deal into an existing deal, and this is something Israel must reject.’

By Giorgia Valente | Friday, November 14, 2025 | 4:26 EST

As negotiators argue over maps and timelines, one of the most sensitive tests of Gaza’s US-brokered ceasefire is unfolding out of sight, deep under Rafah.

Israeli and foreign officials estimate that around 100 to 200 Hamas terrorists are holed up in a tunnel network on the Israeli-controlled side of the so-called “Yellow Line” in southern Gaza, unable to move back into Hamas-run territory without surfacing into areas patrolled by the Israel Defense Forces. For Washington, what happens to those men is more than a tactical problem; for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, it has become a political red line.

At stake is not only the fate of a few hundred fighters but the credibility of a broader ceasefire architecture that is supposed to end large-scale fighting in Gaza and gradually strip Hamas of its weapons, even as violence spirals in the West Bank.

There’s much more at the original.

President Trump has been pushing Israel hard, as have Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, all the supposed guarantors of the cease-fire agreement, but when last we heard, Hamas have said that the trapped fighters would not surrender, even though their only way out is an entrance that the Israel Defense Force control. We don’t know how much food and water they have down there, but eventually they’ll run out.

The article notes Media Line’s claim that the Hamas fighters intentionally remained in the tunnels in the Israeli controlled areas, ostensibly to be behind IDF lines and able to pop out and fight again. But, if true, it’s like so many Hamas operations, not particularly well thought out. I’m not certain that the fighters get their 72 bacha bazi boys for being martyrs if they die of starvation.

Me? I think back to Judges 1:4-7, somewhere around 1,400-1,200 BC, in which Adoni-Bezek states that he defeated 70 kings, and had their thumbs and big toes cut off — a fate he suffers himself after being defeated — to prevent them from ever acting as warriors again. A lot of Israelis do not want these fighters to ever be released, believing that they were part of the October 7 massacre, but at the very least, they should be rendered unable to fight again.

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Ford CEO Jim Farley whines that government isn’t forcing people to buy electric vehicles

I’m starting to worry that I’m poaching too much on William Teach’s themes, with two previous articles in a week about plug in electric vehicles, but I spotted the following story this morning in the Lexington Herald-Leader:

Ford CEO Jim Farley shares ‘shocking’ lesson he learned from Tesla

By Tony Owusu, TheStreet | Thursday, November 12, 2025 | 9:38 AM EST

Earlier this year, Ford CEO Jim Farley had a humbling experience in Asia.

The Detroit automaker has sunk billions into Model e, its electric vehicle division, for decades, with little to show for it.

In June, he told author Walter Isaacson during a panel at the Aspen Ideas Festival that he made as many as seven trips to China over the past year.

“It’s the most humbling thing I have ever seen. Seventy percent of all EVs in the world, electric vehicles, are made in China,” Farley said. “They have far superior in-vehicle technology. Huawei and Xiaomi are in every car. You get in, you don’t have to pair your phone. Automatically, your whole digital life is mirrored in the car.”

Uhhh, maybe some of us would not see that as a great feature. A lot of people — I am not one of them — have their financial records on their phones, and pay some things with their too-smart phones. Perhaps some people wouldn’t want their cars to automatically “pair” with their phones, especially if it gives the car, and who knows how many other people, access to their lives and finances. With an estimated net worth of $72.9 million, perhaps Mr Farley is excited by every new gadget out there, and isn’t too terribly worried if someone pays for their Door Dash through Mr Farley’s accounts, but some of us poorer people do have to keep an eye on things.

The story continues to note how the CEO was impressed by superior technology and engineering, saying that Ford has to step up to compete, but then comes the money lines:

While Farley didn’t speak much about the builds of Ford’s Chinese rivals, he did praise the government for promoting the EV industry in a way the U.S. does not.

Farley said that “EVs are exploding in China” because the government there has put its “foot on the economic scale.”

In a Communist command economy, the government can put its “foot on the economic scale.” In a (mostly) free market in the United States, while there was some, thankfully expired, foot pushing in the form of government tax credits for buying electric vehicles and some states mandating that a certain percentage of new cars be EVs by 2030 to 2035, Americans exercising their free choices have not been so compliant. Toyota listened to what consumers wanted, and has focused on hybrids instead.

Perhaps it’s time that Mr Farley dumped his prejudices in favor of electric vehicles, and took a cold, hard look at what a free people taking free choices actually want.

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Amazing what can happen when manufacturers listen to what consumers want Electric cars nope; hybrids yup!

This site noted, just five days ago, that Ford Motor Company was considering doing away with its all-electric F-150 Lightning line of trucks, because the buyer demand for the vehicles just wasn’t there. Now there’s this, from The Wall Street Journal:

Toyota Doubles Down on Hybrids in the U.S. With $14-Billion Battery Push

New North Carolina plant is aimed at selling more hybrid cars and trucks to Americans

By Christopher Otts | Wednesday, November 12, 2025 | 1:28 PM EST

LIBERTY, N.C.—Toyota, a longtime hybrid car and truck promoter, is making one of the industry’s biggest bets on green transportation and opening a $14 billion battery plant here.

For years, Toyota held out against electric vehicles while rivals retrofitted factories and launched models in preparation for an all-electric future. Now that the EV market in the U.S. is vanishing as tax credits expire and sales disappoint, Toyota is doubling down on its hybrid strategy.

The Japanese automaker’s gamble: that American consumers—many of whom won’t touch an EV—will buy increasing numbers of hybrids, which often get up to 50% better mileage than a standard gas-powered car.

Toyota also said it would invest up to $10 billion in U.S. manufacturing over the next five years in addition to the North Carolina site, where it made the largest investment in a U.S. battery-production site.

The batteries that Toyota has begun making at the sprawling plant, located between the cities of Greensboro and Raleigh, are going into hybrids assembled in Kentucky and Alabama. The complex is designed to make batteries for EVs and hybrids, including those that plug in and travel short distances on just electricity before switching to gas.

Our family are familiar with hybrids, as our older daughter had a 2017 Toyota Prius Hybrid, and now drives a 2024 Prius Hybrid. It’s a good, solid vehicle, and she put a ton of miles on her first hybrid, as her civilian job took her on frequent trips throughout the eastern half of the country. She put nearly 200,000 miles on it, before trading it in.

The reason she traded it in was, of course, the battery. It was beginning to fail, and Toyota wanted $8000 to change it. That has always been the problem with the hybrids, and it’s something Toyota, and other hybrid manufacturers, need to address. I’d bet 25€ that all Toyota did was spend less than $2000 to swap out the battery to sell it used.

“For the longest time, folks were criticizing Toyota that they were so slow to the game in the battery-electric business,” said Charlie Chesbrough, senior economist at Cox Automotive. But the strategy worked, he said. “They really did focus on the traditional hybrids, and they are dominating that whole product segment.”

In other words, Toyota’s leadership were smart enough not to listen to Joe Biden and the Democrats, who were pushing a technology and infrastructure that was simply not ready.

Toyota did listen, however, to consumers, to new automobile buyers, and the company’s actions reflect the free market, and the choices people take in a free country.