They Explode Too?!

This morning Prime Minister Netanyahu is doing the thing where he walks away slowly while shit behind him blows up. 

Reader(s) don't need Stroock's Books to recap yesterday's events in Lebanon. Ynet has a good wrap.* Israel literally decimated Hezbollah's membership and crippled their coms network. Think of the chaos Israel has wrought. Nobody in Hezbollah will pick up a phone without breaking a sweat. Lastly, Israel just humiliated Hezbollah.

A friend, who shall we say is no Zionist, chastised that civilians were hurt. 'War is hell,' we replied. War is funny too. The jokes write themselves:

-Glad I'm not a customer service rep at that pager company. 

-Hezbollah doesn't have the balls to attack Israel. 

-The exploding pager attack really hits below the belt. 

Yes we are approaching this moment with great hubris. Enjoy the moment, for there's been many dark days this last year and many dark days lie ahead. Dark days are here. Four Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza today. Exit question: is this the calm before the storm? Sure feels like it. 

Ohhhh, my god! As we write this, thousands of Hezbollah walkie talkies are blowing up all over Lebanon. 

Hmmm we've been posting a tonne on Substack and getting lots of traction. But we see no correlation of Substack interactions to increased book sales. Hard to say if we're helping ourselves there, as sales spikes seem to be entirely random. Still, with 22 novels in print, picking up just a few readers a week is a big deal in the long run. 

 *My word. If Israel knew Hezbollah was growing suspicious of their pagers, what else do the Israelis know?

They Explode?

We did back-to-back days at the gym, cardio yesterday with calisthenics, rope pulley and rower the day before. A month ago we added pushups to our routine. We stopped pushups in the 2000s when we took up guitar. Playing makes one's wrists brittle and sore, a problem all guitar players have our instructor assured us. We feel better than we thought we would last week. 

The Times of Israel reports that 40 percent of Israelis favor Naftali Bennett vs 29 percent for Netanyahu. Bennett seems to be the only man that can beat Bibi. However, a new party lead by Bennett would tie with Bibi's Likud at 20 Knesset seats with the current oppo parties tallying 64 seats overall. Bennett is laying the groundwork to get back into politics. This blog once more argues that Bennett plus Gantz's National Unity plus Likud sans Bibi would make a fine coalition. 

Israel Radar has lots of reporting on the current state of preparations on the Hezbollah Front. IDF commanders say they must attack soon. Unnamed sources within the IDF say 'the risk of war is highest since 10/7'. The US is pressuring the Israelis to delay the attack till after the election.* Don't forget about the ongoing drama over firing Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with Gideon Sa'ar. Do note that Netanyahu is visiting New York next week. So, there's no chance that the Israelis will attack next week, right? Right?! Methinks strategery is afoot.

Also, as we write this, and we swear we're not making this up, Hezbollah comms gear is mysteriously exploding. We've seen several photos and vids of injured, blood-soaked terrorists. Here's some surveillance vid. That guy's going to be using a wheelchair for a while. And here's another. This one took a header to boot. Enjoy! We've also seen a very gruesome hospital clip with dozens of bloodied military aged men on the floor of a Beirut hospital and more being brought in every few seconds. 

Would someone please do a compilation video of exploding Hezbollah pagers to Benny Hill's Yakety Sax? If we wrote about Hezbollah pagers magically exploding, why the reviewers would kill us.  Do note that the Hezbollah guys who rate an encrypted pager would certainly be officers and noncoms. The imams are right, the Jew is clever. 

Yesterday we discussed how the press was in the tank for John Kerry. We'd use harsher gutter language to describe the media-Kerry relationship, but reader(s) get the idea. Today we harken back to election 2000, Bush vs Gore, and a dirty little secret us conservatives and Bush supporters don't want to admit. In 2000 the press was immensely helpful to W.

George W. Bush was merely a privileged dunce. The media absolutely clobbered Algore for being, wooden, uninspiring, boring. SNL lampooned the man's stiffness in several skits. The press pointed out that every time Algore tried to seem warm, friendly and outgoing he just looked like he was trying too hard. He just couldn't quite get the natural mannerisms right. Why can't you put Bush away, the press demanded of Algore. To this day we don't really understand why the press slammed Algore so. The media has never again been critical of a Democrat presidential nominee. 

A good day with War Night, yesterday. We started Morning Rory. So far, so good. Also, we read through the Haig in the Bunker story. It's...fine. There's an overall narrative, but the story needs work and there are gaps which must needs be filled in. We eliminated the repetitive parts. Also we're not quite buying the authenticity of the story. We have Haig sitting in an undisclosed bunker with the Colonel who happened to be the OOD when the nukes started flying. Haig needs to 1- figure out what the hell is going on. 2- reestablish contact with field commanders. 3-reestablish contact with Washington. 4-Find his deputy commander, what's his name again...? There's a bit of juju for doing BAOR counterattacking. 

*The Regime cares because they will never let Trump take office, as we saw this weekend, and a continued war in the Middle East hampers their efforts.  

Twice Now

They're just not going to let Trump win. As the IRA used to say, Trump has to be lucky every time. They only have to be lucky once. Yes, we're quoting Steyn's quoting the IRA, but we wrote that quote before reading Steyn's quote today.  And that, more than any other reason is why we take the black pill.

We dined at a lovely Middle Eastern restaurant last night. The year being 2024 we told the girls to remove their Chais and Stars of David. We weren't really worried about ownership. Our concern was some jackass rando seeing a Chai and starting his own holy jihad, shouting 'Death to Israel!' and charging us while his wife does that Arab ululating thing. [Yes because every Arab is prone to violent psychopathy - Ed]. It's 2024. Picture the headline, 'A New Jersey man....'

Related, it looks like Netanyahu is on the verge of removing Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and replacing him with New Right party leader Gideon Sa'ar, or a man of Sa'ar's choosing. Gallant is less hawkish on Hezbollah, they say while the IDF is urging the government to hit Lebanon soon. Sa'ar would bring four more seats to the governing coalition and give Bibi some flexibility vis-a-vis the Orthodox and Haredi parties. Gallant is a Likud man so he has no recourse. This blog assumes he'll be bought off with a fancy ambassadorship or some such. The Times of Israel has a brief on the matter. See how complex Israeli coalitions are? See how Bibi loves negotiations? Never cut a deal with Bibi. 

Election 2004 and More. Though the press bias wasn't as bad or blatant as it is now, in 2004 the press was blatantly biased toward John Kerry. Newsweek's Evan Thomas* said media bias was worth 15 points. That's an exaggeration but the media being in the tank for Kerry made a election close. The press ran with a modern Kerry/Camelot vibe. Why John Francis Kerry even had the same initials as Kennedy. JFK skippered a PT boat, Kerry skippered a Swift Boat. The media constantly portrayed Kerry as a brave military vet. Oh how the media lapped it up when Kerry began his 2004 convention speech with, 'I'm John Kerry and I'm reporting for duty.'  Kerry was a devout Catholic, you see.  And he was a 'strong finisher' whatever that meant. 

Well, we'll be working on our Irish lad rocking out at the pub short story this week. We're calling the story, Morning Rory. Monday Metal is related, with yet another Rory Gallagher piece. Enjoy the brilliant rhythm and lead guitar of Whole Lot of People:

*Newsweek and Time were the third member of the media triumvirate, the other two being the big three TV networks + CNN, and the papers; the NYTs and WaPo. To put it another way, the news mag rags were important. 

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/15/24

Services Friday night, lunch at Epstein's Kosher Deli in Hartsdale, and a stop off at the cemetery. That's three Judaisms in 24 hours [Judaisms? Also, you're counting a kosher deli as a Judaism?-Ed]. We're feeling downright biblical. Actually, yesterday left us feeling very tired. We can't drive 150 mile round trips the way we used to. 

The great Grey Connolly quotes the New York Times: 'For the second straight U.S. presidential election, it's becoming increasingly likely that there will be no clear and immediate winner on election night.' They're going to steal another election. Do Trump and the GOP have people in place to Stop the Steal this time?

Connolly wonders why America can't count the votes on election night while his native Australia can. So can Canada, New Zealand, Britain - the whole Commonwealth. For that matter France, Italy, Poland and Hungary can tell us who won their elections the night of the election. Heck, Texas, Florida, Tennessee and Missouri can count all the votes on election night, but Detroit, Atlanta, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, Dem strongholds in key states, needed nearly a week. And that's how we know Trump won. 

Hmmm...the Houthis launched a hypersonic missile at Israel last night. To what end? Was the launch part of some grand plan? Or did the Houthis just feel the need to get in on the action? Perhaps we're overthinking. Meanwhile Netanyahu is promising a 'large scale' action in Lebanon and the IDF has assured the government it has all the ammo it needs. Exit question: how does Israel hit back at the Houthis?

College Football roundup: Via the New York Post: 'Texas lost starting quarterback Quinn Ewer who suffered a “strained abdomen” in the second quarter of Saturday’s game against UTSA. But backup Arch Manning and the Longhorns didn’t miss a beat. Manning threw four touchdown passes and ran for a 67-yard score to lead Texas to a 56-7 blowout victory over UTSA at Darrel K Royal-Texas Memorial Stadium in Austin, Texas.' For you goddamn foreigners, Arch Manninng's uncles are quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning*, and have four Superbowl rings between them. His grandfather is Archie Manning was a good quarterback on bad teams in the 70s and 80s. Arch Manning is a great name.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 9/15/22...okay, Friday we came up with two stories for War Night. One is about a family in Australia. Australia doesn't get hit in the Great Nuclear War of 1975. The idea here is that normal Australian family is watching a nuclear war unfold on the telly in a state of normalcy. Our second idea has a young Irish lad seeing his guitar idol play at a pub when the trouble starts. He meets a fare Irish lass... Reader(s) will know who the guitar idol is. This will probably be War Night's concluding story. 

*People who don't think Eli Manning is a Hall of Fame quarterback don't understand football and should find something else to watch. Women's soccer maybe. Badminton. We dunno. 

Saturday Updates

Services last night. We have to admit that after a decade of being kinda-sorta religious we know our way around a Friday service. 

Today a sojourn across the Hudson River to Epstein's Kosher Deli in White Plains to have lunch with our father. We'll hit Ferncliff cemetery on the way out 

We got in 4 gym sessions in the last week, including a very subpar cardio jaunt yesterday. It's time to rethink our gym program. Maybe we'll go back to rope pulley, rowing machine, bike, elliptical followed by a day off followed by weight sessions? What about light weights, cardio, heavy weights on successive days? Upon this we shall dwell. 

Evidence continues to trickle in that the debate did not help Kamala. Remain vigilant. For next we have a few thoughts on where Dems will go next. We'll blog about the 2000 election as well. 

The Things.

We had a good week editing and touching up War Night. We have a rough of Voodoo Genie. The story needs to sit for a time and we need to rewatch vids about the CF-101 and the AIM-2 Genie rocket. But overall, this story is in good shape. 

Segway...We need to do a tech review of Razorback-1, the nuclear silo story. There's lots of comms to keep straight. We have an Air Force vet reading Razorback-1 right now. He wasn't in the missile wings, but he'll be able to make the story feel more Air Force.

We also have a rough of the Irish Taoiseach story. Writing the previous sentence it occurs to us that the story needs a name. Our man on the ground in Ireland read the story and made a few suggestions. The Irish wear jumpers, not sweaters. And few Irish homes have basements. 'The ground is too wet for that, don't you know?' Also there were two TV channels in Ireland in 1975. Our man on the ground in Ireland also says his heart sank when he read that a green sedan was picking of Taoiseach Cosgrave. 'Oh lord, here it comes. Green and Guinness and fighting brothers and redheaded Irish lasses, and plastic paddies...' But none of that happened.  

And we've got a few good ideas which we'll share tomorrow.

War Night is 47,000 words and primed to hit 60,000, fast. 

Articulating the Startup Nation

Aw, the real Ed stopped by the blog and said hi. Reader(s) know how we love it when she calls us a knobhead. Say it again. Please? Note, the read aloud function on this blog is set to a female POSH English accent [Weirdo-Ed]. Of course the real Ed is a Scouse. 

Look at us on FB nine years ago, still joking around about heading to the hospital after complaining of chest pains and cracking jokes about DNRs. The real Ed joked, 'So who's the lucky lady that gets to pull the plug?'

We wore one of our Israel T-shirts to the gym yesterday. The nice lady behind the counter said she liked the shirt, and it was important to support Israel. We replied that other than attending a few rallies we didn't know what else we could do. While we were chatting, an Orthodox Jew, wearing a Kipa and tallis walked in. Sounds like the set up to a joke. Didn't know we had any of them around here. 

From Israel National News, this is just too much, 'Former US Secretary of State and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton criticizes Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in her new book for taking "zero responsibility" for the Hamas attack on October 7 of last year.' How about you take responsibility for Libya? From the Rose law firm, to the White House travel office, to Whitewater, to healthcare reform, everything that woman touches turns to crap. Reminder, Hillary called one of her employees a 'Jew bastard' and hugged Suha Arafat (sham wife of the homosexual Yassir Arafat) after she blood libeled us. Oh Hillary, what difference, at this point, does it make?*

Israel Radar reports that Hezbollah is ordering civilians to get out of southern Lebanon. Israel Radar also thinks, given what we've seen in the Gaza War, that Hezbollah can't stand against the IDF. The author makes several good points, but we remain cautious. This sounds like victory disease to us. Remember the 1973 War and the 10/7 genocide. Once more, with feeling. Hezbollah, Bibi. By the time the Lebanon war is over, there should be no life in Lebanon south of the Litani. 

We've been thinking through, and trying to articulate what we mean by Startup Nation. In the Startup Nation narrative, Israel is a modern, cosmopolitan, almost European nation**. The IDF must occasionally 'mow the lawn' in Gaza. The army could be paired down, and the border protected with a 'smart fence' and some autocannons. Sooner or later Iran would take care of itself and so would Hezbollah. 

Startup Nation is the title of Dan Senor's 2011 book about modern, entrepreneurial Isarel. Do recall that Israel started as a dusty socialist state with a third world economy. So Israel becoming an economic powerhouse and technological hub with a large natural gas side hustle is a very big deal. The startup nation era also saw a baby boom. Israel is a young country. Even the trendy set that prefers Tel Aviv to Jerusalem had 2 or 3 kids. 

We once saw a clip where a gaggle of Israeli teenage girls joyously sang and danced in a circle around a very old wheelchair bound woman. This woman was almost certainly born in Europe and probably a holocaust survivor. Here's a clip of a holocaust survivor being escorted through Auschwitz by young Israeli soldiers. What awesome symbolism. That's Startup Nation.

*Will also calls Hillary a very bad word.

**Competes in the Eurovision song contest and many European sports leagues.

Startup Stopped

So, this is what we posted on FB nine years ago today, 'Well, that was a fun stay at the hospital. I'm fine. Minor chest pain after exercising, battery of tests, but I'm fine. When they were hooking me up to all the monitors, I cracked up, because this is the only thing I could think of...' We were thinking about Beavis and Butthead doing a lie detector test. 'Are you going to put those things on my nads? Heh. ''Cause you can if you want.' Nine years, 30 pounds and a tonne of cardio latter, here we are.

This blog admits that accumulating evidence points to Harris actually losing the debate - in the long term. HotAir has the story. Pundits love the idea that a few zingers here and there define a debate. Or worse, that one's debating skills win or lose the contest. In 2000 Algore won all three debates with W on points, how'd that work out for him?* But in the end, a debate is a 90-minute job interview. Normies wonder if a candidate can do the job and if they want to be looking at this person for the next four years. It seems Kamala's refusal to answer questions or provide details hurt her. As we've been saying, wait.

Turning, now, to one of Biden-Harris' many war zones...Iran built a vast terror network in Gaza. Iran built a vast terror network in Lebanon. And Iran has been building a vast terror network in Judea/Samaria.  Given that Iran was able to surround Israel with terrorist enemies, is there any reason to believe it won't get the bomb? Just to be clear, that happened mostly under Netanyahu's watch.

Also, a new Canadian documentary shows Bibi the politician and the man. Read the review. It ain't pretty. 

 [Are you turning on your boy?-Ed] Netanyahu is not my boy, but no. We think Bibi is the man for Israel right now, but those are the facts. 

Via Israel Radar, a long twitter thread from General Uriel Schachter about the state, successes and mistakes of the Gaza War. That's okay. Washington had many failures during the War of the Rebellion. Lincoln had many failures during the Civil War, etc..etc...We'll add two points. The Israelis have clearly gotten the better of things on the battlefield. The fighting has been surprisingly lopsided. This blog thought the Gaza campaign would be much bloodier. And B, the defense cuts and mindset Schachter discusses are part of the Start Up Nation mindset. 

We're referring to Dan Senor's 2011 book Startup Nation: The Story of Israel's Economic Miracle. Israel is a tiny, highly educated, high tech economic powerhouse on the Mediterranean, slowly leaving behind the Gazans and West Bank people, not to mention the rest of the Arabs. Startup Nation gave Israel the wonder weapons we see today, Iron Dome, soon Iron Beam, Arrow, Trophy and other gadgets we don't know about. Now Israel is a natural gas producer too. The startup nation economic miracle was accompanied by a baby boom. Israel is a young country. Exit question: was Startup Nation a delusion? Sub question, was this delusion worse than the Oslo delusion?

*We'll be doing election 2000 next week.