Friday Ef it All

Shabbat Shalom Stroock's Books Kibbutzim. 

We got to the gym yesterday for a modified sore knee workout. The knee is a bit less sore this morning, confirming our suspicion that exercise will help it heal. 

Rain last night, replenishing New Jersey's reservoirs just a bit more. We are finally getting over our fear that the sump pump pipe will burst again, or the pump will fail. Baby steps, as What About Bob would say.  Also, I'm sailing! [You're making absolutely no sense whatsoever-Ed]. On purpose, luv. On purpose. 

An excellent article in Ynet on Netanyahu's resilience and the impotence of the Israeli opposition. The opposition is ideologically fragmented and has no clear leader. Again this blog asks, where is Naftali Bennett?

Of the very latest round or protests over the removal of the head of Shin Beit, Ynet notes, 'After years of protests against Netanyahu, it is hard to see what will make this one different, despite the presence of former senior figures in the defense and political establishment...“It’s doomed to fail,” said Dina Dayan, a social activist and member of the Labor Party. “People are obsessed with Netanyahu, and all of this is delusional. There are no values or ideology behind the protests; they have nothing to sell. Being against Netanyahu is not a value.”'

These people protested Bibi's Covid policies, his judicial reform, the war, the hostage negotiations...next month they'll be protesting Bibi over something else. There's no end to it. It's just what they do. Meanwhile, the IDF is massacring Hamas leadership in Gaza. The Israeli left's biggest fear is that Bibi will win the war and become the Lion of Judah. 

DOGE report: we totally forgot our DOGE report yesterday. So World War 1990: Thatcher's War is 50,000 words. Usually a WW1990 novel is somewhere in the neighborhood of 65,000 words.  We're at 50,000 words and barely halfway done. Barely. Last week we axed a chapter showing the rest of the world. This was a mistake. 

We should axe the Derry chapter, all 25,000 words of it. Thatcher's War is a WW1990 novel, not a novel about some parochial Irish conflict. We can't even remember how we got so bogged down in the Troubles and the IRA, the UVF, the RUC, the UDF, and the rest of the alphabet soup of organizations the Irish founded to kill one another or keep them from killing one another. The kill happy Irish, as the late P.J. O'Rourke once called them. For God and Ulster I have come indeed. 

And when one isn't following Charlie the UVF gun thug up Malvern Terrace toward St. Columb's church, reading about Saddam Hussein inspecting troops in Province 19 doesn't seem so strange. So that's what we're gonna do. There, cut, done. World War 1990: Thatcher's War is now 25,000 words [Don't be fooled, people. It's entirely possible he'll put the whole Derry section back in next week-Ed].

Oh look, we got the revised War Night cover back and they still fucked it up. Yes, we are smoldering with rage at the moment.