I wish I could be a fly on the wall for two meetings Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu will have this week.
The first is with President Joe Biden and his hoped-for successor, Vice President Kamala Harris. During that meeting I can only wonder if, after advocating for a ceasefire in Gaza, Biden will press Netanyahu to emulate him to “do the right thing” by announcing his departure from leadership of his country. I doubt it will happen, but I can hope, can’t I?
I have less doubt that in his meeting with Donald Trump later this week Bibi will be pressed to keep the war going at least through November 5 so as not to give Biden/Harris a success story before the election. Earlier this year Trump selfishly torpedoed a bipartisan congressional immigration deal to keep Biden from attaining a desired solution to the southern border crisis.
For a more in-depth analysis of Netanyahu’s visit, read Thomas Friedman’s column “A Small Man in a Big Time, or Not” (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/23/opinion/netanyahu-israel-gaza-congress.html?smid=url-share).
Childless Cat People: JD Vance is discovering that his penchant for writing and speaking his mind has consequences, especially now that he is seeking national office as our next vice president. Take, for instance, misogynistic comments made on Fox News in 2021 about women, specifically Democratic women who have not delivered children.
As AP reported, Vance said Democrats, including Harris, who run the country are “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
“How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?” Vance added.
One of my former colleagues emailed me the following:
“I was taken aback on the news circuit this morning when I heard that JD said childless politicians (and by inference, human beings) without progeny have little to no stake in the future. Yikes! What a heartless, low thrust at the perceived enemies of the Republican state!
“I feel a list coming on of all the childless (by intention or fate) people who have had a dramatic, positive, maybe historic effect on the future of humanity, despite their social or political rank. The first person who came to mind is Anne Frank. Come to think of it, Jesus had no children either.
“And at the unit level, every living person has known a childless relative, teacher or friend who gave hope to the future for children or one child at a time.”
Amen. Thanks, Barbara.
