I am not aware of all internet traditions

Apparently the trio of Matt Yglesias, Ezra Kline, and Spencer Ackerman (all of whom I read but have been neglectful of adding Attackerman to the blogroll.  This will be corrected.) have been dubbed the Juicebox Mafia by the pro Israeli blogosphere.  

Of course they had the audacity to suggest that the current Isreali attack in Gaza was disproportional and perhaps ill-advised.  Since they are Jewish they cannot be condemned as anti-semites, ( I will avoid this tag simply due to the fact that no one reads my blog) so they will be ridiculed by the Very Serious People as children who cannot possibly understand the world.  

Because it is obvious to anyone watching that the only response to random, annoying, and potentially deadly rocket attacks is airstrikes that kill not only the intended target but also many innocents.  because throughout history this strategy has worked.  See The First Jewish-Roman War,  which after a Jewish revolt Rome burned the Temple to the ground and enslaved many Jewish people.  But they made a slight error and let Jewish people continue to reside in Judea.  A mistake they rectified after the second rebellion which lead to the Diaspora, or expulsion of the Jewish people from Palestine.  Obviously, in this analogy Rome is Israel and The Jewish people are the Palestinians.  

Personally, I find this bit by a guest blogger, Eyal Press,on Ta-Nehisis's blog to be instructive.

Many years ago, the Israeli scholar Yehuda Elkana published an essay in which he noted that there were two lessons one could draw from the horrors he'd witnessed as a boy at Auschwitz.  The first was "this must never happen again."  The second was "this must never happen to us again."  Of the two, wrote Elkana, a member of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace-International, a network of scholars committed to ending the occupation and promoting a just settlement of the conflict, "I have always held to the former and seen the latter as catastrophic." 

Just to prove my non-anti-semite cred I will unveil my Mid-East Peace plan for all three of my faithful readers.

Step One-  Allow people of Jewish ancestry move to the United States.

 

That about covers it.

Update:  Couldn't they have called them the "Jewcebox Mafia?"  Just wondering.  Seems funnier.

the great turkey debate

Yglesias demands that the domination of the nation by turkey end now.  I tend to agree, when does anyone eat turkey besides Thanksgiving?  That's what I thought.  Ezra, a "politcal realist," says it is not the birds fault it is ours.  He points out this column by Mark Bittman pointing to another way to make turkey that sounds way better than the traditional method. So there.  Of course this post is way too late to help anybody, whatev.

robot menace update

Ezra Klein points out this NYT peice.

Robots have fared best, Dr. Teller said, in highly structured environments made just for them, and in the company of other robots. “If you took a welding bot from an assembly line and put it in your local body shop, it would end up killing somebody in about 30 seconds,” he said. “It would weld a person to a wall.”

It is almost go time folks.

Obama and teh cool

This is awesome.  Ezra puts it better than I could.

One of the side stories to Obama's appeal among the youth is that he's actually, well, cool...  And this has an actual effect. There's lots of chatter in the media about Sarah Palin's ability to speak the "language" of the conservative base, or of rural America, and how that matters. Obama's tendencies are dismissed as somewhat frivolous affectations. But Obama is speaking in a language familiar to younger Americans -- he's the first candidate who is recognizable to that generation, and my sense is it's going to manifest in two weeks, where the youth actually do turn out for him, rather than proving a disappointingly unreliable constituency as they have in the past.

I would only add vote early and encourage everyone else to as well, that is all.

h/t Ta_Nahesi Coates(If you aren't reading him, start.)

ezra klien still genius

EZ-K kills it.

George Allen is the featured speaker at a GOP event this weekend dedicated "minority outreach." Seriously. It's like a "TV Funhouse" skit. He should come wrapped in his collection of Confederate flags and holding the noose he displayed in his law office. I mean, if you're going to have George Allen anchor your minority outreach then go all the way. Own it.

HAHA!

Ezra Klein: Genius

Why is the drinking age 21?