Ukraine, ICE, tariffs and Jews: is there ANY good news?
Sorry to spoil your Monday
I’ll keep it short today. It’s Monday. We all need to go to work. Unless you’re one of those weird people, someone who shares their morning tantric, power shake, six mile run, and get to work by 6:30 a.m. routine on TikTok, you’re like me, asking “where did the weekend go?”
Okay, the good news. I am a lifelong Red Sox fan. I went to the Red Sox game yesterday, when they played against the Braves, at Truist Park. Interleague play is about the only time I get to see the only two teams I root for play each other. I can’t lose, because no matter who wins, I win. The Bosox beat the Bravos 3-1, and all runs were scored in the first inning; the Braves by a solo homer to center field. The rest of the game was a pitching and fielding duel, with Boston’s southpaw Crochet taking Braves hitters apart. Atlanta pitching got 11 K’s (maybe 12, I might have missed one), but in the end, they stranded more baserunners and never brought one home. A good day for baseball, I say.
While I was enjoying the game with my oldest and two of his teenage friends, Ukraine was taking apart Russia’s long range bomber fleet, using remote piloted drones snuck into into the country in an ingenious and well-coordinated plan. The New York Times called it a “strategic and symbolic blow.” Some online are calling it Russia’s Pearl Harbor. I don’t know how symbolic it is, but taking out some significant percentage of Russia’s Tu-95 and Tu-22M3 long range bombers, along with some number of cruise missiles, in bases as far away as Siberia, seems to me to be a mix of both.
Russia doesn’t make new strategic bombers anymore. Their economy simply can’t support that effort along with replenishment of their cruise missile stocks and other war requirements. So anything that damages that fleet puts a rather large dent in Russia’s war capability. However, there’s plenty still there, and the retribution is likely to be terrible. “Operation Spiderweb,” which is what Ukraine’s security service, the SBU is calling this, was from anyone’s viewpoint a rousing success for Ukraine.
We will see if it translates into anything at the negotiating table as the parties meet in Istanbul today. One question I’m sure will be asked soon is how much American or NATO support did Ukraine get with this operation? Intelligence? Equipment? Logistics? Was this a lone wolf operation? I doubt it, because Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said it had been planned for quite some time, way before 2024. So that means it’s very likely the U.S. knew about it. The fact that the Trump administration, and the Hegseth-led DOD, didn’t leak it to the Russians is noteworthy. Then again, maybe the DOD hid it from its own leaders? We will see what the strange truth reveals here.
On the home front, ICE has been super aggressive in detaining low-hanging fruit, meaning people living here in plain sight, with no criminal records. In other words, the push to deport everyone here illegally is ruining a lot of lives of people who really don’t deserve to have them ruined. I read a local report here in north metro Atlanta of a recently married young lady from South America who got taken by ICE. Her husband was in the shower when agents knocked on the door. This newlywed was wearing an ankle monitor. She wasn’t hiding. Her asylum application had been denied and she was working on the appeal. She wasn’t a threat to anyone.
This isn’t the only story. It’s happening all over the country. A high school student in Milford, Massachusetts was taken before he was to play with his school band at graduation Sunday. A thousand-plus people turned up for a demonstration at the town hall chanting “hands off our kids!”
What the crap, Trump and ICE? How does this kind of thing make the country better in any way? It’s one thing to get rid of gangs and gang members, but to go after people who are harming nobody is just cruel and idiotic. Fix the border, fix the drugs coming in from Mexico, fix the guns going out from our southern border. Canada doesn’t need fixing, and neither does high schoolers or young brides trying to do their best to comply with our ridiculously complex and selectively enforced laws.
Perhaps this is a show of force to get the really bad people to self deport. Well, it won’t work. The bad people will go underground, and the people who work jobs to better their lives will self-deport. Congratulations, you made the problem much worse.
This reminds me of during COVID, when the health administrative state was let off leash, and allowed to have their way nationwide. Trump was largely responsible for that, with his daily press show, handing the country over to Dr. Anthony Fauci, then cutting the legs out from Fauci. If I were Tom Homan, I’d be worried when the ax will fall.
And the most predictable story: a guy in Colorado attacked a group of demonstrators who were advocating for the release of Israeli hostages taken on 10/7 by Hamas. He did it with a homemade flame-thrower. I pray to Yeshua for this guy, because he’s seriously in need of mental health care, and a long stay in a small room with bars on the door.
Anti-semitism is the easiest thing to trigger in the world. Easier than racism against Black people, or strange-sounding and smelling foreigners. Jew hatred is the world’s boogeyman. And copycats are inevitable, when people shout “Free Palestine” as they perpetrate violence against innocent Jews who have nothing to do with what Israel is doing in Gaza. Of course, the “man” who “injured” a “crowd” in the most innocuous reporting, is identified as Mohamed Sabry Soliman. The headline would never read “Arab man attacks unarmed Jews with flamethrower,” even if that’s exactly what happened.
Random people will come out of the woodwork to attack Jews. But in our neighborhood, Israelis are in good spirits. They come bearing gifts and food for Shavuot, the Jewish holiday celebrating the biblical story in the book of Ruth. It’s interesting that Ruth was a Moabite, not a Hebrew, and she told her mother-in-law Naomi, “whither you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.” If only that spirit would take root. I pray it does.
One more thing before I leave you to your Monday blues.
I have published a new Risky Tales story. Please consider reading it and if you like it, consider subscribing. It’s a true story about a retired woman who got scammed out of her life savings, and turned the tables on the scammers.
Blessings to all of you.
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"Perhaps this is a show of force to get the really bad people to self deport."
Nope.
This is ICE discovering that Trump's rhetoric of "INVASION!" is grossly overblown and they're not capable of finding and capturing enough gangbangers and other serious criminals to deport, so to make their numbers so Trump can look like "he's doing something", they're coming after regular people who are playing by the rules when they show up to play by those rules.
Combine this with a bunch of wannabe Rambos and Judge Dredds sporting military gear finally being let off their leash, and you end up with a bunch of LARPing (live-action role playing) at innocents' expense.
A humane administration would do something about this, but in this era, The Cruelty Is The Point.
What kind of record did the fire bomber in Boulder have? The Biden Administration gave him a work permit. What record did some other illegals (including unvetted parolees and those protected from removal) who committed atrocities have? I have no sympathy for illegals except the dreamers who played no role in their illegal entry.
From Shipwreckedcrew's latest.
"This process is going to play itself out for MILLIONS of illegal aliens over the coming years thanks to Joe Biden. The expectation that the bureaucratic nightmare that this process entails — with much taking place parallel in time with ongoing court proceedings — can be managed on an error-free basis is simply stupid and moronic.
Mistakes are going to be made — a lot of them — because it only takes a mistaken keystroke or two, or an not-timely-opened email notification, or the failure to immediately update electronic database information the moment facts change, for the process to spit out a JMS-like result.
This demand for process perfection — and criticism that results from a failure by people who want no deportations to happen — all comes on behalf of individuals who came into the country and lived here illegally. Some, like JMS, commit more crimes after they committed their first crime in the manner of their arrival."