Seen on the Wall Street Journal website, reporting on the latest atrocity: Deadly Strike on Soccer Field Raises Risk of Escalation Between Israel and Hezbollah.
A rocket strike on a soccer field full of young people in the Israel-controlled Golan Heights left a scene of carnage Saturday and threatened to escalate the already tense standoff on the Lebanese border.
The strike killed 12 people, mostly children and teenagers, and injured around 40, according to the Israeli prime minister’s office. The rocket carried a heavier-than-usual warhead, Israel’s military said.
Apparently in the minds of the WSJ reporters, firing a rocket into the midst of "mostly children and teenagers", killing 12, is just maintaining the status quo.
But if Israel responds? Ah, that would be escalation! Can't have that!
That seems to be the spin of the news-side of the WSJ. That side is usually good and professional, but sometimes the mask slips.
Fortunately, the opinion-side of the newspaper is more honest: Weakness Won’t Deter Hezbollah After Its Soccer-Field Attack.
Hezbollah’s rocket attack on Saturday killed 12 children and wounded more on a soccer field in Israel’s Golan Heights. The response in the West has been weakness and a lack of resolve, continuing the message of recent months that has led to the brink of a larger regional war. Something different is needed to alter Hezbollah’s calculus before Israel has no choice but to act.
The media seems stuck on the question of who fired the rocket. Hezbollah first claimed an attack in the area but issued a denial when it became clear the dead children were Druze Arabs, not Jews. Israel identified the rocket as the Iran-made Falaq-1, “a model that is owned exclusively by Hezbollah.” Given that Hezbollah began firing on Israel on Oct. 8, and has since shot more than 6,000 rockets and missiles, this isn’t a murder mystery.
Israel has retaliated according to news reports. Won't bring those dead kids back, but hopefully will "alter Hezbollah’s calculus". I'd say it needs a lot of altering.
Also of note:
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Unburdened by what has been. Becket Adams notices some major image surgery in the works, as the MSM is Inventing Kamala. After noting her anointment as the Democrat's nominee "without a single pledged delegate":
Even crazier than Harris’s political ascent, however, are the press’s efforts to reinvent her for the general election, fashioning her into a completely unrecognizable version of the woman who first came to Congress in 2017. To this end, journalists are going beyond merely bending the facts or misrepresenting truths for the vice president’s general-election glow-up. Some have resorted to outright lying, pumping out political disinformation that’d make even the North Koreans blush.
A Minnesota CBS News affiliate, for example, published a fact check last week titled, “Trump falsely accuses Harris of donating to Minnesota Freedom Fund, bailing out ‘dangerous criminals.’”
In 2020, then-senator Harris’s official Twitter account said, “If you’re able to, chip in now to the [Minnesota Freedom Fund] to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The CBS News affiliate even asked her about her support. Harris’s tweet, which includes a link to the Minnesota Freedom Fund’s donation page, has been shared more than 15,000 times.
Yes, really. CBS’s point is that Harris didn’t donate to the group that posted bail for dangerous criminals but merely fundraised for it. Oh, okay. Thank you for that clarity.
Adams also looks into the "border czar" imbroglio. It's my final NR free link for the month, so dive in.
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Like Consumer Reports, but more trustworthy. Sabine Hossenfelder The Trouble With Heat Pumps. "Let's have a look."
Bottom line: you might need upgraded insulation, different radiators, … But even if you're not in the market, Ms. Hossenfelder does a fine job of debunking some shoddy "fact checking" by careless advocates.
Disclaimer: I have no idea how practical it would be to replace my (relatively new) oil burner with a heat pump. I'm in New Hampshire, which gets cold, and also hot.
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Continuing on the consumer beat… Megan McArdle comments on J.D. Vance's elegy for old refrigerators: J.D. Vance can’t go back in time — and neither can the rest of us.
For one of the youngest vice-presidential candidates ever nominated, J.D. Vance sounds a little crotchety. His convention speech last week pined for an America that the 39-year-old himself never knew — a land before drugs and deindustrialization ravaged the Rust Belt, when housing was cheap and families were intact, and proud American craftsmen made the world’s best products with their own hands.
Of course, there’s nothing wrong in wishing for things you don’t remember — if they were really good, as many things were during the United States’ manufacturing boom: There were job opportunities, families formed easily and people felt support from society. I have sympathy for Vance’s desire to “put people to work making real products for American families.”
The problem is that Donald Trump cannot bring those days back. And I suspect Vance is too smart to truly believe the former president could.
Oh, right, refrigerators:
It’s not just that economies have become too complicated to take apart and reassemble in some simpler, more desirable form. It’s also that American voters would never stand for it. To see what I mean, consider a talk that Vance gave last February in which he suggested that “economics is fake” — based on his experience owning a 40-year-old refrigerator.
“The refrigerator we had,” he told the audience, “you would put lettuce in the icebox and it would be good a month later. … You cannot at any price point buy a refrigerator today that can do that.”
During Vance’s more recent convention speech, the Lettuce Fountain of Youth surfaced on social media to much giggling — because it sums up both the hazy appeal and the implausibility of “Make America Great Again.” Yet there is some truth in Vance’s remark, which is more than a lament for the country’s lost manufacturing might. It’s also a complaint about the way society has become monomaniacally focused on consumer prices, to the detriment of many other things that make our lives better.
Ms. McArdle does some research on what you could buy from Sears back in 1966 and today.
However, with apologies to Steven Wright: I do not recommend you buy a heat pump and refrigerator and let them fight it out.
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