Lidia Bastianich’s most 5 budget-friendly Italian recipes

It goes without saying that Lidia Bastianich is a bonafide living legend. With numerous cookbooks, years of restaurant experience, endless television appearances and awards, plus a stunning personal story, Bastianich is a matriarch within the Italian-American culinary landscape — and at large.

When I spoke with Bastianich earlier this year, she spoke about the deep importance of immigrant communities, the ways in which her upbringing impacted her outlook and her cooking and the vast importance of varying cultures coming together, both at the table and in general.

“Food is a connection”: The legendary Lidia Bastianich on how immigrants built the flavor of America

Bastianich's recipes also happen to often be quite budget-friendly. Many Italian and Italian-American foods actually automatically fall into that genre, if you will.

"Cucina povera" , which translates to "kitchen of the poor," is a style of cooking that was developed by Italians who didn't have the means or the money to feed themselves extravagant meals, so they worked with the humblest of ingredients and tools in order to craft dishes that were filling, nutritious and economical.

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As food insecurity levels continue to rise, cooking with budget in mind is a smart move for everyone. Lidia's tried-and-true recipes offer some of the best that cucina povera has to offer.

Pasta e Fagioli

Lidia's iteration of the classic, rustic dish is lush with the traditional ingredients, like beans, garlic, rosemary and tomatoes — but comes together in only 30 minutes instead of the usual, longer time. She also recommends optionally mashing some of the beans to help diversify the texture, which could help it veer closer to stew than soup. You can also opt to add meats or other proteins, if you'd like, or omit the ditalini if you want to go carb-free. Conversely, swap in some pastina in its place.

Minestrone

Lidia's version of the other classic Italian soup is a winterized version with green split peas, cabbage, squash and kale, but you can instead use whatever veggies you have on hand or tweak the inclusions seasonally.

This version also starts with pancetta, but you can certainly omit if you want to go vegetarian or conversely, use bacon or guanciale instead. Just don't forget lots and lots of grated cheese on top! Lidia recommends grana padano or pecorino, but locatelli or parm. would obviously work, too.

Baked Ziti

It's impossible to go wrong with any baked pasta dish, but baked ziti might in a category of itself own.

Lidia also adds eggplant, ricotta and fresh basil to the list and swaps mozzarella for provolone, but you can certainly go classic with shredded mozzarella if you prefer, use dried basil in stead of fresh, or omit the eggplant, if you'd rather. Lidia's version includes a super-quick, uber-simple marinara, too, but you can feel free to use your favorite homemade sauce recipe or whatever you have on hand.

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Zucchini and country bread "lasagna"

The fascinating, unique application of "lasagna" is an amazing way to use both bread and zucchini. You can also use other squash or even eggplant instead. This is also a great gluten-free option with no pasta in sight. Use whatever tomato sauce and grated cheese you like or add in some shredded mozzarella for a cheesier experience. The dish comes together in no time and calls for less than eight ingredients!

Spaghetti and roasted cherry tomato sauce

It doesn't get much better than a classic spaghetti and tomato, but here, Lidia turns cherry (or grape) tomatoes into a sauce on their own accord. The tomato meld with pecorino, parsley and bread crumbs before being tossed with al dente, hot spaghetti and lots of basil.

You'll be amazed by the simplicity of this one — and then reach for seconds.

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Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles evacuated; Paris under terror alert

Two of France's biggest cultural landmarks and tourist attractions, the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Palace of Versailles, were evacuated on Saturday in response to alleged bomb threats, according to CBS News. The French government has put the entire nation on high alert after a teacher was fatally attacked in the northern city of Arras by a suspected Islamic extremist.

Paris police told CBS that officers had searched the entire Louvre Museum, most of which is a former royal palace on the banks of the Seine, after museum officials received a written bomb threat. No device was found and no one was injured, but the scene was dramatic: A police cordon was set up around the entire complex, alarms rang out and hundreds of visitors and staff members were rapidly evacuated from the museum's various buildings and annexes, along with the shopping center beneath the Louvre's central pyramid.

The Louvre website posted a statement on Saturday reading, "For safety reasons the museum is closed. People who booked a ticket for today will be reimbursed. We apologise for any inconvenience caused and thank you for your understanding."

The former royal palace at Versailles was also closed and under evacuation after a similar bomb threat, according to French national police. CBS reported that police were still conducting a search of the palace and its famous gardens.

The French government has deployed 7,000 troops as the perceived threat of terrorism rises in the wake of the stabbing in Arras and heightened tensions caused by the conflict in Israel and Gaza.

Overloaded Gaza hospitals short of power, fuel, medicine; may be forced to shut down

Palestinian health officials told CNN on Saturday that Gaza hospitals are struggling to deal with large numbers of casualties from Israeli attacks and are beginning to "lose their clinical, pharmaceutical and fuel capacities.”

Dr. Ashraf Alqudera, a spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Gaza, told the network, “We have a moral and human responsibility to treat the wounded and sick under all circumstances. We appeal to all parties to speed up the entrance of medical supplies to hospitals before it's too late.”

Dr. Khalil al-Dekran of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the Gaza community of Deir al Balah told CNN that the hospital was now relying for power entirely on a generator that only had one or two days' worth of fuel available. Without more fuel, the doctor said, all electricity would be shut down and emergency services and surgery would no longer be possible.

Al-Dekran said the hospital had treated more than 1,300 injured civilians, and about 350 had died there. He claimed that Israel Defense Forces have deliberately targeted civilian ambulances, an allegation also made by Alqudera. CNN reported that it could not confirm those allegations.

Gaza humanitarian crisis is “dire” under Israel’s blockade — and rapidly getting worse

International aid groups are warning that they cannot deliver food and other basic services to people in the Gaza Strip and that a "dire" humanitarian crisis is set to worsen.

International aid groups provide food and other means of support to about 63% of people in Gaza.

Israel stopped allowing deliveries of food, fuel and other supplies to Gaza's 2.3 million residents on Oct. 10, and is reportedly preparing for a ground invasion.

On Thursday, Israeli military officials told the U.N. that they had ordered the "entire population" of northern Gaza, roughly 1.1 million people, to "relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours” in anticipation of likely Israeli military operations. “The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement, appealing “for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded" in order to avoid transforming "what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”

Trump, Netanyahu and Israel: Orange man-child embarrasses us all over again

I am a scholar of peace and conflict economics and a former World Bank consultant, including during the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel.

International aid groups now face the same problem in Gaza that local businesses and residents have encountered for about 16 years: a blockade that prevents civilians, and items like medicine, from easily moving into or out of the enclosed area, roughly 25 miles long. That 16-year blockade did not apply to the food and fuel that groups brought in to Gaza.

Now, it does.

Gaza's blockade and economy

Gaza is about the size of Philadelphia and requires trade with different businesses and countries in order to maintain and grow its economy.

But Gaza is heavily dependent on foreign aid.

International aid groups now face the same problem in Gaza that local businesses and residents have encountered for 16 years: an Israeli blockade that prevents civilians, and most consumer products, from moving in or out.

This is partially the result of Israel setting up permanent air, land and sea blockades around Gaza in 2007, one year after Hamas rose to political power. Egypt, which borders Gaza on its southern end, also oversees one checkpoint that specifically limits people coming and going.

While Israel has granted permits to about 17,000 Gaza residents to enter and work in Israel, the food, fuel and medical supplies that people in Gaza use all first pass through Israel.

Israel controls two physical checkpoints along the Gaza border, which monitor both the entry and exit of people and vehicles. Israel limits the kind and quantity of materials that pass into Gaza, and the blockades generally prohibit Gazans who do not have work permits or special clearance — for medical purposes, for example — from entering Israel.

Israel's restrictions through the blockade intensified since Hamas' surprise attack on 20 Israeli towns and several military bases on Oct. 7, in which at least 1,300 Israelis were killed — most of them civilians — and dozens more were captured as hostages and taken into Gaza. Israel then announced a broad blockade of imports into Gaza, preventing all food, fuel and medical supplies from entering the region.

Gaza's isolation

The Palestinian enclaves of West Bank and Gaza — which are generally lumped together in economic analyses — both have small economies that run a massive deficit of $6.6 billion each year, as the value of the imports they receive greatly outweighs the value of the items they produce and export.

More than 53% of Gaza residents were considered below the poverty line in 2020, and about 77% of Gazan households receive some form of aid from the U.N. and other international organizations, mostly in the form of cash or food.

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Gaza's weak economy is caused by a number of complex factors, but the largest is the blockade and the economic and trade isolation it creates.

For the average Gazan, the blockade has several practical effects, including people's ability to get food. About 64% of people in Gaza are considered food insecure, meaning they do not have reliable access to sufficient amounts of food.

Food, as a percentage of Gaza's total imports, has skyrocketed by 50% since 2005, when Israel first imposed a temporary blockade. And the amount of food the West Bank and Gaza actually produce has fallen by 30% since then.

It is hard for Gaza to produce significant amounts of food within its own borders. One factor is that Israeli airstrikes hit Gaza's only power generation plant and main sewage treatment plant in 2008 and again in 2018. These attacks resulted in the spread of sewage waste on land and in the water, destroying farmlands and food crops and threatening fish stocks in the ocean as well.

The U.N.'s role in Gaza

Gaza's weak economy and isolation because of the blockade mean that it relies heavily on international aid organizations to provide basic services to residents. The biggest of these aid groups in Gaza is the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, also known as UNRWA.

Today, UNRWA is the second-largest employer in Gaza, following Hamas. It provides the bulk of the education, food aid and health care services for people in Gaza, in addition to 3 million other people registered as Palestinian refugees who live in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank and other places.

Over time, UNRWA has evolved into a kind of parallel government, alongside Hamas, which Israel, the U.S. and other countries have designated as a terrorist organization.

UNRWA funds and runs a network of 284 schools in Gaza alone, employing more than 9,000 local people as staff and educating more than 294,000 children each year. It also runs 22 hospitals in Gaza that employ almost 1,000 health staff and has 3.3 million patient visits per year.

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Its schools are converted into humanitarian shelters in times of crisis, such as the current war. People can go to those schools to get clean water, food, mattresses and blankets, showers and more.

The number of people in Gaza who are displaced from their homes has quickly risen over the last few days, totaling more than 330,000 by Thursday. Over two-thirds of these people are staying in UNRWA schools.

A complicated U.S. relationship

The U.S. has historically been the single-largest funder of UNRWA, a U.N. agency that relies on governments to support its work. The U.S. gave more than $500 million to Palestinians from April 2021 through March 2022, including more than $417 million that went to UNRWA.

U.S. support to UNRWA has fluctuated throughout different presidential administrations. Total U.S. aid to the West Bank and Gaza peaked at $1 billion in 2009, after Israel sealed off the territory. It reached $1 billion in annual contributions again in 2013, when then-Secretary of State John Kerry helped restart peace talks between Israel and Hamas.

In 2018, the Trump administration cut almost all of the money the U.S. typically gives to UNRWA, which had amounted to roughly 30% of the organization's total budget.

Defenders of the policy change cited UNRWA-published textbooks that allegedly glorified jihad. UNRWA, for its part, maintained that, as an outside organization, it could only use educational materials preferred by the country where it's working.

The Biden administration then restored funding to UNRWA and other organizations helping Palestinians in 2021.

Some Republican politicians have alleged that UNRWA has "cozied up" to Hamas. And an internal UNRWA ethics committee has accused top staff at the agency of "sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation … and other abuses of authority" that created a toxic work environment.

Meanwhile, since the war between Israel and Hamas began on Oct. 8, more than 1,500 Gazans have been killed and more than 5,300 injured, while Hamas attacks have killed more than 1,300 people in Israel and injured about 3,200 others.

International aid groups and EU officials have called for a humanitarian corridor to be set up in Gaza — meaning a protected path specifically for civilians, aid workers and necessary basic items to pass safely back and forth from Gaza to Israel and Egypt. So far, there are no clear plans for such a pathway.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Why does everyone want to date a “golden retriever boyfriend”?

Depending on where you look, there are many different ideas about what makes an ideal male partner. If you’re living in a romance novel, he could be the classic, brooding bad boy or the sweet, unassuming boy next door. If you’re lurking in dark corners of the internet, there’s alpha, beta and sigma males. On TikTok, male archetypes take an animal form. There’s orange cat boys, dobermans, huskies and an overwhelming favorite: golden retriever boys.

Golden retriever boys — also called golden retriever boyfriends, as the end goal is to date one — are a lot like the breed they’re named after. They’re universally liked and inoffensive, outgoing and follow you from room to room looking for attention, love and treats. Today, the hashtag “goldenretrieverboy” has over 86 million views on TikTok, but the term has been floating around the internet for as long as the past two years. Under the tag, you’ll find users proudly sharing videos of their golden retriever boyfriend excitedly greeting them as they get home from work, bringing them their favorite Dunkin’ order as a surprise and affectionately wrapping their arms around their significant others. In a world filled with toxic masculinity and conservatives lamenting the decline of alpha men, a golden retriever boyfriend doesn’t even know what the word “simp” means.

Our digital disillusionment with dating: When loneliness is both caused and fed by living online

Like any internet term, the golden retriever label can have a few meanings and is sometimes applied too liberally. Some videos focus on personality traits like loyal, energetic and friendly while others romanticize guys that just look like golden retrievers (otherwise known as blond men with soft smiles). On a post asking how to find a GRB from last month, a Reddit user aptly defined them as “a significant other that is easygoing and makes it fairly simple to maintain a happy and fulfilling relationship. He's soft, cheerful, a dummy, and loves his girlfriend.” Multiple people online also shared that they knew their partner is a golden retriever because he thanks them for doing things like cutting up an apple or making him a bagel. Other than being outgoing, upbeat and maybe a little stupid, the core characteristic of a golden retriever boyfriend is simply that he loves his partner — something that should be a bare minimum requirement.

In addition to the internet, you’ve definitely seen a GRB on-screen. There’s Mr. Peanutbutter on “Bojack Horseman,” who is literally a golden retriever, Lance the from gone-too-soon “The Other Two,” Jake Peralta from “Brooklyn 99” and Ken from “Barbie'' before he discovers the patriarchy/horses. They’re zealous and corny, but their pride in their partners is remarkable and unfortunately not something all people who date men can expect from them. Their appeal comes in their unguardedness and their ability to build their partner up. In K-Dramas, the “second lead” or the other man vying for the female lead’s heart is often golden retriever-like. While he doesn’t get the girl, he’s there as another option, frequently portrayed as too good for the female lead even.

It’s hard to resist the upbeat demeanor of a GRB, but it’s striking that the best people can hope for right now is a dog. Thanks to the internet, “golden retriever” has become a compliment in real life. “He’s like a golden retriever, and I love it,” a woman fittingly named Kat, said about an early love interest on a recent episode of “Bachelor In Paradise.” People want a partner who is supportive, enthusiastic and makes things easy, like this Reddit user who shared that she hopes to get back together with ex-golden retriever boyfriend while reminiscing about a time he was so excited to greet her that he face-planted on his way to her car. The love we have for this clunky, affectionate type of man is a rejection of traditional gender roles and flat out proof that Andrew Tate’s alpha male courses actually won’t help men attract partners.

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While someone of any gender could have a golden retriever boyfriend, online and on TV, they tend to be paired with a “black cat girlfriend.” Think of the type-A, workaholic Amy Santiago or how Barbie starts to think about death and her purpose. In contrast to her golden retriever boyfriend, a black cat girlfriend has real issues she’s grappling with. While the golden retriever boyfriend dances through life, the black cat girlfriend has some concerns. She likes to make a plan and she’s not afraid to get dark, but her GRB is there to cheer her up. The dynamic speaks to issues in modern dating, especially in relationships between men and women. Women are exhausted with putting up with emotionally unavailable men and the double standards from the outside world, so they are quick to idealize men who actually like them and show it. They’re also excited to be with someone unburdened by the pressures of the outside world. When the world demands a lot from women, who more or less can all be black cats sometimes, it’s nice to have a simple-minded boyfriend that manages to get a coffee order right.

Like the romanticization of the himbo before him, the popularity of the golden retriever boy is here to show us that wooing a potential love interest is a lot simpler than gender norms makes it out to be. You don’t need to “neg” someone and you don’t have to follow a strict set of guidelines about how to act around them since all people really seem to be looking for is someone who resembles a furry friend. I’ve found at least one GRB who plays fetch and another who bravely offered to pull out his girlfriend’s diva cup when she told him she couldn’t get it out as a prank.

They really are good boys, but I’m not convinced the ideal modern male partner should be on par with a dog.

about modern love

How to avoid “zombie” satellites causing atmospheric destruction? Send them to this ocean graveyard

In the U.S., the average person produces 4.9 pounds of trash a day. Multiply that by a population that has been steadily increasing for centuries, and the amount of garbage circulating within our planet quickly reaches astronomical proportions. A sunset stroll on many beaches around the world accompanied by the sound of crunching microplastics underfoot will reveal just how adept humans are at finding ways to dispose of their waste.

The trash problem here on Earth is at crisis proportions, and as we continue to expand our presence in the solar system, we're bringing our trash problem with us, threatening to bleed out far past the Earth’s atmosphere. Since space exploration began in the 1950s, countries have deployed thousands of satellites, rockets and spacecraft. Remnants of this machinery get left behind in orbit. Known simply as space junk, which is estimated to exist on the scale of millions of tiny and not-so-tiny objects in the Earth’s atmosphere and beyond.

That might not seem like a lot, relatively — after all, the solar system is bigger than any of us can wrap our heads around — but collisions among even fragments of space junk have the potential to cause catastrophic damage. As explained by a phenomenon in physics known as Kepler’s law, a single collision among space debris has the potential to set off endless additional collisions like a set of dominoes. This could trigger a severe problem known as Kessler syndrome, in which there could be so many chaotic colliding objects in orbit that it would wipe out many communications networks and could even render space travel impossible, essentially grounding humans on Earth indefinitely.

Thankfully, Kessler syndrome remains theoretical for now, but space junk collisions have already caused the destruction of a Chinese satellite in 2021 and a U.S. satellite in 2001. And the International Space Station (ISS) has had to fire off thrusters to move from the path of spiraling space junk twice this year. In fact, the ISS may one day itself become space junk.

As more and more satellites and other objects are launched into space, there has been a growing movement to ensure that the things orbiting our planet are properly disposed of. So where does a satellite go to die?

NASA's plan to crash and burn the ISS explained and what space commercialization means for science

When a satellite nears the end of its life, it is either sent outward to the “graveyard orbit,” past the geosynchronous region where most satellites orbit, or brought back down to Earth in a region known as the “satellite graveyard.” The idea is to not leave satellites just hanging around in space, said Carolin Frueh, Ph.D., an associate professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Purdue University.

Once an object ends its mission, it has five years to be disposed of.

“One of the problems, for example, is that the rockets if they stay in orbit, tend to be involved frequently in fragmentation events, either because they might spontaneously explode or they're hit by something and then explode because of remnant fuel,” Frueh told Salon in a phone interview.

Once an object ends its mission, it has five years to be disposed of, said Patrick Seitzer, Ph.D., a professor emeritus of astronomy at the University of Michigan.

“You’re supposed to boost it 300 kilometers into a graveyard orbit and then totally passivate it, meaning you drain all the fuel, discharge the batteries and cut the charging circuit so the spacecraft doesn't come back as a zombie spacecraft decades later,” Seitzer told Salon in a phone interview.

Larger objects like the ISS are guided back down to Earth through a controlled re-entry procedure. Several hundred spacecraft remnants have fallen into this area of the ocean since the space junk issue arrived on the space agency’s radar in the 1980s, Seitzer said. Through this process, anything roughly two tons or less will burn up in the atmosphere and not make it to land — although this depends on the object's compostiion — but objects larger than that will fragment on their way down, Frueh said. Those pieces will then rain from the sky in the most remote corner of the Pacific Ocean, 3,000 miles from New Zealand and 2,000 miles north of Antarctica.

“There is nothing there, [besides] a few islands and very few fishermen,” said David Whitehouse, Ph.D., an astronomer and author who has written about the satellite graveyard. “It’s absolutely in the middle of nowhere.”

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Also known as the “pole of inaccessibility,” or Point Nemo, this region is about four kilometers deep and home to sea cucumbers, coral branches and sea urchins, said Autun Purser, Ph.D., an oceanographer at the Alfred-Wegener-Institut in Germany. However, due to having very low flow conditions, marine life is relatively quiet in the area. Most of the seafloor in the region is made up of soft mud, so metal scraps or hard bits from any decommissioned satellites rust and fall apart over time if they’re not slowly buried, Purser said.

“If there are chemicals or radioactive materials, these could well be hazardous, but for most satellite falls, the impact is probably quite small,” Purser told Salon in an email.

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NASA made plans to put the ISS, which is the size of a football field, to rest in the Pacific Ocean in 2031, following a call to action from other space agencies. The European Space Agency (ESA) is also working to reel in the largest satellite in orbit, Envisat, after it lost contact with the control team on Earth in 2012.

“There are also missions underway for active debris removal, where you go up and you snare and grab onto a piece of debris and do a controlled reentry into the Earth's atmosphere,” Seitzer said.

In February of this year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) established the Space Bureau to better regulate a fast-growing satellite industry. Last week, the agency issued its first fine to Dish, charging the company $150,000 for failing to deorbit an old satellite in accordance with its policy. In the same month, U.S. Senators introduced the ORBITS Act to set up infrastructure to manage growing loads of space junk.

As Sen. John Hickenlooper from Colorado, one of the leaders to introduce the bill, said: “Because of the threats from debris already in orbit, simply preventing more debris in the future is not enough.”

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Yet while it’s necessary to throw away our space trash responsibly, it’s also important to consider the environmental impact that these objects have when they burn up through the atmosphere on the way down, Frueh said. “One of our concerns is actually the environmental impact on the atmosphere that is created in the process when those materials have burned up or partly burned up,” she said.

The Space Surveillance Network is currently tracking 50,000 objects orbiting Earth but that could increase to some 400,000 satellites if private companies like SpaceX and Amazon continue launching new ones in the coming years, Seitzer said. Just like on Earth, junk, debris and larger remnants of machinery in space have to go somewhere.

“The unknown composition of some satellites might be worrying, but it is definitely better for the more basic, ‘big metal lumps’ to land here than hit land at speed, where they may cause damage,” Purser said. “Trash is never ‘nice,’ but if it has to go somewhere, here is probably a good choice.

about space junk

What we talk about when we talk about terrorism — in Israel and right here at home

Was the attack by Hamas militants on Israel last Saturday terrorism, or was it an act of war? More than 1,300 Israeli citizens were killed in the Hamas attack. By far the majority of those killed were civilians, including babies, young children, women and the elderly. Using the yardstick of who was killed alone, the Hamas attack was outside the rules of war. Under international treaties, targeting civilians is a war crime. Looked at from here, or from Israel, or from any nation that considers itself a part of the civilized world, the Hamas attack was terrorism, pure and simple.

The attack differed from what we think of as terrorism only in scale — by the number of Hamas militants engaged in the attack, how well they were organized, and how many were killed. President Biden and others have said that the Hamas attack was the bloodiest single day for Jews since the Holocaust, and that appears to be true. But thousands of Israelis have been killed in terrorist attacks over the last 50 years. I couldn’t find a figure for the total number of Israelis killed by terrorists, but a story in the Jewish Telegraphic Agency estimated that more than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the Second Intifada alone, which lasted from late 2000 to mid-2005.

Trump, Netanyahu and Israel: Orange man-child embarrasses us all over again

I was assigned by the Village Voice to travel to Israel in November of 1974 to cover a war that was predicted to start over the signing of the Golan peace accords. That war didn’t happen, so there I was in Israel having already spent about a thousand dollars of the Voice’s money on plane tickets and a hotel, and I had nothing to write about. Or so I thought. A few days after I arrived in Israel, there was a terrorist attack along Israel’s border with Lebanon. A friend and I drove up there a few hours after it happened. Members of a Druze family living on a farm close to the border had been murdered by a lone Palestinian who sneaked through the border fence and shot them. So I wrote a story.

Then I started seeing in Israel what wasn’t being reported in the United States – terrorist attacks of one kind or another happened all the time. A half-dozen terrorists came ashore in Tel Aviv one night in a rubber boat and were killed by the Israeli police before they could launch their attack. Another night, a terrorist threw three grenades inside the Chen Cinema on Dizengoff Square. He killed two patrons and injured 58 more. He had concealed the grenades by taping them to his chest under his jacket, and from that night forward, there were body searches at every cinema or other theater in Israel. A friend and I had intended to go to the showing at the Chen Cinema the same night that the terrorist blew up three grenades, using another to kill himself. Only a last-minute invitation to dinner at my friend’s girlfriend’s apartment saved us from being there.

A few weeks later we were in Beirut, where radical Palestinian groups were attacking each other with bombs and machine guns nightly. Terrorism wasn’t limited to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. I wrote a story in the Voice called, “Holy War and Ritualistic Murder” about what I came to see as a war of terrorism against Israel and also between splinter groups among Palestinians. Dozens were being killed, largely out of sight of the rest of the world because one death here or two deaths there didn’t amount to enough carnage to get in the newspapers.

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But it was a war, and a long one. Recently, I found a site called Jewish Virtual Library that listed all deaths in Israel from terrorist attacks, going back to 1994. I didn’t go through the entire list and count the bodies, but there were more than a thousand. A partial list from the Jewish Virtual Library:

On Nov. 30, 1994, Liat Gabai, 19, was axed to death in the center of Afula.
On Oct. 19, 1994, 21 Israelis and a Dutch national were killed by a suicide bomber on the No. 5 bus on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.
On Oct. 9, 1994, two people were killed in downtown Jerusalem in a terrorist attack. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On April 6, 1994, eight civilians on a bus in the center of Afula were killed in a car bomb attack. Hamas claimed responsibility.
In all, from 1993 to 1999, 43 Israeli civilians were killed in terrorist attacks and 567 were wounded.
On Nov. 21, 2002, 11 people were killed and 50 were wounded by a suicide bomber on the No. 20 Egged bus in Jerusalem.
On Oct. 21, 2002, 14 people were killed and 50 were wounded when a car bomb was detonated next to the No. 841 Egged bus from Kiryat Shmona to Tel Aviv. Islamic Jihad claimed credit.
On Sept. 19, 2002, seven people were killed and 70 were wounded by a suicide bomber on the Dan Bus No. 4 in Tel Aviv. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On July 21, 2002, nine people were killed and 85 were wounded when a bomb went off in the cafeteria in the Frank Sinatra student center on the Hebrew University’s Mt. Scopus campus. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On July 16, 2002, nine people were killed and 20 were injured in a terrorist attack on Dan bus No. 189. Hamas terrorists were wearing Israel Defense Forces uniforms and opened fire on the bus with automatic weapons.
On March 31, 2002, 14 people were killed and over 40 injured in a suicide bombing in the Matza restaurant in Haifa. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On March 27, 2002, 30 people were killed and 140 were wounded in a suicide bombing in the Park Hotel in the coastal city of Netanya, in the midst of the Passover holiday. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Oct. 4, 2003, 23 people were killed, including four children, and 58 were wounded in a suicide bombing carried out by a female terrorist from Jenin in the Maxim restaurant in Haifa. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
On June 11, 2003, 17 people were killed and over 100 wounded in a suicide bombing on the Egged bus No. 14 on Jaffa Road in the center of Jerusalem. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On March 5, 2003, 17 people were killed and 53 wounded in a suicide bombing on the Egged bus No. 37 in the Carmel section of Haifa. Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Jan. 5, 2003, 23 people — 15 Israelis and eight foreign nationals — were killed and 120 were wounded in a double suicide bombing near the old Central Bus Station in Tel Aviv. A Palestinian terrorist splinter group aided by Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
On March 14, 2004, 10 people were killed and 16 wounded in a double suicide bombing at Ashdod Port. Hamas and Fatah claimed responsibility.
On Jan. 29, 2004, 11 people were killed and more than 50 wounded, 13 of them seriously, in a suicide bombing of the Egged bus no. 19 in Jerusalem. The Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Hamas claimed responsibility.
On Feb. 25, 2005, five people were killed and 50 wounded by a suicide bomber at the Stage club in Tel Aviv. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
On April 17, 2006, 11 people were killed and over 60 wounded in a suicide bombing during the Passover holiday at the Rosh Ha’ir shawarma restaurant, near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv. Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.
On March 6, 2008, eight students in Jerusalem were killed when a terrorist armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle walked into the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva and opened fire in the library where about 80 people, mostly teenagers, and teachers, were gathered for religious study.
On July 2, 2008, three women were killed and another 50 people were wounded in a terror attack in Jerusalem by a terrorist driving a bulldozer who plowed into cars, buses and pedestrians on Jaffa Road.

Were you aware of any of these terrorist attacks in Israel — which, taken cumulatively, caused the deaths of more Israelis than the total killed last Saturday? I wasn’t — and, generally speaking, because of my interest in Israel and in the military, I pay quite a bit of attention to what goes on over there.

What does this say about us, that we missed the level of tragedy endured over the decades by the Jewish people of Israel? Does one attack have to kill so many to get our attention?

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And then there is our own country. The Anti-Defamation League reported in February of this year that 25 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks in 2022, nearly all of them by white supremacist extremists. But that figure does not include the 19 children and two teachers killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May. According to Education Week, there were 51 school shootings that resulted in deaths or serious injuries last year. A total of 40 people were killed, 32 children and eight adult school employees.

Must a mass shooting have a political purpose or a connection to extremism to be a terrorist attack? The number of children killed with firearms in the U.S. in 2021 was three times the number of Israelis killed by Hamas last Saturday.

Which raises a question: Must a school shooting, or any other shooting for that matter, have a political purpose or a connection to extremism to amount to a terrorist attack? Here is another figure for you: Axios reported on Sept. 17 that there have been more than 500 mass shootings so far this year in the U.S., defining that term as any shooting in which more than four people are killed or wounded, not including the shooter. There were 645 mass shootings last year, and 689 in 2021, according to the authoritative Gun Violence Archive.

According to a recent study by KFF, one in six Americans has personally witnessed someone being shot. Firearms cause the most deaths among children — more than cancer, car accidents or any other cause. According to the journal Pediatrics, in 2021, the most recent year for which there are figures, 4,752 children died from being shot. According to Pew Research Center, gun deaths among children were up 50 percent between 2019 and 2021. In other words, the number of children killed with firearms in the U.S. in 2021 was more than three times higher than the number of Israelis killed by Hamas last Saturday.

Those are the numbers. But we are talking about children here. We are ignoring the deaths of innocents among us, just as we have ignored the deaths of innocents in Israel over the years.

If we define terrorism as the killing of civilians outside the rules of war, which is how the Hamas attack on Israel is being defined, and we add the killings in this country by white supremacists and other extremists to the number of mass shootings we have every year, including school shootings, then we cannot avoid the conclusion that terrorism is happening practically every day right here in the United States of America. We are a nation of 330 million with more guns than people, and we are paying a steep price for that fact. We don’t need Hamas to attack us for thousands to die. We are doing it to ourselves.

on the war in Israel and Gaza

Expert sounds alarm as Texas book bans grow: These efforts are “well-organized and well-funded”

Local book bans in Texas are gaining momentum after a new law started restricting student library book choices in the state, according to a new report by The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.

In one district, at least 19 titles were banned, which included popular books by Dr. Seuss and Judy Blume. Katy ISD implemented broader criteria for books to be pulled for review this school year, now including "nudity" in the definition of inappropriate material.

School officials in Katy recently bought $93,000 worth of new library books and immediately placed them in storage for assessment by an internal committee, The Tribune reported. The district then banned 14 titles.

In the Hamshire-Fannett independent school district, an eighth-grade teacher was fired after assigning an illustrated adaptation of Anne Frank’s diary to her middle school class.

The graphic novel adapts the diary of 13-year-old Anne Frank, in which she recounts her experiences hiding from the Nazis. This version also includes descriptions of “Frank’s attraction to other girls as well as her clinical descriptions of her private parts,” The Tribune reported.

The book, although not approved as part of the district’s curriculum, was incorporated into a reading list that was sent to parents at the beginning of the school year.

Then, Friendswood Christian School canceled its popular Scholastic Book Fair fundraiser, informing parents that it was aimed at books featuring LGBTQ+ themes and characters.

“The book fair is one of our biggest fundraisers, but unfortunately, we have seen more and more books that promote and support LBGTQ+ views,” the school wrote in a letter to parents obtained by ABC13 in Houston.“We’re at a crossroads where we share different values and beliefs, especially when it comes to exposing young children to adult topics. Friendswood Christian School is a private institution devoted to creating a complete learning environment for children by incorporating Christian principles into the academic framework.”

"Statewide book bans" are coming to Florida's classrooms, enforced by the far right

In recent years, the movement to ban books has been accelerating throughout the United States, notably in states led by Republican administrations. It has become a prominent focus of religious-political activism.

“The majority of the books being censored right now are books focused on diversity/BIPOC and LGBTQ+ books—in other words, books about those who are already marginalized, vulnerable and whose stories have been silenced for far too long,” Michelle Martin, a youth and children’s services professor at the University of Washington, told Salon. “When white supremacy wins these fights, all of our children lose.”

Martin pointed to teacher turnover being “exceedingly high right now,” and noted that the pandemic has played a significant role in contributing to this issue. However, when teachers are being fired because of content in a book, “it sows fear in other teachers that makes it harder to teach,” she added.

“Those states that are exacting retribution on teachers and librarians for book content will soon find homeschooling necessary because no one will dare to go into a teacher education program, knowing that on the other end of that degree will be hostility,” Martin said. “Teachers are hired for the expertise they bring to classrooms; parents should let them do their jobs.”

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In 2021, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed legislation that significantly restricts how educators can address topics concerning race and gender. Texas has taken the lead in book bans, surpassing all other states, having banned 438 books in its schools last year.

The American Library’s Association Office for Intellectual Freedom recorded 1,269 demands to censor library books and resources in 2022, marking the highest number of attempted book bans since ALA began compiling data about censorship in libraries more than two decades ago.

Among these titles, the overwhelming majority were works authored by or related to LGBTQ+ community or by and about Black people, Indigenous people and people of color, ALA found.

“Limiting access to books that give children both mirrors that reflect their own background and windows that help them understand the lives of people who don’t look or live like them narrows their thinking and stunts their ability to empathize with other people,” Martin said. “Also, the literacy statistics across the country show that too many American children are not learning to read efficiently; taking books out of libraries or off of classroom reading lists that could appeal to particular readers (as graphic novels often do) also means that some children won’t learn the content of important histories, as Anne Frank’s story is.”

These efforts are making American children “dumber”, she added, suggesting that education should teach children critical thinking skills and also expose them to people, histories and cultures that are different from their own.

“Given where we are educationally in comparison to other developed nations, that is a backward direction we cannot afford,” Martin said.

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Local censorship initiatives are growing amid ongoing legal battles regarding a Texas law mandating that booksellers rate public school library books based on appropriateness before selling them to schools.

A library material vendor cannot sell library materials to a school district or open-enrollment charter school unless the vendor has “issued appropriate ratings regarding sexually explicit material and sexually relevant material previously sold to a district or school,” according to the legislation.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Alan Albright issued a written order temporarily blocking the law, saying it "misses the mark on obscenity with a web of unconstitutionally vague requirements."

One week later, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the judge's decision, temporarily enabling the law to be enforced as the court reviews the case, with proceedings scheduled for later this month, The Tribune reported.

During the 2022-2023 school year (from July 1, 2022, to June 31, 2023), PEN America documented 3,362 instances of book bans in U.S. public schools and libraries. These bans led to the removal of 1,557 unique book titles, impacting over 1,480 authors, illustrators, and translators.

These bans are proliferating through organized campaigns by a vocal minority and increasingly, due to pressure from state legislation, reflecting a growing trend of censorship. The authors targeted in these bans were predominantly female, people of color, and/or LGBTQ+ individuals, PEN America found.

“These efforts to ban books are well organized and well funded,” Martin said. “Community members who value intellectual freedom and want students to be able to read widely need to organize, learn all they can about what intellectual freedom means in a democratic society, such as understanding the Library Bill of Rights and fight with the same fervor that the censors are fighting.”

about right-wing book bans

LeVar Burton replaces Drew Barrymore as host of National Book Awards Ceremony

Actor, author, podcaster and legendary "Reading Rainbow" host LeVar Burton will emcee the 74th National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner, the National Book Foundation announced on Friday. It's a familiar role for Burton, who hosted the event in 2019.

“I’m a big believer in the power of the written word,” Burton said in a statement, "and am proud to stand alongside the National Book Foundation to celebrate exceptional storytelling and the foundation’s mission to make books accessible to everyone, everywhere. It's an honor to return as host of the biggest night for books, especially in a moment when the freedom to read is at risk."

The news comes one month after the foundation dropped Drew Barrymore as its host following her decision to resume production of "The Drew Barrymore Show" amid the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and SAG-AFTRA strikes, both of which were ongoing at the time. A swift backlash to that decision led Barrymore to reverse course, but the National Book Foundation had already moved on. The WGA has since resolved its labor dispute with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers and ratified a new contract. SAG-AFTRA remains on strike. (Salon's unionized employees are represented by the WGA East.)

This is the latest hosting job that Burton has taken up. In addition to producing his podcast, "LeVar Burton Reads," Deadline reported in late August that Burton was on the verge of finalizing a deal to host a revival of "Trivial Pursuit" for The CW. Burton is best known for playing Geordi La Forge in "Star Trek: The Generation," a role he reprised in its spinoff "Star Trek: Picard." He was also a fan favorite to host "Jeopardy!" before Sony tapped Mayim Bialik and Ken Jennings as the trivia show's permanent co-hosts.

The National Book Awards Ceremony & Benefit Dinner, which will also feature Oprah Winfrey as a special guest, is scheduled to take place on Nov. 15 in New York.

Meghan McCain says she doesn’t watch “The View,” but misses the show’s wardrobe team

In a recent interview with The Messenger, Meghan McCain speaks candidly about her life after departing from her position as co-host of "The View," finding a way to diss the show and plug her new podcast in the same breath.

Saying she doesn't watch the show at all now because doing so would feel similar to looking at an ex-boyfriend's Instagram, she furthers that she has little time in her life to watch content of that nature, but does miss their wardrobe team, remembering them as being "very kind." Worth noting here that no one else from the show was described as such.

Making her point clear, she goes on to say that she's been listening to a lot of podcasts. A perfect segue.

Under her new Citizen Cain Productions banner, she's been readying her "Meghan McCain Has Entered the Chat" podcast since leaving "The View," and goes into the backstory there saying, "I was very resistant to do a podcast for a long time, it was an oversaturated market in a lot of different ways. But honestly, I had such a hard time finding political voices that really speak to me and with me."

Detailing her hopes for the show, which premieres on October 17, she says, "I want people on [who] I don't agree with too, that's part of it. I always keep emphasizing with our booker that this is a deeply respectful space, and I am not here to make anybody uncomfortable or scream at them or get in fights in a way. You could have heated arguments that are respectful, but I'm not here to make a spectacle. And I hope the more episodes come out, people will see that."

House GOP picks Jim Jordan for speaker, maybe. Or maybe not

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio won an internal vote for House speaker among House Republicans on Friday, although he remains a long way from actually taking the speaker's gavel. This comes only days after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., won an earlier vote only to withdraw earlier this week. According to CNN, Jordan, who currently chairs the House Judiciary Committee, won the nomination by a 124-81 vote over Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia, who announced his candidacy at the 11th hour Friday in an apparent effort to block the Ohio congressman. That suggests that 16 of the 221 Republicans in Congress were absent or did not vote.

CNN also reported that Jordan called a subsequent vote by secret ballot asking members whether they would support him on the House floor. That vote was 152-55, making clear that he remains well short of the 217 votes he needs to become speaker. Jordan then sent GOP members home for the weekend, hoping to "use the time to speak with his opponents and try to win them over."

House GOP in total chaos: So much for fascist order and discipline!

“I think we can unite the conference,” Jordan said Friday morning before the vote. “I’ve been saying this for a week, I think I’m one individual who can bring our team together and then help our team go tell the country what we’re doing and why it matters to them.” Reps. Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, Kevin Hern of Oklahoma and Nicole Malliotakis of New York, nominated Jordan during a Friday candidate forum, a source told The Hill.

With two of the 435 seats in the House currently vacant (one from each major party), 217 is a bare majority, meaning that Jordan can afford to lose no more than four Republican votes. Some GOP members apparently remain staunchly opposed to his candidacy. Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, for instance, told reporters Friday that there was nothing Jordan could do to win his support.

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Whenever a floor vote for speaker finally comes, all 212 Democratic members are expected to vote for their nominee, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Republicans who are reluctant to support Jordan may feel pressure from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed Jordan's bid last week. If Jordan, a staunch Trump loyalist and the founding chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, eventually becomes speaker, it would represent a major victory for the ex-president in the GOP's internal conflict, which has only intensified since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted from the role on Oct. 3.

about the GOP's deepening chaos

As Moms for Liberty spreads, so does school turmoil

Carl Kalauokalani has no children, no background in education and no experience in political or community organizing. Yet a year ago, the San Jose resident started the Santa Clara County chapter of Moms for Liberty, the far-right “parental rights” group stoking the nation’s red-hot culture wars.

Why? Kalauokalani, who works for a software support group and lives in one of the bluest counties in California, says he liked Moms for Liberty’s stated mission — the protection of “parental rights at all levels of government” — when he looked for a way to change “a dysfunctional education system.”

He’d heard stories. School libraries offering pornography. Educators trying to convince children their gender can be changed. Laws in the works to force parents to allow their children to transition or risk losing them. “What is being pushed in today’s classrooms,” Kalauokalani said, “is complete lunacy.”

Armed with such assertions, Kalauokalani and thousands of others have helped Moms for Liberty (also known as “Moms 4 Liberty” and “M4L”) spread from coast to coast. What began in Florida in 2021 with three conservative women (two former school board members from neighboring counties and a current school board member) now claims 130,000 members in 300 chapters in 47 states. Underscoring the nation’s deep divisions over race, sex and gender issues, Moms for Liberty, which started with school board fracases over mask mandates, is roiling communities large and small, red and blue, with vicious fights over what should be taught in schools.

Opposition is growing too. As Moms for Liberty has exploded across the country, so has its branding as a “non-partisan” group of “joyful warriors.” Reports that members engage in harassing critics, even threatening them, keep mounting. A GOP darling, its agenda includes filling school boards with conservatives, a boilerplate Republican strategy for winning wider elections. Under its “parents’ rights” banner, Moms for Liberty pushes core conservative policies: bans on public school education about sex, diversity, LGBTQ issues and the role of race and racism in society. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, an avowed conservative, was an early ally, codifying its positions into laws (most recently the “Let Kids Be Kids” laws, including a ban on all discussion of gender through the 12th grade).

Critics say Moms for Liberty (and similar parents’ rights groups it has spawned) has led to a craze in school book bans, whether a majority of parents want them or not. It links parents to booklooks.org, founded by a former Moms for Liberty leader, which rates books based on “inappropriate” passages. PEN America, which advocates for freedom of expression, found a 33% spike in school book bans in 2022-2023 (to more than 3,300 in total), when Moms for Liberty’s book campaign took off, over the previous school year. The Southern Poverty Law Center, the nation’s leading civil rights watchdog, has labeled Moms for Liberty “extremist,” a label that made headlines and cast a gimlet eye on the organization’s mom-and-apple-pie persona. Now the Heritage Foundation is suing the Biden Administration on Moms for Liberty’s behalf, looking for collusion between the White House and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Battle lines drawn, California, where Democrats rule, is leading the official opposition. On Sept. 25, Gov. Gavin Newsom approved a ban on banning textbooks for discriminatory reasons. The law quashes anti-critical race theory resolutions passed by school boards and imposes hefty fines when districts fail to use curriculum that aligns with anti-discrimination laws.

But most of the pushback on Moms for Liberty appears to be coming from the ground. Parents, school officials and community members are speaking out, saying members have bullied, doxxed (made private information public) and threatened those who’ve dared to challenge their positions. In Davis, California, the group has prompted a public outcry after being linked to bomb threats.

In the latest incident, on Sept. 25, officials received emailed bomb threats aimed at schools and the Yolo County library — the fifth such threat in weeks. Davis Police Chief Darren Pytel noted in a statement that the bomb threats began after a contentious Moms for Liberty meeting in August was halted at a local library. Hate speech in the bomb threats was similar to social media posts linked to Yolo Moms for Liberty, Pytel said.

“Although there is currently no evidence pointing to any involvement between local members and the threats,” the police chief said, “the correlation between the two cannot be ignored as part of the overall criminal investigations.”

Yolo County Moms for Liberty has condemned the bomb threats. As Beth Bourne, a group leader, said in a statement published by the Davis Vanguard: “The bomb threats are appalling. … They do not help the cause we are fighting for.”

Asked about the reports that Moms for Liberty members are bullying the public, Tia Bess, the group’s national outreach director, cried foul. In her experience, Bess said, Moms members have been intimidated and harassed, not the other way around.

“I had a progressive school board member call me a racial slur because I’m Black and lesbian,” said Bess, a mother of three children in Clay County, Florida. “I got called a token person who Moms for Liberty parades around because she has a special needs child.”

The labels are unproductive, said Bess, who calls herself a mom with “old-school, core conservative values.”

She added, “I just get tired of people getting caught up in labels and parties. At the end of the day, we care about our kids.”

But Liz Mikitarian, a retired Brevard County, Florida, kindergarten teacher and founder of STOP Moms for Liberty, says she tried seeking common ground with the group for a year. She posted comments on Moms for Liberty’s Facebook page. “I was looking for dialogue,” she said. “They weren’t interested.”

Mikitarian knew one of Moms for Liberty’s founders, Tina Descovich, who had been on the Brevard County school board before losing her seat in 2020. The connection didn’t help.

She says she attended increasingly unruly school board meetings as Moms for Liberty jelled. “They were saying they were seeing things in classrooms that were not going on,” Mikitarian said. When she objected, she said, things got ugly.

She says she was mocked and doxxed. “They started calling me a pedophile supporter. It was nuts. And I thought to myself: What is going on? Are there other people feeling this is a straight-out attack on public education? That’s when I started STOP Moms for Liberty.”

The group, she said, now has chapters in over 40 states. Unlike Moms for Liberty, STOP Moms is unincorporated and has no paid staff or funding. Its growth, Mikitarian said, has come through social media.

As Moms for Liberty “continued all these attacks across the country,” Mikitarian said, “people got wind of us across the country.”

The Contra Costa County chapter of STOP Moms formed in mid-August. Erica Dahl, a longtime Democratic activist who teaches pre-K to deaf and hard of hearing children, said she started the group when she saw that Moms for Liberty was becoming a disruptive, divisive influence.

Others felt the same. Dahl said the Contra Costa County group has nearly 200 members while the newly formed Alameda County chapter has more than 150. STOP Moms, she said, is joining with established LGBTQ and racial justice groups to fight Moms for Liberty with plans for specific actions later this year.

Moms for Liberty’s numbers keep growing. The group announces new chapters almost weekly. But whether these new chapters are all up and running or announcements of efforts to start chapters is unclear. The national organization did not respond to questions about what constitutes a chapter. Emails sent to 15 county chapters listed for California on the group’s website went unanswered.

Only Santa Clara County Moms for Liberty agreed to an interview — via emailed questions and answers.

Kalauokalani said the Santa Clara County chapter incorporated on Oct. 1, 2022. He won’t say how many residents have joined. But convincing Santa Clara County residents that the government is turning schools into transgender recruitment grounds may be a hard sell.

Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley and the richest county in California (home of Apple, Google, eBay and Stanford University), is known for its good schools. Not all of its districts are high performers, but it includes the state’s No. 1 ranked school district, Palo Alto Unified. Not to mention it is in the heavily Democratic San Francisco Bay Area (which includes the capital of “gay America,” San Francisco’s Castro district). In 2020, Biden won almost three-quarters of Santa Clara County’s vote.

Kalauokalani is no newbie to the county. He moved there from his native Hawaii 40 years ago. Still, he bristled when asked what impact his location — Silicon Valley — has had on his recruitment efforts.

“The broader question should be what impact the extreme left agenda is having on our kids and our communities,” he said. “Within the boards of our 31 school districts, I know of a half dozen members that are interested in seeing to the protection of parental rights. That’s a dismal number which we hope to see move in a positive direction in upcoming election cycles.”

George Santos calls Jewish man “human scum” during heated exchange on Capitol Hill

On Friday, Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y lost his temper on Capitol Hill during a heated exchange with a Jewish American man identified as Shabd Singh of Washington. In a clip of the event, Santos lashes out at the man — who has been described as being critical of Israeli policies — calling him "human scum."

At the start of the clip, Santos points out the man to officers in the building, saying that Singh accosted him while he had a two-month-old baby in his hands. Prior to this taking place, he'd been photographed leaving Tim Burchett’s office with this baby and, when asked if it was his, is said to have answered, "Not yet." So TBD on that.

George Santos just left Tim Burchett’s office with a baby in his arms. When asked if it was his baby, he said “not yet.” pic.twitter.com/QQsfPAo8hC

— Matt Rice (@matt____rice) October 13, 2023

"You came in my personal space yelling at me," Santos says to Singh further on in the clip, which can be seen below. Pointing his finger in the man's face, he asks, "What are you doing about terrorists destroying Israel? It is abhorrent that you are in this building stepping up for terrorists," calling him a terrorist sympathizer and human scum as he storms away.

In The Daily Beast's coverage of the event, they point out that Santos was "previously busted falsely claiming to be Jewish," and that Singh said the rep was essentially framing what he'd been saying as "some sort of antisemitic trope.”

Speaking to reporters shortly after, Singh summarized his reason for approaching Santos in the first place, saying, "You cannot weaponize Jewish pain to continue the mass murder of civilians."

Just now on Capitol Hill: George Santos has a yelling match with a man who’s here, calling the man “human scum,” screaming at the top of his lungs. Man says his name is Shabd Singh of Washington, a Jewish American who’s critical of Israeli policies. Video of the moment here 👇 pic.twitter.com/iZrTZWeg8v

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) October 13, 2023

Even colleagues have “never” heard of new Jim Jordan challenger as GOP speaker fight grows desperate

Rep. Austin Scott, a relatively unknown Georgia Republican who's served in Congress since 2011, announced Friday that he would pursue his party's nomination for House speaker. "We are in Washington to legislate, and I want to lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Scott is now the only challenger to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is making his second bid for the speakership after House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., won the nomination and bowed out of the race a day later earlier this week.

Despite Scott's decade-long stint in Congress, Insider reports that it appears that a number of people outside of his southern Georgia district, including his own colleagues, are unfamiliar with him. "Never! lol," one House Democrat told the outlet over text when asked if they'd ever heard of him. "We are busily googling Austin Scott right now…" another Democratic representative texted Axios reporter Andrew Solender. Scott currently serves on the House Intelligence, Armed Services, and Agriculture committees, and one of his most notable actions was voting against an objection to the electoral college results in Pennsylvania and Arizona on Jan. 6, 2021.

Scott also appears to be running primarily to prevent Jordan, whom he blames for denying Scalise the nomination, from obtaining the nomination himself. He told Punchbowl News Friday that he doesn't "necessarily want to be the speaker of the House" or think that "anyone can get 217 votes." The House has been without a speaker for 10 days following the representatives' vote — sparked by a push from vocal critic and Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla. — to oust Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif. from the role last week.

“Frasier” ended perfectly. Why go back?

Television’s Memory Lane has as many versions as there are Atlanta streets named Peachtree, with only a few of those causeways seeing heavy traffic. Avenues memorializing “Frasier” may not be among them, despite Kelsey Grammer's “Cheers”-spinoff being a ratings force in its day, snagging five consecutive years’ worth of best comedy Emmys and running for 11 seasons.

It also ended well in 2004, satisfying longtime viewers by leaving its characters in good places, especially Dr. Frasier Crane, who had long been unlucky in love and finally found a love match in Laura Linney’s Charlotte.

Our last glimpse of Frasier shows him choosing Charlotte over a TV show in a bigger market than his longtime home Seattle and choosing Chicago over Seattle or San Francisco — a flawlessly symmetric bow on a story that began long ago in Boston. Where’s the value in unpacking that?

The totally real "Frasier" reboot episode guide

Networks are perpetually giddy to answer that question. If “Will & Grace” can crawl out of the grave and “That ‘70s Show” can return as “That ‘90s Show,” there's no reason to assume the good doctor is immune to the affliction we'll call revivalitis.

But there’s a difference between breathing new life into a three-decade-old title and whatever awkward necromancy unnaturally extending the life of “Frasier” achieves without adding fresh layers to its eponymous figure. Remember how terrific “Murphy Brown” was for 10 seasons before it ended in 1998? What did you think of season 11, which ran in 2019? (Yes, there was season 11.)

This revivalitis outbreak may not be so forgettable, but it does rely on our affection for resuming familiar patterns. We rejoin our attentive therapist on his way to Paris, which he precedes with a stop in Boston to visit his son, Freddy (Jack Cutmore-Scott), last seen dutifully following the nerd map written into his DNA. Since then, Freddy ditched his parent-approved Harvard undergraduate track to become a firefighter — Mr. July on his department’s calendar, in fact — thereby disappointing his father.

This revivalitis outbreak may not be so forgettable, but it does rely on our affection for resuming familiar patterns.

Before we get into that dynamic, you may be wondering why the show is airing on Paramount+ instead of NBC or Peacock. While the original series premiered on NBC, “Frasier” was produced by Paramount, which now has a streaming service to feed. Thus, Grammer’s return to the field of psychiatry in some respect was probably inevitable. As for the ensemble’s other regulars, David Hyde Pierce opted to leave Niles Crane packed in amber. John Mahoney, who played Frasier’s father Martin, died in 2018.

Peri Gilpin is set to return as Frasier’s no-nonsense Seattle producer Roz, but by the time it happens, we may wonder what purpose it serves beyond reminding us that this new show has threads of connection to the old. (Bebe Neuwirth, who plays Freddy’s mother and Frasier’s ex Lilith, is also scheduled to drop by.) But we’re already getting these through the characters showrunners Joe Cristalli and Chris Harris have arranged around Frasier, which are basically new versions of the old gang.

Since Freddy and Frasier are estranged, and with Harvard in need of his magnificent insight and wit, Frasier decides to return to Beantown, triumphant. In the 19 years since we last saw him, Frasier became the host of a successful TV talk show, making him as recognizable Dr. Phil, minus the abusive trauma theater.

Toks Olagundoye as Olivia, Kelsey Grammer as Frasier Crane and Nicholas Lyndhurst as Alan in "Frasier" (Chris Haston/Paramount+)Joining Harvard’s faculty alongside his old friend, Alan Cornwall (Nicholas Lyndhurst), and Olivia Finch (Toks Olagundoye), the head of Harvard’s psychology department, allows him to be a better father to his son and remove whatever tarnish his talk show left on his intellectual credibility.

The new “Frasier” moves to the same structural rhythms as the old “Frasier,” which would be a comfort if we didn’t already have more than a decade’s worth of the character’s adventures to revisit whether via Paramount+ or Hallmark, where it lingers on by way of a syndicated afterlife.

But what's the value of recreating the same dynamics in the namesake character’s life without establishing new challenges for him? The revival forces us to ask that question, especially in the creaky two episodes currently streaming, directed by the legendary James Burrows. Before you watch those, you may want to revisit the two-part 2004 finale.

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Provided you remember “Frasier,” you might not need to. Crashing the Crane brothers’ highbrow sensibilities against their humble origins is the show’s comedic fuel, of which we’re constantly reminded in the first go-round by Martin, a retired cop, and Martin’s caretaker, Daphne Moon (Jane Leeves).

It's also the source of Frasier’s winning vulnerability, distilled by Grammer into a cocktail of haughty sangfroid, grumpiness and keen loneliness.

Frasier injected a similar energy into “Cheers” once he joined that cast in its third season. But when “Frasier” creators David Angell, Peter Casey and David Lee spun him off from said classic, they didn’t recycle the used clay that was Sam, Norm, Cliff, Woody and so on into Seattle counterparts.

Cristalli and Harris didn't follow that example. Niles’ son, David (Anders Keith), is essentially a combination of Niles and Martin’s wire-haired Jack Russell terrier Eddie instead of Niles and Daphne. He's all elbows, left feet and tail-wagging eagerness. Niles' sensible half shows up in Lyndhurst’s Alan, Frasier’s confidante providing the adult insight David lacks.

Jack Cutmore-Scott as Freddy Crane and Jess Salgueiro as Eve in "Frasier" (Paramount+Chris Haston/Paramount+)Jess Salgueiro’s Eve, Freddy's roommate, takes over Leeves’ dual purpose as a live-in reality check, with Olagundoye’s Olivia on Roz duty, which is to say she’s attractive and capable of wrestling Alan and Frasier into submission. All told, it’s the same show with one character in common who, like us, is looking and feeling older, except he’s back in Boston now, where the struggles he once had with his working-class dad resume with his working-class son.

Every Seattle resident will tell you the dreamy view from Frasier’s condo in those classic episodes is as non-existent as Café Nervosa. The producers’ efforts to tip their hat to the place resulted in some comedic mispronunciations of locales like Lake Chelan. It’s much easier to cultivate the show’s Ivy League bona fides by dropping lines such as, “Explain it to me like I’m a student at Tufts.”

It didn’t matter if the cast and writers didn’t quite nail Seattle as a character because the action revolved around Frasier and what he represented, especially as a figure straddling the end of the Clinton Era and the first four years of George W. Bush’s presidency.

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Frasier was and is the embodiment of the wine-swilling coastal elite clowned and vilified by conservatives from Rush Limbaugh to every Fox News pundit one can name. He drove a BMW, not a Volvo (still, the stereotype fits). Grammer is a lifelong Republican, but regardless of one’s politics, everyone laughed with and at his fussy therapist, and the empathy he engendered was nearly ubiquitous. Both then and now, the scripts allow for stillness, letting the audience marinate in a character’s sensitive insights and confessions between the zingers.

Like Frasier’s profession, this strategy is portable. But the audience has changed enough for the past version of the show to seem of its time even as the character remains timeless. The “Frasier” revival acknowledges its therapists’ part in our modern obsession with fame and fortune in the third episode, where we receive a glimpse of where his show began — as a serious healing endeavor — versus the audience-pandering vaudeville act it became in its final seasons.

The “Frasier” revival acknowledges its therapists’ part in our modern obsession with fame and fortune.

Frasier Crane is a man divided between his need for validation and his urge for refinement and solitude. Perhaps the most touching part of the 2004 finale arrives when Frasier closes the door on a man who has removed Martin’s beaten-up old lounger. He places his beloved Eames chair in its spot, sits down and quietly listens to the rainfall exactly where he’s always wanted to be.

A beat after we experience this satisfaction with him, Frasier makes a phone call we’re made to believe is launching his next chapter — in a new city, and with the fresh challenge of mounting a TV show. We can only imagine the possibilities that could have emerged from depicting the character’s steadfast standards butting against the crass, psychologically draining demands of a viewership-driven business. Instead, we’re invited to settle for a version of history repeating itself. Who knows how many people want to go down that road again?

The first two episode of "Frasier" are streaming on Paramount+.

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Ex-prosecutor: DOJ targeting freed fraudster a “reminder of Trump’s gross abuse of pardon power”

Less than five years into his 20-year sentence for orchestrating a massive healthcare fraud scheme, Philip Esformes was granted clemency by then-President Donald Trump and allowed to walk free. But his freedom is now in jeopardy after being thrust into a legal clash between two administrations, The Washington Post reports, as President Joe Biden's Justice Department seeks to retry him. The move is possible because the jury that convicted Esformes reached no verdict on six of the counts against him, including conspiracy to commit health-care fraud. Since Trump's clemency order didn't account for those charges, prosecutors say they can take Esformes back to court.

The extremely uncommon decision to retry a clemency recipient on hung charges presents another contention in the larger battle between the far-right, which touts claims of a "weaponized" government bent on attacking any associate of the former president, and proponents of law and order aiming to defend institutions of democracy against the consequences of Trump's presidency. In recent months, House Republicans held a hearing characterizing the case against Esformes as a political attack, while a number of Trump allies have taken to the media to lambast the DOJ. "In the annals of American history, no prosecutor has ever tried to reverse a presidential commutation in this manner,” co-wrote Matthew Whitaker, who was briefly Trump's acting attorney general, in a Fox News column.

Some former prosecutors counter, however, that a retrial presents an opportunity to right the wrong of Trump skirting long-standing protocols to grant Esformes freedom. If successful, the DOJ could send the nursing home executive back to prison and undo Trump's executive order. “It’s an opportunity for justice,” Paul Pelletier, a former federal prosecutor told the Post. “We use the law to hold people accountable as best as we can.” Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, who served on special counsel Bob Mueller's team, wrote that the renewed focus on Esformes is an "important reminder of Trump’s gross abuse of pardon power."

“Put up or shut up”: Ex-US attorney says Jack Smith may gain access to Trump’s “trove of secrets”

Special counsel Jack Smith, in a motion filed this week, asked a federal judge to order Donald Trump to provide formal notice of whether he intends to employ advice of counsel as a defense ahead of trial in his federal election interference case, signaling it's time for the former president "to put up or shut up," according to University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney. Smith explains in the motion that Trump and his lawyers have “repeatedly and publicly” stated an intent to use that defense and argues that the Dec. 18 exhibit list deadline should also be when Trump's legal team declares their trial plan.

In an analysis for MSNBC, McQuade asserts the importance of Smith's request because Trump's suggested defense would trigger a waiver of attorney-client privilege for him and require him to produce all documents connected to the advice. Using advice of counsel — also known as an affirmative defense — in this case would allow Trump to say he committed the alleged election fraud but assert his innocence on the grounds that he was only acting in good faith on the advice of lawyers. If successful, Smith's motion would force the former president to decide whether he will use that defense at trial or protect every document and communication sent between him and Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani and his other attorneys.

"Disclosure of those materials between Trump and his lawyers could be explosive because they may not only debunk the advice of counsel defense, but could contain other admissions that Smith could use at trial," McQuade writes, adding later, "Regardless of whether Smith’s motion succeeds, at some point Trump will have to decide whether asserting what may be a flimsy defense is worth sharing his trove of secrets."

Taylor Swift’s invisible merchandise: The era of surprise song collectibles

"This one's from '1989,'" Taylor Swift said to some 70,000 fans on the second night of her Eras Tour stop in Nashville. She was strumming her guitar and in the middle of a sportive preamble to the first surprise song of the show. "It's got kind of one of those choruses where you say the same thing over and over and over again." The crowd's screams drowned out everything after the first "over." The secret was up. The surprise song had been unveiled. The stadium was ready to sing "Out of the Woods" and to bask in the glory of their loot.

The songs must be different at every show unless she messes one up or they're from her latest album, "Midnights."

In an era of Eras literature, which has ascended to its own genre of pop culture commentary, it can be a little too easy to hitch a ride on the bandwagon of awe and adulation — to uncritically aggrandize a billion-dollar enterprise. I'll try to be a tad more circumspect in my deliberation of an Eras phenomenon that remains curiously under-analyzed despite having sparked a refreshing new frontier in the world of stadium tours: Swift's surprise songs couplet. (The preponderance of existing literature on the subject seems to consist of long song lists, in addition to one insipid Forbes exposition that rather misses the point.)

Before the 10th and final act of every show, Swift performs an acoustic set of two hitherto unannounced songs. She plays one on the guitar and one on the piano, usually by herself, and the rules are as follows: The songs must be different at every show unless she messes one up or they're from her latest album, "Midnights," because, as she said in Tampa, "'Midnights' is, like, the most accurate picture of my life to date."

As the most exciting part of her concert, they have become a phenomenon within a phenomenon. Preluded by winking, clue-laden speeches, the songs' unveilings elicit in both live and virtual audiences the sort of manic rush akin to that aroused by the unwrapping of Pokémon cards in the 2000s and baseball cards in the decades prior. (If you can't relate to either, then try to conjure some simulacrum of the sensation you had at age seven when you tore open a McDonald's Happy Meal in search of the surprise toy buried beneath french fries.) In this case, of course, the effusive, suspense-struck collectors aren't bro-ey or geeky gamers but teenage girls, young women and not insubstantial numbers of gay men. (The smattering of forbearing boyfriends, husbands and fathers steered into the stadiums by girlfriends, wives and daughters, tend to survey the spectacle with a sort of dizzy bemusement.)

The right is coming for Taylor Swift. They don't stand a chance

Swift, with her career-long penchant for surprising her fans, has played versions of this game before. During her Speak Now tour, she performed surprise cover songs. During her Red, 1989, and Reputation world tours, she played one surprise song per show; she'd also duet with celebrity guests. But the Eras World Tour has heralded paradigm shifts in Swift's music and mythology. Though she's occasionally brought out musical collaborators such as Phoebe Bridgers, Haim, Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, the tour features very few surprise guests. The truth is, she doesn't need them anymore. They'd sag the show's electricity. This time around, the surprise songs are the celebrity appearances, and their receptions appear louder and more enthusiastic than those with which past tours' cameos were greeted, even when they were from "A-listers" along the lines of Justin Timberlake and Jennifer Lopez.

Swift's once awkward, Anne Hathaway-esque persona, which one cultural critic accurately described as "puzzlingly uncool," has been vanquished by the sheer abundance of her first-rate compositions, the catharsis of hearing her songs live, and the nouveau, once-in-a-generation glamour with which she's concurrently flush. The significance of her pandemic-era albums "folklore" and "evermore" cannot be overstated: they've hoisted her from pop country darling to singer-songwriter maestro in the lineage of Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Paul McCartney.

Taylor Swift performs onstage during the "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Foro Sol on August 24, 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Hector Vivas/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

Every song in her discographical universe matters, and any surprise song she chooses will invariably educe outpourings of jubilation.

That Swift can distinguish with novelty every concert of an international tour, giving her fans, even ones who've already attended a show, something to await, react to and discourse upon, is something perhaps only she can pull off. Is there another contemporary stadium-touring artist who could generate indiscriminately voracious, 70,000-strong welcomes for two freshly performed songs, whichever ones they happen to be? Beyoncé's Renaissance Tour was attended not only by diehards but also by luminaries, dignitaries and dabblers — all of whom wanted to partake in something historic. Swift's shows, on the other hand, seem to be populated exclusively by her zealously loyal, catalog-fluent, mythology-attuned fanbase. Billy Joel, who is well-versed in the art of grading arena energy, said after one of Swift's Tampa shows: "The only thing I can compare it to is the phenomenon of Beatlemania." Perhaps it's because it is a much more sexless sort of mania that Swift's music and mythology have fostered a safer-seeming space for (a predominantly female) obsession — obsession with her past, her lovers, her friends, her feuds, her fixations and, above all, the peculiarly abyssal and still somehow confectionary quality of her songs.

A great many reviews of the Eras Tour referred to the show's opening song, "Miss Americana & the Heartbreak Prince," as a "deep cut" or "deeper album track" — highly amusing divulgences of ignorance from our commentariat. For Taylor Swift fans who tenaciously procure those infamously scarce golden tickets to her shows, there are no deep cuts, certainly no throwaway tracks. Every song in her discographical universe matters, and any surprise song she chooses will invariably educe outpourings of jubilation.

When she reaches into her 17-year-long, 250-song catalog, which, whether or not you think it's uncool to aver, will surely anchor the new millennium's Great American Songbook, she rarely fishes out a surprise song at random. Symbols and signifiers are essential to the Swiftian mythos, and the harder her fans scrutinize, the more so-called Easter eggs she seems to leave them.

Sometimes, the subtext is spelled out. On the first night of the tour, before performing "Mirrorball," which happened to be the first surprise song of the first stadium show she'd played in nearly five years, she said, "It was me writing about how badly I craved the connection that I feel from the care that you have directed my way. […] I was trying to think of sort of an eloquent way to say that I love you, and I need your attention all the time." (The song features her dreamily singing: "I'm still on that trapeze / I'm still trying everything / To keep you looking at me.")

Taylor Swift performs onstage during the "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Foro Sol on August 24, 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Hector Vivas/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)In Las Vegas, she said, "I aim to please, but I also get ideas from things," before introducing the night's first surprise, "Our Song," by saying it was in honor of a wish her opening act beabadoobee had expressed in an interview: "For beabadoobee's first show, I will play this specific song that she wants to hear. I wrote this for my 9th grade talent show." She followed that with a second surprise song similarly awash in explication: "Lana Del Rey put out a new album today," she said. "I want to do some promo for her and in honor of this brilliant album she just put out, I'm going to play "Snow on the Beach.""

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She played "False God" at MetLife ("I'm New York City / I still do it for you, babe") and "Gold Rush" in Philadelphia ("I see me padding 'cross your wooden floors / With my Eagles t-shirt hanging from the door"). On Mother's Day, she performed "The Best Day," a "Fearless"-era paean to her mother. And on April 29, she played "High Infidelity," which features the much-probed lyrics: "Do you really want to know where I was April 29th?" ("Like, I know it's a Saturday, but what's the date?" she asked Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium before starting the song. She said a bit more after "date" but screaming rendered it inaudible.)

The acoustic set most strikingly exhibits the shows' ingenious (and quite possibly ingenuous) veneer of intimacy.

Other times, the subtext runs deeper. She saved "Sparks Fly" for the announcement of her "Speak Now (Taylor's Version)" album, just as she saved "New Romantics" for the announcement of "1989 (Taylor's Version)." On Eras' opening night, she performed "Tim McGraw" as the second surprise song, which, as the first single she ever released, felt like a sort of baptism of the tour. It also happened to be the first single (allegedly) stolen from her by Scooter Braun and company. The last surprise song of her last U.S. show happened to be "New Year's Day," which is the last song off her "Reputation" album and thus the last song to have been (allegedly) stolen from her. When the news of her split with Joe Alwyn burst into public frenzy, she played "The Great War" and "You're on Your Own, Kid."

The acoustic set most strikingly exhibits the shows' ingenious (and quite possibly ingenuous) veneer of intimacy. While the stadium's proportions would seem to render any slivers of individuation downright impossible, there are two factors that work in Swift's favor. The first is digital life's reframing of celebrity proximity. Those who submerge themselves in unmediated star-to-fan selfies and videos can bring themselves to suspend the belief of alienation and replace it with impressions of coziness. The second is what music critic Amanda Petrusich identified as Swift's "'you guys' energy." While Swift talks to her fans throughout the show, she does so most chattily, most adorably, during the surprise songs set. And perhaps the most intimate of such moments is when she makes mistakes.

"I have been rehearsing this for weeks, OK? I have never ever gotten it 100% right," she said before launching into "Right Where You Left Me." When she did indeed bungle the lyrics a few minutes into the song, she burst out laughing and said, "What a fun time to just realize you're stupid."

Performing "Gorgeous" in Atlanta, she asked the audience to help her remember the order of the lyrics.

"Is it whiskey first or is it sunset?"

"Whiskey!" the audience roared.

"What a shame," she giggled. "I practiced this all day!"

In Kansas City, she started "Last Kiss" three times, and the audience, enchanted by her display of verisimilitude, grew louder with each recommencement. It is precisely this propensity to humorously and casually practice a song in front of 80,000 fans that makes Swift's persona so uncanny — and while she jauntily embodies a glossy showgirl for the show's more practiced segments, it is the moments (and sure, maybe they're affectations) of unguarded relatability that her fans prize above the rest.

Taylor Swift performs onstage during the "Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour" at Foro Sol on August 24, 2023 in Mexico City, Mexico. (Hector Vivas/TAS23/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management)

The surprise songs' online resonance has been immense. They became a weekly fixture of Twitter's top-trending items — each show would vault the likes of "Today Was a Fairytale" and "Teardrops on My Guitar" above political events like "Trump indictment" and "Mariupol bombing." Concertgoers compared their dyads and competed over which nights got more momentous surprises. They contemplated dream couplets (mine, I've decided, would be "Begin Again" and "Peace") and pored over the meanings of the selections bestowed upon them. The revelations would also unleash torrential displays of theatrical fury on social media by virtual spectators performatively "canceling" Swift or the song or even the city in which the song was performed because they missed the event and thus the magic of firsthand experience. GIFs of Harry Styles smashing James Corden's desk with a hammer were among those most often meme-ified in service of such rancor.

Can "stanning” be a form of recovery? Healing and trauma in fandom communities

The magic of the Eras Tour really comes down to this pronounced hunger for firsthand experience. At well over three hours long, the shows harken back to the days when big-budget Hollywood films trusted that audiences could sit still for more than 110 minutes. This pining for phenomenological stimulation seems almost reactionary. "When we're all on our phones, reality is the new entertainment," Kate Lindsay keenly noted on her Substack, "Embedded."

In his classic 1935 essay, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," Walter Benjamin lamented the shrinkage of original works of art, whose auras depended on their uniqueness. He distinguished the "cult value" of original art from the "exhibition value" of art that had been reproduced. "Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art," Benjamin wrote, "is lacking in one element: its presence in space and time, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be."

Now, there's almost no doubt that Benjamin would've been horrified at being brought into a discussion about Taylor Swift, if for no other reason than her exemplification of unprecedented scales of mass artistic reproduction and consumption. (I acknowledge this in an attempt to live up to my earlier promise of circumspection.) This being said, Benjamin was indeed struck by the difference between the stage actor, whose performance was tied to the bewitching power of his physical presence, and the film actor, from whose aura audiences were fundamentally estranged. "We know that the earliest art works originated in the service of a ritual — first the magical, then the religious kind," he wrote.

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In an age of plangent merchandising, mass duplication, and scandalous ticket resale prices wreaked by dubiously legal monopolies and the fecklessness of our regulatory agencies, Swift and her fans have managed to launch a project of highly coveted, literally nonmaterial collectibles. Rather than tradable cards, the objects relished, compared and hoarded are the distinct experiences of listening to songs from a musician's beloved catalog alongside tens of thousands of fellow congregants. And the congregants do so in the service of ritual, of the trance-like magic of being plunged into real-time evocation, nostalgia, and communion. Sound a bit cult-like? Well, behold the "cult value" that Benjamin feted!

Swift resumes touring in November. With 89 shows across three continents to go, and about 150 possible surprise songs (not counting repeats) left in the bag, the era of Eras collectibles prevails.

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Cannon abruptly shuts down hearing — accuses Jack Smith’s prosecutors of “wasting the court’s time”

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon rebuked the prosecutors in Donald Trump's federal classified documents case, accusing them of "wasting the court's time" on Thursday for making a sudden request to place partial restrictions on the lawyer for one of Trump's co-defendants.

According to The Guardian, Cannon abruptly postponed the hearing after receiving the request, which came after prosecutors had initially said they would not seek the lawyer's disqualification.

“I do want to admonish the government for frankly wasting the court’s time,” Cannon said, adding that she was "disappointed" that one of the prosecutors, David Harbach, had made the request without warning or citing supporting cases from her district, the southern district of Florida.

The hearing was the second of a pair of conflict-of-interest proceedings scheduled for Trump's co-defendants in the case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, to be informed of their attorneys' representation during the grand jury investigation of witnesses who could testify against them during the trial.

"I was wrong to be optimistic": Ex-prosecutor slams Cannon for considering Trump's "frivolous" suit

Trump and Nauta were first indicted in the case in June on charges pertaining to the alleged illegal retention of national security materials at Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort club and efforts to obstruct the government's retrieval of the documents. With the addition of counts against De Oliveira, they were charged with additional obstruction counts in a superseding indictment unsealed in July.

Prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith's office had requested the hearings for Nauta and De Oliveira's lawyers, Stanley Woodward and John Irving, respectively, over concerns that the attorneys may not be able to fully, and in their best interest represent the two defendants because of split loyalties between them and former clients.

The difficulty arose at the hearing for Nauta when prosecutors said they couldn't be sure of Woodward's approach to cross-examining "Trump Employee 4," who media has identified as Mar-a-Lago IT director Yuscil Taveras. Taveras, who Woodward initially represented during the grand jury investigation, chose to obtain new representation — not paid for by Trump's political action committee — when prosecutors informed him that he was a target for charges, ultimately leading him to change his sworn testimony.

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Prosecutors revealed at the hearing that they now intended to call Taveras as a witness, and told Cannon they believed Woodward should be prevented from participating in cross-examination, or that they should be permitted to question his credibility during closing arguments to the jury.

Prosecutors had previously outlined the cross-examination concern in court filings, but the request to exclude Woodward from closing arguments was new. It appeared to agitate Cannon, who questioned the prosecution about why it was being brought up for the first time at the hearing.

Woodward also raised an objection to the prosecutors' arguments, explaining that his prior representation of Taveras did not preclude him from attacking his credibility at trial and that he was not comfortable with Nauta deciding on a potential conflict of interest until his role at trial could be resolved. Woodward added that he was not prepared to argue that point because Harbach had just raised it in court Thursday. That assertion earned Cannon's agreement, especially after Harbach conceded that he did not have supporting cases from the eleventh circuit, which are binding.

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Earlier Thursday, during the first of the conflict-of-interest hearings, De Oliveira told the judge he wanted to retain his Trump PAC-funded lawyer, John Irving, despite Irving having represented three witnesses who could be called by the prosecution to testify against De Oliveira at trial.

“I want to continue to move forward with Mr. Irving,” De Oliveira told Cannon.

Irving's potential conflicts may have been less of a concern for De Oliveira because Irving had decided ahead of time that his co-counsel, Donnie Murrell, would handle the cross-examination of those witnesses.

At greater issue for De Oliveira appeared to be whether he entirely understood the full extent of what it means to retain a potentially conflicted lawyer as he struggled to explain in his own words what he grasped and earlier told Cannon he could read English better than he could write it. De Oliveira's language skills have been a hot topic for the Trump legal team for months, sources familiar with the matter told The Guardian.

about Judge Aileen Cannon

Peace, love and Ringo Starr: There’s joy and wisdom in his new EP “Rewind Forward”

During the Beatles’ heyday, Ringo Starr was credited with numerous turns of phrase that have entered the cultural lexicon. Such Ringoisms include such unforgettable expressions as “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.” Like some kind of rock ‘n’ roll Yogi Berra — the Major League Baseball catcher whose folky wisdom included “It ain’t over till it’s over” — Starr should rightfully be toasted as popular music’s King Malaprop.

Starr’s latest EP, "Rewind Forward," finds the famed musician in fine linguistic form yet again. “‘Rewind Forward’ was something I said out of the blue — it’s just one of those lines like ‘A Hard Day’s Night.’ It just came to me. But it doesn’t really make sense,” Starr remarked. “I was trying to explain it to myself, and the best I can tell you about what it means is: sometimes when you want to go forward, you have to go back first.”

An appreciation of Ringo Starr's dynamic and joyful musical gifts

As with his baseball forebear, Starr's observation has a certain kind of insight. For the drummer, who recently completed an autumn tour with the All-Starr Band, the EP’s title track underscores the wisdom inherent in the notion of “Rewind Forward.” Indeed, it’s a sentiment not unlike his late Beatle bandmate George Harrison, who astutely observed that “if you don’t know where you’re going / Any road will take you there.” Co-authored by Starr and Bruce Sugar, “Rewind Forward” finds Ringo singing, “What’s your name? / Where are you going to?” as he encourages the listener to embrace the communal value of peace and understanding.

The EP kicks into gear with “Shadows on the Wall,” composed by Toto’s Steve Lukather and Joe Williams. As with “Feeling the Sunlight,” written by Paul McCartney, “Shadows on the Wall” challenges fans to think deeply about our corporeal world and our places, however small, within its larger fabric. The EP concludes in fine style with “Miss Jean,” authored by Heartbreakers Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell. A standout rock ‘n’ roll track, the song features contributions from Ian Hunter, the Mott the Hoople frontman and former All Starr.

As with his previous EPs, Rewind Forward finds Starr reveling in the pure joy of music-making, working alongside such session regulars as Joe Walsh, Steve Dudas, Lance Morrison and Matt Bissonnette, among others. As always, the former Beatle elicits music fans to embrace the simple virtues of peace and love. Like his fallen Beatle comrade John Lennon, Starr recognizes that it’s a timeless message that never falls out of favor, yet always bears repeating.

reviews of Ringo EPs

“Highly problematic”: Ex-Trump CFO’s testimony abruptly halted after he’s accused of perjury

Former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg's testimony came to a screeching and unexpected halt Thursday afternoon just hours after a Forbes writer accused him of perjuring himself during an earlier day on the witness stand, The Messenger reports. Weisselberg testified Tuesday that he "never focused" on calculating the square footage of former President Donald Trump's three-floor penthouse in an effort to distance himself from Trump's false computation, which sized the property nearly three times greater than its actual square footage.

On Thursday, however, Forbes' senior editor Dan Alexander reported that emails and reporter notes not currently in the New York attorney general's possession contradict Weisselberg's testimony. "Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump’s apartment—and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was," Alexander wrote, adding that considering their discussions continued for years and the ex-CFO was very hands-on, "it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court."

Hours after the story's publication, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron convened privately with attorneys for both parties in a huddle but details of the discussion remain unknown. Weisselberg was excused for the day shortly after the meeting. A source close to the New York attorney general, who brought the suit against the Trumps, Weisselberg and another company executive, confirmed that her office is looking into Forbes' report. "Weisselberg testimony seems highly problematic-and the AG elicited evidence of his substantial monetary reasons he may have to tailor his story- he is still owed hundreds of thousands of dollars as part of his agreement with the Trump co," former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Weissman wrote of the revelation on X, formerly Twitter.

Trump, Netanyahu and Israel: Orange man-child embarrasses us all over again

It seems like only yesterday that then-President Donald Trump appeared before the Republican Jewish Coalition and referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as "your prime minister" despite the fact that, by definition, everyone there was American, not Israeli. It wasn't a slip of the tongue. Lamenting that American Jews tend to vote more often for Democrats, in the same speech he proclaimed that voting for them again “would cripple our country and very well could leave Israel out there all by yourselves" and then suggested that “maybe you could explain that to some of your people who say ‘Oh, we don’t like tariffs.’” This was happening at the same time as Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., was under fire from the right for suggesting that some American Jews have "dual loyalties," but somehow Trump didn't hear any condemnation from his fellow Republicans.

Omar was excoriated for tweeting that the Israel lobby was "all about the benjamins," but when Trump told a Jewish audience during the 2016 campaign that “you’re not going to support me, because I don’t want your money," that didn't cause the GOP to gasp in horror. As usual, if Trump says it it must be OK. (And let's note that Omar apologized in both instances. Trump has never apologized for anything in his life.)

It has always griped Trump that Jewish Americans didn't vote for him in large numbers, since he believes he has delivered more for them than any leader in the history of the world. He had tasked his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with solving all the problems in the Middle East which he apparently believed he'd done by moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and signing the Abraham Accords, a diplomatic normalization agreement between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. But in 2020, nearly seven in 10 Jewish voters went with Joe Biden.

From MAGA to Gaza: Trump's disorder engine has global consequences

That's not a huge surprise; Jewish voters have generally supported Democrats ever since pollsters first started tracking their votes in 1916. That's not to say there haven't been plenty of visible and influential Jewish Republicans, but in terms of overall voting patterns, the Democrats have been the political home of the vast majority of American Jews.

But in recent years, Israel has become a top-tier issue for Republicans — not so much because they care deeply about the fortunes of the Israeli people or the future of the Middle East, although some undoubtedly do. They are interested in Israel largely because the single most loyal faction of Republican voters, conservative evangelical Christians, are obsessed with it. As the Washington Post's Philip Bump reported, a poll by LifeWay Research "found that 80 percent of evangelicals believed that the creation of Israel in 1948 was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy that would bring about Christ’s return." Pastor Nate Pyle explained how that is supposed to work in simple terms:

What kick-starts the end times into motion is Israel’s political boundaries being reestablished to what God promised the Israelites according to the Bible.

The evangelical base loves Trump more than any other president ever, but not because he shares their beliefs. He obviously doesn't. And it isn't just because he signed off on the Federalist Society-endorsed Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade. They really love him for moving the embassy to Jerusalem, which they see as the first step toward Israel rebuilding the Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, which is understood as a necessary precursor to the End Times as prophesied in the Book of Revelation.

Trump was extremely angry that Netanyahu congratulated Joe Biden after the 2020 election, reportedly saying, "He was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him."

Needless to say, Donald Trump doesn't understand any of that, or or care. Someone told him that other presidents didn't have the guts to move the embassy, so he did it. But that move, along with withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by Barack Obama, definitely gave him credibility with right-wing Jews and the Israeli government, and Trump seemed to have a lovefest with Netanyahu throughout most of his presidency. Then things went off the rails.

It's been reported earlier that Trump believed that Netanyahu had upstaged him at a White House event and used the opportunity to campaign for himself. But he was extremely angry that Bibi congratulated Joe Biden after the latter's 2020 election victory, reportedly saying that Netanyahu "was very early — like, earlier than most. I haven’t spoken to him since. F**k him." Trump believed that he had been instrumental in Netanyahu's electoral victory (Israel has had so many recent elections it's hard to keep track) and wanted him to refuse to acknowledge that Biden had won. Later, Trump told Barak Ravid, whose book "Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East" chronicles the Trump/Netanyahu relationship, that the congratulatory video was the main reason Netanyahu lost his next election: "That hurt him badly with the people of Israel," Trump said. "As you know, I'm very popular in Israel. I think it hurt him very badly."

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So maybe it's no surprise that during a Trump rally in Florida this week, the ex-president aired his grievances against Netanyahu in the immediate aftermath of the catastrophic Hamas attack on Israel and the early stages of what's likely to be a protracted war in Gaza. It's not like we haven't seen shockingly bellicose rhetoric from U.S. political leaders in recent days, but at least their comments related to vital matters at hand, with thousands of people killed on both sides and news about atrocities and war crimes running on television 24/7.

Early in his Florida speech, Trump shouted "Barack HUSSEIN Obama!" about half a dozen times for no particular reason. It's an oldie but a goodie, I guess. He shared a previously untold anecdote, which he admitted might be classified information, about the January 2020 assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani, saying, "I’ll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down." He criticized Israel for its intelligence failures and called Israel’s defense minister a "jerk” for warning Hezbollah, the Iranian-supported militia in Lebanon, not to attack Israel from the north. Hezbollah was "very smart," he said, and that would clue them in that Israel was weak in that region. (Given their history, it seems extremely likely that Israel and Hezbollah know a lot about each other's strengths and weaknesses.)

Then he recycled his inane anger at Netanyahu for congratulating Biden and actually proclaimed, “If the election wasn’t rigged there would be nobody even thinking about going into Israel.” The Israeli government was not amused by any of this. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi said, “We don’t have to bother with him and the nonsense he spouts." If only that were true here as well.

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In Congress, where Republicans continue to turn the U.S. government into a ludicrous and dysfunctional spectacle by staging one tantrum after another, there wasn't much blowback to Trump's bizarre and ill-timed comments. They were all a bunch of cowards, as usual.

https://x.com/Acyn/status/1712567043931721952

There are fault lines within both parties on this issue and we'll see them play out in coming days and weeks. But Donald Trump's view that everyone is stupid and disloyal to him, and that if only he were president none of this would be happening, isn't what any serious person believes. That is about as childish and ignorant as you can get, and that man will almost certainly be the Republican nominee for president in next year's election anyway. If we went out and grabbed someone off the street to discuss the horrific events of the last week, it's hard to imagine they could sound less informed than this once and possibly future president.

about a week of global chaos

“Devastating human consequences”: UN sounds alarm over Israel’s “impossible” Gaza evacuation order

The United Nations on Thursday appealed to Israel to rescind an order to evacuate 1.1 million people in northern Gaza, warning of “devastating humanitarian consequences.”

Israeli military liaisons told United Nations officials “that the entire population of Gaza north of Wadi Gaza should relocate to southern Gaza within the next 24 hours,” U.N. spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said in a statement.

“This amounts to approximately 1.1 million people. The same order applied to all UN staff and those sheltered in UN facilities — including schools, health centers and clinics,” the statement said.

It’s unclear how the U.N. could relocate so many people in a short time span after many of the roads were damaged and made impassable by Israeli airstrikes, according to The New York Times.

“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” the UN spokesman warned. “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”

"Israel's 9/11" is a dangerous, bloody trap — just like America's 9/11

The Israeli Defense Forces also issued a statement directing all civilians in Gaza City to evacuate to the north “for their own safety and protection,” adding that residents “will be able to return to Gaza City only when another announcement permitting it is made.”

The IDF said it will “continue to operate significantly in Gaza City,” claiming that members of Hamas are hiding inside tunnels underneath houses and “inside buildings populated with innocent civilians.”

Human Rights Watch called on world leaders to speak out “before it is too late” following the order.

“Ordering a million people in Gaza to evacuate, when there’s no safe place to go, is not an effective warning. The roads are rubble, fuel is scarce, and the main hospital is in the evacuation zone,” Clive Baldwin, the organization’s senior legal adviser, said in a statement, according to The Washington Post. “This order does not alter Israel’s obligations in military operations to never target civilians and take all the measures it can to minimize harm to them.”

Israel declares “complete siege” on Gaza: No electricity, food or drinking water

The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem said in response to the order that "a million people in northern Gaza are not guilty."

"They have nowhere else to go," the group said. "This is not what fighting Hamas looks like. This is revenge. And innocent people are being hurt."

The statement comes amid an Israeli military buildup on the Gaza border, fueling speculation that the country is preparing a ground invasion, according to The Times.

Though many frightened Palestinians fled their homes on Friday, many Gazans were reluctant to leave, according to the Times.

Hamas officials urged residents not to comply with what they called Israel’s “psychological warfare,” according to the report.

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Some residents fear permanent displacement like the one in 1948 when more than 700,000 Palestinians fled or were expelled from their homes, according to the Times.

“As I am packing my things I am wondering, is this really another nakba? I am taking my house key and thinking, will I ever return to my home, will I ever see my home again?” Dr. Arwa El-Rayes, a doctor of internal medicine, told the outlet.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said that without "any guarantees of safety or return," the order "would amount to the war crime of forcible transfer."

"The collective punishment of countless civilians, among them children, women, and the elderly, in retaliation for acts of horrible terror undertaken by armed men is illegal under international law," Egeland said in a statement. "My colleagues inside Gaza confirm that there are countless people in the northern parts who have no means to safely relocate under the constant barrage of fire."

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Israel has already declared a “complete siege” of Gaza following the Saturday attacks in Israel that killed more than 1,300 people, cutting off food, water, electricity and medical aid to an estimated 2.3 million people. Its airstrikes have wiped out entire neighborhoods, forcing about 400,000 people into temporary shelters. Gaza’s health ministry reported that 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children, had been killed since Saturday and 6,612 people — a quarter of whom are children — have been injured. Hamas also claimed on Friday that 13 of the estimated 150 hostages it abducted last weekend had been killed in the airstrikes.

Even before the evacuation order conditions in Gaza had become “absolutely horrible” as electricity ran out and hospitals have been pushed to the brink of collapse, Adnan Abu Hasna, an official with the United Nations agency that aids Palestinian refugees, told the Times.

“We are facing a huge disaster,” he told the Times.

The World Health Organization warned on Thursday that "time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe if fuel and lifesaving health and humanitarian supplies cannot be urgently delivered to the Gaza Strip amidst the complete blockade."

"Hospitals have only a few hours of electricity each day as they are forced to ration depleting fuel reserves and rely on generators to sustain the most critical functions," the WHO said in a statement. "Even these functions will have to cease in a few days, when fuel stocks are due to run out. The impact would be devastating for the most vulnerable patients, including the injured who need lifesaving surgery, patients in intensive care units, and newborns depending on care in incubators."

about Israel and Gaza

How much are volcanoes to blame for climate change? Far less than humans, experts say

The most iconic aspect of a volcanic eruption is the massive plume of smog that emits from its crater. Many greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide, are included in this chaotic haze that can sometimes trigger dazzling lightning storms. Not surprisingly, this has an outsized impact on our climate. However, while it's true that volcanoes contribute to climate change, that does not mean that our current climate change crisis — you know, the one that is driving a sixth mass extinction and shattering temperature records — is being caused by volcanoes alone. Indeed, experts strongly pin our out-of-control greenhouse gas problem on humans.

"Volcanoes only emits small amounts of CO2 relative to how much humans emit today."

However, climate change deniers have spent years arguing the opposite, that human-caused climate change is, in fact, nothing more than the product of volcanic activity. In 2015, then-presidential candidate Mike Huckabee claimed that a single volcano puts out as much climate-altering gases as humans do in a century. In 2016, the climate scientist article aggregator RealClimate published a post comprehensively debunking the "volcanoes are to blame" denier myth. In 2020 a tweet went viral that falsely claimed the eruption of Mt. Merapi "spewed more CO2 than every car driven in history." By 2023, an underwater volcano near Tonga was being widely blamed as the supposed bad guy in any climate change.

What climate change deniers get totally wrong about the Little Ice Age

The truth is that, while volcanoes can indeed alter the Earth's climate (more on that in a moment), there is no evidence whatsoever that current volcanic activity is responsible for this unprecedented global warming. In contrast, an abundance of evidence places the blame primarily at the feet of fossil fuel use.

"The burning of fossil fuels and the manufacture of cement releases 37 Gt (billion tones) of CO2 into the atmosphere per year," Yves Moussallam, Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences and Geochemistry at Columbia Climate School, told Salon by email. "Volcanoes are estimated to supply globally 0.28–0.36 Gt CO2 per year to the atmosphere and ocean system." By contrast, "Volcanoes hence contribute about 100 times less CO2 than anthropogenic activities."

Flavio Lehner, an assistant professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, was equally dismissive of the notion that volcanoes could explain the current level of global warming.

"Volcanoes hence contribute about 100 times less CO2 than anthropogenic activities."

"Volcanoes only emit small amounts of CO2 relative to how much humans emit today," Lehner explained, before running through the list of other possible variables that deniers cite as causing climate change. "Another possible factor of 'natural' climate change are changes in solar radiation (energy we receive from the sun), but its fluctuations are too small to explain current climate change, plus it has been trending down since 1950, not up. Another cause of naturally-occurring climate change are changes in orbital parameters (distance to sun, tilt of Earth, etc), but those change on time scales of tens of thousands of years and more, so not applicable here. If anything we were on a slow walk into the next ice age over the next few thousand years, but that's averted (and then some) thanks to greenhouse gas emissions."

At the same time, this does not mean that volcanoes play no role in altering the climate. As one of Lehner's colleagues pointed out, "there are some volcanic eruptions like Hunga-Tonga recently [which] might even warm the planet temporarily by releasing large quantities of water vapor in the atmosphere." According to Daniele Visioni, who is also an assistant professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Cornell University, if that water vapor reaches the stratosphere it could "significantly increase the water vapor load for years. For Hunga-Tonga, it is estimated that the stratospheric water content has increased by 10%, which might result — based on current best estimates — in a further warming of 0.05-0.1 C up to 2030."

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"At our human timescale (a few years to a few hundred thousand years), most volcanic eruptions have a net cooling effect on the climate."

Lehner agreed with this, elaborating that "depending on the time scales, volcanoes can be very influential."

For example, one hypothesis among scientists holds that during the period when Earth was primarily covered with ice and CO2 was locked in the oceans, volcanoes were needed to break through the ice. Once that happened, they began emitting enough CO2 into the atmosphere that it could trap heat, melt the ice and ultimately create a planet capable of supporting life as we know it.

"Large volcanic eruptions can also lead to substantial cooling in the first couple of years after their eruption as they emit aerosols that reflect sunlight and thus cool the planet," Lehner added. It is speculated that the Little Ice Age, or a period of pronounced cooling during the Middle Ages, occurred after a cluster of large volcanic eruptions took place.

Indeed, as Moussallam observed, most volcanic eruptions do not wind up warming the planet — they wind up cooling it.

Most volcanic eruptions do not wind up warming the planet — they wind up cooling it.

"At our human timescale (a few years to a few hundred thousand years), most volcanic eruptions have a net cooling effect on the climate," Moussallam wrote to Salon, citing global cooling periods that occurred after the eruption of Tambora in 1815 and Mt. Pinatubo in 1991. "This is because of another gas which is emitted by volcanoes, sulfur dioxide. In the atmosphere SO2 turns to H2SO4 (sulfuric acid) which condenses into little droplets (aerosols). If these are injected into the stratosphere, they can remain there for several months to years and have a net cooling effect on the surface as they reflect part of the Sun's radiation."

In the case of so-called "super-eruptions," the effect can be profound and lasting.

"The super-eruption of Toba volcano in Indonesia around 74,000 years ago occurred just before the onset of a cooler period when the Earth's climate abruptly shifted to particularly severe cold and dry conditions, lasting for several millennia," Moussallam wrote to Salon. "We don't know if the Toba eruption was the culprit, but it's possible and certainly didn't help."

Of course, even when one looks at some of Earth's most significant volcanic events, many still pale in comparison to what humans are currently doing to the atmosphere. Moussallam referred to how events like super-eruptions from 250 million years ago or 66 million years ago "had a strong impact on our atmosphere and caused mass extinctions, that is catastrophic loss in biodiversity and bio-density in a very short time," but nevertheless "emitted CO2 into the atmosphere at rates that was slower than current human emissions (the mass extinction rate was also slower than the current loss in biodiversity)."

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In other words, experts agree that it is fundamentally irrational to blame volcanoes for the current phenomenon of climate change. If nothing else, humans have an ugly history when it comes to what we do when we get angry at volcanoes for the weather. As Francois Lapointe, a postdoctoral associate in the University of Massachusetts' Department of Earth, Geographic, and Climate Sciences, told Salon by email in August:

"It is noteworthy that periods of intensified volcanic eruptions, which contributed to the cooling during the Little Ice Age, coincided with peaks of persecution against individuals accused of witchcraft. These unfortunate 'witches' were often blamed for causing disastrous weather conditions and crop failures. The correlation between increased volcanic activity and the rise in witch persecutions suggests that climate-induced hardships during the Little Ice Age fueled fears and superstitions about supposed weather manipulation."

about prehistory