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In today’s edition:
- Flat Trump takes on a swing state
- Dispense with the guilt and try reading during the day
- Israel has been negligent on humanitarian aid — but not genocidal
Candidate Cardboard
Second-graders carry around a Flat Stanley. Rick Reilly carries around a Flat Donald.
After getting “Don-bombed” by a friend who sneakily put a cardboard cutout of the former president in Rick’s kitchen, Rick decided to make use of the 2-D Don and pose him for photos around his town of Sedona, Ariz. — and post up in the background to watch what passersby would do.
“I wanted to see how people respond to Trump when no one’s around,” Rick writes. “Because I don’t think this election is about Joe Biden vs. Trump. I think it’s about Trump and only Trump, the most space-swallowing, ulcer-inducing, fire-starting colossus this country has ever seen.”
Rick and Donald’s journey takes them to the grocery store, to a McDonald’s and to a gorgeous scenic outlook that visitors mostly complain Trump is ruining. And after all the silliness reveals something very serious, the adventure ends in a fitting location you’ll have to discover for yourself.
Chaser: Many fans of the real-life Trump cite his ability to “fix” the messed-up economy. But what if, as Megan McArdle posits, the economy is already as normal as it’s going to get?
From former journalist Stephanie Shapiro’s op-ed proposing a solution to this problem so outré, so transgressive that you may wish to first sit down: Allow yourself to read … during the daytime.
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Heavens! Reading is the province of the quarter-hour before bed! The day is for industriousness, not such idle indulgences!
As Shapiro writes, “Just the thought of settling onto the sofa in daylight hours, especially on weekdays, smacks of laziness and stirs up guilt.”
It really oughtn’t. Shapiro writes that we need to rewire our brains to prize reflection as much as production and give in to the daytime chapter or four. But that’s easier said than done — especially when Shapiro has groceries to go pick up.
More politics
Israel’s precision airstrike Monday that killed a handful of notorious Iranian commanders tells us a great deal about the country’s military operations, David Ignatius writes. The sloppiness of the accidental strike that killed seven aid workers tells just as much.
Together, David writes, the two operations “explain the agony of this war for Israel and its adversaries alike.”
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David first examines the attack on Iran’s Quds Force commanders, a surgical strike in keeping with Israel’s unblinking intimidation of its adversaries. But it’s the accompanying hubris that helped lead to the shock of Oct. 7, David writes.
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Next, Israel’s bombing of a World Central Kitchen convoy underscores Israel’s refusal “to plan adequately for coordination of humanitarian assistance in Gaza — to make the safety of noncombatants a priority along with its effort to destroy Hamas,” David says. “Why is Israel only now, in the aftermath of this disaster, agreeing to a joint coordination center to plan humanitarian relief?”
This is negligence, certainly. What it is not, Ruth Marcus writes, is genocide. Yet the International Court of Justice, she writes, is nevertheless “allowing itself to be used as a geopolitical weapon in the Israel-Gaza war” as South Africa presses forward with its accusations of Israeli genocidal intent.
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Ruth explains that Israel’s intent — to defend itself and destroy Hamas, not the Palestinian people — is within the bounds of international law. No matter; the ICJ’s threshold for plausibility of a genocide claim is “astonishingly low,” she writes, and the fact that it has no jurisdiction over non-state-actor Hamas presents a pernicious double standard.
“What’s going on here isn’t law,” she writes. “It’s lawfare, an effort to hijack what should be the somber mechanisms of international justice to the political ends of tarring Israel with the calumny of genocide.”
Chaser: Josh Rogin writes that as famine looms in Gaza, the United States’ own humanitarian strategy is failing the Palestinians.
Smartest, fastest
- David Ignatius and Jim Geraghty just returned from a trip to Ukraine, and in the latest episode of the new “Impromptu” podcast, they talk through the mood on the ground and whether the war seems winnable.
- In his own column, Jim explains how RFK Jr. could spell trouble for President Biden in the swing states.
- In a statement delivered to the Russian Supreme Court and now translated and published at Post Opinions, imprisoned dissident and Post contributor Vladimir Kara-Murza declares how proud he is to have spoken out against Vladimir Putin’s crimes in Ukraine.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Cardboard cutout finds
People keen to pick a side
Election compressed
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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You’re reading the Today’s Opinions newsletter. Sign up to get it in your inbox.
In today’s edition:
Second-graders carry around a Flat Stanley. Rick Reilly carries around a Flat Donald.
After getting “Don-bombed” by a friend who sneakily put a cardboard cutout of the former president in Rick’s kitchen, Rick decided to make use of the 2-D Don and pose him for photos around his town of Sedona, Ariz. — and post up in the background to watch what passersby would do.
“I wanted to see how people respond to Trump when no one’s around,” Rick writes. “Because I don’t think this election is about Joe Biden vs. Trump. I think it’s about Trump and only Trump, the most space-swallowing, ulcer-inducing, fire-starting colossus this country has ever seen.”
Rick and Donald’s journey takes them to the grocery store, to a McDonald’s and to a gorgeous scenic outlook that visitors mostly complain Trump is ruining. And after all the silliness reveals something very serious, the adventure ends in a fitting location you’ll have to discover for yourself.
Chaser: Many fans of the real-life Trump cite his ability to “fix” the messed-up economy. But what if, as Megan McArdle posits, the economy is already as normal as it’s going to get?
From former journalist Stephanie Shapiro’s op-ed proposing a solution to this problem so outré, so transgressive that you may wish to first sit down: Allow yourself to read … during the daytime.
Heavens! Reading is the province of the quarter-hour before bed! The day is for industriousness, not such idle indulgences!
As Shapiro writes, “Just the thought of settling onto the sofa in daylight hours, especially on weekdays, smacks of laziness and stirs up guilt.”
It really oughtn’t. Shapiro writes that we need to rewire our brains to prize reflection as much as production and give in to the daytime chapter or four. But that’s easier said than done — especially when Shapiro has groceries to go pick up.
Israel’s precision airstrike Monday that killed a handful of notorious Iranian commanders tells us a great deal about the country’s military operations, David Ignatius writes. The sloppiness of the accidental strike that killed seven aid workers tells just as much.
Together, David writes, the two operations “explain the agony of this war for Israel and its adversaries alike.”
David first examines the attack on Iran’s Quds Force commanders, a surgical strike in keeping with Israel’s unblinking intimidation of its adversaries. But it’s the accompanying hubris that helped lead to the shock of Oct. 7, David writes.
Next, Israel’s bombing of a World Central Kitchen convoy underscores Israel’s refusal “to plan adequately for coordination of humanitarian assistance in Gaza — to make the safety of noncombatants a priority along with its effort to destroy Hamas,” David says. “Why is Israel only now, in the aftermath of this disaster, agreeing to a joint coordination center to plan humanitarian relief?”
This is negligence, certainly. What it is not, Ruth Marcus writes, is genocide. Yet the International Court of Justice, she writes, is nevertheless “allowing itself to be used as a geopolitical weapon in the Israel-Gaza war” as South Africa presses forward with its accusations of Israeli genocidal intent.
Ruth explains that Israel’s intent — to defend itself and destroy Hamas, not the Palestinian people — is within the bounds of international law. No matter; the ICJ’s threshold for plausibility of a genocide claim is “astonishingly low,” she writes, and the fact that it has no jurisdiction over non-state-actor Hamas presents a pernicious double standard.
“What’s going on here isn’t law,” she writes. “It’s lawfare, an effort to hijack what should be the somber mechanisms of international justice to the political ends of tarring Israel with the calumny of genocide.”
Chaser: Josh Rogin writes that as famine looms in Gaza, the United States’ own humanitarian strategy is failing the Palestinians.
It’s a goodbye. It’s a haiku. It’s … The Bye-Ku.
Cardboard cutout finds
People keen to pick a side
Election compressed
***
Have your own newsy haiku? Email it to me, along with any questions/comments/ambiguities. See you tomorrow!
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