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Hamas have not yet accepted the Trump Peace Plan they supposedly had “no choice” but to accept.

Hamas keep dithering, unsurprisingly, on the Trump Peace Plan, and Gazan ‘civilians’ keep being sent to Jahannam because of it. But perhaps, just perhaps, the people of Gaza are finally getting fed up with their terrorist masters. From The New York Times:

‘Enough Is Enough’: Many Palestinians Say Hamas Must Accept Cease-Fire Plan

Interviews in Gaza suggest wide support for a proposal that calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

by Liam Stack | Thursday, October 2, 2025 | 5:04 AM EDT

Tel Aviv — Palestinians in Gaza have spent almost two years longing for an end to the war that has destroyed their communities and killed tens of thousands of their neighbors. Many say their best hope yet is the latest cease-fire plan proposed by the United States — if only Hamas would accept it.

“Hamas must say yes to this offer — we have been through hell already,” said Mahmoud Bolbol, 43, a construction worker who has remained in Gaza City with his six children in the battered shell of their home throughout the war.

President Trump unveiled the proposal while meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel at the White House on Monday. Mr. Trump said that if Hamas did not accept its terms, then he would give Israel the green light to “finish the job” of destroying the armed group.

Hamas has not yet given its response to the proposal, but interviews with Palestinians in Gaza on Wednesday suggested widespread public support for the plan. It calls for an immediate end to a war that has brought immense civilian suffering.

Hamas, of course, don’t care about “immense civilian suffering,” but the well-being of their own leadership, a leadership which lead not from Gaza, but Doha, Qatar. We reported, on Monday, how the Qatari government (reportedly) told the Trump Administration that they could convince Hamas to disarm and accept the plan, and French President Emmanuel Macron stated on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏, the worst rebranding in history — that Hamas have “no choice but to immediately release all hostages and follow this path.”

Yet, it seems that Hamas believe they have a choice, and, at least at publication time, have not accepted the plan. It took two atomic bombs, and that after half a year of relentless explosive and firebombing, to get Emperor Hirohito to force the militarist government to surrender. There’s no particular reason to think Hamas are any less pigheaded.

For the past two days, Mr. Bolbol said, his neighbors have talked about almost nothing but the cease-fire proposal. If Hamas rejects it, he said, his family would finally leave Gaza City and head for what he hoped would be the relative safety of the enclave’s south.

“Hamas needs to understand: Enough is enough,” Mr. Bolbol said. Most Gazans are not members of the group, he added, “so why drag us into this?”

We do not know how Mr Bolbol reacted personally to the October 7th attack, but we do know that most of the denizens of Gaza erupted in a cheering frenzy as hostages, both living and dead, were paraded back in Gaza, tied up, thrown in the back of the ubiquitous white Toyota trucks, celebrating an attack that anyone with an IQ above room temperature — room temperature in Celsius! — should have known would lead to a strong lethal and destructive response from Israel.

Some, including some from Hamas, have said that they didn’t think that Israel would have destroyed Gaza to the extent that they have. In the mindset of the ‘Palestinians,’ I suppose that they accepted that there’d be some martyrdom, but perhaps not this much martyrdom.

But the proposal contains several elements that Hamas has said are unacceptable.

Those include a ban on the group exercising future power in Gaza, a requirement that it disarm and the establishment of a transitional government overseen by foreign officials, including Mr. Trump and Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.

The proposal unveiled on Monday sent a rare flash of hope through Gaza, people said in interviews. But others are less hopeful.

Some people said the terms of the proposal made them doubt that Hamas would agree. Others said their doubts grew from something more basic and bitter: They simply did not believe that Hamas would put the interests of the Palestinian people above the interests of the organization.

Also see: William Teach, “Surprise: Hamas Likely To Reject Peace Plan“

Well, who can know? Perhaps Hamas leaders and fighters really believe that their interests and those of the ‘Palestinian’ people in general are the same, but attempting to read the minds of people who are in no way part of Western civilization by those of us who are civilized is often an exercise in futility. In the “mirror universe” episode of Star Trek, Mr Spock told Captain Kirk, once they were returned to their regular dimensions, that it was easier for them, as civilized men, to play the part of barbarians than it was for their opposites, as barbarians, to play the roles of civilized men.

So, we have the specter of civilized Westerners trying to bring aid and comfort to the people of Gaza, something the Israeli Navy has now stopped, all to aid people who have nothing in common with Western civilization, and who would happily assault or even kill many of the “Global Sumud Flotilla” if they actually lived in Gaza, or anyplace else in the world where Islamic fundamentalism has taken hold.

Perhaps Hamas will, in the end, accept or negotiate an amendment to the Trump plan, but one thing is certain: if Hamas do accept disarmament, it will only be until they can covertly — and perhaps not so covertly — rearm.

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We are wealthy!

Holy Monastery Roussanou from a neighboring peak. Photo by D R Pico, and may be freely used with appropriate acknowledgement. Click to enlarge.

My darling bride — of 46 years, 4 months, and 12 days — and I recently returned from our two week vacation in Greece, and we saw many amazing and beautiful places. The photo to the right is from the Holy Monastery Roussanou, one of five, including the one made famous in the James Bond movie For Your Eyes Only, around Meteora, Greece.

Other than Athens, the most famous city in Greece and the home to the ancient Grecian works, but which was a filthy city defiled with ubiquitous graffiti, we loved Greece. There is a seaside home in Kefalonia, and it is actually on the (rocky) beach, that I considered buying, for only 315,000€, though Mrs Pico would have vetoed it. Litochoro, on the other hand, had my wife asking about real estate prices; Litochoro is a short car ride from both Mt Olympus and Aegean Sea beaches. Being a poor country, prices in Greece are surprisingly low. Two nice dinners in Greece cost less than one in the United States.

However, despite this article title, we are not rich. Buying a 315,000€ home would have required selling the small farm we currently have; it’s not like we have six figures to the left of the decimal point in the bank. We’re both retired — though my wife, a registered nurse, picks up an occasional shift at the hospital, primarily to fatten the vacation fund — but we own our home without a mortgage, have a relatively small retirement annuity, and our Social Security. We aren’t really worried about money, but, on the other hand, we don’t spend much anyway.

We were sitting in a couple of cheap chaise lounge chairs on Monday afternoon, on one of our lawns. Yes, we have more than one! It was sunny and in the low 80s, with a slight breeze, but we’d arranged the chairs in the shade of a pin oak tree. The only road, which is not very busy, was a couple hundred yards away. There’s only one neighbor’s house visible from our property, and it was just barely visible. There were three dogs lazing around in the yard. We have food in the refrigerator and the pantry, we have heat and air conditioning when we need them, running water, electricity, the internet, all of the utilities of modern life. We have our (small) family nearby, and enough friends that we don’t need more.

In rural Kentucky, we don’t have fancy restaurants, we don’t have Starbucks, and we don’t have the glittering lights of the big cities. Then again, we can actually see the stars at night, and hear crickets rather than cars. We sometimes hear Jeremiah croaking in the evening.

So, how are we not wealthy? Two working-class Americans, fortunately in decent if not perfect health, who suffered a few reverses during life but still did things the right way, now retired and living the life that we want to live. The places in Tuscany, in France, in Greece, and in Scotland that we’ve seen and liked and said, “We could live here,” were all nice, but is there really anyplace better than the United States of America?
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The poor economics of Starbucks

While I would expend the effort to drive for a Wawa coffee, it’s pretty foolish to spend $4.50 or more for a Starbucks coffee that I can make at home for 50¢!

Sadly, the days of the wife sending her husband off to work in the morning with a lunchbox in his hand and breakfast already in his stomach are gone. Many, many businesses have grown up around that societal and economic change, with all sorts of chain and local stores selling coffee and a bagel — sesame bagel, dark toasted, with butter for me, thank you very much! — but I have to ask: has the market become oversaturated with some of these businesses?

Starbucks kind of broke the mold, with its waitresses now becoming ‘baristas,’ and its fancy shops and eight million different flavors and brews. The average prices that can be found on the internet vary wildly, but $4.50 seems to be about a midpoint.

Now, the company is having problems:

Why Starbucks is closing these six Philly locations

Starbucks has seen sales decline over six consecutive quarters.

by Erica Palan | Monday, September 29, 2025 | 12:44 PM EDT

Starbucks, the Seattle-based coffee powerhouse, announced last week that it would immediately shut down hundreds of underperforming stores and eliminate 900 corporate positions.

The cuts come as Starbucks has seen sales decline at stores open for at least a year for six consecutive quarters. The company’s shares have fallen about 12% in the past year.

The chain is grappling with rising labor costs, in addition to rising coffee prices.

We have twice previously reported on Starbucks and other coffeehouse workers efforts at unionization, and how OCF coffeehouse owner Ori Feibush simply closed his three Philadelphia coffee shops when the workers decided to unionize. The coffee shops were not profitable anyway, and were only a small part of the owner’s businesses, so he could afford to do it.

Checking Amazon, the Keurig which looks closest to ours, as pictured above, lists for $109. If a person is spending $4.50 every working morning, for coffee that costs me roughly 50¢ at home, he will have paid for that Keurig, and the coffee pods it uses, over the course of 27 workdays. That ignores having to physically stop at the local Starbucks, and whatever fuel he spent if it was out of the way on his way to work.

We also have a toaster, so I could toast a bagel at the same time! 🙂

Starbucks workers have been whining that the closures are the result of management fighting unionization:

Employees impacted by the store closures were notified Friday.

On Sunday, about 35 Starbucks union members gathered in front of the location at 16th and Walnut Streets in protest. They say they’re prepared to strike if the company doesn’t return to the bargaining table to negotiate higher wages, staffing levels, and healthcare benefits.

Over the last few years, Starbucks baristas in Philadelphia and beyond have taken efforts to improve worker protections. Some have been successful in establishing unions, while others have not. According to Starbucks Workers United, there are more than 12,000 unionized Starbucks baristas at more than 650 stores.

So, out of 18,734 Starbucks stores, only about 3.47% have been unionized. Management doubtlessly considers that a serious problem, but does it account for sales dropping for six consecutive quarters? Probably not, but it does point out the rather obvious problem of workers trying to unionize a shrinking company. It’s less expensive to shutter an economically underperforming store.

Three of the closed stores in Philadelphia — 1801 Spruce St., 1709 Chestnut St., and 1500 Market St. — are not unionized. Three others — 1900 Market St., 1128 Walnut St., and 490 N. Broad St — are unionized.

This is a matter of economic competition. If people are spending $4.50 every workday morning just for a cup of coffee they could Keurig themselves, that’s $1,080 in a 240-workday year. After four years of Bidenflation, there just might be a few families that decide that Starbucks every morning just isn’t that good an idea.

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Who can seriously believe that this will happen?

Could you imagine the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth among our friends on the left if Donald Trump’s peace proposal led to a lasting peace in the Middle East, and he won the Nobel Peace Prize for it?

Qatar tells US it can convince Hamas to disarm, accept Trump plan

Sources told the Post that Qatar was “capable of persuading Hamas to agree to a deal that includes demilitarization.”

By Amichat Stein, Jerusalem Post Staff, REUTERS | Monday, September 29, 2025 | 6:24 PM Jerusalem Time | Updated: 10:48 PM Jerusalem Time

Qatar informed the US President Donald Trump’s administration that it would be able to persuade Hamas to disarm and accept Trump’s 20-point peace plan for Gaza, Sky News Arabia reported on Monday.

Qatari officials reportedly told Trump, along with Arab states, that it was “capable of persuading Hamas to agree to a deal that includes demilitarization,” a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post.

Concurrently with Netanyahu’s visit to the White House, senior Qatari officials are currently in Washington, a source familiar with the details told The Post. The Qataris are expected to participate in discussions regarding the negotiations for a deal.

Qatar does have the ability to force Hamas leadership to accept, by threatening to kick their candy asses out, and ship them to Tel Aviv if they don’t agree, but I can’t see that happening.

During the meeting, Netanyahu reportedly called Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani regarding the assassination attempt of Hamas leadership in Doha, a source familiar with the details told The Jerusalem Post.

The article continued to tell readers that the apology was required for the Qatari government to agree to continue to facilitate the negotiations.

French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted that he completely supported Mr Trump’s plan, and that Hamas have “no choice but to immediately release all hostages and follow this path.” Interestingly enough, Grok automatically translated the tweet from the original, which was not in French, but Arabic.

Also read: William teach, “Israel Agrees With Trump’s Gaza Peace Plan. What About Hamas?“

But let’s tell the truth here: Hamas will never seriously agree to disarm. There is a slight possibility that they’ll agree in public, but continue to hide weapons, and seek to covertly rearm as soon as possible, but they’ll never agree to actually disarm.

Tahir al-Nono, a senior Hamas official, said that yes, Hamas are willing to release all hostages, but will not disarm. More, he said that the Hamas terrorists imprisoned in Israel would have to be released as well. Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader currently burning in Hell, was one of 1,027 terrorists released by Israel in exchange for one captured IDF soldier, and look how that turned out. In exchange for 48 remaining hostages, over half of whom are already dead, Israel risks yet another October 7th attack!

Who knows? Perhaps this deal will go through, but I seriously doubt that any lasting peace can be obtained between the Israelis and those who want nothing more than to kill them all.

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Arizona leads the nation in the most important educational reform.

We reported, on Friday morning, how public schools in the Pyrite State have been required to treat mentally ill boys who think that they’re girls as real girls, and how such has caused a number of other high schools to forfeit girls’ volleyball games rather than play against ‘transgender’ players.

The Wall Street Journal has now reported how different options to the public schools have opened up in next-door Arizona:

At the Epicenter of School Choice, Arizona Public Schools Battle Existential Crisis

Educators fight back against falling enrollments and rising competition. One idea: mimic restaurant-industry focus on customer service.

by Matt Barnum | Friday, September 26, 2025 | 10:00 AM EDT

PHOENIX—Public school leaders in Arizona recently convened a summit to combat an existential crisis.

Across the state, enrollments at district public schools are falling. Last month, superintendents gathered in Phoenix at the “Traditional Public Schools Messaging Summit” to strategize ways to improve the perception of public education. The goal: woo families and bolster political support.

In an opening brainstorming session, educators shouted out benefits of public schooling. “We welcome all!” said one person. “We represent the community,” added another. There are “comprehensive choices” in public education, chimed in a third.

Well, perhaps that’s just it: as California is ‘welcoming all’, to the point of pretending that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, and thereby harming the rights and privacy of other people — similar problems are cropping up in the once sensible Commonwealth of Virginia — and the liberal governments imposing #woke ideologies and leftover Biden Administration federal policies are making public schools places that aren’t quite as welcoming to normal people.[1]Yes, by “normal people,” I am referring to heterosexuals Only the cost of private schools have kept millions from fleeing to them . . . and Arizona broke that barrier!

Arizona is at the leading edge of a reckoning in public education. Nationwide, declining birthrates and rising competition—from alternatives like charter schools, private education and home schooling—have eroded student bodies at the regular neighborhood schools that generations of Americans attended.  .  .  .  

In 2022, Arizona became the first state to allow any family to use public funding for their child to attend a private school or support home schooling. The move came as public schools across the country faced intense criticism over Covid precautions and practices related to diversity, equity and inclusion.

A surge of similar voucher initiatives followed in Republican-led states. The federal government will soon launch a program to subsidize private education costs, although states will have to opt into it.

I saw this tweet on Wednesday, and “Rebecca” told us a story which few people know, but which is far too common:

People who say this about autism have exclusively dealt with the high functioning autist, who perhaps has a revulsion to wearing socks. When I was first teaching in public school I had a 4th grade autistic student who regularly wet himself, could not speak beyond moans, often hit and bit out of frustration, could not read or write. If you don’t think parents and children deserve a cure for this, you are either a very evil or very deluded person.

She was responding to another silly post on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — with a graphic saying that “autism does not need to be cured”, so not addressing this topic, but the real problem is that the school stuck her with such a ‘student’ in the first place. ‘Mainstreaming’ the seriously and hopelessly disabled may sound so very sympathetic, but it harms the educational progress for the real students. How does the disruptive autistic ‘student’ inhibit the rest of the class? How does having a ‘student’ who regularly urinates in his pants enable the teacher to continue teaching the other kids in the class?

I remember this very clearly! It was the last day of school at St Joseph’s Regional Academy in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, in early June of 2023, where my younger daughter attended the seventh grade. I took the day off, and was speaking with another parent there, who was herself a teacher at the public Pocono West High School, but put her own kids in parochial school. She described the same situation, a ‘mainstreamed’ handicapped student, and described her job as less teaching than just trying manage a chaotic situation due to a frequently disruptive, seriously handicapped ‘student,’ one who could never function on any normal level, regardless of how many resources were invested in him.

I get it: I’m the [insert slang term for the anus here] who’s wholly insensitive to the needs of handicapped children and their families, but at some point it has to be asked: are we allowing public sympathy for people who will have to be cared for — frequently at public expense! — for their entire lives to negatively impact public education for the vast majority of normal students?

Sadly, the Journal article never brought up the subjects I have, but they are subjects with which most school systems of any size have to deal, and subjects which push normal families to want to get their normal kids out of the public school systems.

Nor does the article raise the subject of teachers, almost entirely from the political left, attempting to indoctrinate students politically. Somehow, some way, I managed to go through twelve years of public schools — back in the days of quill pens and inkwells — without ever knowing anything about my teachers’ sexuality or political leanings, but there are tons of stories now on teachers of this century sharing exactly those things.

The Supreme Court had to rule, in the case of Mahmoud v Taylor (2025), that parents could opt their children out of public school lessons they deemed immoral or contrary to their religious beliefs,[2]Technically, the case allowed the petitioners to receive an injunction to require the opt-outs while the merits of the case were adjudicated, but the majority held that the parents were likely to … Continue reading when the Montgomery County, Maryland, School Board ended such a policy to force children as young as kindergarten to be instructed with “LGBTQ+-inclusive texts.” That’s the kind of thing to which normal parents might object, but the Board wanted to wave away such objections away and indoctrinate kids their way, not the parents.

Is it any wonder that trust in the public schools is low?

The rest of the referenced article I do encourage you to read, but it’s mostly a documentation of sales programs that private and now some public schools are trying to use.

It’s a good thing that Arizona passed their laws concerning school choice, so that their citizens can use it and show the rest of the United States how our education system can work for the good of the American people rather than just the teachers’ unions and liberal special interests. I can just imagine how The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers would react to such a program in the Keystone State!

References

References
↑1 Yes, by “normal people,” I am referring to heterosexuals
↑2 Technically, the case allowed the petitioners to receive an injunction to require the opt-outs while the merits of the case were adjudicated, but the majority held that the parents were likely to succeed on the merits.
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Surprise: Fossil Fuels Hating PRC Trying To Keep Fossil Fuels Companies From Leaving

Here’s from October 2024

Why Oil Companies Are Leaving California

On October 16, 2024, the refiner Phillips 66 announced that it will cease operations at its Los Angeles-area refinery in the fourth quarter of 2025. This announcement came a few days after California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a new law placing additional regulations on refineries.

The closure will affect approximately 600 employees and 300 contractors that currently work at the Los Angeles-area refinery. Politico reported that this closure would also impact 8% of the state’s already tight gasoline production.

Although Phillips 66 spokesperson Al Ortiz denied in an email to Politico that the closure was a response to Newsom’s signing the new law, California’s treatment of its oil industry has undoubtedly been a factor.

The news follows an announcement in August 2024 that Chevron, the second-largest U.S. oil company, will relocate from its California headquarters to Texas. The company, with roots in California dating back to 1879, will transition its headquarters to Houston over the next five years.

Chevron’s move comes as a response to California’s stringent regulations and aggressive climate policies. Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, expressed concerns about the state’s business environment in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

I still maintain the companies should stop selling their products to the state government of the People’s Republic Of California. Stopping operations in the PRC will increase the cost of energy in the state, and moving operations to other states will deny a lot of tax money. Anyhow, now

California trying to keep oil and gas firms from leaving the state

Following 25 years of what oil and gas executives categorize as hostility to the industry, the state is now making a play to keep those companies from leaving.

Concerned with the exodus of oil and gas companies, refinery closures and the expensive price of gasoline in the state, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation last week that fast tracks the approval of 2,000 new wells per year over the next 10 years in Kern County, a significant oil-producing region.

But, will the companies actually want to develop those wells, wondering when the other shoe in the PRC will drop, having watched the Democrat operate the past 25 years? Particularly since there are still lawsuits from cities and counties in the PRC? Will they take the chance?

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That thing that never happens has happened again

Riverside County, where the Jurupa United School District is located, is the fourth largest county in California and tenth largest the United States, but it has at least a little bit of sense — for the Pyrite State, that is — in that it was actually carried by Donald Trump on the 2024 election, albeit by the narrow margin of 463,677 (49.30%) to 451,782 (48.04%). Six congressional districts have parts of the county in them, represented by three Democrats and three Republicans, while there is again a split in the state Senate, but a 5-to-1 advantage for Republicans in the state Assembly.

But, alas! California overall is dominated not only by Democrats, but far-left Democrats, and every #woke[1]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading policy possible has been enacted. And A B Hernandez, a male who is just absotively, posilutely certain he’s really a girl, is on the Jerupa Valley High School girls’ volleyball team.

Perhaps you’ve heard of young Mr Hernandez. He recently won the girls’ triple jump track competition by eight feet!

Now:

Patriot High School has forfeited an upcoming match to the Jurupa Valley High School.

Jurupa Valley previously saw three forfeits in one weekend at the Freeway Games tournament, as Aquinas High School, San Dimas High School, and Yucaipa High School all refused to play Jurupa Valley. Before this, the teams AB Miller High School, Orange Vista High School, Rim of the World High School, and Riverside Poly High School had all forfeited to Jurupa Valley.

Young Mr Hernandez’s presence isn’t the only ‘transgender’ boy causing forfeits in California.

From Fox News:

Three of Hernandez’s current and former volleyball teammates have filed a lawsuit against the Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD), the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) and the California Department of Education (CDE) over their experience sharing a team and locker room with the transgender athlete.

The two current teammates in the lawsuit, seniors Alyssa McPherson and Hadeel Hazameh, previously told Fox News Digital they were stepping away from the team as long as the transgender athlete is participating. The third plaintiff is McPherson’s older sister Madison, who graduated last year.

“Plaintiffs have been intimidated by an intentionally hostile environment created by Defendants wherein they were bullied by school officials to censor their objections to competing with, and against, a male and to sharing intimate and private spaces with a male,” the lawsuit reads.

We have previously reported on the discovery that “Blaire” Fleming was actually a male named Brayden Fleming on the San José State University women’s volleyball team, and how it led to several forfeits.

I get it. Our good friends on the left, consumed by sympathy as they are, really, really, really want to accommodate the ‘transgendered,’ those afflicted with gender dysphoria, who apparently seriously believe that they are not really the sex into which they were conceived, developed, and born. They really, really, really want people like young Mr Hernandez and Will Thomas to be able to live out their dreams to be women, regardless of the fact that they just are not.

But there are real differences between men and women, between boys and girls, differences which make a difference when it comes to athletics, and for all of the ‘transgendered’s’ Wishin’ and hopin’ and thinkin’ and prayin’, Plannin’ and dreamin’ that girls can be boys and boys can be girls, they really can’t be. The ‘transgendered’ are mentally ill, and our very sympathetic friends on the left somehow believe that it’s better to go along with their delusions than to help them and tell them the truth.

However crazy you might think I am, no matter how much I really, really want to be as athletic as Bo Jackson, I’m at least sane enough to realize that I’m not.

Now, there are athletes, there are families in southern California, some of which might have been more sympathetic to people like young Mr Hernandez who are learning the hard way that the idiocy of the hard left wokesters is not something in the distance, something that happens to Other People, but happens to them as well.

The academic year has really just begun. How many more stories like this will we see before it’s over?

References

References
↑1 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues. By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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Fish Wrap: Trump May Be Wiping His Hands Of The Whole Ukraine-Russia War

This is in the “news analysis” section of the NY Times, so, just one step away from the opinion section. Oh, and hey, weird how the Times and few other media outlets bother mentioning Ukraine anymore

With His Pivot on Ukraine, Trump May Be Washing His Hands of the War

Eight months into his second term, President Trump has made a declaration about Ukraine that sounded vaguely like the ones his predecessor, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., used to make. With the right mix of courage, ingenuity and weapons from NATO, he asserted on Tuesday, Ukraine could force Russia to retreat from the territory it has seized in three and a half years of brutal war.

But scratch the surface, and a deeper desire seemed buried in Mr. Trump’s reversal of position during the U.N. meetings in New York this week. Mr. Trump appears to want to wash his hands of the Ukraine conflict, after having no success bringing President Vladimir V. Putin to the negotiating table, and a dwindling chance of acting as mediator between the two warring parties.

Based on what? I’ve pre-read the article twice. Can David E. Sanger read Trump’s mind?

Like many policy declarations by Mr. Trump, it is hard to divine his true beliefs, and impossible to assure he will not change position again. He is nothing if not mercurial. His foreign policy views, former aides say, are more often driven by pique and a sense that he has been disrespected than by strategic analysis.

Hard to define, but, David did.

White House officials did not respond on the record to questions about Mr. Trump’s new strategy. But a senior White House official argued that during the Biden administration, the United States only had one option, to fund Ukraine indefinitely, and there were no negotiations underway with Russia. The official said that Mr. Trump remained willing to impose a round of tariffs against Moscow — not traditional sanctions — but only if Europe ceased buying all energy from Russia.

Maybe Ukraine should stop selling grain to Russia? It looks like Trump gave negotiations with Putin a shot, in the same way you might negotiate with a business rival. It didn’t work out, so, Trump is moving a different way

For his part, President Volodymyr Zelensky did his best to sound enthusiastic about the president’s rhetorical shift, which he called a “game changer.”

Mr. Zelensky had some reason to celebrate: His long-running effort to get back into Mr. Trump’s good graces, after their famous confrontation in the Oval Office in February, had paid off. Mr. Trump was no longer pressuring him to give up land for peace, which could be politically suicidal for the wartime president. Moreover, Mr. Trump, openly annoyed at Mr. Putin, may have been pressuring the Russian leader to make concessions, rather than Mr. Zelensky.

What does it all mean in reality? I doubt Trump is washing his hands, as he would love to go down as the president who brought peace

Top EU diplomat warns Trump that Europe can’t shoulder Ukraine war burden alone

Europe alone is not responsible for helping Ukraine bring an end to its war with Russia, EU top diplomat Kaja Kallas warned Thursday.

That is particularly true when considering President Donald Trump’s pledge to halt the fighting, she said in an interview on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly.

“He was the one who promised to stop the killing,” Kallas said. “So it can’t be on us.”

Her comments come as Ukraine and its allies try to divine the meaning of Trump’s sudden about-face on the war between Kyiv and Moscow.

Why not? Why can’t Europe take the lead, considering they are right there and claim they are in danger? How about they all stop buying European energy, to start with?

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He’s baaack!

Marble curb and gutter in Athens. Photo by D R Pico and may be freely used, with appropriate credit.

Mrs Pico’s and my vacation in Greece is over, and I’m back at the computer typing in my hopefully-not-completely-mindless drivel! My thanks to William Teach of The Pirate’s Cove for keeping this poor site going for the last two weeks.

Greece is a beautiful, if very arid-looking country, but one thing really, really, really annoyed me. Athens is supposed to be the crown jewel of that ancient nation, full of ancient monuments. We climbed the Acropolis to visit the Parthenon, we visited the Temple of Zeus, and we saw things created by the hand of man 2,500 years ago. Even Jerusalem doesn’t boast signs of civilization that old, other than just a couple of places where stones from the original Temple built by Solomon 2,900 years ago can be seen.

As a Catholic, it was interesting to have walked some of the same streets as St Paul on his visit to the city. (Acts 17:16-34)

We climbed on Mt Olympus, because I wanted to have a talk with Zeus, but, alas! he was nowhere to be found.

Athens is so magnificent that, as in the picture on the right, there are streets on which the very curb-and-gutters are made of marble. The photo is on a side street devoted to restaurants just a block from our hotel.

But Athens is an absolutely filthy city! It seems that every block is scrawled with graffiti, major amounts of graffiti, graffiti as high as the “artists” can reach. How can a city so dependent upon the euros of tourists let itself become so defaced and dirty? The European Union has designated several sites in Greece with the European Historical Label, and are national parks in the Hellenic Republic.

The rest of Greece? Much cleaner — except Thessaloniki — and amazingly inexpensive. Our meals in Kefalonia and Litochoro cost half, or even less, than what they would have cost in a comparable American city. Real estate was so inexpensive that we saw, and considered a detached beachfront house in Kefalonia for only 315,000€.

OK, OK, I considered the house, but my darling bride — of 46 years, 4 months, and six days — was pretty much vetoing it, saying, truthfully I’m afraid, that we couldn’t afford it. Our current property, were it located in Massachusetts or Maine would be worth more than that, but in low-cost Kentucky, it isn’t.

Litochoro? Mrs Pico would have considered that, a town just 20 minutes from Aegean Sea beaches and Mt Olympus.

We visited the ancient monasteries at Meteora, including the one featured in the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only.

Greece is a great place to visit, but not for the reasons and places that most people would expect.

There was one thing that I regretted, not being able to write on this site because I didn’t take a computer, and that was we left just before the assassination of Charlie Kirk. But, in retrospect, perhaps that was a good thing, because I wasn’t able to write anything stupid by jumping the gun on things.