“ANTI-ZIONISTS” SHOWING THEIR TRUE COLORS:

OPEN THREAD: Ring out the weekend.

LOL, THERE IS NO FAR LEFT THERE IS ONLY “FAR RIGHT.”

THIS. A THOUSAND TIMES, THIS. Just a taste:

“We may have been registered to vote but we didn’t wear our political affiliation on our sleeves or, in the spirit of neutrality, bring our politics into the office. (And our editors would likely have sent us packing if we did.) We didn’t believe the dominant political parties were intrinsically evil or good. We knew enough history—and had enough humility—to understand that each party over time had produced its share of rogues and do-gooders, heroes and scoundrels. Following the money in the name of keeping an eye on the public’s purse was always going to be a better path to uncovering stories of malfeasance and corruption than political affiliation.”

FWIW, Ken Wells is the very best reporter and writer I’ve ever worked with. Check out his page on Amazon. I tease him often that he writes so well I hate his guts.

GREAT MOMENTS IN TIMING: Horrific video shows suspect watching woman burn to death in F train car after he allegedly set her on fire.

A migrant from Guatemala has been arrested for allegedly lighting a sleeping subway rider on fire in Brooklyn on Sunday morning — then watching as his innocent victim burned to death in what the New York’s top cop called “one of the most depraved crimes one person could possibly commit.”

The savage killing — which happened at about 7:30 a.m. on an idling F train at the Coney Island-Stillwell Avenue station — shocked commuters, MTA workers and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who said Sunday that the heinous crime “took the life of an innocent New Yorker.”

“As the train pulled into the station, the suspect calmly walked up to the victim, who was in a seated position at the end of a subway car … and used what we believe to be a lighter to ignite the victim’s clothing, which became fully engulfed in a matter of seconds,” Tisch said at a press conference.

Patrolling cops smelled and saw the smoke, then found the flame-covered woman, the commissioner said.

They extinguished the blaze, but the woman died at the scene.

—The New York Post, today.

But who are you going to believe, New York’s governor, or your lying eyes?

Related: As with recent reports of “Flames [targeting a] place of worship” and “car” driving through a German Christmas market, the New York Daily News believes it apparently is reporting on the distaff equivalent of the Fantastic Four’s Human Torch:

HEY, WHAT’S GOING ON IRAN RIGHT NOW? Iran’s Energy Crisis Hits ‘Dire’ Point as Industries Are Forced to Shut Down.

Government offices in Iran are closed or operating at reduced hours. Schools and colleges have moved to online only. Highways and shopping malls have descended into darkness, and industrial plants have been denied power, bringing manufacturing to a near halt.

Although Iran has one of the biggest supplies of natural gas and crude oil in the world, it is in a full-blown energy crisis that can be attributed to years of sanctions, mismanagement, aging infrastructure, wasteful consumption — and targeted attacks by Israel.

“We are facing very dire imbalances in gas, electricity, energy, water, money and environment,” said President Masoud Pezeshkian in a live televised address to the nation this month. “All of them are at a level that could turn into a crisis.”
While Iran has been struggling with issues with its infrastructure for years, the president warned that the problem had reached a critical point.

For most of last week, the country was virtually shut down to save energy. As ordinary Iranians fumed and industrial leaders warned that the accompanying losses amounted to tens of billions of dollars, Mr. Pezeshkian could offer no solution other than to say he was sorry.

“We must apologize to the people that we are in a situation where they have to bear the brunt,” Mr. Pezeshkian said. “God willing, next year we will try for this not to happen.”

Exit quote: “This is how regimes fall:”

TOM HANKS AND MEG RYAN IN SHOPLIFTING IN SEATTLE – WORST ROMCOM EVER:

In December of 2022, Virginia Postrel wrote in the Wall Street Journal: What Shopping Did for American Equality.

The urban palaces of early department stores, the climate-controlled corridors of suburban malls, the endlessly scrolling pages of Etsy, the utilitarian aisles of Walmart and the chatty reveals of haul videos aren’t merely sites of envy or exchange. They’re places where Americans—both buyers and sellers—work out who we are and who we want to be. Since the mid-19th century, modern retailing has tested the practical meaning of equality and freedom.

When A.T. Stewart opened his multistory dry goods store in 1846, the Manhattan merchant introduced two revolutionary practices that we now take for granted. He let anyone come and browse freely, whether or not intending to buy, and he charged every customer the same price. Both policies changed the everyday meaning of social equality.

At Stewart’s, wrote a journalist in 1871, “you may gaze upon a million dollars’ worth of goods, and no man will interrupt either your meditation or your admiration.” The store and its many emulators established a new social norm. Any well-behaved patron, regardless of class or ethnicity, could freely examine the merchandise without being pestered or pressured to leave.

The key phrase there is “well-behaved patron,” which requires law, order and social customs to maintain, all of which have been in short supply in Seattle in recent years. But according to the New York Post last month, they may be making a return: Seattle finally starts throwing shoplifters and other petty criminals in jail for the first time in 4 years.

Seattle has finally started tossing people in jail for low-level crimes again after four years of letting shoplifters, vandals and other petty criminals walk free.

The change, which went into effect earlier this month, reverses pandemic-era restrictions by King County that kept Seattle police from booking all but the most serious misdemeanors into the slammer.

Officials in the Emerald City argued the policy hamstrung prosecutors and cops.

But now Seattle’s ne’re-do-wells will face a jail cell if they flaunt the law.

For four years, cops in Seattle weren’t allowed to book anyone arrested for low-level misdemeanors into jail. Getty Images

The move is a win for local law enforcement, which has long pushed for more tools to fight a four-year crime wave that has continued since the pandemic — despite crime in nearly every other major city declining, an analysis by the Seattle Times showed.

“We’ve had people tell us, ‘You can’t arrest me for that.’ Well, that was true but now we can. We’re hoping to get a little bit of accountability back,” the Times quoted Deputy Police Chief Eric Barden as saying.

Maybe when there’s a lot of that accountability back, the plexiglass cases will come down – but I suspect they’re going to be there for quite a while longer.