One phrase never to say to a person on sabbatical is, “Well, since you are not working right now. . .”

It’s especially cute to hear this from a fellow academic.

OK, last news item for today is Friedman’s great article on Israel:

Israel is a really powerful country. It’s not a disarmed Costa Rica. No one expects it to give up everything. But fewer and fewer can understand why it puts so much energy into explaining why it can’t do anything, why the Palestinians are irredeemably awful and why nothing Israel could do would affect their behavior. I truly worry that Israel is slowly committing suicide, with all the best arguments.

There doesn’t seem to be a strategy in place in Israel. All I’m seeing (and as we can see from the linked piece, I’m not alone) is a series of tactical decisions that aim to serve some situational need of the next 40 seconds. Beyond that, there is nothing.

And a big gift for Putinoids has already arrived. They are joyfully celebrating the results of the Polish elections. The “We told you so!” triumphalism on Putin’s state-controlled media is intolerable. The isolated Russian dissidents are literally pulling their hair out.

Folks, wouldn’t it be great to see a Clinton / Carson race? This would be such a gift for Hillary.

These toy hedgehogs have been banned in Russia because authorities decided they were created on purpose to pervert Russian children. The representatives of the company selling the hedgehogs tried to explain that the offending parts of the hedgehogs were supposed to be bellybuttons and not whatever the authorities suspected them to be.

The authorities, however, said it was clear that hedgehogs were all female, which made the situation very suspicious.

Yes, it’s all for real.

Lithuania (one of the Baltic States) is eager to accept refugees but refugees are turning a cold shoulder to this small yet pretty European country.

Lithuania’s offer of welcoming refugees is sincere given that the country’s young people are emigrating at such a fast clip that there are fears there might eventually not be any Lithuania at all. Refugees here will be not a burden but valued contributors.

Lithuania has been working hard to make itself more attractive to migrants, and I hope the efforts pay off. I’ve been to Lithuania, and it’s a very nice place. Beautiful nature, great architecture, good health care, passable food. It suffers a bit from uniformity and insularity but that’s precisely what refugees can help turn around.

Folks, I’m at the gym and I just caught a glimpse of a TV report featuring a crazed cop assaulting a girl in a classroom in a really brutal way.

Does anybody have a link about what happened?

What is this, fucking Russia?

A health care practitioner approached me to extol the virtues of flu shots. In her pitch, she concentrated on “young girls” who “benefit enormously from flu shots” and suffer more than anybody else from bad cases of flu. I had no idea what all this yammering about young girls had to do with me, so I left.

Only now, several hours later, did I realize that “the young girls” were a way of flattering me in order to attract me to the idea of a flu shot. And I, with my literal brain, thought the woman was weird or confused me with someone who knew many young girls.

I now want to send my husband into that pharmacy to see if the lady will approach him with a story about young boys. Knowing N, he will be freaked out.

Few experiences are sadder than those of a Ukrainian who arrives at a Ukrainian food store located at an hour’s drive from her house and realizes that she left her wallet at home.

All this food – so near, yet so far away. Oh, the pain, oh, the cruel disappointment.

A Syrian refugee on the border between Slovenia and Austria says, “This is a war between Russia and the US. And we are the ones suffering. I lost 9 people from my family. This is wrong!”

Can we listen to the Syrian refugee instead of Kissinger, Carter, and every dumbass journalist who is chirping on the subject? Seriously, maybe it makes sense to hire a Syrian to write about Syria, a Ukrainian to write about Ukraine, etc. Otherwise, we get the kind of narcissistic, self-centered, projection – ridden analysis that keeps driving this country’s foreign policy into the ground.