This is classic Biden. It's classic center-right Democrat speak. The Republicans predictably do something bad decades after they started trying to accomplish it, and centrist Washington Democrats sit around doing nothing. I can't say they betrayed my expectations because this is exactly what they have been doing for the last 20 years.
I don't think he can, but he shouldn't give up the fight before it's even started. If you have the presidency the bully pulpit you could at least start to put the idea into the minds of the Americans and normalize. It certainly better than just bending over.
Mean there's not a very good chance for a single-payer healthcare system to be instituted anytime soon but that doesn't mean politician shouldn't openly advocate for it.
To be clear, there is zero fight to be had. The composition of the Court can only be modified by Congress. The GOP led House is not going to pass a bill allowing the Democrat President to add new judges to the Court.
Given that reality, there's simply nothing Biden could do even if he wanted to.
and centrist Washington Democrats sit around doing nothing
Democrats have only the slimmest possible Senate majority and lost the House majority. If voters don't give them the tools to unfuck what Republicans do, it's not the Democrats fault.
You voters gave Republicans 3 Surpreme court judges. It was your fault in 2016, it is your responsibility to fix it. You can't blame democrats for "doing nothing" when you don't let them do anything
It is their fault, because if the Republicans were in the same position, they would be trying every single trick in the book, pulling in every favour, possible to get their way.
I’m not interested in any of that. And I really don’t admire republicans. But it can’t be denied that they do actually accomplish things, something that can’t really be said of establishment centrists/centre-right parties. Obviously what they’re accomplishing is awful and they use pretty shady methods to do it.
Yeah this is basically the way the Democrats of operated my entire life and possibly longer.
They claim there needs to be a strong Republican party and that they want bipartisanship. They already are starting off as being More right wing than every single European conservative party or any conservative party in the OECD basically on issues like health care and social policy.
Same with the debt ceiling thing. There was a million ways around that besides caving to the Republicans on cutting food stamps.
I will never understand why that’s so difficult for some people. Calling on Israel to stop the illegal “settlements” in no way indicates support for Hamas.
To be 100% clear, the horrific murders and mutilations they’ve committed are inexusable and Hamas should be utterly dismantled, with every surviving member put on trial for war crimes. That can be true at the same time as it’s true that Israel’s illegal annexation of territory and treatment of Palestinians is wrong.
Please, can someone tell me they understand that? Am I taking crazy pills, here?
I like you acknowledge both wrongs, but you mustn’t have spent much time looking at post replies and comments if you think the people decrying the implicit supporters of Hamas are the problem.
I think the thing that’s putting an incredibly sour taste in a lot of people’s mouths is that anyone who decries the wanton slaughter and rape of innocent civilians by a terrorist group is absolutely bombarded with replies from blindly pro palestinian comments saying things like:
“Israel asked for this”
“Those people shouldn’t have been there if they didn’t want to get raped and killed”
“People have a right to self defense”
“Look at this map which doesn’t reflect the whole story of this conflict, implying that it’s justified”
“Freedom fighters fighting against oppression/apartheid/open air jail”
Paraphrased obviously but this is what it reads like. It’s hard not to see people posting that stuff whilst bodies are still warm on the ground instead of condemning the barbaric attacks as not implicitly supporting Hamas and the disgusting crimes they just committed. There is no “but” after decrying these attacks. They are unjustifiable and inexcusable.
Obviously Israel needs to stop creating settlements in the west bank, but bringing that up relentlessly like a bot farm of brain damaged propagandists doesn’t help the cause. It feels the same as Russian trolls claiming Ukraine is run by Nazis, or MAGA people taking about some laptop. Nothing gets taken seriously when it’s clearly a one sided megaphone style discussion.
Making it look like any pro palestinian discourse is actually just people supporting their preferred football team doesn’t help create dialogue and a future peace. You’re just creating an echo chamber which to less invested observers seems to be celebrating rape and murder of civilians.
Nope. I got some if you’d like though. The nuances of a situation seem to be lost on a lot of people. You can disapprove of the Israeli government’s actions (or lack thereof) and not be pro hamas or antisemitic. Unless you ask the internet at large, I suppose.
I will never understand why that’s so difficult for some people.
You’re assuming everyone is discussing this in good faith. They’re not. Some are weaponizing antisemitism so only unequivocal support for the Israeli government is welcome. I don’t know why anyone would think doing that is a good idea, it’s certainly not going to bring people around to the side of Netanyahu’s government.
People need to understand that when you do something like that, it waters down both sides of the equation. You can call something “antisemitic” to get people to think that action is evil without looking too closely because they want to distance themselves as much as possible from the evil label. But it also can make people lose the association between “antisemitic” and “evil” because they agree with whatever is being called “antisemitic” and think “if this is antisemitism, it must not be that bad”.
And then there’s the ones who think “if you’re going to call me evil, then I might as well just be evil”.
It’s an example of crying wolf and I guess we all know how that ended. Accusations of antisemitism have been used as a cudgel to silence critics for so long now that when I hear someone has been accused my first instinct is to dig into what they actually said because I’m automatically skeptical of the accusation.
This kind of thing happened when Jeremy Corbyn was running in the last UK election. To this day, I’ve yet to read a single comment he has ever made that could be construed as antisemitic.
Yeah, now that you mention it, it’s already happened with me, too. I’ll still make the assumptions if the news is associated with neo-nazis, but in any other context “antisemetism” needs more specifics before I can tell if it’s legit or if it’s just Israel (or their allies) trying to silence critics.
Like there was an article about a study just a few weeks back that said “antisemitism was rising among liberals”, but then you look into what it actually meant and it was really about liberals not supporting Israel. But even before I clicked it to have a look, I was looking to see how ridiculously they defined “antisemetic” rather than having any worry that hatred of Jewish people was on the rise with progressives.
You aren’t taking crazy pills. This entire situation has always been engineered to be difficult for people to talk about who see the world in black and white terms. Not me though, I’m a greyman
I’ve even seen some people try claiming that the attack didn’t happen and Israel must have fabricated it. My first thought was, “Really? We’re going to ‘Alex Jones/Sandy Hook’ this?”
You can both want Palestinians to be treated fairly and be against Israeli citizens (among others) being slaughtered. Saying “Hamas was wrong to do this” doesn’t mean you’re saying “Israel is blameless in this situation.”
Sadly, way too many people need there to be a Good Guy Who Never Does Wrong and a Bad Guy Who Never Does Right.
I hope someday, at a minimum, some really impactful social science comes from the timeframe we are experiencing right now.
I’m just constantly baffled by people’s capacity for evil, in the name of a good. Also, people’s willingness to intentionally share delusions with people they unquestionably believe in, frightens the hell out of me. There is a very obvious a conscious choice happening when people are choosing to accept lies as truth.
As horrific as it all continues to be, its also fucking really morbidly fascinating. I remember being a little boy and reading about the horrors of the Holocaust, and failing completely to wrap my mind around how an entire Society could allow things to escalate that way. I want to be somebody who says they still don’t understand it, but I can’t. Because it’s happening right here in front of me, and I see why and how. And I hate it.
Back in college (which is longer ago than I like), I went to the Holocaust Museum in DC. The most impactful exhibit was called Daniel’s Story. You enter a room and go back in time - into the life of Daniel. He’s a Jewish boy growing up in Germany around when Hitler came to power. Everything looks just fine in Daniel’s house.
Then you go to the next room and time has skipped forward a bit. There are slight changes, but it isn’t anything too bad so you walk on.
In every room, time moves forward slightly and the changes always seem “not too bad.”
Then you get to the final room which is the entrance to a death camp. Suddenly, you realize just how all those “tiny/just fine” changes accumulated. But by now, it’s too late to stop it. You’re at the gates.
Had the Germans launched the full blown Holocaust on Day 1, too many people would have objected. But after a slow burn of tiny steps for reasons that sounded plausible enough to not be widely objected to, dehumanization, and other such tactics, the Nazis created an atmosphere where “kill all the Jews” seemed like a reasonable outcome. At least to most of the general populace who weren’t Jewish. Or LGBTQ. Or political dissidents. Etc.
The other exhibit that hit hard (well, they all did, but this one was notable to me) was the train car. You can walk around it or through it. I walked through and paused in the middle.
The plaque outside had said how many Jews were put in this car. I tried to imagine sticking that many people in the car, but I couldn’t. Then I realized my problem.
I was trying to put PEOPLE in the car.
Even though the “people” I was mentally putting in were imaginary, I was still treating them like people. If I switched to putting that many people shaped objects in the car, it became easy.
It was a huge lesson in the power of dehumanization.
I support Palestine doing whatever they deem necessary to end their oppression. If slaughtering civilians is what will end the genocide Israel is doing, then so be it. Israel brought it on themselves. Palestinians know the situation better than we do. I mean, what has only targeting military personnel done for them so far? Western media is saying they should just keep trying the thing that clearly does not work, because they want Israel to win. Its the same reason they endlessly claim without evidence that protests must be peaceful to work, even though they literally never have.
even if hamas didn’t exist there would be a similar organization doing something similar. Turning Gaza into a giant prison means a gang will pop up to enforce rules and they will build up new angry recruits every time israel kills a protestor, day by day, week by week.
One of the problems is that there’s a constant cycle of violence. Palestinians, feeling oppressed by Israel, launch some sort of attack (rockets, firing on civilians, bombs, etc). Innocent people are killed and Israelis react in fear and anger. This pushes right wing Israeli politicians into power which results in bloody responses directed at the Palestinians. Repeat again and again with each side’s attack being justified by the other side’s latest action.
(And, note, I’m not saying “the Palestinians started this” above. I just need SOMEWHERE to start the illustration and recounting the full 100 or so year history of this conflict would be way too long.)
Then, add to the mix, foreign interference. On the Palestinian side is Iran who doesn’t want human rights for Palestinians. No, they just want Israel attacked and Jews killed. So they’ll push for attacks like the recent one even if it will hurt, rather than help, the Palestinian cause.
On the Israeli side are evangelical Christians from the US. They think Jesus will come back if Israel, run by Jews, is attacked. They’ve got the “run by Jews” part and peace would stop an attack that would bring Jesus back. They do things like fund the settlers who take over Palestinian land.
I don’t pretend to know the solution. If I did, I’d be a world class diplomat - something I definitely am not. However, I can both understand why each side does what it does while condemning actions that I think cross the line. The whole thing is a twisted mess and anyone who thinks one side is all good and the other side is all bad is vastly oversimplifying the situation.
Nope. However I think it’s important to recognize that desperation breeds radicalization. And Israel creates fertile ground for this.
Proportionally speaking, at least people are publicly talking about how shitty Israel is for now, which is better than before since nobody cared about the many dead Palestine civilians over the years. In that sense, the PA get to actually have a conversation in the media while Hamas can be the fall guy.
Reddit worldnews has had a live thread about Russian invasion of Ukraine since February last year. They didn’t have one for the Israeli occupation.
This works both ways also. Israelis feel like they are constantly under threat of attack from rockets, bombs, and now raids that kill civilians. This increases support for hard line, right wing politicians who will act swiftly and harshly. Temporary anger over the attack (which, to be clear, is justified), can result in actions that cross the line.
It’s a vicious cycle. Israelis feel attacked and so support right wing politicians who promise them safety. Then the Palestinians are attacked and turn to terrorist groups like Hamas to strike back. Repeat again and again and again. Neither side is willing to back down because they have to get revenge for the latest attack even though this revenge will cause another attack.
I completely agree. I understand why radicalization occurs within Palestine, but this attack does not advance the goals of Palestine in any way but in fact exacerbates their already-dismal conditions tenfold. To me, I feel that Israel has nearly all of the agency to actually change the paradigm, but of course won’t. Meanwhile Palestinians are pretty much voiceless on the world-stage and so “acting out” is the only way they can get attention. It’s a horrible state of affairs that can only resolve by some miracle of a true leader presenting themselves within both camps and seeking to truly turn the page.
I don’t think Israel has “all the agency.” Part of the problem is that, with Hamas in charge, Israel would be trying to negotiate with someone whose stated goal is the complete destruction of Israel.
Suppose that, starting tomorrow, Israel treated the Palestinians perfectly. No military members assaulting innocent Palestinian citizens. No blockades of crucial supplies. Not even guards at checkpoints keeping Palestinians from entering/leaving certain areas.
If Hamas and similar organizations kept up attacks (because they wouldn’t have achieved their goal of wiping out Israel), it would just lead to pressure to restore those measures (despite them being flawed). The more attacks, the more pressure to act as the more likely that the government would crack down again.
It’s tricky because the Palestinians don’t want to stop because they fear the Israelis trampling them and the Israelis don’t want to stop because they fear terrorist attacks. Both fears are valid but it’s resulting in a toxic cycle of violence. It would take both sides cooperating to break this cycle. Sadly, I don’t think the current leaders on either side want to even attempt this.
I generally agree with you here; though as a caveat if I understand right, Hamas changed their charter to accept the the 1967 borders two-state solution as of 2017, suggesting a willingness to coexist.
It’s only difficult for some. On one hand the Israeli government purposely equates Jews as people with Israel as a nation to deflect criticism. Hell even shady Israeli spy companies like the ones behind the pegasus exploit followed about the reporters from uToronto to try to get them to make anti-Semitic or anti-zionist remarks so as to discredit their reporting on a government sanctioned hacker group that sells to dictators. On the other hand actual anti-semites hide their anti-semitism in criticism of Zionism. Which is how you get gas the Jews chants at pro-palestine rallies.
The problem is that you’re victim blaming. Imagine that Jews had done the exact same things Hamas has done to the Nazis. Would you be right to criticize the Jews for how they behaved towards their oppressors? No. Past a certain level we should not give one shit what lengths an oppressed class goes to to end their oppression. Short of literal genocide, Palestine will be the good guys here no matter what they do, because Israel is doing literal genocide to them.
The only successful slave revolt in history just happens to be the one where the slaves wantonly murdered their enslavers. It is a lot more moral to go to extreme lengths to ensure your oppressors are defeated, than it is to take the high road and lose. The high road is for cowards who would rather do what is easy than do what is necessary.
Nah, mate. Killing random civilians isn’t the same as killing slave masters. Random people on the street aren’t the ones to blame. Needless blood is counterproductive and just fuels hatred. Being designated as a terrorist org means the slim possibility of receiving foreign assistance is reduced to zero.
Oh yeah, america calling you terrorists means sooo much… Remember the “terrorists” that were in the hospital Obama bombed? Or the “terrorists” at the wedding he bombed? Or the “terrorists” who had WMDs based on zero proof?
Israel kills far more civilians than Hamas ever has, so it’s the lesser of 2 evils. Maybe Israeli citizens should storm the capitol and force an end to the genocide. If your country is doing genocide and you say nothing, you are complicit. I don’t care if Hamas targeted civilians, even though they didn’t. Because they know better than I do about what is necessary in order to end the genocide.
Talking about needless blood only when Israel loses a fight makes you a hypocrite. There has been a river of blood flowing out of Palestine for 30 years, so excuse me if I declare bullshit on you and the rest of our country caring about innocent civilians now.
Thank you for this. I just wanted to add that Hamas didn’t know the political leanings of those they killed so there can’t even be a “well, they voted for Netenyahu.” I have family in Israel. They all voted against Netenyahu and marched against many of his actions. Luckily, they are all safe, but had they been in that area they would have been killed or taken hostage with everyone else.
This wasn’t an attack against the people who attacked the palestinians. This was an attack against random innocent citizens. It’s possible to both condemn Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and condemn this attack.
Put yourself in the shoes of an Israeli boy. Maybe ten years old or so. One day, a Hamas attack kills your cousin, your best friend, and your five-year-old sister, as well as both of your parents. You survive because you happened to be elsewhere at the time. You’re not a soldier. You’re not one of the people responsible for Israel’s oppression of Palestine. You’re literally just some kid.
But in ten years, you better believe you’re going to be an IDF soldier, and one of the bad ones, because you want revenge. Every night, in your sleep, you see your parents’ corpses. And your sister’s. Someone literally cut her head off, and you see it, every night. And you are hellbent and determined to make them pay.
Now… Has Hamas’ murder of your little sister accomplished anything good for them? For their goals? Is it practical? Is it pragmatic? Will it move the world closer to a free Palestine?
No. Of course it won’t. It’s counterproductive. It will make Israel literally level Gaza. It will empower the hardliners, the ones who pushed for illegal settlements in the first place. They will be fueled by the combined rage of tens of thousands of people just like you, a little boy who lost everything because Hamas decided civilians were legitimate targets for murder, rape, mutilation, and torture.
The moral high road isn’t for cowards, it’s for people who aren’t idiots. You don’t win by taking the low road in a situation like this, you just make both sides angrier, more scared, and more entrenched. It accomplishes literally nothing that you profess to want accomplished. The low road is for fools.
Just look further down in this thread. You can see one person justifying Hamas and saying “slave rebellions require the wanton killing of their masters” and another justifying Israel’s actions by conflating all of Palestine with Hamas.
It’s the rare case where there are actually a nontrivial group of people taking what would be otherwise a strawman position. And that makes it incredibly difficult for us to discuss this like adults. This conflict is the perfect storm of centuries of geopolitics, anti semitism, anti Muslim sentiment, and nationalism.
The only good people here are the innocent civilians, and they’re the ones being brutally murdered and bombed and taken hostage.
Sadly, yeah. I’ve seen a few on Lemmy, which disappoints me. I mean, it’s not that hard:
Don’t support targeting civilians and cutting people’s heads off.
Don’t support illegal settlements and systematic oppression.
Why is that difficult? Why is it so goddamn difficult to say both are wrong in different ways? Supporting Israel’s right to exist free from terrorism against innocent civilians is not identical to supporting illegal expansion and the oppression of the Palestinian people. And supporting Palestine’s right to exist free from tyranny and encroachment is not identical to supporting Hamas, which is a horrendous terrorist organization that is just as awful to the Palestinians as they clearly are to civilian Israelis.
I think the one point of nuance that’s continually lost (and ironically, you glossed over it as well) is the Israeli treatment of Palestinians. They’re doing more than just “annexing” and “being mean”. They’ve been murdering and disappearing Palestinian civilians for decades.
I think Israel has been complacent, because it’s been relatively easy for them to live with Iron Dome and use Gaza as an open-air prison. The scale and effectiveness of this attack is unprecedented even if an attack is expected in general, which makes Israel’s failure to stop this and Hamas’ success even more surprising.
It’s really good to see Burgis (and Jacobin) publish something level-headed about the situation from the left, as well as seeing some Marxist pages I follow make the same distinction. Left pages (I’ve only seen a few personally) posting memes about revolutionary violence to sort of under-handedly voice support for Hamas I find pretty abhorrent, considering how anti-Communist Hamas is, not to mention would gladly start their own final solution if given the chance.
I don’t think anyone should feel good about supporting any group but civilians in this conflict. That means Israel needs to stop treating Palestinians as “animals,” which is what their Defense Minister recently openly referred to them as. That also means siding with Palestinian civilians but not the anti-semitic, fascist, Hamas. Many Israeli politicians probably have more in common with Hamas than not in their ideaology. The good people in this fight are the ones not fighting.
The unfortunate thing is how Israel’s western allies are basically enabling their complete blockade of Gaza from here on out. 2 million people will have no power, food, water, or medical supplies coming in, while being bombed with nowhere else to go, with the full support of it’s allies.
You aren’t crazy. This must have been what it was like being a sane, thinking person right after 9/11 and during the run up to the Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and seeing everyone around you descend into psychotic, genocidal bloodlust. That’s par for the course for conservatives but it is genuinely horrifying to see it coming from liberals and people on the left.
I remember that sinking feeling and realizing that our culture was going to use 9/11 as an excuse to act really terrible. I’m from the western US and had no cultural or personal ties with anyone east of the Mississippi, so I had less of an emotional connection to the actual terrible events. Nothing has been quite the same since in our culture.
The problem is the wording. If you say “To be clear, the horrific murder and the mutilation they’ve commited are inexcusable and Israel military and government, or Zionist, should be utterly dismantled, with every surviving member put on trial for war crimes” you would be labeled antisemitic, terrorist, and this might be consider hate speech which be law if your employer find out, they can fire you. And if you are a head of State, a politician, a journalist, most likely you will be forced to right an apology, and declare “Israelis” have god giving rights to the land…
Okay, but if one of the two, and only two, groups that some demagogue has helpfully divided the world into for me is bad, then the other must be good, right? That’s how the world works, right?
I will never understand why that’s so difficult for some people. Calling on Israel to stop the illegal “settlements” in no way indicates support for Hamas.
It’s because Zionists have enjoyed complete control over the narrative for decades.
They’re in overdrive right now trying to regain that control, and it isn’t working.
Castro kept her promise to repeal the ZEDE laws that allowed Honduras Próspera to establish its private libertarian city-state on the island of Roatán. Congress unanimously agreed that the ZEDEs represented a breach of Honduras’s sovereignty.
Thiel and his band of libertarian ideologues weren’t going to go down without a fight. Honduras Próspera launched an $11 billion ISDS case against the government of Honduras, claiming that its repeal of the ZEDE laws violated the terms of existing international treaties. That amount, $11 billion, represents about two-thirds of the government’s annual budget.
Honduras Próspera’s case has been roundly condemned all over the world. Elizabeth Warren and thirty-three other Democratic representatives wrote a letter denouncing the proceedings and calling for the elimination of ISDSs. The US magazine the Atlantic described the case as “neocolonial.”
Despite this condemnation, the case has not made international headlines. With the ISDS system so riggedly in favor of wealthy nations and powerful corporations, Castro’s government faces a difficult road ahead.
The ZEDE's which as I understand it, is like a free trade area/zone in the west but on steroids. Basically, investors can buy their own miniature nation to govern within Honduras, protected by Honduras but can't be repealed for at least 50 years. Now that Honduras is ousting their corrupt government officials, they obviously repealed the law establishing ZEDEs.
So now, investors are suing Honduras in what is going to be essentially a "court" of investors (ICSID, UNCITRAL or whoever) that will likely rule in the investors' favor (as they usually do).
It's like this was taken out of a dystopian novel.
Katyal is an MSNBC mainstay who came to prominence as a liberal defender of Republican president Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominees, all of whom will now rule on the case. In recent years, Katyal has helped Nestlé defend itself in a child slavery case before the Supreme Court and represented Johnson & Johnson in its bid to use bankruptcy to block lawsuits from cancer victims.
Modern society needs a way to deal with people who are cartoonishly evil. Maybe we should start trying to drop anvils on them or something...
If you do a more rustic baguette and roll the ends tight and pointy then it could be more pointed then the horn of an anvil. Also anvils are heavier on the bottom so would likely drop bottom down not horn first.
I am a former baker and also tried a bit of blacksmithing.
Also eat the rich, don’t waste their well fed bodies.
Matt Rosendale, a Montana Republican serving in the House of Representatives, responded to the Held v. Montana decision with the worst sort of condescending bluster. “This is not a school project,” he insisted. “It’s a courtroom. . . . Judge Seeley did a huge disservice to the courts and to these youths by allowing them to be used as pawns in the Left’s poorly thought-out plan to ruin our power grid and compromise our national security in the name of their Green New Fantasy.”
The only fantasy, however, was Rosendale’s characterization of the proceedings. The plaintiffs’ case was overwhelmingly persuasive, with extensive testimony from climate and pediatric health experts showing that people younger than twenty-five were going to be especially vulnerable to the many impacts climate change is going to have on physical and psychological health. In her ruling, Seeley summarized some of the damages to which the plaintiffs had testified.
I think it’s crazy that there are still so many out there that still just don’t get how fucked we are.
It’s not that they don’t “get it” - it’s tat they actively want to fuck other people, even if that means fucking themselves. They have the mentality of suicide-bombers, willing to sacrifice themselves to harm others.
Or alternatively they’re paid by lobbyists to protect fossil fuels industry’s interests. And since they’re sociopaths they don’t care if they wreck the earth and drive humanity to extinction as long as they get their proverbial 30 pieces of silver.
This isn't surprising. Thw US Constitution doesn't encompass all legislation or possibilities. That's the purpose of legislation from congress.
That so many keep turning tonl the constitution all the time for answers speaks volumes about how broken the US Congress and state level political systems are.
Basically if we want legislation to enforce climate stabilisation and prioritisation then the US needs to do something about it's polarised and clogged up political system.
Personally I think proportional representation to break the power of the duopoly of dems and repubs is the way to go. Citizens in individual states and communities may even have potential routes to do that at local levels through their plebiscite systems. They could break the system from the bottom but for whatever reason aren't.
They could break the system from the bottom but for whatever reason aren't.
Comfort. The system as it is, is predictable. Not just the voting public but members of Congress too. Good example the FED rate. At any point Congress could have put forth fiscal policy to address the looming monetary situation that quantitative easing was very clearly bringing. But they didn't because no one wanted to be the group that ended the party. Because what would happen if they implemented policy and then poof, slow down of the economy or inflation?
But of course we know what happened. No fiscal policy got implemented and basically we kept riding that gravy train till it was completely untenable. Then monetary policy had to be implemented. Then came a massive spike in inflation. Congress was so scared to implement any kind of policy that they basically ensured the thing they didn't want happening.
Then you've got folks like Senator Elizabeth Warren trying to blame the FED chairman and it is like, "No, you're inaction Senator is why the FED chairman must do the things he must do. All 100 of you are culpable in this, you all sat there and did nothing."
But of course one brings this up and some folks want to try and hijack it like "See both sides!" Or you get "No the other team is much worse!" And the reality is, most members of Congress are just too sheepish to implement any kind of bold policy. Because what if it doesn't work? There's the obvious bunch that are seen most often in the news, but there's way more members than the ones that seek out face time on the TV. And those are the majority.
The majority of Congress just wants to push the button they're told to push, collect their paycheck, and move on. And that is why we see no motion. The polarization is the visible figureheads battling it out, but the real culprit is indifference and a desire to maintain the comfortable world that has known qualities. Very rarely is actual original thought obtained in the US Congress.
This is a joke article. Biden got the traditional vote percentage for an incumbent. Let’s talk about how Trump loses at least 35%-45% every single primary.
Except that it’s extremely rare for it to be against literally no-one.
It also represents enough people for him to lose Michigan.
Biden really - really - needs the ceasefire he’s saying will happen Monday. It already looks like it’s an attempt to salvage something before Super Tuesday (which is, Tuesday,).
Who didn’t get 100k votes. At best; 80k people specifically voted uncommitted in protest to Biden. And that’s generously subtracting the “normal” 20k, despite the feeling of exit pollsters that no one who voted so, were not doing so in protest.
bigger margin
A margin that has almost certainly gotten smaller. 50k votes is practically nothing. Therefore it’s not dishonest to say that Michigan is in serious doubt.
dishonesty
Whose being dishonest? Are you seriously saying that Biden’s actions on Gaza aren’t hurting his election?
Edit: you can see the shrinking margin by looking at how many people voted and where:
the Republican had 1,104,385 people voting, with Trump getting 753,003 votes.
Democrats had 762,697 people voting, with Biden getting 618,426, and uncommitted getting 101,100 votes (81.1% and 13.3%)
It’s a bad expectation to say there won’t be more people voting in the regular election, but if we use it as a bellwesther, we can soundly say that Biden is most likely to loose Michigan. Particularly because history shows that republicans are more likely to fall in line than democrats.
In- as I’ve been saying for a while now- a repeat of ‘16. Where the only difference in rhetoric is that others are already blaming voters.
Ah, you forgot the only option conservatives can entertain as true: everyone does it anyway and liberals are only caring about it now to [favorite culture war paranoid fantasy].
In Clarence Thomas’ case, it gives them a convenient excuse to call people on the left racists. Because apparently it’s racist when a black person is a Republican and you criticize them fairly.
Potentially. The government would have to actually prove the supposed gifts were actually payment in exchange for some sort of consideration or work. Legitimate gifts are subject to exemptions and generally taxed on the gift giver’s side as well.
Each individual can give out somewhere around $17k per recipient per year tax free and then beyond that a total of currently around $12M in total gifts over that limit tax free in a lifetime.
I agree it doesn’t pass the smell test generally but nowadays you essentially need direct unequivocal proof of it being a bribe.
It’s not that easy because you don’t bribe a Supreme Court Justice for decades because of the one case that might involve a company you’re invested in. They’re trying to align his decisions with their political opinions, and keep him from retiring so someone who doesn’t share their political opinions doesn’t get his spot.
It’s funny, because I remember reading this exact same conclusion just days after the first story about him broke last year. And yet nothing has happened. I guess it’s good it’s in the news again.
Hunter Biden, the president’s problematic son, has finally been indicted for his years of tax evasion. Only in an egregiously unequal society like ours do the children of the rich and powerful get away with corruption for as long as Hunter Biden has.
I guess my old coworker who made $35k a year and evaded their taxes for more than 30yrs was just lying.
Fuck off with this “OnLy ThE rIcH CaN eVaDe TaXeS.” Lots of people do it without getting audited. There’s plenty of reasons to be pissed off about the two tiers of justice, but this Hunter Biden angle is just ignorant and smacks of Republicans clutching their pearls as they try to build public momentum for their impeachment bullshit.
No. I choose not to engage, because that’s what they want. They don’t care about acting in good faith, and they aren’t interested in sussing out the facts or nuance.
ETA: I wasn’t directing the “fuck off” at you, OP, but at the author of the article.
I choose not to engage, because that’s what they want.
They do want you to roll over and not have a response, having a simple reasoned reasoned response that’s actually describing what’s going on without the conspiracy is far better. It shows you understand more and aren’t angry or shy to address it.
Yes, but they don’t care what the answer is. They aren’t interested in being wrong or changing their paradigm. If they have no response, they’ll just wave the argument away like, “You’re just ignoring the gravity of the matter.”
They aren’t interested in engaging honestly. Reality is mundane. Conspiracy theories are exciting, which is why the right is so full of them.
Why should what the right is willing to engage in determine what facts and views you have around an issue? Don’t you agree elites shouldn’t be treated differently, that the right will force this as an election issue as much as they can, and that you’d rather it explained away reasonably so people are immune to the conspiracy disinformation?
Why should what the right is willing to engage in determine what facts and views you have around an issue?
They don’t. But choosing to engage with them only helps their credibility, and that implicit credibility can help them sway naive and gullible people.
Don’t you agree elites shouldn’t be treated differently, that the right will force this as an election issue as much as they can…
Yes, but since we’re in the context of this article, Hunter Biden specifically is irrelevant to that conversation. Running his name as a headline for this decades-old issue only gives credence to the efforts to link his personal conduct to his father.
…and that you’d rather it explained away reasonably so people are immune to the conspiracy disinformation?
Yes, but that presumes people are predisposed to reason, and that reason would immunize them. I simply don’t see evidence of that being the case for far too many people, and certainly not people on the right. Nobody is immune to propaganda, even skeptics.
Engaging on a personal level is a different matter, but on the public stage, engagement is the goal. I think there are exceptions, like where it puts people in danger (see anti-vaxx bullshit), but in general, the liar is not obligated to engage honestly.
He is absolutely not saying that. The one quote is him saying we have the capacity to pay attention to Ukraine and Israel at the same time, and the other is saying that we aren’t sapping our economy with the money going to those countries because the countries are buying from the US.
“It’s not as bad for the economy as people are claiming, there are mitigating factors” is not the same thing as “it’s an incredible opportunity to boost the economy!”
The overused argument at the end that we should be spending the money on the US is exactly what he’s responding to…the money IS coming back to the US, and this is just not that much money compared to the size of the US economy.
It’s always fun to ask the spend it in the US crew what sort of social programs they would like to see bolstered, NOT including tax cuts for the wealthy/corporations or adding to the existing military budget, more police, etc. Inevitably the want isn’t to help the people but to benefit those already in control.
we have a trillion dollar 'defense' program that sells human killing weapons to the rest of the world. of course these wars are going to be profitable for us, its the conservative way. make money, fuck people. in that order.
god forbid any monies not be spent the military-industrial welfare program. gotta get keep that money trickling upwards
It is OK to criticize or express caution about Israeli policies and government.
No, it's not if you are German.
And this has nothing to to with some signaling for team Israel. If a single high-ranking politician in Germany would be caught saying that Israel is commiting war crimes the international media wouldn't need more than 30 minutes before the calls for invading to denazify Germany again would start. And with the usual hateful morons being in control it would only need to another 30 minutes before we had reached the bomb them all and finally destroy that failed country stage on social media.
You should really try having any opinoin but one of highest praise and adoration for Israel as a random nobody from Germany on social media. Then you might understand actual reality. This is not Germans that call for your immidiate execution the moment you dare to criticise Israel.
FFS... I dared to mention over on Reddit that Hamas' terrorist acts don't suddenly make Israel's actions right and now have another dozen new messages calling me a nazi or calling for me to be shot (or both) for my collection, alongside with a lot of new messages from Reddit's mental health bot offering me all the hotline numbers I obviously need before I start hurting my self and others in my unstable mental state.
Even the simplest softest anti-Zionist criticisms are turned into huge anti-semitic proclamations, and those in turn are beyond the pale in Germany. In the last week Israel flags have sprung up everywhere, as well as missing person posters for Israelis supposedly abducted by Hamas.
But that’s as far as German support for Jews goes - or maybe one should call it German repentance for the crimes of the Nazis.
At the same time anti-semitic violence has always been happening in the background, but it’s never really reported on or discussed. There are regular Nazi “cells” discovered within police and military, but it’s always “isolated incidents.” The constitutional protection agency (Verfassungsschutz) is run by Nazi adjacents. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.
The whole point of the constitution is “to ensure domestic tranquility”, and “no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process…” but I guess we get to handwave that if the means of deprivation being legislated is a second order effect.
The suit filed “claim to a fundamental constitutional right to be free of CO2 emissions.”
Free of CO2 emission. That’s both beautiful and wildly impractical. If you file a lawsuit with foolish demands you should expect to get resistance. IIRC there’s something like a Trillion dollars set aside in the IRA for emissions/ghg reduction strategies - directly or indirectly- across the board.
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