That’s generally true, and if I’m going to be stuck with an American government excusing Israels war crimes, it might as well be one that protects abortion, but there is a big stupid “but” to go with that. Trump hates bibi. Not because of any considered foreign policy thing, but because Trump is mad bibi called biden to congratulate him on winning the election. Trump never has forgiven bibi for this, and has been criticizing bibi on the trail because of it. Our politics are fucked, I guess is what I’m trying to say.

That’s true, but I think what recent conflicts have demonstrated is that total firepower isn’t everything. Ukraine was significantly outmatched by Russia and hung on, even before western weapons shipments. Hamas, estimated at something like 30k fighters strong and armed with small arms and light rockets/artillery, continues to fight effectively against the US armed IDF. Then we have historical examples like the US war in Vietnam, or the US failures to fight insurgents in Iraq (with the tide only changing after deliberate hearts and minds political/social strategy).

The whole “we have a lot of planes” thing is just defense contractor marketing. How that translates on the battlefield, especially when the civilian population despises you, is not great.

A war like that would devestate Isreal and drag the US into a true quagmire. It would sap a tremendous amount of resources and leave the US more vulnerable to the china’s and Russias of the world.

Not to mention our good old buddy international terrorism, which Bidens unwavering support of Bibi is already making us a prime target for. Shit would be fucked.

Bibi is obviously evil, but also a moron if he does this. Electorally, if Bibi wants Trump back in the Whitehouse, one the better strategies to do that is keep democrats divided on Isreal. In other words, Bibi hugging Biden drives progressives away from Biden, hurts enthusiasm, reduces Dem turnout, all good things for Trump. Bibi coming to speak to the Republican conference (he is already meeting with Republican senators today virtually) only serves to make support for Isreal more partisan by pissing off Dems and aligning them against Isreal. Not to mention pissing off Biden who he needs.

I guess the strategy is to scare Biden and Dems into supporting Isreal more to stave off attacks from Republicans who would be viewed as more supportive of Isreal by voters? Sounds like a dumb move, public opinion is turning against Isreal, and an invasion of Rafaku isn’t going to make Isreal any more sympathetic to the average non racist and non biblical prophecy believing voter. Again, Republicans attacking Biden for not supporting genocide enough only serves to shore up Bidens base, and independent looking at the chaos and suffering in Gaza aren’t going to ding Biden for not being Bibi’s bitch.

Would be a dumb move I reckon.

Tonight I’m going to sleep in my warm bed in my house. Navarro is going to sleep tonight on a cot in a cell. No amount of playing the victim to cameras will change those facts. I am going to smile falling to sleep tonight thinking about that.

That’s literally what happened. A book was published in which white house officials shared stories which questioned his mental fitness. The stable genius thing was from a series of tweets he sent attacking the book.

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart,” the President continued. “Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!”

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/donald-trump-white-house-fitness-very-stable-genius/index.html

So much of this shit went down the memory hole, I worry a lot of voters won’t remember what it was like to live in that daily chaos.

I’d say it’s worse then that. The IDF said they killed 20 “terrorists”. In IDF speak, all Palestinians are terrorists. The IDF didn’t specify if these alleged “terrorists” were actively shooting at them. Rueters used the term “gunmen” suggesting armed and active combatants. The IDF simply didn’t say that.

To me this just shows how broken Congress is. US social media companies have been collecting our data, building profiles of us, manipulating us with the content they show in various ways, harming teen mental health, and all of that for decades, but Congress did nothing. Facebook in particular was used as a tool to manipulate the 2016 election by Russia in various ways, but apart from some show hearings, Congress did nothing. But TikTok is alleged to do the same thing (remember nobody has actually shown proof that the CCP is like directing TikTok to promote pro-China content for Americans), and we get bipartisanship somehow. That vote was more bipartisan than a stopgap bill to prevent a government shutdown.

And the reason is “China bad” is a message that voters agree with, and because Google and Meta are more than happy to reward these people for helping to kill their biggest rival in social media. At the end of the day TikTok users are forced onto less desirable platforms so their data can be harvested by American companies and all that, our brave congresspeople get to pretend to be “tough on China”, and Big Tech rakes the profits they were losing by being outcompeted in the market. So few in Congress, on either side, have integrity.

To be clear how off the deepend they went, they released a poll after the election “proving” that Kari Lake won the AZ Governor’s race by 8 points. The article implies the final stray was when they released a poll showing that 1 out of 12 Americans have been paid to vote in a certain way (or at least received an offer).

Republican media has convinced their viewers that Biden is basically constantly confused and just slackjawed and drooling constantly. They set expectations for him so low, when reality didn’t bare out their caracicture they had to pivot. I think the implication they are going for is Biden was dosed with something to make him seem coherent, basically the weekend at Bernie’s president. Dumb, but so are Fox News viewers, so I’m sure it’ll go over just fine with them.

That said, it did seem like Biden was yelling a lot. The few moments where he slowed down to talk about some somber topic came as a relief to me. To put a metric to it, I saw in Politico that the written version of his speech contained 80 more explanation marks than last year’s speech.

Oops! Looks like you you weren’t able to find a way to keep shifting blame from Biden. Nice dodge!

I and you and we all do bear some responsibility for the genoicde in Gaza though. Your trying to make a dumb argument, but your actually right. While we, as individual tax payers, do not make decisions on where the money is going, why do have control over who we elect to represent us (to some extent in our two party system).

Which is why I voted non committed in the primary. It’s also why I stopped paying federal taxes years ago!

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/02/08/national-security-memorandum-on-safeguards-and-accountability-with-respect-to-transferred-defense-articles-and-defense-services/

I assume you either just don’t know what your talking about or are desperate to make this not Joe Bidens fault. But it is. And even if Biden has his hands tied in certain ways, it’s not like he’s complaining about it. The day of the flour massacre the administration pointedly reaffirmed that they would continue providing aid despite the human rights abuses. But whatever, pretend Biden isn’t responsible for sending bombs to Isreal to drop on kids, whatever makes you feel better about yourself.

What bodies are relevant here? Congress has famously not approved aid for Isreal, so it’s not them. Joseph R. Biden, commander in chief of the armed forces pursuant to Article 2, Section 2 of the US Constitution has unilateral authority to approve, disapprove, or condition arms sales to Isreal. I don’t know what you think is constraining him.

Unless you are referring to AIPAC, in which I take your point.

It’s like your trying to make this more complicated to somehow shift Bidens culpability away. We have three branches of government , the judiciary isn’t sending bombs for Isreal to drop on kids, the legislature is too incapable of doing anything at all, so that leaves us with the executive branch that gets to decide whether to send bombs to Isreal and what conditions to put on them. Currently, the executive branch is headed by Joseph R. Biden, and he makes those calls. Just like it was his decision to set up a temporary port for aid. What does 200 years of history have to do with anything? Is George Washington approving arms sales? Did Biden want to condition weapons transfers on Isreal adhering to humanitarian law, but the ghost of Richard Nixon wouldn’t let him?

The analogy, in my opinion, works to illustrate the point that just because you did one good thing, that doesn’t absolve you of responsibility for the much larger bad thing you are still doing. Biden getting aid in is good, I’m glad and support it and yada yada. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to forget that at the same time he is sending bombs (over 50% dropped on Gaza were unguided!) without any conditions on how Isreal uses them.

Great perspective, I enjoyed reading that thank you

I have a 100 dollar auto donation to Trump’s campaign set up. My family was mad at me for that, so I also set up a 10 dollar donation to Biden. That didn’t seem to get them off my back, so in a few weeks I’m going to up my donation to Biden to 30 dollars. For some reason my family is still mad and wants me to stop donating to Trump. Can’t they just celebrate how awesome my donation to Biden is? AITA?

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS.”

I really think that’s the answer. No deep conspiracy, just money. I looked it up today, and NYT subscriptions fell off a cliff as soon as Biden took office. Chaos means newspaper subscribers and cable news viewers. The fate of the country be damned, there’s money to be made off of four more years of daily outrages and instability.

Yeah the button is labeled “stop transfer of bombs to Isreal”. All he has to do is push it. Without the unlimited firehouse of US taxpayer funded weapons flowing in, Isreal will have to decide whether they want to draw down their current stocks blowing up residential houses and hospitals, leaving them more vulnerable to actual threats, or pull back. Also, the US is the only thing holding back international accountability. If Isreal loses that support, they might face consequences for their actions, become isolated, lose trade, etc.

Now it doesn’t have to get all the way to that point, the US could just seriously threaten cutting off support, military or otherwise, and Israel would likely back down. But Biden calling bibi and saying “pwease don’t target civilians” is not asserting pressure.

Biden won’t do more because he knows if he puts real pressure on Isreal then Republicans would attack him as “weak on Hamas” or whatever, and that threatens his reelection. Biden cares about that far more than human rights.

At least your honest about your call for genocide, instead of pussyfooting around with “right to defend themselves” nonsense.

The majority of the state of Mississippi does not support LGBT rights or protections for women That’s their culture, even if not everyone agrees with that. I assume your cool with genocideing Mississippi as well?

“There is international pressure and it’s growing, but particularly when the international pressure rises, we must close ranks, we need to stand together against the attempts to stop the war,” he said.

Sorry, why is Isreal not an isolated state at this point? If they won’t respond to international pressure, and indeed are intent on doubling down because of that international pressure, why even include them in international bodies?

I’m old enough that for me the NYT lost a lot of credibility with their cheerleading of the Iraq war and WMDs and serving as a tool for Cheney to get revenge on a whistleblower and all that shit. The same organization that is now writing haikus to avoid saying Isreal massacred starving civilians in their headline, “As Hungry Gazans Crowd a Convoy, a Crush of Bodies, Israeli Gunshots and a Deadly Toll”.

The simple fact is a second Trump term is good for the NYT. Trump does crazy shit, people are outraged, they buy newspaper subscriptions to read about it. The NYT monetizes doom scrollers, and Trump is a endless supply of doom.

So is it money, or is the NYT always just been a mouthpiece of neocons? Or both.