• 4 Posts
  • 80 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • MAGA-flation. Republican -flation. Trump is a lame duck, but MAGA will survive. Messaging that ties everything that Trump fucksup to him alone gives Republicans in 2 or 4 years room to duck the consequences (I didn’t do it, Trump did it, I don’t agree with everything he did, blah blah blah). We need to make sure to tie everything Trump does to the whole Republican party now, so they all pay the price for letting Trump take over their party and fuck the economy and everything else.

    The fight for the midterms starts today. Remember that.



  • I’ll say, we had a guy do the scarecrow thing in a neighborhood I lived in when I was under 5yo back in the late 80s. 30 years later, the only actual memories I have of trick or treating at that age are the scarecrow guy and some shitty old guy who gave out popcorn balls. I can still picture scarecrow guy’s house and everything about the set up. Point being, congratulations on creating some core memories for a lot of kids!



  • Just a guess, but it’s probably a combination of two things. First, if we say a self driving car is going to hit an edge case it can’t resolve once in every, say, 100,000 miles, the number of Tesla’s and other self driving cars on the roads now means more miles driven more frequently which means those edge cases are going to occur more frequently. Second, people are becoming over reliant on self driving - they are (incorrectly ) trusting it more and paying less attention, meaning less chance of human intervention when those edge cases occur. So probably the self driving is overall better, but the number of accidents overall is increasing.


  • There is a significant difference between proxies and a direct missile attack launched by a nation-state. Just as there is a significant difference between the US arming a genocidal state, and the US actually dropping bombs directly on civilians. Not to say Iran and the US are not blameless for the actions of their proxies, but there are degrees here that are significant. You kneejerk “Iran bad, Israel good” view of the world is devoid of nuance. Maybe you should get yourself a twitch stream.




  • Iran’s IRGC say attack on Israel response to killing of Nasrallah

    Iran’s Fars news agency is reporting that Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the missile attack under way on Israel is in response to the killing of Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah last week as well as that of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh earlier this year.

    “In response to the martyrdom of Ismail Haniyeh, Hassan Nasrallah and (IRGC Guards commander) Nilforoshan, we targeted the heart of the occupied territories,” the IRGC said in a statement.

    So seems like Iran intends this to be a one and done response for everything Israel has done the last few months.


  • Depends on Israels response. When Iran did this in April in retaliation for Israel bombing an Iranean embassy, Iran was like “we have retaliated and are good now”, Israel responded but it was limited, and status quo was restored.

    If Israel decides to escalate (which is their default play lately), or if Iranean missiles hit forcing them to retaliate, there could be all out war, including involving the US.

    If you want a hint of what’s to come:

    The far-right Israeli finance minister (Bezalel Smotrich) writes on social media: “Like Gaza, Hezbollah and the state of Lebanon, Iran will regret the moment.”


  • 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.






  • 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.




  • 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.