Seize the Means of Distraction

Could anything be a stronger example of the #ruleoflaw than a former US President going to prison for breaking a law he signed while in office?

@Legal_Fil I still support dumping the filibuster but the dumbest thing are Dems pushing the idea that no GOP nominee should ever get a Dem Senator’s vote. Uhh, Dems are going to be the Senate minority about 66% of the time for probably the next 50 years. Thats a losing escalation.

"We've got to get rid of the filibuster b/c our opponents are so dastardly that, if we don't pass this law, democracy ends." "But won't they just rescind the law once in power? After all, w/o the filibuster, you won't be able to stop them." "Well, they aren't THAT dastardly..."

@Osint613 @TzillaSaid Pretty sure the Israelis have a significant fund available for “payback” to Hezbollah after decades of terrorism.

REUTERS: Regional sources say Tehran has informed mediators it will reject any deal that does not include compensation from Israel to Hezbollah.

@TechTonik808 @ChrisCillizza @jimmykimmel @CherokeeNation I was wondering when the reflexive blockade position among Dem podcasters would run up against their identity politics obsession in this case.

@ChrisCillizza Crazy that @jimmykimmel would openly mock a member of the @CherokeeNation for being a successful entrepreneur. I guess Jimmy doesn’t care about minorities and disenfranchised groups. Shameful.

Not a great look

@ColonelMark4 @ChrisCillizza @LStargazer54 GW was an experienced army officer too. It’s certainly not the first time cabinet positions went to someone mainly because they were in Congress and the Senate for a while.

@ChrisCillizza @LStargazer54 George Washington was a planter/farmer Benjamin Franklin was a printer. Roger Sherman was a shoemaker. I could go on.

@VividProwess My thought is that people sentenced to life imprisonment should only get palliative & basic healthcare. No one should have treated Sinwar for his cancer. They should have let him die.

🚨BREAKING: The Death Penalty for Terrorists bill was approved by Israel's National Security Committee for its second and third readings, advancing toward final approval by the Knesset plenum. Is this the right decision by Israel?

@CadessborX @Legal_Fil Especially given that his portion of Muslim-majority societies (Pakistan) effectively surrendered to extremist ideology in domestic policy as long as a small secular elite continue to control the state in trade & foreign affairs.

@Legal_Fil Medhi Hasan logic

“People who support and engage in terrorism will support and engage in more terrorism if you do anything to stop their support for and engagement in terrorism” is a very odd argument.

@Legal_Fil Its left-coded racism to deny people have agency. It's also a movie myth that terrorists have tragic backstories. Violent assholes exist in every society. 'Those 70k rockets Iran's regime built or financed, fired at Israeli civilians since 2005, just made them vote for Bibi!'

@Timodc POTUS is the only one who gets to decide such things. The age where diplomats abroad or where ambitious colonels and generals stationed abroad had significant autonomy is long over. After MacNamara, Kissinger, and Ollie North, the public doesn't want that power delegated.

This is another thing that makes me look a little side eye. The war is not the fault of “AIPAC bought politicians” broadly. It’s the fault of Trump. You could say Bibi or MBS influenced it. But domestically the person to blame is Trump. Throw in Lindsey if you want.

@BitPaine The other aspect is at the mid-levels where it erodes the institutional experience. 2003-2005 when the 2nd Intifada ended, Hamas basically had old men living abroad and 20 year old "commanders" in Gaza and WB. Every 25-45yo field officer equivalent was dead or imprisoned.

I don’t think people internalize how demoralizing and destabilizing it is to have successive iterations of your leadership eliminated, without a single meaningful casualty inflicted in return, week after week, for a month. This war is basically coughing baby vs hydrogen bomb.

@Penny_J_Thomas @MargaretReturns I’m here in a house, I bought w money I made at my job, on a postage stamp worth of land that without modern technology is practically unliveable 9 months out of the year, in a state under it’s sovereignty and laws. I don’t owe an apology to anyone.

@Penny_J_Thomas @MargaretReturns The whole “colonizer/oppressor” ideology is fascist “blood & soil” but left-coded. If you do a land acknowledgement in the US, it’s left-coded. In UK it’s far-right & will get you jailed. In Israel or India it’s right-wing.

I no longer believe what the descendants of colonizers, settler, genocides in the US say when it comes to Israel. Y'all sure are comfortable on the stolen land your ancestors achieved.

@ok_post_guy @speechboy71 Any Arab state facing a hostile population in an enclave like Gaza would have annihilated Gaza, and not just the buildings. China put 10M Muslims through a reeducation prison system & turned cities into surveillance dystopias for a handful of stabbings and a riot.

@ok_post_guy @speechboy71 The option the US/EU and Arab states had, was to actually do something about Hamas since 2005. Egypt removed their entire side of Rafah to eliminate Hamas in Sinai. As long as it was only IDF that would be the ones to fight, Israelis are right to disregard their critics.

A lot of people are focusing on Blinken saying "coulda, woulda, shoulda" while completely refusing to grapple with this part of his answer, which is the reality at the core of the Israel-Gaza war There was no "one weird trick" for the Biden administration to end the war

@WatsonLadd @Cincinnatus56 @ok_post_guy At this point Hamas is more of a threat to Gazans than Israel. Hamas’ continued rule over half the strip and most of the people means no reconstruction is likely.

@Cincinnatus56 @ok_post_guy Well Hamas did not end up removed

@Cincinnatus56 @ok_post_guy There was no starvation campaign though it’s an obvious thought given that Gaza under Hamas became a welfare dependency w 70% unemployment & most of its GDP from foreign aid. It was threatened but the Israelis blinked first every time on that issue.

@ok_post_guy The character of the war was different early on. It was still possible for Israel to pursue a humane military strategy focused on Hamas instead of engaging in a starvation campaign. The idea that Biden or anybody could’ve restrained Israel from removing Hamas on 10/8 is laughable

@reesetheone1 The Trump GOP are acting like they want the American Jewish vote but they don’t need it and the DNC is acting like they don’t want it and they are screwed without it.

Too many Jewish people in battleground states…… Just saying.

@agraybee Build more housing, make ACA subsidies more generous with a Medicare buy-in.

I just think Democrats need a bold and inspiring vision for the working class that goes beyond "AIPAC Bad."

@BainterPatricia @RepWPH @mkolken They were told by their bosses to streamline permitting because it is good for business creation. If anyone noticed fraudulent patterns they were probably told it’s not their job to worry about it.

@RepWPH @mkolken Paper-shuffling administrative government employees have to be facilitating this. Who rubber stamps 112 hospice companies at the same address without noticing how absurd it is? What’s the nationality and education level of these government employees?

Illegal immigrants just pulled off a $90 MILLION hospice scam in California. One foreign national behind it. Even worse, 112 hospice companies were registered to a single building… and when reporters showed up, there were ZERO patients. This isn’t just fraud. It’s the entire system being exploited in plain sight.

#LetsGoCaps and also this is the last way we know we aren’t in the AI apocalypse yet.

@CenTexLib It’s not even about antisemitism at this point, it’s whether psychotic people on his staff think driving a car bomb into a preschool is acceptable. There should be 0 people in America who think that’s acceptable and I’d deport everyone who disagrees to the middle of the Sahara

Abdul El-Sayed said on a conference call that members of his team were worried about the supposed “risk” associated with condemning the antisemitic attack on Temple Israel. He says he decided to make the statement because he viewed making the statement as an act of leadership. From the article: “‘It was a risk,’ El-Sayed said. ‘All of our team was really worried about saying something, but leadership is being willing to say the thing if you believe it to be true that nobody else is going to say.’” Additionally, the article contains a link to an unlisted YouTube video. That video is the snippet of the Zoom call where he says this. While he is talking about this, one of the call’s participants comments “the synagogue raised funds for the IDF,” in an apparent effort to justify the attack. El-Sayed ignored this comment, refusing to give oxygen to the idea that there was any sort of justification for the attack. That’s good. But it’s also not good that there are people in high places within his campaign who would believe, let alone say, such a thing. I think Dr. El-Sayed is a good man. But I am supporting McMorrow in this primary, in part because I prefer a campaign that is not staffed by people who waver on whether antisemitism is bad.