Bill Zettler

The answer is mutiny. JD Vance could have private conversations with the cabinet, even the ones dedicated to hiding the Epstein Files, namely Bondi and Patel. He has more private conversations with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who may well already be close to open revolt, seeing their soldiers slaughtered in a meaningless fight for Israel's greater glory. Once everyone's on board, activate the 25th Amendment and get rid of the guy before he gets us all killed. The deal for Trump: leave, and the Epstein Files stay buried and you won't be impeached or prosecuted for starting an aggressive war or murdering children. Alternative scenario, in case Vance's vocal support for the war is sincere: Tulsi Gabbard could maybe do it. Tulsi would have the instant support of a majority of Americans, I think. Her patriotism is unquestioned, except for monsters like Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, who found her truth-telling inconvenient, and drummed her out of the Democratic Party on the utterly fake pretext of her being a Russian spy.

@Contextprov @ggreenwald No argument on that point.

@twitbzed @ggreenwald I agree Tulsi is just doing whatever she has to do to keep her role and even when she was anti war was probably just saying it to be popular. But I still think it’s a humurous point to believe trump listens to everyone, when he’s had more people leave than any other POTUS

This little trick -- named The Barak Ravid Tactic, after the Israeli media operative who launders it -- has been used repeatedly. We hear reports of Trump and Netanyahu diverging, Trump negotiating a peace: all a ruse that enables war. Let's hope there's an exception now:

@Jvnior Lots of people to murder in Thailand. A target-rich environment.

🚨 BREAKING: 425,000 Israelis flee to Thailand. That’s f*cked. That’s like 5% of the population.

@AhmedBaba_ "Progressive" doesn't mean everyone is black, gay, trans, and above all, useless.

Right-wing haters killed something that was objectively amazing. Starfleet Academy had one of the best first seasons of any Trek show. Period. These anti-woke losers would’ve had a stroke at Riker rizzing up non-binary aliens in TNG. Star Trek has always been progressive.

@BenjaminDEKR I prefer to deal with humans. Hell, I resist the ordering kiosks at McDonald's, and cost-cutting measures should be much more tolerable there.

What is the point of hotel check-in desk people anymore? Why isn't this 100% automated? Verify your ID, pay, get entry code. Why are humans still doing this?

@beith123 It *can't* be simply Epstein blackmail if Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater were saying, in the bloody 1960s, for heaven's sake, that Israel controlled US foreign policy outright. That's when they were still pretending to tolerate talk of a "two-state solution". It was a lie.

Ever wondered how a TINY, INSIGNIFICANT COUNTRY like Israel - population a mere 10 million - can exercise SO MUCH INFLUENCE over the MASSIVE USA with a population of around 350 Million? MOSSAD/EPSTEIN BLACKMAIL??? Any other ideas??????

And my counterpoint is to say that we have no one on record, not even Joe Kent, saying that Tulsi got sidelined. For all we know, the leak was Tulsi's own propaganda, preserving her political cred among progressives and anti-war folks. People (me included) want to see good in Tulsi that might not exist. She might well have decided that being the Queen of Warmongers is kind of fun. She could always say what she thinks, and we could judge accordingly. Right now, she's walking in Colin Powell's footsteps.

@twitbzed @ggreenwald Sort of missing my point there, I agree mostly with what you stated btw, my point is there’s wide spread reporting tulsi is on the outside because she doesn’t agree with decisions trumps making, same with Kent before he left. This goes against trump listening to ‘everyone’

@MattWalshBlog Your 25-year-old suggestion is about to run smack into reality, as Trump re-activates the draft, and sends lots of these ignorant spring breakers to their early deaths. Not the girls, of course. Never the girls.

There's basically no difference between this and the exact same kinds of "dumb spring breaker" videos you'd see 10 years ago or 20 years ago or 30 years ago. I actually don't mind the fact that a bunch of 18 and 19 year old kids are totally ignorant about world affairs. That's healthier than obsessively doomscrolling alone in your basement or whatever. The problem is that these kids can vote. We should all just agree that 19 year olds are stupid and don't know anything, and that's basically fine, but it's also why they shouldn't be able to vote. Raise the voting age to 25.

@Contextprov @ggreenwald The only evidence we have that Tulsi is anti-war is her campaign speeches. If you'll recall, Trump's campaign speeches were full of the exact same rhetoric, and in his case, at least, they were all lies. Tulsi's always hated Muslims, and she's best friends with Meghan McCain.

@ggreenwald @twitbzed Wasn’t there a seperate group at Mar-a-Lago when they started the attacks which boxed out anyone anti-war? Hasn’t Tulsi been boxed out for months not even allowed into discussions on Venezuela due to her anti-war stance? Wasn’t Joe Kent’s different views not listened to?

As soon as you accept that Israel must exist as a "Jewish state" no matter what, you are accepting that there will never be peace in the middle east. Because Israel cannot exist as it is without nonstop violence. Show a Zionist a map where Israel does not exist as a Jewish state and a map where the entire middle east is on fire except for Israel, and then ask them to pick a future, and they'll pick the second one every time. That's the worldview that's baked into Zionism. The worldview you're not supposed to bring up in mainstream discourse about the Zionist ideology. You're not supposed to mention the demented murderousness inherent in the premise that Israel must exist as a Jewish ethnonationalist state no matter how many people need to be killed in order to make that happen. But that's the reality. It's a simple matter of historical record that Israel cannot exist without continuous violence and abuse. That's not my opinion, that's historical fact. There has never been a modern state of Israel which does not constantly kill and abuse its native population and the inhabitants of neighboring countries. And the typical Zionist response to such criticisms is to blame everyone but themselves. It's the fault of the Palestinians, the Arab nations, the Iranians etc, because they refused to tolerate the west's imposition of a brand new ethnostate dropped on top of a pre-existing population who became victims of mass displacement and apartheid as soon as it was created. But nobody has ever been able to provide me with a convincing argument why the original inhabitants of the region ever should have accepted this arrangement. They've never been able to put me in the shoes of a Palestinian in the 1940s and lay out a reason why I should have been fine with the things that were happening to me and my people. Nobody has ever been able to provide me with a convincing argument why the Muslims of west Asia should not have stood in solidarity with the Palestinians and their plight. The only solid argument they've ever given me is "They should have laid down and submitted, because that's what was required in order for the Israelis to stop killing and abusing them." And that's still the only argument they've got to this very day: that the Palestinians and their neighbors should lie down and submit to the existence of this genocidal apartheid state that was inserted into their homeland like a glass shard into a foot. But the fact of the matter is that they did not lie down and submit. Many Arabs did out of sheer self-preservation, but many did not. You can tell me they should have given up and submitted, but that's just arguing with reality. That's not a solution, it's just whining about the inevitable. And this is where that leaves today. Israel and its allies butchering human beings throughout the middle east, creating countless war orphans who are naturally going to grow up desiring violent retribution. Generation after generation Israel creates the violence it pretends to be defending itself from, all because it was decided that there must be a "Jewish state" in historic Palestine no matter what needs to be done in order to accomplish this. And Zionists are fine with this. They don't care if the entire middle east is turned into an ocean of fire so long as the Israelis are still dancing to their electronic music in the middle of it. That's what this slogan "Israel has a right to exist" really means. It means Israel and its allies have a right to keep the middle east in a nonstop state of war, and the strongest argument for why this must be the case is that some dead guys made some stuff up and put it in a book thousands of years ago. At a certain point you need to admit that this is a psychopathic status quo which cannot be allowed to stand, and that anyone who supports it is complicit in the bloodshed. The ethnonationalist apartheid state of Israel must be dismantled. People's various religious objections to this statement must be disregarded as infantile tantrums made by adults who believe silly fairy tales. A wildly different status quo needs to be established from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Because the alternative is a middle east that exists in a permanent state of nonstop violence and chaos.

@DropSiteNews An equivalent gesture of goodwill would be Trump exercising some sort of authority over Israel, so that the Iranians have some faith Israel can be constrained at all. Of course, Trump has no authority over Israel at all. Quite the reverse, really, and Iran knows it.

🗞️ Trump’s “gift” from Iran was limited tanker passage of non-U.S., non Israeli tankers through Hormuz Iran “did something yesterday that was amazing — they gave us a present…worth a tremendous amount of money… [it] arrived today,” President Trump said at the Oval Office on Tuesday. According to a U.S. official and a senior Arab diplomat cited by the The Times of Israel, he was referring to Tehran allowing a limited number of non-U.S., non-Israeli fuel tankers to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The move came after Washington, via intermediary countries, reportedly asked Iran for a goodwill gesture to test it was speaking to actors in a position of power, as it claims it seeks a diplomatic off-ramp to the unprovoked war it launched in late February. Analysts cited by TOI said the “gift” had only a modest impact on global oil markets, if that, and does not amount to a major concession.

@academic_la That's crazy talk! Next you'll be suggesting we allow gays into musical theater!

This horrific discrimination will not stand. We need a Jewish Rosa Parks to break the glass ceiling and get Jews back into American public life. Maybe start with allowing Jews to own media companies or something.

@notmobydick @caitoz To reiterate: lots of dead soldiers lets pro-war propagandists shout down anti-war arguers much louder. They'll say anyone speaking the slightest defense of Iran is a traitor. They'll bring out the soldiers' mothers to shout down anyone who suggests those lives were wasted.

@twitbzed @caitoz So the American people don't want a ground war, unless a few thousand ground or airborne troops are killed, then they want the war they don't want to go ahead?

If the US were a normal country with a normal military it could just walk away from Iran whenever it wants. But because it's running an empire with military bases throughout the middle east, this war is only over when Iran says it's over. Iran can keep hitting those bases as long as it has missiles and drones to launch. Tehran knows it needs to impose severe costs on the United States or else it's just going to get bombed again in a year or two, so even if Trump "declares victory" and says the war is over it can keep hammering those bases while imposing economic costs with the Strait of Hormuz blockade for as long as it likes. Basically it appears the US has three options: 1. Dramatically escalate and find some way to secure total victory. 2. Pull out and just let Iran smash the US military bases in the region until it decides a sufficient price has been paid. 3. Completely withdraw from the middle east. All of which would come at extreme cost to the empire. We live in interesting times.

I'd argue that reflexively hating on schemes to get government revenue, no matter who it's from or what it's for, isn't much better than Bernie Sanders' approach to government, where any expenditure must be seen as the right thing to do, regardless of how it's paid for or who it benefits. So Bernie advocates for free healthcare for illegals, despite there being no free healthcare for citizens. He thinks money is free, and this will simply open a door through which universal free healthcare will gently walk through. In some ways, your argument is the precise opposite of Bernie's approach, but the singlemindedness of it, and faith in its righteousness, is identical. Me, I like things to be paid for, and I like the payers and the beneficiaries to make sense, but taxation is a necessary evil.

@twitbzed @Amelia558rs You are arguing to not be a burden by paying, I’m saying the govt is the burden. Just let the govt know you don’t need the money and forego Social security and Medicare as you age, then pay extra to fund the young’s needs. No one is stopping you from paying extra.

Give me a Yes if you agree.

@notmobydick @caitoz It's much easier to paint Iran as irrational and insane monsters with several thousand of our best and brightest rotting under the Iranian sun. Right now, the American people sympathize with people who were brutally attacked and are now forced to defend their homeland.

@FurkanGozukara But here we're talking about control spanning more than 50 years. So their stranglehold long predates Epstein Island. So what are the tools of manipulation they're employing? I really don't think Richard Nixon was a pedophile sex pervert.

Mind blowing revelation. Glenn Greenwald confirms that Richard Nixon and Barry Goldwater both complained on tape that the Israel lobby completely dictates American foreign policy. This is not a conspiracy theory. It is a documented reality admitted by US Presidents.

Not so much. In 2016, the GOP establishment fought tooth and nail against Trump and in favor of establishment Repubs like Jeb! Bush. Ironically (and perversely, I suppose), it's why I hold out hope for the GOP. Unlike the Dems, when the GOP base went for the weirdo, the Party reluctantly acquiesced. This is in stark contrast to how the Dems reacted to Bernie Sanders' popularity: they broke every rule they ever claimed to stand by to destroy his bid for the nomination. They didn't acquiesce to the people's will; they canceled it. And they found that canceling the people's will was so easy, and produced little enough blowback, that they chose to just wipe out the people's role. They cut the people out of the nominating process completely. I don't know how they'll thwart the people's desire for a fair primary for 2028, but they very obviously will. They'll have to if they want to nominate the perenially unpopular Kamala Harris, who is a useless fucking idiot who should never have attained high office in the first place. Likewise, Gavin Newsom is unlikely to win a real primary by praising Zionism as his idea of a dandy state religion.

These were the assholes who gave us Trump.

@TedRall And Eve looks an awful lot like Sydney Sweeney.

Adam was Elon Musk?

@RobertPicardo @jondelarroz You're lucky you escaped having your character turned black, gay, and trans.

Careful! Can't remind the "real Star Trek fans" on this platform form what real Star Trek is and is meant to be. They get angry and abusive - - especially when you block them for being angry and abusive! @jondelarroz , for example, has no understanding of Gene Roddenberry's vision.

@TerribleMaps That's pretty much the definition of what you need to create a 4th-degree spline. That is, you can do it with any 5 points.

Believe it or not, Germany’s 5 largest cities lie perfectly on a 4th-degree polynomial