See, if you’re gonna cover the election in pure horse race terms, this is the way to do it. Try to tell me this article wasn’t more fun to write than something about “+ 2 points in the polls.”
In fairness, they did that too, with Biden. I also sent messages to all my congresspeople back when they were voting on aid for Israel (not that it did anything). Putting pressure on Harris at this point to pull her towards the side of humanity in her forming Israel policy does seem like some level of sensible thing to do.
I absolutely think that the level of pressure the activist left has been putting on the Democrats has been producing an impact, which is absolutely a good thing. Pretty much the only part I disagree with is the attempt to solidify some sort of linkage as if the Democrats like what is happening in the Middle East right now or have explicit policies in favor of it, that aren't posited on pure political survival in our misled and largely war-criminal-friendly electorate.
Protesting for peace in Gaza strikes me as a much better way of achieving peace in Gaza than does heckling the most pro-peace-in-Gaza candidate available
Or, hell, even organizing an "uncommitted" vote or etc. Or finding a coalition of voters that can make specific demands of the Democratic party in exchange for votes. Or doing public protests to raise public awareness, so that the Democratic candidate won't be faced with this awful decision of either funding a genocide or facing defeat in the election because most of the American public doesn't understand that it's a genocide. There are a lot of things that will better influence American public policy than will heckling the Democratic candidate when it is still uncertain whether she will win against the pro-genocide party.
When I was in undergrad some of the chemistry students would do parties where they would dump ice cream ingredients into a big bowl and then dump liquid nitrogen in and stir vigorously to make instant nerd ice cream and then we would all have some
Don’t forget Mrs. “I’m with Her”’s nod and wink to the coup in Honduras that fucked things up in pretty permanent fashion there up to and including to the present day
Better than literally any other president in living memory. Which is to say, still genocidal dogshit. He put sanctions on settlers, pushed for a ceasefire, paused weapons shipments to try to pressure them to stop killing, and then said aw what the hell and gave them $60 billion worth of weapons anyway.
In the footsteps of Napoleon, the shadow figures stagger through the winter
Falling back before the gates of Moscow, standing in the wings like an avenger
And far away behind their lines, the partisans are stirring in the forest
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You'll never know, you'll never know, which way to turn, which way to look, you'll never see us
As we steal into the blackness of the night you'll never know, you'll never hear us
And the evening sings in a voice of amber
The dawn is surely coming
The morning road leads to Stalingrad, and the sky is
Softly humming
-Al Stewart
(I wonder if Putin has been nervously watching the Gaddafi video at all, recently)
Come on let’s talk about how foreign nations shouldn’t be interfering in US elections
And about how the “Persians” chumped the Obama administration on the nuclear deal until you got the best of them and now they fear and respect you and only you
Honestly I LOVE being able to have Ctrl and Cmd be different modifiers.
Ctrl-C is break, Cmd-C is copy. And so on. All the Unixy stuff respects Ctrl and ignores Cmd and vice versa for the Mac stuff. Honestly it’s the best keyboard setup I have experienced and the only one which never manages to irritate me.
(Personally I am fine without a dedicated copy/paste key; the only ones I like having dedicated keys for are things like volume up/down for which I’m not aware of a universally understood key combination for)
The one time the UN looked in detail into this theory, it turned out it was crap. Hamas and civilians are sometimes next to each other just because they all live in Palestine, but the claimed thing where they would deliberately gather up some civilians and have them stand next to their installation, as if this would deter the Israelis or as if there was any shortage of non-artificial civilian casualties and so it was useful on any level to create some artificially, was it turned out a bunch of hooey.
Does that mean that if Likud has a headquarters near some civilian installation, that it's okay to blow it up and the civilians along with it?
(Not that I necessarily believe that Hamas had a command center next to all of the children, but even if they did, I don't think that automatically means that blowing up all the children in the school becomes okay)
I think the more that Trump does to bring reality to people’s experience of him that he is a piece of shit, the better.
You want people in these city governments (which surely includes some number of Trump supporters) to say hey this guy really fucked us - not the Hispanics or the Democrats or some abstracted enemy that we’re on board for him fucking with, but us, and what’s up with that.
At the time that Carlin was saying this, it was probably a lot more accurate than today. The parties were pretty indistinguishable for a lot of the 80s and 90s, and then after that the Democrats got significantly better in some cases, and the Republicans went straight off the edge into wanting to kill anyone different than them or who wanted to stand in their way.
See, if you’re gonna cover the election in pure horse race terms, this is the way to do it. Try to tell me this article wasn’t more fun to write than something about “+ 2 points in the polls.”