Where did all these evil people come from? Is it possible that Israel’s actions are just going to create even more and worse terrorist groups? Or you think the surviving children will grow up and look kindly on Israel for killing their parents and destroying their homes?

The current extremist government in Israel knows exactly what they need to do to stop Hamas and Hezbollah from continuing to attack Israel, they just don’t want to. They’d rather continue to create the conditions for extremism so that these attacks can be used as justification to finish their genocide.

At this point we know that if you keep an entire group of people poor and oppressed with no prospect of economic opportunity or achieving a viable state, they become easier to recruit into a terrorist group. What have they got left to lose? Why NOT grab a rocket and attack your oppressors? This is why international law doesn’t allow the creation of stateless persons…

Israel could STOP settlement expansion into the West Bank, first and foremost. They could start complying with international law and internationally recognized borders. They could stop working AGAINST a two state solution.

Maybe the Israelis could stop assassinating their own leaders when they work towards peaceful solutions. They could also stop radicalizing their own youth and defense forces to believe that the only solution is to exterminate the Palestinians.

There is a whole range of things that they could do… I wonder why they don’t?

I think the stated position is that it’s tough to legislate a line there because it should be a decision that is made between the woman and her doctor.

It might be possible to have legislation that draws a reasonable line while still largely recognizing a woman’s right to choose… The problem is trust. We’ve seen that conservatives have repeatedly tried to use this line as a way to effectively ban abortions. For example, by setting a ban on abortions after 6 weeks, they effectively ban abortion because a woman might not even know they are pregnant by that time.

It’s the same thing with Voter ID. We’ve seen Republicans attempt to use that as a tool for voter suppression, even claiming in public to their supporters that Voter ID would swing the election to the Republican. Does anyone actually support the right of undocumented immigrants to vote? Of course not. We know it’s a bad faith position because if they really wanted to prevent undocumented immigrants from voting, they could just implement automatic voter registration and send people a free Voter ID. They won’t do that because their goal is voter suppression.

Unfortunately this works the same with gun laws, conservatives are suspicious of any gun regulations, even the sensible ones that have majority support, because they’ve been told that Democrats want to take their guns and every regulation is a step down the slippery slope that ends with the feds going door-to-door to take their guns. So they don’t want any line to be drawn.

I didn’t realize there were UN peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon. This article has a good overview of the history of that:

UN Peacekeepers in Southern Lebanon

Unfortunately even if she wins and wanted to restrain Israel, AIPAC money could still be spent against Democrats in the midterms.

Support for Israel is going to have to become much more unpopular with voters before we see real action from politicians.

This article describes how Israel’s favorability has gone down globally but in the US it had only taken a very small hit last year. As the genocide as progressed and the war widened, maybe that favorability has taken more of a hit.

Time Israel’s Favorability

All of this is great except the shoes, get some new/better shoes it’s worth it, your body will thank you later.

I’d be OK with giant corporations as if they were actually competing with each other for consumers and labor, paying their fair share of taxes, and weren’t allowed to use their revenue to subvert the will of the people by buying politicians.

The problem is that it takes a strong FTC, IRS, NLRB, FEC to ensure the above things, and we know how Republicans and billionaires feel about that.

Not even going to pretend that AI investment will solve climate change then? Saying the quiet part out loud?

Speaking of former tech executives known for comically bad strategic decisions, Steve Ballmer was on the Daily Show recently and I was thought “this is the guy who said Linux was cancer and decided not to invest in mobile phones, can’t take him seriously” but the guy seems to be doing some interesting stuff now, more interesting and less harmful than “AI” anyways. Has a site usafacts.com attempting to make hard data with reliable sources easily available for better political discussions. Seems better than some of these other billionaires with their “free speech” platforms and “alternative facts”.

I find that they have a lot of mistaken assumptions that are just lies repeated by Fox News. Sometimes they don’t even watch Fox, they’re just surrounded by people that do.

I like to focus on the economic issues, since there is hard math for the economy and I find it’s not productive to argue with someone who is terrified that a trans person might be in the same bathroom as their child. I find these people literally start foaming at the mouth over that stuff and I just don’t have the right math or words to cut through the rabies.

For example. I’ve heard Republican voters say that Republicans are better for the economy and reducing the national debt. Ask them which Republican presidents have left office with a reduced deficit?

Ask them if they know how much it added to the national debt when Reagan, Bush, and Trump passed tax cuts primarily for the rich and corporations.

Let them know that you’re also concerned about the economy and the deficits, and show them a chart of federal spending and ask them whether they want to cut Social Security, Medicare, or defense spending to pay for more tax cuts for the rich and corporations.

Then ask them why DON’T the Republicans cut ANY of those things to pay for their tax cuts? Why do those deficits just get passed on to the next Democrat and blamed on them? How are Republicans going to reduce the deficit when it’s not politically feasible with their base to cut ANY of those three things?

When it comes to immigration, ask them why they think immigrants are trying to get here in the first place. Show them Smedley Butler and talk about the war on drugs and ask them if they think the US is partially to blame for the violence in other countries that people are trying to escape from.

Also, show them the Maddox comic where he depicts immigrants “stealing our jobs”. Ask them who is hiring these illegal immigrants and why? Ask them who the managers and owners of those companies vote for and why those people might have an incentive to preserve the “illegal” status of those employees.

Maybe Amazon will develop a system where Ring/Alexa will let the drivers into your house to use your bathroom, in exchange for showing fewer ads on Prime Video.

A Trump presidency means US out of Israel and Iran? How so? Trump and his advisors have done way more to hawk a war with Iran than Biden/Harris. Trumps actions while in office were also very supportive of Israel and antagonistic to Palestinians, leading to more attacks on Israel and more US involvement.

Is it possible that the Democrats’ hands are tied because the American public supports Israel and AIPAC has successfully primaried several progressive politicians?

I think they’re in a tough spot politically, the left seems to think that support for Israel will cost the Democrats elections, but there’s more evidence that if they do NOT support Israel strongly enough, it will cost them elections.

I love how the article refers to Bolton as “famous war enjoyer”. I hope that catches on.

And still Trump supporters tell me that Trump is the anti-war candidate and the Democrats always start wars. I guess they will blame the war with Iran on Biden, even though Trump pulled out of the Iran deal, antagonized the Palestinians, and did his best to start a war by assassinating generals. Let’s not forget Bolton’s “I’ll celebrate with you in Tehran” speech.

That’s not even true, they interrupted episode 2 of Rings of Power for me.

I paid for the ad free add-on while Rings of Power is on but after that I’ll just cancel Prime completely until there’s another show I want to watch, so they’re overall losing money from me with this decision.

I think it was 5 to 6 that was a really tough one for me because we had an in-house state management library that broke with the major breaking changes to RxJS. After that was pretty much no issue all the way from 6 to 17.

I’ll never look at my phone the same way again

Yeah, the “chilling effect” is a big problem. I’m sure the creators of TemTem and other alternatives are getting nervous.

I guess we’ll never know whether Palworld could have avoided this with a different art style or varying the catching mechanics more.

And we would be talking about it, if Palworld was NOT such a blatant ripoff of Pokemon.

It’s like using the OJ Simpson trial as an example of how messed up the LAPD is. Is the LAPD fucked up? Yes. Is OJ Simpson someone that we should be sympathetic to? Not so much.

If they start going after games that are NOT blatant ripoffs of their IP, then yes, I’m much more concerned about the abuses of the patent system. Patent trolling IS a real problem, I’m just not sure if Palworld is the right catalyst for people to be sympathetic about patent trolling.