• @Nobody
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    12711 months ago

    I’m still not seeing why Israel is being treated as a priority over or at least equal to Ukraine. Ukraine is up against a legitimately strong adversary using human wave tactics. Israel is dropping bombs seemingly indiscriminately on mostly civilians. Ukraine is fighting for its existence. Israel is getting revenge on its much, much weaker neighbor.

    If Iran and its proxies enter the war, that might change the calculations, but that hasn’t happened yet.

    • @glimse
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      7211 months ago

      Israel is also rich as fuck with a strong military. They do not need financial support.

      • thilo
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        1111 months ago

        But politicians elsewhere need israeli support (to get voted they believe)

    • @PilferJynx
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      3611 months ago

      Agreed. Isreal doesn’t need help putting the boot on helpless children.

    • @Illuminostro
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      1711 months ago

      It’s a strategic foothold in the region for the US. And “Jeebus.”

    • @[email protected]
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      1611 months ago

      And the more support Israel gets to kill those civilians the more likely sympathetic regional neighbours would be inclined to join. And rightly so. It’s genocide.

    • bioemerl
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      911 months ago

      Republicans like Israel and don’t (all) like Ukraine

    • @Pasta4u
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      -611 months ago

      We have already given the Ukraine over a 100b in funds. We don’t need to give them anymore. I also don’t want us to give aid to anyone.

  • Veraxus
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    11911 months ago

    How about: No arms deals with any entity that indiscriminately murders innocent people, women, and children?

      • @[email protected]
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        711 months ago

        Example: we don’t vote for the president or the people who actually elect him. Yet, we are bombarded with ads about which to pick! Why?

        • @_bug0ut
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          11 months ago

          I mean, that’s not entirely accurate - a vote for a presidential candidate is a vote for the slate of electors tied to said candidate - effectively a vote for your candidate, albeit indirectly. Electors can, however, be required to vote according to popular vote as required by the state they’re electors in. Or they could have pledged to vote according to specific party. I don’t know for sure, but I assume state elector requirements override party pledges.

          My understanding is that when it was devised, it was a compromise between direct democracy (which would honestly be potentially dangerous - how many people do you know where you can’t help but go, “Fuck… This guy can vote.”) and election via congressional vote. It certainly ain’t perfect and I have no bias towards it, but it’s a system like anything else that people tend to point at and blame when things don’t go their way or just ignore or even defend when things do go their way.

          • @[email protected]
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            011 months ago

            Biden is president. Things went my way. But let’s imagine that this was how you got lunch.

            Hmm, Josh! I want a hamburger!.. okay buddy I promise I’ll bring you a hamburger. I’m just going to be your food delegate in the food acquisition team.

            Josh! I want a salad! … and I want a spoon full of extra virgin olive oil!. Josh I want an apple! Hey Josh can I get some Doritos crushed in a bowl and mixed with jalapeno and chicken nuggets!

            Then Josh goes to the big food acquisition meeting… My team wants a spoon full of extra virgin olive oil!

            Then you wait half an hour and you get a turkey sandwich but you’re vegan so you eat the three onion rings.

            70 percent of the office was vegan too, but only 5 of the food delegates were vegan. The other 20 were old timers that have been ordering the food for the past seven years. They like turkey sandwiches. So you get turkey sandwich.

            I hope you enjoy your turkey sandwich 🥪. 😂 LOL. At least it wasn’t a lump of lard with a tupee.

            • @_bug0ut
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              111 months ago

              The long, drawn out metaphorical explanation was unnecessary and frankly kind of condescending.

              I’m not over here trying to be some champion of the electoral college and I’d be more interested in seeing a real push for ranked choice or one of its cousins.

              The point I was making was that if you sat at home and didn’t vote at all, your chosen candidate would never see the inside of the oval office and I went into my understanding of why it is the way it is. Ultimately, voting under the current system is not entirely worthless as you seemed to claim in the original post I responded to.

              We’ve had something like 59 elections in total and 5 of them involved the winning candidate losing the popular vote but winning the election by way of the electoral college. Only one of those elections - the very first - involved anything even remotely close to your example (but still not42.3% vs 31.6%). The other 4 had a difference of like 2% or less between the two leading candidates.

              The electoral college was devised as a compromise between direct democracy and congressional voting and I’m sure it was done in good faith to try to make sure everyone was represented, but this system seems to truly show its cracks when we’re facing an insanely stark national split like we see today and there’s no argument that we should probably shake things up and get rid of it.

    • @_bug0ut
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      11 months ago

      - George Costanza

    • @[email protected]
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      411 months ago

      Biden said something like: “If there was no Israel, we’d have to invent it.”

      The US loves having a highly militarized, violent, totally amoral and 100% US-dependent proxy next to all those oil fields. The last thing the US wants is peace in the middle east. This is just divide-and-conquer 101.

  • @Synthead
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    2211 months ago

    This is taxation without representation

  • @[email protected]
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    2211 months ago

    I get why - congress is increasingly useless - but there’s obvious accountability problems there.

  • krzschlss
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    11 months ago

    I don’t like this trend! War movies in 10-20 years will be boring. No Rambos, no Schwarzeneggers, no Spielberg and Tom Hanks emotional patriotism! No funny casual racism, no casual homophobia, no casual misoginy… Did Mark Hamil play a terrorist in Star Trek after all? The End of an Era. We’re gonna have to watch films about how a bribed White House politicant struggles to keep up with weapon manufacture demands while managing to convince his wife not to divorce him because she feels neglected since he’s never at home… directed by Clint Eastwood.

    That’s boring. I’m out!

      • @AngryCommieKender
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        311 months ago

        That was Reagan. It never worked, but we did get some useful stuff out of the project.

        • @Madison420
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          -111 months ago

          No, Mark hamil was on Star wars not star trek, they never let him guest appear to prevent confusion and to not make a running joke that wouldn’t ever die.

  • @[email protected]
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    11 months ago

    I can’t believe how many shitlibs there are in here, using this opportunity to guilt people with an actual conscience into voting for this piece of shit as if he has some sort of moral high ground.

    What is the lesser evil when both the DNC and the GOP work directly for the exact same military industrial complex?

    The real villain here is the system that makes any party outside of the two party system completely irrelevant: first-past-the-post.

    We have two Republican parties. One of them just so happens to pretend better at being inclusive…but they secretly also wish that the poor could be burned to fuel their mega-yachts.

    • @[email protected]
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      11 months ago

      The one that isn’t taking away trans rights, making abortion illegal, and saying the last election was stolen, seems like the lesser evil actually. I can agree that I think our parties would be slightly better if first past the post was changed to allow for multiple parties, but i think it’s ridiculous to say both parties are currently the same. Edit: As I responded to thecrotch, I disagree with the assertion that the Dem party is evil. Flawed? sure, our 2 party system will only allow for flawed parties, but to say their evil is downright showing ignorance of US politics or disinformation given the examples that I gave.

      • @[email protected]
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        1111 months ago

        Not to people overseas. There’s no difference between being indiscriminately murdered by a Republican or a Democrat to the people dying.

        • @[email protected]
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          -411 months ago

          Democrats aren’t getting people killed, Republicans are by not allowing women to get medically necessary abortions. To people over seas, seeinh one group deny the existence of covid, make abortions illegal, and passing laws restricting lgbt+ peoples rights is obviously the evil one.

          • @[email protected]
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            811 months ago

            I’m sure that the people in Syria who are being bombed and the people in Palestine who are being bombed by Israel using US dollars really care about our domestic politics as they watch their families get blown to shreds.

        • @[email protected]
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          211 months ago

          You’re right, what I should have also added to my post was that, I disagree with the assertion that the Dem party is evil. Flawed? sure, our 2 party system will only allow for flawed parties, but to say their evil is downright showing ignorance or disinformation for the examples that I gave.

          • @[email protected]
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            811 months ago

            Democrats voted for Afghanistan, Iraq, the Patriot act, and countless other evil legislation. They’re absolutely evil. So they’re less evil than the Republicans, so what? Should I give them a cookie?

            • @[email protected]
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              011 months ago

              You’re like 20 years behind, catch up. Give them a cookie? Give them your vote. The alternative is republicans who RIGHT NOW, IN THIS YEAR are attempting to restrict abortions, deny the elections, restrict lgbt+ rights. Democrats are fighting against that. But yeah you’re right maybe split you’re vote because both sides “are the same”.

              • @[email protected]
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                -111 months ago

                I didn’t say they’re the same. They don’t have to be the same to both suck. Fuck you for telling me how to vote. You got a lot of nerve.

                • SatansMaggotyCumFart
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                  311 months ago

                  The person you’re responding to isn’t wrong, but you do whatever you feel is right.

            • @frunch
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              -111 months ago

              No, but you should still vote for them. What else can you do? Vote independent? Change the world?

              • @[email protected]
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                411 months ago

                My state is reliably going to be won by the same party no matter what I do, and that party is going to get 100% of our electoral votes no matter what I do. So I vote third party, because if they can get 20% of the popular vote they get to be in the debates next time around. Living in a locked down state, it’s the only way my vote can possibly have a chance of making any difference.

    • @Illuminostro
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      1511 months ago

      No, we have Eisenhower Republicans, and Nazis.

    • thilo
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      811 months ago

      This is nonsense. MAGA is a fascist movement. Don’t let both being neo-liberal blind you.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 months ago

        Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.

        To me, it sounds a whole lot like both Biden AND Trump can be considered fascists….especially with this idea of secret military aid to Israel that I’m reacting to here.

        • @[email protected]M
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          11 months ago

          Looking at it from an economic definition perspective though Biden represents the financial bourgeoisie and Trump represents more industrial bourgeoisie

          • @[email protected]
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            811 months ago

            I’d actually argue that Trump comes from the real estate bourgeoisie but I agree on the Biden characterization. Biden never saw an MBNA donor contribution that he didn’t love (like in 2008 when he sold all future generations out for a $250,000 payout from MBNA).

            I just don’t see how real estate wealth translates to industry. In general, many of Trump’s areas don’t fully align with the Republican establishment who, in my observation, generally are from real estate, energy, and industry as you mentioned.

            Thinking about it more, it seems like real estate has a lot of overlap in both parties.

    • cannache
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      111 months ago

      It’s a bipolar world buddy and your mind and body is sport for the hunters lol

    • krzschlss
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      411 months ago

      Genocide is illegal (I think, it’s kinda blurry for decades now). Don’t see those people concerned about it. I don’t think these people care about law. They bend it to their will, like they do with their tax-paying citizenry who vote and pay for them.

    • krzschlss
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      11 months ago

      deleted by creator

    • Karyoplasma
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      11 months ago

      Not quite true. Israel gets a lot of support from the US government because it’s a useful ally.

      It’s the vanguard in the coveted Middle Eastern region (lots of oil) that is incidentally hated by everyone around them so you can easily use their status to provoke proxy wars, then invade and claim plausible deniability by saying you just helped out your ally.

    • @TotallynotJessica
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      211 months ago

      Nah fam. Miss me with that nonsense. Why would a tiny nation control the US? They have influence with American interests in many ways, but control it? It makes no sense. The only position that this would make sense from is the same antisemetic cabal bullshit. A small group controls the world alright. The wealthy, most of whom are white Christians. They control things, not Jews.

  • HuddaBudda
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    311 months ago

    But during some of those conversations, managers have told staffers they should not expect to influence U.S. policy on Israel-Palestine regardless of their national security chops, according to five current and one recently departed State Department officials who talked to HuffPost.

    Keep in mind, that Biden has asked for a humanitarian cease fire in Gaza. This information is like fresh of last night, so I don’t expect news agencies to catch up fast.

    It looks like Biden is lagging behind public opinion on this one, but he is turning course.

    What that means going forward will depend on how much aid is let in Gaza by Israel.

    • @[email protected]OP
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      1411 months ago

      Biden is specifically avoiding the term “cease-fire”:

      The White House has refused to call for a cease-fire but has signaled that the Israelis should consider humanitarian pauses to allow civilians to receive aid and for foreign nationals trapped on the strip to leave Gaza.

      • HobbitFoot
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        011 months ago

        Yeah, but probably because using the term would cause major political problems for him.

    • @[email protected]
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      1211 months ago

      Asking for a cease fire to move people out. Nothing about them being able to return to their homes or land.

      • HuddaBudda
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        511 months ago

        Hitting the breaks on this whole mess is the first step. I will most certainly not call this a victory for just beginning.

        But at least now the people in power understand that this is a problem. Versus the previous mindset of:" kill all humans, full speed ahead."

        • @[email protected]
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          611 months ago

          Forcing people out of their homes so that they can be occupied by Israel isn’t hitting the brakes, it’s accelerating it.

    • cannache
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      011 months ago

      It’s like the war on drugs but worse. Technically the US doesn’t really have a horse in the race so to speak. I doubt that the USA, nor the oil giants across the Middle East are inclined to involve themselves in a potential paradigm shift of global politics into WW3 directly after the disaster that was Trump’s election loss and subsequent social disorder.

      Personally although I feel like a one state secular, democratic solution but with multiple internal use passports would suit the whole lot of them better. If you choose to carry card X y or z you become the subject to a different set of religious rules return unique benefits. You can theoretically try to carry all three but you’re going to have a hard time computing let alone complying with all of the religious rules all the time.

      If we ignore the humanitarian issue of the bombings so to speak, because war, like hell is a gift in itself by all measures, I think the fairest solution would simply be for the most stable, responsible and directly involved guy in the room - Benny boy, to pay up and fix his own shit he’s created by actually building more homes and infrastructure on both sides of the fence and giving the Palestinians a card printing system, redraw the lines on the map and let them decide their own laws, rather than kicking people out of their homes and bulldozing stuff without a plan, creating a system of displacement which realistically nobody wants, just to let the terrorists come back and make pipe bombs and other weapons from the scraps.

      Hopefully someone found my verbal diarrhoea to be constructive