Who cares? Anybody who still supports Trump even knowing he’s a wannabe dictator, convicted felon, serial rapist, and buddy of Epstein, need their fucking head checked. At this point I really hope these bozos give Trump all of their money. Knock yourselves out, dumb fucks.

“sold”

To think that this pathetic sack of shit is the best the Republicans could come up with, for 3 consecutive elections, blows my mind.

He lets the worm do the thinking.

There is a “public comment period” that can last up to 60 days.

So at the latest by the end of the summer. Biden obviously wants to get this done before the election, as he should, because it’ll help him.

Let’s be real though, the nonpartisan committee has been doing a real shitty job running the debates in recent years. No order, bad questions, shitty crowds full of wooping plants, allowing candidates to shout over eachother and make faces or side comments, etc.

America doesn’t need a repeat of the last 2 election cycles.

Thomas won’t even have to die. If Trump wins you can be sure we’ll see at least 1 resignation and replacement. They aren’t going to make the same mistake that RBG made, especially since they’ve had their eye on the ball when it comes to packing the courts with conservative judges at every level for decades.

Everything is in place for Trump to perform an autocratic authoritarian takeover of America. People need to be mentally prepared to fight or flight.

Care to elaborate on what Biden can realistically do with the current congressional breakdown?

Counterpoint: If Biden can pass the biggest infrastructure bill since the New Deal, the biggest climate bill ever, erase tens of billions of dollars of student debt, pull us out of the pandemic economy without a major crash, put together a global coalition to help Ukraine fight against Russian imperialism, reschedule cannabis, etc., then I’m going to blame the stupid voters for not (a) recognizing his achievements and (b) not recognizing the threat that Trump and the Republicans pose to our democracy and the global climate.

Biden has a razor-thin majority in the Senate and has no control of the House. Trump has already personally appointed 33% of the SCOTUS, and has another 66% eating out of the palm of his hand. And people are going to hand our country to the Republicans again (even though they are openly speaking out against democracy every fucking day) because… why…? Because there isn’t peace in the middle east and somehow that’s Biden’s fault?

I don’t blame him. Low quality, poor safety standards, made in sweatshops by who-the-fuck-knows, not good for American jobs. China can keep their junky clunkers.

I love Evangelion. I don’t love this stupid bullshit.

1. My cat
2. Tough one, but probably my cat.
3. Not only do I love my cats, taking care of your pets if your responsibility as a pet owner. I have no love or relationship to a stranger, they don’t care about me and I don’t care about them, and It’s also not my responsibility to protect other people. An animal that I raised from near-birth, and who has always shown me basically unconditional love and affection seriously means as much to me as a child. My pets are there for me when I have a bad day, and they’re with me when I’m having a great day too. They bring so much joy and comfort into my life and they are so innocent and kind. Even after a lifetime of interactions I never have a single bad or negative moment with my pets. I don’t hate people and I wouldn’t like to have to decide in a fucked up scenario like you’re describing here. But to be honest, I’m probably saving my pet. Sorry.

Lemmy is leaking. lmao

ps: Hamas should free the hostages, stop hiding behind innocent people and accept the ceasefire deal.

(a) Their “offers” are unacceptable because the involve returning the hostages over the span of months, not days. (b) the last time Hamas and Israel had a ceasefire, Hamas broke the ceasefire by attacking Isreal on October 7th. © Hamas are losing this war, very badly, and are not in a position to dictate their terms on Israel.

If you want a ceasefire, and you should, stop defending Hamas and start realizing that they are the ones who need to surrender and release the damn hostages. God damn.

If you’re going to embarrassingly try to argue literal semantics, then you should at least know that Persians (“Iranians”) speak Persian, not Arabic. 🤦

Iran has repeatedly called for the complete and total destruction (see: actual genocide) or Israel and its people over multiple decades. Iran funds and supports Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi’s and many other extremist groups in the region.

Being “quite vocal” is purely politics. Actions speak louder than words, and you know that.

It’s not the same thing as disarming our closest ally in the Middle East, which again, is something that NO U.S. President would do. Not Joe Biden, Not Donald Trump, Not Bernie Sanders, Not Ted fuckin’ Cruz or whatever asshole the Republicans will come up with next. Israel is too important to America culturally and strategically, and they are under too many active threats from their neighbors.

America will continue to support Israel unless Netanyahu really takes the gloves off and starts indiscriminately waging genocide. Unless Trump is reelected, in which case he’ll probably directly help “clean up” Gaza and the West Bank, and then you’ll really have something to be angry about. I guess we’ll see…

“In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such [snip…]

The part you’re not bolding is perhaps the most important part.

“killing members of a group” is obviously not genocide or every war in history would be considered genocide; “killing members of a group” with intent to destroy that group is what specifically elevates war into genocide.

In other words, intent, context and the details really matter here.

We already know Hamas’ intent is genocide of all Israeli Jews, as was laid out in clear worlds in their founding 1988 charter. And when people say that “Palestine should be free from the river to the sea.”, they seem to be calling for some kind of genocidal one state solution that erases Israel from the map and implies nothing good for the Israeli Jews who currently live there and whose ancestors have lived their for thousands of years. On top of that, many of Hamas’ actions on October 7th (violence targeted exclusively at civilians, rape, theft of civilian property, kidnapping, hiding behind their own civilians as a human shield, etc.) are war crimes.

Does Netenyahu’s government want genocide? It’s debatable. Some of the rhetoric of Israeli ministers has been at least inappropriate and at worst borderline genocidal. But If they only wanted to kill all Palestinians, they wouldn’t only be fighting in Gaza and they would likely have killed many more civilians indiscriminately (there are 2 million people living in Gaza after all). But more important than those are the fact that Israel seems to be following the international wartime rules of “proportionality”, and seems to be able to justify their use of force in the vast majority of cases. They do, in fact, have a right to defend themselves from terrorist threats and wage a military campaign in the hopes of eliminating those threats and saving the hostages (who have been held in captivity for almost HALF A YEAR now.) This is exactly why the International Court of Justice fell short of accusing Israel of genocide.

All that said, the war is horrible and the suffering of civilians is an unspeakable tragedy. The only real solution for peace is a two-state solution under which Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arab Muslims can coexist and live together in a land that they have shared for centuries, or really, millennia. Hamas should release the hostages and accept the ceasefire deal so that the world can move on from this ugly and tragic war.

If you’re going to go back 100 years, why stop there?

Why not blame the Ottoman Empire, the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate, the Byzantine Empire of Eastern Rome, etc.

The fact is that Palestine and Israel as countries were created at roughly the same time. Israeli Jews have existed there for thousands of years. The tribe called the Philistines have been there possibly just as long, and supposedly the were often at war with the Judah and Israelites. Though the Philistines were neither arabs nor muslims, who came in around 500 years ago during the Rashidun Islamic Caliphate (still a long time, longer than America has existed).

There has never in thousands of years of history been a free, self-governed, single state of Palestine. Both the Israelis and Palestinians have cultural and historic claims over the region going back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This suggests to me that the only real and viable solution for peace is a two-state solution in which both sides lay down arms and learn to coexist peacefully. Neither Netanyahu nor Hamas are truly interested in a two-state solution, and as such I consider them both to be enemies of peace.

(And before you spend to much time defending Hamas, please know that disproportionate violence targeted directly at civilians, sexual violence against civilians, kidnapping of civilians, hiding militants behind a civilian human shield, etc., are ALL actual war crimes, and that Hamas has openly supported genocide against Israeli Jews since their founding charter in 1988.)

Despite my best instincts, I’ll bite… When did Biden “promise support for genocide”?

• Biden is not in any way responsible for the October 7th terror attacks and war crimes (targeted killing of civilians, sexual violence and kidnapping, to name a few) that started this whole mess, Hamas (who are the ruling party of Gaza and have been for over a decade) are.
• Biden is also no in any way responsible for the Israeli response, nor is he in any control of the tactics used by the IDF in achieving their goals. Like every US President, real or imaginary, Biden will continue to support Israel because they are (a) our closest ally in the region (b) a home to many US citizens and a cultural site to many US jews, christians and muslims and © under constant threat of attack from every angle by enemies who in some cases have vowed to “wipe Israel of the map” (to name a few, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan, Syria and Iran).
• Despite what lemmy-think might have one believe, neither the UN, the ICJ, or any reputable organization have been able to show evidence that escalates what we’re seeing in Gaza to any kind of war crime, let alone “genocide”. There are 2 million people living in Gaza, and if Israel’s goal was genocide we’d be seeing a lot more death and destruction than we are today. (Help elect Trump and I guess we might get a closer look at it.)
• The Biden administration has been much more effective at delivering aid (by air and now by sea) to Gazans than the UN, Hamas or anyone else.

Biden doesn’t want to see innocent civilians killed, be they Israeli Jews or Palestinian Arabs. Why would he?

Unlike Netanyahu and Hamas, Biden gains literally zero political benefit from the war. His life and his job would objectively be much easier if there was peace in the middle east. You know that as well as I do. In fact, I’d say it’s plainly obvious to anyone with half a brain. This war is a drain and a distraction from the US’s resources ability to defend Ukraine from Russia, it makes the region (and thus, the world) less safe, and it is nothing but a political vulnerability to Biden. And still, there is not a serious politician in this country that would even consider removing support of Israel in the wake of the October 7th attacks, especially given a hostage crisis that is now entering its 6th fucking month.

In other words, while you’re entitled to your subjective opinion that what’s happening in Gaza amounts to a genocide or other war crimes, you can’t seriously blame Biden for any of it.

If you’re looking for someone to blame here, look no further than Netanyahu’s government and Hamas–two entities that have repeatedly propped each other up as boogeymen in order to push their communities into the political fringe for the sake of power. Netanyahu literally funded and boosted Hamas, and Hamas has done everything to maximize civilian casualties (also a war crime, btw) on both sides of the conflict.

There have now been multiple reasonable ceasefire negotiations that the Biden administration has helped negotiate which Hamas has unilaterally rejected. The world is only waiting for Hamas to do what they should have done months ago: return the hostages, lay down their weapons, and turn over the war criminals and terrorists who made it their mission to rape, kill and pillage Israel on October 7th. The ball in unquestionably in their court, and it has been for months.

Cute way of admitting that nothing Biden can do can do will please you I guess.