Draft letter to Joe Biden

I plan to send a letter to Joe warning about the damage that current US policy toward Israel can cause to US democracy and civil liberties. I avoided talking about a cease-fire, humanitarian aid to Palestinians, dealing with hostages and other specific policies. Instead, this letter is focused on (1) the damage to Biden’s campaign that US policy toward Israel might cause, and (2) the possible consequences of DJT being re-elected. Is that the best focus? Any comments, corrections, suggestions? 

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I have incorporated comments into some revisions. This is the draft I will mail to Biden today.

FINAL DRAFT

April 1, 2024

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20500

Re: The 2024 election & Israel policy

Dear President Biden,

As you might imagine, the 2024 presidential electoral college election could be very close. One of maybe a dozen issues or factors, could tip the election to Trump. In turn, that could easily lead to the end of democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law as we have known it at least since the passage of civil and voting rights legislation in the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it is clear that the American experiment in self-governance is on the verge of failing and collapsing into some form of a kleptocratic radical right tyranny. Evidence of an authoritarian threat in the public record is abundant and undeniable. Some Americans see the severity and urgency of the radical right authoritarian threat, but many cannot.

Some of the issues that could give the White House to Trump in 2025 are out of your control. But some are not. One issue you control that could be necessary to tip the election to Trump is US policy toward Israel. You are aware of the bitterness that surrounds this issue. It is tearing the Democratic Party apart. It also deeply alienates or offends independent and other voters who sincerely believe that US policy is complicit in genocide against the Palestinian people. I am one of those voters.

US policy must somehow tie US military aid and political support to Israel implementing an immediate ceasefire, allowing unrestricted humanitarian aid into Gaza, and stopping the ongoing genocide against Palestinian civilians. Absent those bare minimum steps, the US continues to forfeit its moral standing and authority, basically obviating a civilized outcome to the endless, bloody Israel-Palestine misery. Of course, that assumes that our moral standing and authority is not already irretrievably dissipated. It is very late in the game for US policy toward Israel to come to its senses.

Unjustifiable and shockingly immoral as US policy toward Israel arguably is, the re-election of Trump presents a far worse moral and human catastrophe. He is a grave threat to democracy and human well-being. If American democracy falls to Trump’s corrupt, radical right authoritarianism, what is left of democracy in Israel will fall to a radical, bigoted Zionist theocracy. That is almost guaranteed. The theocratic threat to democracy in Israel is obvious and undeniable. So is the threat to the Palestinian people of another Trump presidency.

Much worse than that, Democracies in Europe and elsewhere will fall in due course if America degenerates into some form of a kleptocratic dictatorship-Christian theocracy-plutocracy. With an eye on the enormity of the American authoritarian threat, it is clear that Israel does not know what is best for Israel. It certainly does not always act in the best interests of America. You are no doubt aware of all of this, which is well-documented.

US policy that constitutes no daylight between the US and Israel is catastrophically flawed for both the US, Israel and human-well being. That basis for Israeli foreign policy could wind up throwing the election to Trump. No one can deny that with certainty. Later, the entire human race could enter into a long period of worldwide authoritarianism, human misery, poverty, bigoted oppression and endless climate disasters. One can look to China and Russia to see one possible long-term outcome for our species.

The threat of bigoted, corrupt, American radical right authoritarianism should be terrifying to anyone who supports democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law. Please carefully reconsider US policy toward Israel and the starving Palestinian people. There is urgency to this. The window of opportunity gets narrower every day, assuming it is not too late already. The stakes in this election for democracy could not be higher. US-Israel policy is far less important than the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.

This letter is sent in the spirit of good will and constructive criticism. It also comes with a desperate hope that it is not already too late to limit some of the damage that US policy toward Israel has caused to democracy and world peace so far, maybe reversing some of it.

Sincerely, 

Germaine Descant

The GOP stands against environmentalism; GOP defends dark free speech in court

As we all know by now, TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) leadership and elites are staunchly opposed to doing anything to try to reduce global warming, species extinctions or anything else pro-environment. The authoritarian monster also opposes efforts to support green energy, even when green energy is off the table for technical reasons. PBS station WLRN in Miami reports about how TTKP pro-pollution and pro-global warming policies play out quietly with as little publicity as possible:

DeSantis’ office quietly backed Florida ban on wind energy

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office quietly helped write a bill to curtail wind energy in the state of Florida, email records provided to the Tampa Bay Times show.

A version of that bill is now awaiting DeSantis’ signature to become law, which will ban offshore wind turbines in state waters. It also proposes to delete the majority of references to climate change found in state law, the Times previously reported.

Florida lawmakers passed the bills, Senate Bill 1624 and House Bill 1645, in early March, even though the state has no operational wind farms because Florida generally has slower wind speeds.  

The governor’s office did not respond to emails asking about his staff’s involvement and why the governor was interested in banning wind energy. Collins and Altman did not respond to voicemails seeking comment. Neither did Rep. Bobby Payne, R-Palatka, who sponsored the House version of the energy omnibus bill.

This is another garden variety case of radical right authoritarian monsters virtue signaling to the brass knuckles capitalist carbon energy sector and to government haters. The TTKP protects that corrupt special interest sector of the US economy. And as usual in the face of inconvenient questions, the corrupt authoritarians involved are all relying on the popular demagogic KYMS (keep your mouth shut) tactic so the matter will fade away quietly with as little political damage as possible for the responsible, morally rotted scumbag politicians.  

The TTKP hypocrites in Florida (and everywhere else) sanctimoniously claim to oppose government interference in business, but they pass laws that more than simply interfere. They kill businesses they choose to hate and destroy. That is Republican Party style tyranny. 

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The Guardian reports about state TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) efforts to squelch honest speech about research on dark free speech on social media:

Missouri AG sues Media Matters as Republicans 

take on critics of Musk’s X

The attorney general of Missouri is suing Media Matters, a progressive watchdog group, alleging that it failed to turn over internal documents following its 2023 coverage of hate speech on the social media platform X. The head of the group says news outlets could be the next targets.

“Media Matters has pursued an activist agenda in its attempt to destroy X, because they cannot control it,” the lawsuit said, describing X – formerly known as Twitter – as a “free speech platform” that allows “Missourians to express their own viewpoints in the public square”.

The lawsuit, filed by Missouri’s attorney general, Andrew Bailey, on Monday, marks the second time that GOP officials have taken legal action against Media Matters to support Elon Musk, X’s billionaire owner. In November, the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, launched an investigation into Media Matters, describing the group as a “radical anti-free speech organization”.

“These state attorney generals, first Paxton and now Bailey, are directly responding to Musk’s pleas. They are helping him punish critics,” said Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters. 

The rush to defend Musk against the organization, a newly anointed enemy of the right, underscores Musk’s rising profile among Republicans as a free-speech crusader. Carusone worries that the GOP’s embrace of Musk will help the billionaire stifle important criticism of X and the rightwing extremism and hate speech that proliferate there.  

Musk, whose takeover of Twitter began with the reinstatement of neo-Nazi users, courted rightwing leaders by positioning himself as a foot soldier in the fight against “liberal censorship” – in this case, content moderation policies on his own social network.

Again, we see the blatant double standards that America’s radical right anti-democracy authoritarians increasingly use to bludgeon inconvenient facts and truths, and political opposition. Free speech is for their speech, not for political opposition. This is what the TTKP deep state will do in spades if DJT is re-elected. This is what fascism looks like when corporate interests and government power combine to steamroll anything that looks even vaguely threatening to America’s radical authoritarian wealth and power movement. 

What price too high?

Many thoughts swirling around in my head this morning.  I got up early today to try and jot them down:

• Purity tests…  is the price ever too high to pay?
• Spock’s “the needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few… or the one.”
• Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayer’s “Will this institution survive the stench that…" 

*    *    *

Let’s get into the weeds now.  Let’s talk about principles, something that also may be thought of as “purity tests.” I have plenty myself, so I viscerally understand the concept.  I admire principles.  I respect them.  I know that no one arrives at them without serious contemplation, often many hard years in the making.  Principles are no small thing.  Totally get that. [SMH Yes]

The revered character, Spock, realized in the final moments of his life, that “the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few… or the one.”  Now that’s a lofty principle; maybe the ultimate purity test.  The height of selflessness, I’d say.  Going outside the self and looking at the bigger picture.  I can get that too.

Sonia Sotomayer wondered if “tossing out the landmark rulings would tarnish the court's reputation and open the floodgates to other challenges to well-settled law.”

All interesting ideas to ponder.  I’d call them “bottom line” kinds of thoughts.  Now let’s look at the other end of the “idealism versus realism” spectrum.

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When all is said and done, when the chips are finally down, does “idealism” really trump “realism?”  Should it?  We may not like it, the reality, but can we be that (I’ll call it) “unreasonable / stubborn / rigid / indeed “ideologically pure?”  Yes, there are things, personal things, that we will absolutely not compromise on. They are that important to us.  And there are things we know we must compromise on, like it or not.  And we never do (like it), even though we know it is for the greater good.  Is that the ultimate test?  What is done for the greater good?  Excellent question.

*    *    *

Well, that prologue took a while, and now that I’ve gotten you in the desired mindset, it finally brings us to my specific questions… almost. 😉

Yesterday I again had an exchange with a poster who believes that personal principles trump the greater stark reality.  Or so it seemed, to me.  Specifically, we were talking about being confronted with what the poster saw as “two bad choices” (Biden versus Trump).  The poster insists s/he will not vote for either; not be forced to pick between "the lesser of two evils," taking a stand on personal principles. Maybe in that poster’s mind s/he thinks, "does one more vote for or against really matter in the greater scheme of things?"  The answer seems like a “No, it won’t really matter.”  And still, another thing I can get.  Yes, I do get all these things.

Question: 

Which of the following do you agree/disagree with?  Give examples to support your belief:

1. Sometimes the price is “too high to pay” for our personal principles.
2. Principles always trump reality, including existential threats, no exceptions. 
3. Sticking to principles only is valid when those principles only affect oneself.
4. Never compromise your principles. It’s a matter of personal integrity, damn the consequences. 
5. Principles should/must be compromised when the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few… or the one.
6. Never allow “the perfect” to be the enemy of “the good.”

(by PrimalSoup)

Now, time for some coffee ☕.  Thanks in advance for thinking about these things, and commenting! 😊

The Compulsory Voting Debate

 MY vote is no. BUT there are many out there that think it's about time.

Compulsory voting might seem strange to Americans, where voting is a right but not a legal duty or obligation. But there are arguments in favor of making voting compulsory, as well as arguments against it.

https://www.findlaw.com/voting/how-u-s--elections-work/the-compulsory-voting-debate.html

Compulsory voting, as the name suggests, is a state or nation requiring all eligible voters to cast a ballot on election day. In countries that use compulsory voting, voters who don't cast a ballot may face legal sanctions.

Belgium was the first country to institute compulsory voting in 1892. Soon after, Argentina and Australia instituted mandatory voting laws. Brazil currently practices compulsory voting, although they exempt the following non-voters from legal consequences:

• Illiterate people
• Anyone over 16 and under 18 years old
• Anyone over 70 years old

Some countries that use compulsory voting also include exceptions. Some countries exempt people with disabilities, citizens living abroad, and various voting ages. Visit the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance for a list of countries with mandatory voting laws.

The Brookings Institution, the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, and Harvard Kennedy School (Brookings-Harvard working group) published a report on universal civic duty voting in 2020. The report advocates for instituting mandatory participation in elections in the United States. It imagines "an American democracy remade by its citizens in the very image of its promise...". Its underlying principle is that "high levels of participation are good for democracy."

The Brookings-Harvard working group sees voting as a civic duty. They compare its importance to jury duty and defending the country during wars. They suggest a fine of $20 for non-voters. Their goal is not to impose sanctions to penalize. Instead, they suggest a minor penalty to send a "strong message that voting is a legitimate expectation of citizenship."

The pros and cons can be found within the above link, but I am sure everyone here has their own opinions and why they would be for it or against it. State YOUR reasons.

American tyranny rising

Way back in December of 2022, Trump said he wanted to terminate the US Constitution. After there was some criticism for that moment of honest candor, he backtracked and lied, saying he did not say what he said. Last August, The Hill reported:

In a back-and-forth during the first 2024 GOP presidential debate between candidates Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie, the latter brought up previous comments from former President Trump stating he wanted to terminate portions of the Constitution to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post in December 2022.

Trump later responded to backlash against the comments, which were related to X’s, the platform formerly known as Twitter, role in suppressing a story about Hunter Biden. The former president alleged his words were twisted by others.

“The Fake News is actually trying to convince the American People that I said I wanted to ‘terminate’ the Constitution. This is simply more DISINFORMATION & LIES, just like RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, and all of their other HOAXES & SCAMS,” Trump wrote in another Truth Social post, saying he meant that “steps must be immediately taken to RIGHT THE WRONG.”

In December of 2022, Politico commented:

Several of Trump’s fellow Republicans were critical of the post, but few condemned Trump himself or said it would be disqualifying for him to earn their vote — a lack of repudiation that has drawn criticism from Democrats.

News bits: Religious churning; Traitor John Eastman forced out of law; Money talks, democracy walks

NPR reports poll data about reasons people leaving their religions for another religion or for no religion:

People say they’re leaving religion due to 

anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse

People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

The Catholic Church is losing more members than it’s gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.

There is much lower religious churn among Black Protestants and among Jews who seem overall happy in their faith traditions and tend to stay there.

As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion's teachings.

And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people. “Religion's negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church,” Deckman says. “We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.”

About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.

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A California state bar judge has found that DJT's traitor lawyer John Eastman committed 10 offenses during his work to overturn the 2020 election in favor of DJT. The judge ordered Eastman into a status called involuntary retirement and ordered him to pay all California State Bar costs plus $10,000 in sanctions for being extra naughty. The California State Supreme Court will have to disbar him because the state bar court does not have that power. The 128 page decision includes these statements:

Introduction

In this contested disciplinary proceeding, the Office of Chief Trial Counsel of the State Bar of California (OCTC) charged John Charles Eastman (Eastman) with 11 counts of misconduct arising from certain activities surrounding his representation of former president Donald J. Trump and the 2020 presidential election. Eastman is charged with one count of failing to support the Constitution and laws of the United States (Bus. & Prof. Code § 6068, subd. (a));1 two counts of seeking to mislead a court (§ 6068, subd. (d)); six counts of moral turpitude (🤪) by making various misrepresentations (§ 6106); and two additional counts of moral turpitude (§ 6106). After full consideration of the record, the court finds that OCTC has satisfied its burden of proving all charges except for count eleven, which the court dismisses with prejudice.

In view of the circumstances surrounding Eastman’s misconduct and balancing the aggravation and mitigation, the court recommends that Eastman be disbarred.

INVOLUNTARY INACTIVE ENROLLMENT 

John Charles Eastman is ordered transferred to involuntary inactive status pursuant to Business and Professions Code section 6007, subdivision (c)(4). His inactive enrollment will be effective three calendar days after this order is served and will terminate upon the effective date of the Supreme Court’s order imposing discipline herein, or as provided for by rule 5.111(D)(2) of the State Bar Rules of Procedure or as otherwise ordered by the Supreme Court pursuant to its plenary jurisdiction.

Good ’ole judge Roland whacks the traitor Eastman

A satisfying result

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The WaPo reports (whole artilce not paywalled off) about the fickleness of greedy wealthy elites and their shallow to non-existent commitment to democracy and the public interest:

Many GOP billionaires balked at Jan. 6. 

They’re coming back to Trump.

Elite donors are rediscovering their affinity for the former president over taxes

The day after a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, billionaire and GOP megadonor Nelson Peltz called the attempted insurrection a “disgrace” and expressed remorse for voting for Donald Trump. “I’m sorry I did that,” Peltz said of supporting Trump in 2020.

But earlier this month, Peltz had breakfast with Trump and other billionaires — including hotelier Steve Wynn, Tesla and X CEO Elon Musk and former Marvel chairman Isaac Perlmutter — at Trump’s luxurious Palm Beach oceanfront mansion, according to people with knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the private gathering.

The shift reflects many conservative billionaires’ fears of President Biden’s tax agenda, which if approved would drastically reduce their fortunes. In some cases, it also points to their discomfort with the Biden administration’s foreign and domestic policy decisions. Some of these billionaires have been assiduously courted by Trump and his advisers in recent months.

“If it starts to look like Trump may win, despite his legal troubles, it is inevitable that Republican business people who have not been fans will open their wallets in self-defense,” said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, the top lobbying group for major corporations in New York.

Things that seem to make most people mostly authoritarian include lots of power, lots of money and rigid ideology. Combined with an authoritarian personality, the allure of authoritarianism is quite strong. All the authoritarians need to do is promise to serve and protect the elites, and they get support. 

Now, combine all of that with the legalization of political corruption by the 2010 Citizens United USSC decision and the power brass knuckles capitalist power of lightly regulated corporations acting as mere innocent human beings with constitutional human rights. What does one get? One gets seductive a form of kleptocratic authoritarianism that is far too sexy and fun for the most (~85% ?) of the wealthy to resist. Same goes for authoritarian Christian nationalist elites.

That b@stard Biden is at it again… 😠

Now he’s strengthening protections in the endangered species act!  Who the hell does he think he is, trying to get things done? He’s such a disrupter to our beloved gridlock. And how are the Trump boys 'sposed to bag their big game now?  That Biden is such an @sshole! 😡

Biden administration strengthens Endangered Species Act weakened under Trump.

WTH!  Why doesn’t somebody stop this guy??

More shenanigans by Biden.

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Elect TRUMP!  Let's Double MAGA!! 😍/s

(by PrimalSoup)

ILLEGAL INVADERS!!

OH THE HORROR! ILLEGAL INVADERS!!

Busload of ‘Illegal Invaders’ Was Actually the Gonzaga Basketball Team

On March 27, Matthew Maddock, a Republican member of the Michigan House of Representatives, tweeted two images purporting to show buses of illegal immigrants being loaded at Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport.

“We know this is happening. 100,000’s of illegals are pouring into our country. We know it’s happening in Michigan,” Maddock continued in a follow-up post. “Our own governor is offering money to take them in! Since we can’t trust the #FakeNews to investigate, citizens will. The process of investigating these issues takes time.” 

The investigatory process for this incident actually took little time, however: X users quickly pointed out that the images actually depict the aircraft and buses carrying the Gonzaga University men’s basketball team. The Bulldogs touched down in Motor City on Wednesday evening in preparation for their Friday matchup against Purdue in the Sweet 16 of the 2024 NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

Maddock, however, refused to back down from his assertion, responding “sure they are kommie [communist],” and “Sure kommie. Good talking point,” to two users who suggested that the aircraft had transported the Gonzaga team.

https://thedispatch.com/article/busload-of-illegal-invaders-was-actually-the-gonzaga-basketball-team/

 

Second State Dept. Official Resigns over US Gaza policy

State department official’s resignation highlights rifts over US Gaza policy

Annelle Sheline says ‘I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,’ claiming Biden is flouting US law over Israel

The Guardian

by Julian Borger

• 
  

Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.03 EDT

Last modified on Wed 27 Mar 2024 18.48 EDT

A human rights official has resigned from the US state department over Gaza saying the Biden administration is flouting US law by continuing to arm Israel, and is hushing up evidence that the US had seen on Israeli human rights abuses.

Annelle Sheline, said she had hoped to have an influence on policy by staying at her post in the Near Eastern section of the bureau of democracy, human rights and labor, taking part in discussions, signing dissent cables and raising her concerns with her supervisor. But she had lost confidence she could do anything that would affect the flow of US arms to Israel.

“The fundamental reason was – I no longer wanted to be affiliated with this administration,” Sheline told the Guardian. “I have a young daughter. She’s not yet two, but if some day in the future, she is learning about this and knows that I was at the state department and she asked me [about it] – I want to be able to tell her that I did what I could.”

Sheline is only the second state department official to resign over US policy on the Gaza war (another official left the education department over the issue), but she said that many of her colleagues had told her they would resign if they could afford to lose their job, and had urged her to speak out about her reasons for quitting, rather than to leave quietly.

Annelle Sheline. Photograph: Annelle Sheline

The 38-year-old, who studied the foreign policy of Arab governments for her doctorate, said the state department was aware of plenty of evidence that Israel was violating international law in its conduct of the Gaza war, and that the Biden administration was violating US law by continuing to supply weapons.

She pointed in particular to the Leahy laws, which forbid assistance to foreign military units implicated in atrocities, and section 620 (I) of the Foreign Assistance Act, which states that no assistance should be given to any government which “prohibits or otherwise restricts, directly or indirectly, the transport or delivery of United States humanitarian assistance”.

On Monday, the state department said it had received assurances from Israel officials and “not found them to be in violation of international humanitarian law”. But Sheline said: “The law is clear here and we do have evidence. But the specifics are just not being followed.”

The state department has said it is reviewing evidence of civilian harm under a mechanism established by the Biden administration last year, weeks before the Gaza war broke out, but Sheline said the results of those investigations would only be made public when the White House wanted them to be.

 “There are a lot of people working on this at State but at the end of the day, the public policy does have to be something that the White House signs off on,” Sheline said. “Until the White House is ready to take a different line, some of the other things happening in State are just not going to come out.” She said she believed administration policy was being driven by domestic political considerations, but argued that domestic politics were shifting on the issue, pointing to the significant “uncommitted” protest vote in the Democratic presidential primary election, and suggested that the Biden administration had misjudged the mood.

“I do think the president’s view of Israel is deeply influenced by a generational divide,” she said. “I think it’s taken this administration a long time to realise that the previous political calculus on this, in terms of big donors, in terms of the Israel lobby, … is seeing a shift.”

On Wednesday, Gallup published a new poll showing a significant drop in American public support for Israel’s conduct of the war, from 50% in November to 36% now, with 55% disapproving of Israel’s actions.

Sheline credited this shift for helping lead to the US abstention on a UN security council resolution on Monday, allowing it to pass after the US vetoed three earlier draft texts over the nearly six months since the war started.

“I am glad to see that slight shift, but it hasn’t really made any difference to the people in Gaza yet,” Sheline said. “So it’s really too little, too late.

“Not only are these policies devastating the people of Gaza, but I think they’re also devastating the US image in the world,” she argued. “This administration came in promising to rebuild American diplomacy and America’s moral leadership after the Trump administration, but so many of these issues that the administration said were so important – including human rights – seem to be less important to this administration than the US-Israel relationship.”

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Also fr yesterday's Guardian:

Biden administration’s Gaza strategy panned as ‘mess’ amid clashing goals

Strain of aiming to influence Israel’s actions without leverage and also avoiding starvation is showing, say analysts (full story here: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/26/biden-gaza-strategy-criticised-israel

The Biden administration’s policy on Gaza has been widely criticised as being in disarray as the defense secretary described the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe” the day after the state department declared Israel to be in compliance with international humanitarian law.

Washington was also on the defensive on Tuesday over its claim that a UN security council ceasefire resolution on which it abstained was non-binding, an interpretation that put the US at odds with other member states, international legal scholars and the UN itself....

 I​​srael announced on Monday it would stop working with the UN relief agency Unrwa, the main aid agency serving Gaza. Unrwa said its aid convoys had been blocked since 21 March.

On the same day, the state department spokesman, Matthew Miller, insisted that the US currently had no reason to dispute Israeli assurances that it was complying with humanitarian law in Gaza.

 

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The following warning was published as an op-ed in late Feb. in US Today. It was written by 7 experts  and directors of global food charities in February, so things are only worse now.

The crisis in Gaza will soon reach a tipping point, where emergency food aid won't be enough. Averting mass death becomes harder as starvation gains momentum.

Sean Callahan, Jan Egeland, Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, Jeremy Konyndyk, Abby Maxman, Michelle Nunn, Janti Soeripto and Charles Owubah

Opinion contributors/ USA Today: 2/24

President Joe Biden recently said that in Gaza, “there are a lot of innocent people who are starving.”

In fact, letting people in Gaza suffer and die from hunger and preventable disease is a political choice.

It is not too late to change this story if urgent actions are taken to achieve a cease-fire and the release of the hostages, and to allow a sufficient flow of aid into Gaza.

Only an immediate stop to the fighting, a massive increase in humanitarian assistance and the return of basic services can keep the number of deaths caused by hunger and disease from eclipsing the already shocking number of those killed to date.

 

 “If the situation continues,” one colleague writes, “we will see one of the biggest disasters we have faced as humanitarians. It will be due to hunger, disease, and the very polluted and dangerous environment in Gaza, resulting from the residuals of the thousands of bombs, the white phosphorus, the raw sewage floating all over the place, and the unsafe water being consumed as people don’t have other choices.”

 

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global authority that monitors food insecurity and acute malnutrition, reports that the entire population of Gaza – more than 2 million people – is experiencing hunger at crisis levels or worse: “There is a risk of Famine and it is increasing each day that the current situation of intense hostilities and restricted humanitarian access persists or worsens. … This is the highest share of people facing high levels of acute food insecurity that the IPC initiative has ever classified for any given area or country.”[Note: this piece was written over a month ago, and things have only gotten worse since then with UNRWA not allowed to work within Gaza anymore, and the US having defunded it for a minimum of one year in a bi-partisan vote extending Biden's ban]

The speed of the deterioration in Gaza is unprecedented in recent history. Nearly 3 in 4 Palestinians in Gaza are drinking from contaminated sources. Communicable diseases are on the rise. ....

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Please consider signing a petition for Biden to enforce the UN Ceasefire and expedite as much humanitarian aid as possible before it is too late. If things continue as they are going, not only will untold numbers of civilians slowly waste away and die, but the US will not be the same again in the eyes of the world and its own eyes.

How surrounded are you?

 

I’m very surrounded.  By “rednecks” that is. 

It’s very scary.  As Judy Collins said in the song “Pirate Jenny,” “You never know to whom you’re talkin’.”  Beg to differ.  For the most part, I do.

Link here.

I checked with Siri, and this man lives ~30 miles from me.  When the news said “an Ohio man,” I just had to look it up.  Sure enough, my instincts were right.

While it’s true we never know who surrounds us, how ‘bout you?  Do you live in such a hard MAGA area?  Are you as suspicious of your neighbors as I am?  Any stories to tell?

(by PrimalSoup)

The federal debt & herd psychology; Radical right & the moral rot of cronyism

The Hill reports about an issue that has been personally increasingly concerning for years, namely the psychology of things that trigger herd panic:

Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Phillip Swagel warned the United States could suffer a similar market shock as seen in the United Kingdom during former Prime Minister Liz Truss’s brief stint leading Britain, citing the nation’s “unprecedented” fiscal trajectory.

In an interview with the Financial Times this week, Swagel discussed the country’s rising debt, while warning of the dangers of the U.S. facing “what the U.K. faced with former prime minister Truss — where policymakers tried to take an action, and then there’s a market reaction to that action.”

Truss roiled markets in October 2022 as she pressed for significant tax cuts, including changes lessening the tax burden on wealthier individuals without offsets, as well as other economic measures. The budget proposal spurred a major selloff of British debt, forcing U.K. interest rates to decades-long highs and causing the value of the pound to tank.

While Swagel said the U.S. is “not there yet,” he raised concerns of how bond markets could fare as interest rates have climbed.

He added that the nation has “the potential for some changes that seem modest — or maybe start off modest and then get more serious — to have outsized effects on interest rates, and therefore on the fiscal trajectory.”

Some budget experts, however, have cast doubt on Swagel’s alarm.

Bobby Kogan, senior director of federal budget policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, pointed to improved deficit projections in recent years, as well as forecasts from the CBO he said “don’t project anything that looks like a panic.”

“If someone were thinking about, ‘Should I panic or should I not panic?’ I would just say, ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right?’” Kogan said, adding “there’s been lower, long-term projected deficits in the Biden administration.”

“You either should have been worried a long time ago, or you should be less worried now,” he said. “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.”

A couple of things in that are not comforting. First, although Swagel says the U.S. is “not there yet” in terms of Britain’s economic situation, there is no way to know what might trigger an out of control reaction by debt holders. Maybe we are there now, but maybe we are not. We are talking about a herd (of wealthy investors) that can get spooked if a panic gets triggered by all sorts of things. A change in tax policy can do it. So can a high enough level of US federal debt, on the books or off. )Estimates of unfunded off the books debt obligations runs into the tens of trillions.) So can an enraged, crackpot president who incites a civil war.

Second, the “logic” that experts who downplay the threat evinces arrogance grounded in gross ignorance of basic human cognitive biology and social behavior. The question, should I panic or should I not panic?, cannot be blithely rationalized away by simply saying ‘hey, the underlying situation has gotten better, right’? That ‘reasoning’ is childish and asinine. Panic can arise in the face an allegedly improving underlying situation, because complex situations may not in fact be improving by simply looking at one factor. 

What other factors might be relevant? How one encapsulated by this blithe vapidity quoted in The Hill article: “Because we’ve been on roughly the same path for forever, but to the extent that it’s different, it’s better.” That is a testament to the fact that the TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) no longer cares about piling up debt. That has been the case at least since George Bush was in office. A part of the mindset kill government at all costs TTKP mindset is called Starve the Beast, which is significantly responsible for increasing debt even in good economic times.

If we have been on the same bad path forever, that is direct evidence the path remains bad and no fix is in sight, so therefore, don’t worry, be happy.  

An expert says, don’t worry, it has always been 

getting worse but we are still just fine!

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The NYT reports:

How Justice Thomas’s ‘Nearly Adopted Daughter’ 

Became His Law Clerk

Justice Clarence Thomas gave Crystal Clanton a home and a job after she left a conservative youth organization in controversy. Then the justice picked her for one of the most coveted positions in the legal world.

“Crystal Clanton’s clerkship for OT ’24 was announced by Scalia Law today!” wrote an assistant to Virginia Thomas, the justice’s wife, who is known as Ginni. The email referred to the 2024 October term of the court, and the tone was jubilant: “Please take a look at these posts of congratulations and support. Consider reposting, replying or adding your own!”

The Thomases and Ms. Clanton, a 29-year-old conservative organizer turned lawyer, have built such a close relationship that the couple informally refer to her as their “nearly adopted daughter.” Ms. Clanton, who was previously accused of sending racist text messages, including one that read “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE,” has lived in the Thomas home, assisted Ms. Thomas in her political consulting business and joined her in a “girls trip” to New York.  

Ethics experts say there is nothing in the Supreme Court’s new ethics code that prohibits a justice from hiring someone accused of racism, or even a close family friend.

This is just more evidence of the deep moral rot that dominates TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) thinking and behavior. Ethics are not even an afterthought. We saw the same with the corrupt, clueless and useless Jared and Ivanka in government. Here we see the moral rot operating in the USSC. We also see the sick joke that “ethics in government” actually is.

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From the TTKP Crackpots and Liars Files: The WaPo reports about hypocritical, baseless finger pointing by TTKP liars in the aftermath  of the bridge collapse in Baltimore:

Day after bridge collapse, Republicans are blaming Democrats, 

floating unfounded and sometimes racist theories

Some Republican officials, candidates and right-wing pundits attempted to connect the tragedy to some of their most frequent political targets: diversity initiatives, illegal immigration, coronavirus lockdowns and the Biden administration. And early reaction to the incident also provided fresh ground for unfounded theories that the collapse was not an accident at all.

Several sitting Republican officials have sought to tie the Biden administration to the collapse of the nearly 50-year-old bridge.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) told Newsmax on Tuesday that the government is focusing on spending federal funds on “waste,” “when it could be going to things that are the government’s purpose, just like this.”  

“We’re not spending it on roads and bridges. Look at the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill that was done a couple of years ago that the left hails as this massive success. But it was mostly Green New Deal, actually, in that bill,” Mace said, referencing the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill signed into law by President Biden.

Republicans previously criticized Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg as not visiting East Palestine, Ohio, quickly enough after a toxic train derailment there last year. But after the secretary visited Baltimore on the day of the bridge collapse, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.) suggested without evidence that the visit was politically motivated and that Buttigieg was preoccupied with diversity policies.  

“Well, this is an election year, so he probably, if it was two years ago might have been a month before he went at all,” Van Drew told Fox Business Network’s Maria Bartiromo on Wednesday. “He’s worried too much about pronouns, worried too much about DEI policies, worried too much about being the cool kid on the block. … I’m disappointed in the job that he does.”  

Along with Van Drew, conservative political candidates and right-wing media personalities have turned to blaming diversity, equity and inclusion policies — a loosely defined term broadly used to refer to efforts to diversify the workforce and academia — for the collapse. It’s the latest in a series of issues that the right has blamed on DEI.

Again, the moral rot in the form of lies, crackpot conspiracy theories, shameless hypocrisy and slanders comes out loud and clear. For example, TTKP members of congress bitterly opposed the Democratic infrastructure bill but now they lie, telling us it is a failure due to an accident having nothing to do with the infrastructure bill.

TTKP moral rot knows no bounds, ethical, legal or rational. The rot is constant, shameless and packed full of lies and slanders. 

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News about DJT’s worldwide support for dictatorship: 

Trump calls his globe-trotting ex-diplomat ‘my envoy.’ 

Neither is in office. Richard Grenell is meeting with far-right foreign leaders, attacking President Biden and offering a glimpse at what U.S. foreign policy could be like in a second Trump term 

After an anti-corruption crusader unexpectedly won last year’s presidential election in Guatemala, democracy teetered on the edge in the Central American country. Amid law enforcement raids on election offices and threats of violence, the Biden administration worked feverishly to lay the groundwork for a peaceful transfer of power.

But not Richard Grenell, a former diplomat and intelligence official in Donald Trump’s administration, who arrived in Guatemala in January, days before the new president was to be sworn in — and threw his support behind a right-wing campaign to undermine the election. 

Grenell met with a hard-line group that sued to block the inauguration, which thanked him for his “visit and trust.” He defended Guatemalan officials who had seized ballot boxes in an effort to overturn a vote declared “free and fair” by the United States and international observers, and he attacked the U.S. State Department’s sanctions against hundreds of anti-democratic actors.

“They are trying to intimidate conservatives in Guatemala,” Grenell said in a television interview. “This is all wrapped into this kind of phony concern about democracy.”

The take-home point is crystal clear: 

DJT considers defending free and fair elections to be a phony concern about democracy, therefore DJT is a full-blown dictator

Grenell - defender of dictators everywhere

Get ready to have some new neighbors if you live in a city

 Two sources:

https://www.courthousenews.com/north-american-cities-may-see-a-dramatic-shift-in-urban-wildlife-species-due-to-climate-change/

https://www.cp24.com/lifestyle/climate-change-expected-to-drive-shifts-in-urban-birds-animals-bugs-1.6824650#:~:text=X-,A%20study%20suggests%20climate%20change%20will%20drive%20a%20massive%20shift,Canada%20could%20welcome%20new%20animals.

Both refer to the same study:

The authors of a new study published on Tuesday in the journal PLOS One say the warming climate is likely to displace thousands of species that inhabit urban centers in the U.S. and Canada by 2100.

I have to admit I never heard of PLOS till now, but I bookmarked their home page because they have some awesome material about the climate:

https://journals.plos.org/climate/

Quoting the cp24 source:

The mix of urban birds, bugs and other critters that humans have grown familiar with is due for a big shift because of climate change, a new study says.

On the one hand, cities with temperate climates such as those in Canada could welcome new animals.

By the end of the century, cities such as Ottawa and Edmonton could become hospitable for hundreds of new species while losing habitat for a couple dozen.

Quebec City is the champion. Filazzola's simulation suggests the Quebec capital could support more than 500 new species.

“When we get these slightly warmer temperatures and changes in precipitation patterns, a lot more species are coming in than they are leaving,” he said.

But is all this a good thing or a bad thing. Depends on what life moves in and what life moves out.

“Imagine hearing different birds in the morning when you go out to have your coffee,” Filazzola said. “It means a lot.”

However:

And many of those new arrivals are likely to be insects. Varieties of centipedes, butterflies, spiders and cockroaches are all likely to pop up in places they've never been before, Filazzola suggests.