News bits: Regarding US aid to Gaza; More on Gaza; Regarding TTKP election subversion laws

 Various sources are reporting about the US sending aid to starving Palestinians by air drops. The Hill writes:

President Biden said Friday that the United States will begin airdrops of humanitarian aid into Gaza amid negotiations for a temporary cease-fire in the Israel-Hamas war.

“Innocent people got caught in a terrible war, unable to feed their families, and you saw the response when they tried to get aid. And we need to do more, and the United States will do more,” Biden said.

“The truth is, aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough now. It’s nowhere nearly enough. Innocent lives are on the line and children’s lives are on the line,” he added.

The airdrops are seen as a way for the U.S. to get aid into the area while officials continue efforts to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas to allow for food, medicine, water and other supplies to get into Gaza, and for hostages to be released.

White House spokesperson John Kirby called it “extremely difficult” to effectively conduct airdrops in such a crowded area. The materials need to land somewhere accessible to aid organizations while also arriving in an area with high concentrations of people in need, he said.  

The president had initially suggested a cease-fire could take hold as early as next Monday, but more recently indicated that timeline was unlikely. He acknowledged talks would be complicated after more than 100 Palestinians were killed at a food distribution site in Gaza when Israeli troops opened fire.

This pisses me off a lot. The situation is outrageous and insulting. If it is “extremely difficult” to do air drops, then Biden should force Israel to send in aid by trucks. Israel refuses. Instead of sending in aid Israel opened fire on starving Palestinians seeking what little food there is, but Biden the US still supports Israel, Netanyahu and war crimes. What does that say about Biden?

And as expected, the cease-fire that Biden recently promised would be very soon, turned out to be a lie. Israel itself blocked aid and killed civilians seeking food. All Biden says is that slaughter will “complicate” and delay a cease-fire. More lies. No condemnation of Israel from Biden. Just more unconditional US support. 

This outrage might be a necessary factor in what could cost (i) Biden the White House in the elections, and (ii) the US its democracy, the rule of law and individual civil liberties. 

Q: Am I being too critical of Biden and unconditional US support of Israel and Netanyahu? Or are my criticisms anti-Semitic, racist, bigoted and/or otherwise unwarranted or unjustifiable? 

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A NYT analysis summarizes the Gaza humanitarian and cease-fire the situations:

The disaster that unfolded Thursday marked a new low in the Gaza Strip’s unfolding calamity. Local authorities said more than 100 people were killed and more than 700 others injured, accusing Israeli forces of opening fire on a crowd of people in devastated Gaza City waiting for humanitarian aid. An IDF official acknowledged that IDF troops on one end of the convoy fired at members of the crowd who were approaching in, what they called, a threatening manner but said many Palestinians died in a stampede as they sought to reach trucks carrying vital aid.  

The bulk of Gaza’s more than 2 million people face the prospect of famine — a state of affairs that constitutes the fastest decline in a population’s nutrition status ever recorded, according to aid workers. Children are starving at the fastest rate the world has ever known.

Hopes are dimming for an imminent diplomatic breakthrough that could see Hamas free its remaining hostages and hostilities cease. This week, it emerged that the Biden administration may even be contemplating airdropping aid into Gaza, given the delays and difficulties in supplying vital food and other goods over land crossings. Some analysts couldn’t help but consider the irony of the United States dropping supplies onto a population that’s seeking respite from months of Israeli attacks with U.S.-made munitions. Such measures would “mostly serve to relieve the guilty consciences of senior U.S. officials whose policies are contributing to the ongoing atrocities and risk of famine in Gaza,” said Scott Paul, Oxfam’s humanitarian director, in a statement. (emphasis added)

A number of top U.N. officials voiced their alarm Thursday. “I am appalled at the reported killing and injury of hundreds of people during a transfer of aid supplies west of Gaza City today,” Martin Griffiths, the U.N.’s lead humanitarian officer, said. “Life is draining out of Gaza at terrifying speed.”

Another NYT article reports:

Three U.S. Air Force cargo planes airdropped 66 pallets over southwest Gaza, according to a U.S. official. Aid groups say such airdrops do little to ease hunger and suffering in the enclave.

US aid pallets falling on Gaza yesterday

International aid groups are criticizing a Biden administration plan to airdrop food to desperately hungry Gazans, saying that such a move would be ineffective and would distract from more meaningful measures like pushing Israel to lift its partial siege of Gaza.

“Airdrops do not and cannot substitute for humanitarian access,” the International Rescue Committee, a New York-based aid organization, said in a statement on Saturday. “Airdrops are not the solution to relieve this suffering, and distract time and effort from proven solutions to help at scale.”

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One major wild card in the 2024 elections is what detectable effect, if any TTKP (Trump Tyranny & Kleptocracy Party) voter suppression and election rigging laws will have on red state election results. If the presidential election turns out to be as close as I think it will, this could easily be a necessary factor in putting DJT back in the white House and ending democracy, most civil liberties and the rule of law. The NYT writes about one analysis of voting data available so far:

Racial Turnout Gap Has Widened With a Weakened 

Voting Rights Act, Study Finds

The Black share of the electorate had been on the rise for decades, but in some counties, a Supreme Court decision in 2013 changed that, according to a new analysis

When the Supreme Court knocked down a core part of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. argued that some of the law’s protections against racial discrimination were no longer necessary.

He wrote that the once-troubling turnout gap between white and Black voters in areas with histories of discrimination at the polls had largely disappeared, and that “the conditions that originally justified” the civil rights law’s attention to these places, mostly in the South, no longer existed.

But a new, yearslong study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan think tank focused on democracy and voting rights issues, suggests otherwise.

Before the decision, counties with a history of racial discrimination at the polls were required to obtain permission from the Justice Department before changing voting laws or procedures. This was known as “preclearance” under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, and it was the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder that effectively killed this part of the law.

Since that decision, the gap in turnout rates between white and nonwhite voters “grew almost twice as quickly in formerly covered jurisdictions as in other parts of the country with similar demographic and socioeconomic profiles,” the Brennan study found.

According to the group’s report, the turnout gap between Black and white voters in those former Section 5 counties has grown by 11 percentage points since the Shelby decision, between 2012 and 2022. The study relied on nearly one billion voter files to estimate that, had the decision never occurred, the white-Black turnout gap would have nevertheless grown, but by just six percentage points.

Though that difference may appear small, the study’s authors contend that such gaps are “potentially huge” in modern politics: Since 2012, at least 62 elections for Senate, governor and president in states with Section 5 counties were decided by under five percentage points.  

“By the 2022 midterms, the Shelby County effect cost hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters of color in the formerly covered counties in each federal general election,” Mr. Crayton said. “And we know that even a fraction of that number can make a difference in an election or in awarding a state’s electoral votes.”

So, if DJT gets back in office, the hostility our cynical TTKP USSC has for democracy and elections could easily be a necessary factor in re-electing a kleptocratic dictator who goes on to kill our democracy, civil liberties and the rule of law, at least for the foreseeable future.

Once can reasonably expect the TTKP to either employ the effective, standard KYMS propaganda tactic and/or attack this study as flawed, partisan bias, a pack of lies, etc. It will probably be mostly KYMS at first that will transition to attack once TTKP dark free speech experts come up with the most effective way to undermine its credibility.

KYMS: Keep Your Mouth Shut