DL Open Thread Thursday, May 13, 2021

Israel and the Palestinians are fighting again. This is news in the same sense that the weather is news — the particulars change, and sometimes there’s a hurricane, but the most common forecast from the meteorologists is “clouds and sun,” which pretty much covers the whole spectrum, doesn’t it? The violence has a clear cause — crooked autocrat Bibi Netanyahu is fighting for his political life, so the dog must be wagged.

According to the fascism-enabling Washington Post, this “exposes rifts among the Democrats,” maybe because Black Americans are not in the same thrall to Israel so many white Americans are. The issue that actually exposes Democratic Party rifts is the fight over vaccine patents, and Joe Biden just punched Big Pharma in the mouth.

Here’s another topic that exposes a rift among the Democrats: Some of the Senate’s Democratic quislings are having a major sad over the fact that Biden hasn’t proposed removing the $10,000 cap on writing off state and local taxes. Media (and Bernie Sanders) are framing this as rich people begging for a handout, but there are plenty of middle-class people in nearby Pennsylvania who are paying $10,000 a year in local school taxes alone, so I’m not quite with Bernie on this one. Maybe a new, higher cap would lighten their burden without giving the actual rich the entire break.

Republicans are the party with the bigger rift, having just defenestrated Liz Cheney from her House leadership role for that most egregious of all GOP sins, telling the truth.

Because the media cannot resist a shiny object, it’s paying a lot of attention to attention whore Caitlyn Jenner who, demonstrating the lack of basic common sense that led her to marry Kris Jenner in a former life, has been talked by Republican operatives into running for California governor due to the recall election of Democrat Gavin Newsome. She was already polling at 6% before she related how her pal at the airport where she keeps her private plane told her he was leaving California because of all the homeless people on the streets. If this turns out to be one of those Joaquin Phoenix-style role-playing stunts, I’m impressed at Jenner’s ability to portray a clueless ditz. If not — Jesus, what a clueless ditz.

Republicans, eager to find something, anything to bash Joe Biden with, are blaming him for the ransomware attack on the Colonial pipeline. The media, jonesing for an issue that will glue people to their screens in fear — where are you, Last Guy? — have been eager to give them the time and space to spread nonsense like “he’s creating chaos.” The media ogt a stiffie at the thought of gasoline lines, and ginned up so much fear that people were trying to hoard the stuff. Sadly for the media, the pipeline is up and running again.

Republicans are also trying to recast the Jan. 6 insurrection as legitimate protest, and the media are happy to report that, too. The sad truth is that these people were radicalized because they have guns and weak minds that are especially susceptible to propaganda, as this jailhouse letter from an insurrectionist makes clear. The dipshit in question was turned in by his 18-year-old son.

Here’s one of the loopholes that changed my mind about the death penalty. John Cameron, 55, serving a life sentence in Smyrna for murder, has been charged with beating his 69-year-old cellmate to death. Because Cameron was already serving a life sentence, he faces no further punishment, meaning he got to murder someone — a child rapist, but still — without consequence.

The floor’s yours.