DL Open Thread Monday, Jan. 29, 2024
Did Hamas intend to set off a region-wide war with its Oct. 7 attack? It seems they did whether they meant to or not. Now three U.S. soldiers in Jordan have been killed in a drone strike. Biden has vowed retaliation “at a time of our choosing” against the Iranian-backed militia that took credit for the attack.
Republicans have been screaming about immigrants for most of this century, but have resisted all proposals to fix it. With a Democrat in the White House, they’d rather let it fester and Blame It on Biden. This has been Republican operating strategy since the Gingrich years, and it’s about time they were called out on it. Now Biden is doing that, saying he’ll “shut down the border” the day the bipartisan deal passes, while Trump implores Republicans not to pass any bill. The media is even reporting it that way.
Mother Jones apparently reported on this story back in 2019, but it’s coming back into view now that Trump is on the ropes: He’s carrying what’s being characterized as a “mystery debt” of $50 million, a loan from one of his own companies (a Delaware shell LLC, naturally) that doesn’t show up on its books. It could be a way of avoiding taxes, but Trump wouldn’t do something illegal like that, would he?
The same media claiming to lack resources pours them into Trump trial coverage, so few outlets have noted that the U.S. economy keeps outperforming both forecasts and the rest of the world. The reason I’m a pessimist about human nature: The public persists in the belief that Republicans are better on the economy, and economists persist in ignoring reality when it fails to fit their theories. That’s why “dismal science” is only half true.
Some people like to scare themselves with horror movies. I get all the frights I need reading environmental stories like this one about the pollutants spewing from Canada’s tar sands. The process makes oil drilling look surgical by comparison.
The floor’s yours.
The “mystery debt” is interesting. It reads as if Trump was so accustomed to not being investigated or charged with tax evasion that at some point he and his accountants stopped considering it a crime. No wonder he sees a nefarious conspiracy behind that fact that all the tax evasion is suddenly being construed as a crime now.
Well, if SOMEONE considers it a crime, the new law requiring LLC’s to reveal their owners in criminal proceedings might shed some light on this…
Last week Israel reported that 12 UNRWA staffers had actually participated in the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. and within hours the US and a handful of Western allies announced a “pause” in their funding of UNRWA.
Reporting is surprisingly muted, and I have yet to see the evidence presented (or maybe I haven’t looked in the right places). On the one hand this seems like a hit job, with the news coming in the Friday news dump, and the coordinated funding cuts.
On the other hand, in what seems like an admission of guilt, UNRWA responded by immediately firing the staffers, and claimed they were just a few bad apples.
The UN, with 48 Muslim-majority member states, has had an Islamist/anti-Israel bias for decades. So if the evidence bears out, Israel has achieved an intelligence coup.
Details emerge of the evidence against the UNRWA Twelve.
Yusef Salaam is one of the Central Park Five who was recently elected to New York City Council.
Last Friday Salaam was pulled over by police – while talking on speakerphone with council members discussing police stops.
NYPD said the stop was for “windows tinted beyond the legal limit.” (WTF is it with these tinted windows? I used to think they were to conceal drug activity in the car, but now everybody has them). However, the cop wisely ended up letting Salaam go.
Police discretion. Always available, rarely used.
Thanks for that rock solid proof that we are the good guys in the kerfuffle in The Levant.
There are no good guys. That’s the Catch-22.
As noted by most the Republicans have no intention of “Fixing” the border and prefer to let it fester as a stick to beat the Dems with, now elevated by the madman on wheels we call Greg Abbott to defying the supreme court (surprise surprise) . Sounds like the Dems were ready to give the Republicans what they wanted, as noted this is a vintage Newt Ginggrich ploy.
“Republicans don’t actually want to do anything” should be an easy case to make to voters. It will not move any voters one way or the other, because that sentiment has been the centerpiece of the GOP platform for 20 years.
But it is an easy case to make just the same.
The Biden administration is bogged down by folks who don’t understand power. We are compelled to respond to Iran directly. Certainly drone infrastructure should be reduced to rubble. That would be a two-fer.