DL Open Thread: Sunday, October 6, 2024
Feckless Joe Done Got Played. ‘Some’ people are placing him in the pantheon of great presidents. Here’s why he’s not:
When Israel defied America’s appeals for restraint by invading Lebanon a few days ago, a reporter asked President Biden if he was comfortable with what had unfolded.
“I’m comfortable with them stopping,” Biden replied plaintively. “We should have a cease-fire now.” He walked away from the podium, grouchy, frustrated and impotent, a self-diminishing president.
It was the latest sign of how Biden keeps getting rolled by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel. As the political scientist Ian Bremmer said of Biden’s words on the invasion: “Impact: zero.”
Instead of midwifing the landmark Middle East peace that he hoped for, Biden became the arms supplier for the leveling of Gaza — a war that killed more women and children in a single year than any other war in the last two decades, according to Oxfam.
“The arms supplier for the leveling of Gaza”–and beyond. There’s no whitewashing his role in this genocide, regardless of ‘good intentions’. Any doubt that he won’t listen to French President Macron on this?:
Macron’s call comes amid mounting public scrutiny of thehigh death toll in Gaza and Israel’s widening conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Macron said Lebanon should not be allowed to “become a new Gaza,” referring to Israel’s ground and air offensive in the country. “The Lebanese people cannot, in turn, be sacrificed,” he added.
Meanwhile, just another collateral damage story:
An Israeli strike on a mosque in the Gaza Strip early Sunday killed at least 19 people, Palestinian officials said, as Israel intensified its bombardment of northern Gaza and southern Beirut in a widening war with Iran-allied militant groups across the region.
Displaced people were sheltering at the mosque that was struck near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. A further four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.
The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants, without providing evidence.
Here’s what happened to a doctor just trying to help:
The confines of Gaza’s Nasser hospital are unrecognisable from just a year ago, its regular patients now joined by a flood of war-wounded and the homeless sheltering in its courtyards and corridors. Even many of its doctors are new.
As fighting has shifted through the Gaza Strip during the past year of war, hospitals have been forced to close and doctors to move, seeking the next place to safely operate.
Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis is now one of the few left operating at any level.
Dr Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, deputy medical coordinator for Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Palestine, is now leading a team working out of the hospital, having shuttled between different locations for the past year.
“The hospitals are not the hospitals that we used to know,” he says. “Hospitals have specific conditions; they’re organised, there’s only patients [there], but during this war hospitals are places where people are sheltering, bringing their tents, sleeping in the car park and even in the wards because they thought the hospitals are secure.”
In reality, even hospitals have often been far from safe, with more than 500 attacks on healthcare facilities in Gaza in the past 12 months of war, according to the UN, including bombing and raids of some of the biggest, such as Nasser and Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital.
A Hamas sympathizer in every janitorial closet? You fuckers can act as apologists all you want, you are complicit in genocide.
Am I the only one concerned about Kos’ triumphalism over Kamala Harris’ campaign? He’s revisiting his 2016 slobbering for all-things-Hillary again. Just had to excise that from my psyche. Pretty sure I’m the only one.
Don’t Like The Looks Of This Potential Hurricane. Just don’t blame it on climate change. Ron DeSantis won’t:
Tropical Storm Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday, is expected to become a hurricane late Sunday or early Monday. The storm is expected to pose a major hurricane threat to Florida by midweek, just over a week after Helene pushed through the region.
The National Hurricane Center says that “there is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and wind impacts for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning late Tuesday or Wednesday.”
What do you want to talk about?
Any sort of attempt to frame Biden as a good President is solely based on grading on a curve. Is it the “most progressive” administration in my lifetime? Arguably yes, but it’s a backhanded complement.
Clinton and Obama have abysmal legacies, and the Republicans are obviously worse. So being the best by default isn’t something worth bragging about.
Uh Oh! Seems like nothing is any good yet again! Pray tell, what did you expect? Biden, like all the other Delaware politicians I remember, is a product of Delaware’s corporate culture. Money is the primary goal, just like the Republicans. What would happen if we refused to supply the Israelis the weapons of death? Others would fill the gap and the slaughter would continue. To which I respond what are we going to do about it? History suggest absolutely nothing. As we say here Sucks, don’t it?
“What would happen if we refused to supply the Israelis the weapons of death?”
Well, if it happened this month – Trump would win.
Would that be a total ban? Forever? In that case, the balance of power in the region would eventually shift in the long term until Israel’s enemies and adversaries could attack Israel without fear of reprisal and “push it into the sea.”
Or just a conditional ban until (some condition) is met? Which condition should we choose to impose on Israel? Should we insist Israel once again allow neighboring territories to become unfettered launch platforms against itself?
Bullshit. You keep defending using an atomic bomb when a fly swatter would do.
“fly swatter”
That is the “forever war” policy which allows Patriot systems but only permits mild counter-attacks that keep the conflict alive.
The forever war is favored by the modern UN and by neighbors in the region who use anti-Israel, anti-American agitation domestically to prop up their regimes.
By the way, Iran’s collection of terrorist proxies are not the legitimate voice of Palestinian rights and do not constitute a “resistance.” Their hold on civil and military power needs to end. Stop saving a place of honor for them at the negotiating table.
Let’s see, 7 million Israeli Jews, 341 million Muslims in the Middle East-North Africa region, including 8 million in Israel.
What makes you think this has any hope of not being a forever war?
Hezbollah sends thousands of rockets aimed at innocent Israeli civilians with virtually no casualties. Why? Because Israel has built shelters to protect its people. Where are the Gazan and Lebanese shelters? They don’t exist. Hamas LOVES IT when multiple civilians are killed. It makes Israel look like a monster. They purposely attack Israel from children’s bedrooms, mosques, hospitals — all where innocent Gazans have taken shelter KNOWING ISRAEL WILL STRIKE BACK AND THERE WILL BE HORRIFIC GAZAN CASUALTIES! The Gazans can’t take refuge in the vast network of tunnels. Those are only for the feckless Hamas leaders. Pay attention to the other side of your one-sided story.
I’m interested in how many people you are willing to see dead before you consider Israel secure.
Washington Post profile of LBR, written by a UD grad who got his start freelancing for the old Crossroads sections of the News Journal. He was part of the WaPo team that won a Pulitzer this year for reporting on the AR-15 rifle.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/10/05/lisa-blunt-rochester-black-woman-senate/?utm_campaign=wp_todays_headlines&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_headlines&carta-url=https%3A%2F%2Fs2.washingtonpost.com%2Fcar-ln-tr%2F3f36987%2F67025fa5638939001ba2bbfc%2F59698d2b9bbc0f6d71c2c789%2F20%2F57%2F67025fa5638939001ba2bbfc