Rottcodd

I think it's safe to presume that Iran hasn't retaliated yet, and likely won't retaliate in any direct military way, because that's exactly what Netanyahu wants them to do - that was the entire point of the assassination in the first place.

Though Iran arguably loses face by not diectly retaliating, they'd likely lose even more face by allowing themselves to be provoked into doing what Netanyahu wants them to do.

Alongside that, it's safe to presume that they will retaliate at some point, but it's going to take a form that conveys a clear message to Israel and to Netanyahu while not being the direct military response that Netanyahu was trying to provoke, so won't give him an excuse for the war he wants to drag the US into.

To "win?" No - not really.

But I don't think that matters much.

Honestly, I think that Trump and the overt fascists and plutocrats who are backing him fully intend to get him into office or destroy the country trying - that if he doesn't win legitimately, he'll "win" through fraud, or through the machinations of the brazenly corrupt and compromised supreme court, or through violent revolution.

His backers - the Heritage Foundation and the rest of the fascists and Musk and Thiel and the rest of the plutocrats and so on - don't just want to try to get him into office - they want to destroy American liberty and democracy. It's not even so much about him specifically - he's just the right combination of charismatic and shallow that they see him as their opportunity to impose the autocracy they want. And I don't think they're going to let anything stand in their way. So whether or not he actually wins the election isn't even really relevant, other than to the degree that that will determine what other strategies they might have to, and will, implement.

I would expect that any random person on the street would be more trusted on the economy than Trump

If economic expertise actually consisted of lying, filing false financial statements, running businesses into the ground, dodging creditors and filing bankruptcy, then Trump would be unmatched. But those decidedly are not signs of economic expertise - exactly the opposite in fact.

And rightly so. And the blame for that falls entirely on the shoulders of the zionists.

The zionists, by conflating opposition to Israeli government policy with antisemitism, have effectively asserted that being Jewish is indistinguishable from being a supporter of Israeli government policy. That's the only way that opposition to Israeli policy can be considered antisemitic - if support for it and being Jewish are identical and thus interchangeable.

So all it takes for an individual to adopt a genuinely antisemitic viewpoint is to oppose Israeli government policy and to believe what the zionists are saying. They're saying that being Jewish is indistinguishable from being a supporter of Israeli government policy, so if one is to effectively oppose Israeli government policy, then one must, by the zionists' own logic, oppose Jews broadly.

And as an added bit of irony, what all that means too is that the zionists actually are antisemitic. By effectively assigning a specific, and in the eyes of many a repugnant and hateful, set of beliefs and behaviors to any and all Jews, entirely regardless of the actual beliefs and behavior of any individuals, they are engaging in the exact dynamic that defines bigotry, and thus antisemitism.

I'm regularly struck by the literal insanity of politics, but this whole deal with Israel is a particularly notable example.

The fact of the matter is that we have no idea what Harris's actual opinion of the situation is. Regardless of what it might actually be, she has to support Israel, which at this point means supporting a government of literal murderous psychopaths who are simultaneously carrying out a genocide in Gaza and a violent incremental illegal land grab in the West Bank while also brazenly trying to provoke, and drag the US into, a war with Lebanon or Syria or Yemen or Iran. And why does she have to support all of that patent evil? Because if she doesn't, AIPAC will spend millions and millions of dollars trying to destroy her, like they already destroyed Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush, for daring to have principles.

And what's the likely net result of that? To elect a Republican, which is to say, a member of the party of actual antisemites.

They accuse Democrats of being antisemites merely for calling genocide genocide, and meanwhile, the actual antisemites - the people who comtinue to hold to the notion of Jews as evil, money-grubbing vermin who are conspiring to take over the world, are Republicans, even including Republicans in high office, like "Jewish space lasers" Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Think about how insane that is - a politician has to publicly support a genocidal regime or face being called an antisemite and having an Israeli advocacy group spend millions and millions of dollars to destroy her and instead elect the candidate from the party of actual Jew-hating antisemites.

And as if that isn't enough, we have Jill Stein in the middle of it all, who, with zero chance of actually winning, is free to take the position that any rational person should take, and the position that the majority of the Democratic base takes - that genocide is genocide and is rightly condemned. And that then introduces the risk that she'll draw off enough Democratic voters, merely by taking the position held by the majority, so the position that the Democratic candidate should take, that it will hand the election to the Republican - the candidate of the party of actual antisemites.

The whole thing is bludgeoningly insane. I don't think anyone could've created such a grotesquely dysfunctional and actuslly counter-productive system if they'd deliberately set out to do it.

And yet that's the world we live in - the world we're forced to live in - a world warped by the literal insanity of a wealthy and powerful few.

It boggles my mind.

Mmm...no

It's "some random guy with a working moral framework, the ability to feel empathy, and some measure of respect for the rights of other humans and simple human decency calling a bunch of murderous xenophobic psychopaths murderous xenophobic psychopaths." So it's in fact nothing like that.

Even beyond the fact that it's stupid and crazy, why is it ugly?

At the very least I would think that she'd want neat, clear, balanced letters rather than a crooked, lumpy scrawl.

Right, nor did I expect a rating based an on individual article - sorry if that's the way I made it sound.

It's simply that the rating of high credibility accompanying an article that was so obviously little more than a barrage of loaded language cast the problem into such sharp relief that I went from being unimpressed by MBFC to actively not wanting to see it.

All I see here is someone whose ego relies on a steady diet of derision hurled in the general direction of strangers on the internet.

I haven't seen any evidence that it does that, and quite the contrary, evidence that it does not - examples from publications ranging from Israel Times to New York Times to Slate in which it accompanied an article with clearly loaded language with an assessment of high credibility.

It's possible that it's improved of late - I don't know, since I blocked it weeks ago, after a particularly egregious example of that accompanied a technically factually accurate but brazenly biased Israel Times article.

If you’re not going to answer then I’ll just default to the obvious: you think you’re special and that everyone else is an idiot/sheeple/etc.

Right - you'll just assume that I see it as some sort of competition that I'm winning.

So are you saying that you wouldn't be able to recognize my second example as a biased statement without the MBFC bot's guidance?

Or did you just entirely miss the point?