Talk about toxic masculinity

Exactly. They're being really unwise here. After all,

Big Oil has done just fine under Biden, setting records for oil and gas production, launching massive new projects, and more or less guffawing in the general direction of the energy transition

so by hoping to get more from that other guy - it's just asking for more money, all else be danged. Or, like burning your torso to keep your head warm.

I applaud her spirit and agree with her that a peace treaty should be concluded.

That's sick. That's not a reason to withhold an apology.

This is sick. It applies to all couples, including the traditional married husband and wife where the wife has some medical issues that make it impossible for her to become pregnant or safely carry a pregancy to term.

Italy on Wednesday criminalized citizens who go abroad to have children through surrogacy

Loophole? If we've abroad for some other well established reason (e.g. born abroad and having never lived in Italy) and then just happen to go through surrogacy in a place where it's legal... are we safe?

Yes, really. I even saw an earlier news article showing that the referendum was expected to fail!

Thank goodness that they made it, even after all the Russian disinformation and interference. Democracy won again today.

This is difficult and painful. At the same time that it's good that the EU is recognizing that its member states have a problem and is listening to them about it, they also need to maintain the high bar of respecting refugee and asylum seeker's human rights and ensuring that those with valid claims do make it to safety.

Did Harris run in 2016? I remember the 2020 run but don't recall 2016.

Agreed w/ you - though in Harris's defense the call to the highest office sorta came in the eleventh hour, so that might be part of why - she thought she'd have a whole four more years to define this, rather than just 4-5 more months (from when Biden dropped out).

I maybe saw an occasional video with them but never even open an account with them. I wonder why they're shutting down now..

too close to comfort, but I’m surprised with this huge of turnout even just local reporting isn’t doing exit polling.

Same here. Everything I've been reading is that we don't know who these early voters voted for yet, nor are there reliable estimates of which way it may have swung overall.

But if one side does stoop that low, that doesn't give the other wise a free pass to do the same thing.
I mean it's easy to say that when you don't have family or friends being detained and tortured in Israeli prisons.

Also, it's easy to say that when you don't have family or friends being detained as hostages by Hamas in who knows where.

In case it wasn't clear, I'm on the side of the innocent folks who are being detained (doesn't matter by who).

You'll find the details if you look, or I can grab them from somewhere,

If you could, I tried looking but haven't gotten a better or more nuanced look than what was on the Atlantic. As usual, your references are super helpful!

It's widely theorized that one of the purposes of the deal was to prevent naturalization with Saudi Arabia from happening, specifically because it wouldn't contribute anything to Palestinian statehood.
and not at all a grand deal that would free them from Israeli oppression.
but either way don't take what The Atlantic says too seriously.

Hmm, right now all I can do is to quote the Atlantic article when it says,

by building a Palestinian state into the deal.

But of course, just because these details were being hashed out in secret doesn't mean the folks who scuttled the deal (Hamas) knew about it, so both could be true at the same time. (One disturbing alternative is that Hamas was aware of this detail but decided to scuttle it anyways, as they didn't agree with the two-state solution that was being built and supported by Israel, the US, Saudi Arabia, and presumably the Palestine Authority.)

Naturalization was widely viewed as a betrayal by Saudi Arabia of the Palestinian cause,

I guess this is why MBS said,

“Half my advisers say that the deal is not worth the risk,” he said. “I could end up getting killed because of this deal.”

Biden cares more about Zionism than about US democracy and his career, or at least that's what it would seem from his actions.

Yeah, that's fair - if you look only at the actions it's easy to see it this way.

He's not even clearing the bar Reagan set.

Yeah, again that's quite a bit disturbing.

Biden pretends to push back but he never has actually pulled the trigger on any actual pushback.

So we were talking about Harris. Anyways, "pulled the trigger on any actual pushback" is a bit ambiguous - for example, some would argue that withholding 2,000 pound bombs while resuming 500 pound bomb deliveries (as per the above articles) is exactly that kind of pushback, while otherwise would say it's a meaningless gesture.

And a pause – essentially a delay in shipping, Same as your amazon package getting delayed. Even if it was true and not made up, its is a meangless performative gesture at best.

Well, not quite the same as having an amazon package getting delayed. With amazon, you can get refunded (and then buy the same item from another vendor, say in person in a storefront) or have another of the same item reshipped to you (in the hopes of getting back faster). In either case it'd likely be resolved long before hitting five months.

In this case, there's likely no other vendor to turn to for 2,000lb bombs. And there's no question of reshipping or anything. So here we are five months later, with the pause fully in place.

Biden has used exactly zero of his levers to move toward peace, and 100 percent of his levers to encourage the expansion and impunity of a bloodthirsty genocide and ethnic cleansing.

Hmm...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned their Israeli counterparts in a letter dated Sunday that it must increase the amount of humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza within the next 30 days or Israel could risk losing access to U.S. weapons funding.

Source: https://apnews.com/article/israel-iran-oil-nuclear-sites-biden-f5dd702de7d990dd1d00f665e1484dee

And that was followed up by, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-gaza-aid-letter-blinken-austin-warning-netanyahu-government-rcna175657

And Harris has indicated that she will continue on the same course he has charted.

From https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/kamala-harris-israel-arms-biden ,

Harris ... called for Palestinian “freedom and self-determination”.

If this "will continue the same course that he has charted" then yes she will.
Fair to ask Harris to go further.
But again, she's not a sock puppet and has already distinguished herself on this topic from Biden.

This one is oddly specific. So if Harris doesn’t exactly and precisely have that one specific view, then she would be a sock puppet no matter how far apart her beliefs are from Bidens?
Oddly? you say?

Yes, it's very odd to have a specific view about "breaking US law about enabling regimes plausibly commiting war crimes" in the definition of sock puppetry. So in other words, "breaking US law about enabling regimes plausibly commiting war crimes" is sock puppetry and "breaking Israeli law about enabling regimes plausibly commiting war crimes" is not because the word US isn't in there.

The Leahy laws are specific. Have you heard of those?

They've been mentioned a few times in the news recently. But they don't seem to have any reference to sock puppetry. If you disagree, please show me the text of the relevant section of that law that defines it along with a proper analysis.

And you ship weapons or you dont. You see nuance there huh. Thats telling.

Of course. There's a huge difference if the US is shipping only a single pistol with a single bullet in a century vs tens of thousands of nuclear armed ICBMs every single day. What the US is currently shipping to Israel under Biden lies somewhere between these two extremes (and imvho it's still a bit too much, but I've already explained why I have hope that Harris will bring it down).

The fact that you can't see nuance here is even more telling.

You see nuance there huh.

A bit surprised to see this as I didn't mention nuance in the earlier quotes.

You quoted me a link from a tiny Israeli site that has a yellow war ribbon in their logo.
“Israelhayam” a far right low factual reporting website. That one of your favorites?

No, but the point is that even these guys are worried about Harris staying committed to the current level of arms shipments. If even folks of this flavour and persuasion are worried, then that's very suggestive, no?

So you’re pushing Israeli propoganda.

That said, it's fair to ask for alternative sources if one is suspect. So happy to help again, thus here's a different source, a non-Israeli progoganda source, for the same information: https://arabcenterdc.org/resource/washington-policy-weekly-harris-supports-pause-on-2000-pound-bombs-to-israel/

A single threat to pause that wasnt actually carried out, was it.

Again, happy to correct you!
Indeed it was, as per https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/10/biden-resumes-sending-israel-bombs
And it remained so even in late September, as per https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/28/world/middleeast/israel-nasrallah-bunker-buster-bombs.html

Most things I'm saying can be found in the Wikipedia page on the attack and the festival massacre

Thanks! There actually a couple of pages in this area for each so if you have specific Wikipedia articles to link to, that would help a bit. Otherwise I'll make do, no worries either way.

Note that this is the only article that explicitly states that the drone both hit and was fired by Hezbollah,

Thanks for the reference! Very helpful.

so it could be a mistake on their part but I personally don't think so.

Yeah they haven't updated it after a couple of days, so it seems legit.

That was, in fact, the case.

Ok, that seems fair then. It wasn't part of the plan.

On an operational level it was a good opportunity to take hostages, but for multiple reason, including the aforementioned laxness, it quickly devolved into what we now know as the Nova music festival massacre.

Again, fair.

Still fucked up, but from what I understand it seemed like they could do it without compromising their initial objective at the time.

Yep, fair.

Israel takes hostages (also known as detainees) all the time

Hostage taking is wrong either way. Once found to be a genuine and innocent civilian who had nothing to do with the matter, that person should be released by the IDF. (It's different matter when enemy combatants are captured, but even then we have Geneva conventions and such to follow.)

you can't free them without something to trade. and that something was hostages in this case.

Something is deeply sickening about this. The idea that innocent civilians can just be taken and used as cards to trade. (Doesn't matter who or which side, the idea is sick no matter who is behind it, IDF or Hamas.)

I consider it a "don't blame the player, blame the game" situation.
I view it as a realpolitik military/political decision

Neither side should stoop that low. But if one side does stoop that low, that doesn't give the other wise a free pass to do the same thing.

I see why realpolitik is so deeply disliked.

You might say that the hostages didn't really help (other than free a few detainees), and in hindsight you'd be right

Yup.

but nobody could predict the perfect storm of Netanyahu's desperation for a forever war to keep him in power

I'll give credit here. Hamas really screwed up as it seems like things were on the verge of a grand bargain of peace here with Saudi Arabia helping to ensure an independent State of Palestine - see https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2024/09/israel-gaza-war-biden-netanyahu-peace-negotiations/679581/

And then it all broke down in the aftermath.

and the until-then-unknown insanity of Biden's Zionism.

Eh, the same article shows Biden really didn't want this, though he also feared publicly breaking with Netanyahu.

Even now he's still (feebly and ineffectively) pushing for Israel to stop, as per the headline "Biden tells Netanyahu it's time to end Gaza war after Sinwar's elimination" : https://www.axios.com/2024/10/17/biden-netanyahu-sinwar-gaza-war

CNN has a paywall?

Good. With the recent news from the UK, now we just need more from North America on this..

but stressed that the administration would continue to support Israel and would not delay or stop weapons shipments.

Hoping that this is one area that Harris/Walz will distinguish from Biden's admin in.

I explicitly blamed the people who set it up, and that account went off about how I’m blaming Biden.

I agree with you. There's some nuance that's being missed. Obviously Biden had nothing to do with a program that got signed into law in 2007.

You (and John Oliver, who's rarely wrong) said that Biden paid the extra interest - which shouldn't have existed if things were done right from the start. And this means less money for other loan forgiveness. That's what Biden is being blamed for. Paying extra interest. Nothing else.

The catch here is that maybe Biden couldn't have cancelled or reversed that interest without new legislation, which would be tough in these times due to the strong MAGA hold on the GOP half of Congress right now. Hence he had to work within the framework of existing laws and prioritized ending the suffering of his constituents first. On that basis, I figure it's probably the right call overall, even if it means some scummy for-profits got a little bit fatter.

But the other commenter said,

And here you sit, just another asshole blaming Biden and Democrats for mess their predecessors went out of their way to create, because they didn’t clean it up instantly and perfectly.

Which is just highly inaccurate, as it was only one tiny aspect of the cleanup that was being questioned.

Agreed. If talking about "when the blueprints are drawn up" then 17 is way too short as it'd been in the works and planned for even longer. 17 years ago is when things started operating, even if the first payouts didn't happen for another ten years.

The problem with it is when it was set up, some idiot put the loan companies in charge. And thru intentional .. most people didn’t get forgiveness when they should

I've been following folks who've been stuck here. Being told they were in a forgiveness plan or having an eligible employer, only to be told at the last minute that nope they gotta start all over again. (Luckily this was fixed and those folks got their second chance, but it never should have happened at all.)

some idiot put the loan companies in charge. And thru intentional .. most people didn’t get forgiveness when they should

Why is it so hard to expect a for profit company to actually comply with the law here? That's all that was needed to prevent a series of tragedies from happening.