Don’t forget that the Hamas leaders are living in luxury as billionaires in Qatar. If the Israeli response kills a few thousand Palestinians, then Hamas’ leaders will shrug their shoulders and say “sounds like good PR” while lounging in a hot tub.
Now? During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump insisted that he had large hands and large genitalia because one of the other candidates said he had small hands.
Trump has never been dignified.
$175,000 for 50 years? He’s 71 now so he went into prison at 21. That means he spent virtually his entire life in prison. He could have done so many things, but instead he needed to sit in a prison cell. All because he was wrongly convicted.
And because I’m a math geek and need to figure this stuff out, $175,000 over 50 years is $3,500 a year. If we calculate what he would have earned at the federal minimum wage over that time frame (ignoring bank account interest or inflation just to keep things simple), we’d get over $500,000.
They’re giving him a third of what he should have earned at bare minimum. (And that ignores all the other horrible things involved with being wrongfully imprisoned for 50 years.)
And this woman also WANTS to have the baby. She and her husband were trying to get pregnant. Unfortunately, the fetus has abnormalities that mean it won’t survive. Without an abortion, she will need to wait until she hits term, have a C Section, and then have a dead baby.
Oh, and thanks to her medical history, she’ll likely be unable to have another pregnancy after that C-section. So it’s either give birth to a dead baby now and have no more or have an abortion now and (after she recovers) try to have another baby. Only one of these options might result in a baby that’s alive and it’s the option that includes abortion.
But Paxton will scream about how he’s “protecting the unborn baby” without caring that the fetus has a nearly zero chance of survival and without caring that the woman faces potential severe (possibly life threatening) medical complications if she’s forced to continue the pregnancy. He’ll force women to carry pregnancies to term even if it kills them!
The Red State Brain Drain continues. Professors leaving Florida. OB/GYN doctors leaving Texas.
Why would you want to work in a place that criminalizes your job?
And don’t forget the “life of the mother” exceptions in places like Texas that can only be triggered if the woman is actively dying. If she’s not close enough to death, it is still “carry it to term or else.”
And also because the Republicans can project their views on those groups.
“If the ‘unborn baby’ or dead soldier could talk, they’d say that we should absolutely overturn this election result and name Trump President again. After all, he will protect the unborn (unless they happen to reside in his mistress) and what did those soldiers die for if not President For Life Trump?!!!”
I think there are four factors at play here. They’re mixed together in an extremely messy fashion and overlap quite a bit, but they are:
The people on both sides fear for their safety. The Palestinians fear the Israeli government and military taking action against them. The Israeli people fear rocket attacks and raids like the one that just happened. When a populace lives in fear, it leads to -
Extremist groups are in charge. You have Hamas on one side whose stated goal is to kill all Jews. (Not just in Israel, but across the world.) You have the right wing Israeli government on the other side who push for horrible actions against the Palestinians in the name of “safety.”
Foreign interference. Iran on one side is arming/helping Hamas. On the other side, evangelical Christians help the settlers and push the Israeli government because they think Jesus will come back if Israel suffers a big enough attack. (Peace would prevent that attack and stop Jesus from returning.)
A long and bloody history. Both sides remember when they were killed by the other side. Both sides refuse to leave the past in the past and intend on making the other side pay. The problem here is that the cycle of violence never breaks. If you always have to attack because “they did X to us” then they will feel like they always need to attack because you did Y to them. It goes around and around and never changes no matter how much everyone suffers.
How do you untangle this mess? If I knew that, I’d have the Nobel Peace Prize. I wish I did know. I’d set the peace prize aside in a second, tell the world what to do, and stop it all. Unfortunately, I’m no diplomat. (Some of the best diplomats have failed in this arena.) I can see what’s going on, but I have no clue how to stop it.
The best I can think of is that perhaps UN security forces need to move in. Not to attack one side or another, but to keep both sides away from each other. Sort of like the national version of putting two kids who were fighting in time out until things cool down. But again, I’m no diplomat so for all I know that would make things worse.
The problem, even if we reinstated this, is that this applied to broadcast only. This wouldn’t apply to cable channels. Neither would it apply to Internet groups. Both of those would still be free to spout full blown lies and conspiracy theories dressed up as “news.”
The biggest thing that I can see that needs to be done would be shutting down “news” organizations like FOX News, OAN, and Newsmax. Also, breaking up online movements like Q where blatant misinformation is spread as if it’s proven truth.
Now, HOW you do that without massive first amendment violations, I don’t know. You would also need to be careful how it’s structured because that could easily be used to shut down anyone left of center should a Republicans take the presidency/control Congress.
That and the “Alpha Male” garbage. Even the author of the study on wolves has said repeatedly that his study was totally wrong. And yet some people continue to reference it and apply it to humans when even the original study wasn’t about people.
My father isn’t quite “Red Caesar,” but he recently told me that his dream ticket is Trump and RFK Jr. 🤦♂️
The sad part is that, when I carefully avoid buzzwords, he’ll actually agree with me on things. Say Medicare For All and he’ll rant about how that’s socialism. However, when he praises Medicare, he’ll sometimes wonder why more people can’t sign up for it. (Like, maybe allow All to get Medicare?)
If you say Defund the Police (a slogan I think is stupid), he’ll rant about lawlessness and crime. But talk about the specific issues and he’ll agree that the police unions have too much power, police officers who abuse their positions should be fired - not rehired one precinct over - and that police should have more training so that they don’t act like the first thing to do is whip out their gun and open fire.
It’s like he comes close to understanding why Progressiveism is good, but then immediately slides back into MAGA-land.
Part of it is projection. Part is them assuming that if they want to do X, then the other side must be doing it even more. (Which they also use to excuse doing X.)
Helping Ukraine isn’t relishing war. Yes, peace would be better, but that’s entirely in Russia’s control. If Mexico invaded the US and seized a state or two, does anyone think that the US would just sign a peace treaty and give up those states? (I mean, maybe if it was Mississippi or Alabama.) No, we’d strike back until we took back every inch of territory that we had lost.
Russia could have peace tomorrow by pulling their troops out and agreeing to never again invade a sovereign country. (I’m sure there were be more conditions before it would be a lasting peace, but that would be a great start.) Russia’s idea of “peace,” though, is “Ukraine becomes part of Russia and everyone in Ukraine who doesn’t like this is tortured, raped, and then killed.”
It’s a false equivalence to pretend that fighting to free your country from an invading force is the same as fighting as part of the invading force.
Some of the MAGA folks are already saying that we should bomb/invade Mexico to stop the drug cartels and immigrants. Of course, they hand-wave how horrible a war would be. They assume that Mexico would thank the US for such a great bombing and ask for more. Because MAGA.
And even there, he could hold onto the speakership by working with Democrats. If he throws the Democrats a few bones in exchange for them voting to keep McCarthy in any speakership vote, then the power of the Freedom Caucus would be blunted.
But silly me, the obvious path forward is really to keep doing the same thing and hope that the Freedom Caucus will become reasonable. Surely, that will work perfectly, right?
To be fair, we’re also worried that, if he does, his followers will go violent again. Not that this is a reason to excuse him him prison. It just means that it might not be all rainbows and puppies if Trump goes to prison. Our celebrations might be interrupted by home grown right wing terrorist attacks.
Not a restaurant manger, but I worked for Sbarro’s back in college. The one on campus wasn’t bad, but the one in the mall? We had pizzas sitting under heat lamps for 6 hours or more before they were bought, tossed in the oven for a second, and then handed to the customer. They had to search for gloves because I was the only one who wanted to wear them.
At one point, I needed to put pepperoni on a pizza.i told my manger I couldn’t because the pepperoni was moldy. My manger reached into the bag, pulled a small handful of moldy pepperoni out, threw it out, and declared that rest of the bag perfectly good (without even looking at it).
It’s been 30 years and I still can’t eat at Sbarro.
I worked for a pretty popular magazine back in the late 90’s. One day near the beginning/middle of 2000, we were all called down to the bullpen for a last minute meeting by management and marketing. (That’s never a good sign.)
We were told that we have a great product with amazing writing, but marketing doesn’t know how to sell it so they’re closing us down. Instead, we went online only. I was the web developer so I survived the firings.
So then we figured that we were set because our website produced more content and had more traffic than any of the company’s other websites. However, in March of 2001, we had another emergency meeting. Again, we were told our content was great, but the company was going in another direction. Instead of producing our own content, the company was going to just repost other sites’ content. I and everyone else in my team were let go.
Needless to say, the whole “we’ll just repost what other people posted” plan didn’t go so well. Last time I checked, the company wasn’t doing very well at all.
Weren’t some hostages also drugged so they’d be “happy and smiling” for the cameras when released? I heard that, but don’t know the authenticity.
Edit: I found many news sources that said they were. I know some folks don’t trust anything Israel says so take reports like this with a grain of salt. Still, it’s been confirmed that many of the hostages were drugged while in captivity. Especially the kids - to keep them quiet. (Anyone with little kids knows they can be loud while scared and this must have been extremely scary. As a father, the reaction of “drug the little kids” makes me angry.)