There’s no way to know for sure, I imagine, but I do hope our intelligence agencies are counterattacking. Defense is great and all, but sometimes some offense becomes appropriate.

… now that was not on my bingo card.

… that’s clever.

You’d need some sort of vetting process, I don’t think companies would be interested in unvetted randos as part of their security. But if you could figure out a way to vet them inexpensively, that could potentially be marketable.

I suspect this thinking is part of what contributes to Walmart’s historic friendliness to car campers.

Yeah, especially since Rogan is supposedly a sports fan himself.

If Rogan accepts him on his show, I’ll actually gain a touch of respect for him.

Biden didn’t actually violate the Leahy Law. Here’s the relevant section:

No assistance shall be furnished under this Act or the Arms Export Control Act to any unit of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.

with a later amendment that included DoD-derived funding.

Which units got arms that were engaged in rights violations? I understand that isn’t very satisfying when we know Israel has committed war crimes, but the law does not specify country, it specifies military unit. So, which unit should be barred from receiving arms? The others will still be able to legally receive them in full compliance with the Leahy Law.

Then we also have:

(b) Exception.—The prohibition in subsection (a)(1) shall not apply if the Secretary of Defense, after consultation with the Secretary of State, determines that the government of such country has taken all necessary corrective steps, or if the equipment or other assistance is necessary to assist in disaster relief operations or other humanitarian or national security emergencies.

This clause frankly creates a legal loophole the size of a Merkava.

edit for formatting

“Why make a good product if you can put your effort into making it just seem like your product is good? This way you can pivot around more flexibly. Instead of having to possess a wide array of hard-earned skills you can make specific content about, you can simply learn the skills of marketing, branding and style, and now you can bullshit your way through anything you want.”

-many modern business practices

Bah. Who needs NATO when you have the world’s best pikemen?

I don’t know about “loving” NATO, military alliances aren’t the most loveable things. They’re necessities for protecting from our thousands of years of conquering each other very, very frequently, unless you’re a believer in that neo-lib idea of free trade preventing war.

Understanding NATOs importance is the more important thing imo.

edit: Loving NATO is like loving your car insurance. Do you love it? No, probably not. Should you just get rid of it? No, probably not, unless you just never drive.

I didn’t say 330 million registered voters. I said 330 million people, as in total population of the country including all nonvoters and ineligible.

At any rate, I don’t think any singular factor dominated, each person has their own mix of issues. Economy was a big one, including things like rent prices that the feds have little control over in our system. Gaza was a smaller one, definitely. There’s at least a dozen more.

Polls cannot really accurately capture this, they’re too clumsy a tool. Focus groups can though.

There are around 50 million registered dems in the country and Harris is currently sitting at around 70 million votes. Our problem is everyone else in a country with 330 million people.

Keep the faith, Brits. Perhaps Brexit washed some of the insanity out early enough that the far right continues to struggle there.

Hopefully we’re not slowly returning to the Napoleonic Era, I’m not sure you guys could withstand all of continental Europe a third time.

No, not yet. Every service member of our military forces takes a personal oath to defend the Constitution. That is the final guardrail. There are still a couple other, weaker ones as well, we’re not done yet

edit: I do feel bad for the young people that are new to this experience, it does hurt. This’ll likely be the strongest assault we’ve been forced to endure yet. But having lived through GWB and Trump’s first term, this fight is not yet over. Not even close. Their side is not unified in its goals, it’s a coalition just like ours. That’s a vulnerability that can be exploited, just as ours was.

I actually sort of like this idea. People would still figure it out, of course, but it’d shift people’s default attention from the person to the platform.

I hope so too.

With a strong enough swell of support from Israelis, the need to work with Netanyahu to maintain our reputation of standing by our allies and maintaining some leverage over the Israeli government would evaporate. It’d create room for a strong pivot that would still allow us to plausibly threaten Netanyahu with consequences, maintaining his inability to finish his ethnic cleansing goals.

Needs a lot of people though, enough to give some plausible cover to what could otherwise be perceived as a betrayal of an established alliance. We could say we’re still standing with the Israelis, though, look, here’s their signatures. The rest of them are clearly traumatized and not in their right senses.

I don’t think we’d need a majority of their population to sign or anything, but a lot for sure.

No. In astronomy, everything heavier than hydrogen or helium is referred to as metals. So, a star’s metallicity would be including carbon, oxygen etc.

Ices are metals.

Thank you for the blurb.

Hm, that is interesting. Definitely does fit with American Cold War activities, so I’m inclined to believe it.

No, the Palestinians are certainly not being helped in any way by Netanyahu. He and his right wing cronies want them all gone, I’m fairly sure. Despite that goal, however, most of the 2 million+ residents of Gaza remain alive. That would probably not be the case at this point, without western leverage being exerted on Netanyahu to restrain him.

It would actually be easier for him to kill them all if he did not have to maintain alliances. Not harder. If he wants to remain safe vs Hezbollah and Iran, he must preserve most of the Gazan lives, even though he really doesn’t want to.

Source on the Australia stuff? That’s new to me.

Arming genocidal regimes is nothing new, the Leahy Law was created in the first place because these things were problems. Ultimately though, without that influence over Netanyahu, the Palestinians would be worse off, not better.

Netanyahu doesn’t need big bombs to starve a captive population, no matter how much people like to fantasize about Israel magically letting them all go as soon as arms are embargoed.