The Biden Administration (No Lago)

[Stahlseele]

In unrelated knows. The US is bombing Iraq.

*record scratch*
que? x.x

[PseudoStupidity]

There has been an uptick in attacks on US military bases, including ones in Iraq, because of our open support for genocide. We bombed a bunch of people in Iraq (US media claims the people we bombed were Iranian proxies) in response to this.

[Kaelik]

Israel made a fake website for Hamas in English, using Wix.com (an Israeli website creation company) and is now pretending this is a real Hamas website that shows how bad Hamas is.

Because this is designed only to convince two kinds of people, people who already really want to genocide the Palestinians, or the dumbest fucking morons. Joe Biden is one of those!

[Kaelik]

Israel got one last bombing of a school in a refugee camp run by the UN to target the three most dangerous Hamas factions before the ceasefire officially started.

But now those 100 UN aid workers, children, and refugees won't be a threat to break the ceasefire, so really it was all worth it.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I notice that just five minutes ago it was mainstream western leadership consensus that just using the word "ceasefire" was unacceptable and basically calling for the destruction of Israel.

But now they got their not especially adequete humanitarian pause that we ALREADY have the top US officials ON RECORD saying is actually just a PR excercise to allow Israel to bomb MORE civilians than it otherwise would get away with...

...now Israel, the western media and political leaders are rebranding the "humanitarian pause" as a fucking "ceasefire".

The spin on everything is so god damn nonsense.

And of course Israel is already promising that if they have to stop mass murdering civilians for 4 days they will DEFINITELY start again, even harder for a minimum of 2 MONTHS once the pause is done.

Because of course they are. Openly. Like thats an acceptable thing to do or even say you are going to do BEFORE you've even actually sealed the deal on hostage exchange.

Oh yes. Exchange. Because of course Israel has more innocent Palestinians imprisoned than Hamas has Israeli captives. Gotta dig well past the western press to know that one. And Hamas is releasing pretty close to every hostage they have, if the deal goes well the extra releases potentially planned will be basically all of them. Israel while releasing more innocent civilians they just for no reason put in their wildly overcrowded torture jails, is only releasing a FRACTION of the numbers they have and only women and children at that!

The press doesn't like to mention that, or even that largely the whole October 7th attack was largely an attempt to capture hostages for this exact trade since Israel had been upping its population of tortured civilian prisoners jailed for the crime of being Palestinian well before that.

Can't acknowledge history, material conditions or context. Everything started on October 7th with an attack that just came out of nowhere because Hamas are just pure stupid evil because Arab.

Still. There is one of those goals smaller than eradication of the Jewish people that Hamas DID negotiate for. And which the Israelis tried real fucking hard to reject and have been undermining in public media before and since, and fuck knows if Israel wont do SOMETHING that probably wont fuck it up but WILL be a vile war crime that results in more civilian deaths during the pause somehow. Don't worry, unnamed Hamas leaders like, stood behind a toddler or something. Justifies ANYTHING.

[MGuy]

The Biden administration has at some point realized that a ceasefire is a good thing and wants to take credit for this one. That's cool and all but that's just going to make sure that they look even worse when Israel starts to continue the rest of their genocidal attacks. They are going to, I guess, pull some kind of spin that both acknowledges that this ceasefire is good and necessary but that the ongoing horror show after that will be necessary because Israel has the right to defend itself. On top of all that there is growing violence in the area in general with actual military targets in other neighboring entities in the region going at it with western installations. So in addition to the genocide we could see more conflict spark in the region.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

So in the midst of the ceasefire humanitarian pause ceasefire that if cocked up ends the hostage exchange...

...the IDF is killing civilians for the crime of going back to their homes smoking piles of rubble to rebuild their lives search through the rubble to rescue survivors.

This is of course not a cowardly and criminal defiance of the agreed ceasefire because they TOLD Hamas no one was allowed back to their homes. Which of course in the orderly and controlled situation was definitely a thing anyone could deliver. And also apparently not a transparent and morally reprehensible fake demand to manufacture a pretext to murder civilians with during a ceasefire.

And it isn't morally a bad thing because some of those guys wandering back to the smoking rubble might be Hamas. And if Hamas might be there everything is always morally acceptable and their fault.

[Kaelik]

Biden admin taking advantage of the time period where aside from the numerous reports of Israel bulldozing homes and orchards in the West Bank, there won't be news of Israel bombings to request that they be allowed to give Israel any kind of weapon in infinte amounts for nothing:

https://theintercept.com/2023/11/25/bid ... arms-gaza/

[Kaelik]

Obviously doing a genocide is worse, but it remains very weird that Joe Biden has personally waived 37 regulations that protect the enviroment and indigenous communities so that he can build the Biden Border Wall. He literally campaigned against this dumb shit, but in classic Biden tradition, it turns out that in fact Joe Biden loves every Trump policy as long as he's the one doing it.

[Sashi]

You are fucking advocating that ethnic Russians being in Ukraine NOW is somehow wrong, them JUST LIVING WHERE THEY HAVE THEIR WHOLE LIVES is, from the angle you are arguing a continuation of ethnic cleansing, but a group of government backed organized Nazi military killing them and trying to drive them out of the region somehow isn't?

Stop fucking shadowboxing with straw men and actually read what I wrote. I did not say that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine was an extension of an ethnic cleansing project but that Putin declaring the existence of ethnic Russians in Eastern Ukraine was part of the reason that land should belong to Russia as propaganda for his obvious war of conquest. Obviously it's not good for Ukrainian nazis to attack ethnically Russian Ukrainians but equally obviously it's not good for Putin to annex that region because of the attacks by Russian nazis. Your continued shouting about how I am suffering from liberal mind poison because I am condemning wars of conquest whether or not not there be nazis in the land you want to conquer just shows how little you care about these people and how much you just want to win an internet argument. Fuck off.

Fucking hell, that's exactly the same argument Israel is making about settlements on the west bank in, or the USA made for ripping up Indian treaties because a bunch of white people moved into "empty land" in a reservation. It doesn't stop being bad just because it happened long enough ago that the people who moved into those lands had babies.

[Kaelik]

Still trying to figure out if anyone has realized that the reason there are ethnic Russians in the nation kf Ukraine is not because they ethnically cleansed ethnic Ukrainians who used to live there but instead because ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are basically the same goddam people who have been in the same goddam country from like 1300 to 2023 and that there was in fact never a real actual difference so there have always been both in "ukraine" and also "russia."

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

Your continued shouting about how I am suffering from liberal mind poison because I am condemning wars of conquest whether or not not there be nazis

No. This literally started because you shouted that there were nazis whether or not there were Nazis. And kept trying to smere anyone pointing out that there aren't always nazis as apologists for wars and war crimes, they, I, were also condemning right there.

Because you have the brain of a baby and cannot differentiate badness from badness in any form.

Don't keep trying to pretend you didn't say profoundly dumb things and put words into others mouths. That's just the path to saying further really dumb things.

Like...

It doesn't stop being bad just because it happened long enough ago that the people who moved into those lands had babies.

It profoundly DOES stop being bad. Because generations have passed. The new generations are not the same people and did not commit the crimes. They just got born there.

That is also why the Israeli settlements ARE so bad, and so much MORE bad in an important and uniquely DIFFERENT way. Because they are happening right now. Unlike ALL the historic examples, we can actually stop the crimes, we can help the direct victims and we can bring the criminals to justice. Because they are all (well except a lot of the victims) still alive.

You don't understand that because you are an idiot and you have a liberal and deeply cosmetic comprehension of the legacy of colonialism.

The bit that doesn't stop being bad is the ongoing generational economic and social impact of the crimes. The bit that doesn't stop being a crime is the bit committed by now long dead prior generations and THEY should be condemned for it. The new generations are entirely innocent of the colonialist crimes (not ruling out some of them being personally racist oppressors in their own life times) and frequently even are NOT the primary generational beneficiaries of the crimes.

But the ethnic cleansing bit IS over. And you DO have to deal with a new population being there and if you are against further ethnic cleansing then yes, you fucking moron, that means we CANNOT in fact ethnically cleanse the descendants of ethnic cleansers for the crime of being descended from ethnic cleansers. Feels like that might I don't know, take a while to work through the iterations.

Of course, again. As people have pointed out. Even your original sin in the Ukraine is... questionable cold war propaganda at best. But even if Stalin personally mowed them all down with flame throwers in both hands that does NOT make your stance on "continuations of ethnic cleansing" anything short of such insane apologia that it borders on an actual argument FOR committing MORE crimes against humanity in the name of "correcting" crimes against humanity.

Still trying to figure out if anyone has realized that the reason there are ethnic Russians in the nation kf Ukraine is not because they ethnically cleansed ethnic Ukrainians who used to live there but instead because ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Russians are basically the same goddam people who have been in the same goddam country from like 1300 to 2023 and that there was in fact never a real actual difference so there have always been both in "ukraine" and also "russia."

I don't know, I mean then why are they concentrated right in the bit of the Ukraine that is the nearest to the Russian bit. Far too convenient that. Surely a natural state of affairs would be a large contingent of ethnic Peruvians or something else equally naturally random and not artificially geographically biased.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

To try and bring this back to Biden. The polling is only getting worse. The Israel thing has hit every western government backing it pretty hard. And the UK is only doing OK because the Tories were already less popular than... ... ok nothing is as unpopular as them. You can tell they are concerned because they tried to pretend to do something with the rebranding of the humanitarian pause to a ceasefire. (You can just imagine them right now in their liberal HQs "Oh no the focus groups HATE the "humanitarian pause" for some reason! Quick what if we solve the problem caused by that branding by rebranding the rebranding! Definitely it isn't the actual policy they hate, or the bit where we were caught out loud saying it was just an excuse to help Israel kill more Palestinians")

Here in Australia the Labor party government is spiraling too. Here they do a great spin on it, "Nobody even knows why Labor is suddenly sinking hard in the polls! It's a Mystery." Not Oh, I don't know the Israel thing hitting the same time as about 5 other issues all of which are the product of being cowardly minions of the US. That and being so cowardly on policy that they don't actually have ANY other achievements to point at as a distraction.

Which is where Biden is at. This is a giant scandal. They don't want to acknowledge it and seem to have no will or power to change it. They try pointing at their other achievements like "yeah but look at the economy" but their other achievements were policy swamped in reluctance towards progressiveness and general incompetence that they either look fake or ARE fake.

And the look on John Kirby's face and the way he nervously licked his lips when confronted with the label "Genocide Joe"... priceless. There is a rich mine of schadenfreude appearing. Riddled with hidden treasures from thousands of people labelled I told you so.

[MGuy]

I think Biden has an extremely uphill battle if 'the economy' is his only play. Biden and Biden enjoyers have been very frustrated that us struggling people just don't see how the economy is actually better. I mean it's getting bad more slowly I guess, but that isn't as noticable as the fact that under his watch the checks stopped. The school loan forgiveness thing never panned out. Now he has"full throated support of genocide" on his record. Unless he starts legit paying people to vote for him the only route he is going to have at this point is the same that got him into office. The hope that the voting public is motivated to vote Dem because Republicans are bad.

[PseudoStupidity]

His economic record on the macro side is decent, but the thing that's really hurting him (and fueling everyone's dislike of his handling of the economy) is that he let all the COVID welfare expire while inflation went up. This has led to most households in the US making less money in 2023 than they were in 2022, 2021, or 2020, which naturally makes people think the economy is worse (because nobody cares about "the economy," they care about how they and the people they know are doing). Median household income has fallen for 3 years straight, even worse for Biden is that many of the states who saw their incomes decline are battleground states (here's a CBS article on it). It's difficult to argue the economy is going well if most people's economic situations are getting worse, and you can point the blame directly at Biden and Congress for pulling the rug out from under struggling people.

Biden doesn't have anything people give a shit about to run on except "the other guy is Trump," and it looks like he does not intend to run on "I have been having a hard time getting good policies through, but I'll try extra hard if I win again!" He abandoned minimum wage increases, he never tried to do fucking anything about getting us a public option for healthcare, and he is pursuing two unpopular wars (or rather, one unpopular war and one genocide). Even Build Back Better died an ignominious death and we just don't talk about it anymore. I feel like we're in for a slightly worse than a coin flip election unless Biden changes course or Trump dies.

[Kaelik]

Great news everyone, the evil vile Supreme Court Hacks ruled against the Biden DOJ on the question of whether disabled people should have rights.

Turns out, Samuel Alito is to the left of Merrick Garland on disability rights. It was a 9-0 decision against the hotels trying to gut the ACA (and against the DoJ's amicus brief in support of the hotels.)

[Kaelik]

In worse news, the israeli ceasefire ended how everyone expected, with Israel (having already attacked gaza multiple times during the ceasefire, having attacked the west bank the entire time, having locked up more palestianians then they released from cages in exchanges) by Israel saying evil Hamas broke the ceasefire in the last 30 minutes, so anyway, time to start bombing the one place we told Gazans they would be safe to maximize the genocide.

The Biden administration has responded by giving them bigger bombs and then saying "please stop dropping these big bombs we give you on you actual target, the people you want to genocide please."

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

by Israel saying evil Hamas broke the ceasefire in the last 30 minutes

That's just the blame Hamas fall back.

Originally their argument was that the end of the cease fire was Hamas's fault on an administrative technicality. Because they (in an evil way) refused to say exactly how many more hostages they would release and provide their full documented details in advance.

That there were more hostages was not in question. That Hamas would release them was not in question. That there were enough more for multiple days of hostage exchanges to occur not in question. That Israel could immediately reopen (more) hostilities when those hostages did dry up, like hell that was in question.

Simple fact is, in the end, the ceasefire, even short, even fake, even openly violated five ways to Friday by Israel, that itself was what was intolerable, and it was Israel that couldn't tolerate it.

Anyway. Their position on why to blame Hamas was so esoteric that it was getting them more of those "oh for fucks sake" looks even from their client journalists so they decided to just blame Hamas once any single person in Gaza started to (return) IDF fire five minutes before the official end they announced and gloated about well in advance.

[Kaelik]

The Biden admin did that thing where they beg congress to do something because only congress can do it, then congress votes it down, then they just declare a state of emergency and do the thing congress voted down because it turns out the president is a dictator who can do whatever he wants as long as 34 people in the senate refuse to convict him.

Did he address climate change? Reimplement the voting rights act? House the homeless? Medicare for all?

Haha, just kidding of course. The only emergency is that the genocide might have stopped if Israel ran out of weapons, so he gave them more explosives to keep doing genocide.

Anyway remember like 6 months ago when we had to give Ukraine cluster bombs because there was nothing else to give them? We sure have found a bunch of other bombs in our back pocket.

[Kaelik]

At the white house Hanukkah celebration Joe Biden announced his plan to final solution all the Jews in America apparently?

He announced no Jew in America is safe and they are only safe in Israel.

Anyway love to fight anti semitism by being super fucking anti semitic.

[Kaelik]

Joe biden proposing a compromise with the gop where Joe biden will personally strangle every immigrant child in the country to death with his own hands as long as they agree to give more bombs to Israel to complete the genocide (and also some more weapons to ukraine.)

Jokes on the gop. Even if they keep refusing to arm Ukraine Joe biden will still strangle the immigrant children anyway because he loves it so much.

[MGuy]

Isn't it a week known fact that Jewish people are in far more danger in Israel than most, if not all, western democracies? I guess Biden is a true believer in the Israeli propaganda.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

It should be a known fact that even during flair ups in Israel its Muslims, Arabs and Palastinians that face more and worse racial hate crimes than the Jewish communities in most western countries in the same intervals.

Every time this happens the media focuses on how much "Reports of Antisemitism have dramatically risen during the conflict". Then brush over stories of beatings, murders, the burning of peoples homes and businesses because of their Islamic or Arab associations and basically NEVER say the words "actual instances of violent Islamophobia not just "reports" have dramatically risen during the conflict".

I know that people will say "but antisemitism is real", well fuck you, it's less real and less serious in most Western nations. And when I hear shit like "but Jewish people feel threatened by someone saying "free Palestine" because the Jewish person gets to decide that's personally calling for their personal eradication and everyone in the mainstream press will pretend that is a fucking sane ass position for anyone to take or defend and not neurotic cry bullying of an epic scale that should see them fucking sectioned for their own safety!" I for one get pretty damn pissed.

There is a point at which you don't get to decide yourself into a persecuted group. There is a point at which you don't get to decide the level of your persecution justifies your apparent right to persecute other groups. NO ONE wants to acknowledge that in the press. They actively seem afraid to.

[Kaelik]

I enjoyed reading an argument from two Jews on bluesky, one a reporter who investigated all the claims of antisemitism at various colleges and found no evidence of any of the claims and the other some random dude who explained that he called his IDF friend to ask him what words mean.

They were arguing about the reporting because one of the examples of antisemitism was people saying the word "intifada" which is a word which means an aggressive peaceful resistance. The IDF friends guy said that actually all the people using the word must have meant genocide all jews because he had personally thought it meant genocide all jews and surely Israeli propaganda saying it means that means everyone else believes that too, and what are we supposed to believe that people at palestine solidarity marches have a different understanding of words then people who call their idf friends to find out what words mean?

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

I enjoyed reading an argument from two Jews on bluesky, one a reporter who investigated all the claims of antisemitism at various colleges and found no evidence of any of the claims

That seems to keep happening with Western reports of antisemitism. Usually racial hate is under reported but for some reason when actually investigated antisemitism, especially on campuses, for some reason gets routinely over reported, with very convenient political timing.