#michael benjamin washington

[dailyrannells]

the boys in the band || fave moments (requested by anonymous)

[jameswilsonsupremacy]

rewatching the boys in the band (2020) and am totally normal rn

[cywa08]

[wornoutspines]

The Bone Collector (1999) | Movie Review

I rewatched #TheBoneCollector movie from 1999 and it's still a solid psychological thriller with strong performances and an engaging plot. #Throwback #AngelinaJolie #DenzelWashington #QueenLatifah #PsychologicalThriller #MovieAdaptation #BookToFilm

Phillip Noyce (Director)CASTDenzel WashingtonAngelina JolieQueen LatifahMichael RookerBased on The Bone Collector (1997) by Jeffery Deaver Review To avoid a throwaway line explaining Lincoln Rhymes’ condition, we are thrown into the tragic accident that leaves the forensics expert and detective confined to his bed. As an introduction to the character, it hits the right notes we learn a lot…

[austinslounge]

[taxmacabre]

Chernow: A Bad Historian?

Though better historians/researchers than myself have posted aplenty on the speculative nonsense Ron Chernow gets up to in his biographies, he sometimes still gets praise for his work. Yes, sure, he's bad at his conclusions, but he's a good historian.

Right?

I would argue, no. Not even close.

His sources seem extensive, and can certainly serve as a jumping board for the budding historian - but he cannot be trusted. Even his sources are sometimes either lied about (directly or through subterfuge), edited, or plain untrue. Let me take two pages as an example in his biography of Alexander Hamilton, page 74-75.

Midway through the first page, he states,

"Hamilton had already informed his distant St. Croix readers, "This city is at present evacuated by above one half of its inhabitants under the influence of a general panic.""

He then gives a source - a source, however, which has not proven to be Hamilton at all. This is a similar mistake he made on p.68, 69 and 72 (that he drew wild assumptions about Hamilton's disposition and opinions on, unsubstantiated as his source is dubious). It wouldn't be this harmful of a thing to do, if the exact same source which he blatantly pretends must be Hamilton, just because it was printed in the Royal Danish Gazette, addressed from an anonymous New York soldier, wasn't used again and again and again.

Michael Newton does a better job than I do in proving that these were not, in fact, written by Hamilton. In his book (Alexander Hamilton: The Formative Years, Ch.13), he explains that the anonymous letter attributed to Hamilton by Chernow had been published previously in London newspapers, and just reprinted for the Danish Gazette. Chernow's entire argument for why it obviously must be H, falls through.

Then, Chernow states that in April 1776 (where the current narrative of the book is at) that Washington stayed at a Hudson River mansion called Richmond Hill. Fair enough. But then follows a wild assumption; that Burr visited Washington in that house, quit it in disgust, and wrote this letter (this is the one Chernow cites here!) - a letter which was written more than a full year later, and has no mention or reference to Burr visiting him at Headquarters.

We do know that Burr was appointed aide-de-camp of Genl Putnam on June 22, 1776, as seen in this General Order. He later joins Col. William Malcom's regiment, as seen here. This appointment is what the above letter was in reference to - not, as Chernow assumes, about Burr potentially meeting Washington in New York.

Not only that, but Chernow continues,

"Something about Aaron Burr - his penchant for intrigue, a lack of sufficient deference, perhaps his insatiable chasing after women - grated on George Washington."

What? Where does he get any of this information? From the fact that this letter - the same letter that happens a year after Chernow alleges it took place - went unanswered? As usual, this speculative nonsense goes unsourced. Chernow wants Burr to be the antithesis of Hamilton, the villain of this sordid tale - and he is willing to make up facts and bend the truth to make this happen.

[If anyone can find the source for Burr's supposed few week sojourn at Washington's headquarters as ADC and subsequent firing by the Genl, please, let me know. I can find plenty of other sites and books repeating this, but no source is ever given.]

At the top of page 75, he mentions (assuredly) that in June, 1776;

"Hamilton gallantly led a nighttime attack of one hundred men against the Sandy Hook lighthouse outside New York harbor."

No one but Chernow has ever asserted that Hamilton led this attack. Neither Hamilton himself nor any of his contemporaries mention his involvement, let alone his leadership.

Instead, this attack was led by Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin Tupper. (Who, a year prior, had already led a mission against this same lighthouse). He wrote what happened after the attack on the lighthouse to Washington on June 21st,

"I advanced within 150 yards of the light-house in so secret a manner that my party was undiscovered, I advanced with an officer and desired to speak with the commanding officer, and after a few words he fired several shots at me, but as God would have it, he mist me. I returned to my party and ordered the artillery to play, which continued for about an hour, but found the walls so thick as to make no impression."

Here's some more information on this.

Yes, he sources a great many things - but clearly, that does not make it a reliable piece of work. And remind you - this is barely 1,5 page of closer scrutiny.

So, sure, read his work, as his is one of the few complete cradle-to-grave biographies out there on the subject (for now). But oh god, be careful. Don't trust a thing coming out of this man's mouth. Don't trust the Pulitzer he won. Do your homework, and stay vigilant.

[historyofglee]

On this day in 2010:

Glee season 1, episode 16 “Home” aired.

Written by Brad Falchuk and directed by Paris Barclay, the episode was originally watched by 12.18m viewers in the United States.

1x16 featured 5 new cover songs- Fire, A House is Not a Home, One Less Bell to Answer/A House is Not a Home, Beautiful, and Home.

The song Fergalicious, performed by Kurt Hummel, Mercedes Jones, and the Cheerios, was cut from the episode and has never been released.

The episode also guest starred Michael Benjamin Washington as Tracy Pendergrass.

[dissolvedprincess]

✶⋆.˚ Masterlist ✶⋆.˚

━━━ ━━━ ━━━ ✮✮✮ ━━━ ━━━ ━━━

ʚɞ Josh Washington - Until Dawn

ʚɞ Frank Castle - The Punisher

ʚɞ Michael Berzatto - The Bear

ʚɞ Benjamin Poindexter/Bullseye - Daredevil

━━━ ━━━ ━━━ ✮✮✮ ━━━ ━━━ ━━━

[darkmaga-returns]

Israel is in “total panic” that they’re going to be the next US “ally” dropped by the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post.

From The Washington Post, “Trump repeatedly bypasses Netanyahu, stoking dismay among Israelis”:

JERUSALEM — During his first major overseas trip this week, President Donald Trump is set to visit three countries in the Middle East — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — without stopping in Jerusalem. It’s not the first time he has bypassed Israel — or Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. From embarking on nuclear talks with Iran to attempting hostage talks with Hamas without Israel’s knowledge, Trump has increasingly sidelined Netanyahu, stoking anxieties in a country long accustomed to being consulted by successive U.S. administrations. Last week, Israelis believed they saw more cracks emerge between the “America First” president and Israel, after Trump said he had struck a truce with Yemen’s Houthi rebels that curbed the group’s attacks on U.S. ships — but did not cover Israel. Days later, reports emerged that Trump was considering offering Saudi Arabia access to civil nuclear technology without demanding that the kingdom normalize relations with Israel, a precondition that had been set by former president Joe Biden. On Sunday, senior Hamas leader Khalil al-Hayya said the group would release Israeli American hostage Edan Alexander following direct talks with U.S. officials. Now, many Israelis are wondering whether Israel is the next U.S. ally to be left behind by a president they considered, just months ago, to be the most pro-Israel in history. “It’s disconcerting,” said Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to Washington. “It’s total panic,” said Shalom Lipner, a former Netanyahu aide and a fellow at the Atlantic Council, describing the mood in Jerusalem. Israeli concerns about Trump’s negotiations with Iran and other threats to Israel “are not being taken into account, or if they are, they’re dismissed,” said Dennis Ross, a former senior State Department official who served as a Middle East envoy under both Democratic and Republican presidents. Voices in the Trump administration who advocate fewer U.S. military entanglements in the Middle East are in the ascendancy, Ross noted, while Trump is likely to put top priority on bringing billions of dollars’ of investments from wealthy Persian Gulf monarchies to the United States during his trip.

[eretzyisrael]

by Michael Goodwin

For months, Biden and Kamala Harris have tried to force Israel to accept fatally flawed terms with Hamas in Gaza and, by extension, Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Democrats are motivated by fear that anti-Israel voters in the upper Midwest, especially Muslim Americans in Michigan, will abandon the party.

The result has been a relentless pressure campaign against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, complete with attempts to undermine him politically at home and hamper Israel’s military by withholding munitions.

Recall that Secretary of State Antony Blinken sat in on cabinet meetings to dictate which targets Israel could attack.

The disgraceful effort, which included following the same playbook as anti-Israel mobs at the United Nations, prolonged the war and gave Hamas incentives to hold out for better deals.

Emboldening Hamas

Although some details remain unknown, the US was pushing for Israel to get back the remaining hostages abducted during the horrors of Oct. 7, some of them American citizens.

In exchange, it would release thousands of Palestinians arrested on terrorism charges.

Even worse, Hamas would have survived in some capacity, letting its leaders again plunder international aid, gain government control in Gaza and attack Israel again.

Even as Hamas kept upping its demands, Washington kept the heat on Israel.

Finally, Netanyahu spoke in the only language terrorists understand.

He rejected the Biden-Harris demand to halt Israel’s ground operation in Gaza and green-lighted last week’s sensational beepers-go-boom operation in Beirut.

Like a story line from “Fauda,” the hit streaming series about Israeli secret agents, disrupting Hezbollah’s communications delivered a psychological blow in addition to killing scores of fighters and injuring several thousand others.

Netanyahu followed with attacks on Hezbollah rocket launching sites and the targeted killing of one of the group’s top leaders.

Given that the leader, Ibrahim Aqil, was a US-designated terrorist linked to the 1983 bombings of our Marines barracks and embassy in Beirut that killed nearly 400 people, most of them US citizens, the White House should be celebrating.

Aqil had a $7 million American bounty on his head, and if Biden had any sense, he would send the check to Israel with a big thank you.

Instead, watch for long faces in the Harris campaign now that it’s clear she won’t get the Michigan political benefit of a pre-election cease-fire.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A slurry of lies in the wake of Helene and the path of Milton are making matters worse. [Benjamin Slyngstad]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

October 11, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Oct 12, 2024

A report from the Labor Department yesterday showed that inflation has dropped again, falling back to 2.4%, the same rate as it was just before the coronavirus pandemic. Today the Dow Jones Industrial Average jumped 400 points to a record high, while the S&P 500 closed above 5,800 for the first time. 

Washington Post economics columnist Heather Long noted that “[b]y just about every measure, the U.S. economy is in good shape.” Inflation is back down, growth remains strong at 3%, unemployment is low at 4.1% with the U.S. having created almost 7 million more jobs than it had before the pandemic. The stock market is hitting all-time highs. Long adds that “many Americans are getting sizable pay raises, and middle-class wealth has surged to record levels.” The Federal Reserve has begun to cut interest rates, and foreign leaders are talking about the U.S. economy with envy. 

Democratic presidential nominee and sitting vice president Kamala Harris has promised to continue the economic policies of the Biden-Harris administration and focus on cutting costs for families. She has called for a federal law against price gouging on groceries during times of crisis, cutting taxes for families, and enabling Medicare to pay for home health aides. She has proposed $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers and promised to work with the private sector to build 3 million new housing units by the end of her first term. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which focuses on the direct effect of policies on the federal debt, estimated that Harris’s plans would add $3.5 trillion to the debt.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has promised to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and to impose a 10% to 20% tariff across the board on imported goods and a 60% tariff on goods from China. Tariffs are taxes paid by American consumers, and economists predict such tariffs would cost an average family more than $2,600 a year. Overall, the effect of these policies would be to shift the weight of taxation even further toward middle-class and lower-class Americans and away from the wealthy. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates that these plans would add $7.5 trillion to the debt.

But there is more: Trump has also made deporting undocumented immigrants central to his promises, and his running mate, J.D. Vance, has claimed the right to determine which government policies he considers legal, threatening to expand deportation to include legal migrants, as well. 

Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times noted on October 8 that in March, the Peterson Institute for International Economics pointed out that the immigrants Trump is targeting are vital to a number of U.S. businesses. Their loss will cause dramatic cutbacks in those sectors. Taken together, the study concluded, Trump’s deportations, tariffs, and vow to take control of the Federal Reserve could make the country’s gross domestic product as much as 9.7% lower than it would be without those policies, employment could fall by as much as 9%, and inflation would climb by as much as 7.4%. 

And yet, in a New York Times/Siena Poll of likely voters released on October 8, 75% of respondents said the economy was fair or poor. Further, although a study by The Guardian showed that Harris’s specific economic policies were more popular than Trump’s in a blind test, 54% of respondents to a Gallup poll released on October 9, thought that Trump would manage the economy better than Harris would. 

Part of Americans’ sour mood about the economy stems from the poor coverage all the good economic news has received. Part of it is that rising prices are more immediately obvious than the wage gains that have outpaced them. But a large part of it is the historic habit of thinking that Republicans manage the economy better than Democrats do. 

That myth began immediately after the Civil War when Democrats demanded the government renege on the generous terms under which it had floated bonds during the war. When the Treasury put those bonds on the market, they were a risky proposition, but with the United States secure after the war, calculations changed, and Democrats charged that investors had gotten too good a deal.

Republicans were horrified at the idea of changing the terms of a debt already incurred. They added to the Fourteenth Amendment the clause saying, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” When that amendment was added to the Constitution in 1868, the Democrats’ fiscal rebellion seemed to be quelled.

But as Republicans increasingly insisted that protecting big business with a high tariff wall was crucial to the American economy, Democrats called for lowering tariffs to give the consumers who paid them a break. In response, Republicans said that those suffering in industrial America were lazy or spendthrifts and warned that Democrats were socialists. When Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress and put Grover Cleveland in the White House in 1892 with a promise to lower tariffs, Republicans insisted that the economy would collapse. But, the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The working classes of the country need such a lesson…. The Republicans will be passive spectators… It will not be their funeral.” 

Their warnings of an impending collapse prompted investors to take their money home. On February 17, 1893, fifteen days before Cleveland would be sworn into office, the Reading Railroad Company went under, after which, as one reporter wrote, “the bottom seemed to be falling out of everything.” By the time Cleveland took office, a financial panic was in full swing. 

Republican lawmakers and newspapers blamed Democrats for the collapse because everyone knew they would destroy the economy. Republicans urged voters to put them back in charge of Congress, and in 1894, in a landslide, they did. “American manufacturers and merchants and business-men generally will draw a long breath of relief,” the Chicago Tribune commented just days after the Republican victory. Republicans had successfully associated their opponents with economic disaster. 

That association continued in the twentieth century. In 1913, for the first time since Cleveland’s second term, the Democrats captured both Congress and the White House. Immediately, President Woodrow Wilson called for lowered tariff rates and, to make up for lost revenue, an income tax. Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge called the tariff measure “very radical” and warned that it would destroy all the industries in Massachusetts. As for the income tax, big-business Republicans claimed it was socialism and that it discriminated against the wealthy. 

For the rest of the century, Republicans would center taxes, especially income taxes, as proof Democrats were bad for the economy. As soon as World War I ended, Republicans set out to get rid of the high progressive taxes that had paid for the war. Andrew Mellon, who served as treasury secretary under presidents Warren Harding, Calvin Coolidge, and Herbert Hoover, took office in 1921 and set out to increase productivity by increasing investment in industry. To free up capital, he said, the government must slash its budget and cut taxes. From 1921 to 1929, Mellon returned $3.5 billion to wealthy Americans through refunds, credits, and tax abatements.

The booming economy of the 1920s made it seem that the Republicans had finally figured out how to create a perpetually prosperous economy. When he accepted the 1928 Republican nomination for president, Herbert Hoover said: “We in America are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. The poorhouse is vanishing from among us…. [G]iven a chance to go forward with the policies of the last eight years, we shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.”

The Great Depression, sparked by the stock market crash of October 1929, revealed the central weakness of an economic vision based in concentrating wealth. While worker productivity had increased by about 43% in the 1920s, wages did not rise. By 1929, 5% of the population received one third of the nation’s income. When the stock market crash wiped out the purchasing power of this group, the rest of the population did not have enough capital to fuel the economy. 

Mellon predicted that the crisis would “purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.” The Hoover administration preached thrift, morality, and individualism and blamed the depression on a wasteful government that had overstaffed public offices. To restore business confidence, Republicans declared, the nation must slash government spending and lay off public workers. 

But most Americans had had enough of Republican economics, especially as the crash revealed deep corruption in the nation’s financial system. In 1932, voters overcame their deep suspicion of Democratic economic policies to embrace what Democratic presidential candidate Franklin Delano Roosevelt called a “New Deal” for the American people, combating the depression by regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and investing in infrastructure. Hoover denounced Roosevelt’s plans as dangerous radicalism that would “enslave” taxpayers and destroy the United States. 

Voters elected FDR with about 58% of the vote. Over the next forty years, Americans of both parties embraced the government’s active approach to promoting economic growth and individual prosperity by protecting all Americans. 

But when President Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, he promised that returning to a system like that of the 1920s would make the country boom. He called his system “supply-side” economics, for it invested in the supply side—investors—rather than the consumers who made up the demand side. “The whole thing is premised on faith,” Reagan’s budget director David Stockman told a reporter. “On a belief about how the world works.” 

Under Reagan, deficit spending that tripled the national debt from $995 billion to $2.9 trillion—more federal debt than in the entire previous history of the country—along with lower interest rates and deregulated savings and loan banks, made the economy boom. Americans watching the economic growth such deficit spending produced believed supply-side economics worked. Tax cuts and spending cuts became the Holy Grail of American politics, and the Democrats who opposed them seemed unable to run an economy. 

But that belief was not based in reality. In April the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute found that since 1949 the nation’s annual real growth has been 1.2 percentage points higher under Democratic administrations than under Republican administrations (3.79% versus 2.60%), total job growth averages 2.5% annually under Democrats compared to barely over 1% under Republicans, business investment is more than double the pace under Democrats than under Republicans, average rates of inflation are slightly lower under Democrats, and families in the bottom 20% of the economy experience income growth 188% faster under Democrats than under Republicans. 

A recent analysis by former Goldman Sachs managing director H. John Gilbertson expands on those numbers, showing that Democratic administrations reduce the U.S. budget deficit and that stock market returns are 60% higher under Democrats than under Republicans.

Democratic President Joe Biden returned the country to the proven system that worked before 1981, and the economy has boomed. While Trump has vowed to return to the tax cuts and deregulation of supply-side economics, Vice President Harris has promised to retain and fine-tune Biden’s policies. 

But Harris has to overcome more than a century of American mythmaking. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[offender42085]

Post 0620

Jonathon Adamson, Washington inmate 425903, born 1998, incarceration intake in 2019 at age 21, sentenced 42.5 years; scheduled discharge date not available

Murder, Rape, Kidnapping, Witness Tampering

In a 2019 hearing in Lewis County Superior Court Adamson pleaded guilty in the death of Randle (Washington) teen Benjamin Eastman III.

Adamson, who has been in the Lewis County Jail since June 30, 2018.

As a condition of sentencing, Adamson testified and provided a full and accurate account of Eastman’s death as a state witness against other individuals involved, including cases against Michael D. Salazar, 17, and Amanda L. Hagerty, 42.

Salazar is accused of preventing someone from reporting to attack Eastman to a third party, after it was overheard during a camping trip. Hagerty is accused of helping Adamson and his brother, Benito Marquez, 17, devise a false story to tell law enforcement as they investigated Eastman’s disappearance.

Adamson pleaded guilty on July 3, 2019 to first-degree murder, first-degree rape, second-degree kidnapping in Eastman’s death, and to two counts of witness tampering from February 2019.

The plea agreement includes an agreed-upon sentence of 42 and a half years to life in prison.

Marquez pleaded guilty on Feb. 22, 2019 to charges including first-degree murder and first-degree rape.

The brothers were accused of luring Eastman into the woods in East Lewis County and beating him to death. They allegedly left him in a shallow grave, then dug up his body and moved it before fleeing to Eastern Washington, where they were arrested.

3g

Last reviewed November 2024

[mariacallous]

Despite an ongoing eleventh-hour attempt to secure a cease-fire in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday that Israel’s war cabinet had unanimously decided to proceed with its military operation in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, which Israeli officials say is Hamas’s last major holdout. 

Even as top United Nations officials have warned that a Rafah invasion could push the 1.5 million Palestinians who have encamped there over the border into Egypt—essentially making resolving the conflict impossible—Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops on Sunday that an invasion is imminent. 

And early Monday, the Israeli military began preparing the battlefield with airstrikes on Rafah, signaling a possible imminent ground operation; it also ordered 100,000 Palestinians—just a fraction of those sheltering in Rafah—to evacuate to an Israeli-established humanitarian zone along the Mediterranean coast. 

If Israeli troops do advance into Rafah in an attempt to eradicate the four Hamas battalions believed to be there, experts say they will face a battle-hardened enemy that has the ability to fight and resupply through a vast network of tunnels, all while Israeli troops try to get tens of thousands—if not millions—of civilians out of the way. 

In other cities where the IDF has fought since this war began, such as Khan Younis, troops were able to move neighborhood by neighborhood, sector by sector, clearing out people as they needed to. But larger masses of people will likely be forced out this time as the IDF moves in. “Rafah is going to fundamentally look a bit different,” said Jonathan Lord, a senior fellow and the director of the Middle East security program at the Center for a New American Security, a Washington-based think tank. It “isn’t quite as clean, necessarily.” 

The Hamas battalions fighting in Rafah are “fairly indigenous” to the area, Lord said. They rely on the Philadelphi Corridor, a dense network of tunnels. The Israelis have tried to put in a subterranean wall to block Hamas’s use of the corridor but haven’t been successful.  

“Hamas is most likely dug in and prepared to fight from emplaced positions where they have access to tunnels and resupply and the ability to exfiltrate and escape and move around,” Lord said. “That becomes a little bit harder in some of the improvised humanitarian areas.” 

Michael Mulroy, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense now working with Fogbow, a group helping to set up the aid pier in Gaza, said the Israelis have told NGOs that the evacuation will take about 10 days, though aid groups believe it could take substantially longer. Mulroy said the operation could shut down border crossings into Gaza for up to three to four weeks. Rafah, which borders Egypt, is home to the only border crossing into Gaza that Israel does not directly control.

And it’s not clear that the Israelis have set up enough temporary housing, hospitals, and security to make the evacuation workable. The Israeli government has begun setting up 40,000 tents in Mawasi, a beachside area where there are less likely to be Hamas tunnels, but humanitarian groups say that number is far short of what is needed. 

“The immediate conclusion is going to be, what are you going to do with all of these people?” said Bilal Y. Saab, an associate fellow with Chatham House in London and a former U.S. defense official.

Hamas might also want civilians in the way, analysts said, and could even potentially impede their exit. Some former military officials are even worried that the militant group could take human shields.

“You need to reduce the number of civilians in there,” said Kenneth McKenzie, a retired Marine general and the head of U.S. Central Command until 2022. “The fact of the matter is, Hamas will try to make that not happen. Hamas has no interest in evacuating civilians, regardless of what they say.” 

Mulroy said the Israelis will need at least two divisions, a paratrooper and an armored element, alongside smaller detachments of artillery and special operations forces. But there are still high-level tactical arguments taking place between the Netanyahu and Biden administrations about how the campaign would be conducted. 

“It’s going to be a multidimensional fight,” McKenzie said. “They’re going to have to fight underground, they’re going to have to fight on the surface of the Earth, they’re going to have to fight in the low-Earth atmosphere, because Hamas will probably fly lots of drones. Israel will certainly fly drones. It’s going to be another tough, bloody, ugly fight, which Israel will have lessons learned from their fights [in northern Gaza]. Hamas will have lessons learned from the fights up north. Both sides will apply them.”

In a phone call with Netanyahu on Monday, U.S. President Joe Biden reiterated his opposition to a Rafah ground operation, and White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said Israel had not yet provided the United States with a comprehensive plan for its operations in Rafah. 

“The U.S. would like to see [Rafah] as more of a surgical, intel-driven probe with reconnaissance [to] find the mass of Hamas fighting militants and then streamline your combat power directly to it,” Mulroy said. “The Israelis—at least from what I know—are [planning for] more like a Fallujah-type, mass movement, block-to-block fight,” he added, referencing the pitched urban battles that U.S. troops fought in Iraq following the 2003 invasion. 

Whether Netanyahu and his war cabinet will end up being receptive to Washington’s wishes or instead choose to forge ahead and do things their own way remains to be seen. But experts aren’t holding out much hope.

“Have they actually decided to further alienate the Americans?” Saab said. “We keep telling them, don’t do it, and [Netanyahu] is about to do it.”

[charmedchronicles]

𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐧/𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐚𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧/𝐚𝐦𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐦𝐬

Female

Adrianne Chalepah (Kiowa/Apache)

Amandla Stenberg (Greenlandic/Inuit)

Amber Midthunder (Assiniboine/Sioux)

Anna Lambe (Inuit)

Auli'i Cravalho (Unspecified Native Hawaiian)

Blu Hunt (Oglala Lakota/Apache)

Ciara Renée (Unspecified Native American)

Daniella Alonso (Inca)

Demi Lovato (Unspecified Native American)

Devery Jacobs (Mohawk)

Eva Longario (Unspecified Native Mexican/Mayan)

Hannah Marks (Creek)

Jessica Alba (Unspecified Native Mexican/Mayan)

Julia Michaels (Unspecified Native Mexican)

Kiana Madeira (First Nations)

Kiawentiio (Mohawk)

Kerry Washington (Unspecified Native American)

Malese Jow (Cherokee)

Marisa Quinn (Apache)

Marisol Nichols (Unspecified Native American)

Nathalie Kelly (Quechua)

Paulina Alexis (First Nations/Sioux)

Sarah Jeffery (First Nations)

Tanaya Beatty (First Nations)

Q'orianka Kilcher (Quechua/Huachipaeri)

Male

Adam Beach (Ojibwe-Saulteaux)

Alex Meraz (Purépecha)

Benjamin Bratt (Quechua)

Bronson Pelletier (Plains Cree)

Carter Jenkins (Cherokee)

Chaske Spencer (Lakota Sioux)

Cody Christian (Penobscot/Passamaquoddy)

Cody Kearsley (Métis)

D'pharaoh Woon-A-Tai (Oji-Cree)

Dakota Beavers (Ohkay Owingeh/Apache)

Eddie Spears (Lakota Sioux)

Froy Gutierrez (Cancan)

Gabriel Luna (Lipan Apache)

Gavin Leatherwood (Cherokee)

Gil Birmingham (Comanche)

Henry Braga (Indigenous Brazilian)

Jason Momoa (Unspecified Native Hawaiian)

Kamala Epstein (Unspecified Native Hawaiian)

Keanu Reeves (Unspecified Native Hawaiian)

Kiowa Gordon (Hualapai)

Lane Factor (Caddo/Creek-Seminole)

Manny Montana (Unspecified Native Mexican)

Mario Lopez (Unspecified Native Mexican)

Michael Cimino (Native Puerto Rican)

Richard Harmon (Mi’kmaq First Nations)

Ryan-James Hatanaka (Métis)

Sinqua Walls (Unspecified Native American)

Tahmoh Penikett (Upper Tanana/Athabascan/First Nations)

Gender Fluid/Non-Binary/Transgender

Amandla Stenberg (Greenlandic/Inuit)

Forrest Goodluck (Navajo/Hidatsa/Mandan/Tsimshian)

[ripr4]

I keep posting incorrect quotes with the #HP Banana Crew so if people want to know the members here they are

HP Banana Crew:

Marcus Fenix (gears of war)

Dominic Santiago( gears of war)

Augustus Cole ( gears of war)

Damon Baird( gears of war)

Benjamin Carmine( gears of war)

Anthony Carmine( gears of war)

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[democracyunderground]

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden 's growing frustration with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to mount, with the Democrat captured on a hot mic saying that he and the Israeli leader will need to have a “come to Jesus meeting.”

The comments by Biden came as he spoke with Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., on the floor of the House chamber following Thursday night's State of the Union address.

In the exchange, Bennet congratulates Biden on his speech and urges the president to keep pressing Netanyahu on growing humanitarian concerns in Gaza. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg were also part of the brief conversation.

Biden then responds using Netanyahu's nickname, saying, “I told him, Bibi, and don’t repeat this, but you and I are going to have a ‘come to Jesus’ meeting.”

An aide to the president standing nearby then speaks quietly into the president’s ear, appearing to alert Biden that microphones remained on as he worked the room.

“I’m on a hot mic here,” Biden says after being alerted. “Good. That’s good.”

A widening humanitarian crisis across Gaza and tight Israeli control of aid trucks have left virtually the entire population desperately short of food, according to the United Nations. Officials have been warning for months that Israel’s siege and offensive were pushing the Palestinian territory into famine.

Biden has become increasingly public about his frustration with the Netanyahu government’s unwillingness to open more land crossings for critically needed aid to make its way into Gaza.

In his address on Thursday, he called on the Israelis to do more to alleviate the suffering even as they try to eliminate Hamas.

“To Israel, I say this humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said.