#i debated biden last month

[blinkiesreal]

more blinkies muahahahahhahhahahahahaha

[zvaigzdelasas]

[TIME is Private US Media]

[By Anatol Lieven]

The long-awaited counteroffensive last year failed. Russia has recaptured Avdiivka, its biggest war gain in nine months. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been forced to quietly acknowledge the new military reality. The Biden Administration’s strategy is now to sustain Ukrainian defense until after the U.S. presidential elections, in the hope of wearing down Russian forces in a long war of attrition.

This strategy seems sensible enough, but contains one crucially important implication and one potentially disastrous flaw, which are not yet being seriously addressed in public debates in the West or Ukraine. The implication of Ukraine standing indefinitely on the defensive—even if it does so successfully—is that the territories currently occupied by Russia are lost. Russia will never agree at the negotiating table to surrender land that it has managed to hold on the battlefield.

This does not mean that Ukraine should be asked to formally surrender these lands, for that would be impossible for any Ukrainian government. But it does mean that—as Zelensky proposed early in the war with regard to Crimea and the eastern Donbas—the territorial issue will have to be shelved for future talks.

As we know from Cyprus, which has been divided between the internationally recognized Greek Republic of Cyprus and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus since 1974, such negotiations can continue for decades without a solution or renewed conflict. A situation in which Ukraine retains its independence, its freedom to develop as a Western democracy, and 82% of its legal territory (including all its core historic lands) would have been regarded by previous generations of Ukrainians as a real victory, though not a complete one.

As I found in Ukraine last year, many Ukrainians in private were prepared to accept the loss of some territories as the price of peace if Ukraine failed to win them back on the battlefield and if the alternative was years of bloody war with little prospect of success. The Biden Administration needs to get America on board too.[...]

Ukrainians have scored some notable successes against the Russian Black Sea Fleet, but to take back Crimea they would need to be able to launch a massive amphibious landing, an exceptionally difficult operation far beyond their capabilities in terms of ships and men. Attacks on Russian infrastructure are pinpricks given Russia’s size and resources.

More realistic is the suggestion that by standing on the defensive this year, Ukrainians can inflict such losses on the Russians that—if supplied with more Western weaponry—they can counterattack successfully in 2025. However, this depends on the Russians playing the game the way Kyiv and Washington want to play it.

The Russian strategy at present appears to be different. They have drawn Ukrainians into prolonged battles for small amounts of territory like Avdiivka, where they have relied on Russian superiority in artillery and munitions to wear them down through constant bombardment. They are firing three shells to every one Ukrainian; and thanks in part to help from Iran, Russia has now been able to deploy very large numbers of drones.

For Ukrainians to stand a chance, military history suggests that they would need a 3-to-2 advantage in manpower and considerably more firepower. Ukraine enjoyed these advantages in the first year of the war, but they now lie with Russia, and it is very difficult to see how Ukraine can recover them.[...]

A successful peace process would undoubtedly involve some painful concessions by Ukraine and the West. Yet the pain would be more emotional than practical, and a peace settlement would have to involve Putin giving up the plan with which he began the war, to turn the whole of Ukraine into a Russian vassal state, and recognizing the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its de facto present borders.

For the lost Ukrainian territories are lost, and NATO membership is pointless if the alliance is not prepared to send its own troops to fight for Ukraine against Russia. Above all, however painful a peace agreement would be today, it will be infinitely more so if the war continues and Ukraine is defeated.

24 Feb 24

[finefiddleheaded]

"[A]s I said in my resignation letter, in my time in the department, I dealt with many morally challenging, controversial arms sales.

I think what made the difference for me here is that for all of those previous instances, even under the Trump administration, mind you, there was always room for discussion and debate and the ability to mitigate some of the worst possible outcomes, to delay sales until crises had passed, so that they weren’t contributing immediately into a humanitarian crisis, to work with Congress and be confident that once the policy debate had ended in the State Department, there would be a congressional piece to it, too. And Congress generally has stood up in the past repeatedly on matters of human rights and arms sales. What was different here was that there was none of that. There was no debate. There was no space for debate. And there was also no congressional appetite or willingness to have debate."

[...] I think [the protests do] have an impact on the White House. I think we’ve seen a significant change in tone in the last few weeks, not because there is a sudden deep care, frankly, for Palestinian civilian casualties on their own merits, but because there is a sense that there is a political crisis here developing for the Biden administration, that many people are saying, you know, “We’re just going to sit out the next election. We have lost faith in this White House, in this administration.” So, I think that does have an impact.

And let me also say I have found it incredibly moving, as well, to watch these protests. You know, I was up on the Hill for meetings this week and last week and came across, in one office, a sit-in that was happening, where there was a group of Jewish students singing peace songs and holding up signs that said “Save Gaza.” I found that incredibly moving."

Guys, it IS helping, please please keep up the pressure.

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

I will be curious to read the vituperative denials of the validity of this article's analysis, which is pasted below the cutoff:

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” That question, first posed by Ronald Reagan in a 1980 presidential-campaign debate with Jimmy Carter, has become the quintessential political question about the economy. And most Americans today, it seems, would say their answer is no. In a new survey by Bankrate published on Wednesday, only 21 percent of those surveyed said their financial situation had improved since Joe Biden was elected president in 2020, against 50 percent who said it had gotten worse. That echoed the results of an ABC News/Washington Post poll from September, in which 44 percent of those surveyed said they were worse off financially since Biden’s election. And in a New York Times/Siena College poll released last week, 53 percent of registered voters said that Biden’s policies had hurt them personally.

As has been much commented on (including by me), this gloom is striking when contrasted with the actual performance of the U.S. economy, which grew at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the most recent quarter, and which has seen unemployment holding below 4 percent for more than 18 months. But the downbeat mood is perhaps even more striking when contrasted with the picture offered by the Federal Reserve’s recently released Survey of Consumer

The survey provides an in-depth analysis of the financial condition of American households, conducted for the Fed by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. Published every three years, it’s the proverbial gold standard of household research. The latest survey looked at Americans’ net worth as of mid-to-late 2022 and Americans’ income in 2021, comparing them with equivalent data from three years earlier. It found that despite the severe disruption to the economy caused by the pandemic and the recovery from it, Americans across the spectrum saw their incomes and wealth rise over the survey period.

The rise in median household net worth was the most notable improvement: It jumped by 37 percent from 2019 to 2022, rising to $192,000. (All numbers are adjusted for inflation.) Americans in every income bracket saw substantial gains, with the biggest gains registered by people in the middle and upper-middle brackets, which suggests that a slight narrowing of wealth inequality occurred during this time. In particular, Black and Latino households saw their median net worth rise faster than white households did—though the racial wealth gap is so wide that it narrowed only slightly as a result of this change.

A big driver of this increase was the rising value of people’s homes—and a higher percentage of Americans owned homes in 2022 than did in 2019. But households’ financial position improved in other ways too. The amount of money that the median household had in bank accounts and retirement accounts rose substantially. The percentage of Americans owning stocks directly (that is, not in retirement accounts) jumped by more than a third, from about 15 to 21 percent. The percentage of Americans with retirement accounts went from 50.5 to 54.3 percent, a notable improvement. And a fifth of Americans reported owning a business, the highest proportion since the survey began in its current form (in 1989).

Americans also reduced their debt loads during the pandemic. The median credit-card balance dropped by 14 percent, and the share of people with car loans fell. More significantly still, Americans’ median debt-to-asset, debt-to-income, and debt-payment-to-income ratios all fell, meaning that U.S. households had lower debt burdens, on average, in 2022 than they’d had three years earlier.

The gains in real income (in this case, measured from 2018 to 2021) were small—median household income rose 3 percent, with every income bracket seeing gains. But that was better than one might have expected, given that this period included a pandemic-induced recession and only a single year of recovery.

The picture the survey paints, then, is one of American households not only weathering the pandemic in surprisingly good shape, but ultimately also emerging from it in better financial shape than they were going in. And that, in turn, points to the effect of the U.S. policy response to the crisis: Stimulus payments, enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, and the moratorium on student-loan payments boosted household income and balance sheets, helping people pay down debt and increase their savings. In the process, these policies mildly narrowed inequality.

The U.S. government’s aggressive response to the pandemic, including Biden’s stimulus spending, also helped the job market recover all its pandemic-related losses—and add millions of jobs on top. The resulting tight labor market has been a huge boon to lower-wage workers. In fact, because the Fed survey’s income data end in 2021, it understates the income gains for the bottom half of the workforce, and the shrinking income inequality they’ve produced.

Hourly wages for production and nonsupervisory workers (who make up about 80 percent of the American workforce) rose 4.4 percent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2023, for instance, ahead of the pace of inflation. And this was not anomalous: Arindrajit Dube, an economist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, crunched the numbers and found that real wages for that same sector of workers are not just higher than they were in 2019, but are now roughly where they would have been if we’d continued on the upward pre-pandemic trend.

The reason for this is simple: Low unemployment has translated into higher wages. As a recent working paper by Dube, David Autor, and Annie McGrew shows, the tight labor markets of the past few years have given lower-wage workers more bargaining power than in the past, leading to a compression in the wage gap between higher-paid and lower-paid workers. Of course, that gap is still immense, but the three scholars found that the wage gains for lower-paid workers have rolled back about a quarter of the rise in inequality that has occurred since the 1980s.

So what should we take away from the Survey of Consumer Finances data, and from Dube, Autor, and McGrew’s work? Not that everything is fine, but that public policy and macroeconomic management matter a lot. Enhanced unemployment benefits, the child-care tax credit, the stimulus payments—these things materially improved the lives of Americans and helped set the economy up for a strong recovery. If the policy response had been less aggressive, the U.S. economy would be in worse shape now. This is something you can see by looking at Europe, where economies are growing far more slowly and unemployment is higher, while inflation is no lower.

Key to this story is the fact that lower-wage workers in particular would be worse off, because they have been among the chief beneficiaries of the low unemployment created by the robust recovery. It’s a useful reminder that stagnant wages are not an inevitable result of American capitalism: When labor markets are tight, and employers have to compete with one another for employees, workers get paid more.

So, even allowing for the high inflation we saw in 2022, no one could really look at the U.S. economy today and say that the policy choices of the past three years made us poorer. Yet that, of course, is precisely how many Americans feel.

Although that pessimism does not bode well for Biden’s reelection prospects, the real problem with it is even more far-reaching: If voters think that policies that helped them actually hurt them, that makes it much less likely that politicians will embrace similar policies in the future. The U.S. got a lot right in its macroeconomic approach over the past three years. Too bad that voters think it got so much wrong.

[schraubd]

The Settler's War and the Biden Response

While the world's eyes are primarily on the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, another spate of violence has erupted in the West Bank, where Israeli settler violence has surged to unprecedented levels. A few weeks ago, I observed that while what's "going on in Gaza is more eye-catching ... the [West Bank] situation is in some ways even worse because there isn't even a colorable claim of self-defense -- it's pure unconstrained terror inflicted by settler extremists on the Palestinian population for the express purpose of subjugation." (Matt Yglesias made a similar point). The Gaza operation can at least in the abstract be defended as a necessary response to Hamas' violence. The violence inflicted upon Palestinians in the West Bank defies even theoretical justification. In terms of familial resemblance, West Bank "price tag" settler terrorists differ from the perpetrators of October 7 only in degree, not kind. Today, the Biden administration announced it would begin pursuing sanctions (such as visa bans) on settlers who engage in or promote violence against Palestinians. It's an overdue step, and I've urged considerably harsher measures than that (last week I suggested identifying violent settler organizations and placing them on the State Department's list of Designated Terrorist Organizations). Nonetheless, it is a welcome one. Extremist violence emanating from West Bank settlers is one of the primary drivers of the current conflict and an existential (and very much intentional) threat to the viability of a two-state (or one-state, for that matter) solution. The fact that these malign actors carry significant support in the highest echelons of the Israeli government is not a reason for the United States to stay its hand. Indeed, their substantial influence and clout makes it more imperative that America decisively intervene to isolate them. This step by the Biden administration will not neuter the criticism it is getting from the left for how it has handled the past month's events (indeed, I first heard about the anti-settler sanctions from at least three social media accounts who flagged it in the course of derisively dismissing the notion that it meant anything at all). But that's the way it goes -- our policy towards Israel and Palestine should be humane and intelligent regardless of whether that earns brownie points with the online activist crowd. This proposal is a good proposal. I hope it is followed up on, and I hope it prompts other pro-Israel Democrats to think more proactively and creatively about what steps America can take to sap the strength of the settler-terror movement. The other big almost-news of the day is the prospect of a ceasefire negotiated by the Biden administration. Initially this was reported as a "tentative deal" having been struck, now the reporting has backed off a little to saying the deal is "close". The details, as they're being reported, would see both sides cease hostilities for five days, the release by Hamas of approximately 50 hostages (approximately 20% of the total number they're estimated to be holding), and the transport into Gaza of significant quantities of humanitarian aid. All I'll say on this is that I'm familiar with the arguments for why Israel's military operation is necessary, and I'm aware that a ceasefire is still part of the middle, not the end. But I'll never be dismayed at the prospect that people suffering tremendously in a warzone will, for some time at least, suffer less. And I'll likewise only feel joy at the prospect that some kidnapped captives will be redeemed to their families. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/qZQuvxF

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday denounced the Israeli military's total decimation of Gaza's universities during floor remarks on protests that have broken out on American college campuses over the past several weeks.

"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."

Sanders' remarks came during a floor debate over a Republican resolution ostensibly aimed at condemning antisemitism on college campuses. GOP lawmakers and President Joe Biden have repeatedly smeared campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza as antisemitic and ignored the prominent role Jewish students have played in the nationwide demonstrations.

After Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) attempted to pass the GOP antisemitism resolution via unanimous consent, Sanders—who is Jewish—rose to block the measure, criticizing it as insufficient and proposing an alternative that condemns antisemitism as well as all other "forms of bigotry in this country, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, including Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, and the growing attacks against the Asian American community."

Sanders' proposed resolution also expresses support for "the right of students and all Americans to peacefully protest," whereas Scott's measure attacks recent campus protests as "hotbed[s] of blatantly antisemitic rhetoric and action."

"The fact of the matter is that 67% of Americans, according to recent polls, support the United States calling for a cease-fire, and 60% oppose sending more weapons to Israel," Sanders said. "And that's what the protesters are talking about: They are asking why it is we are complicit in the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza."

According to the United Nations, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip's schools have been damaged or reduced to ruins by Israeli forces since October, including all of the enclave's universities.

Last month, a group of U.N. experts said that "it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide.'"

"The persistent, callous attacks on educational infrastructure in Gaza have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future," the experts added. "Students with international scholarships are being prevented from attending university abroad."

American campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza have offered some measure of hope to Palestinian students whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the U.S.-backed war.

Hala Sharaf, a second-year medical student who moved to Cairo to resume her studies amid Israel's assault, told Al Jazeera that the U.S. student campus demonstrations "have made us feel so hopeful for rejecting what America and Israel are doing to us."

"The student protests in America make me feel like I'm not alone," said Sharaf. "My message to them is to keep the focus on Gaza. Don't forget about Gaza."

[defundthepolicedestroythegop]

House GOP seeks billions in cuts to rail, water infrastructure spending

Two years after approving a bipartisan $1.2 trillion law, Republicans are looking to scale back spending that some in their own party previously supported

By Tony Romm and Ian Duncan

Updated July 18, 2023 at 12:12 p.m. EDT|Published July 18, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

It took decades for Congress to deliver on its promise to pour new money into the nation’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections.

Now, House Republicans are trying to slash some of the same funds.

A series of GOP bills to finance the federal government in 2024 would wipe out billions of dollars meant to repair the nation’s aging infrastructure, potentially undercutting a 2021 law that was one of Washington’s rare recent bipartisan achievements. The proposed cuts could hamstring some of the most urgently needed public-works projects across the country, from improving rail safety to reducing lead contamination at schools.

Some of the cuts would be particularly steep: Amtrak, for example, could lose nearly two-thirds of its annual federal funding next fiscal year if House Republicans prevail. That includes more than $1 billion in cuts targeting the highly trafficked and rapidly aging Northeast Corridor, which runs between Boston and Washington, prompting Amtrak’s chief to sound early alarms about service disruptions.

In recent days, Republicans have defended their approach as a fiscally responsible way to reduce the burgeoning federal debt. They’ve largely tried to extract the savings by slimming down federal agencies’ operating budgets next year, technically leaving intact the extra funding that lawmakers adopted in the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

But the effect would be the same: The GOP bills would reduce the federal money available for repairs. The cuts would come at a time when the country is grappling with the real-life consequences of its own infrastructure failures, from train derailments in Ohio and Pennsylvania to the collapse of a key portion of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia last month.

“I guess no one reads newspapers,” said Rep. Mike Quigley of Illinois, the top Democrat on the appropriations panel that oversees transportation and other key infrastructure programs. “When big infrastructure issues are blowing up in our face, we’re doing the opposite.”

They opposed the infrastructure law. Now, some in the GOP court its cash.

The emerging House battle underscores the massive chasm between Democrats and Republicans over the nation’s fiscal health, only weeks after the two parties brokered what was thought to be a political truce.

In a deal to stave off a potential first-ever federal default, Biden worked out an agreement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) in June to pursue modest voluntary spending caps on federal agencies and programs starting in the 2024 fiscal year. In exchange, Republicans permitted lawmakers to raise the debt ceiling, allowing the United States to resume borrowing money to pay its bills.

Even as Republicans touted that vote as a victory, however, some in the party’s far-right flank signaled they planned to continue the fight. They pledged to force Democrats to accept massive spending cuts through the annual appropriations process that funds the government — or risk a shutdown if lawmakers fail to act by the Sept. 30 deadline.

So far, the standoff has largely simmered behind the scenes. In recent weeks, Rep. Kay Granger (R-Tex.), the chairwoman of the House Appropriations Committee, has worked methodically to process a dozen funding bills, which McCarthy on Monday said he hopes to start bringing to the chamber floor as soon as next week.

In a sign of the acrimonious debate to come, each of the House appropriations bills features sharp spending cuts that Democrats vehemently oppose — even targeting some federal infrastructure programs that until recently had enjoyed bipartisan support.

Two years after Congress approved $55 billion to improve the nation’s water supply, for example, House Republicans last week proposed to eliminate $1.7 billion from the two primary federal sources for drinking water and wastewater grants to states.

Those programs had received supplemental funding as part of the bipartisan infrastructure act. Rather than undo that law, the GOP bill would dramatically reduce the initiatives’ annual budgets, compared with what they received in the 2023 fiscal year, while underfunding a slew of other federal water infrastructure operations. That includes two programs to help schools and low-income communities reduce lead contamination, which together could receive about $85 million less next year than lawmakers previously had authorized, according to an analysis of data released in January 2022 by the Congressional Research Service.

“I’ll be real honest with you: If you’re looking for a pretty bill, this is not it,” acknowledged Rep. Mike Simpson (R-Idaho), the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee that produced the proposal, at a hearing last week.

“Cutting funding is never easy and can often be an ugly process. … But with the nation’s debt in excess of $32 trillion and inflation at an unacceptable level, we have to do our jobs to rein in unnecessary federal spending,” he said.

After weeks of haggling, House appropriators are expected to finalize that bill this week. Rep. Chellie Pingree of Maine, the top Democrat on the panel, described the spending measure in a recent hearing as “one of the most harmful attacks on America’s efforts to tackle climate change.”

Congress approves $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, sending measure to Biden for enactment

The proposed cuts to infrastructure spending come at a time when new federal money has started to flow more rapidly. The White House estimates it has announced about $225 billion in awards under the 2021 law, which has benefited roughly 35,000 projects nationwide, a figure Biden has touted regularly as he tours the country to promote his economic agenda.

For both parties, the $1.2 trillion packagemarked a major achievement after years of false promises and jokes about botched “infrastructure weeks.” It took months of late-night negotiating sessions among a small group of moderate Democrats and Republicans before they could reconcile their competing visions about the size and scope of new federal spending.

Even then, though, lawmakers acknowledged their compromise addressed only a small fraction of the United States’ true needs. In its latest national report card, the American Society of Civil Engineers projected the nation faces a roughly $2.6 trillion, 10-year backlog in projects to repair the country’s roads, bridges, pipes, ports and internet connections — a gap about twice the size of the infrastructure law.

“There’s a lot of work to be done,” said Emily Feenstra, the chief policy and external affairs officer at ASCE. “We need every cent.”

Some of the greatest needs are in transportation, where House Republicans on Tuesday convened a hearing to finalize a 2024 spending bill that includes $6.6 billion in cuts. The spending reductions predominantly target transit and rail, while curbing Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s work to promote environmental and racial equity.

“This bill is another example of the real progress we’re making to reduce overall spending while funding our highest priorities,” Granger told committee lawmakers.

Amtrak would take one of the heaviest blows, potentially losing $1.5 billion in funding next year if the GOP plan becomes law. In a statement last week, Stephen Gardner, the passenger railroad’s chief executive, said such a cut would force Amtrak to “radically reduce or suspend service on various routes across the nation.”

Republicans would extract another $2 billion from a federal infrastructure program used to fund the construction of new transit lines. That could jeopardize a slew of projects now underway — including the Gateway tunnel system between New York and New Jersey, one of the largest infrastructure endeavors in the nation, which hopes to receive $7 billion to make urgently needed repairs.

The GOP bills also provide no new funding in 2024 for a series of grant programs that Republicans historically have supported. That would equate to a roughly $800 million cut from the initiative known as RAISE, which provides money to cities and states so they can construct bridges over rail lines, create new pedestrian paths and finance street redesigns.

The program is so popular the Transportation Department received $15 billion in requests last year, though the agency could award only 162 projects totaling $2.2 billion in funding in June. Some of those requests came from GOP lawmakers on the House Appropriations Committee: 17 panel members wrote the Biden administration in search of funds for dozens of local projects in 2022 and 2023, according to letters backing requests for funds that the department released to The Washington Post last week.

The members include Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa), who wrote in support of five RAISE applicants in her state. Her office accused the Biden administration of “playing political games” in releasing the letters and said the congresswoman “will remain focused on bringing investments back to Iowa while reining in overall government spending.”

Biden, for his part, only sought in 2024 to fund the RAISE program at the level adopted under the infrastructure law. But the president did request — and Republicans ultimately denied — $1.2 billion in new money for infrastructure megaprojects. That would have included funds for the long-sought overhaul of the Brent Spence Bridge between Ohio and Kentucky and the Calcasieu River Bridge, which carries Interstate 10 in Louisiana.

In an early hearing last week, the top Republican overseeing transportation spending — Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.) — defended the bill as one that “meets the challenge before us to reduce spending and get our debt under control.”

On Tuesday, he added of the fierce debate to come: “These things tend to start out in one place. They always tend to end up some place else.”

Taken from The Washington Post because this shit is too important to put behind a paywall. Link is in the title.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

In a letter to the Fox Network, Hunter Biden’s attorneys have put the company on notice that it’s about to get its pants sued off for defamation.  Again. Biden’s attorney, Mark Geragos, best known for his successful representation of celebrities, issued the following statement: 

[For the last five years, Fox News has relentlessly attacked Hunter Biden and made him a caricature in order to boost ratings and for its financial gain. The recent indictment of FBI informant Smirnov has exposed the conspiracy of disinformation that has been fueled by Fox, enabled by their paid agents and monetized by the Fox enterprise. We plan on holding them accountable.]

The letter specifically cited the network’s “conspiracy and subsequent actions to defame Mr. Biden and paint him in a false light, the unlicensed commercial exploitation of his image, name, and likeness, and the unlawful publication of hacked intimate images of him.” It also stated that Hunter Biden would be suing the network “imminently.” Supporters of the younger Biden cheered, glad to see he was finally taking the gloves off against purveyors of salacious, fake news. Fox is already reeling from other defamation lawsuits, including one it settled with Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million and another by Smartmatic, a voting software company presently seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Not everyone is happy, though. Advisers to the president had been hoping his son would keep a low profile and not put himself back in the news during an election year. They worried that news stories about the lawsuit would resurface the allegations, even if false and defamatory, which would then suck the air out of the news cycle. Such media time might otherwise be focused on Donald Trump’s problems and Joe Biden’s many accomplishments.

[...]

The Burisma bribes lie

There are three main things Fox was fixated upon that have now opened it to possible massive liability. The first is what I call the fake “Burisma bribes.” Fox gleefully amplified the false claims of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who had conveyed to his handler that he had information that both Joe and Hunter Biden had accepted $5 million in bribes from the Ukrainian company, Burisma, on whose board Hunter Biden once served. This false statement was dutifully recorded, as most statements by informants are no matter how wild, in a standard FBI informant form. This was left to gather dust for years until Rudy Giuliani and the FBI, at Bill Barr’s urging, resurfaced and weaponized it along with help from members of Congress.

For its part, Fox made sure that story went wide and was repeated ad nauseam. For months, host Sean Hannity ran nonstop coverage about the alleged bribe, poisoning viewers with actual Russian disinformation. Hannity’s show alone aired at least 85 segments that amplified these false Burisma bribery claims in 2023. Of those 85 segments, 28 were Hannity monologues.  After his indictment and arrest, Smirnov admitted that the story he received had come straight from Russian intelligence. By centering and repeating the fake story, Fox had become a willing Russian disinformation mule, along with many members of Congress. But it never retracted the story or apologized for its role. Instead, it continued to claim that the source, Smirnov, was “highly credible.”

[...]

Nude pics

We all have heard about, but hopefully not personally seen, intimate images of Hunter Biden at parties and in sexual acts with various partners. His lawyers claim that these images were “hacked, stolen, and/or manipulated” from his private accounts, and then aired by Fox in violation of his civil rights and copyright law. They also appeared during congressional hearings as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-MW) infamously used them as visual props. (She’s lucky to be shielded by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution, or she could be swept up in a suit as well.) The decision to go after those committing what amounts to “revenge porn” on Hunter Biden, including the Fox Network, is part of a larger legal counteroffensive that began last year, according to sources with NBC News.  As you may recall, the “Hunter Biden Laptop” story emerged as a kind of “October surprise” in 2020. The repair technician who leaked the contents of it to Rudy Giuliani later sued Biden and others for defaming him, claiming he had suffered damage to his reputation because they had claimed the laptop contents were part of a Russian disinformation campaign. 

[...]

The “Trial of Hunter Biden”

In fall of 2021, Fox aired a six-part series called “The Trial of Hunter Biden,” which amounted to a mock trial of what his upcoming trial would look like if he were charged with being a foreign agent or with bribery, none of which has happened.  Biden’s lawyers claim in their demand letter that “the series intentionally manipulates the facts, distorts the truth, narrates happenings out of context, and invents dialogue intended to entertain. Thus, the viewer of the series cannot decipher what is fact and what is fiction,” and it should be removed entirely from all streaming services.

[...]

The reality is, Fox and other right wing media continue to give oxygen to Rep. James Comer, who has yet to end his evidence-free impeachment inquiry. At least now, Fox will be on notice that it could face ongoing liability for failing to retract its false reporting, even while pushing out more lies about Hunter Biden. The network will have to tread more carefully, and ultimately it will have to consider whether it doubles down or backs off. Then there is the actual trial of Hunter Biden which is set to begin this fall. Attention will be on the president’s son at that time anyway, but with this lawsuit, just as with his counterclaims and counteroffensives against those who violated his privacy, Hunter Biden will look like a fighter and not just a victim. With all that has been done and said about him, he has very little to lose but a very large ax to grind. And if the GOP overplays its hand, as it inevitably will, it could create voter sympathy for him, even though it had hoped to paint him as a criminal, drug addicted womanizer. Democrats are often accused of not having enough courage to go on the offensive, of being too reticent to push back against the onslaughts of numerous bad faith actors on the right. Then when they do, there’s a good deal of hand wringing about how this assertiveness might come across to the voters.

Glad to see Hunter Biden fight back against the right-wing smear machine by threatening to sue Fixed News for defaming him.

[free-gaza-west-bank-golan]

send your copy to President Biden here // your reps in Congress here

Free Palestine or I will not vote Biden in '24

As an American citizen, I demand U.S. support to:

1. End Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Golan Heights.

Israel, with one of the most powerful militaries in the world, has inflicted violence continuously in these areas since 1967. Has it worked? Obviously not. When we reject every other avenue of liberty, the oppressed must resort to violent resistance (just like the USA did to become a country). This cycle of violence and retaliation against Palestinians and Syrians will not end until Israeli occupation ends.

2. Discredit and disavow Israeli falsehoods and propaganda.

It's too easy to delegitimize Palestine's government by evoking the great bogeyman, "terrorism." There's no credible evidence that Hamas prioritizes civilian targets, while there's decades worth of evidence of illegal and unjustifiable Israeli targeting of Palestinian civilians. U.S. media eagerly amplifies every baseless claim of the Israeli war machine while quietly, if at all, admitting to its lies or bad faith. We must listen to Palestinian voices and allow them the right to report on their own situation.

3. Reject the premise that any criticism of Israel, or Palestinian claim to independence, is antisemitism.

This is textbook facism: "If you're not with us, you're against us." It's reactionary, it's ethnonationalist, and we must not give it credence. Nor can we give in to provacateurs who bait us into endless debate and fractious argument. Reject the premise and move on.

4. Hold Israel accountable by international law for its crimes against humanity.

11,000+ killed in Gaza. Thousands more injured, traumatized, and radicalized. Countless more victim to retaliatory violence in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Constant, credible reports of abuse and atrocity. And all this just in the last two months.

We have decades worth of proof of Israeli war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Their leadership is openly calling for genocide using language we only hear during the darkest moments of history. This is what we're taught to stand against. This goes against the core values codified by centuries of American law and rhetoric. I thought this is why people go into politics (at least initially)- to be in a position to take a stand and make a real difference. To uphold the right of all humans to freedom and self-determination, not occupation.

send your copy to President Biden here // your reps in Congress here

(please do copy, distribute, plagiarize, or otherwise disseminate any/all content of this letter)

[tomorrowusa]

Even people in red states think that Trump is deranged.

Over the last few months, as his future life of incarceration becomes increasingly more apparent, Donald Trump has lost his grip on whatever fragments of sanity he possessed previously. And he is now firmly in the land of crazy dictator.  Oh, you disagree?  Well, let me remind you that on Veterans’ Day, Trump’s message to the country was not one of gratitude and inspiration for the troops. Instead, it was a promise that, if elected in 2024, he would rid the country of his political opponents, which he referred to as “vermin.”  You know who else called political opponents vermin?  Hitler and Mussolini.  They also denigrated certain groups of people, claiming that their mere existence within their countries tainted bloodlines and made the countries weaker. They painted these groups as enemies and used the vermin rhetoric to reduce them to subhuman species that deserved to be mistreated and killed. 

And here we have a former U.S. president doing the same. As people, including thousands of Bible-thumping, constitution-waving Christians in this state, cheer him on. Buy swag with his face on it. Fly flags with his name on them. 

If you heard somebody on the street screaming about "vermin" and threatening to crush his enemies, you'd rightfully assume that person is bonkers and possibly dangerous. That's what Trump is: deranged and probably dangerous.

Trump's demented threats have been normalized in public discourse and in the media. Sorry, but when a politician starts talking concentration camps and using the government to punish his enemies, that's not normal; and there's plenty of history to show what happens when such people are entrusted with power.

And people who listen to such politicians are themselves lacking in the normalcy department.

Look, if you want to vote for a Republican for president, while I think that’s insane unless you’re ultra-wealthy, go for it. Maybe something will trickle down for you eventually. There are probably a couple of candidates in the ongoing debates who could beat Joe Biden.  But we’ve got to stop this cult-like following of Trump. There’s more than enough evidence at this point that he’s broken dozens of laws, violated the constitution and cares way more about himself and his personal ambitions than he does about this country.  Your continued support of such an individual makes you as crazy as he is.

Trump belongs in a treatment center – not the Oval Office.

Don't let idiot MAGA relatives go unanswered at holiday gatherings when they sympathize with Trump's Nazi-style plans for a second term. Of course you won't change their minds, but it's important to let others hear that such views are unhinged as well as un-American.

[blinkiesreal]

blinkie pack 2/? for my toyhouse!!

[mariacallous]

The United Nations on Thursday adopted a U.S.-led resolution on artificial intelligence, marking what Washington says is a major step toward establishing a global baseline to regulate the rapidly developing technology. 

The resolution, which followed more than three months of negotiations among dozens of countries, calls on U.N. member states to ensure “safe, secure, and trustworthy AI systems” that are developed responsibly and respect human rights and international law. 

While the resolution is non-binding and does not include an enforcement mechanism, U.S. officials in a briefing on Wednesday highlighted the significance of its unanimous adoption as an important step in establishing global AI guardrails. 

“This first-ever standalone resolution on AI at the United Nations is a consensus resolution—that means that all 193 member states will agree to it, and trust me, that is no easy feat,” a senior Biden administration official said, adding that as of Wednesday afternoon, 97 countries had also co-sponsored the resolution and that number was growing “literally by the hour.” 

Debates on how best to regulate AI have dominated bilateral and multilateral forums for more than a year, ranging from the G-7 summit in Japan to the AI Safety Summit hosted by the United Kingdom last November. Several of the world’s most powerful governments have also established their own paths to regulate AI—the European Union earlier this month passed the EU AI Act after nearly two years of deliberations, while authorities in China have cast an ever-expanding, ever-evolving regulatory net to rein in AI technologies. 

The Biden administration took its biggest swing last October with an executive order that echoes many of the goals included in the U.N. resolution. “What we’ve done, essentially, is to make sure that the resolution reflects what the administration is already doing with respect to its domestic AI governance,” another senior administration official told reporters.

The United Nations also has multiple other initiatives, including a new AI advisory body and its global standard-setting organization, the International Telecommunication Union. Those efforts will continue, but this week’s resolution may give the conversation more heft. “We view this as complementing other initiatives happening throughout the U.N. system, but it is different,” the second official said. “We think it’s important when all 193 member states agree to a set of global norms.”

That broad agreement is significant, given the diplomatic battles that have played out in the United Nations between Western democracies and allies on the one hand and autocracies on the other. China and Russia, in particular, have increasingly sought to shape the institution toward their worldview and priorities, stalling deliberations over a proposed treaty on crimes against humanity and attempting to impose a contentious treaty on cybercrime. On AI, however, the discussions appear to have been more productive. 

“There were lots of heated conversations; that’s not unusual for the United Nations,” the first administration official said. “The fact that 193 countries that often can’t agree on anything at the U.N. were able to agree on this shows that this issue of AI is so transformative—not only from the technology standpoint but in terms of the potential opportunities that people see—that I think it transcended the usual geopolitical divisions that we have here in the United Nations.”

The inclusion of language ensuring AI systems comply with human rights is a particular bright spot of the resolution, according to Daniel Leufer, a senior policy analyst at the digital rights group Access Now. “I wouldn’t take that for granted as a statement,” he said. “Getting the message across that there are uses of AI that are just incompatible with human rights and cannot be permitted was a battle, and it is good to see that enshrined in something at this level with the level of consensus.”

But achieving that consensus also dilutes the impact that the resolution can have, Leufer added, particularly with a lack of enforcement mechanisms built into the U.N. process. “There’s always a risk that what that means effectively is bringing everyone down to the lowest agreeable bar,” he said. “If we limit ourselves to what we can get every state to agree on, we’re not going to get too far.”

One notable absence from the resolution is the potential military use of AI, and that was largely by design. “In looking across the broad sweep of AI considerations in the world, we made a purposeful choice in pursuing a consensus-based U.N. resolution to not include the military uses discussion in this resolution,” one of the officials said, adding that several diplomatic and multilateral conversations about military applications of AI are already ongoing across the U.N. and other forums. “We believed there was an opportunity to talk about safe, secure, and trustworthy AI in a civilian, non-military context, which was very important and deserved and merited its own attention and focus.”

[msclaritea]

Box Office: ‘Civil War’ Starts Off With Impressive $2.9M in Thursday Previews

Alex Garland's controversial movie about the political divide in America easily scored the best preview number ever for A24.

BY PAMELA MCCLINTOCK

APRIL 12, 2024 9:18A

Alex Garland‘s dystopian action movie Civil War has started off its North American box office run with an impressive $2.9 million, a record for indie studio and distributor A24.

The $50 million movie about a divided America is a big swing for A24 as it tries to produce bigger movies, and is its most expensive production to date.

Civil War is tracking to open north of $20 million, although one leading tracking service has a slightly lower range of $19 million to $20 million. As with the preview number, that would be record for A24, beating the $13.6 million opening of A24’s horror pic Hereditary in 2018.

A24 and writer-director Garland held the movie’s world premiere last month at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival, an ideal venue since many of the attendees are younger adults, the film’s target demo.

Set in the near-future, the story follows a wartime photojournalist (Kirsten Dunst) and her colleagues as they make their way across a hostile and divided United States of America that has been torn apart under the authoritarian rule of a three-term president (Nick Offerman). Yet the film shys away from red state/blue state divisions, and the politics behind the conflict are generally left unexplained, other than to say that one of the president’s first first actions was to disband the FBI in an apparent nod to former President Donald Trump, who has called to “defund” the Bureau.

Civil War‘s timing surely isn’t a coincidence as it hits cinemas amid a contentious election year in which President Biden and former President Trump are once again the leading candidates for their respective parties as Trump seeks to return to the White House

At a SXSW panel following the film’s premiere, Garland said it made sense to release Civil War now, although it’s not as if there is anything new about the contentious political discourse gripping the country.

“I think all of the topics in in [Civil War] have been a part of a huge public debate for years and years. These debates have been growing and growing in volume and awareness, but none of that is secret or unknown to almost anybody,” Garland said. “I thought that everybody understands these terms and, at that point, I just felt compelled to write about it.”

Cailee Spaeny, Jesse Plemons and Wagner Moura also star.

2012–2013: Founding and early years

A24 was founded on August 20, 2012, by film veterans Daniel Katz, David Fenkel, and John Hodges. Katz formerly led the film finance group at Guggenheim Partners, Fenkel was the president, co-founder and partner at Oscilloscope, and Hodges served as "Head of Production and Development" at Big Beach. The name "A24" was inspired by the Italian A24 motorway Katz was driving on when he decided to found the company.

Guggenheim Partners provided the seed money for A24. The company was started to share "movies from a distinctive point of view". In October 2012, Nicolette Aizenberg joined as head of publicity from 42West where she was senior publicity executive.

The company began its distribution of films in 2013. The company's first theatrical release was Roman Coppola's A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III, which had a limited theatrical release. Other 2013 theatrical releases included Sofia Coppola's The Bling Ring, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers, James Ponsoldt's The Spectacular Now, and Sally Potter's Ginger & Rosa.

In September 2013, A24 entered a $40 million deal with DirecTV Cinema, where DirecTV Cinema would offer day-and-date releases 30 days prior to a theatrical release by A24; Enemy was the first film to be distributed under the deal. That same year, A24 entered a deal with Amazon Prime, where A24-distributed films would be available on Amazon Instant Video after becoming available on Blu-ray and DVD.

2014–2017: Television and later productions

In May 2015, A24 announced that it would start a television division and began producing the USA Network series Playing House, as well as working to develop a television series that would later become Comrade Detective, produced by Channing Tatum. The company also announced that they would also finance and develop pilots.

In January 2016, Sasha Lloyd joined the company to handle all film, television distribution and business development in the international marketplace. The company, with cooperation from Bank of America, J.P. Morgan & Co. and SunTrust Banks, also raised its line of credit from $50 million to $125 million a month later to build upon its operations. In April, the company acquired all foreign rights to Swiss Army Man, distributing the film in all territories, and partnering with distributors who previously acquired rights to the film, a first for the company. In June, the company, along with Oscilloscope and distributor Honora, joined BitTorrent Now to distribute the work of their portfolio across the ad-supported service.

Eileen Guggenheim Breaks Silence, denies Introducing Women To Epstein

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Beef is Criticized After star's Resurfaced Rape Comments B

Does HBO's Euphoria Really Glamourize Drug Use?

Euphoria Season Two Review: Far Too Much Nudity, Sex and Violence

Michelle Yeoh Says Hot Dog Fingers Scene With Jamie Lee Curtis Was ‘Most Beautiful Love Story

Not much time is shown in this universe. All the audience knows is that Evelyn works at a pizza shop. She is shown wearing a ridiculous costume and waving around a sign.

"A24 and writer-director Garland held the movie’s world premiere last month at the South by Southwest Film and TV Festival, an ideal venue since many of the attendees are younger adults, the film’s target demo..."

Penske Media Corporation (PMC /ˈpɛnski/) is an American mass media, publishing, and information services company based in Los Angeles and New York City. It publishes more than 20 digital and print brands, including Variety, Rolling Stone, Women's Wear Daily, Deadline Hollywood, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Boy Genius Report, Robb Report, Artforum, ARTNews, and others. PMC's Chairman and CEO since founding is Jay Penske.

President Trump awards Medal of Freedom to Roger Penske | Fox News Video

In addition to media publications, Penske Media Corporation owns the Life Is Beautiful Music & Art Festival and is a 50 percent stakeholder in South by Southwest. It is also the owner of Dick Clark Productions which includes the award shows Golden Globe Awards, American Music Awards, Streamy Awards, Academy of Country Music Awards, and the Billboard Music Awards.

Jay Penske--NACSCAR Heir ARRESTED...and It's A Pisser

@aeltri I'm a bit fuzzy on the details. What was that you told us, recently, about Pizza and Hotdogs?

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

May 8, 2024

"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said the Vermont senator. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday denounced the Israeli military's total decimation of Gaza's universities during floor remarks on protests that have broken out on American college campuses over the past several weeks.

"There are no protests on the college campuses in Gaza," said Sanders (I-Vt.), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "You know why? Because every one of the 12 universities in Gaza has been bombed and destroyed."

Sanders' remarks came during a floor debate over a Republican resolution ostensibly aimed at condemning antisemitism on college campuses. GOP lawmakers and President Joe Biden have repeatedly smeared campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza as antisemitic and ignored the prominent role Jewish students have played in the nationwide demonstrations.

After Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) attempted to pass the GOP antisemitism resolution via unanimous consent, Sanders—who is Jewish—rose to block the measure, criticizing it as insufficient and proposing an alternative that condemns antisemitism as well as all other "forms of bigotry in this country, whether on college campuses or elsewhere, including Islamophobia, homophobia, racism, and the growing attacks against the Asian American community."

Sanders' proposed resolution also expresses support for "the right of students and all Americans to peacefully protest," whereas Scott's measure attacks recent campus protests as "hotbed[s] of blatantly antisemitic rhetoric and action."

"The fact of the matter is that 67% of Americans, according to recent polls, support the United States calling for a cease-fire, and 60% oppose sending more weapons to Israel," Sanders said. "And that's what the protesters are talking about: They are asking why it is we are complicit in the humanitarian disaster taking place in Gaza."

Watch Sanders' remarks:

According to the United Nations, more than 80% of the Gaza Strip's schools have been damaged or reduced to ruins by Israeli forces since October, including all of the enclave's universities.

Last month, a group of U.N. experts said that "it may be reasonable to ask if there is an intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system, an action known as 'scholasticide.'"

"The persistent, callous attacks on educational infrastructure in Gaza have a devastating long-term impact on the fundamental rights of people to learn and freely express themselves, depriving yet another generation of Palestinians of their future," the experts added. "Students with international scholarships are being prevented from attending university abroad."

American campus protests against Israel's assault on Gaza have offered some measure of hope to Palestinian students whose lives have been thrown into chaos by the U.S.-backed war.

Hala Sharaf, a second-year medical student who moved to Cairo to resume her studies amid Israel's assault, told Al Jazeera that the U.S. student campus demonstrations "have made us feel so hopeful for rejecting what America and Israel are doing to us."

"The student protests in America make me feel like I'm not alone," said Sharaf. "My message to them is to keep the focus on Gaza. Don't forget about Gaza."

[wack-ashimself]

Know what I never want to hear again, not even ONCE, the rest of my life?

"Our government would never do that."

YES, THE FUCK, THEY WOULD. THEY HAVE. THEY DID. THEY WILL, EASILY, AGAIN.

If we could also include to avoid: "Our government never did that" and "Our government COULDN'T do that*" It would be much appreciated.

During #JFK: They wanted to do a #falseflag, and blame it on #Cuba. During #Nixon: Crack to the blacks.

In the 70s, the #CIA OPENLY admitted they had a gun with a dissolving bullet that could cause an undetectable, natural looking heart attack. NOW, they have radar dishes they can point at people to give them execrating pain, making them nearly immobile.

We started with a genocide to fund the #usa, had slavery for far too long, made concentration camps for Japanese-Americans during #WW2 where we stole BILLIONS from their houses and assets, and today? Today we have the largest #prison#slave population in human history; yes, more than when we actually had legalized slavery. The biggest military EVER, which, historically, has killed more than any other military with new age weapons. Yeah-can't deny the whole white phosphorus, regular ole bombs, and of course, NUCLEAR WEAPONS. What's ironic? Japan actually hates us more for the firebombs we used on them (more suffering instead of instant death). Didn't know about the #firebombs? MOST DON'T.

And then we get to 9/11. Ya know. When our government shut down all airports, but let a FEW special planes go out of #Florida just after it happened, containing some very unique individuals (proven). Or how about how not 1, not 2, but 3 buildings fell down perfectly straight, which is basically impossible from being hit on ONE side. Oh, and the 3rd building, building 7, which contained a lot of classified government documents was never HIT by anything!? Or how JUST before all this happened, the pentagon announced (not for the first OR last time**) they lost trillions of dollars, and had no idea where it went? OR how the guy who owned the #twintowers insured them for terrorist attacks just months before it happened?

Finally, today....where our #DEMOCRATIC president, brain dead #biden, is openly funneling guns, weapons, and worse to a terrorist colonizing state called #israel, against a nearly completely defenseless people in #Palestine? A #genocide, in real time, for MONTHS now, funded by our government. They're trying to pass another funding bill of billions as I type. Over 12k children killed in cold blood. MULTIPLE RAPES have been proven done by the israelis. You literally can not imagine a worse thing to happen due to a government (outside adding cannibalism).

SO PLEASE, never fucking god damn say again "Our government would never do that" when they have done it EVERY-FUCKING-TIME! <Forgot to mention the experimentation on their own citizens. That's a whole other post!>

Because when you live in an #oligarchy, you got to assume the rich in control will do ANYTHING IMAGINABLE AND UNIMAGINABLE to maintain their wealth and power. Historically, they always fucking do. WAKE UP!

*The technology they hold back and use against us may not come out to the public for DECADES. We have proven weather modification is real AND works. Not a debate. And Direct Energy Weapons (DEW) have been documented to being real just recently...You really think they can monitor, categorize, AND filter ALL THE DATA we say and do without AI? No. And they've been doing that for HOW long? Over 20 years? And when did we get access to AI? Side note-pentagon RIGHT NOW strong arming their way thru congress, trying to force them to allow the military to turn on AI's capabilities to choose what it kills. So that's...#terminator fun.

**The #pentagon, aka, the military, losing money has been a tried and true method of filtering money to the bad guys. It's kinda like how Tony Stark found out he was arming terrorists in Iron Man. You forget we helped for Al-Qaeda and #Isis? WE DID. Osama Bin Laden was a CIA asset! Why? To fuck with everyone in the Middle East all the way to Russia. Look it up if you didn't know.

<When we do physical or mental labor for taxes to be taken away, they usually go to murder. When you do your job, your taxes pay mostly for the rich to get richer and murder. Nothing else. If I'm wrong, look outside at how great it is, how free everyone is, and all the happy smiles. We allowed this to happen. We can create something better without them. What's the harm in trying? It can't get worse, sadly. But at the same time, inspiringly: we can only go up from here. :)>

No war but the class war.

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Donald Trump, in response to a question during a 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden, insisted that he closed down his bank account in China before his first campaign. But six years’ worth of Trump’s tax records, released Friday, reveal that wasn’t true.

“[I] had an account open, and I closed it,” Trump said with some irritation to moderator Kristen Welker, NBC White House correspondent, in the final debate of the campaign in October 2020. “I closed it before I even ran for President, let alone became President.”

Rep.-elect Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.), who served as the Democrats’ lead counsel in the first impeachment inquiry into Trump, noted that the former President had bank accounts in China until 2018, from 2015 to 2017, according to his tax records.

“Generally, you only have bank accounts in a foreign country if you are doing transactions in that country’s currency,” Goldman tweeted Friday. “What business was Trump doing in China while he was President?”

Trump, who had accounts in a number of countries and collected income from more than a dozen foreign nations while in office, paid more in taxes in 2020 to the Chinese government than he did in American federal income tax that year, his returns revealed.

Trump also lied a month earlier to then-Fox News commentator Chris Wallace, who pointedly asked him during the first presidential debate in 2020 if he’d paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, as The New York Times had reported (which Trump immediately blasted as “fake news”).

Trump angrily responded — twice — that he had paid “millions of dollars.” His returns revealed that indeed he had paid just $750 in federal income taxes in each of those years. Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income tax in 2020, the last full year he was in office, according to the tax records.

In addition, Trump did not annually donate his $400,000 presidential salary to charity, as he has claimed. He declared no charitable contributions of any kind on his 2020 returns.

Among the early revelations emerging in Trump’s tax records, some of the most troubling involve his financial entanglements abroad while he was President, “highlighting a string of potential conflicts of interest,” Politico noted.

Trump had multiple bank accounts in a number of foreign countries, and collected millions of dollars in income from more than a dozen nations ― including Panama, the Philippines (whose onetime dictator, former President Rodrigo Duterte, he has praised) and the United Arab Emirates during the Trump administration.

While presidents routinely place assets in blind trusts while they’re in office, Trump’s eldest sons continued to openly operate the Trump Organization and forged deals around the world with nations affected by the Trump administration’s policies and expenditures.

Trump’s returns reveal hefty financial losses in the two years before he became President, some of which he carried forward to reduce tax bills.

Trump enjoyed an adjusted gross income of $15.8 million during his first three years in office. He paid $642,000 in federal income tax in 2015, $750 in 2016 and in 2017, just under $1 million in 2018, $133,000 in 2019 and nothing in 2020.