‘This is outrageous,’ said the spokesperson from Meta. ‘Spying and tracking and manipulating domestic politics is something private industry does, not some creepy foreign agency.’

They are CONCENTRATING Palestinians into a CAMP for “humanitarian” reasons folks. It’s almost like Israel’s language is GHETTOing ridiculous.

Imagine having the power to just stop this, and not doing it. That’s Joe Biden folks.

Gen X here to report that it doesn’t get better with age.

RFK Jr always looks like the superhero movie character that the bad guy just injected with the evil potion that is starting to metamorph him into some kind of reptilian cockroach creature. He looks so gross all the time, like this own physiology is disgusted by his psyche and slowly eating itself alive from the inside out to spare the rest of us from his awfulness.

How about reigning in Israel and not, like, genociding. That would be nice.

Joe Biden is a fucking monster. He and his State Department toadies are criminally liable for the atrocities they are perpetrating. Furthermore, Harris owns ALL this now that she pulled the mask off at her DNC coming out speech. Don’t come at me pointing at the hollow, uninspired gestures she made to humanity in her speech. She made it very very clear that she’s fully locked in to both excusing and fueling the genocide of Palestinians just like her beloved mentor.

Spot on. All the excitement of Biden dropping and Harris making some savvy choices (like Walz) got me timidly peeking out from the cocoon of cynicism I’ve build up from decades of incompetent and evil leadership. Then Harris welt full tilt Palpatine/DNC pandering campaign cop and all that good will and energy just evaporated. In addition to shying away from all this vaunted joy-infused leadership-ness I heard Democrats crow about for four days, she’s hurting her electability with yet another Democratic shift to the right. And, if we’re lucky enough to get her in, and finally boot the orange shitgibbon to the curb, we have every reason to believe she will run yet another, timid, milquetoast administration that continues to Overton window us further toward Republican-style fascism.

I desperately hate the Democratic Party for being such a comprehensively ineffective opposition to creeping fascism. She had a chance to demonstrate real leadership here, but chose DC campaign consultant maneuvering instead. Such a deep let down.

Also, what “promise” are we upholding with regard to Israel? Did we promise to help genocide Palestinians? If so, fuck our our promises and any leaders, candidates or constituents who advocate it.

Did you miss the part where dangling the prospect of a 2 state solution has been used as stalling tactic by Israel and the US for about 30 years at this point? Did you miss the part where Israel is not actually participating in negotiations, as evidenced by the fact that they assassinated the main Hamas guy that was involved with negotiations? Do you actually think that Harris, or Biden, or the DNC are not aware of these things and just might be banking on a general ignorance about the history of this region to avoid being held accountable? These are not new positions. People who have been paying attention have been hearing the same sentiments for decades with no progress. It’s almost like the leaders expressing this stuff are lying and distracting and gaslighting.

Why would you take anything that she is saying at face value? The Biden administration has been delaying action for almost a year now, by saying the same things that Harris is now saying.

“She will plot a path” - This sound a lot like ‘I have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam’. Why should I believe that? She has offered nothing but slightly more warm and fuzzy platitudes than what Biden himself has expressed.

She had a chance to show leadership in this moment, and she did the opposite. Listen, I’m glad she’s not a fascist like here opponent, but that doesn’t excuse what she presented last night. If we don’t hold our leaders to higher standards, we will never actually accomplish anything real. I’m glad that a Harris win means we get a reprieve from US fascism for at least another four years, but based on her presentation, we’re going to get more of the same middling, ineffective, mealymouthed , insecure Democratic Party leadership that characterized the last two Democratic administrations. Given the opportunity in this moment, that is a tragic mistake.

This description of what she said last night is undeservedly charitable. There was a tone shift about half way through, where all the joyful, salt of the earth family shit shifted into Emperor Palpatine territory. It happens right around when she invoked the word “lethal”. I heard nothing, absolutely nothing, to indicate that her administration will veer in any way from Biden’s actively genocidal policies. There were platitudes about Palestinians, but honestly she deserves no benefit of the doubt on this given how vague she is being and what has occurred this last year. It’s ironic that DO SOMETHING was a theme for her since she communicated that she’s not really doing much but supporting Israel and providing cover for their atrocities all while wrapping herself in a fuzzy veneer of joyful neighborliness.

As a whole, the speech was incredibly disheartening and has evaporated any active excitement I had for her campaign. It sounds like her plan is to GO BACK to to triangulation strategies that made both the Clinton and Obama administrations so middling and ineffective. I thought we might be on the precipice of an actual change in Democratic politics, but I guess that was fanciful hope.

Having now heard her speech, I wouldn’t waste too much time on that hope you expressed.

All of the celebrating about inclusiveness and railing against Republican bigotry starts to ring hollow when you realize that the DNC stance on Gaza is basically rooted in racism. You cannot take credit for fighting racism if you’re perpetuating it against this one small group. Harris hasn’t spoken yet, so I’ll give her a chance, but she needs to demonstrate the forceful leadership all these speakers have been celebrating for the past three days. If she capitulates to the party on this, she’ll be teeing up the same sort of ineffective administration that Obama’s turned out to be. That’s not good enough.

It’s interesting to me that I keep running into some version of the following argument: Yeah, Obama kinda sucked as president, but he had a heart of gold and there have been worse, so we should celebrate him! If you keep holding these people to such low standards, you’re going to keep getting such mediocre leaders.

By oligarch, I am referring to a small, exclusive group of rulers that hoard power.

I have already said that their ‘sincerity’ is irrelevant to my point and a useless way to assess people like this.

To address the specific examples I raised:

Providing legal cover to white collar criminals protects the ruling class that Obama served as president.

Crafting the legal framework to indiscriminately kill civilians protects the enforcement mechanism that the ruling class needs to project power.

Failing to defend an open Supreme Court seat opened the door to removing rights to bodily autonomy and moved us closer to a theocratic autocracy.

Celebrating a strategy of rhetorical weakness against racists and fascist, made it easier for them to win the White House in 2016.

Do you have anything to support your assertions, or was this just some pedantic, contrarian troll posting?

Harris needs to get in front of this situation in a hurry. The feel-good ‘we might actually avoid dictatorship’ circle jerk isn’t going to carry her campaign all the way to November. And it certainly isn’t going to protect her new administration from ‘genocide Jane’ accusations until she demonstrates a meaningful shift in policy. The supposed tone shift has already lost its salience. I’m as happy as anyone to support her and finally put the boot to trump’s fascist aspirations, but I’m not going to tolerate Biden’s genocidal policies dressed up with “joy”. There should be no honeymoon on this.

I went and looked up definitions of ‘oligarch’ to make sure I didn’t misspeak. Nearly everything I found lines up perfectly with the point I was expressing.

Your focus on motivations isn’t a useful way to evaluate figures like the Obamas. It doesn’t matter what’s in their hearts, only their actions. What difference do their beliefs make, if their actions are harmful?

Obama’s entire administration was filled to the brim with actions and inactions that had the effect of protecting and preserving entrenched power structures. Here’s several examples:

Obama chose to let the individuals and organizations directly responsible for the 2008 economic collapse to avoid criminal accountability. Obama massively increased the use of lethal unmanned drones and instituted a policy of retroactively classifying civilians killed by them as combatants because of those individuals proximity to the resulting explosions. Obama sacrificed the Supreme Court seat that would lead to Roe’s overturning by choosing to not challenge McConnell’s unprecedented months long stalling. Michelle Obama’s misguided “when they go low, we go high” sentiment perfectly characterized the ineffective, elitist political strategy that enabled trump to win in ‘16. I can go on and on with examples.

The Obama’s were right on point by Obama standards. They delivered extremely well crafted rousing speeches, positively dripping with charisma in a way that almost papers over how shallow their sentiments are. The thing I dislike about the Obamas more than anything, is that they are determined to channel a tremendous amount of talent and good will toward preserving the entrenched power structure that is ultimately the main thing that’s rotting out this country. They are feel-good oligarchs.

I’m going to start calling it the ‘camera tumor’. Thanks for that.

Don’t forget that Donahue was fired from MSNBC in 2003 for providing critical coverage of the US invasion of Iraq.