Recent Comments

1. about 13 hours ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   He’s the second richest man in the world. If he wants to polish coprolite and make a shiny new 4chan, he could do it out of his own pocket for the rest of his natural life

2. about 22 hours ago on Nick Anderson

   Musk said “advertiser blackmail” was going to drive X into bankruptcy. He’s the second wealthiest man in the world. Mr “Free Speech champion” could run this as a loss leader for decades if he really believed in it.

   But he’s really just trying to polish the coprolite with his re-warmed 4chan

3. about 22 hours ago on Matt Davies

   A bit over 3 years younger than Biden but in demonstrably worse shape

4. about 22 hours ago on Tom the Dancing Bug

   And Musk has alternately sued advertisers for leaving and Media Matters for posting actual screenshots of the app in use

5. 2 days ago on Jeff Danziger

   Israel always loses the high ground from Hamas attacks by regularly killing 10X the civilians Hamas does. The fact that Hamas does it on purpose and is premeditated while Israel is less discriminating is drowned out by the scale.

   Israel pays about as much attention to the rules of war as they think they need to, which is generally not enough.

   And while Israel may be technically correct that a Hamas leader hiding in a civilian refugee camp is a war crime, Israel was the one dropping the bomb; they can’t completely wash their hands of killing 300 civilians to get one guy

6. 2 days ago on Nick Anderson

   It started as a Gingrich/Heritage Foundation idea. They thought the individual mandate was constitution then. It got diluted with all the compromises to the gop – who then voted against it anyway. And then the gop has tried every trick in the book to subvert it.

7. 2 days ago on Nick Anderson

   The ACA started as a Gingrich/Hertiage Foundation idea – until Obama said “Okay, let’s give it a go!” Then they were against it

8. 4 days ago on Jeff Danziger

   I read some articles from the late 1990s where they quoted “Unnamed Mossad sources” as saying the post-Oslo period was Israel’s most peaceful, because Arafat was doing all Israel’s work for them. Arafat was arresting agitators, squashing Hamas-like attack plans, etc – all in expectation that Israel would follow through on their Oslo obligations.

   Then Rabin got assassinated and Bibi took power. Bibi kept saying “Do this one more thing, then we’ll talk” for years, so Arafat was doing more and more with nothing to show for it.

   In that brief period where Ehud Barack briefly was prime minister, he and Bill Clinton said “Look, we can give you 85% of what you were promised in Oslo but that’s as high as we can go.” Arafat said “I’ve been going out on a limb for almost a decade for this; I can’t go back with less than Oslo.”

   Every Likud administration since has been more and more clear that not only were they never going to follow through with Oslo, they were going to actively do the opposite.

9. 4 days ago on Jeff Danziger

   From 1948 up through the 1980s, I’d say you’re right – that motivation applied to pretty much the entire Arab world. Since then, though, they’ve been less and less interested in even the PR aspect of it – unless there is something like the current situation whipping up the streets.

   In other words, unless there’s massive bombing in Gaza, all the Arab countries are happy letting the “Palestinian situation” lie whereever it is at the moment.

   That’s what gives Hamas leverage – they know whenever they attack, Israel is going to respond at least 10X and make them sympathetic to the Arab street, at least for a while.

   The cap on that sympathy is that none of the Arab countries want either to a) declare total war on Israel again or b) take in Palestinian refugees.

10. 4 days ago on Jeff Danziger

    I’d say it’s more that the neighbors have never really paid anything more than lip service to the “Palestinian cause”. None wanted large blocks of refugees upending their delicate local political balances, and after Israel destroyed the whole country of Lebanon, nobody wanted a large block of agitators looking to instigate a war in their country.

    Outside of Iran, the rest have been quite willing to let the situation fester. And it’s Bibi who has spent most of his political career undermining the concept of a 2 state solution and fostering a burning hatred of Israel.