mozz

They allowed Israeli banks to let them buy food and housing and a couple other things with their money. Before that, their domestic Israeli accounts were frozen completely, which I didn't even know was possible.

Smotrich actually specifically used the word "lifted" when he described what hasn't happened yet that he wants to have happen in the future.

I'm not sure why we're arguing about this -- it sounds like we're in agreement that anything Biden is doing in regards to Gaza is catastrophically undone by the fact that he's still arming Israel and providing diplomatic cover for them. Everything else is just hemming and hawing around that main point, yes.

Actually this is worth delving into a little bit.

This pattern is called Never Play Defense -- MotoAsh is throwing out repeated accusations and shifting the frame of the discussion so that anything I say to demonstrate that any given one of them isn't accurate just gets a response that's some new line of attack. It's a way to take a tremendously weak or specious argument (in this case, the idea that Biden's bad for labor) and make it look like a serious contender in the arena of ideas.

So take a look at what's happened:

• I highlight the shills who keep up a drumbeat of how bad Biden is for labor

• MotoAsh insults me and implies that Biden isn't responsible for what the NLRB is doing and that the idea he might have is stupid (sort of related to my point)
• I point out some citations for specifically why the current NLRB's actions are a direct result of what he did (outside the norms of a usual US president)

• MotoAsh ignores the point, and shifts the framing to say that anything that's good progress is worthless unless Biden singlehandedly gets us to a point above where we were after however-many years of backwards. That (1) isn't how it works, and (2) has nothing to do with my refutation of what he was saying.
• I disagree

• MotoAsh decides to shift away from anything factual at all and purely to accusing me of being a shill for Biden.

So at that point I have a choice. I can respond to the new accusation, or I can stick with the old point that I was making before the framing shifted, or I can just respond in kind to the personal insults. All three of these are bad responses. The video lays it out in a little more detail, but basically, we're now on the fourth iteration of a new thing to talk about, and just responding factually can actually make a winning argument look like it's "losing" because of the flow of conversation. A lot of times people who use this style are happy to continue it forever, because they know they're getting their points across and into the mainstream. For as dishonest an approach as it is, it's actually really effective.

Tell you what, MotoAsh: Usually with this kind of thing I like to just ignore the bad faith claims after a certain point and calmly lay out my own talking points for people to read, with the factual citations of why they are accurate. But if you want a real response, then sure. Lay out exactly what you're saying in full. I can tell you what you're wrong about with some citations, and we can call it a day. How's that sound?

(I somewhat anticipate they won't want to do that, which is fine from my side too.)

I love how you fools view him undoing a direct attack as a step forward.

Is this some of that 4d chess I was hearing about, where undoing a direct attack is a step northwest or something?

TIL Biden invented the NLRB

Actually this is a common misconception -- the NLRB dates back to 1935. Biden was negative seven years old then; he had nothing to do with it.

In fact, he took the fairly unusual step of firing Peter Robb who Trump had put in charge of it, which was widely viewed as yet another in his string of horrifying union busting, since Robb had brought in his strong credentials of classifying Uber drivers as contractors instead of employees, and helping with Reagan's absolutely historic breaking of the air traffic controller's strike, which ushered in a whole new era of labor relations which has blessed us with the new economic landscape we've been in ever since the 80s.

Absolutely normal stuff for the NLRB and yet another example of how all these corporatized candidates are all exactly the same, and too bad we got Biden who started undoing all of it. I was hoping for Jo Jorgenson.

He put restrictions on settlers using violence of any kind, not just those using US arms to do it.

It's pretty weak sauce TBH. As the one commentator noted in the article, the impact on the ground is a little limited, and he has a bunch of other things he could be doing instead -- like, for example, not sending them more weapons by the hundreds of millions, as a start.

But I was assured by Lemmy commenters that the Biden administration was rabidly anti-labor

They felt super strongly about it and kept talking as if it was widely acknowledged

In the modern day, it’s usually not that we’re just mad at them for being socialist; the days of pointless bloodshed like Vietnam and Cuba belong to a time several generations ago. Ever since the 1980s, it’s usually been just that they have something we want, and socialism doesn’t enter into that equation as much. We’re just as comfortable coup-ing Honduras as we are invading Afghanistan, but not for reasons of ideology. We just want their stuff.

Check out “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man” for an in depth look at exactly how fucked and criminal the entire system is.

What the shit is this

The total budget is $7.2 trillion, "defense" spending is $850 billion (the summary's on page 136). Unless I'm missing something both of the numbers in the meme appear to be just made up. Here's an infographic that's a couple years out of date but a lot easier to make sense of.

The US spends an absolutely insane amount on its military, but it also spends an insane amount on lots of other stuff. The really obscene thing that's making it hard to fund needed programs is (1) corrupt congresspeople simply deciding not to fund them and (2) simply not taxing people who are making millions or billions of dollars (see also #1).

Just for him though. For others he loves consequences; exclude or browbeat them or or firebomb their office or slam them on the pavement and arrest them. Whatever.

Dude they just kept $10 billion worth of civilian airplanes, like the shady employee who goes in the freezer every day and just makes himself food, scaled up to a whole nation state. I think the stealing Western stuff when they can get their hands on it gloves are off at this point.

His desire is not to say what he wants. His desire is for no one to be allowed to disagree with him when he does.