What a credulous piece of reporting. No mention of Tea Party being a Koch-seeded astroturf, no mention it was animated by racist hostility to Obama and black people and immigrants in general, no mention of its contempt for women. Complete doofus brain shit nytimes.com/2019/08/28/us/…
Except the Tea Party got EXACTLY what it wanted because it’s nominal opposition to deficits was a PR cover for standard anti-poor partisan GOP politics. The net result of 2010 takeover was gerrymandering, anti-abortion laws, anti-environmentalism, taking healthcare from millions.
“Tea Party failed because deficits are high” is supposed to be some cool liberal gotcha but it glosses over how astroturfed and phony the whole thing was.
NYT has incentive to keep buying the transparently bogus line the Tea Party cared about deficits b/c their reporting in 2009 ate it up. They didn’t spot a Bircherism Koch job at the time and think it best to simply ignore it now and view it all as organic “populist” uprising.
Imagine in the year of lord 2019 still thinking a bunch of foaming lifelong republicans—virtually all of whom now back tax cut and spend happy Trump—were animated not by the election of the first black president but a sudden, genuine and race-blind concern with “deficits”.
In Dec 2017—of the 30 remaining representatives who composed the initial 2010 Tea Party caucus—every single one of them voted for Trump’s deficit-bloating tax cuts. They never cared about deficits and we have proof because they voted that way for 9 years. docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u…
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The Economist and Bloomberg also called the downing of fighter jets an “escalation” by Iran. Everyone knows you’re supposed to just let invading militaries bomb your universities and girls’ schools and apartment buildings and that shooting back is an act of unhinged aggression.
If you’re invaded, 1000s of your people are killed, your infrastructure destroyed and your leadership is wiped out in a sneak attack, anything short of you doing this to the enemy in response cannot, by definition, be an “escalation”. Thats how language works, that how words work
Last I checked Iran has done exactly zero of these things to the US so they have not come remotely close to “escalating.” Being Modestly Successful At Fighting Back is not an “escalation.”
A very strange article that makes repeated references to an “Iranian nuclear weapons program” that US intelligence has repeatedly said doesn’t exist. He was sabotaging and threatening *civilian* nuclear scientists but this somehow becomes “stopping Iran from getting the bomb”
Again, US intelligence has repeated time and time again since 2003 that Iran has neither the desire to build a nuclear bomb nor do they have an active program to do so. A fact strangely omitted from this piece of rank propaganda
If New Yorker editors have access to some unique intel that Iran had or has a “nuclear weapons program” they should share it with the CIA, ODNI, NSA, DIA, NRO, NGA, and military intelligence who have repeatedly disagreed with this conclusion for 20+ years
No Kings is planning 3000-events on 3/28 and its 1700-word press release makes zero mention of Iran, only opaque mentions of “illegal wars” (which ones?) I like many of the orgs involved but what’s the utility of these generic “anti-authoritarian” word salads at this moment
Given how much Trump’s attack on Iran is rapidly escalating and the stakes involved, it seems now would be a good time for No Kings and Indivisible to marshal their tremendous resources and hold an actual antiwar march with clear demands, not more partisan pep rallies.
Perhaps they could, at least, mention the country the US is poising to invade with ground troops by name idk. This may offend some of indivisible’s donors who also fund Zionist organizations but it would let them capture the profound antiwar sentiment rn, esp among democrats.
more brainless stenography from the paper of record. Is anyone at NYT interested in doing any actual journalism or just running through a list of "officials says" and wholesale embracing the US govts line? lets break down the problems with the latest copy and paste job from NYT🧵
(1) The piece heavily implies that Venezuela's oil is under sanctions from "The US and other countries". It is not, it is only under sanctions from the US.
(2) we've now moved from scare quotes to the NYT just using the term "ghost tankers" This is a meaningless propaganda term
Why are they "ghosts"? Could it be because one country (the US) is stealing their oil? And they'd like them to not do that? Is anyone at the NYT interested in asking if these ships are hiding their location because the US is hijacking them rather than the current narrative...
It’s correct that Israel doesnt want Hamas out of power in a formal sense, they want them totally disarmed which is to say they want everyone in Gaza disarmed so they can use an IDF solider getting a paper cut as a pretext to finish the job against a wholly defenseless population
This is why, despite half of Palestinians disapproving of Hamas according to most polls, 70% reject Hamas disarmament because (1) they know in effect Israel means a disarmament of everyone not on their payroll and (2) they’re be nothing standing between them an total annihilation
This is why this “external” security force plan keeps hitting “roadblocks” because its based on a fundamental distortion of Israel’s goals. Israel doesnt want Palestinian autonomy—Hamas or no Hamas—they want to staff out occupation/depopulation plans to the US and its Arab allies
There’s a frog in boiling water element to this too. On polymarket you can bet on whether Gaza will be ethnically cleansed. On Kalshi you can bet on whether they’ll be famine in Gaza (that one paid out for ‘yes’ btw) This is objectively depraved and should not be legal but 1/2
it is not only legal but totally normalized and never commented on by anyone in our media. CNN, by partnering with Kalshi, is going to be “reporting on the news” now while offering the chance to wager on these events. On mass death, starvation, dispossession and genocide. 2/2
The fate of victims of an ongoing genocide—a genocide often supported and backed by the same investors and executives of these gambling apps—are just another chip on a roulette table. The total dehumanization of the billions of NPCs they wager on and fleece is complete and total.