The US will begin air dropping food aid to the people of Gaza, President Joe Biden announced on Friday, as the humanitarian crisis deepens and Israel continues to resist opening additional land crossings to allow more assistance into the war-torn strip.
Speaking in the Oval Office, Biden said the US would be “pulling out every stop” to get additional aid into Gaza, which has been under heavy bombardment by Israel since the October 7 Hamas terror attacks.
“Aid flowing to Gaza is nowhere nearly enough,” the US President said, noting “hundreds of trucks” should be entering the enclave.
Biden said the US is “going to insist that Israel facilitate more trucks and more routes to get more and more people the help they need, no excuses”.
He also noted the efforts to broker a deal to free the hostages and secure an “immediate ceasefire” that would allow additional aid in.
He had to. He should have done it months ago tbh.
The mowing down of 700 people and killing 100 who were trying to get food and water is the last straw. Bibi is toast now. You’ll see a speech in the Knesset soon calling for his ouster and an end to the veto coverage Israel had in the UN.
Pretty sure the government has been trying to talk Israel down since things got way out of scope in November. But Bibi wants blood.
Bibi is now Hitler Lite in my opinion. The number of deaths aren’t quite there or the level of cruelty, but the intent and mindset is exactly the same and he could easily get to that cruelty and deathcount if not stopped.
I don’t think there are enough Palestinians on the planet to hit the body count of the holocaust… but that doesn’t mean that Israel’s actions are a lesser evil. Genocide is genocide
Yeah which is why they said the scale is different. They’re talking about the mindset because let’s face it, Israel wants to turn Gaza into Lebensraum. They’ve been pretty clear about that.
That’s exactly what it means, what? Must be cool to live on an island unto yourself. In the real world choices have consequences though.
The amount of children being killed in Gaza every day matches that of a big concentration camp at the peak of the Holocaust.
Don’t call him Bibi. He deserves no cute nicknames which downplay these atrocities.
Pretty sure the government has been trying to talk Israel down since things got way out of scope in November.
Wrong, government backed israel and provided them military aid and weapons.
What world do you live in lol. They had Bidens support since 1970. Pelosi too. They were completely on board until like yesterday, due to pressure from the voter base.
How the hell are you being downvoted? This is objectively true.
Talking him down while sending more weapons in violation of US law?
He could have done this in October.
Is it too little too late to save his presidential run?
We’ll see. He has to get the ceasefire first.
(There was another time Israel bombed and aid convoy (waiting till the aid was in a position to be destroyed), back in October, so its not like the first time they’ve done this even in this conflict.)
Honestly if he stops this mess now he should get enough lesser evil votes. Gotta also revert his position on the border and other things, but he still has time to save his campaign.
Or he could do what most of the county wants, and give us meaningful change. That’s what has been drawing voters since Obama, that’s why Trump won in the first place - Hillary is the status quo incarnate
But we’ve been strung along for way too long, he needs to take a stand and make some enemies
I mean yeah but if he was going to do that he wouldn’t be Genocide Joe “nothing will fundamentally change” Biden.
His actually al strategy right now is just so fucking stupid.
It’s like he thinks he’s going to appeal to voters by taking in Trump’s policies.
He’s got no read on the country ATM.
He had to. He should have done it months ago tbh.
The plan was to do it after gaza has been destroyed
Congratulations “Uncommitted” voters and other protesters, it looks like you are at least part of making Biden’s “blank check” support of Israel too politically expensive to continue. It will be interesting to see how this plays out as Biden tries to balance actions around an angry electorate vs. pro-Israel factions and money (which non-profit watchdog Open Secrets says he’s the largest recipient of). Especially with the unofficial cease-fire deadline of Ramadan only 10 days away which is expected to be the launch of an Israeli offensive in Rafah barring a temporary cease-fire agreement. I say temporary because Netanyahu is cited in that article as saying, “If we have a deal, it will be delayed somewhat, but it will happen. If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway”.
I hope this “no excuses” change in tone will yield meaningful results and most importantly relief for the civilians in Gaza.
I feel like it was that gunning down incident with the humanitarian aid that ultimately tipped the scales.
I know I’ve been going on defense for Israel a lot recently, but I am kinda playing messenger boy as a neutral for being both here and some pro-Israel groups. The Michigan vote didn’t really phase them, that incident did. Seen them even sharing more info about how ridiculously strict Bibi is with aid in general.
I think the Michigan vote and subsequent media coverage was meaningful, but I agree there’s no denying the shooting had a big impact. Thank you for adding that perspective. My guess is having both happen so close to each other increased the total effect. Regardless, it’s going to be an important 10 days coming up.
Realistically it’s probably both in some sort of confluence, the campaign hears the uncommitted vote news and then the massacre happens and they see it as an opportunity to about face without making it look like they are back tracking previous moves. It’s cynical as hell but I think it’s probably likely
Nah israel did shootings like that every week. Biden doesn’t care about brown people dying. I’d argue that the hospital massacre israel committed was far worse optically
Michigan did this. All the people that refused to bend the knee and vote for Biden in December if he continues the Genocide.
And Aaron Bushnell. His sacrifice was a huge turning point.
You’d think that, but humans can be weird with what actually causes introspection.
The hospital thing they just took the official line for. They actually mocked Aaron, or were actually grateful he took his own life thinking he was a disturbed individual.
Edit: If you want to understand the logic: they’re willing to turn a blind eye if they can “both sides” incidents so they can simply keep their position of “Israel has a right to defend itself, regardless if they’re not saints about it”.
The humanitarian aid story is getting them because Bibi won’t even let them do that! Hence why I mentioned the story sharing, since they know Bibi had made it clear he wants to starve Palestinians.
Oh it’s absolutely from the mass shooting and terror incident at the humanitarian aid delivery.
The optics on that are awful and being repressed pretty hard since there really ain’t going to be a good look for that.
“The IDF soldiers were scared” oh grow up.
But Biden was insistent that he was heading towards a cease fire that probably got massively pushed back because of that incident crushing even more of the little remaining trust in Israel by citizens of Palestine.
Air dropping food in away from soldiers makes it so it’s an obvious sign that it’s not a trap from IDF shows they understand there is starvation and tries to claw back the trust at least in the US of being helpful. Probably expect a lot more aid and some heavy pushing from the US to look trustworthy to start talks through.
This is what pisses me off about “moderates”. All they give a damn about is optics and winning the next election. The rest of us understand that the only power we have is our vote, and if we don’t use that power to its full extent, which means threatening to withhold it, we’ll never get any concession from any politician.
The rest of you are quite literally shills who simply don’t give a shit about what’s happening in Palestine. You just do what you’re told to and act like that makes you a good person. You weren’t even willing to do the bare minimum of using your voice, because you dummy actually care.
You must be some Russian/MAGA spam bot!! How dare you encourage them to just hand over the election to trump!
/s
I know you’re making a joke, but it really is a crazy year to be an American voter. I laughed at Bill Burr’s take in December when he said (among other funny things) “I want someone in their 40’s. Someone who is going to have to live with their decisions”. I’m biased though because I’ve enjoyed Bill’s brutal comedy for years.
Trump would be a disaster in all respects, so I guess that decides things. Biden’s domestic policies don’t feature destroying checks and balances on power and revenge/witch hunts as key features. Democracy is supposed to be rule of the people via elected officials who genuinely represent them, so I’m happy to see the beginnings of a change in tone at least (and I dearly hope policy) from Biden. I’m definitely not cheering for another 2016.
Man that audio/video of Bibi saying genocide would continue and they were gonna level Gaza because the American people have given them a blank check and full support …yea …that was everything I expected from that fascist.
And as fascists (and corporatists; tho any difference is arguable) always do, he said the quiet part out loud, insinusting Israel’s stretched past their compacity while invigorating the anti-genocide (which I would hope is all of us, but clearly isn’t. I don’t see how a moral person rationalizes killing 20000 children) center/left to bolder action against Biden.
The news getting out of Bibi’s forces beating down the Orthodox in Jerusalem for protesting is indicative of a few things, mainly that dissent at home is greater than his propaganda machine can keep the lid on. His propaganda machine has been busch league, AT BEST. Obviously lying with AI generated photos. Idk about you, but I can’t believe a single thing that comes out of a zionists mouth. If the world didn’t stop their aggression, I think we all know full well they would’ve killed every single Palestinian down to the last.
Zionist has become as negative a word to me as Nazi. The only difference being pro-jew or anti-jew. I spit at them both.
Wait what? Can you link to this video?
Yes, please give us the video link. B.N. and members of his government have said home very bad things, but I’ve not heard that quote. We would join your sentiment if you could be more factual.
Unfortunately it’s been a few days so I’m not sure we’re going to get it. I looked but couldn’t find any quote like this. I suspect this is a distorted version of something he did say but without knowing his exact words I would take the above comment with a large grain of salt.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Now tell your UN ambassador to reverse the veto in the security council so UN troops can actually do something about this.
Never going to happen. ✅
It’s in Netanyahu’s interest to drag this out until November and do everything he can to make Biden lose to Trump. After that, all he has to do is mention the chonky fascist’s “big manly hands” and he gets to do all the genocide he wants while continuing to keep his corrupt ass out of jail.
Biden needs to wake the fuck up.
Trump will offer Netanyahu the full services of the 6th fleet within days of taking office.
Just had to wait for there to be 30,000 Palestinian deaths first.
9/11 had 2,996 deaths for a little bit of context. Just imagine what would be happening right now if there were 30,000 dead Americans.
America has 9/11s of covid deaths monthly, long after Biden “ended covid” with Trump’s strategy of “just stop reporting the numbers”. That’s what our journalists also do with all of the people murdered by Israel. Keep them out of sight, out of mind.
To be fair, it is medically hard to determine whether elderly people die with covid or from it.
I’m sure that it is, but it’s not just elderly dying, plenty of kids and their parents are suffering. I just read a NPR puff piece about a landlord who finally got their investment property ‘back’ by evicting their tenant… a recently widowed healthcare worker with a child. It’s almost like we shouldn’t be trying to just return to ‘normal’ with an uncontrolled pandemic raging.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point. I’m not saying it’s not a serious illness but I am saying it’s very far from “an uncontrolled pandemic” and saying it is is hyperbolic to the point of disregarding any other point you made.
As many people die from covid as do from influenza or RSV at this point.
I understand you don’t feel affected by covid anymore, but you’re incredibly wrong.
CDC estimates for influenza deaths in the 2022-2023 flu season: 21,000
CDC cumulative covid deaths from Sep 9, 2023 minus Oct 1, 2022: 84,560
Honestly, I’m not seeing a death count for RSV, but based on this RSV Burden Estimates, it’s at most: 10,300 per year.
And this is all shown pretty well in the Trends in Viral Respiratory Deaths in the United States graph.
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Not denying covid is more deadly than influenza or RSV, but you still have to account for the fact that covid might kill an old person that would otherwise die to influenza in a month or two (or something else, they are old and their bodies are degrading inevitably). That is why sustained increased death rates in corrolation to covid numbers is a better qualifier for the argument that we have to take precautions to limit people dying. I have been of the understanding that after the major initial waves, death rates are not higher than usual and hence unsustained.
Even if I ignore you moving the goalposts, would you really look at a graph like this
that’s a few years out of date and assume the total deaths settled back down into the old pattern?
I’m not finding a more up-to-date data source for deaths per month, but it’s not like you’re providing any kind of data that covid isn’t still killing a lot of extra people per year.
We’ve given up on all testing, masking, vaccination and even quarantining at this point. 9/11s of people are dying monthly from all manner of respiratory diseases (after getting wrecked by covid). What exactly would uncontrolled look like to you then?
Uncontrolled would be the very start of the pandemic, with neither masking nor immune people. It’s not a wildfire any more, not even in the US with their proclivity to shoot themselves in the foot. It’s better controlled than influenza simply because more people got shots against it.
That’s all I’m saying. Yes it’s a dangerous illness, but ERs aren’t overwhelmed by patients like they were late 2020. I think part of the issue is semantics and a lot of people not realizing just how dangerous full-on influenza is, it’s absolutely a deadly virus and 10s of thousands of people die from it every year right here in the first world; much less in the 3rd world.
edit: get mad about it but I guess you don’t remember lockdowns and toilet paper shortages. I never got to work from home (medical-related field yay), I know exactly what uncontrolled looks like. If you want to panic about something start reading into microplastics, way more long term damage we’re only beginning to understand. Plastics are everywhere.
It’s sometimes hard to say an individual death was for sure caused by COVID, but it’s easy to compare the number of deaths to the historical average and see how many more happened. It’s really the only way to get a good count of COVID related deaths, because looking at excess deaths will also reveal how many people are being killed indirectly, such as dying due to lack of medical care because COVID was overwhelming the hospitals.
I agree with you and actually argued for this further down some comment chain. However, mortality increase was temporary in Norway where I am from (and AFAIK mostwhere in Europe), hence indicate that there is no uncontrolled pandemic here.
Here is an infographic from the start of 2023:
You should probably be looking at trends over a longer period of time, rather than just a single month.
From here. There was a dip below the 2016-2019 average in January through March of 2023, but time marches on.
Empirically: a pandemic. :(
They waited and will wait until the goal is achieved which is destroying gaza and drive as many palestinians away so that israel can extend its state.
Theyve returned the hostages right? Did we forget about the hostages?
How many non-Americans died as a result of 9/11? How many in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries in the global war on terror? I’m guessing a shit ton more than 30,000.
It’s only going to increase every day the hostages aren’t returned.
Like a million just in Iraq I think.
Lol no. Most studies are in the 250,000 to 500,000 range and include deaths because of coalition forces, the civil war (“sectarian violence”), and AQ.
This is also over a much larger population, time period, and area.
Bunch of children died due to a reduction in quality of diet, healthcare, education. A lot of it was sanction related. Believe it or not, didn’t pull the number out of my arse.
So you’re using the study that adds in assumed deaths in the ten years before the Iraq war as a misleading figure for the Iraq war. Just so we’re clear that isn’t an apples to apples comparison. Unless you want to put the work in to check those numbers for Gaza since the mid 2000’s when Israel began it’s blockade.
But that would require acknowledging the last 15 to 20 years of Israeli fuckery. So instead you went and found the biggest possible number to tag the US with as some kind of perverse shield for Israeli war crimes.
God, people on Lemmy are weird.
What a stunning fucking number, it isn’t just murder on a mass scale, it is the denial of an entire future reality for a country because of the massive empty spaces all that destruction and death cause.
Jesus you people are never happy.
Biden gave material support to Israel’s genocidal campaign which has killed over 30,000 people. You’re delusional if you think paying lip service to a ceasefire while still actively supporting the genocide is going to satisfy anyone.
Well, this is what is happening right now because there were 1319 dead Israelis.
Be right back, getting popcorn.
Uno Reverse: the actual genocidal and apartheid party operating in Israel was always Hamas! ✅
But what Israel did to Gazans is just as bad as a thousand October 7th.
“war-torn strip”???
More like, “massacred and obliterated strip”. Not much of a “war” going on here
Sadly, this headline seems to be misleading. Checking for additional sources, I can find none that confirm that he actually called for a ceasefire.
According to the Associated Press, he did decry the loss of life in Gaza and announce that the US are about to commence airdrops of humanitarian aid, but at no point did he seem to do what this headline implies.
A Reuters article covering the same conference mentions the possibility of a ceasefire, but this apparently referred to a previous conversation a few days ago.
Unless anyone can find evidence to the contrary, I have to assume that this Newshub article is clickbait.
I found a video of him saying it: https://www.wlbt.com/video/2024/03/01/biden-calls-immediate-cease-fire-gaza/
Thanks, I couldn’t find that part anywhere.
I’m personally not sure that saying “We’re trying to work out … an immediate ceasefire” has nearly the same urgency as as calling for one, but hey at least it’s something.
Well, especially considering he has the leverage to just go “you stop that now or no more arms” and Israel would have no choice but stop that instant, “trying to negotiate a deal” is a particularly weak choice of words.
That’s why I did a double take when I saw the above headline. Biden finally putting his foot down and strong-arming Israel into a ceasefire would be huge.
But alas…
I’m not sure that Israel actually would have to stop in that circumstance. It’s a wealthy country with one of the world’s biggest arms industries, and it’s not like this is a peer conflict
“For at least 6 weeks”
That’s a start at least.
He’s taking the Michigan numbers seriously. Let’s hope it’s not too little too late.
If we can get a similar result in another swing state, we might see real progress
Cool, cool. Are we still supplying weapons to Israel? Give the weapons to Ukraine and tell Israel that’s enough genocide for now.
Didn’t he claim he will airdrop humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
Damn you guys behind the pond should introduce a law setting the max age a person can hold a presidential position. There is a reason why old people are not given a driver’s license and you should take the cue and do something about it.
Oh we let old people drive too, there’s not really any tangible system for ensuring they’re still capable. There’s a way your doctor can have it pulled but healthcare is privatized so they’ll just shop around for the guy who’ll say it’s totally fine if they have to.
My ex’s mom randomly passed out completely multiple times a day sometimes, it never got pulled - until some innocent pedestrian paid the ultimate price for eagle fuckin American “freedom.”
We’re trying but we’re up against hateful shitty old fucks who have a deathgrip on positions of power, absolutely stupid masses who enjoy a steady diet of warped theocratic leadership mixed in with batshit conspiracy, an alarming growing group of outright fascist af young people, and then a rather large contingent of apathetic cunts who can’t be bothered with doing the bare minimum in civic duties. It’s a fucking mess here. Not looking great.
I don’t disagree with you but at least along the issue of Gaza, young people are OVERWHELMING on the side of reason and that is heartening even while it is heartbreaking to see it doesn’t fucking move the needle on Biden’s actions even a nanometer.
It seems to be moving his actions somewhat. He’s calling for a ceasefire and airdropping aid to Gaza. I feel like a lot of that is due to pressure from constituents.
Yeah kinda feels like he is airdropping hotdogs into a baseball stadium though, like, ok those people needed hot dogs but what about the whole hot dog distributing apparatus that is surrounding all those people with multiple concession stands distributed strategically throughout the stadium to minimize congestion and even people walking around who specialize in just distributing hot dogs. Kinda feels like you are beating around the bush buddy when you plan to airdrop hotdogs into the baseball stadium instead of just having all of those people and systems start giving people hotdogs who need them.
I hope the pressure keeps making him take concrete steps though.
Gotta wonder if he’d care if it weren’t election season, though. After his whole four year term he finally got around to wiping my student debt a week ago. I know that was election driven.
Too little, too late. Military intervention or nothing, Israel and Gaza need to be taken in by UN peacekeeping forces and a new dialogue needs to be started about how to find a permanent solution for the coexistence of Palestinians and Israelis. If the need exists, maybe even deconstruct the current Israel to make way for a more tolerant and democratic nation that respects people of all origin.
They absolutely need a 2-state solution.
And neither of the 2 states should be the current states of Israel or Palestine.
A 2 state solution is effectively impossible at this point. Israel won’t let their settlements go and the Palestinians will not accept anything less than the 1967 borders. There’s also the split country problem. Bangladesh used to be East Pakistan. Split countries have a bad habit of one part getting exploited pretty hard.
So what you’re saying is the problem with the 2-state solution is the 2 existing states that I specifically said shouldn’t be part of the solution?
You can’t just do a rebrand. These are thousand year old ethic identities. There has to be a structural change as well.
It’s about re-election optics, not about helping Gazans.
Ding ding ding!
They started seeing everyone posting on social media that they’re not voting to support us paying for a genocide.
Vote “uncommitted” in the primaries, all the centrists shaming progressives for having a red line at “genocide” are so desperately wrong about now being not the time to raise our voices, fuck them.
The only way to get Biden to care about the horrific mass slaughter of an entire population is to directly make him afraid he won’t get his power trip again if he doesn’t capitulate because it is blindly obvious nothing else will sway him until it’s farrrrrrrrr too late.
After the election is the worst time to do it, if Biden wins he will just completely ignore progressive/almost unanimous international outcry over Israel’s genocide and continue handwringing because why would he do otherwise given his ideology and the fact that he doesn’t need the votes anymore?
Doubt UN troops would help here. They’d either get swayed like UNRWA was or would get the same treatment as Israelis.
What is more plausible according to you:
- Hamas managed to sway UNRWA and pretty much all of the known humanitarian organisations operating in Gaza?
- Or that the situation on the ground is really dire and it was like this long before the 7th of October no matter what Israel is claiming.
And please feel free to send me any article of any non affiliated NGO or humanitarian organisation with Israel praising their efforts to achieve long lasting peace before the 7th of October.
Because I can easily do the opposite.
Our own intelligence agencies rated that as “low confidence”. Which is the Intel version of pressing F to doubt. It means they found nothing to support the allegations. Typically it’s followed by the briefer saying something like, “we do not recommend action on this item at this time.”
calling for a ceasefire when it matters the most: before the elections. good job Biden.
when he realizes he is probably going to lose the election because a lot of his former voters don’t support genocide as much as he does
When those same former voters watch Israel murder every Palestinian while Trump actively cheers them on and rounds up all Palestinian Americans to deport them for further ethnic cleansing.
I mean, it’s pretty hard to make an argument that Trump would be materially worse for Palestinians than Biden if both are going to defund UNRWA and give Israel military aid. What Biden is doing now is definitely a step in the right direction; I hope he keeps this up, even when the Republicans inevitably say he’s being, “soft on terrorism,” (or whatever the talking point becomes).
2024 where the harm reduction vote goes to whoever supports genocide less fervently. Thanks DNC!
It isn’t the dnc’s fault a third of the country is apparently fascist these days. Nothing moves left until the ultra right is thoroughly defeated and sent back to the shadows.
Yes it is. The Democrats have had plenty of opportunities to step away from their pro-corporate stance and start doing things to help people. Every single time they cave to Republican pressure in the name of “bipartisanship”. Look at the border policy they just proposed that was everything that Republicans wanted. Democrats will give the whole game away just to keep that sweet sweet donor money coming in.
“Republicans are worse” is a shitty argument when Democrats already give them everything they want.
In fact the Democrats LOVE the far right because they can just point to them and go “well you don’t want THOSE guys in charge do you?”, while doing absolutely nothing to help the populace who are suffering under greedflation.
Bullshit. They can absolutely move left and pick up all the voters they left behind over the decades.
There are nowhere near enough left behind voters to make up for one’s they’d lose. We have to marginalized the ultra right first.
So we have to keep moving right to marginalize the right? We keep running party propaganda further to the right, and expect that makes less people vote to the right?
That’s the most insane shit I’ve heard all day.
Right and at this rate the Democrat will be doing that in 2028 while telling us it’s okay, we can still vote and the other guy is worse!
Harm reduction only works so long as there is remediation between elections. Just ratcheting shit further to the right and telling everyone they have to vote for you because you’re still not as far right as the other guy isn’t a scenario I want to participate in. If they want my vote the least they can do is not be worse than GW Bush.
If you think Biden is no better than GWB then I don’t even know what to say. You’re living on a different planet.
Sucks because Trump is going to stay behind Isreal too. The people that refuse to vote for Biden because of this likely just won’t vote. Which = Trump.
And again we’ll blame it on the voters that failed to “fall in line” instead of the establishment that gave them no reason to.
Gives a whole new meaning to “vote or die”.
Didn’t the US just recently block another UN resolution calling for a ceasefire?
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This made me laugh through my nasal passages because I read it in the sarcastic tone I would’ve delivered it in.
I know this is way later than I or anyone whose been screaming for ceasefire wished for, but I’m so glad something has changed. I hope this is the just a start.
In all likelihood, Biden is starting to pay lip service to the call for a ceasefire as the people around him realize his support for Israel’s genocide may hurt his chances of reelection. I’m not holding my breath for him to actually do anything about it. Words are cheap.
Losing a few votes in a primary sure does motivate a guy.
If he wanted to wrap up the election rn, he’d break formal relations with Israel and target IDF forces entering any UN green zones.
I’d also love to see what an F-35 would do to a Merkava
Hamas’ RPGs are already fucking them up, I don’t think it takes an F35.
Well it didn’t require one buttttt a GBU-12 would be pretty spectacular
This is the dumbest thing I will hear all day, by far.
In what delusional world do you think that this would be a reasonabke thing to do?
A world that respects the rights and sovereignty of the Palestinian people, and opposes Israel’s genocide and occupation of Palestine.
Yes, we have to respect the right of a non-state actor to put terrorists in charge and cancel all future elections so they can continue living in a rich culture of stoning infidels to death? No thanks.
Everyone’s in here giving Biden shit like not voting for him and letting Trump win will make things better for anyone.
You know that you can vote for someone AND be critical of their future, past and/or present decisions right?
You’re right, but there are a lot of people (that I’ve seen, at least) who are willing to abstain from voting over Biden’s handling of this.
Then that is their democratic choice. And it’s Bidens loss for not listening to his voters.
Don’t blame the voters for using their votes
People who are able to vote and specifically choose not to should absolutely be blamed. Voting third party is perfectly reasonable, but you have no right to complain about the state of politics and deserve to be ridiculed if you make the conscious decision not to vote even though you are fully able to.
We’re not. We’re blaming them for being fucking idiots who will vote in a literal dictator because they’re mad at Biden. Someone who will do far more damage to and destroy hundreds of millions of lives in the US and the rest of the world.
30,000 deaths in another country is nothing compared to US deaths little orange is responsible for when you only consider his one choice to fuck over pandemic response at the beginning of the pandemic. Dude has the deaths of millions on his hands already.
Anyone, any human being alive, that would vote for him is a fucking idiot that needs to give their head a bashing
I love that you used the phrase democratic choice to describe it too. A+
America’s path to fascism doesn’t begin and end with Trump. Forcing people to vote for someone they do not morally support is fascist. The last time he was president the world didn’t end. Millions of peoples lives in the United States are already horrible and the US regardless of who is president , democrat or republican, murder people all over the world. This narrow minded take of how the world works is part of the problem not the people abstaining from voting for Biden.
Okay, sure, but voting on a single issue is what fucking morons do.
And children without a lot of life experiences to understand. Imagine coming of age in the last decade. This is their “normal”. Its awful and terrifying… exactly what all the people working to divide and and destroy democracy around the world have been working for.
As much as I’m angry at their ignorance, it’s also really fucking sad.
No. It is not, this is a scary and extremist perspective and I’m sorry you feel like that. The media in America and the propagandist dismantling democracy have done so much damage.
So many bots, so many promoters of disjunction. It’s overwhelming.
You’re being asked to make a choice between eating a gross vegetable and a the barrel of a shotgun and you’re arguing for the shotgun.
First you say “were not” and then in the next sentence you say “we do”. Good one.
Best part about a democracy is that everyone gets to vote.
Worst part is that everyone gets to vote.
This is how it works. Just because you’re afraid of being on the losing side doesn’t mean anything has changed.
And before you start yapping on. I’m not American. We don’t work on a 2 party system. I’m just saying what everyone else can see looking in.
You can’t support democracy ONLY when your side gets what they want.
It’s the unalienable right of every US citizen to say whatever dumbass shit they want. I’m still gonna call them a dumbass for saying dumbass shit though.
It’s the trolley problem. It is much more difficult for people to be an active part of genocide by voting for Biden than simply not voting and allowing a worse outcome to happen if Trump becomes president…
Seems like they missed the lesson of the trolley problem, then.
Perhaps we should work to make sure no one is on the tracks instead of pulling the lever?
We should do whatever we can to keep people off of the tracks in the future. But that’s not mutually exclusive with pulling the lever right now, since the trolley is already heading towards people.
It’s an easy decision to make if you aren’t the one tied to the tracks. Palestinian Americans are losing their families and flipping that lever will neither bring them back nor make the situation better. Not only that, but flipping the lever without any real change of action from the DNC just means they can just trust their base to overlook genocide again and again in perpetuity as long as republicans remain the worse choice (which will be always).
Maybe read up on what the trolley problem (together with its variations) is about then.
I’m not abstaining. I’m voting for Jill Stein.
Jill’s currently polling at 5%. If the Green Party could get 5%, we’d qualify for millions of dollars in federal grant money, which would go a long way towards helping us fight the corrupt two-party system.
Exactly, I demand better of him and I will probably vote for him. I really wonder though how someone that’s a Muslim or Palestinian can stomach voting for him. His policies around Israel are pretty much identical to what Trump would do which is a big deal for a lot of people. He’s basically saying “Forget that I let Israel murder and starve to death your loved ones, I’ve been pretty good when it comes to monopolies right?!?”.
I’ll vote for him because he’s the better of two options, however, he has blood on his hands and that may just lose him a second term.
yes i do
Tell that to the terminally online edgelord jimmy Dore “left” crowd
There’s a time and place to be critical of dumbass politicians taking half-measures on important issues, but doing it now is potentially undermining the election in favor of fascist criminals.
Seems like Biden should listen to his constituents if he wants to win re-election.
honestly doesn’t it seem like this change of direction is him listening? Even weeks ago I would have never thought I would have heard the words ceasefire out of his mouth.
to me this seems like a direct response of the message people sent to him with the Michigan primary and I am happy to see it.
doesn’t mean I’m happy with what he’s done so far or even that he has not immediately taken direct action but this is a pivot and failing to acknowledge it weakens protest actions like this in the future.
If you read the article, he still wants the hostages released as a pre condition to any ceasefire. His position there hasn’t actually changed.
maybe I am missing something that I don’t see why that is an objectionable position? like obviously the ceasefire needs to happen immediately but what is wrong with hostage release as part of it?
not that long ago politicians were doing anything they could to avoid the word ceasefire and now they’re actively calling for it I’m really not thinking that this is an unchanged position but I am willing to listen if I have some drastic misunderstanding.
Because the hostages aren’t why we need the ceasefire. We need it to deliver aid. Also it’s an Israeli pre-condition. So what the white house is doing is putting the one big thing Israel wants and telling Hamas they’ll get a temporary peace out of it. Hamas has no reason to take that deal. Israel would similarly tell the white house to pound sand if they showed up in Tel Aviv to say Hamas has a deal that just requires the removal of all IDF troops from Palestinian territory.
I mean, wouldn’t it be a good thing if hostages were released? Also, surely getting a ceasefire like this is one of the reasons Hamas took hostages, right?
In a vacuum, yes. But we aren’t in a vacuum and Hamas needs something more than a shaky ceasefire to release all of the hostages. Israel isn’t agreeing to a ceasefire unless every hostage is released. At that point Hamas loses all leverage.
It’s also an incredibly partisan move by a mediator who says their main concern is getting aid into the area. You need cooperation for that and you don’t get cooperation by backing the demands of just one side.
Yeah, this keeping voters accountable to politicians nonsense needs to end. Make it the other way around or GTFO.
Trump is a really dark post-political blank slate for maniacs to project their frustrated base instincts and worst fantasies on. That’s not a unique thing, seemingly all European democracies have some populist equivalent. Those laying claim to leadership over opposing these forces need to do fucking better.
At this point it’s a hard chicken and the egg proposition to say what came first:
– the frustrations of large swaths of populations through centrist politics sucking up to a nimbyist “middle class” that always favor tax breaks and benefits for car driving homeowners over public investments in anything/anyone else or
– the calls for those frustrated to either vote centrist or have fascism imposed on them.
I’m not American and do in fact think it is important that Biden wins (if even just to avoid destabilizing the world’s largest military power in a time of global tensions). And as such I have no other choice but to encourage Americans to vote for him, regardless of conviction. But it’s galling to hear or read – whether in the context of the Biden, Macron or any similar choice between a turd sandwich or fascism – that people should shut up and be happy and enthused about it.
I’m not happy about it, but it’s the reality of the situation. We’re sliding towards fascism as our rights are being eroded away. The government ignores our protests and no one will take up arms against the ruling class. This is how it is.
For sure! Where I live the last election was between a neo-liberal coalition or a neo-liberal coalition fueled by fascism. Both options were a vote for an erosion of civil liberties, under the banner of combating a mix of real gang violence and made up evils of evil, but one of the factions also offered the catharsis of blaming everything wrong on immigrants. Not that the not non-fascist faction has been slow to underwrite the fascist narrative, whenever that’s appeared beneficial to public support. The “lesser evil” lost the election, and at no point have they stopped to consider that the “evil” part of their strategy was a part of it, they think it was a failure in selling themselves as superior administrators of the same policies the current government is championing.
It sounds like he’s starting to. He’s gone from full-throated support to silent complicity to actually calling Israel out. I hope he can do more.
When the options are that or try to capitulate to fascists to gain favor, this should be a super easy choice.
Oh, but wait…he’s a Catholic, and Democrats are Zionists.
We are super screwed
And they are never satisfied.
“Biden must demand an immediate ceasefire!”
Biden: I demand an immediate ceasefire!
“Biden isn’t doing enough!”
Ok, read what actually was said then come back.
The headline is misleading. Biden simply said “I hope a ceasefire happens one day”. Which is a FAR cry from “demanding a ceasefire now”. He isn’t doing enough because he hasn’t been saying things like “We are planning on withdrawing aid from Israel if they keep up this offensive”. Instead it’s “Well golly gee I hope Hamas returns all the hostages for a 2 week ceasefire and no troop withdrawals by Israel.”
But hey, at least he’s decided that he can say the word “ceasefire” Up until maybe a couple of weeks ago that was a forbidden word by the administration.
When Biden ran in 2020, this was the argument I heard from Biden supporters: sure, Biden may not be perfect, but we should support him anyway, and then, once he gets elected, we’ll hold his feet to the fire.
Yet now, when people try to hold his feet to the fire, they’re accused of supporting Trump. Funny how that works.
My argument is: Biden may not be perfect, but he’s a whole hell of a lot better than the guy that tried to start an insurrection and appointed a Supreme Court justice that got rid of Roe v. Wade. Holding his feet to the fire is a waste of time because the house always wins; the People will be the ones to bear the burden of any sort of loss for the Democrats. All I can do is hope that people will finally be pushed too far and revolt against the government, but that will be a whole hell of a lot harder if the 1st and 2nd Amendments are infringed on any more than they already are.
So essentially, shock doctrine. “This is bad, but it could be worse”.
More like “This is bad, but the only other remotely probable outcome is worse.”
Revolting against the government is far less feasible (and far more ethical) than simply voting for an alternative party.
1996 had the lowest recorded percentage of voter turnout in the past century, at 51.7%. Assuming there’s currently about 250 million eligible voters in the US, that is equivalent to about 129 million voters.
Imagine you were a wizard and could force everyone on Lemmy to vote for a single third-party candidate. Also assume every account on every instance of Lemmy is a US citizen capable of voting. Lemmy has about 421 thousand users. Even if each account on Lemmy could magically convince 50 other eligible voters to vote for the same independent candidate, that would only amount to about 21 million votes, or about 16.3% of all votes in the election going towards that candidate.
Voting in an independent party is nothing short of impossible in the US.
What does Lemmy have to do with it? I never brought up Lemmy!
My point is that the numbers are so unbelievably stacked against a third party winning that you’re not achieving anything by voting for a third party.
F… Him, he needs to be in a care home yesterday.
You’re allowed to swear on the Internet
