Not once did I see the descriptor “Hamas run.” It’s about goddamn time Western media started moving away from that to cast aspersions on the truthfulness of Gazan government statements.

Also,

A UN report this week said that nearly 70% of the people killed in the war in Gaza have been women and children.

Here’s a fun thing that happened at the state level when Republicans cut taxes.

The Kansas Experiment

Essentially, the Republican dominated state government in Kansas significantly cut taxes, the ‘expected’ increase in revenue didn’t materialize, the quality and quantity of public services decreased, the state’s credit rating went down, and everyone got mad. After a few years, the governor was voted out of office and Republicans ‘saw the light’ and put the old taxes back in place. What’s wild is there are still conservatives who look at that and say ‘Well, you guys didn’t do it right. I still think it’s a good idea.’ If it were up to me, we’d go back to the tax levels we had when that antifa commie Marxist-Leninist far left extremist Eisenhower was in office.

Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%

Romney’s Approx. Tax Bill: $5,250,000

During the administration of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a 92 percent marginal income tax rate for top earners in the United States remained from the previous administration of Harry S. Truman. At the time, the highest tax bracket was for income over $400,000.

This was nearly the highest tax rate for top earners in the century, just under the 94 percent rate for income over $200,000 instated during World War II under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.

In 1954, the 92 percent marginal rate decreased to 91 percent under Eisenhower. The maximum tax on long-term capital gains was 25 percent – a rate that remained in place for a decade.

And-

Eisenhower explained it this way: The super rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house and clothe poor people of America, among other things.

Go Japan! Hell yeah!

Tally Gotliv, a Likud MP, told MEE: “We need to occupy the complete land of Israel. There are no innocent people in Gaza. Everybody who has refused to leave the north is a collaborator.”

Monday’s event took place against the backdrop of an escalating military assault on northern Gaza where hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remained trapped and subjected to daily air strikes.

The assault came amid reports from Israel that the military has started to implement a strategy known as “the Generals’ Plan” which called for the ethnic cleansing of the north of the territory, and condemnation by aid groups who warned last week that northern Gaza is being “erased”.

This is their plan. They’re doing it right now. I can’t imagine how folks will deny this, I guess they’ll move onto justify.

I think sentiment is changing. Recently I’m noticing more US mainstream media using language like

Since Israel launched its devastating retaliation for the Hamas-led attack just over a year ago

It’s a small thing, it’s better than the softer language they would normally use. But, damn, it’s not enough.

Here’s a fun thing about student loans: we have stupidly high tuition thanks to CA governor Reagan and president Nixon wanting to reduce the number of students protesting against the Vietnam War. Of course the excuse they used was to balance the budget. This is just one more in a long line of things that Reagan and Nixon ruined in this country for decades.

https://12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

Also, the real reason school vouchers were pushed was to backdoor segregation after Brown v Board of Education desegregated schools.

https://12ft.io/https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Here’s the original since 12ft.io looks a little weird on mobile. https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they’re taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they’re bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they’re committing ALL the crime, and they’re voting in ALL elections. It’s true, I saw it on the TV. They’re busy, I don’t know how they have the time to do all of that.

You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can’t be; now excuse me, I’m going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.

Maybe not all of them were ready for violence, but a lot of them were prepared. They didn’t forget to bring guns, many had guns on them inside the Capitol building.. There were people with zip-tie handcuffs.. They were a hair’s breadth away from politicians who were their targets of ire, who they believed were stealing their country, when Ashli Babbitt breached the last barrier and reached the last line of defense before being shot. Behind Babbitt was a hallway/staircase full of insurrectionists.

Few started the day with a desire to get into the Capitol. Many were swept up in the moment by following far right extremist groups who were executing a plan to get in. Though we know how far they went following those extremists, we’ll never know how much farther they would have gone had those same extremists managed to reach politicians. Thank goodness they were stopped otherwise this may be a very different country.

I feel your pain. There’s a reason I don’t want to get promoted and actively deny them when I can. “C’mon guys, just let me do what I’m good at and let me be a happy, contented minion.”

They can request and may be assigned an individual tax ID number (ITIN). Having an ITIN may allow them to open a bank account. It also makes it so they pay taxes which a surprising number want to do. Since they want to stay in the country, having a long history of paying taxes is a way to show you don’t want to cause trouble and you just want to work. Hell, a lot of them probably know they got Al Capone on tax evasion and don’t want to end up like him. Here’s a report I just Googled, and possibly the source of the number which is an estimate.

On the other side is how much tax funding is used on them. Here’s a report from the House of Representatives which states they use more in services (Medicare, WIC, sending kids to school, etc) than they pay. I can’t speak to how accurate the report is considering the makeup and views publicly expressed by members of the committee. I’m personally leaning towards ‘they don’t, and can’t, use as more than they contribute’ because they’re not eligible for many benefits.

I’ve noticed a small change in how news media has recently been reporting information provided by Palestine: they’re not using ‘according to Hamas run (agency)’ as often. It’s a small but significant change that, I think, indicates more people are no longer buying that Israel has the “most moral army.”

Would it make a difference to you if the controversy kicked off because the org that disqualified these two fighters was banned by the IOC from participating in the Olympics for shady stuff? Or if the org has never said why they were disqualified? Or if the guy making the wild claims is the head of the org and a friend of Putin, and the DQ for one fighter happened after she beat an until then undefeated Russian fighter?

You really should look into the background of it. Here’s an AP News link

Banned governing body that’s fueling outcry on Olympic boxers has Russian ties and troubled history

It was hard not to copy and paste the whole article, I did my best to pull excerpts and bold important portions.

Summary- Long story short, the disqualifications were done in a tournament run by an organization banned by the Olympics. Both boxers participated in tournaments run by this organization with no issues for the last several years. The organization hasn’t said why they were disqualified. The man saying the weird trans woman claims is the leader of the organization. He’s a friend of Putin and described as a drug trafficker. The disqualification for Khelif happened after she beat the previously undefeated Russian boxer Amineva 3 days post fight.

Strangely, nobody who’s up in arms about the weird claim has looked into who made it, when, the context around it, or an explanation for it. They just ate it up.

Nearly 17 months ago in New Delhi, Algerian boxer Imane Khelif was disqualified from the International Boxing Association’s world championships three days after she won an early-round bout with Azalia Amineva, a previously unbeaten Russian prospect.

The disqualification meant Amineva’s official record was perfect again.

The governing body claimed the fighters had failed unspecified eligibility tests

The BA’s decision last year — and its curious timing, particularly related to Amineva’s loss to Khelif — would have raised warning signs around the sports world if more people cared about amateur boxing, or even knew more about the IBA under president Umar Kremlev of Russia.

The entire boxing world has already learned to expect almost anything from the Russian-dominated governing body that was given the unprecedented punishment of being permanently banned from the Olympics last year. In fact, it hasn’t run an Olympic boxing tournament since the Rio de Janeiro Games in 2016.

The International Olympic Committee has decades of mostly bad history with the beleaguered governing body previously known for decades as AIBA, and it has exasperatedly begged non-boxing people to pay attention to the sole source of the allegations against Khelif and Lin.

The IOC had stuck with the previous incarnation of boxing’s governing body through decades of judging scandals, bizarre leadership decisions and innumerable financial misdeeds while it presided over Olympic boxing tournaments.

Not until 2019, nearly two years after the organization elected a president with what U.S. officials call deep ties to Russian organized crime and heroin trafficking, did the IOC finally banish the perpetually troubled group.

The IOC permanently stripped the IBA’s Olympic credentials and ran the past two Olympic boxing tournaments with a task force.

Kremlev also has made additional allegations about the gender of both fighters without providing proof, and people across the world have accepted his word.

So much is unclear about the IBA’s decision to ban Khelif and Lin last year, particularly since both had competed in IBA events for years without problems.

It’s even possible the decision was actually made according to the results of legitimate tests conducted over two years, as the IBA says — but the IBA has refused to officially say what, when or where these tests were administered, who evaluated them, or what the results meant.

The IOC has said boxing will be dropped from the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics unless the sport lines up behind a new governing body

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Maybe Boeing should have thought of that before making poor decisions. It should learn a little something called personal responsibility and if it goes broke, well, that’ll be a shame. Anyway!

NYT - Here’s the latest on the attack in Beirut.

Israeli analysts said Hezbollah was most likely aiming at a nearby army base on Mount Hermon and did not intentionally target the village. But the group’s use of inaccurate rockets in an area dotted with civilian communities could lead to the kind of unintended consequence that risk sparking an all-out war, they said.

Sounds a lot like Israel might be using human shields to protect their base.

In February, far-right settlers went on a rampage in the West Bank town of Huwara torching dozens of houses and cars. Following the violence, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich called for Huwara to be “wiped out”.

Hmmm, I wonder what happened to the people rampaging in the town.

Israel’s military called the settler attack on this Palestinian town a ‘pogrom.’ Videos show soldiers did little to stop it

The IDF said in a statement to CNN that dozens of Israelis had “desecrated Palestinian property” and “acted violently against Palestinian residents” on February 26, but only several were arrested. All were released without charges.