Being a narcissistic, bloviating despot is exactly what everyone expected of Trump. In fact, he came off rather well from the time constraints, muted mics, and the total lack of fact-checking because the format of the debate didn’t expose his weaknesses like it did for Biden.
I’d say a good-sized part of it is simply the American preference for watching beautiful, weathly people doing beautiful, wealthy people things. Hollywood rom-coms and US TV shows in general clearly skew towards upper middle class settings when compared to the equivalents from, say, the UK.
In other words, I reckon US media prefer their fictional characters to be aspirational whereas other cultures prefer theirs to be relatable.
hasn’t Biden had a stutter from a very young age and struggled with it most of his life?
It hasn’t apparently impacted his public speaking for most of his political career up until recently:
https://youtu.be/86Nrv5izaTs?si=bZ9WNXIEZNOaBV3T
And even when not speaking during tonight’s debate, he often looked totally bewildered.
People have been saying this for quite a while now despite the excuses from the Democrat establishment, but tonight there was no hiding the fact that the dude just looks unable to last another four years as president.
The whole thing was the strongest argument against American exceptionalism I’ve ever witnessed.
Calling Biden articulate is being incredibly generous. I mean, what on earth was he trying to communicate here?
Overall, Biden put in a very lackluster, unconvincing performance while Trump did his usual schtick of rambling off topic, lying through his teeth, and refusing to answer any questions on policy. The whole thing was a shambles.
I think Tlaib did a decent job at giving some kind of pushback, but it was particularly galling to see Moskowitz stand up and repeat Israeli propaganda without anyone calling him out on it.
In his speech, he alluded to misinformation that was debunked over a month ago: that the numbers from the Gaza Health Ministry were allegedly unreliable and that the numbers of dead civilians had recently been halved by the UN. Neither of these things were true, and so therefore he was either lying on Israel’s behalf or he didn’t care enough to do the appropriate research.
It’s quite a bit more complicated than that. Firstly, ultra-orthodox Jews (a.k.a Haredim) are mostly non-zionist. They also only make up roughly 33% of Israeli settlers.
Traditionally, the Haredim have voted for their own center-right Haredi parties, but a minority (especially the younger generation) are now drifting further rightward towards the nationalist Religious Zionist party of Ben Gvir and Smotrich that is particularly popular amongst the settlers. Despite this recent trend, though, the majority of Haredim remain Anti-Zionist.
It’s this stance, combined with the facts that Haredi men have been able to avoid military service and have relied heavily on social security to fund their living costs, that has caused a lot of resentment towards them from the majority of Israeli society. As the article above notes, this removal of their military service exemption has overwhelming support amongst the general population.
But you’re definitely right in saying that this throws a spanner in the works, albeit mostly for Netanyahu. His brittle coalition relies heavily on support from the two main Haredi parties in the Knesset. This new policy could backfire on him.
That’s why they’re running the disclaimers now - the trial hasn’t been held yet and they’re bracing themselves for impact.
Unlike Fox News, who could settle with Dominion for $787M and carry on as usual, Newsmax’s pockets don’t run nearly as deep. If the court rules against them in September, they’ll most likely be utterly screwed.
It really is insane. Just imagine a different PAC whose sole purpose is to advocate for any other foreign nation - and not just the obvious “baddies” like Russia, China, etc. - spending millions of dollars to oppose the election of congress members who don’t follow their agenda, and then openly bragging about it on social media. People would lose their goddamn minds, and rightfully so.
A few US outlets have mentioned it fleetingly, but here’s a more balanced account from Haaretz.
Here is a flyer circulated by the protest organizers:
Here is a flyer advertizing the real estate sale itself:
Here is an archived copy of the real estate sale web page (which is currently unavailable):
https://web.archive.org/web/20240624010428/https://homeinisrael-il.com/
Here is a listing for property in Efrat, which is an illegal Israeli settlement located in the West Bank:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240324124658/https://homeinisrael-il.com/property/efrat-hamoshava/
I still find it quite baffling that for a distro that pitches itself as an everyday Linux distro for newer and intermediate users, Fedora doesn’t come with snapshots preconfigured out of the box or any obvious way of handling a system restore.
Archuleta himself, though, has a history of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric. He previously blamed LGBTQ+ individuals for the Club Q shooting and said that queer people are “groomers” – or child sex abusers – a negative stereotype that has been used to justify hatred and discrimination.
Bruh.
The tax payer pays up almost $1M and these scumbags remain employed. How predictable.
Also, just in case anyone isn’t aware: rule number one if you’re in the US and police ever bring you in and try to interrogate you is to shut down and demand a lawyer. Legally, the interview has to stop immediately until you have one present. If the officers don’t comply, then you know they’re corrupt and there’s no reason to believe anything they say from that point onwards.
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