VIM
4mo ago
If they had such a strong aversion to beheadings they wouldn't have enthusiastically supported Al Qaeda taking over Syria
VIM
4mo ago
It feels kind of perverse to say "I hope my guy loses" but losing isn't always a terrible thing. I suspect Trump 2020 would have been a far less powerful president than Trump 2024.
Sometimes to win a war you have to choose to retreat from certain battles
VIM
4mo ago
but are there any DSA senators and not just House of Representatives?
By my count so far there's Platner in Maine plus AES in Michigan, though the latter still has to win the primaries. Am I missing anyone else?
VIM
4mo ago
After one of the cofounders, Gabe Einhorn, posted Franco’s reply with his last name blocked out, Franco was quickly identified.
Einhorn said he did not “want to ruin his life,” but wanted to “raise awareness” of antisemitism.
Franco, in a now-deleted post, said that in his personal and professional experiences, Jews were tribalistic and vengeful, and tended to ruin and bully others who opposed them.
Franco stated, “I am sure that if you indicated you didn’t want to work for someone who was White or Christian this would not have blown up…”
Franco claimed that the actions by Einhorn and the Jewish community, posting his reply, doxxing him, and then trying to investigate and uproot his personal life, vindicated his concerns that Jews do not work with others politely.
Subsequently:
-
the British Daily Mail ran an article calling this random 19 year old an "entitled Cornell student"
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FOX ran multiple stories on this kid, with one contributor demanding that his "life be ruined" while another compares being jewish among goys to being a human amongst the Planet of the Apes.
I was told that "woke is dead" but it seems cancel culture is alive and well on the kosher Right. How is one supposed to take any of the clowns seriously attacking "woke leftists" when they act like this? Why is "student doesn't want to work for jews" worthy of being elevated to international news?
VIM
4mo ago
I believe the US can blow up bridges and power plants, I just don't believe that blowing up said bridges and power plants would lead to victory.
Rather, since Iran's missile cities have proven nearly impervious to US airpower I suspect that the Iranians would respond by hitting Gulf power plants and desal. Iran has less firepower but Iran is also a huge country while the typical GCC member could be depopulated with just a few hard hits against the right infrastructure. The top buyers of American protection getting Spec Ops: The Line'd is probably an even worse outcome than simply failing and giving up
VIM
4mo ago
"I chose to lose because I just don't know what would happen if I really let loose" - every guy who ever got beat up at a bar
VIM
5mo ago
What will they do if Trump cuts off their munitions? The IDF doesn't even make its own bombs. They have about as much independence as Mussolini circa 1944
VIM
5mo ago
Maybe, but if they actually have much worse stuff to drop then one would imagine they'd hold off on dropping anything so that they could clobber him after the nomination to guarantee the reelection of Susan Collins. If they're too successful right now they're just going to get Platner replaced with someone they don't have a vast stash of oppo research on
Also IIRC the woman making the (most serious) accusations is also the same one who dropped the tattoo allegations which would suggest she's personally trying to torpedo Platner
VIM
5mo ago
None of the other women suggested he did anything comparable, though. Her allegations are clearly an outlier so far
VIM
5mo ago
On the contrary, since it's coming from a Republican political operative it seems immensely sus that he's being accused of something that doesn't quite rise to the level of criminality sufficient to justify discovery but is more than sufficient (if true) to torpedo a Senate campaign. It's the perfect level of accusation if you don't actually want to have to back up anything you're claiming in court.
A lifetime of knowledge, reading & education vs "DURR GROK DID DIS HABBEN!?!"
I'd recommend you learn what "books" are and what a "university" is before trying to engage in discussion of complex topics in the future. I'm afraid Grok can't save you
VIM
5mo ago
Have you ever heard of books? University classes? Conversations with people from wide ranging backgrounds?
Are you a real human being or are you some sort of AI chatbot that has never experienced the real world? I suppose if you literally only exist on the internet it would make sense to conclude that all knowledge comes from machines.
Dude. You 100% used a machine to research whatever you said occurred in Iran. You used either Wikipedia, Google, or maybe some podcast bro. AI can just scan more data points than google.
Fact check: false.
I knew that Saddam used chemical weapons against the Iranians and that his war killed hundreds of thousands of people from prior knowledge, not Wikipedia or Google. I'll grant that I double checked after you claimed it "never happened" but unlike you I don't use a machine to replace my brain :)
History is filled with stories of high civilian casualties and destroying civilian infrastructure led to victory.
It's also filled with stories of high civilian casualties leading to defeat, as Hitler, Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein and ISIS can attest. Not to mention that in nearly all of the examples you give the military victory came first and the civilian casualties came later which confuses cause and effect. Where is your evidence that this sort of strategy will produce results instead of just running up the kill count while failing to produce surrender?
VIM
5mo ago
And from what I know about the US military they tend to find chemical weapons as not effective but I’m no expert.
My point wasn't that chemical weapons are effective, it's that Saddam was willing to cross all moral red lines against the Iranians and it didn't work. Where is the evidence that your strategy works?
Grok say this never happened
Perhaps you should think and research with your own brain instead of replacing it with a machine
VIM
5mo ago
What happens if Trump commits bombing warcrimes, they're ineffective and Iran returns the favor against the Gulf? Iran is a huge country that would take quite a bit of effort to actually depopulate whereas the Gulf is entirely reliant on a handful of desalination plants. Such an exchange could easily wind up going worse for America's allies than Iran. At that point what do you do, nuke Tehran to reestablish deterrence?
It seems like the reason the US is in this mess is because it keeps doubling down, losing, and winding up in an even more humiliating position than before.
to be clear, those were intended as separate statements, as in "Saddam used chemical weapons on Iranian civilians and he killed hundreds of thousands", not "Saddam's chemical weapons killed hundreds of thousands"
If I meant "Saddam killed hundreds of thousands specifically with chemical weapons" then I wouldn't have separated the statements with an "and" but I suppose I was too imprecise. My bad
VIM
5mo ago
It seems more likely that the Dollar's reserve status would be displaced by a commodity rather than any specific country's currency.
In unrelated news, "Gold has overtaken U.S. Treasuries as the World's Top Reserve Asset"
VIM
5mo ago
Saddam Hussein fired chemical weapons directly into Iranian cities and killed hundreds of thousands of people yet the Iranians kept fighting for years in the hope that they could seize some territory in compensation.
It seems pretty doubtful that blowing up some civilian infrastructure would achieve much of anything
VIM
5mo ago
Was Operation Rough Rider a great demonstration of American invincibility too? They brought in multiple carrier groups, bombed Yemen endlessly and assassinated plenty of Houthi leaders even up to the Houthi Prime Minister but the Houthi missile/drone capabilities were basically untouched and Trump effectively gave up after a month when stockpiles started running low.
So if this goes the same way and Iran is still firing missiles and drones a month at every country hosting American military assets, shutting down the Strait of Hormuz and possibly obliterating all of the soft oil infrastructure between the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea would you still consider it to be a great victory for Trump?
VIM
5mo ago
As YA said, the polls had the race coming down entirely to age differentials. Quantus, the most accurate, had Massie leading the 26-35s by 50 and Gallrein leading 65+ voters by 30.
The Trump/MAGA coalition of 2026 isn't the same one he won with in 2024.
VIM
5mo ago
It isn't that much of a mystery; his support has been falling with nearly everyone except elderly Republicans, the dominant force in Republican primary elections (let alone midterm primary elections). You can be wildly unpopular and still dominate Republican primaries if you have an iron grip on the olds. At least for now.
VIM
6mo ago
Look, you literally said
Hamas livestream themselves via GoPro gang-raping Israeli women on October 7th
I ask for evidence of this happening and it turns out that, in fact, you have no such evidence whatsoever. No such livestream exists. You lied. You made it up. Why did you do that?
Instead you pivot to an "investigation" by an Israeli "Civil Commission" which, if we're being objective, should really be given about as much credibility as an "investigation" by the "Hamas Health Ministry". Yet even the "Civil Commission" doesn't claim Hamas live streamed themselves raping anyone; in the section actually covering "Filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" they don't even make that claim. They claim to have found secondary evidence of rape after the fact but even this dubious Israeli investigation isn't claiming to have it on video, let alone on livestream.
The word "rape" appears 309 times in the report, 29 of those as part of the phrase "gang rape". The section "Rape, gang rape, and other forms of sexual assault" is five pages long, while the section on "filming and digital dissemination of SGBV" is three pages long. None of this is open for debate.
Why are we expected to unquestioningly believe Israeli war propaganda without debate, exactly? Putting aside the fact that it isn't even claiming what you claimed.
It is so, so tiresome how you immediately pivot to arguments-as-soldiers mode. You demand evidence that Hamas did the things I claimed, I provide it, and you instantly pivot to "well Israel is just as bad so who cares". We weren't debating whether Israel was just as bad as Hamas, or who is worse: we were debating whether Hamas really did the things they filmed themselves doing and disseminated. It is a simple factual question, not an ethical one.
Nope, you made a false claim, you provided "evidence" from a dubious source that doesn't even back up your false claim and now you're going on a hysterical rant about things I never said.
Only if your worldview depends on you failing to understand what's right in front of your nose. The rape, gang rape, sexual abuse, torture and humiliation committed on October 7th was exhaustively documented, perhaps an outright majority of it by the perpetrators themselves.
I mean, if Hamas livestreamed themselves committing gang rape then surely a link to it exists somewhere, right? Why are you unable to provide this clear, irrefutable evidence that would instantly resolve this dispute, rather than paging through entirely secondhand Israeli war propaganda reports?
VIM
6mo ago
Footage circulated by Hamas and its collaborators depicts women and girls being violently dragged, humiliated, and abducted; female corpses being abused, mocked, or burned; and female hostages being tormented, abused, taunted, or humiliated on camera.
None of this is "rape", let alone "gang rape".
Also with the possible exception of the abuse/mocking/burning of female corpses basically all of these accusations would hold true if you replaced "Hamas" with "Israel".
Hard to avoid the conclusion that there's a double standard being applied here.
VIM
6mo ago
If, in fact, such a thing were impossible, then it would prove without doubt that the paper of record recklessly printed unverified falsehoods. We are now in the “doctors arguing with the author about the medical literature” stage of the discourse. See, even though we have documented evidence that dogs can cause rectal injury to humans, in none of those reports was the initial contact involuntary on the part of the human.
I am not well acquainted with dogs, but my understanding is that it is not particularly hard to get them to hump things. I guess the people making this argument are hoping that others won’t want to think too hard about the mechanics of dog rape.
Clearly they've never heard of the Toy Box Killer. Anyone claiming "anatomical impossibility" can be dismissed out of hand as a liar or a hack.
If the Israelis really wanted to disprove allegations of abuse at their facilities it would be absolutely trivial to organize some sort of impartial third party investigation. Even the Nazis had the sense to bring in the Red Cross and get out of the way when they were falsely accused of committing the Katyn Massacre.
Israel hasn't allowed any international observers into Gaza to measure, how could you possibly know whether they've negated the natural population increase or not?
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