It's not trump who is powerful - it is the powerful who make him appear so. He is less than nothing in any other world. A world in which the corporate media would take its task professionally and dutifully. But they don't...
Harris did a great job against the man with lifelong experience and practice lying and drawing in the gullible to his world view. I hope to see another debate so Harris can do more of the same and correct more of Trump's BS.
Daniel Soloman should be elated that Taylor Swift finally endorsed Harris. I'm signed up to phone bank for Harris and hope to pick up Harris/Walz signs later today.
I visited several MAGA sites and they are in SHOCK. Trump looked like Bluto after he was whupped by Olive Oyl.
The bookies immediately discounted Trump 8 points.
RealClearPolitics Betting Average
51.8 Harris
46.9 Trump
Vote Vets had a post debate zoom event led by Fred Wellman. Trump got the majority in 2016 and 2020. IMHO we can flip a majority of them. He admitted releasing the Taliban while the Afghani government had no say in the deal. The 13 dead were killed by suicide bombers, most probably Taliban. Add this to "not suckers or losers." 4 million people on Facebook are veterans or active duty members. 12.5 million people on Facebook are family members of a veteran or an active duty member. 242 million people on Facebook are friends with one or more veterans or active duty members. A few of Thom's readers can post "not suckers or losers" on military and history sites. That alone might turn the election.
Meanwhile FT 6 has sent over 12 million tests to unregistered folk who trend Democratic. Need phone bankers and canvassers to close the deal and make a blue tsunami.
Do Swifties vote, and can they influence their parents?
You and I are vets Daniel. And I am beside myself that Vets were/are Trump humpers.
Then again since they went all volunteer, I must admit, that the vast majority of enlisted are not the cream of the crop. Overwhelming majority from the south, rural America and from depressed regions where there are little chance for upward mobility or even jobs.
And the officers, well the service acadamies have been infected with Dominionism.
How nice it would be to see an expose on Dominionism, New Apostolic Reformation, Opus Dei, Catholic Truth and other fascistic religious ideologies which are behind the right wing and MAGA movement.
I only leave the house to go to the market and pick up mail, and when I do I wear a Kamala T-Shirt, My contribution, and man do I get thumbs ups and smiles.
If there is another debate they should hire you to do the fact checking! How can we make that happen?
Also, It will be interesting to see if they ever recover the boxes sent to T’s Bedford, NJ golf club. I’m curious to find out why a search warrant was never requested for that club. Was there?
The candidates need to be placed in soundproof boothes were their microphones automatically gets cut off when their speaking time is over, and they are thoroughly fact checked! Just to make it "fair"!
Just as important is that the moderators keep them to strict time limits. They allowed Trump to interrupt and ramble on.
Despite the fact that Muir fact checked Trump on Migrants eating dogs
Trump had spoken for approximately 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for about 37 minutes and 36 seconds.
While the debate was designed to offer both candidates an equal chance to respond to questions, they could choose not to use the maximum allotted time. The ABC moderators also allowed more time for responses after some exchanges.
I wonder William, if Trump had said Marxists, socialist, communists agnostics, hippies, liberals, lefties or atheists were accused of eating pets, would Muir come to their rescue?
As far as a warrant for searching Bedford, no one would confirm boxes in question were sent there thus no probable cause for search, according to what I read was from Garland or a DOJ spokesperson. The reach of trump $$ & threats no doubt.
In my view, most MAGAs are reactionaries who are overwhelmed by the complexities of modern life and feel like victims of the government system. In other words, they prefer to project their failures on others rather take responsibility for their own bad judgement. It is not that they are what Trump calls "losers" as much as that they do not feel like winners. To them winners have lots of money to play with and buy more and more toys. It is easy to feel like a winner when you claim you were cheated.
I agree, 100 Grand a year is not enough for mega supporters. They need about 500 Grand a year to fill like they're not victims? I have talked to many that live a pretty decent middle-class lifestyle, about 90k a year and they feel like they are impoverished. Working for the government for God sakes! Kamala is going to raise their earned income tax credit she never talks about lowering taxes for single people who are becoming homeless on the streets and of course neither does Donald Trump.
Yes Mr. Johnson, you are no doubt aware that most of the people who stormed the capital on 1/6 were employed and earned a living. Some even flew to D.C. We must try to figure out what exactly their grievance is. A good start might be to read STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
How can the election be close? Because every voter finally seriously tuning into the candidates and then choosing Harris is counterbalanced by another choosing Trump.
The candidates are adding voters about equally. But Trump's appeal should top out soon while Harris' continues to grow. At that time, the numbers should change to favor Harris.
Mr. Hobbs, I am not certain what you mean by "close." But Harris will undoubtedly win the election. How big her margin will be is up for guesses. Whether or not there will be a "blue wave" is uncertain.
Debates are only one part of the many components of an election. The question of who "won" and who "lost" the debate is not particularly important.
Those voters you refer to so callously as "morons" are our fellow citizens. Many are people who feel left behind. They are for the most part, badly educated, uninformed, financially struggling, emotionally needy. They are being preyed upon in their vulnerabilities by wealthy hustlers. Chief among them Trump. We should listen to them and reassure them that their lives matter. And we should struggle to change this country enough so their lives and the lives of their children are better.
As for the big topic we will be hearing about for the next several weeks: Trump's performance and Harris's performance:
Harris blew it. She treated trump as though he was legitimately engaging in debate. She legitimized him. He is obviously out of contact with reality: psychotic. When she interrupted him while he was speaking she gave him a chance to score an obvious point. When she made sardonic smirks with her face as he spewed his insane, hate filled, word salads and non sequiturs she was playing his school-ground game of face-making. That's what he does. When he said doctors are killing new-born babies. When he said immigrants in American cities are eating dogs and cats. She should have used those opportunities to look over at him and tell him, and the world, that he is insane. Just as the little girl in the fable refused to recognize the emperor's cloak; Harris should have refused. She should have refused to recognize him as legitimate. The American public would have arisen out of their seats.
I am old enough to remember when the outraged, brilliant attorney J.N. Welch defending the U.S. army in a congressional, hearing said to the insane, alcoholic Senator Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" That was effectively the end of McCarthy.
As it is now, Trump has not been eliminated even though he will lose the election. He might weigh in effectively in the 2026 midterm elections. He might continue to control the Republican Party. He might even run again for President in 2028. After all is said and done; she legitimized him. If they have another debate, it will be difficult for her to delegitimize him then. Because she has already indicated that she takes him as a legitimate candidate in yesterday's encounter. Harris may have won the debate. But it ain't over yet.
Terrorist bombings in Afghanistan were a "fact of life" (to borrow a phrase from JD) from the first day of the war till the very last day. Hanging that albatross around President Biden's neck is actually ridiculous. AND he stopped any further loss of American lives while telling people well ahead of time to get out. Republicans whine about the equipment left that probably cost more to remove than it was of use to us. They also fail to mention the enormous amount of money we have saved on ending the longest war in history. Thank you President Biden and condolences to the families.
Vice President Harris showed the world that she truly does know Trump's type. He is the type that doesn't mind the violence that his dictator friends wreak daily on their own people and their neighboring countries. He IS a psychopath; they are not all in love with violence, but his TYPE are. We know he loved the insurrection, and he loves the criminals that hurt our officers and ultimately caused deaths among them. She got him on that too. Well done Kamala!
VP Harris sees him, but more importantly she sees us. Taylor and the Swifties aren't going back and neither are we.
Excellent take on the presidency and the Debates. I have a slightly different take on the Bush administration than Thom, and that probably is because I was working in the tall trees of our government at the time. To me, Bush was Cheney's useful idiot. Cheney engineered the WMD lie, and conned Powell into lying to Congress to justify invading Iraq to ensure a 2nd term in power. Most of the people in my deep-state world seemed to see it that way too.
I asked several experts on Iraq disarmament at the time who had been on the ground. They said the only undiscovered WMD might be a couple of anthrax-loaded biological warfare shells rusting in the desert somewhere. They also told me that attempts to contact the WH to set the record straight were rebuffed. It was as if Cheney had surrounded 1600 Penn with a political moat full of sharks.
Subsequent his address to Congress, Powell got wised up that he had been set up, and quietly retired from public life. Alas, his legacy endures as we still have troops on the ground in Iraq, and Iraq still has a puppet government - which like in the Iran of yore and the Afghanistan of today - is no government at all.
Of course it was obvious that the Iraq thing was absurd--I heard the same lies about Vietnam. But "WMD" is such a nebulous legal term that it means almost nothing, and even if Saddam had very serious weapons he wasn't crazy enough to use them. When Bush said that he had to prove that he wasn't hiding them I knew it was over. You cannot prove a negative any more than you can check everyplace and everyone to show that you don't have a twin brother. But the really sad thing is that after the very predictable way that this ended the next administration tried the same "regime change" in Libya and got exactly the same kind of result. Repeating an action and expecting a different outcome is one definition of insanity.
Doc, though Bush was a dunce, and if he hadn't been given a direct commission by his Daddy, and stayed an enlisted man he would not have made it to SSgt E-5, but he was no idiot, much less Cheney's.
He was like so many men, he had to best his daddy. His daddy only served one term,and Dubya wanted to be reelected and finish what Pappy Bush started.
Cheney was CEO and Chairman of the Board of Halliburton as it was going into receivership. Bolivia had been forced by the IMF to sell it's water rights to Halliburton, and Halliburton squeezed the peasants to pay for that which had been free. There was a peasant revolt. the government terminated the contract, and the international court forced Bolivia to reimburse Halliburton for lost revenue. It never did, because it couldn't.
There were two other forces that wanted to get rid of Saddam. Israel and Saudi Arabia and it's Arab allies.
Saddam posed a threat to Israel and to the Arab leaders, He first claimed to be a reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, and then proclaimed himself the new Salah al Din (Saladin), thus positioning himself as the leader of the Arab world, making the Saudi's and Emirates subordinate.
Cheney saw this as an opportunity to enrich Halliburton and himself, by claiming Iraqi oil, however things never work out as one plans. The best laid plains fail at the opening barrage.
Oh yes, there were other things going on though how much Saddam really believed his claim I don't know. Until the war had almost started he ignored religion (Islam, which I know came along long, long after Babylon) and then it was to his advantage to embrace it. And people in that part of the world seem to remember the past very well--in quieter times I traveled through it from one end to the other, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and was struck by how Alexander, the Crusaders and so on remained in public consciousness. Americans...we forget anything before last year's Super Bowl and it's no surprise that our ideas about "changing" things there were and are pipe dreams.
I'm not sure how much Iraq was a threat to Israel either, as they had taken out his nuclear reactor. Having him there to keep a lid on the different groups, including those Shi'a who would ally with Iran seemed like a better strategy. Perhaps the Saudis felt he was too powerful though after the 1990 war his reach was reduced. Now he (and later Gaddafi) apparently did talk about replacing petrodollars with Euros, which would have undercut U.S. economic power in the oil industry, so that might have been a hidden reason to go in there.
But at the end of the day maybe it was just what a professor I met said. His class was all for the war because of 9/11. When he pointed out that Saddam had nothing to do with it and in fact he and bin Laden hated each other they said they didn't care. At bottom they felt that "somebody had to pay" and that was enough.
It is not that Saddam was a military threat, or that Saddam believed his own shit.
Those are irrelevant it is the threat of unifying the Arab nation around him, that worried the Saudis and Emirs, and it was the threat of a unified Arab "Nation" that worried Israel.
Remember the United Arab Republic The two green stars on the Syrian national flag represent Egypt and Syria, Iraq in 1958 was a big supporter of the UAR The Iraq National flag is the same with the addition of a third Star (Iraq) and separated from the other two by the takbir (Allhu Akbar in Arabic)
The UAR failed in 1961, but the memory and desire for a United Arab Nationalism lives on, and as you properly note, what we consider ancient history is to the Arabs only yesterday
World wide Muslims still defend and brag about the Islamic golden age from the 8th to the 13th Century, that period when Islam was open, questioning, and reformist, then it grew too rich and the Caliphates and potentates fat, lazy and corrupt and it fell in on itself, reverting it's fundamental roots. and so it remains to this day, and left alone it drifts further and further back into barbarity, like the Taliban, ISIS and even Saudi Arabia (sophisticated barbarism)
Yes I know and knew, that Saddam hated bin Laden, who considered him an apostate (murtadd) and the penalty for apostasy in Islam is death.
Well said and you know your history, William. But unifying people is very hard and religion or even past glory is not enough. Peru and Argentina or Spain and Italy will not truly unite because they are Roman Catholic and once belonged to their respective empires. During World War I the Ottoman Sultan tried to revive the Caliphate and that went nowhere. Anyway, the dialects of Arabic spoken in Iraq, Saudi and Egypt are quite different, as are their education and economic levels, subsequent histories and so on. Bin Laden could dream of unifying the post-Mohamed Arab empire, even talked about conquering Al-Andalus (Andalusia=Spain), just as ISIS did, but they could never unite it. Maybe having such a dream is better than the practical effects of trying to run such a place. Heck, Israel has serious internal divisions that are muted because of external threats. Take those away and it could go the way of Yugoslavia.
Of course a nations leaders are not going to give up their power to a Caliphate.
However when the Ummah is attacked by hated kufr, they circle the wagons and set aside differences like accents and ethnicities or local traditions and power struggles.
Your right the Catholic countries will not re unite into one Catholic hegemon, but they are actually united in one respect, the Roman Catholic church (The Roman empire never died, it just changed form from secular to sectarian...smart move)
If Catholicism came under attack, they would drop their hostilities and claims to sovereignty for a moment to circle the wagons.
I am aware of the problem in Andalus (Arabic for land of the Vandals)
and again it is because the moorish Caliphate of Cordoba became fat, lazy and indolent and was spending most of its time fighting off palace intrigues.
There was an attempt in the 8th Century to expand into Europe via France but that was stopped at Tours, some believe Poitiers in 732 by a Franc and his army of volunteer axe throwers (the francsica the axe gets the name from the Franks and not vice versa.
The Ottoman Turks tried again in 1638, and were stopped at the Gates of Vienna by John III Sobieski. The French(Louis IV) who had his own quarrel with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, despite entreaties of Pope Innocent XI, gave him the finger and said, you are on your own.. but it was a fellow Catholic John III that came to the rescue of Christendom.
Sometimes they circle the wagons, sometimes they don't, it depends on how petty and vengeful your fellow coreligionist is, and how threatened you feel.
The Ummah, however,is quite unlike Christendom, which has no worldwide community sense or identity.
There are schisms in Christianity, but none in Islam, The shia sunni conflict is not a religious schism, or interpretative difference butover who is the rightful succeessor of Muhammad, even Sufismis not a schism. There is one Schism but they are not considered Muslim and are persecuted in Pakistan and that is the The Ahmadiyya branch of Islamm because it doesn't recognize Muhammad as the last prophet it has its own peopet/messiah Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
And the Baha'i faith that grew out of Islam and is considered an apostasy and a rejection of Islam because it taught that Allah would send a new mahdi.
The Baha'i are severely persecuted in Yemen by the Huthi's and in Iran.
I do not indulge in wishful thinking.
Believe me if the Islamic world actually believed that it was being attacked and under siege by the entirety of Christendom, then they would forget their petty squabbles.
As it stands at the moment, the Israeli Arab conflict has achieved that purpose. Nothing in Islam is more despised than the Jews, in fact their day of Judgement depends on the final war of annihilation of the Jews.
Didn't work out for Dickies, wet dream, Iraq has kept it's oil
China is dominant in Iraq's oil and gas sector
he contracts signed were with: China's ZPEC for the East Baghdad and Middle Furat oil fields, and the Qurnain and Abu Khaima blocks; Hong Kong-based UEG for the Fao Block; China's Geo-Jade for the Zurbatiya and Jebel Sanam blocks; China's Sinopec for the Summer block; China's CNOOC for Block 7; China's Anton Oil for Al-Dhifriya oil field, and Kurdistan-based KAR for the Al-Dima, Sassan and Alan oil fields and the Khilaisiya exploration block.
The CIA, MI6 worked together to overthrow Mossadegh. Under the Shah British Petroleum (BP and Dutch Royal Shell had the contracts for extraction and sale of oil.
Frances Total S.A. was out in the cold, so the DGES (France's CIA) and the government worked with an exile, the Ayatollah Khomeini to smuggle, via diplomatic pouches, cassettes of his sermons and exhortations into Iran.
After the Revolution, the Government as the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) took over the industry, and cancelled all contracts,it eventually
Under the administration of President Mohammad Khatani the desire to increase production resulted in foreign contracts being let, but now NIOC is in complete control of production. China is the biggest supporter of NICO and most certainly has it's people working in the fields alongside Iranians.
If Harris loses, it will be the fault of the media. Of course, the media are owned and controlled by the plutocracy. They love exploiting the Sturm und Drang that is all the faux orange flatulent felon has to offer. And to exploit, covertly if not overtly, what his base hates about VP Harris—she is, gasp! A woman! And…not white! Bad! Very bad! A blue November or this country is gone, and deservedly so, because the monied classes will have won their war on the middle class and the poor that started in earnest with Reagan.
I live in Arizona and we set ALL TIME record high temperatures this year. This could be why the border crossings went down during June, July, August and September. I look for them to go up greatly in October I hope I'm wrong. We have climate, religious and economic refugees coming from all over the world and they come in by plane also.
If another right winger gets elected, they will probably follow Orban and Putin's economic policies of zero growth, in other words they will just burn through the useless eaters, anyone who needs a government check like social security to live on and all the homeless and prisoners and disabled and political prisoners, will be sent to extermination camps. I can't see the billionaires wanting to support people who they cannot exploit out of the goodness of their hearts!
What the billionaires care about is cheap labor. The border fence Trump keeps talking about, I keep seeing pictures of people climbing over and under the fence, obviously it does not work? I have read where they have taken power equipment and cut holes through the fence! The billionaires want the illegal immigrants into America to bust the unions and to replace unhealthy American workers who won't work for peanuts while blaming the left and accusing them of being soft on border protection. Kamala needs to propose building a military base from San Diego to Laredo Texas along the entire border! They will still come in by airplanes though, at least it won't be the poor ones who can't afford a plane ticket! America's constitutional Agnostic culture and their religious cultures, do not mix!
My quarrel with the hard bound ideologues is their grouping of all illigeal migrants as poor folk seeking asylum.
And they are not.
There are genuine asylum seekers,running for their lives, from threats of murder, rape.
There are job seekers,seeking jobs to send money back home (remittances a major source of income for Western Union)
Supposedly there are people risking their lives, in Africa, because of climate change, climate refugees, but I can't help but notice that most of these climate refugees are young males, over half should be women and children.
Then there are the well to do middle class, who suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder, but have the money to buy an airplane ticket and afford to pay coyotes,like the Venezuelans.
Then it strikes me that there is a business in human smuggling, and one has to pay thousands of dollars for their services. Where to these destitute, poor, starving people come up with thousands of dollars?
And the worse part, there are Haitians, Chinese, Sikhs, people of all nations, including Islamic terrorists (yes them to) showing up at the border. And it costs thousands of dollars to fly from the Mid east, Asia and even Haiti to Mexico, and to enter Mexico, to debark from the plane one must have a passport and a visa..
Think about that. Have you obtained a passport? It is not a simply thing, in any country, much less obtain a visa
A foreign national wishing to enter Mexico must obtain a visa unless they are the citizen of one of the 68 eligible visa-exempt countries or one of the 3 Electronic Authorization System-eligible countries.
I've seen photo's of Sikhs and Chinese huddled around a fire at the border. Now tell me that they are economic refugees. Mohdi of India has sent Sikh Assasssins to kill dissendents in Canada and the U.S.
Thom has been commenting for years about the "corporate media" and the way even "unbiased"
journalism shapes opinion in lieu of critical thinking. The current example of sane washing the incoherent sentences Donald Trump has been using as answers to interviewers and moderators questions shows us this can be another form of misinformation.
Yes - they have been covering for Trump’s deteriorating mental condition. He was always a narcissist and sociopath. Now he can’t cover up the slippage into fantasy of dementia. This makes him completely unfit for office because he is so easily manipulated. The story of the illegal immigrants eating the Springfield pets was a perfect example. David Muir even tried to correct Trump, but “No” he wouldn’t back off. We can not have crazy grandpa negotiating for the United States against Russia.
The ability for propaganda to alter the people's belief of which party is better at managing war for the nation comes from a constant lying of the facts. FDR's win of WWII made all the statement necessary. How misinforming the American people on who is better for the military only stems from a culturMl belief in misinformation. A campaign of misinformation the GOP are better at than any political party. Truth has little impact or movement while kabuki theater dominates. The Dems ot to take note and learn the lesson and become expert at the art. Mudsill is the goal of the GOP to make the majority of American's living below the middle class in order to have the economy generate unearned millionaires and billionaires. When the majority of the American's are living at the middle class or higher level there are only earned millionaires.
In fact Trump’s been already running around the world pretending that he has the “right” to “negotiate for the United States” - that’s a violation of the Logan Act! We fired his ass as President but crazy pants refuses to accept it. Now our allies are having to deal with our kooky ex president and his MAGA nutcase insurrectionist Republicans,
I sure hope this country on Nov. 6 doesn't get what it probably deserves. You can't keep creating wars and profit through the "guns and butter' formula for economic strength and not expect blowback.
I would like to add that George W H Bush, invaded Panama, to arrest a bag man, Manuel Noriega, who had been a conduit for cocaine drug money for the CIA
George W. Bush, on his graduation from the 3710 Basic Military Training Squadron at Lackland AFB, TX would have been a Basic Airman, E-1, he was an undistinguished trainee. Lackland had two Training Squadrons that handled the special and privileged, the 3710 was for members of the Air National Guard and the 3702 was for reservists.
George's daddy was the Governor of Texas and on graduation, he pinned 2nd Lt gold bars on him, while he still have hair stubble. He never even attended Officer Training School, or even the familiarization course that Chaplains and medical officers attend.
The Newspapers, and the corporate media, favor Trump. The Republican party is a client of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Tax breaks and deregulation is what they offer There is a built in Republican bias and needs to be constantly exposed.
The corporate overlords, the billionaires, are untouchable because of their wealth and power, and thus unaffected by social issues (the culture war), outlaw abortion, they will still have them, they can hire people to ensure that enemies and competition are no longer a problem. If gay, no problem, they don't want to get married anyway, like Peter Thiel, and their wealth and power inures them from social opprobrium. If they have children, the children will get the best education money can buy to ensure the safety and security of their dynasty and legacy. However a dumbed down population of workers, reduces the threat tot their power and status.
And the journalists, reporters, writers and hosts who facilitate them, well they have to eat, want careers and enjoy the acclaim of awards and recognition.
The biggest lie ever told even bigger than Trump winning the election, in my opinion, "the meek shall inherit the earth"!
When the right teaches young children that this is a FACT (truth), they become detached from reality and for the rest of their lives they become putty in the hands of their rich masters. They will willingly go off and fight and die in wars and kill good people for their masters, while believing they will get to go to heaven.
The definition meek is thought of in terms of the present era. but what is the original Greek word that was translated into meek, and what was it.
Meek can mean the lesser creatures, like ants and insects and in that regard if we keep going the way we are headed the meek will indeed inherit the earth.
Jesus also said love they neighbor as thy self, but 2,000 years ago your neighbor was an ethnic kins man, went to the same temple, had the same ancestors. Today a neighbor is a complete stranger with no commonality.
It's not trump who is powerful - it is the powerful who make him appear so. He is less than nothing in any other world. A world in which the corporate media would take its task professionally and dutifully. But they don't...
Harris did a great job against the man with lifelong experience and practice lying and drawing in the gullible to his world view. I hope to see another debate so Harris can do more of the same and correct more of Trump's BS.
Daniel Soloman should be elated that Taylor Swift finally endorsed Harris. I'm signed up to phone bank for Harris and hope to pick up Harris/Walz signs later today.
Yep. Roped a dope. Kamala beat him with body blows and Taylor, hopefully, can finish him off.
Swifties can attach https://voterizer.org/ to their comments on her social media.
I visited several MAGA sites and they are in SHOCK. Trump looked like Bluto after he was whupped by Olive Oyl.
The bookies immediately discounted Trump 8 points.
RealClearPolitics Betting Average
51.8 Harris
46.9 Trump
Vote Vets had a post debate zoom event led by Fred Wellman. Trump got the majority in 2016 and 2020. IMHO we can flip a majority of them. He admitted releasing the Taliban while the Afghani government had no say in the deal. The 13 dead were killed by suicide bombers, most probably Taliban. Add this to "not suckers or losers." 4 million people on Facebook are veterans or active duty members. 12.5 million people on Facebook are family members of a veteran or an active duty member. 242 million people on Facebook are friends with one or more veterans or active duty members. A few of Thom's readers can post "not suckers or losers" on military and history sites. That alone might turn the election.
Meanwhile FT 6 has sent over 12 million tests to unregistered folk who trend Democratic. Need phone bankers and canvassers to close the deal and make a blue tsunami.
https://www.fieldteam6.org/all-volunteer-ops
Do Swifties vote, and can they influence their parents?
You and I are vets Daniel. And I am beside myself that Vets were/are Trump humpers.
Then again since they went all volunteer, I must admit, that the vast majority of enlisted are not the cream of the crop. Overwhelming majority from the south, rural America and from depressed regions where there are little chance for upward mobility or even jobs.
And the officers, well the service acadamies have been infected with Dominionism.
How nice it would be to see an expose on Dominionism, New Apostolic Reformation, Opus Dei, Catholic Truth and other fascistic religious ideologies which are behind the right wing and MAGA movement.
I am not an expert but she's been recording since 1989. Approximately 360 million followers. Gen Z is the largest voting block.
I wrote a Substack when she visited Paris. https://danielsolomon.substack.com/p/is-there-a-swiftie-in-the-house
Gen Z is the generation between 1997 and 2012, those born before November 2006 can vote. I hope they are registered and I hope they are Swifties.
41 million members of Gen Z will be eligible to vote in 2024.
https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/41-million-members-gen-z-will-be-eligible-vote-2024
Yea, but first we have to build the blue tsunami. There is a huge push to purge and suppress the vote to overcome. Let’s keep our eyes on the prize.
I only leave the house to go to the market and pick up mail, and when I do I wear a Kamala T-Shirt, My contribution, and man do I get thumbs ups and smiles.
If there is another debate they should hire you to do the fact checking! How can we make that happen?
Also, It will be interesting to see if they ever recover the boxes sent to T’s Bedford, NJ golf club. I’m curious to find out why a search warrant was never requested for that club. Was there?
The candidates need to be placed in soundproof boothes were their microphones automatically gets cut off when their speaking time is over, and they are thoroughly fact checked! Just to make it "fair"!
Some think Harris should not do another debate. Let this winning one stand.
There won't be another debate. Trump has been warned and so has the team that tries to manage him.
I agree. I sent that idea in before the last presidential debate in addition to muting the mics.
Just as important is that the moderators keep them to strict time limits. They allowed Trump to interrupt and ramble on.
Despite the fact that Muir fact checked Trump on Migrants eating dogs
Trump had spoken for approximately 42 minutes and 52 seconds, while Harris spoke for about 37 minutes and 36 seconds.
While the debate was designed to offer both candidates an equal chance to respond to questions, they could choose not to use the maximum allotted time. The ABC moderators also allowed more time for responses after some exchanges.
ABC should offer her 5 minutes of ads during peak time.
Sometimes it's beneficial to let idiots ramble on.
I wonder William, if Trump had said Marxists, socialist, communists agnostics, hippies, liberals, lefties or atheists were accused of eating pets, would Muir come to their rescue?
As far as a warrant for searching Bedford, no one would confirm boxes in question were sent there thus no probable cause for search, according to what I read was from Garland or a DOJ spokesperson. The reach of trump $$ & threats no doubt.
How could this election even be close? Because there are legions of morons who won't let truth or reality get in the way of their cherished delusions.
In my view, most MAGAs are reactionaries who are overwhelmed by the complexities of modern life and feel like victims of the government system. In other words, they prefer to project their failures on others rather take responsibility for their own bad judgement. It is not that they are what Trump calls "losers" as much as that they do not feel like winners. To them winners have lots of money to play with and buy more and more toys. It is easy to feel like a winner when you claim you were cheated.
I agree, 100 Grand a year is not enough for mega supporters. They need about 500 Grand a year to fill like they're not victims? I have talked to many that live a pretty decent middle-class lifestyle, about 90k a year and they feel like they are impoverished. Working for the government for God sakes! Kamala is going to raise their earned income tax credit she never talks about lowering taxes for single people who are becoming homeless on the streets and of course neither does Donald Trump.
Yes Mr. Johnson, you are no doubt aware that most of the people who stormed the capital on 1/6 were employed and earned a living. Some even flew to D.C. We must try to figure out what exactly their grievance is. A good start might be to read STRANGERS IN THEIR OWN LAND by Arlie Russell Hochschild.
Well, Neoliberalism kind of ruined so much for so many.
Well said Tomonthebeach.
How can the election be close? Because every voter finally seriously tuning into the candidates and then choosing Harris is counterbalanced by another choosing Trump.
The candidates are adding voters about equally. But Trump's appeal should top out soon while Harris' continues to grow. At that time, the numbers should change to favor Harris.
Mr. Hobbs, I am not certain what you mean by "close." But Harris will undoubtedly win the election. How big her margin will be is up for guesses. Whether or not there will be a "blue wave" is uncertain.
Debates are only one part of the many components of an election. The question of who "won" and who "lost" the debate is not particularly important.
Those voters you refer to so callously as "morons" are our fellow citizens. Many are people who feel left behind. They are for the most part, badly educated, uninformed, financially struggling, emotionally needy. They are being preyed upon in their vulnerabilities by wealthy hustlers. Chief among them Trump. We should listen to them and reassure them that their lives matter. And we should struggle to change this country enough so their lives and the lives of their children are better.
As for the big topic we will be hearing about for the next several weeks: Trump's performance and Harris's performance:
Harris blew it. She treated trump as though he was legitimately engaging in debate. She legitimized him. He is obviously out of contact with reality: psychotic. When she interrupted him while he was speaking she gave him a chance to score an obvious point. When she made sardonic smirks with her face as he spewed his insane, hate filled, word salads and non sequiturs she was playing his school-ground game of face-making. That's what he does. When he said doctors are killing new-born babies. When he said immigrants in American cities are eating dogs and cats. She should have used those opportunities to look over at him and tell him, and the world, that he is insane. Just as the little girl in the fable refused to recognize the emperor's cloak; Harris should have refused. She should have refused to recognize him as legitimate. The American public would have arisen out of their seats.
I am old enough to remember when the outraged, brilliant attorney J.N. Welch defending the U.S. army in a congressional, hearing said to the insane, alcoholic Senator Joe McCarthy: "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" That was effectively the end of McCarthy.
As it is now, Trump has not been eliminated even though he will lose the election. He might weigh in effectively in the 2026 midterm elections. He might continue to control the Republican Party. He might even run again for President in 2028. After all is said and done; she legitimized him. If they have another debate, it will be difficult for her to delegitimize him then. Because she has already indicated that she takes him as a legitimate candidate in yesterday's encounter. Harris may have won the debate. But it ain't over yet.
Terrorist bombings in Afghanistan were a "fact of life" (to borrow a phrase from JD) from the first day of the war till the very last day. Hanging that albatross around President Biden's neck is actually ridiculous. AND he stopped any further loss of American lives while telling people well ahead of time to get out. Republicans whine about the equipment left that probably cost more to remove than it was of use to us. They also fail to mention the enormous amount of money we have saved on ending the longest war in history. Thank you President Biden and condolences to the families.
Vice President Harris showed the world that she truly does know Trump's type. He is the type that doesn't mind the violence that his dictator friends wreak daily on their own people and their neighboring countries. He IS a psychopath; they are not all in love with violence, but his TYPE are. We know he loved the insurrection, and he loves the criminals that hurt our officers and ultimately caused deaths among them. She got him on that too. Well done Kamala!
VP Harris sees him, but more importantly she sees us. Taylor and the Swifties aren't going back and neither are we.
Excellent take on the presidency and the Debates. I have a slightly different take on the Bush administration than Thom, and that probably is because I was working in the tall trees of our government at the time. To me, Bush was Cheney's useful idiot. Cheney engineered the WMD lie, and conned Powell into lying to Congress to justify invading Iraq to ensure a 2nd term in power. Most of the people in my deep-state world seemed to see it that way too.
I asked several experts on Iraq disarmament at the time who had been on the ground. They said the only undiscovered WMD might be a couple of anthrax-loaded biological warfare shells rusting in the desert somewhere. They also told me that attempts to contact the WH to set the record straight were rebuffed. It was as if Cheney had surrounded 1600 Penn with a political moat full of sharks.
Subsequent his address to Congress, Powell got wised up that he had been set up, and quietly retired from public life. Alas, his legacy endures as we still have troops on the ground in Iraq, and Iraq still has a puppet government - which like in the Iran of yore and the Afghanistan of today - is no government at all.
Of course it was obvious that the Iraq thing was absurd--I heard the same lies about Vietnam. But "WMD" is such a nebulous legal term that it means almost nothing, and even if Saddam had very serious weapons he wasn't crazy enough to use them. When Bush said that he had to prove that he wasn't hiding them I knew it was over. You cannot prove a negative any more than you can check everyplace and everyone to show that you don't have a twin brother. But the really sad thing is that after the very predictable way that this ended the next administration tried the same "regime change" in Libya and got exactly the same kind of result. Repeating an action and expecting a different outcome is one definition of insanity.
Doc, though Bush was a dunce, and if he hadn't been given a direct commission by his Daddy, and stayed an enlisted man he would not have made it to SSgt E-5, but he was no idiot, much less Cheney's.
He was like so many men, he had to best his daddy. His daddy only served one term,and Dubya wanted to be reelected and finish what Pappy Bush started.
Cheney was CEO and Chairman of the Board of Halliburton as it was going into receivership. Bolivia had been forced by the IMF to sell it's water rights to Halliburton, and Halliburton squeezed the peasants to pay for that which had been free. There was a peasant revolt. the government terminated the contract, and the international court forced Bolivia to reimburse Halliburton for lost revenue. It never did, because it couldn't.
There were two other forces that wanted to get rid of Saddam. Israel and Saudi Arabia and it's Arab allies.
Saddam posed a threat to Israel and to the Arab leaders, He first claimed to be a reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar, and then proclaimed himself the new Salah al Din (Saladin), thus positioning himself as the leader of the Arab world, making the Saudi's and Emirates subordinate.
Cheney saw this as an opportunity to enrich Halliburton and himself, by claiming Iraqi oil, however things never work out as one plans. The best laid plains fail at the opening barrage.
Oh yes, there were other things going on though how much Saddam really believed his claim I don't know. Until the war had almost started he ignored religion (Islam, which I know came along long, long after Babylon) and then it was to his advantage to embrace it. And people in that part of the world seem to remember the past very well--in quieter times I traveled through it from one end to the other, including Iraq and Afghanistan, and was struck by how Alexander, the Crusaders and so on remained in public consciousness. Americans...we forget anything before last year's Super Bowl and it's no surprise that our ideas about "changing" things there were and are pipe dreams.
I'm not sure how much Iraq was a threat to Israel either, as they had taken out his nuclear reactor. Having him there to keep a lid on the different groups, including those Shi'a who would ally with Iran seemed like a better strategy. Perhaps the Saudis felt he was too powerful though after the 1990 war his reach was reduced. Now he (and later Gaddafi) apparently did talk about replacing petrodollars with Euros, which would have undercut U.S. economic power in the oil industry, so that might have been a hidden reason to go in there.
But at the end of the day maybe it was just what a professor I met said. His class was all for the war because of 9/11. When he pointed out that Saddam had nothing to do with it and in fact he and bin Laden hated each other they said they didn't care. At bottom they felt that "somebody had to pay" and that was enough.
It is not that Saddam was a military threat, or that Saddam believed his own shit.
Those are irrelevant it is the threat of unifying the Arab nation around him, that worried the Saudis and Emirs, and it was the threat of a unified Arab "Nation" that worried Israel.
Remember the United Arab Republic The two green stars on the Syrian national flag represent Egypt and Syria, Iraq in 1958 was a big supporter of the UAR The Iraq National flag is the same with the addition of a third Star (Iraq) and separated from the other two by the takbir (Allhu Akbar in Arabic)
The UAR failed in 1961, but the memory and desire for a United Arab Nationalism lives on, and as you properly note, what we consider ancient history is to the Arabs only yesterday
World wide Muslims still defend and brag about the Islamic golden age from the 8th to the 13th Century, that period when Islam was open, questioning, and reformist, then it grew too rich and the Caliphates and potentates fat, lazy and corrupt and it fell in on itself, reverting it's fundamental roots. and so it remains to this day, and left alone it drifts further and further back into barbarity, like the Taliban, ISIS and even Saudi Arabia (sophisticated barbarism)
Yes I know and knew, that Saddam hated bin Laden, who considered him an apostate (murtadd) and the penalty for apostasy in Islam is death.
Even today
Well said and you know your history, William. But unifying people is very hard and religion or even past glory is not enough. Peru and Argentina or Spain and Italy will not truly unite because they are Roman Catholic and once belonged to their respective empires. During World War I the Ottoman Sultan tried to revive the Caliphate and that went nowhere. Anyway, the dialects of Arabic spoken in Iraq, Saudi and Egypt are quite different, as are their education and economic levels, subsequent histories and so on. Bin Laden could dream of unifying the post-Mohamed Arab empire, even talked about conquering Al-Andalus (Andalusia=Spain), just as ISIS did, but they could never unite it. Maybe having such a dream is better than the practical effects of trying to run such a place. Heck, Israel has serious internal divisions that are muted because of external threats. Take those away and it could go the way of Yugoslavia.
Of course a nations leaders are not going to give up their power to a Caliphate.
However when the Ummah is attacked by hated kufr, they circle the wagons and set aside differences like accents and ethnicities or local traditions and power struggles.
Your right the Catholic countries will not re unite into one Catholic hegemon, but they are actually united in one respect, the Roman Catholic church (The Roman empire never died, it just changed form from secular to sectarian...smart move)
If Catholicism came under attack, they would drop their hostilities and claims to sovereignty for a moment to circle the wagons.
I am aware of the problem in Andalus (Arabic for land of the Vandals)
and again it is because the moorish Caliphate of Cordoba became fat, lazy and indolent and was spending most of its time fighting off palace intrigues.
There was an attempt in the 8th Century to expand into Europe via France but that was stopped at Tours, some believe Poitiers in 732 by a Franc and his army of volunteer axe throwers (the francsica the axe gets the name from the Franks and not vice versa.
The Ottoman Turks tried again in 1638, and were stopped at the Gates of Vienna by John III Sobieski. The French(Louis IV) who had his own quarrel with the Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, despite entreaties of Pope Innocent XI, gave him the finger and said, you are on your own.. but it was a fellow Catholic John III that came to the rescue of Christendom.
Sometimes they circle the wagons, sometimes they don't, it depends on how petty and vengeful your fellow coreligionist is, and how threatened you feel.
The Ummah, however,is quite unlike Christendom, which has no worldwide community sense or identity.
There are schisms in Christianity, but none in Islam, The shia sunni conflict is not a religious schism, or interpretative difference butover who is the rightful succeessor of Muhammad, even Sufismis not a schism. There is one Schism but they are not considered Muslim and are persecuted in Pakistan and that is the The Ahmadiyya branch of Islamm because it doesn't recognize Muhammad as the last prophet it has its own peopet/messiah Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
And the Baha'i faith that grew out of Islam and is considered an apostasy and a rejection of Islam because it taught that Allah would send a new mahdi.
The Baha'i are severely persecuted in Yemen by the Huthi's and in Iran.
I do not indulge in wishful thinking.
Believe me if the Islamic world actually believed that it was being attacked and under siege by the entirety of Christendom, then they would forget their petty squabbles.
As it stands at the moment, the Israeli Arab conflict has achieved that purpose. Nothing in Islam is more despised than the Jews, in fact their day of Judgement depends on the final war of annihilation of the Jews.
Said if we took Iraq, the oil rights would pay for the war. At least 3 trillion bucks off budget never accounted.
Didn't work out for Dickies, wet dream, Iraq has kept it's oil
China is dominant in Iraq's oil and gas sector
he contracts signed were with: China's ZPEC for the East Baghdad and Middle Furat oil fields, and the Qurnain and Abu Khaima blocks; Hong Kong-based UEG for the Fao Block; China's Geo-Jade for the Zurbatiya and Jebel Sanam blocks; China's Sinopec for the Summer block; China's CNOOC for Block 7; China's Anton Oil for Al-Dhifriya oil field, and Kurdistan-based KAR for the Al-Dima, Sassan and Alan oil fields and the Khilaisiya exploration block.
The CIA, MI6 worked together to overthrow Mossadegh. Under the Shah British Petroleum (BP and Dutch Royal Shell had the contracts for extraction and sale of oil.
Frances Total S.A. was out in the cold, so the DGES (France's CIA) and the government worked with an exile, the Ayatollah Khomeini to smuggle, via diplomatic pouches, cassettes of his sermons and exhortations into Iran.
After the Revolution, the Government as the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) took over the industry, and cancelled all contracts,it eventually
Under the administration of President Mohammad Khatani the desire to increase production resulted in foreign contracts being let, but now NIOC is in complete control of production. China is the biggest supporter of NICO and most certainly has it's people working in the fields alongside Iranians.
Well said!
If Harris loses, it will be the fault of the media. Of course, the media are owned and controlled by the plutocracy. They love exploiting the Sturm und Drang that is all the faux orange flatulent felon has to offer. And to exploit, covertly if not overtly, what his base hates about VP Harris—she is, gasp! A woman! And…not white! Bad! Very bad! A blue November or this country is gone, and deservedly so, because the monied classes will have won their war on the middle class and the poor that started in earnest with Reagan.
I live in Arizona and we set ALL TIME record high temperatures this year. This could be why the border crossings went down during June, July, August and September. I look for them to go up greatly in October I hope I'm wrong. We have climate, religious and economic refugees coming from all over the world and they come in by plane also.
If another right winger gets elected, they will probably follow Orban and Putin's economic policies of zero growth, in other words they will just burn through the useless eaters, anyone who needs a government check like social security to live on and all the homeless and prisoners and disabled and political prisoners, will be sent to extermination camps. I can't see the billionaires wanting to support people who they cannot exploit out of the goodness of their hearts!
What the billionaires care about is cheap labor. The border fence Trump keeps talking about, I keep seeing pictures of people climbing over and under the fence, obviously it does not work? I have read where they have taken power equipment and cut holes through the fence! The billionaires want the illegal immigrants into America to bust the unions and to replace unhealthy American workers who won't work for peanuts while blaming the left and accusing them of being soft on border protection. Kamala needs to propose building a military base from San Diego to Laredo Texas along the entire border! They will still come in by airplanes though, at least it won't be the poor ones who can't afford a plane ticket! America's constitutional Agnostic culture and their religious cultures, do not mix!
Trump refused to answer David Muir’s question about how he was going accomplish gathering and deporting 11 million people.
My favorite immigration factoids are:
1. he was the poster boy for employer sanctions for employing illegals on his job sites, had to pay a $2 mil fine, and
2. He hires foreigners (mostly Slovenians?) for Mar a Lago and the Doral using temporary visas to avoid having to hire locals.
3. His boy Bannon was pardoned for running a scam grifting the Mexican wall.
My quarrel with the hard bound ideologues is their grouping of all illigeal migrants as poor folk seeking asylum.
And they are not.
There are genuine asylum seekers,running for their lives, from threats of murder, rape.
There are job seekers,seeking jobs to send money back home (remittances a major source of income for Western Union)
Supposedly there are people risking their lives, in Africa, because of climate change, climate refugees, but I can't help but notice that most of these climate refugees are young males, over half should be women and children.
Then there are the well to do middle class, who suddenly find themselves at the bottom of the economic ladder, but have the money to buy an airplane ticket and afford to pay coyotes,like the Venezuelans.
Then it strikes me that there is a business in human smuggling, and one has to pay thousands of dollars for their services. Where to these destitute, poor, starving people come up with thousands of dollars?
And the worse part, there are Haitians, Chinese, Sikhs, people of all nations, including Islamic terrorists (yes them to) showing up at the border. And it costs thousands of dollars to fly from the Mid east, Asia and even Haiti to Mexico, and to enter Mexico, to debark from the plane one must have a passport and a visa..
Think about that. Have you obtained a passport? It is not a simply thing, in any country, much less obtain a visa
A foreign national wishing to enter Mexico must obtain a visa unless they are the citizen of one of the 68 eligible visa-exempt countries or one of the 3 Electronic Authorization System-eligible countries.
A map of the 68 countries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_policy_of_Mexico#:~:text=A%20foreign%20national%20wishing%20to,Electronic%20Authorization%20System%2Deligible%20countries.
I've seen photo's of Sikhs and Chinese huddled around a fire at the border. Now tell me that they are economic refugees. Mohdi of India has sent Sikh Assasssins to kill dissendents in Canada and the U.S.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/8-suspected-terrorists-possible-isis-ties-arrested-new-york-l-philadel-rcna156635
William, I believe that almost all of the walkers are poor?
Thom has been commenting for years about the "corporate media" and the way even "unbiased"
journalism shapes opinion in lieu of critical thinking. The current example of sane washing the incoherent sentences Donald Trump has been using as answers to interviewers and moderators questions shows us this can be another form of misinformation.
Yes - they have been covering for Trump’s deteriorating mental condition. He was always a narcissist and sociopath. Now he can’t cover up the slippage into fantasy of dementia. This makes him completely unfit for office because he is so easily manipulated. The story of the illegal immigrants eating the Springfield pets was a perfect example. David Muir even tried to correct Trump, but “No” he wouldn’t back off. We can not have crazy grandpa negotiating for the United States against Russia.
I totally missed that Trump was setting himself up as a "peace candidate." Maybe because I assumed from the get-go that everything he said was BS?
Yes - total bs
The ability for propaganda to alter the people's belief of which party is better at managing war for the nation comes from a constant lying of the facts. FDR's win of WWII made all the statement necessary. How misinforming the American people on who is better for the military only stems from a culturMl belief in misinformation. A campaign of misinformation the GOP are better at than any political party. Truth has little impact or movement while kabuki theater dominates. The Dems ot to take note and learn the lesson and become expert at the art. Mudsill is the goal of the GOP to make the majority of American's living below the middle class in order to have the economy generate unearned millionaires and billionaires. When the majority of the American's are living at the middle class or higher level there are only earned millionaires.
In fact Trump’s been already running around the world pretending that he has the “right” to “negotiate for the United States” - that’s a violation of the Logan Act! We fired his ass as President but crazy pants refuses to accept it. Now our allies are having to deal with our kooky ex president and his MAGA nutcase insurrectionist Republicans,
I sure hope this country on Nov. 6 doesn't get what it probably deserves. You can't keep creating wars and profit through the "guns and butter' formula for economic strength and not expect blowback.
I would like to add that George W H Bush, invaded Panama, to arrest a bag man, Manuel Noriega, who had been a conduit for cocaine drug money for the CIA
George W. Bush, on his graduation from the 3710 Basic Military Training Squadron at Lackland AFB, TX would have been a Basic Airman, E-1, he was an undistinguished trainee. Lackland had two Training Squadrons that handled the special and privileged, the 3710 was for members of the Air National Guard and the 3702 was for reservists.
George's daddy was the Governor of Texas and on graduation, he pinned 2nd Lt gold bars on him, while he still have hair stubble. He never even attended Officer Training School, or even the familiarization course that Chaplains and medical officers attend.
The Newspapers, and the corporate media, favor Trump. The Republican party is a client of Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce, Tax breaks and deregulation is what they offer There is a built in Republican bias and needs to be constantly exposed.
The corporate overlords, the billionaires, are untouchable because of their wealth and power, and thus unaffected by social issues (the culture war), outlaw abortion, they will still have them, they can hire people to ensure that enemies and competition are no longer a problem. If gay, no problem, they don't want to get married anyway, like Peter Thiel, and their wealth and power inures them from social opprobrium. If they have children, the children will get the best education money can buy to ensure the safety and security of their dynasty and legacy. However a dumbed down population of workers, reduces the threat tot their power and status.
And the journalists, reporters, writers and hosts who facilitate them, well they have to eat, want careers and enjoy the acclaim of awards and recognition.
The biggest lie ever told even bigger than Trump winning the election, in my opinion, "the meek shall inherit the earth"!
When the right teaches young children that this is a FACT (truth), they become detached from reality and for the rest of their lives they become putty in the hands of their rich masters. They will willingly go off and fight and die in wars and kill good people for their masters, while believing they will get to go to heaven.
The definition meek is thought of in terms of the present era. but what is the original Greek word that was translated into meek, and what was it.
Meek can mean the lesser creatures, like ants and insects and in that regard if we keep going the way we are headed the meek will indeed inherit the earth.
I don't think that is the way it gets interpreted though in Sunday School?
Of course not, I know how it is interpreted.
Jesus also said love they neighbor as thy self, but 2,000 years ago your neighbor was an ethnic kins man, went to the same temple, had the same ancestors. Today a neighbor is a complete stranger with no commonality.
At the end you said, Thom, Perhaps Jared is planning on building oceanside condos in Gaza.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/mar/19/jared-kushner-gaza-waterfront-property-israel-negev
And no, an Israeli real estate company is not selling beach front properties in Gaza
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-12-20/ty-article/.premium/no-an-israeli-real-estate-company-is-not-selling-beachfront-homes-in-gaza/0000018c-86d1-d60e-afdf-e6df243a0000