December 31, 2023

'Gradually dismantling Hamas, the IDF is also battling its own government's impatience'

https://www.timesofisrael.com/gradually-dismantling-hamas-the-idf-is-also-battling-its-own-governments-impatience/#:~:text=The%20IDF%20is%20gradually%20taking,both%20central%20Gaza%20and%20the

'Army chiefs warned from the start the war would be long and hard. And so it is proving, amid ministerial critiques, public strain, global hostility, but also, crucial US backing...The IDF is gradually taking apart Hamas’s military capabilities —
significantly weakening the terrorist army in northern Gaza, where several Hamas battalions are either no longer functioning or struggling to function, destroying miles of the Hamas underworld, and expanding ground operations in both central Gaza and the Hamas stronghold of Khan Younis to the south....But Hamas remains largely intact in the south of the Strip, none of its most prominent leaders has yet been eliminated, and its overall commander Yahya Sinwar remains confident that he and the monstrous force he has nurtured will ultimately be able to hold off the Israeli troops and survive to massacre Israelis again and again in the future...

The only country that strategically recognizes the significance of October 7 — recognizes, in other words, that a life-affirming sovereign state that wants to continue to survive in the unforgiving Middle East cannot do so in the shadow of a barbaric, hugely funded terror-state neighbor — is the United States. To Israel’s existential good fortune, the US is also the country most willing and able to back Israel in this war...Its practical military support is central to Israel’s daily capacity to fight....And its diplomatic support was again tangibly evidenced in Friday’s binding UN Security Council resolution. At American insistence, the motion was transformed from an initial text demanding an immediate ceasefire — and thus victory for Hamas — to one seeking the means to urgently expand humanitarian aid into Gaza, and ambivalent language urging the creation of conditions to enable a future cessation of hostilities, clauses that Israel can certainly live with.'

My words: I found this article informative. I realize this is a hot topic for some, please try to be kind to each other.

December 30, 2023

"The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War"

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-29-2023

Letters From An American: Heather Cox Richardson

'Haley has correctly been lambasted for her rewriting of history. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens of Georgia, was quite clear about the cause of the Civil War. Stephens explicitly rejected the idea embraced by U.S. politicians from the revolutionary period onward that human enslavement was “wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically.” Instead, he declared: “Our new government is founded upon…the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition.”

President Joe Biden put the cause of the Civil War even more succinctly: “It was about slavery.”

My words: Just to clear up any confusion for Nikki Haley and folks like her. Anyone who believes that they are worthy to follow in the shoes of one of the greatest American Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, had better know the history of their own goddamn country.

December 29, 2023

Heads up: Yale University Professor David Blight on Lawrence O'Donnell explaining 14th Amendment

&t=213s


Note: Includes Maine Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows

December 28, 2023

'Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election'

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/recordings-trump-team-fake-elector-ballots/index.html


'Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.

So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.

The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.'

My words: Treason by any other name is TREASON.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/28/politics/recordings-trump-team-fake-elector-ballots/index.html

December 28, 2023

Michael Popok from Meidas Touch

&t=318s

'Jack Smith CORNERS Trump like A RAT with Powerful Motion'

'While Trump is busy sending Special Counsel to “rot in hell” over the holiday, the Special Counsel is responding in the courtroom and in new motions by calling Trump’s bluff that the prosecutors are coordinating with the Biden Administration and campaign to bring down Trump. Michael Popok of Legal AF explains that Trump’s “freeloading” days of using false claims of prosecutor misconduct on social media and to raise money, are over.'

My words: Love this guy. Smart as hell and doesn't screech, like others on this channel.

December 24, 2023

A little Hendrix might be good today.

'When the power of love
Overcomes the love of power
The world will know peace'

Jimi Hendrix

December 24, 2023

'Let's talk about Biden and something not happening...'

Beau of the Fifth Column

Wow, people. Joe's the man.

December 24, 2023

"Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action'...

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/december-23-2023

Letters From An American: Heather Cox Richardson

'On this day in December 1783, General George Washington stood in front of the Confederation Congress, meeting in the senate chamber of the Maryland State House, to resign his wartime commission...“Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of Action; and bidding an Affectionate farewell to this August body under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my Commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”...

In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation. As they discussed the project, he told President James Madison: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”

Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily giving up power rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the U.S. Capitol, in the Rotunda. It hung there over the January 6 rioters as they tried to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and put in place their candidate, who insisted he should remain in power despite the will of the American people.'

My words: Keep the faith, people.

December 23, 2023

'Supreme Court Ruling NOT THE WIN Trump Thinks AT ALL' Michael Popok

'Does the US Supreme Court’s decision NOT TO EXPEDITE an appeal of whether Trump has absolute presidential immunity, and deferring instead to the lower DC appellate court, a win for Trump, or really for Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office. Michael Popok of Legal AF explains why the decision may not ultimately lead to a delay in the March 2024 trial against Donald Trump at all.'

December 21, 2023

US supreme court urged to make 'immediate, definitive decision' on Trump's immunity

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/dec/21/jack-smith-supreme-court-trump-immunity-decision

US supreme court urged to make ‘immediate, definitive decision’ on Trump’s immunity

'Jack Smith says court should make decision on whether former president is immune from criminal prosecution on federal charges'

'Jack Smith has urged speed for the supreme court to take up the issue of whether Donald Trump is, as the former president claims, immune from criminal prosecution on federal charges over his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss. On Thursday the US special counsel submitted a new file to the supreme court in Washington DC, reiterating his argument for urgency in their consideration of such a key element of the federal election interference case, in response to Trump’s latest move the day before.

On Wednesday, Trump’s team asked the highest court in the US to stay out of the argument about whether he has immunity from federal criminal prosecution, after Smith asked the court last week to take up review of the matter.

On Thursday, Smith submitted to the supreme court that in the public interest it should make an “immediate, definitive decision” on the “important constitutional question” of Trump’s immunity or lack of it in the federal election interference case. “The charges here are of the utmost gravity. This case involves – for the first time in our nation’s history – criminal charges against a former president based on his actions while in office,” the latest submission said. Smith’s filing added: “Enforcing federal criminal laws that prohibit such conduct is vital to protecting our constitutional processes and democracy itself.”'