Monitoring Biden and other Contemporary Events

And I don't recall seeing anyone in the Biden administration "blessing" anything.

Re: blatham (Post 7344975)
I think somebody said something very similar around 1:34 in the above video!

Here’s one example:

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/summary?cycle=All&ind=Q05&mem=Y&recipdetail=S

Senator, State & Amount Received from Pro-Israel PACs
Biden, Joe (D) $4,346,264
Menendez, Robert (D-NJ) New Jersey $2,483,205
Clinton, Hillary (D-NY) New York $2,358,112
Kirk, Mark (R-IL) Illinois $2,294,469
Lieberman, Joe (D-CT) Connecticut $1,996,274
McConnell, Mitch (R-KY) Kentucky $1,953,160
Schumer, Charles E (D-NY) New York $1,725,324
McCain, John (R-AZ) Arizona $1,491,366
Cruz, Ted (R-TX) Texas $1,299,194
Wyden, Ron (D-OR) Oregon $1,279,376
Levin, Carl (D-MI) Michigan $1,245,913
Perdue, David (R-GA) Georgia $1,136,541
Durbin, Dick (D-IL) Illinois $1,126,020

You’ll note that Ds & Rs are happy to work for Israel. I wish they’d work as hard for the American people.

That’s A LOT of money from a foreign government.
I thought there was a law against that.

Yeah, we all heard Joe say, "Good job, Bibi, keep committing war crimes – you're doing the Lord's work."

And remember, the US gave Israel a perpetual green light for this sort of action decades ago by propping it up militarily and diplomatically.

Realistically, do you think the IDF would stop fighting because of a UN resolution?

I doubt that even the suspension of military aid would have much effect as Israel is a well-armed country capable of manufacturing powerful bombs.

And given the physical reality of a small territory with two million civilian inhabitants who have nowhere to go and a fighting force of desperate men willing to die, do you see any way that a disaster wouldn't have occurred?

It doesn't answer the question of why the biden administration would block an initiative (UNSCR) to put a stop to the continuation of war crimes against innocent Palestinians?

Well then we're all going to have to come up with another way to stop the war crimes.

You'll have to explain how that excuses Israel's war crimes against the people of Palestine.

If you invade a territory in retaliation for an attack...

I have never made any post on the subject or topic of Israel/Palestine/Gaza
And I still have never made any post on the subject of Israel/Palestine/Gaza
I have no intention on posting anything related to the topic of Israel/Palestine/Gaza

It was a messy compromise. On Friday, after a week of wrangling, the United Nations security council (UNSC) staggered across the finish line, approving a watered-down bid to boost aid to Gaza and calling for urgent steps “to create the conditions for a sustainable cessation of hostilities”.

The US, a staunch ally of Israel, abstained to allow the 15-member council to adopt the resolution. Joe Biden’s allies will claim that it represents progress of sorts. But it will have little impact on the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe as Israel’s bombardment continues.

And to get even there, the president gave the impression of a man being dragged to the dentist for a root canal.

Like America after 9/11, Israel has squandered much global goodwill following the 7 October terrorist attack in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage.

There is instead global outrage over its ruthlessly imprecise prosecution of the war. The death toll in Gaza now stands at 20,000. Most people have been driven from their homes. The World Food Programme says half of Gaza’s population is starving.

“While it is clear that Israel has the absolute right to respond militarily against a brutal terrorist attack, it is also clear that [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s rightwing, extremist government is waging that war in a deeply reckless and immoral way,” US senator Bernie Sanders said in a floor speech this week. “A just cause for war does not excuse atrocities in the conduct of that war.”

Yet by wielding the threat of a veto, Washington forced days of vote delays and negotiations at the UNSC.

It objected to an initial draft that called for “an urgent and sustainable cessation of hostilities”. It also ensured that the resolution does not end Israel’s control over all aid deliveries to 2.3 million people in Gaza.

The US continues to oppose a ceasefire, contending that it would only benefit Hamas. Earlier this month the 193-member UN general assembly demanded a humanitarian ceasefire, with 153 states voting in favour of a move that had been vetoed by the US in the security council days earlier.

Critics say Biden, praised for the empathy he displayed during the global pandemic in 2020, has certain blind spots.

He seemed strangely disconnected regarding the plight of Afghan civilians after America’s botched withdrawal. He questioned the reliability of the Palestinian death toll while failing to capture the emotional weight of dying children.

His grudging, inch-by-inch concessions over the latest resolution should come as no surprise given his lifelong faith in Israel and its right to defend itself – seemingly at any cost.

He has described himself “a Zionist in my heart” and told how his father impressed on him the value of establishing the Jewish homeland in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Biden has met every Israeli prime minister over more than half a century in elected office, starting with Golda Meir in 1973. As they were posing for a photo after their meeting, Biden often recalls, she whispered to him that Israel had a “secret weapon” to protect them — “we have no place else to go”.

Less well known is an anecdote related by prime minister Menachem Begin, who in 1982 was grilled by the Senate foreign relations committee in Washington about Israel’s allegedly disproportionate use of force in Lebanon.

The Times of Israel reported in 2020: “‘A young senator rose and delivered a very impassioned speech – I must say that it’s been a while since I’ve heard such a talented speaker – and he actually supported Operation Peace for the Galilee,” Begin told Israeli reporters after he returned to Jerusalem.

“The senator – Biden – said he would go even further than Israel, adding that he’d forcefully fend off anyone who sought to invade his country, even if that meant killing women or children.

“I disassociated myself from these remarks,” Begin said. “I said to him: ‘No, sir; attention must be paid. According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war … sometimes there are casualties among the civilian population as well. But it is forbidden to aspire to this. This is a yardstick of human civilization, not to hurt civilians.’”

From 1990 to the present, Biden was the Senate’s biggest ever recipient of donations from pro-Israeli groups with more than $4m, according to the Open Secrets database, well ahead of fellow Democrats Robert Menendez and Hillary Clinton at just under $2.5m each. In the aftermath of the 7 October attacks, all his empathy was on display and he has since urged Congress to send Israel $14bn in military aid.

Aaron David Miller, a former state department analyst, negotiator and adviser on Middle East issues, says: “Alone among modern American presidents, his bond and/ or experience with Israel is unique. His preternatural support was guaranteed. It’s his default position to accommodate, not to confront.

“I don’t think you can underestimate the impact on him emotionally and personally of the brutality and savagery of October 7 and the hostage situation.”

The US position has evolved in response to the exponential increase of Palestinian deaths and the growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Washington is now pressing Israel to find different ways to prosecute the war to minimise casualties and create corridors for humanitarian aid, as well as to plan for the long term.

But Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, adds: “If the president were on this call, he would say we wouldn’t even be having this conversation if it wasn’t for October 7 and, while I understand that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t begin on October 7, it reached a new level of brutality and violence that we had not witnessed, and that’s on Hamas.

“All of this reinforces the president’s disposition. [The Biden administration] wants to see a fundamental change in the pictures and the ground campaign in Gaza in January.

“The deeper you get into the spring without that happening, the more they’re going to be very concerned about the impact this could have on the president politically.”

Indeed, for all Biden’s pro-Israel instincts, the countervailing forces include his own political survival heading into likely rematch with Donald Trump in next year’s presidential election.

Nearly three quarters of voters aged between 18 and 29 disapprove of the way Biden is handling the conflict in Gaza, according to New York Times/Siena College poll.

Come November, some might be tempted by the clarity of a pro-ceasefire candidate like Cornel West or simply not vote at all. Biden has often managed to hover somewhere in the middle of the Democratic party: when it moved left, he went with it.

As more Democrats shift in favour of a ceasefire and imposing conditions on military aid, the president may find himself not leading but following.

It's 10:45 my time here on Dec 24 and I just want to wish everybody (and I do mean everybody) a Merry Christmas or Merry Whatever.

Thanks Bernie. Last night's Whatever was very nice and we enjoyed a sumptuous venison daube with fresh spinach from the garden, a butternut squash galette, and a delicious strawberry chocolate trifle. Now it's back to gruel and maybe a few crusts of stale bread washed down with "Adam's Ale".

Who can answer this question? Wouldn't you really have to find out from people within, or at least very familiar with, the Biden administration itself?

Hell, it's possible that the Netanyahu government has possession of a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden that's filled with accounts of embarrassing and incriminating behavior by the Biden crime family and the Big Guy's being blackmailed

But the president might have some compelling argument which invokes "national security" or maybe he informs key senators about some secret operation concerning Iran that . . .

Or, if you attack a country, kill over a thousand civilians, and retreat to a densely-populated territory, it will be very difficult for the attacked nation to retaliate without inflicting heavy civilian casualties and incurring international wrath

Sacrificing human beings to save face.

A secret operation that includes starving Palestinians and allowing for the their removal from their land?

...it's no longer retaliation; it's war crimes!

States across the country are moving to provide universal free school meals to all our children. Meanwhile, Republicans are trying to stop them from doing just that.

The Republican Study Committee (of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members) on Wednesday released its desired 2024 budget, in which the party boldly declares its priority to eliminate the Community Eligibility Provision, or CEP, from the School Lunch Program. Why? Because “CEP allows certain schools to provide free school lunches regardless of the individual eligibility of each student.”

The horror.

Of note is that the CEP is not even something every school participates in; it is a meal service program reserved for qualifying schools and districts in low-income areas. The program enables schools that predominantly serve children from low-income backgrounds to offer all students free breakfast and lunch, instead of means-testing them and having to manage collecting applications on an individual basis. As with many universal-oriented programs, it is more practically efficient and, as a bonus, lifts all boats. This is what Republicans are looking to eliminate.

It’s the kind of provision that many would want every school to participate in. Why not guarantee all our children are well fed as they learn and think about our world and their place in it, after all?

But indeed, as California, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, New Mexico, and as of this week, Vermont, all move to provide universal free school meals in one form or another—and at least another 21 states consider similar moves—Republicans are trying to whittle down avenues to accomplish that goal.

Along with trying to stop schools from giving all their students free meals, the proposed 2024 Republican budget includes efforts to:

• cut Social Security and Medicare
• make Trump’s tax cuts for the top 1 percent permanent
• impose work requirements on “all federal benefit programs,” like food stamps and Medicare
• extend work requirements on those aged 55–64
• bring back all of twice-impeached and twice-arrested former President Donald Trump’s deregulations, including the weakening of environmental protection.

And that’s just a taste of their hopes and dreams. But don’t mistake it all as just wish-casting: “The RSC Budget is more than just a financial statement. It is a statement of priorities,” the party assures in the document.

I think your presentation would be more effective if you just stated your opinion rather than trying to wheedle affirming positions from others .

I think whether this amounts to "war crimes" would have to be adjudicated

Some people seem to think that an investigation is necessary to verify that tens of thousands of innocent people are being killed while hundreds of thousands are being starved, and their homes destroyed.