RedWizard

Welcome to our Friday ritual! I want to hear about all the bullshit you had to put up with last week! This week, it was April vacation. It's like a vacation for me, but I still have to show up to work!

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/42725

Democratic senators overwhelmingly voted to block bomb and bulldozer sales to Israel on Wednesday, in a reflection of the Jewish state’s plummeting stock among party rank-and-file and growing anger over the war with Iran.

The Democratic votes on the pair of resolutions from Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., were not enough to overcome universal opposition from Republicans.

“This is where the American people are. The polls are very clear.”

Still, the votes represented a watershed moment in the party’s relationship with Israel and the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel had continued to enjoy strong support from Democratic leaders, despite outrage from the base over the war on Gaza. Sanders said the votes signaled that party leaders are finally taking note.

“This is where the American people are. The polls are very clear: The overwhelming majority of American people do not want to continue to give weapons to Netanyahu and his horrific wars in the Mideast,” he said. “I think the Democrats have caught on to that. It took a little while, but they caught on to that. But Republicans, I think, are standing in opposition to millions of their own supporters.”

Some of the most notable names to vote in favor of blocking military transfers to Israel on Wednesday are potential 2028 presidential contenders.

New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego were among the Democrats to vote for both the resolutions.

[

Related

With World’s Eyes on Iran, Israel Locks Down the West Bank](https://theintercept.com/2026/03/10/israel-iran-war-west-bank-lockdown/)

One resolution targeted the sale of the bulldozers that have been used to demolish neighborhoods in Gaza. Critics say the heavy equipment could accelerate the destruction of Palestinian property in the West Bank, an Israeli-occupied territory that has come under greater threat of annexation under the country’s far-right government.

The bulldozer resolution drew support from 40 members of the Democratic caucus.

Democratic support for the measures came as Americans are increasingly expressing dissatisfaction with Israel in public opinion polls. Hassan El-Tayyab, a policy advocate at the Friends Committee on National Legislation who supported the resolutions, said the votes were a sign that Democrats are starting to take their voters seriously.

“What is happening on the Hill is a lagging indicator of these trends we have seen among Americans,” he said. “These folks are starting to see the writing on the wall, reading these tea leaves, that continually supporting this blank check to Israel is going to cost them electorally.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was among those who voted against it, as did Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn.; Chris Coons, D-Del.; Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.; John Fetterman, D-Pa.; Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y.; and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.

The other resolution, which failed 36–63, was aimed at blocking the transfer of 1,000-pound bombs, of the type that have been linked to civilian casualties in attacks by Israel on Gaza and Lebanon.

That resolution drew support from fewer Democrats. Sens. Gary Peters of Michigan, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island joined the others in voting against it.

El-Tayyab said the bulldozer vote seemed to be an easier commitment for some Democrats.

“It was directly tied to annexation efforts by Israel in the West Bank that threatened the two-state solution,” he said.

On the other hand, the massive bombs were viewed by some senators as defensive weapons. “We heard some arguments on the Hill that certain members considered the 1,000-pound bombs defensive in nature, as they were a deterrent that helped prevent attacks,” said El-Tayyab.

The argument, he said, held no water.

Republican Attacks

The breadth of support among Democratic members for the resolutions surprised even of advocates who have sought to cut off the flow of U.S. arms sales to Israel.

[

Related

Trying to Block Arms to Israel, Bernie Sanders Denounces AIPAC’s Massive Election Spending](https://theintercept.com/2025/04/03/bernie-sanders-aipac-israel-weapons-sales/)

Sanders has fought a long and, at times, lonely fight across administrations to block arms sales to Israel. The first resolution he sponsored, while Democrat Joe Biden was president, drew only minority support within the Democratic caucus.

As the war on Gaza dragged on, however, Democrats’ opinions on Israel soured. The prior high-water mark for one of Sanders’s resolutions was in July 2025, when 27 of the 47-member Senate Democratic caucus, which includes two independents, voted to block the sale of assault rifles to the Israeli police.

“We can look at what is happening in the region right now and understand that this is not business as usual.”

If there was any doubt that 2028 contenders are listening, Kelly, the Arizona senator, dispelled it by introducing Sanders’s resolutions on the Senate floor. A longtime supporter of Israel whose political star has risen in the face of personal attacks from President Donald Trump, Kelly said he would always support the country’s right to exist but could not support the arms transfers.

“Our support for our allies must always be about what makes us stronger and safer,” he said. “And we can look at what is happening in the region right now and understand that this is not business as usual. And it is not making us safer. The United States and Israel are fighting a war against Iran without a clear strategy or goal.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., in a joint statement with fellow Democratic California Sen. Alex Padilla, tied the arms sales to the ongoing war with Iran.

“We oppose actions that further deepen the United States in an unauthorized conflict in Iran — one with no clear strategy, no legal authority, and no defined end,” he said.

Senate Republicans blasted the resolutions, accusing Democrats of trying to undermine the war effort. Senate Foreign Relations Chair Jim Risch, R-Idaho, said the resolutions amounted to a helping hand to Iran from Democrats.

“I come to the floor and tell Iran: No one is coming to help you. Not China, not Russia, not North Korea, not Venezuela, not Cuba. Except for the 47 people that sit over here,” Risch said, referring to the Democratic caucus. “They are trying to help you, Iran. We are not going to let that happen. We are not going to abandon our ally, Israel. We are not going to abandon this fight that is taking place. We are going to win this fight, and we have already won it, to a very large extent.”

The arms debate came hours after Senate Democrats voted nearly unanimously, except for Fetterman, in favor of a war powers resolution meant to block Trump’s ongoing war against Iran. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., was the sole Republican to vote in favor of the resolution.

The final 47–52 tally disappointed advocates who had hoped to draw more GOP support. Still, they remain hopeful that more Republicans will come onboard when Democrats force a vote on other pending Iran war resolutions.

The post The Dam Breaks: Democratic Senators Overwhelmingly Reject Arms Sales to Israel appeared first on The Intercept.

From The Intercept via This RSS Feed.

From the intro:

For most of the last century, Russia was governed by a non-elected government with policies that cost the lives of many millions of people. They died of starvation or in cruel prison camps. That was the price Russia had to pay to be a superpower equipped with nuclear weapons and home to the largest army in the world. Despite its great achevements in space exploration, the communist system failed to build an efficient economy. In the 1980s Russia finally lost its competetion with the Western world. The Soviet Union was dismantled after the last communist leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, opened the way to reform and democratcy.

From the history section:

"When Lenin died in 1924, Russia's new leader, Joseph Stalin, tried to industrialize Russia, but his methods were brutal. Tens of millions of people starved when Stalin's plans for agriculture failed to produce enough food. Others were executed for opposing him. Millions more were sent to prison camps in Siberia, where many died."

"in the early years of World War II (1939 - 1945), the Soviets invaded the Baltic states. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became part of the USSR. Stalin had agreed to share territory in eastern Europe with Nazi Germany. However, in 1941 the German leader Adolf Hitler turned on his ally and invaded the Sovet Union. German troops reached Moscow, but were driven back by the Red Army. Losses were huge on both sides. The soviet Union lost 9 million soldiers and 18 million civilians.

A war in Afghanistan in the 1980s put even more pressure on the Soviet economy. The country began to collapse. In 1986 an explosion at a nuclear plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine, released a radioactive cloud so large it could be seen from space. The soviets could no longer hide their problems.

So Long, Soviets

The Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, tried to modernize the country, although he meant it to stay communist. He remained in control of the Sovet Union, but he allowed Russia and the other republics to hold elections. In June 1991, Boris Yeltsin won the first free election since 1917, and became president of Russia.

Russian communists tried to seize power in August 1991. They failed, but their attempted coup weakened Gorbachev, who could no longer hold the Soviet Union together. It broke apart. Russia was once more a sperate country--known as the Russian Federation--and a democracy.

You can find a copy of the book on Anna's Archive using its ISBN: 978-1-4263-0259-6

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/62565685

Does that mean gas prices will go down now?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/45946938

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8246456

Ah yeah more money than I will make in a lifetime, ez to start a family nowadays!

Key findings

• The 18-year cost of raising a child grew to $303,418 after tax exemptions and credits, according to a LendingTree analysis, even though the cost of the first five years dipped slightly. That's an average of $16,857 annually over 18 years, up 1.9% from a year ago. However, annual costs in the first five years decreased slightly from $29,419 to $29,325 (or 0.3%), driven primarily by a dip in day care costs.
• Hawaii is the most expensive state to raise a small child, with annual costs for the first five years reaching $40,342. Maryland and Massachusetts follow at $36,419 and $34,247. Conversely, annual costs are lowest in Mississippi ($17,148), Alabama ($18,019) and South Dakota ($18,622). All three states have infant day care costs below $10,000 annually, helping them rank among the cheapest states to raise a small child.
• Fourteen states saw the annual cost of raising a small child rise at least 10.0%, including four with growth of 20.0% or more. Annual costs rose in 39 states and the District of Columbia. Nebraska (27.4%), Montana (24.5%), Maine (24.4%) and Wisconsin (23.3%) all saw significant year-over-year growth in the annual cost of raising a small kid.  - Families in six states are projected to spend more than $300,000 raising a child over 18 years, with Hawaii leading at $412,661, followed by Alaska ($365,047) and Maryland ($326,360). By contrast, projected costs are lowest in New Hampshire ($201,963), the District of Columbia ($202,115) and South Carolina ($204,213). Kansas and Alaska saw the largest increases in projected 18-year child-rearing costs, each rising 23.5% from last year's report.
• Families spend an average of 21.9% of their income on the basic annual expenses to raise a small child, down from 22.6% in our 2025 analysis. The percentage is lowest in the District of Columbia (13.9%) and highest in Hawaii (27.4%).

After the 2024 elections, there was a panic among Democrats about the absence of a liberal Joe Rogan. Could one be found? Could one be created? It was an epic exercise in missing the point. You cannot have a liberal Joe Rogan because Rogan is not particularly political. His audience cohered around conversations with comedians, M.M.A. fighters, bodybuilders and psychonauts. That's what made him politically influential: He could reach millions of people who were not otherwise interested in politics.

The problem Democrats actually had

one of them, anyway

was that they didn't like Rogan and criticized others for going on his show. They tried, repeatedly, to cancel him for his comments about trans people and his skepticism of Covid vaccines. To the extent that he is now a right-coded figure, it's not because he started that way. Rogan's political views are mixed. He backed Bernie Sanders in 2020. He supports universal health care and abortion rights; he dislikes vaccine mandates and lax border control. But it shouldn't have been a surprise when, after years of being attacked by the left, he endorsed Donald Trump in 2024. The simplest way to tell people which side they're on is to tell them how much your side hates them.

That brings me to a more-important-than-it-might-look controversy that has burst out over the leftist streamer Hasan Piker. He had a breakout moment over the past year, as Democrats began obsessing over the absence of a liberal Joe Rogan and Piker, who mixes leftist politics with a bro-ish aesthetic, was proffered as a possible answer (a category error because, again, the whole point of Rogan's political power is that his show mostly avoids politics). But pick over Piker's years of streaming, and you can find offensive things he's said. Among them: That America "deserved 9/11," that his favorite flag is Hezbollah's, that a liberal Zionist is akin to a "liberal Nazi."

"Streamer has said offensive things" isn't really a news story. But then Abdul El-Sayed, the more D.S.A.-ish candidate in the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, began rallying with Piker. That led Third Way, a centrist group that previously demanded that Democrats "draw a line in the sand" and shun "Hasan Piker and his fellow Jew-haters," to send a letter to El-Sayed demanding details about "how closely you align with his most abhorrent views." Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, said Piker reflected "the dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics." Politico then asked a number of possible 2028 Democratic hopefuls whether they would appear on Piker's show: Gov. Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel said they would. Representatives Ro Khanna and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez already had. Senators Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego and Elissa Slotkin said they wouldn't.

I think there's rather a lot wrapped up in this controversy, so let's take it piece by piece.

Is Piker a "Jew hater," as Third Way alleges? In an interview with the writer Aaron Regunberg, Piker addressed some of his worst comments. I find some of his answers compelling and others less so. The comparison of liberal Zionists to Nazis, for instance, is repugnant and not much improved by Piker clarifying that he opposes ethnostates. What made the Nazis notable wasn't their support for an ethnostate. Ethnostates are common. What made the Nazis notable was their effort to exterminate the Jewish people. And Piker's assertion that his opposition is to all "reactionary ideology" is hard to square with his admiration for Hezbollah.

But to focus only on those comments is to miss much else that Piker has said and believes. He has also said: "From pogroms to the Holocaust, Jews have always been singled out by those in power as a scapegoat for the instability and economic volatility that people in power caused. A resilient, nascent antisemitism is a constant threat." He has called antisemitism "gross," "immoral" and "a hate crime." He has promoted Jon Ossoff, a Democratic senator from Georgia who is Jewish, as a 2028 presidential possibility. In previous presidential primaries, Piker supported Bernie Sanders, who is also Jewish. It is an unusual form of Jew hatred that calls out antisemitism and promotes Jewish Americans for the presidency.

I have deep disagreements with Piker, but he isn't a "Jew hater." He's an anti-Zionist. And here, I think, the real stakes of this fight come into view. We are living through a rupture in both the meaning and the reality of Israel. A Gallup poll from February found, for the first time, that more Americans sympathized with the Palestinians than with the Israelis. Among Democrats, the gap was overwhelming, with 65 percent who sympathized more with the Palestinians and 17 percent with the Israelis. The difference, as I have argued, is largely generational: Older Americans still view the Israelis more sympathetically, but among Americans ages 18 to 34, 53 percent sided with the Palestinians and 23 percent with the Israelis. This is new. Before 2023, young people and Democrats were more likely to side with the Israelis.

This is not the result of an international psy-op or a profusion of memes. The Israel that young people know is not the Israel that older people remember. It responded to the savagery of Oct. 7 by flattening Gaza in a brutal campaign that killed at least 70,000 Gazans, taking control of more than half of the territory and herding Gazans

more than two million people

into the remainder. Life there remains hellish. Israel has made hopes for a two-state solution fanciful by slicing the West Bank up into Israeli settlements and abetting constant settler violence and keeping a boot on the throat of the Palestinian Authority. It has used the Iran war as an opportunity to launch an invasion of Lebanon, displacing more than a million people and announcing that as many as 600,000 won't be allowed to return to their homes until Israel decides otherwise. The Knesset just voted to legalize hanging as a punishment for Palestinians who are convicted of killing Israelis in terrorist attacks.

Third Way suggests you can identify "Jew haters" by their use of "loaded words taught in social justice seminars ('apartheid,' 'genocide,' 'settler colonialism)." If that is the test, then a large number of American Jews now fail it. Israel, as it is behaving today, and as it is constructing itself for tomorrow, is incompatible with any normal understanding of liberal values.

"There will be no Palestinian state to the west of the Jordan River," Benjamin Netanyahu has said. "For years I have prevented the creation of that terror state, against tremendous pressure, both domestic and from abroad. We have done this with determination, and with astute statesmanship. Moreover, we have doubled the Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, and we will continue on this path."

Anti-Zionism is rising as a response to what Israel is doing. It will simply not be possible to treat it as a marginal viewpoint that can be shamed or shunned into invisibility. Yes, antisemitism often cloaks itself in anti-Zionism. So don't do the antisemites' work for them. If you keep telling people that if they oppose the Jewish state then they must hate the Jewish people, eventually, they will believe you.

The impulse to cut off those with whom we disagree reaches far beyond Piker or the Israel-Palestinian debate. It sits at the heart of cancellation as a political tactic. It relies on a belief in the power of gatekeepers that might have been true in an earlier age but no longer reflects the way attention is earned and held. Tucker Carlson was ejected from Fox News and grew stronger on X and YouTube. Nick Fuentes was banned from major social media platforms and gathered strength in the shadows. Trump went from being banned by every major social media platform to retaking the presidency.

But it's not just that cancellation has failed to silence those it targeted; it also weakened those who used it. The Democratic Party

and the progressive movement

was ill served by the belief that it could decide the boundaries of acceptable debate. In narrowing who it could talk to, it limited what it could hear and whom it could be heard by.

I haven't been on Rogan's show, but I've been on some of the shows in that broader universe, like Andrew Schulz's "Flagrant" and Lex Fridman's podcast. I was surprised by how frustrated the hosts were about their inability to book Democrats in 2024. They had said things that the broader progressive universe disliked or had conversations with people who were anathema to the left. And so Democrats largely avoided these podcasts, ceding them to the Trump campaign.

This was not only bad politics but also bad democratic practice. These shows had come from nowhere and had gained millions of loyal listeners. They had earned their viewerships by voicing something that made millions of Americans feel seen, heard or at least interested. In avoiding those spaces, Democrats avoided contact with the kinds of voters they otherwise claimed to represent. This is the mistake Democrats often make when they talk about what they did wrong in 2024. They realize, now, that they should try to talk to the people who listen to these shows; they are less likely to realize that they should listen to the people who talk on these shows.

Beneath this is an important principle: Conversation is not a reward to be bestowed on those with whom we agree; it's a necessary habit in a democracy. The point is not to find agreement so much as to deepen understanding. To talk with others is to believe in the possibility of change

theirs and your own. Whether you like everything that someone has said should be severed from the question of whether that person is worth talking to.

The space for such conversations was once wider. In 1968, William F. Buckley Jr., the archconservative founder of National Review, hosted Eldridge Cleaver, the minister of information for the Black Panthers, on "Firing Line." Neither man was there to endorse the other's politics.

"I should like to begin by asking Mr. Cleaver whether he finds it consistent with his ideology to encourage the assassination of Mr. Richard Nixon," Buckley said.

Cleaver's answer: "I would say that if Richard Nixon was assassinated, it would only result in having another pig in line who possibly would need to be assassinated."

Buckley later hosted Cleaver at his home. It was a different time, but it created a lasting artifact. The interview has hundreds of thousands of views on YouTube and remains riveting to watch.

Are there people I won't have on my show or shows I won't go on? Sure. But those judgments, for me, are more about what I think will be productive rather than who I think can be included. Similarly, I wouldn't judge Booker or Gallego or Slotkin for avoiding Piker's show. They're busy people, and it may not be how they want to spend their time. But there's something strange about aspiring to lead the country's left-wing coalition and elevating the avoidance of prominent leftists to a matter of principle. That's all the more true now, as attention isn't bestowed on the chosen few by television networks and newspaper editors; it's won or lost in a ferocious marketplace that rewards outrage and controversy.

The winners of the attention wars today are typically people who said some outrageous things in the past

or are still saying them in the present. When you're dealing with podcasters or streamers who talk, unstructured and unrehearsed, for hours each week, if not every day, there's going to be so much said that it's almost inevitable that a dossier of dumb statements can be compiled. To write those people out of acceptable political discourse is to back yourself into a shrinking, sanitized corner of the public sphere.

Booker admitted on "Pod Save America" that when he had said he would never go on Piker's show, he had never heard of Piker. His communications director had read him a list of the four or five worst things Piker had said, and Booker used that as the basis for his response. Booker got piled on for that admission, but I appreciated the honesty. That is, in practice, a version of how many of us make our judgments.

Algorithmic media is an engine of motivated decontextualization. We see other people in snippets that serve the agendas of those who cut them. We are fed 30-second clips shorn from multihour streams, two-sentence quotes ripped from long conversations, old comments that obscure subsequent change. We have to be careful about being lulled into believing these shards represent anyone's whole person. We should not be afraid of finding out who those people are, of seeking to change them or of allowing ourselves to be changed by them.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11288433

Tagline material.