Biden has been a gaffe his entire career. He has lived his entire life with a speech disability. The recent frenzy turning his gaffes into evidence of dementia is just a flaming example of how disability is weaponized against disabled people in old age.

The notion that pro-Palestinian liberals are going to abandon Biden to go vote for Trump even deeper in Netanyahu's pocket), or sit out 2024 to 'punish' Biden--

Well, it's not impossible, but both result in a Trump Presidency and a more unhinged Netanyahu. Not to mention the end of US democracy.

What, because your fantasy of bossing Israel around doesn't work if they're willing and able to buy guns and bombs the same way most of the non-US aligned world does?

China would shower them in munitions for a tech & intel exchange. Netanyahu was already cozying up to authoritarianism.

Trump will be a lot *more* likely to win if Biden abandons Israel. There are plenty of older liberals for whom that would be a red line-- some of whom are Democratic members of Congress and the Senate.

Which morals are more imperative-- doing the 'right thing' and watching the people of Gaza starve and die of disease when Israel cuts all aid, or you know-- actually saving lives by getting as much aid as possible into Gaza, and keeping negotiations for hostage exchanges open?

Are you under some imperialist fantasy that Israel couldn't get bombs and guns without the US? We can't even cut off the flow of weapons to North Korea. The Likudniks would happily starve Gaza for a year while they endorsed Trump and waited for election season.

Are you under some impression that Israel would be without bombs and guns if the US cut them off?

Netanyahu and co. would happily throw in with Trump and Putin if it came to it, and believe they would re-secure US support in the next election cycle-- maybe even accurately.

He's maintaining diplomatic engagement, but people who don't study diplomacy can't be convinced that Netanyahu would ignore Biden and walk away if Biden issued ultimatums. It's an imperialist power fantasy even the US left is guilty of- that we can dictate terms to allies. That's not how that works.

What the centrist media won't say is that Biden is unpopular because he is a governing centrist-- disapproved of by both the partisans of the other side, and by the purists of his own party. Biden is in the dumps more recently because largely the younger left thinks he's in the tank for Netanyahu.

I got huge grief for this post in Muskland. But can we now say that I was right?

It is in fact amazing to me how many things I've lived through are now "old people" things. TV static. Rotary phones. 8-track tapes. The universal agreement that being a Nazi was a bad thing. New Coke!

#SCOTUS The question is simple: could Confederate General Robert E Lee have run for and been elected to the office of President under the 14th amendment? You have to be pretty off your rocker to believe that those who drafted the 14th Amendment understood it to mean Confederates could be President.