As intended.

Israel set out to do exactly this - to kill however many Gazans happened to die along the way to completely destroying the territory’s infrastructure and healthcare, and to herd the survivors into the smallest possible space, then to sit back and watch as many, MANY more die of starvation and disease.

This is mass murder, and it’s been the goal all along.

Speculation - Trump’s desperate for somebody to pin this supposed Epstein files conspiracy on, but there’s nobody since the entire thing is bullshit.

Maurene Comey has that last name and was involved with the Epstein case, so could serve the purpose, but her record is impeccable and she’s dangerously skillful, so there’s no way to pin anything on her. So she’s being fired without explanation so that the MAGA faithful will conjure up their own explanation (likely with a bit of surreptitious assistance from Trump’s lackeys), so that she’ll end up being blamed for whatever nonsensical conspiracy theory arises, without Trump having to stick his neck out with any (actionable) specific accusations.

Gee… who’da thunk a president who’s already been convicted of fraud would push legislation that would invite fraud?

They’re not “settlers” - they’re state-sanctioned terrorists.

Although this is worse than even I cynically expected, I was certain we were going to end up facing something along these lines, just because I’m Generation X, and we’ve spent our entire lives wading through the debris and garbage the Boomers have left in their wake every step of the way.

Yes.

The pressure is mounting. The overt harm that the billionaires do merely by their existence - merely by holding wealth that could instead have served to keep the poorest people sheltered and fed - becomes more obvious with every passing day and every newly unhoused and unfed American.

But, psychopaths that they necessarily are, the billionaires are unwilling to give up any of their wealth, and in fact are instead looking for any opportunity to increase it. Always.

So, to them, the solution is simple - we need to kill as many poor people as possible, so they won’t be around being poor and making billionaires look bad.

And to all too many of them, that much the better if most of the dead are minorities.

I watched it in person, sort of.

I was living on the Florida Gulf Coast at the time. From the Gulf Coast, a shuttle launch was just a bright bead drawing a thin line up from the horizon, so it wasn’t any sort of spectacle, but it was something interesting to watch if you happened to be outside, which I was.

And it was obvious even from there what had likely happened, since the bright bead suddenly flashed, then went out, and the line went off sideways.

Occam’s Razor says that if nothing notable has changed even under Trump, then it’s likely that the simple fact of the matter is that the allegations were mostly true and it’s just that the CIA, as opposed to Trump and his minions and lackeys, won’t lie on his behalf.

And they put razor blades in Halloween candy too!

Meaning is subjective and not intrinsic, so there can be no such thing as “the” meaning of anything.

The artist can have an intended meaning, but the audience not only can but will find their own meaning in it. It might be the case that the audience gets the same meaning from it that the creator intended, but it might just as easily be the case that they get some entirely different meaning from it.

None of them are right or wrong - that’s not even a coherent concept in that context. They just are whatever they are.

Karl Urban

Honorable mention: Harry Dean Stanton, Sam Rockwell, Jean Reno…

Yeah - I realized after I posted that that was likely the case. Sorry if I came off as rude.

And yeah (again), I don’t disagree with any of that - the whole notion was pretty much doomed from the start.

I still think it’s both notable and funny though that Trump fucked it up so bad.

Mmm… I don’t disagree with that.

You can disagree all you like

WTF?

Mmm… I don’t disagree with that.

But the fact remains that by not providing any consistency upon which companies could plan, Trump destroyed any possibility of it right out of the gate.

The funniest part to me is that “revitaliz(ing) U.S. manufacturing” is one positive that could (to at least some degree) potentially have come from the tariffs IF Trump hadn’t completely fumbled it right from the start by not taking a firm position.

He and he alone did such a shitty job of it that he and he alone guaranteed that “revitaliz(ing) U.S. manufacturing” is one thing that’s NOT going to happen. At all.

Of course it is.

Hamas isn’t a cause - it’s an excuse.

Israel is and long has been determined to conquer everything from the river to the sea, and to kill however many Palestinians it takes to do it. And if they didn’t have Hamas as an excuse, they’d just find (or manufacture) another.

No.

(A quick search later)… Ah… yeah A likely two-bit Babylonian copper hustler who through a quirk of fate is a sort of legendary historical figure almost four millennia later.

Yep - that has the same sort of appeal. Thanks for that.

It’s something about irony - the legendary nobody, famous for something mundane.

My username is actually from a side character in Terry Gilliam’s first non-Python movie - Jabberwocky.

The protagonist, Dennis, is a cooper - a barrelmaker (actually he’s a tedious putz who can’t even manage to make a barrel, but that’s another story). Early on, he goes to make his fortune in the big city, where he meets a legendary cooper - “The Wat Dabney?! The inventor of the inverted firkin?!” - who has been reduced to begging because all of the business in the city is controlled by the guilds and they’ve shut him out.

Curiously, many years later I ran across a somewhat similar character in an entirely different medium who appealed to me the same way. This one is in a manga - The Voynich Hotel, by Dowman Sayman. They have a serious problem with the boiler in the eponymous hotel, so the protagonist sets out on a quest to track down a hermit who’s reputed to be able to fix anything - Tepes, the legendary second-rate boiler engineer.

I’m not sure what appeals to me about second-rate legendary craftsmen, but…

So they’re basically voting explicitly to void the Constitution.

Interesting tidbit there…

Clinton was impeached for perjury - specifically for lying under osth.

The thing is though that the “lying” part of it wasn’t the actual crime. The “under oath” part is the actual crime. Perjury is actually the violation of a legally sworn oath, and it’s just that the oath to tell the truth in a court is the one most often violated

But violaing an oath of office is also technically perjury, and a crime, and impeachable. And congresspeople swear oaths to, among other things, uphold the Constitution.

So that could be interesting if the Democrats demolish the Republicans in the midterms.

It likely won’t be, since Congresspeople are pretty much universally corrupt cowards, but still…

Only much, much uglier.