The Manchin Off The Hill

WV Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is hanging it up, leaving his fellow Democrats out to dry and making keeping the Senate considerably harder, because why wouldn't he go out like a huge asshole?

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) announced Thursday he would not seek reelection in 2024, setting back Democrats’ plans to hold onto their Senate majority in 2024 and raising their fears that he could get involved in the presidential race as a third-party candidate.
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“After months of deliberation and long conversations with my family, I believe in my heart of hearts that I have accomplished what I set out to do for West Virginia,” Manchin said in a video posted to X. “I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for reelection to the United States Senate.”

Manchin, 76, had defied political gravity by holding onto his seat in a deeply red state but would have faced long odds against either Gov. Jim Justice or Rep. Alex Mooney (W.Va.), who are running in the GOP primary next year. The veteran politician had run the coal country state as governor, but West Virginia’s rightward turn in recent years had left him the only Democrat in statewide office.

Faced with what he knew would probably be the race of his life, Manchin was weighing retiring from politics altogether or running for president as a third-party candidate backed by the centrist group No Labels.

Manchin’s announcement video suggests he has not chosen the retirement path just yet, as he said he planned to travel the country to gauge “if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.”

Democrats fear such a bid would hurt Biden’s chances of reelection at a time when polls show him losing swing states to former president Donald Trump, and when several other candidates are also launching third-party runs.

Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon declined to comment on whether he planned to pursue a presidential run, and a No Labels spokeswoman said the group won’t decide until early 2024 about whether to nominate a ticket and who will be on it.

“The Senate will lose a great leader when he leaves, but we commend Senator Manchin for stepping up to lead a long overdue national conversation about solving America’s biggest challenges, including inflation, an insecure border, out-of-control debt and growing threats from abroad,” said No Labels spokeswoman Maryanne Martini.

Oh but it would get far worse if Manchin challenged Biden in 2024, or worse, he went full No Labels as a third party spoiler. I wouldn't put it past him, either.

We'll see.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

 Some truly good news out of Gaza today: Israel has agreed to daily humanitaria pauses in its attack to allow more Palestinians to escape Northern Gaza.

In a crucial breakthrough for the global effort to provide humanitarian aid to Gaza, Israel has agreed to daily, four-hour pauses in fighting across northern Gaza, the White House said Thursday.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said the Israelis had committed to announcing each four-hour window at least three hours in advance starting Thursday. Israel also was opening a second corridor for civilians to flee the areas being pounded by Israel's military campaign aimed at wiping out Hamas after the brutal Oct. 7 attack on border communities, with a coastal road joining the territory’s main north-south highway, he said.

Pauses in the fighting have been taking place intermittently for days while tens of thousands of civilians flee northern Gaza for the south. The U.S. and several other nations have been urging Israel to provide more time for safe passage and for the safe flow of humanitarian aid into war-battered Gaza.

Kirby also said the pauses could help the effort to win freedom for at least some of the approximately 240 hostages, including several Americans, held by Hamas and other militants since the war began. President Joe Biden told reporters he asked the Israelis for a “pause longer than three days” in talks about freeing the hostages.

So the Biden administration was able to negotiate a daily pause window and a second escape route. I'll take it, frankly. This will save lives.

We'll see how many. 

Last Call For Hunting The Hunter, Con't

Professional idiot James Comer is going all in on the Hunter Biden probe, demanding subpoenas from Hunter Biden and multiple Biden family members because Comer will never, never let this go even with the complete lack of actual criminal activity.

Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden have been subpoenaed Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee, which took the remarkable step of seeking depositions from family members of President Biden amid its impeachment inquiry.

As part of the request, the committee asked for James Biden’s wife, Sarah Biden, as well as Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen, to sit for transcribed interviews. The panel also asks for interviews with Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden, and her sister Elizabeth Secundy.

The subpoenas come weeks after the Oversight Committee demanded both Hunter and James Biden’s personal bank records, and also include a subpoena for Hunter Biden’s former business partner Rob Walker.

The panel is also requesting to speak with Tony Bobulinski, whom Hunter Biden’s attorney have accused of lying to the FBI.

The release from House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said he “plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week.”

The government shuts down in nine days, but we're harassing the President's son as a priority. But hey, it's the Clown Show, and Comer is definitely a giant clown.  More subpoenas are coming, he promises. Boy they sure care about working class Americans, don't they.

Idiots.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump 2024 people are screaming from the rooftops that they will make mass arrests of Democrats and their voters in 2025 and at this point I have to assume that a whole lot of your friends and neighbors are going to spend the next year trying to get on Team Fascism so that they don't end up on the pogrom lists.

 

Donald Trump and his allies have begun mapping out specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

In private, Trump has told advisers and friends in recent months that he wants the Justice Department to investigate onetime officials and allies who have become critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, as well as his ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley, according to people who have talked to him, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Trump has also talked of prosecuting officials at the FBI and Justice Department, a person familiar with the matter said.

In public, Trump has vowed to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. The former president has frequently made corruption accusations against them that are not supported by available evidence.

To facilitate Trump’s ability to direct Justice Department actions, his associates have been drafting plans to dispense with 50 years of policy and practice intended to shield criminal prosecutions from political considerations. Critics have called such ideas dangerous and unconstitutional.

“It would resemble a banana republic if people came into office and started going after their opponents willy-nilly,” said Saikrishna Prakash, a constitutional law professor at the University of Virginia who studies executive power. “It’s hardly something we should aspire to.”

Much of the planning for a second term has been unofficially outsourced to a partnership of right-wing think tanks in Washington. Dubbed “Project 2025,” the group is developing a plan, to include draft executive orders, that would deploy the military domestically under the Insurrection Act, according to a person involved in those conversations and internal communications reviewed by The Washington Post. The law, last updated in 1871, authorizes the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement.

The proposal was identified in internal discussions as an immediate priority, the communications showed. In the final year of his presidency, some of Trump’s supporters urged him to invoke the Insurrection Act to put down unrest after the murder of George Floyd in the summer of 2020, but he never did it. Trump has publicly expressed regret about not deploying more federal force and said he would not hesitate to do so in the future.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not answer questions about specific actions under discussion. “President Trump is focused on crushing his opponents in the primary election and then going on to beat Crooked Joe Biden,” Cheung said. “President Trump has always stood for law and order, and protecting the Constitution.”

The discussions underway reflect Trump’s determination to harness the power of the presidency to exact revenge on those who have challenged or criticized him if he returns to the White House. The former president has frequently threatened to take punitive steps against his perceived enemies, arguing that doing so would be justified by the current prosecutions against him. Trump has claimed without evidence that the criminal charges he is facing — a total of 91 across four state and federal indictments — were made up to damage him politically.

“This is third-world-country stuff, ‘arrest your opponent,’” Trump said at a campaign stop in New Hampshire in October. “And that means I can do that, too.”

Special counsel Jack Smith, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Biden have all said that Smith’s prosecution decisions were made independently of the White House, in accordance with department rules on special counsels.

Trump, the clear polling leader in the GOP race, has made “retribution” a central theme of his campaign, seeking to intertwine his own legal defense with a call for payback against perceived slights and offenses to right-wing Americans. He repeatedly tells his supporters that he is being persecuted on their behalf and holds out a 2024 victory as a shared redemption at their enemies’ expense.

 

Again, Trump is promising that he'll arrest Democrats and their supporters, maybe tens of thousands or more, and that he'll deploy the US military against Americans, and your friends and neighbors and co-workers are not only okay with this, they're actively rooting for it to happen.

And if the polls are any indication, a whole lot of people are considering being on the side that supports the coming fascism rather than resisting it. 

President Biden is trailing Donald J. Trump in five of the six most important battleground states one year before the 2024 election, suffering from enormous doubts about his age and deep dissatisfaction over his handling of the economy and a host of other issues, new polls by The New York Times and Siena College have found.

The results show Mr. Biden losing to Mr. Trump, his likeliest Republican rival, by margins of three to 10 percentage points among registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden is ahead only in Wisconsin, by two percentage points, the poll found.

Across the six battlegrounds — all of which Mr. Biden carried in 2020 — the president trails by an average of 48 to 44 percent.

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them. The survey also reveals the extent to which the multiracial and multigenerational coalition that elected Mr. Biden is fraying. Demographic groups that backed Mr. Biden by landslide margins in 2020 are now far more closely contested, as two-thirds of the electorate sees the country moving in the wrong direction.

Voters under 30 favor Mr. Biden by only a single percentage point, his lead among Hispanic voters is down to single digits and his advantage in urban areas is half of Mr. Trump’s edge in rural regions. And while women still favored Mr. Biden, men preferred Mr. Trump by twice as large a margin, reversing the gender advantage that had fueled so many Democratic gains in recent years.

Black voters — long a bulwark for Democrats and for Mr. Biden — are now registering 22 percent support in these states for Mr. Trump, a level unseen in presidential politics for a Republican in modern times.

Add it all together, and Mr. Trump leads by 10 points in Nevada, six in Georgia, five in Arizona, five in Michigan and four in Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden held a 2-point edge in Wisconsin.

In a remarkable sign of a gradual racial realignment between the two parties, the more diverse the swing state, the farther Mr. Biden was behind, and he led only in the whitest of the six.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump are both deeply — and similarly — unpopular, according to the poll. But voters who overwhelmingly said the nation was on the wrong track are taking out their frustrations on the president.

 

We're about to hand this country back to an autocratic crook who will take endless revenge on anyone and everyone in sight in a massive purge of anyone even remotely critical of him backed by lethal military force, but it's okay because Joe Biden is old LOL.

 

Excusing the voters as ignorant doesn't work anymore. Trump is absolutely saying on a nearly weekly basis at rallies that he's going to hurt people. And the majority of the American people want it to happen. 

 

Biden needs to get his ass in gear and run like he's 10 points down.

 

Because right now?

 

He is.

Voters, by a 59 percent to 37 percent margin, said they better trusted Mr. Trump over Mr. Biden on the economy, the largest gap of any issue. The preference for Mr. Trump on economic matters spanned the electorate, among both men and women, those with college degrees and those without them, every age range and every income level.

That result is especially problematic for Mr. Biden because nearly twice as many voters said economic issues would determine their 2024 vote compared with social issues, such as abortion or guns. And those economic voters favored Mr. Trump by a landslide 60 percent to 32 percent.

The findings come after Mr. Biden’s campaign has run millions of dollars in ads promoting his record, and as the president continues to tour the country to brag about the state of the economy. “Folks, Bidenomics is just another way of saying the American dream!” Mr. Biden declared on Wednesday on a trip to Minnesota.

Voters clearly disagree. Only 2 percent of voters said the economy was excellent.

"At least Trump made the trains run on time"is gonna be the epitaph of this country at this rate. And the kids? The kids want to go back to Trump.

Voters under 30 — a group that strongly voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 — said they trusted Mr. Trump more on the economy by an extraordinary 28 percentage-point margin after years of inflation and now high interest rates that have made mortgages far less affordable. Less than one percent of poll respondents under 30 rated the current economy as excellent, including zero poll respondents in that age group in three states: Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin.

“I actually had high hopes for Biden,” said Jahmerry Henry, a 25-year-old who packages liquor in Albany, Ga. “You can’t be worse than Trump. But then as the years go by, things happen with inflation, the war going on in Ukraine, recently Israel and I guess our borders are not secure at all.”

Now Mr. Henry plans to back Mr. Trump.

“I don’t see anything that he has done to benefit us,” said Patricia Flores, 39, of Reno, Nev., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but won’t support him again in 2024.

 

"You can't be worse than Trump", but they're going to vote for him anyhow. We really are going to hand this place back over to Trump for a second go and he'll finish the country off. The psychopathy and despair are real. The Zoomers who will never be able to afford a house are willing to roll the dice on the autocrat again. Hey, maybe he'll crash the housing market so they can buy cheap.

Of course, Biden siding America with the country openly asking why they can't nuke a civilian population because there are "no non-combatants in Gaza" doesn't exactly put him with the good guys, either, as awful as Trump is.

The rest of us have a lot of work to do in convincing others that's not the case. We know he's going to destroy the place.  Trump going to prison before the election might be the only thing that saves us.

On the other hand, having said all this...

Let's remember that the NY Times can definitely be wrong on this election.

And we've been down before a year out.

The larger point is we have an entire year. Let's not waste it.

 

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The European Union is rapidly running out of patience with Kyiv and is looking for the exits out of Ukraine, especially with the Israel-Hamas conflict going volcanic. 

 

U.S. and European officials have begun quietly talking to the Ukrainian government about what possible peace negotiations with Russia might entail to end the war, according to one current senior U.S. official and one former senior U.S. official familiar with the discussions.

The conversations have included very broad outlines of what Ukraine might need to give up to reach a deal, the officials said. Some of the talks, which officials described as delicate, took place last month during a meeting of representatives from more than 50 nations supporting Ukraine, including NATO members, known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the officials said.

The discussions are an acknowledgment of the dynamics militarily on the ground in Ukraine and politically in the U.S. and Europe, officials said.

They began amid concerns among U.S. and European officials that the war has reached a stalemate and about the ability to continue providing aid to Ukraine, officials said. Biden administration officials also are worried that Ukraine is running out of forces, while Russia has a seemingly endless supply, officials said. Ukraine is also struggling with recruiting and has recently seen public protests about some of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s open-ended conscription requirements.

And there is unease in the U.S. government with how much less public attention the war in Ukraine has garnered since the Israel-Hamas war began nearly a month ago, the officials said. Officials fear that shift could make securing additional aid for Kyiv more difficult.

Some U.S. military officials have privately begun using the term “stalemate” to describe the current battle in Ukraine, with some saying it may come down to which side can maintain a military force the longest. Neither side is making large strides on the battlefield, which some U.S. officials now describe as a war of inches. Officials also have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin. U.S. officials have shared their views on such a timeline with European allies, officials said.

“Any decisions about negotiations are up to Ukraine,” Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement. “We are focused on continuing to stand strongly in support of Ukraine as they defend their freedom and independence against Russian aggression.”

An administration official also noted that the U.S. has participated with Ukraine in discussions of its peace summit framework but said the White House “is not aware of any other conversations with Ukraine about negotiations at the moment.”

President Joe Biden has been intensely focused on Ukraine’s depleting military forces, according to two people familiar with the matter.

"Manpower is at the top of the administration’s concerns right now,” one said. The U.S. and its allies can provide Ukraine with weaponry, this person said, “but if they don’t have competent forces to use them it doesn’t do a lot of good”

 

With Republicans in the US continuing to do Russia's bidding and cutting off Kyiv from additional military aid, the writing is on the wall at this point.  Heavy casualties have been inflicted on Ukraine and Russia, but Russia has more manpower and always did. The advantage in military tech that Ukraine had matters less and less now.

But let's be honest: any peace negotiations will result in the end of Ukraine. The Zelenskyy government will be removed, jailed, and probably executed, a satrap will be installed and a defacto Russian government will run the place, and frankly there's zero reason to trust Putin won't take the rest of the country -- or additional former Soviet republics -- in the years ahead.

The defense of Ukraine may be politically inconvenient, but we know what happens if they surrender: the end of the country, period.

Beshear Audacity Of It All, Con't

The same Emerson College poll from last month that showed Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear with a commanding double-digit lead now shows Beshear tied with GOP AG Daniel Cameron 47-47% heading into Election Day on Tuesday.

The final Emerson College Polling survey of Kentucky voters before the 2023 gubernatorial general election finds incumbent Governor Andy Beshear and Attorney General Daniel Cameron in a dead heat: 47% support Beshear and 47% support Cameron. Two percent support someone else and 4% are undecided. Undecided voters were asked which candidate they lean toward at this time; with their support accounted for, Cameron holds a slight advantage with 49% support to Beshear’s 48%.

Since last month’s poll of registered Kentucky voters, Beshear’s initial support has decreased by two points, 49% to 47%, while support for Cameron increased 14 points from 33% to 47%. Undecided voters have reduced by nine points, from 13% undecided to 4% ahead of the Tuesday election.

Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling, said, “Cameron appears to have gained ground by consolidating Republican voters who supported former President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. In October, 54% of Trump supporters supported Cameron; now, as election day approaches, that number has jumped to 79% – a 25-point increase. Notably, October’s poll was of registered voters in Kentucky, while this final election poll includes only those who are very likely or have already voted in Kentucky.”

Support for Cameron has increased among older voters in Kentucky since the October poll. A majority of voters (58%) ages 50-69 now support Cameron for governor, a 22-point increase from October, where Cameron held 36% support among the same age group. Beshear’s support among 50-69-year-olds has dropped 9 points since October, from 49% to 40%.

Independent voters remain split between the two candidates; 48% support Cameron, while 46% support Beshear. Six percent would vote for someone else.

A majority of voters (57%) expect Governor Beshear to be re-elected, while 41% think the Attorney General will win.

Kentucky voters oppose the current state laws that ban abortion in nearly all cases, with no exception for rape or incest, 55% to 28% who support it; 17% are unsure.

“Majorities of both men and women voters oppose the abortion law,” Kimball said. “Fifty-two percent of men and 58% of women voters oppose the laws, while support is relatively similar: 30% of male voters and 28% of women voters support the abortion laws.”

Three-quarters (75%) of Democrats in Kentucky oppose the current abortion laws, while a plurality of independents (47%) say the same. Republicans are more divided on the issue; a plurality (42%) support the no-exception abortion laws, while 37% oppose, and 21% are unsure.

“The strongest opposition to the abortion law is among voters under 30 at 68%, opposition decreases with age culminating with voters 70 years of age and older at 52% in opposition to the law,” Kimball noted. “Support for state abortion laws is highest among voters ages 50 to 59 at 37%.”

A significant majority (83%) of voters who support Andy Beshear for governor oppose the state’s no-exception abortion laws. In comparison, a slight majority (51%) of voters who support Cameron support the state’s abortion laws.

 

Beshear has been hitting Cameron hard on the the unpopular abortion ban here. But Cameron has been hitting Beshear back with the even more unpopular Joe Biden. The President is...not...popular here in the Commonwealth, and that's just fact.  The most recent Morning Consult poll finds Biden's popularity here at 23%.

Cameron hasn't missed a chance to compare Beshear to "Washington liberals like Biden and Pelosi" in the last six weeks and it's working. The ads have been running non-stop. You'd think Kentucky was Times Square in 1978 or something with all the crime and drugs in Cameron's ads, but they are certainly rallying the GOP base here.

But the fact that Beshear has an even chance of winning Tuesday shows you just how well he's liked in a state that hates Biden. Even 41% of Republicans think he's doing a good job, as opposed to the 4% of Republicans who think Biden is doing a good job here in Kentucky.

I still think Beshear will win, but it's going to be close. Early voting is underway here in KY through today. Get that ballot in today or Tuesday.

We need you. Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out Here, Con't

Two wild post-Gaza invasion stories from Team WIN THE MORNING this week, first, that the US Senate is looking at a peacekeeping force in Gaza "after it falls".

Talks are underway to establish a multinational force in Gaza after Israel uproots Hamas, two senators confirmed Wednesday, the clearest sign yet that the U.S. and its partners are seriously weighing deploying foreign troops to the enclave.

Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) told POLITICO that there’s early, closed-door diplomacy over establishing a peacekeeping force in Gaza, though it was not likely to include American troops.

“There are ongoing conversations regarding the possible composition of an international force,” Van Hollen said, refusing to go into specific detail. “They are very preliminary and fragile.”

“I do think it’d be important to have some kind of multinational force in Gaza as a transition to whatever comes next,” he continued.

Hamas, the militant group that killed 1,4000 people in Israel on Oct. 7, has ruled Gaza for more than 15 years. Israel launched a retaliatory military operation after the attack to end Hamas’ rule, including a massive bombing campaign, ground invasion and siege that has killed more than 8,000 people.

The National Security Council did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg News first reported that the United States and Israel were in discussions about establishing a peacekeeping force to maintain order in the enclave. In a statement to Bloomberg, NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson denied that “sending U.S. troops” to be part of the coalition was under discussion.

Blumenthal said the congressional delegation that he traveled with to Israel last month discussed the possibility of having Saudi Arabian troops in the force. He noted, however, that he hadn’t heard of U.S. troops heading to Gaza as part of the deliberations.

“There certainly has been discussion with the Saudi about their being part of some international peacekeeping force if only to provide resources, and, longer term, supporting Palestinian leadership and a separate state, obviously. Reconstruction of Gaza will require a vast amount of resources, which the Saudis potentially could help provide,” he said.

“I’m not sure how active the conversation is about U.S. troops,” Blumenthal continued. “I would think that maybe an international force could be mustered without U.S. troops.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Ben Cardin (D-Md.), who traveled to the Middle East with Blumenthal, said lawmakers discussed with Israeli officials how aid and security would be administered in Gaza after the war. He said he favored the idea of a multinational force, but said sensitivities in the region to U.S. troops would prevent them from being a major part of any such force.

“It’s got to be credible, it’s got to provide security, and it has to involve the surrounding states that believe in a two-state solution,” Cardin said.

 

I can't believe for a moment that there would be any GOP support for a single US soldier as part of said Gaza peacekeeping force, especially in an election year.  If the Bonesaw Boys in Riyadh want to handle it, well, we've certainly provided enough weapons to the House of Saud for a force, but all of this seems...pretty damn grim, even for the pragmatism of Senate Dems.

On the other hand, that brings us to story two, where the White House doesn't seem to think Netanyahu is going to survive politically anyway, and they're probably right.

Joe Biden and top aides have discussed the likelihood that Benjamin Netanyahu’s political days are numbered — and the president has conveyed that sentiment to the Israeli prime minister in a recent conversation.

The topic of Netanyahu’s short political shelf life has come up in recent White House meetings involving Biden, according to two senior administration officials. That has included discussions that have taken place since Biden’s trip to Israel, where he met with Netanyahu.

Biden has gone so far as to suggest to Netanyahu that he should think about lessons he would share with his eventual successor, the two administration officials added.

A current U.S. official and a former U.S. official both confirmed that the administration believes Netanyahu has limited time left in office. The current official said the expectation internally was that the Israeli PM would likely last a matter of months, or at least until the early fighting phase of Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip was over, though all four officials noted the sheer unpredictability of Israeli politics.

“There’s going to have to be a reckoning within Israeli society about what happened,” said the official who, like others, was granted anonymity to detail private conversations. “Ultimately, the buck stops on the prime minister’s desk.”

The administration’s dimming view of Netanyahu’s political future comes as the president and his foreign policy team try to work with, and diplomatically steer, the Israeli leader as his country pursues a complicated and bloody confrontation with Hamas, the Palestinian militant group that controls Gaza and attacked Israel on Oct. 7.

 

This of course all depends on how the Gaza ground invasion goes. If things get as bad as I think they will, the backlash could end Netanyahu's war government quickly.

 

But if the US gets sucked into Yet Another Middle East Quagmire™ all bets are off, and it's not Netanyahu's political shelf life we'll be talking about, but Biden's.

 

Luckily Biden is smarter than that, and so are the people surrounding him on foreign policy. Biden's decades of foreign policy experience in the Senate is exactly what we need now.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It

More than a few Muslim groups in the US are telling Joe Biden to broker a cease fire between Israel and Hamas now or else they will hand the country over to Trump and the GOP.

 

The National Muslim Democratic Council, which includes Democratic Party leaders from hotly contested states that can decide elections, such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, urged Biden to use his influence with Israel to broker a ceasefire by 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.

In an open letter entitled "2023 Ceasefire Ultimatum," Muslim leaders pledged to mobilize "Muslim, Arab, and allied voters" to "withhold endorsement, support, or votes for any candidate who endorses the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people."

"Your administration's unconditional support, encompassing funding and armaments, has played a significant role in perpetuating the violence that is causing civilian casualties and has eroded trust in voters who previously put their faith in you," the council wrote.

Emgage, a Muslim American civic group, found that nearly 1.1 million Muslims voted in the 2020 election. Associated Press exit polls showed 64% of Muslims voted for Biden, a Democrat, and 35% for his Republican rival, Donald Trump.

The Arab American Institute estimates 3.7 million Americans "trace their roots" to an Arab country; its poll results issued on Tuesday show support for Biden and Democrats has dropped significantly in this group.

The White House has scrambled to address concerns raised by community members and political appointees within the administration. Biden met with a handful of Muslim leaders last Thursday, a White House official said.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the poll, but told reporters that Biden was aware that American Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim had "endured a disproportionate number ... of hate-fueled attacks" and respected their perspectives.

She said the Biden administration had been engaging with Arab and Muslim community members, along with Jewish leaders, as well as political appointees within the administration on their different concerns, and would continue those efforts.

Biden has spoken out against rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, but Muslim leaders say the war must end.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Minnesota, said he had no option but to vote against Biden in 2024 unless he worked to end the fighting. He said he was speaking as an individual, not on behalf of CAIR, which is barred from political campaigning.

Local pro-Palestinian groups have scheduled a protest in Minneapolis on Wednesday during a visit by Biden to Minnesota to tout his administration's investments in rural America.

Arab and Muslim American communities have voiced frustration that Biden has not condemned Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip after an Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza that Israel says killed 1,400 people and took 240 hostages.

Biden has said Israel has a right to defend its citizens but should protect innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are victims of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Gaza health authorities say that 8,525 people, including 3,542 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7. U.N. officials say more than 1.4 million of Gaza's civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would not agree to any cessation of the attacks on Gaza. U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby said, "Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now."

 

Needless to say, that 5 PM deadline yesterday passed without said ceasefire, and as a matter of fact, Israeli Defense Forces bombed a Gaza refugee camp in order to kill a top Hamas leader, and killed hundreds of civilians while they were at it.

 

Support for Biden has dropped from nearly 60% in 2020to the upper teens among Arab Americans in the latest Zogby poll, with support for Donald Trump up to 40%.

 

Believe me, I understand the rage of American Muslims right now, and I understand the rage of American Jews right now. I'm telling everyone that the solution to this problem in now way involves another Donald Trump term.

 

But I guess when Trump gets back in the White House and starts mass detainment of Muslims and closures of mosques, CAIR and company will have really shown Biden who's boss. 

That boss being Donald Trump. Keep thinking you'll even be able to vote at all under a GOP regime. Virginia purged more than 3,000 voters ahead of next week's elections by "accident". Republicans in NC and Mississippi are doing the same, except they're omitting the whole accident excuse.

Once these autocrats get into power, they will never relinquish it. But feel free to be on the side of the devils to make your bargain, folks. Trump's flunkies are gearing up for fascism as we speak, and you want to threaten the rest of us with that?

The rest of us will certainly remember.

Ridin' With BidenGPT

The White House has issued a long-anticipated executive order involving the regulation of artificial intelligence systems, which I know absolutely sounds like part of the opening exposition in the first five minutes of a Terminator franchise movie, but this is a dose of necessary reality here in 2023.

 

President Joe Biden signed a wide-ranging executive order on artificial intelligence Monday, setting the stage for some industry regulations and funding for the U.S. government to further invest in the technology.

The order is broad, and its focuses range from civil rights and industry regulations to a government hiring spree.

In a media call previewing the order Sunday, a senior White House official, who asked to not be named as part of the terms of the call, said AI has so many facets that effective regulations have to cast a wide net.

“AI policy is like running into a decathlon, and there’s 10 different events here,” the official said.

“And we don’t have the luxury of just picking ‘we’re just going to do safety’ or ‘we’re just going to do equity’ or ‘we’re just going to do privacy.’ You have to do all of these things.”

The official also called for “significant bipartisan legislation” to further advance the country’s interests with AI. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., held a private forum in September with industry leaders but has yet to introduce significant AI legislation.

Some of the order builds on a previous nonbinding agreement that seven of the top U.S. tech companies developing AI agreed to in July, like hiring outside experts to probe their systems for weaknesses and sharing their critical findings.

The order leverages the Defense Production Act to legally require those companies to share safety test results with the federal government.

It also tasks the Commerce Department with creating guidance about “watermarking” AI content to make it clear that deepfaked videos or ChatGPT-generated essays were not created by humans.

The order adds funding for new AI research and a federal AI hiring surge. The White House has launched a corresponding website to connect job seekers with AI government jobs: AI.gov.

Fei-Fei Li, a co-director of Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview that government funding is crucial for AI to be able to tackle major human problems.

“The public sector holds a unique opportunity in terms of data and interdisciplinary talent to cure cancer, cure rare diseases, to map out biodiversity at a global scale, to understand and predict wildfires, to find climate solutions, to supercharge our teachers,” Li said. “There’s so much the public sector can do, but all of this is right now starved because we are severely lacking in resources.”

 

And while this is a start, these remain guidelines without real enforcement consequences. Actual laws have to be written by Congress, and they keep dragging their feet as AI keeps getting further and further ahead. Ethical, social, and environmental concerns are great to have, but all this lacks any real hard and fast penalties for companies that violate them.

As it is, the major players in AI like Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, all have a long history of violating federal antitrust, commerce and labor regulations. Asking them to play nicely here is not going to hold up for much longer when trillions are at stake in the years ahead for whichever company masters the process of successfully stealing a planet's worth of intellectual property to feed their Frankenstein's Monster first.

We're going to need something much, much stronger, if not an international treaty with watchdog organizations and monitoring the way we have for nuclear, biological and chemical weapons currently.

 

On top of that, we have to make it stick. We're not going to of course, not until it's well far past being too late. 

We may already be past that point now, to be frank.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu failed miserably to protect the Jewish state from Hamas, and whether it was intentional or not, the world will pay a heavy price in the weeks and months ahead.

 

Hamas’ massacre of more than 1,400 Israelis and kidnapping of over 200 others on Oct. 7 was more than a national tragedy for Israel — it was also a massive intelligence failure. Now, as Israel goes to war against Hamas, vital questions abound: Why didn’t Israeli leadership see this coming? If Israel defeats Hamas, what will take its place? And what are the odds that Israel’s greatest ally, the United States, could get pulled into a direct role in the conflict?

Amos Yadlin has unique insights into all these questions. The 71-year-old former Israeli intelligence chief, who oversaw the destruction of Syria’s nascent nuclear program and the serial sabotage of Iran’s, has emerged as a key voice on the crisis, briefing members of Israel’s war cabinet. For the last 12 years, he’s served as the head of Israel’s highly influential Institute for National Security Studies, and he remains a security eminence grise.

In a new interview with POLITICO Magazine conducted via Zoom over two days last week, Yadlin offered a useful window into official Israeli thinking on the escalating war — from solutions to the ongoing hostage crisis to the challenge of avoiding Palestinian civilian casualties.

Yadlin made clear that Israel’s policy in this war was not simply to retaliate for the massacre or weaken Hamas, but to definitively end the jihadist group’s 16-year rule in Gaza.

“We are going to destroy Hamas, as Nazi Germany was destroyed,” he said, adding that Israel would mount a global assassination campaign against Hamas leaders akin to the one it launched following the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre.

Aligned politically with the country’s center left — he was the Labor Party’s candidate for defense minister in the 2015 elections — Yadlin attributed much of the blame for the catastrophe to the national distraction of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push to overhaul the country’s judiciary: “Netanyahu got all the warnings — from his defense minister, from the chief of staff, from the head of intelligence, from the head of Shin Bet and from independent writers like me, like others — that this is weakening Israel deterrence and endangering Israeli national security.”

Complicating matters in recent days, the Israeli media has been abuzz with reports of internal Israeli government deliberations over a second front with Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, with the defense minister and other Israeli officials reportedly advocating a preemptive strike on the militant group and the U.S. cautioning against it.

Yadlin said Hezbollah’s “very cautious” behavior indicated a low likelihood of a second front developing. But while declining to go into details, Yadlin — who is privy to recent discussions between U.S. and Israeli officials — hinted that, in the event Hezbollah were to initiate a full-blown war with Israel, the U.S. might join “shoulder to shoulder” with Israel: “If Hezbollah attacks first, don’t be surprised — the U.S. may participate in this war.”

 

So yeah, expert after expert agree on two things: Bibi dropped the ball, and that the odds of a much bigger -- if not global -- conflict are ridiculously high as a result. This should all look familiar to Americans after 9/11, because we're headed down the same path with the same results.

Meanwhile, the ground invasion in Gaza is getting underway.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Friday that they are "expanding ground operations" in the Gaza Strip, according IDF spokesperson Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.

“In addition to offensive operations we carried over the past few days, the IDF ground forces are expanding their ground operation this evening,” Hagari said.

“Hundreds of thousands of IDF soldiers are all around the borders of the state — in the air, ground, and the sea — to protect the state," he added.

The announcement comes as CNN reports a large series of explosions rocked Gaza City on Friday night. 

 

Gaza is without power, telecommunications, or internet and is being bombed to ashes.

Large swaths of buildings around Gaza City, Beit Lahya and Beit Hanoun have been destroyed. A big amount of the damage that CNN was able to confirm is in northern Gaza.

Hundreds of craters across northern Gaza have also been identified.

CNN was able to identify the areas of destruction in Gaza through satellite imagery from Planet Labs, and by working with Synthetaic — a company that utilizes AI to identify and classify data, including satellite imagery.

Using imagery of the entire Gaza Strip from Planet Labs, Synthetaic is analyzing and comparing it through its proprietary AI-driven Rapid Automatic Image Categorization (RAIC) system, looking for destruction such as damaged and destroyed buildings, as well as impact craters. Aided by what RAIC identified as destruction, CNN is taking the Planet Labs imagery and conducting its own analysis to independently confirm the destruction.

The result is a snapshot of the destruction that's occurred across Gaza.

 

Hundreds, if not thousands of foreign nationals remain trapped. 

More than two weeks of intense negotiations to evacuate foreign nationals out of Gaza have yielded few signs of progress, leaving hundreds of desperate civilians stranded inside the war-torn strip of land as Israeli ground operations expanded amid a barrage of airstrikes on Friday.

Multiple sources involved in the diplomatic talks tell CNN that the effort to open a key border crossing in southern Gaza remains stymied by Hamas’ control of the enclave, Israel’s blockade and bombing, as well as Egyptian security concerns.

Now that the Israeli defense forces have announced an expansion of their ground operations, the situation for civilians and foreign nationals who remain trapped in Gaza has become even more dire. Aid officials and other individuals on the ground had expressed fears even before the expansion of operations that nowhere in Gaza was safe, and despite US officials saying they were working with Israel to establish civilian safe zones, such areas have not been fully stood up.

People who have family in Gaza told CNN on Friday they have not been able to make contact with them after communications went down in the strip amid the barrage of strikes.

Negotiators have been furiously working to find a solution to appease Egypt’s concerns about refugees entering the country through the Rafah crossing in southwestern Gaza, the border between Egypt and the Sinai. Complicating things are Israeli and American claims that Hamas has blocked the way out, as well as the inherent difficulties that come with processing thousands of people who claim to be foreign nationals.

The US had also been rushing to negotiate the release of hostages held by Hamas ahead of the incursion, talks that the US government insisted will continue amid Friday’s intensified airstrikes.

The Biden administration said Thursday it was hopeful that a deal will be reached in the coming days to allow US citizens to evacuate Gaza through Egypt, though the State Department had previously issued an alert saying the crossing into Egypt would open but it never did.

 

The catastrophe continues as the UN demands a cease fire, falling on deaf ears in Tel Aviv and Washington.

 

The U.N. General Assembly approved a nonbinding resolution Friday calling for a “humanitarian truce” in Gaza leading to a cessation of hostilities between Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers, the first United Nations response to the ongoing war.

The 193-member world body adopted the Arab-drafted resolution by a vote of 120-14 with 45 abstentions after rejecting a Canadian amendment backed by the United States. It would have unequivocally condemned the Oct. 7 “terrorist attacks” on Israel by Hamas and demanded the immediate release of hostages taken by Hamas.

The votes came part way through a list of 113 speakers at an emergency special session on Israeli actions in occupied Palestinian territories. Jordan’s U.N. Ambassador Mahmoud Hmoud, speaking on behalf of the U.N.’s 22-nation Arab group, had called for action on the resolution because of the urgency of the escalating situation on the ground.

The Arab group went to the General Assembly after the more powerful 15-member Security Council failed to agree on a resolution after four attempts over the past two weeks. While council resolutions are legally binding, assembly resolutions are not, but they do serve as a barometer of world opinion.

 

Things always get darker right before it goes pitch black.

Unimpeachable Me, Con't

Lost in the Clown Show was news that Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer continues to be the dumbest hammer in the box with his attempted "President Biden took direct payments" story last week. And Biden did...getting a loan repayment from his brother Jim in 2018, when Joe Biden was not in government at all.

 

Republicans announced Friday that they had uncovered a “direct payment” to President Joe Biden — exactly the kind of evidence they’ve sought linking Biden to his family’s foreign business deals.

But the March 2018 payment came from Joe Biden’s brother James, not a Ukrainian oligarch or Chinese tycoon, and the check was marked as a “loan repayment.”

Still, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who obtained the records via subpoena, said the $200,000 check looks suspicious for the president.

“Does he have documents proving he lent such a large sum of money to his brother,” Comer said in a video, “and what were the terms of such financial arrangement?”

Comer has been leading Republicans’ investigation and impeachment inquiry into President Biden, which so far hasn’t implicated Biden himself and in recent weeks has been overshadowed by infighting among Republicans that has paralyzed the House of Representatives.

Democrats on the Oversight Committee say the personal bank records recently provided to the committee do show that Biden loaned his brother the money.

“These records actually show that President Biden was the one who stepped in to help family members when they needed support, including by providing short term loans to his brother,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in a statement.

Raskin added that the 1,400 pages of records Republicans got from their subpoenas, which asked banks for several years of records relating to the president’s brother and son, show no wrongdoing, but do reveal “payments for things like groceries, vet visits, and plumbing repairs.”

 

Yeah, 200 grand is a lot of money to most of us. I wish I had that kind of scratch, sure. But there's the thing: Joe Biden helped out his brother, and his brother paid him back. That's not illegal, and in fact Joe Biden reported it on his income taxes.

 

Unlike, you know, Trump.

 

Clowns. Absolute clowns. James Comer is yet another Republican member of Congress I have to apologize to the rest of America for and I'm tired of these assholes.

Last Call For The Return Of Syria's Business

We're bombing Syria now in retaliation for attacks on US bases in the Middle East, and this all feels like October 2001 again.

U.S. fighter jets launched airstrikes early Friday on two locations in eastern Syria linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Pentagon said, in retaliation for a slew of drone and missile attacks against U.S. bases and personnel in the region that began early last week.

The U.S. strikes reflect the Biden administration’s determination to maintain a delicate balance. The U.S. wants to hit Iranian-backed groups suspected of targeting the U.S. as strongly as possible to deter future aggression, possibly fueled by Israel’s war against Hamas, while also working to avoid inflaming the region and provoking a wider conflict.

According to a senior U.S. military official, the precision strikes were carried out near Boukamal by two F-16 fighter jets, and they struck weapons and ammunition storage areas that were connected to the IRGC. The official said there had been Iranian-aligned militia and IRGC personnel on the base and no civilians, but the U.S. does not have any information yet on casualties or an assessment of damage. The official would not say how many munitions were launched by the F-16s.

A senior defense official said the sites were chosen because the IRGC stores the types of munitions there that were used in the strikes against U.S. bases and troops. The two officials briefed reporters after the strikes on condition of anonymity to provide details on the mission that had not yet been made public.

According to the Pentagon, there have now been at least 19 attacks on U.S. bases and personnel in Iraq and Syria since Oct. 17, including three new ones Thursday. Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said 21 U.S. personnel were injured in two of those assaults that used drones to target al-Asad Airbase in Iraq and al-Tanf Garrison in Syria.

In a statement, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the “precision self-defense strikes are a response to a series of ongoing and mostly unsuccessful attacks against U.S. personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-backed militia groups that began on October 17.”

He said President Joe Biden directed the narrowly tailored strikes “to make clear that the United States will not tolerate such attacks and will defend itself, its personnel, and its interests.” And he added that the operation was separate and distinct from Israel’s war against Hamas.

 

Of course the fear is that strikes on Iranian positions won't be distinct and separate from the current Israel-Hamas conflict for much longer. More attacks on US bases and troops will continue if the last two decades are indicative, no matter how many F-16 sorties we run.

Of course, if Trump were in charge instead of Biden right now, there wouldn't be fear of a global war, we'd be neck deep in one, so I'll take the hope that Biden and company know what they are doing when it comes to deterring a wider war any and every day over that.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

There are still plenty of warning signs ahead in the housing, auto loan, and student loan sectors, but for now, not only is America's economy growing under Bidenomics, it's skyrocketing.

 

The U.S. economy grew by an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter, the strongest pace since 2021, as spending — by families, businesses and the government — accelerated, even in the face of fast-rising borrowing costs.

New government data released Thursday by the Bureau of Economic Analysis shows that gross domestic product expanded between July and September, capping five straight quarters of growth and eluding a long-feared recession.

The economy’s resilience is a product of a strong job market and extra pandemic savings, which have made it possible for people to keep spending despite inflation and rising interest rates. Robust government hiring — including 214,000 new jobs between July and September — also added to overall strength.

“It’s enough to knock me over with a feather,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG. “We’ve had the most aggressive credit tightening from the Federal Reserve since the 1980s and, guess what, the economy’s accelerating. We really underestimated how much consumers could keep spending."

That spending was broad-based in the third quarter, with U.S. households doubling down on both necessities, such as housing, utilities and prescription drugs, as well as luxuries including dining out, hotel stays and recreation. Businesses and the federal government also continued to spend, though GDP was dragged down by lower non-residential investments.

Overall, the latest spike in GDP is more than double the previous quarter’s annual growth rate of 2.1 percent.

What isn’t clear yet is whether higher borrowing costs could reverse some of these gains in the months to come. Economists say that acceleration in economic growth is likely to slow later this year, as pandemic-era savings dry up and millions of households resume student loan payments. Fears of a government shutdown, ongoing strikes by actors and autoworkers, and worsening wars in Ukraine and Gaza are also adding to the uncertainty.

“The U.S. consumer has so been hanging tough and powering the economy forward, but I expect much slower growth the rest of the year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, who expects economic growth to slow to an annualized rate of 1 percent in the fourth quarter. “There are a lot of headwinds out there.”

In Cincinnati, Dominique Walker just made her first student loan payment in more than three years — which means she’s rethinking all sorts of other expenses, including manicures, massages and morning coffees. She’s packing her lunch a lot more and expects to spend less this holiday season than she has been.

“I’m having to rebalance things,” said Walker, 32, a data management specialist at a hospital. “That extra $305 a month, that has to come from somewhere.”

 

The bad news is that voters think the economy is the worst they've seen in decades.

 

The Fed has lifted borrowing costs 11 times since March 2022, with the goal of slowing the economy enough to stabilize prices. Mortgage rates, at 7.6 percent, are at a two-decade high, and the housing market has all but come to a standstill. But economists say that has freed up Americans to spend elsewhere. Expenditures at restaurants, movie theaters and sporting events have all risen in the past few months, helping support continued hiring in those industries.

Meanwhile, inflation has moderated — to 3.7 percent from last summer’s peak of 9.1 percent — though it remains far higher than the Fed would like.

The spate of growth is welcome news for the White House, which has invested heavily in infrastructure as part of its “Bidenomics” plan. But despite $302 billion in spending, it has struggled to convince voters that its economic policies are working for them. Biden’s ratings on economic matters are lower than ever, with just 32 percent of Americans saying they approve of the president’s handling of the economy in a recent CNBC poll. 

 

The disconnect is staggering. Giving the economy back to Trump would be catastrophic. But tens of millions of Americans want to do just that.

 

Last Call For That Poll-Asked Look, Con't

Polling from this summer indicated that RFK Jr.'s spoiler third-party run was drawing more Trump voters than Biden voters, but this time a poll from Harvard/Harris finds RFK Jr. is throwing the race to Trump.

 

Former President Trump is leading President Biden and Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in a three-way race, a new poll found.

The Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll survey, shared with The Hill, showed Trump receiving 39 percent support, Biden receiving 33 percent support and Kennedy receiving 19 percent support in a three-way race. A separate 9 percent of voters said they did not know or were unsure.

When those who were unsure were asked who they would vote for if they had to choose, Trump received 42 percent support, Biden received 36 percent and Kennedy received 22 percent.

In a two-way race, Trump holds a 5 percentage point lead over Biden, with the former president receiving 46 percent and Biden receiving 41 percent. Fourteen percent of respondents said they were unsure or didn’t know.

The survey noted that Biden gained 1 percentage point since a similar survey was conducted in September, while Trump gained 2 percentage points.

Biden still leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley in separate head-to-head match-ups.

Between Biden and DeSantis, Biden received 44 percent support while DeSantis received 40 percent. Between Biden and Haley, the president sat at 42 percent while Haley received 38 percent support.

The survey also indicated that Trump received the highest percentage of support when GOP voters were asked who they would vote for if the 2024 Republican primary were held today. Trump received 60 percent while DeSantis received 11 percent; all others received less than 10 percent, according to the poll.

“Trump’s polling continues to defy gravity both in the primary and the general election. Kennedy right now doesn’t change the result — an election held today would elect Donald Trump,” Mark Penn, the co-director of the Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll, said. “There is a lot of time and events to go, but Trump has a significant edge at the starting line.”

 

Again, a poll 12 months out from an election is about as predictive as a bucket of warm spit, but it continues to show that Trump facing 90+ counts in four separate criminal trials doesn't matter to half the country and that they'll vote for him anyway.  The polls have consistently shown him with a 40-50 point lead in the primaries despite the dozens of felony charges, to the point where I believe being indicted has actually helped him, not that Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley would have a chance in hell even without the criminal charges.

 

Trump continues to have a 46-point lead in the GOP primaries in the latest USA Today/Suffolk U poll, too.

Former UN ambassador Nikki Haley has surged nationally in a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, challenging a faltering Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as the top alternative to Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination.

Haley's support has risen to 11% of registered voters who plan to vote in GOP primaries or caucuses, up from 4% in the USA TODAY/Suffolk poll taken in June and just one percentage point below DeSantis. His 12% standing was a steep fall from his 23% support four months ago.

Trump continues to dominate the field, backed by 58%, up 10 points.

 

However, the USA Today/Suffolk U poll shows again that RFK Jr. would turn a tie into a one-point Biden lead.

One in four voters, 26%, said they would seriously consider supporting a bipartisan ticket of a Republican and a Democrat that a centrist group called No Labels may field. Another 23% said they might consider it, depending on who the nominees were. Biden voters were more likely than Trump voters − 28% compared with 18% − to say they would take a serious look.

The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cell phone Tuesday through Friday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

Not since billionaire businessman H. Ross Perot drew 19% of the vote in 1992, enabling Bill Clinton to defeat President George H.W. Bush with just 43% of the popular vote, has the prospect of independent bids threatened to upend the standard two-party calculations of campaigns.

Without Kennedy in the mix, Trump would edge Biden by 41% to 39%, a lead within the survey's margin of error, with West at 7%. Without West in the mix, Biden would edge Trump by an even narrower margin, 38% to 37%, with Kennedy at 14%.

With neither Kennedy nor West on the ballot, Biden and Trump would tie at 41%-41%.

 

Polls aren't accurate this far out, but they are consistent, and there's more than enough polling data to show that the real problem is that Trump is anywhere close to winning, and that a good 40%+ of Americans are still willing to vote for the guy given the last seven years.

 

Trump's the symptom, sure. The root cause remains the people who still support him.

The Out-Of-Tune Squad

I can understand not fully believing the Pentagon's assessment that a Hamas rocket fell short of Israel and crashed directly into a crowded hospital killing hundreds, unless the rockets Hamas are using have the power to level entire buildings (and if that's true, that's a much bigger problem.) But using that as an excuse to slag Biden from the Left like our old friends the Squad are doing is only making things worse.

 

Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib, of Michigan, refused to apologize Wednesday for saying a day earlier that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza, despite evidence from the U.S. defense department that the blast was likely caused by an errant projectile from Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

A number officials in the US and around the world blasted Israel for what they believed was an attack on a civilian facility that left hundreds dead. But claims and evidence began to suggest that the Gaza hospital blast was likely caused by a Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket that fell short of its target, two U.S. officials told ABC News. Still, what has happened has not conclusively been determined.

Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat, have been among Israel's strongest critics, with Tlaib accusing Israel of "oppressive & racist policies" in 2019. In February 2019, a tweet from Omar in response to a tweet from journalist Glenn Greenwald appeared to be using a common way of referring to $100 bills -- which feature Benjamin Franklin -- to suggest that many members of Congress support Israel because they get campaign donations from pro-Israel groups and individuals, evoking historical stereotypes linking Jews to money and influence. She later apologized for the tweet.

Their comments have at times been alleged by colleagues and others in congressional leadership to be antisemitic. But they have defended their views as legitimate, free speech in defense of the Palestinian cause.

Some of the criticism leveled against Tlaib and Omar over past comments has also been criticized as including Islamophobic or racist rhetoric.


Tlaib on Wednesday joined thousands of protesters calling for a ceasefire in Gaza during a solidarity rally hosted by the left-leaning group Jewish Voice for Peace at the National Mall. She was visibly emotional, at time, pausing her speech to openly weep and criticizing lawmakers who have not backed a proposed ceasefire resolution in Congress.

"As an American, not just as a member of the United States Congress, I am ashamed. I am ashamed that they're saying, 'not yet. Maybe next week.' ... How many more have to die?" Tlaib said.

She also addressed the backlash, applauding attendees for the "courage it's taken to speak up."

"The American Jewish community in my district, and all of you here. I just know how much courage it's taken to speak up. Many of you have been targeted. You're being gas lit. Some people are losing their jobs. Folks are getting events canceled. Literally, their First Amendment right wiped away for standing up and saying that children deserve to live. It is literally inhumane for my colleagues to allow that to continue and say nothing," Tlaib said.

 

She could have stopped there. She did not.

Tlaib also slammed President Joe Biden for his support for Israel since the Hamas terrorist attack.

"To my president, to our president ... I want him to know, as a Palestinian American and somebody in Muslim faith, I'm not going to forget this. And I think a lot of people are not going to forget this," Tlaib said.

President Biden, not all Americans are with you on this one and you need to understand that. We are literally watching people commit genocide and killing the vast majority just like this, and we still stand by and say nothing. We will remember this," she warned.

Omar is also facing criticism from Republicans over similar comments Tuesday that Israel is to blame for the hospital explosion that day in Gaza as Israel denies fault. As information about the hospital blast was initially being reported, Tlaib tweeted on Tuesday afternoon, "Israel just bombed the Baptist Hospital killing 500 Palestinians (doctors, children, patients) just like that. @POTUS this is what happens when you refuse to facilitate a ceasefire & help de-escalate. Your war and destruction only approach has opened my eyes and many Palestinian Americans and Muslims Americans like me. We will remember where you stood."

 

Hey, so, Biden's $100 million in direct humanitarian aid, and for now, talking Bibi out of ethnically cleansing the hell out of everything Gaza City and north means nothing to you then? 

As usual with Reps. Tlaib and Omar, it's Biden's fault. I expect that from the GOP. I was foolish not to expect that from the Squad, too.

Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

President Biden is expected to address the nation in a primetime speech Thursday evening explaining the US response to the current Israel-Hamas war.

 

President Joe Biden will address to the nation Thursday to update Americans on the U.S. response to the Hamas attacks, the White House said.

The 8 p.m. ET Oval Office speech comes a day after Biden's high-stakes visit to Israel where he pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow aid from Egypt into Gaza for Palestinian civilians reeling from Israel airstrikes.

In a rare move, Biden spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One, telling them he had been on the phone with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in "blunt negotiation" and that El-Sisi had agreed to open the closed Rafah crossing gate in southern Gaza to allow up to 20 trucks with aid through.

"I came to get something done -- I got it done," he said.

"They're going to patch the road -- they have to fill in the potholes for the trucks to get through," he said. "Expect that to take about eight hours tomorrow.So, there may be nothing rolling through … probably until Friday."

Asked about what he told Israeli officials, Biden said, "I was very blunt about the need to support getting humanitarian aid to Gaza, get it to Gaza and do it quickly."

He added, "I got no pushback, virtually none. ... Let me say it again, I got no pushback."

"Look, Israel has been badly victimized, but you know, the truth is that if they have an opportunity to relieve suffering of people who are, have nowhere to go, they're gonna be, it's what they should do," Biden said. "And if they don't, they'll be held accountable in ways that may be unfair."

 

Brutal honesty from the president as the White House also announced $100 million in additional humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile stateside, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested demonstrating in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday.

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated on Capitol Hill and occupied part of a House office building on Wednesday, urging lawmakers and the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, which has been under Israeli airstrikes since a deadly Hamas terror attack.

Dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Jews say cease fire now" and "Not in our name," the activists sat clapping and singing on the floor in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building and held up large banners that read "Ceasefire" and "Let Gaza Live."

"We warned the protestors to stop demonstrating and when they did not comply we began arresting them," the U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Capitol Police said protests are not allowed inside the building. They told CBS News the protesters entered the building legally and properly through visitor security checkpoints, and were permitted to gather and congregate, but failed to follow police warnings after beginning the demonstrations.

Police gave an early estimate that about 300 demonstrators were arrested, but said the number could grow as they continue processing arrests.

The protest was organized by the group Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization.

Before the sit-in, hundreds of people had gathered on the National Mall near the Capitol urging the Biden administration to call for a cease-fire.

 

Nationally, some 85% of Americans believe this conflict is going to become a larger regional war, and you can count me among them.

In the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and Israel declaring war on Hamas, an overwhelming majority of voters (85 percent) are either very concerned (49 percent) or somewhat concerned (36 percent) that the war between Israel and Hamas will escalate into a wider war in the Middle East, while 13 percent are either not so concerned (8 percent) or not concerned at all (5 percent), according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today. The poll was conducted from October 12 through October 16.

Voters (76 - 17 percent) think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States.

Republicans (84 - 12 percent), Democrats (76 - 17 percent), and independents (74 - 19 percent) think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States.

Voters (64 - 28 percent) approve of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attack.

Republicans (79 - 19 percent), Democrats (59 - 29 percent), and independents (61 - 32 percent) approve of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel.

There are wide gaps when looking at age. Voters 18 - 34 years old disapprove (51 - 39 percent) of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attack, while voters 35 - 49 years old (59 - 35 percent), voters 50 - 64 years old (77 - 17 percent), and voters 65 years of age and over (78 - 15 percent) approve.

When it comes to the relationship between the United States and Israel, slightly more than half of voters (52 percent) think the U.S. support of Israel is about right, while 20 percent think the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel, and 20 percent think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. This compares to a Quinnipiac University poll in May 2021 when 35 percent thought the U.S. support of Israel was about right, 25 percent thought the U.S. was not supportive enough, and 29 percent thought the U.S. was too supportive of Israel.

Voters were asked whether their sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians based on what they know about the situation in the Middle East. Roughly 6 in 10 voters (61 percent) say the Israelis, while 13 percent say the Palestinians. This is an all-time high of voters saying their sympathies lie more with the Israelis since the Quinnipiac University Poll first asked this question of registered voters in December 2001. The previous high for saying the Israelis was in April 2010 when 57 percent said the Israelis and 13 percent said the Palestinians. The low for saying the Israelis was in May 2021 when 41 percent said the Israelis and 30 percent said the Palestinians.

 

Slaughtering hundreds of civilians at a peace rally makes it pretty clear you're the problem and that you need to made to pay the piper.

 

Unfortunately, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are going to be made to pay as well.

Spoilers Ahead, Con't

I'm still convinced RFK Jr. is running to put Trump in the White House by hurting President Biden, but apparently the people falling for such an obvious con are MAGA voters themselves in the latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll.

In a potential presidential re-match, President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump remain competitive with Biden scoring just three points more among registered voters nationally. However, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. factors into the equation, Biden opens up a 7-percentage point lead over Trump among the national electorate. Kennedy’s presence erodes Trump’s lead among independents and cuts into his support among Republicans. Trump’s loss among his base is double the loss Biden experiences among Democrats.

Biden (49%) and Trump (46%) are well-matched among registered voters nationally in a hypothetical 2024 contest. This is little changed from earlier this month when 2 percentage points separated Biden (49%) and Trump (47%).

Partisan allegiances are strong. Among independents, though, Trump (49%) is ahead of Biden (43%) by 6 percentage points.

In a three-way contest with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. running as an independent, Biden opens up a 7-point lead over Trump. 44% of registered voters support Biden. 37% back Trump, and 16% are for Kennedy.

Kennedy’s presence in the contest makes the race competitive among independents who break 34% for Trump, 33% for Biden, and 29% for Kennedy.

With Kennedy in the race, Biden’s support dips 5 percentage points among Democrats while Trump loses 10 points among Republicans.

“Although it’s always tricky to assess the impact of a third-party candidate, right now Kennedy alters the equation in Biden’s favor,” says Lee M. Miringoff, Director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. “What this does speak to, however, is that about one in six voters are looking for another option especially independents.”

 

This is wild to me, but let's remember that before RFK Jr. decided to run as an independent, Team Trump was happily telling people that he was a good guy in order to hurt Biden.

 

Apparently this backfired incredibly. We'll see for how long.