NYTimes: Hamas Demand For End To War "Thwarting" Truce Efforts

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > NYTimes: Hamas Demand For End To War "Thwarting" Truce Efforts

«‹›1330 »

Main Paineframe: Oct 27, 2010

Phone posted:

does that include the crossword though?

no

get the package that includes the crossword and the cooking articles and that's $6.25 a week, or $325 a year

# ? Jan 27, 2019 21:04

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 20, 2024 22:59

Shrecknet: Jan 2, 2005

Main Paineframe posted:

no

get the package that includes the crossword and the cooking articles and that's $6.25 a week, or $325 a year

You can get just the crossword with a 20 year archive, for $40 a year.

# ? Jan 27, 2019 21:40

H.P. Hovercraft: Jan 12, 2004; one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse; Slippery Tilde

Sarah Problem posted:

hilariously it doesn�t

lmao

# ? Jan 27, 2019 22:02

Phone: Jul 30, 2005; 親子丼をほしい。

Sarah Problem posted:

hilariously it doesn�t

lmao, also 2 down: BEANER

a print subscription to current affairs is $60/yr (it's a magazine and is actually good, so apples and oranges)

# ? Jan 27, 2019 22:05

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

https://twitter.com/davidsirota/status/1089568861442138114

# ? Jan 27, 2019 22:08

Gunshow Poophole: Sep 14, 2008; OMBUDSMAN
POSTERS LOCAL 42069; Clapping Larry

the only thing that even makes that remotely plausible is just the sheer volume of content that the NYT publishes, like there's dozens and dozens of articles about poo poo that nobody cares about just being blasted out every day

# ? Jan 27, 2019 22:09

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Safety not guaranteed: Asshat is arguing against Trump impeachment

You could argue that the month of January has very modestly raised the odds that Donald Trump will not finish his term as president.

First, the government shutdown has demonstrated that Trump�s own incompetence suffices to cost him support in the polls and in the Senate � an indication that a larger crumbling of his political firewall might be possible.

Second, the indictment of Roger Stone, based on his lies to Congress about outreach to WikiLeaks, keeps open the possibility of future revelations of conspiracy implicating Trump himself.

Finally, there has been a burst of media interest in impeachment � an Atlantic cover story by Yoni Appelbaum prodding Democrats to take the plunge, and a more cautious essay by my colleague David Leonhardt putting the option on the table.

I�m open to these arguments; indeed, I have to be, since I�m on the record urging this president�s removal from office using the unusual remedy of the 25th Amendment. But there are several difficulties with the current briefs for impeachment, which suffice for now to keep a Pence presidency out of reach.

The first is the gulf between the democracy-subverting powers that the briefs ascribe to Trump and the actual extent of his influence. In Appelbaum�s essay, the president is charged with nothing less than having �trampled� on �the liberties guaranteed by the Constitution.� But many of his examples feature Trump failing to actually trample anything. He �did his best� to enact a Muslim travel ban (the actual ban was limited and upheld by the Supreme Court), he has �called for� the firing of political enemies (with little discernible result), he has made �efforts� to impede the Mueller investigation (which continues apace), and so on down the list of outrages that exist primarily on his Twitter feed.

Much of the case for �trampling,� then, is a case against Trump�s rhetoric. And one can acknowledge that rhetoric�s evils while doubting that the ranting of a president so hemmed in, unpopular and weak is meaningfully threatening the Constitution.

Especially because of the second problem with the case for impeachment, which might be summed up in a line from a poem that Trump often quoted in 2016: You knew drat well I was a snake before you took me in. Meaning, in this case, that little about his rhetorical excess, his penchant for lies and insults or the seaminess of his courtiers was hidden from voters on the campaign trail in 2016, in an election that by the Constitution�s standards Trump legitimately won.

Editors� Picks
:wtc:

Mitch McConnell Got Everything He Wanted. But at What Cost? It's trolls within trolls

The electorate�s foreknowledge of a politician�s sleaziness doesn't preclude impeachment. But it means that there is, at least, a quantum of sleaze that the president's supporters voted to accept. And the closer we get to a new election � including another primary campaign � the stronger the case for asking voters to retract that endorsement, instead of pre-empting their judgment from on high.

The rebuttal here is that the danger of keeping Trump in office is too great � a point with which I sympathize, because I fear Trump�s incapacity in an unlooked-for crisis. But I�m more doubtful about the policy dangers that are supposedly evident right now.

Appelbaum, for instance, analogizes Trump�s race-baiting to Andrew Johnson�s efforts to impede Reconstruction in the late-1860s South. But when he was impeached, Johnson was literally using his veto to abet the possible restoration of white supremacy. Whereas Trump is conspicuously losing a fight over some modest border fencing, and his last race-inflected policy move was � a criminal justice reform supported by many African-Americans. The president may be a bigot, but the policy stakes do not remotely resemble 1868.

Then there are the geopolitical risks of Trump�s alleged Russian loyalties. After the Stone arrest, Appelbaum�s Atlantic colleague David Frum deemed these too severe to wait even for Robert Mueller�s verdict: �But now � now! � the country is in danger.�

But in the absence of Mueller-stamped evidence, what we have to prove that peril is Trump�s actual foreign policy, which is erratic but frequently quite unfriendly to Moscow � with the administration�s effort to subvert the Russian-aligned Maduro regime in Venezuela just this week�s example.

Which makes it entirely reasonable to wait to see whether Mueller vindicates the various uncorroborated scoops about a conspiracy hatched in Prague or the Ecuadorean Embassy, rather than trying to impeach Trump for, say, his private griping about NATO.

At the end of my invoke-the-25th-Amendment column I wrote, �There will be time to return again to world-weariness and cynicism as this agony drags on.� That was month four of this presidency; as we approach month 25 I suppose I have become that world-weary cynic.

But like all cynics I prefer to call it realism. If you want Trump gone, the existing case for impeachment will not do it. You must either prove him � not Stone or some other hanger-on, but him � guilty of conspiracy, or accept that he will depart only when he is beaten at the polls.

# ? Jan 27, 2019 23:18

GalacticAcid: Apr 8, 2013; NEW YORK VALUES

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

He sacrificed his first wife.

Lol

# ? Jan 27, 2019 23:49

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1089655355691405312

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:06

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

If you think of all the wars we didn't fight, then really we won.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:11

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

I'm hoping to see Bild or some other German paper print an article explaining they won both World Wars, if you think about it.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:16

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

forkboy84 posted:

I'm hoping to see Bild or some other German paper print an article explaining they won both World Wars, if you think about it.

If the Volksturm didn't stall the red army at the Brandenberg Gates, then think of the war that would have to be fought over communist France.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:18

Doktor Avalanche: Dec 30, 2008

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1089655355691405312

from the comments:
There is no question that despite the costs and many mistakes made, America has been a force for good in the world, and that the world is a better place that is mostly more welcoming to travelling Americans and business as a result.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:38

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

Gonna share that op-ed with a Vietnam expert in the milhist thread; here, have something from there:

https://twitter.com/JozNorris/status/1088886021620748293

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:51

Platystemon: Feb 13, 2012; BREADS

It won�t be 168 years till 6 February.

The entry is dated 25 January on the Julian calendar.

Anyone using the Gregorian calendar would have recognised the day Tolstoy wrote that as 6 February 1851.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 00:59

Grand Prize Winner: Feb 19, 2007

someone said the exact same thing in the milhist thread

# ? Jan 28, 2019 01:01

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

the soviets actually won afghanistan since in the long run it kept them from declaring war on europe

# ? Jan 28, 2019 01:06

Tewdrig: Dec 6, 2005; It's good to be the king.

Some Guy TT posted:

the soviets actually won afghanistan since in the long run it kept them from declaring war on europe

The Soviets actually won in Afghanistan since in the long run they forced the Americans to fund terrorist groups as a counter, which groups would go on to attack America, thereby causing America to invade Afghanistan and waste its military power for twice as long as the Soviets ever did.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 01:31

Tewdrig: Dec 6, 2005; It's good to be the king.

Since this is the NYTimes thread, have a failing article that starts by quoting Republican senators about how the shutdown should never have happened, and never thinking to ask them why they then supported the shutdown during it.

https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1089515903484641280

Republican senators quoted in the article as how the shutdown was a bad idea and shouldn't have happened, really:

�Shutting down the government should be as off limits in budget negotiations as chemical warfare is in real warfare,� Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, said on Friday.

�This never should have happened,� said Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, speaking for many.

�I�ve said repeatedly throughout this process that government shutdowns are a bad idea,� said Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio.

�The final package should also end government shutdowns once and for all,� Mr. Grassley said.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 01:38

Pener Kropoopkin: Jan 30, 2013

they basically gassed themselves, so I appreciate the chemical warfare analogy.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 02:01

Some Guy TT: Aug 30, 2011

did they pretend to be this broken up about shutdowns in 2013 too

# ? Jan 28, 2019 02:13

comedyblissoption: Mar 15, 2006

not a cult posted:

from the comments:
There is no question that despite the costs and many mistakes made, America has been a force for good in the world, and that the world is a better place that is mostly more welcoming to travelling Americans and business as a result.

i'd post this in the wsj comments but it's paywalled sooo

from one of william blum's last talks before he died
https://williamblum.org/aer/read/158

quote:

We can all agree I think that US foreign policy must be changed and that to achieve that the mind � not to mention the heart and soul � of the American public must be changed. But what do you think is the main barrier to achieving such a change in the American mind?

Each of you I�m sure has met many people who support American foreign policy, with whom you�ve argued and argued. You point out one horror after another, from Vietnam to Iraq to Libya; from bombings and invasions to torture. And nothing helps. Nothing moves these people.

Now why is that? Do these people have no social conscience? Are they just stupid? I think a better answer is that they have certain preconceptions. Consciously or unconsciously, they have certain basic beliefs about the United States and its foreign policy, and if you don�t deal with these basic beliefs you may as well be talking to a stone wall.

The most basic of these basic beliefs, I think, is a deeply-held conviction that no matter what the US does abroad, no matter how bad it may look, no matter what horror may result, the government of the United States means well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they may even on many occasions cause more harm than good, but they do mean well. Their intentions are always honorable, even noble. Of that the great majority of Americans are certain.

Frances Fitzgerald, in her famous study of American school textbooks, summarized the message of these books: �The United States has been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. The U.S. always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took.�

And Americans genuinely wonder why the rest of the world can�t see how benevolent and self-sacrificing America has been. Even many people who take part in the anti-war movement have a hard time shaking off some of this mindset; they march to spur America � the America they love and worship and trust � they march to spur this noble America back onto its path of goodness.

Many of the citizens fall for US government propaganda justifying its military actions as often and as naively as Charlie Brown falling for Lucy�s football.

The American people are very much like the children of a Mafia boss who do not know what their father does for a living, and don�t want to know, but then they wonder why someone just threw a firebomb through the living room window.

This basic belief in America�s good intentions is often linked to �American exceptionalism�. Let�s look at just how exceptional America has been. Since the end of World War 2, the United States has:

Attempted to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically-elected.
Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries.
Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders.
Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries.
Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries.
Led the world in torture; not only the torture performed directly by Americans upon foreigners, but providing torture equipment, torture manuals, lists of people to be tortured, and in-person guidance by American teachers, especially in Latin America.

This is indeed exceptional. No other country in all of history comes anywhere close to such a record. But it certainly makes it very difficult to believe that America means well.

So the next time you�re up against a stone wall � ask the person what the United States would have to do in its foreign policy to lose his or her support. What for this person would finally be TOO MUCH. Chances are the US has already done it.

Keep in mind that our precious homeland, above all, seeks to dominate the world. For economic reasons, nationalistic reasons, ideological, Christian, and for other reasons, world hegemony has long been America�s bottom line. And let�s not forget the powerful Executive Branch officials whose salaries, promotions, agency budgets and future well-paying private sector jobs depend upon perpetual war. These leaders are not especially concerned about the consequences for the world of their wars. They�re not necessarily bad people; but they�re amoral, like a sociopath is.

Take the Middle East and South Asia. The people in those areas have suffered horribly because of Islamic fundamentalism. What they desperately need are secular governments, which have respect for different religions. And such governments were actually instituted in the recent past. But what has been the fate of those governments?

Well, in the late 1970s through much of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a secular government that was relatively progressive, with full rights for women, which is hard to believe, isn�t it? But even a Pentagon report of the time testified to the actuality of women�s rights in Afghanistan. And what happened to that government? The United States overthrew it, allowing the Taliban to come to power. So keep that in mind the next time you hear an American official say that we have to remain in Afghanistan for the sake of the women.

After Afghanistan came Iraq, another secular society, under Saddam Hussein. And the United States overthrew that government as well, and now the country has its share of crazed and bloody jihadists and fundamentalists; and women who are not covered up properly are sometimes running a serious risk.

Next came Libya; again, a secular country, under Moammar Gaddafi, who, like Saddam Hussein, had a tyrant side to him but could in important ways be benevolent and do some marvelous things. Gaddafi, for example, founded the African Union and gave the Libyan people the highest standard of living in Africa. So, of course, the United States overthrew that government as well. In 2011, with the help of NATO, we bombed the people of Libya almost every day for more than six months.

Can anyone say that in all these interventions, or in any of them, the United States of America meant well?

When we attack Iran, will we mean well? Will we have the welfare of the Iranian people at heart? I suggest you keep such thoughts in mind the next time you�re having a discussion or argument with a flag-waving American.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 02:28

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

https://twitter.com/reason/status/1088911900262330369?s=19

# ? Jan 28, 2019 10:25

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

https://twitter.com/TeenVogue/status/1089811609877467136

# ? Jan 28, 2019 11:30

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Some Guy TT posted:

did they pretend to be this broken up about shutdowns in 2013 too

Chaos president may by pure happenstance get several longstanding bullshit government things fixed via abusing the gently caress out of them. House Democrats want to basically kill the debt ceiling as a thing to quibble over as well.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 12:01

Metis of the Chat Thread: Aug 1, 2014

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/mdubowitz/status/1089655355691405312

ctrl f "cambodia"

0 results

# ? Jan 28, 2019 12:07

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1089915615245152256

# ? Jan 28, 2019 16:59

the bitcoin of weed: Nov 1, 2014

Jose posted:

https://twitter.com/TeenVogue/status/1089811609877467136

is teen vogue just officially a communist magazine now

# ? Jan 28, 2019 17:57

forkboy84: Jun 13, 2012; Corgis love bread. And Puro

the bitcoin of weed posted:

is teen vogue just officially a communist magazine now

Well, as long as they keep paying the avowedly anarchist Kim Kelly to write for them, yeah.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 18:09

H.P. Hovercraft: Jan 12, 2004; one thing a computer can do that most humans can't is be sealed up in a cardboard box and sit in a warehouse; Slippery Tilde

https://twitter.com/superlancerboy/status/1089618916714762240

# ? Jan 28, 2019 19:04

Zerg Mans: Oct 19, 2006

so like are we supposed to feel bad about the buzzfeed people being told to learn to code because I feel most media people deserve that

# ? Jan 28, 2019 19:45

Badger of Basra: Jul 26, 2007

what did they do to deserve it

# ? Jan 28, 2019 19:59

Dean of Swing: Feb 22, 2012

Wrote a listicle that got me buttblasted.

# ? Jan 28, 2019 20:27

the bitcoin of weed: Nov 1, 2014

zegermans posted:

so like are we supposed to feel bad about the buzzfeed people being told to learn to code because I feel most media people deserve that

the "learn to code, lazy industrial workers" stereotype people all still have their NYT op-ed jobs so it just feels mean

# ? Jan 28, 2019 20:40

Sazabi: Feb 15, 2014; A-MA-ZON!!

zegermans posted:

so like are we supposed to feel bad about the buzzfeed people being told to learn to code because I feel most media people deserve that

On the one hand they've done some big stories in the past year or two. Mostly about Trump and the alt-right. But on the other hand it's been how many years of 15 gifs that sum up last night's episode of the walking dead. And $800 dollar crayons vs. $8 dollar crayons. Is it worth it bro?

# ? Jan 28, 2019 20:45

Jose: Jul 24, 2007; Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster and writer

https://twitter.com/DRUDGE_REPORT/status/1089894893848166400

# ? Jan 28, 2019 20:47

Nebakenezzer: Sep 13, 2005; The Mote in God's Eye

the bitcoin of weed posted:

the "learn to code, lazy industrial workers" stereotype people all still have their NYT op-ed jobs so it just feels mean

Pretty much anytime there's a universal prescriptive "just do Y" :smug:

the idea isn't to help the other person, it's to grind contempt into them while talking about how cool you are

This is worse in gormless/highly privileged people who don't know it, it's why Silicon valley thinks every poor person is a failed third wave independent contractor and thus deserves poverty and death

# ? Jan 28, 2019 20:53