I bought in 2022 and can’t imagine having that much interaction with a mortgage broker. My interaction consisted of giving them my information. Getting pre approved for a stupidly large mortgage (about twice what I could afford). Then, when I found a place to buy, they punched in the address for the “virtual appraisal” and approved the loan.
Trump is an existential threat to Iran. Iran is in a regional cold[0] war with Israel. Israel’s ability to wage this war is largely dependent on US support; both in terms of raw military assistance, and in the US providing diplomatic and economic cover for Israel.
While the US had not applied nearly as much moderating pressure on Israel as I would have liked, it has still provided some. Israeli prime minister Netenyahu, in contrast, has been angling for a direct confrontation with Iran for decades now. Given the past 11 months, there are serious forces, both in Israeli politics, Iranian politics, and the inertia of war, pushing in that direction.
Trump is aligned with Netenyahu on this point, and would push him towards a direct confrontation with Iran. By all indications, Harris is not. This dynamic was made clear to Iran when the Democratic administration signed the Iran nuclear deal (against Israeli opposition), from which the US under Trump proceeded to unilaterally withdraw from.
[0] Cold might be a bit of an understatement after the last 11 months. However, apart from a brief tit-for-tat exchange, the fighting has stayed confined to Israel and Iranian proxies.
Because tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been steadily rising since October 7th because of Hzebollah’s objection to how Israel is acting in Gaza. To be clear, prior to October 7th, tensions were already high enough that they would regularly lob bombs at each other. Today’s “escalated” tensions include northern Israel being evacuated due to threats from Hezbolla’s rocket attacks.
At this point, it is clear that the options available to Israel are to either withdraw from Gaza and hope Hezbolla stands down, or end up in a full war with Hezbolla. Historians will say that the war with Hezbolla started months ago, and this was just one attack among many.
But they didn’t because materials that explode like that simply aren’t used as batteries.
Further, software is not magic. In consumer electronics basic power management is done entirely by hardware. A hack cannot short out the battery, because the circuit to do that simply doesn’t exist. Maybe the hack could cause enough of a sustained power draw to overheat the battery and trigger a failure eventually, but that would still look quite different from what we saw.
To be clear, the target of the shooting was an unidentified individual, and a scoped rifle was found in the vicinity.
Maybe something else happened, but it looks like the secret service doing their job and stoppingva shooter before he was ready to take the shot.
In the modern era, wars are rarely in the interest of either side. However, miscalculations happen, and the more you play at the edge of war, the more likely you are to fall over.
In April, Israel calculated that they could bomb an Iranian complex in Syria, targeting top Iranian officials without sparking a war. They were correct.
In response, Iran calculated that they could send 300 drones/missiles to Israel, and have enough be intercepted by air defense systems to avoid starting a war. They were correct.
Israel and Hezbollah have been exchanging fire; each side calculating that each strike would not start a war. Thus far they have been correct.
For years, Hamas and Israel have been exchaning small attacks. Both sides correctly calculating that they could avoid a full war. Then, on October 7th, the IDF fucked up. A Hamas attack was far more successful than it had any bussiness being, and now both sides are 10 months into a war that hurts both of them.
A war with Hezbollah might not be inevitable, but the current level of conflict is not sustainable. Every day that it is not resolved is one more opportunity for miscalculation; and one more notch ticked on the escalatory ratchet.
The President’s role is largely ceremonial. The President consults party leaders to determine who they would support, then nominates that person. The nominee must then form a coalition that can get support from a majority of the Knesset.
How do you think intelligence agencies work? There is a reason why background investigations for security clearences focus so much on “is there anything you can be blackmailed with”
It was not compulsory for Ben Gvir, who was excused from compulsory service because the IDF at the tine thought he was too extreme. He has since been convicted of terrorism, and currently serves as Israel’s minister of defense.
But you are allowed to stage a murder; hire a film crew to record your staged murder; pay television stations and websites to show a preview of your staged murder, and sell a recording of your staged murder to anyone who wants to buy. Depending on how graphic it is, you might be required to put an age advisory on your work and not broadcast it on public airwaves; but that is about the extent of the regulation.
You can even stage murders of children and show that.
Even if the underlying murder is real, there is still no law outlawing having a recording of it. Even producing a recording of a murder isn’t technically illegal; although depending on the context you might still be implicated in a conspiracy to commit murder.
Sexual assult of children is the only crime for which the mere depiction of the crime is itself a crime.
The problem with Israel is that its leader was a bit too vile. About half of the elected knesset refused to form a coalition government with Netenyahu, resulting in years of failing to form a governing coalition.
Eventually, the path out of the stalemate ended up being forming a coalition with far right members of the knesset that had previously been political pariahs; including appointing a convicted terrorist to the role of minister of national security.
Prior to October 7, this was an extremely tenous political position. The coalition was hanging on by a thread. The attempted judicial coup reform was stopped by massive public backlash. And the politian whose divisiveness was central to the political crises that enabled the far right to join the coalition was in the middle of defending himself in a criminal trial. However, when a crisis like October 7 happens, you are stuck with the leaders you have. And Israeli leadership at the time was possibly the worst in the history of the country for handling it (unless you agree with their manifest destiny version of Zionism, in which case I think they are doing quite well).
What does this have to do with Israel?
Russia is fighting a war against our ally in Ukraine, and has threatened to go nuclear.
China has been saber wrattling about Taiwan for ages and has been growing into a general geopolitical rival for years.
North Korea is … North Korea. Their foreign policy has been “we can start a nuclear war if we want to for decades”.
Notably absent from the list is Iran, which is the non-US alligned country at risk of starting a major war over Isreal, and is a near nuclear power.
When you are looking at someone down the scope of a gun, you do not see a kidnapper, or a mudered. You see a person. That is not a moral judgment. It is a deep instinctual inpulse we have, enhanced by a lifetime of socialization, against killing people. Half of the point of military training is getting people to overcome tharmt base instinct.
As the commanders say, these soldiers have not had adequate training.
We are talking about US politics here, so I’m assuming the focus is what the US has been doing.
Stop funding and supplying arms to Israel.
Like the $20 billion we approved earlier this month (in direct violation of the foreign assistance act)
recognize Palestine as a state
We simply do not do this. Then again we don’t recognize Taiwan either.
Back ICJ arrest ruling for Netenyahu
The US has been opposed to this warrent, and there is talk of sanctioning the ICJ over it.
Should anyone ever arrest any Israeli official pursuant to an ICJ ruling, there is standing US law (American Service-Members’ Protection Act, otherwise known as the invade the Hague act) authorizing the President to use full military force to secure their release [0]
Urge the UN to sanction Israel
The US is routinely the sole veto on every major UN vote on Israel.
[0] This isn’t Israel specific. It us authorized for bassically any ally that is not an ICJ member.
A 40% approval rating is not popular under any circumstances. A wartime government being underwater is damning.
I have not listened to his DNC speach, but back in january he introduced a resolution that would have invoked the legal requirement that US assistance not be used to commit human rights violations. It failed 72-11.
Back in April, he spoke in the senate opposing the $8.9 billion offensive military aid to Israel; after having introduced amendments to cut those provisions out. (If you read 1 link from this post make it this one).
As early as October 11, he was calling for the US to force Israeli restraint, and explicitly calling Israel’s responce a violation of international law
On October 25, he demanded information on how Israel was going to use the first aid package before it went to a vote in the senate, which was formally sent to Biden November 1.
At this point I stopped going through his press releases, because at this point, he just sounds like a Cassandra.
I actually read the 7 page opinion, because normally there is at least some shred of reasonableness in these crazy opinions. But this one … those 7 pages have nothing.
I’ll just leave this little nugget from the end:
The points we have made above provide some clarity about the legal standards and framework for this sensitive area of Texas law. The courts cannot go further by entering into the medical-judgment arena.
The really telling part of all of this is that there was no reason for this to be a thing. The state attorney general chose to fight this specific case. Then chose to send a letter to every hospital saying the injunction did not actually protect them, and chose to appeal the decision to the state Supreme Court.
None of that had to happen. He could have let the extreme cases go through while fighting to remove women’s rights on the more “controversial” cases, but instead chose to make a test case out the most extreme interpretation of his extremist ideology.
Despite this, the court seems willfully blind to the fact that the reason for needing an injunction is that the state is acting in demonstorable bad faith.
Side note. Remember when the US SC ruled that this law could not be challenged because the state was not going to be the one enforcing it?
The allagation is that Panera did not adequately communicate the contents of the lemonade.
Neutral and Israel alligned countries have been calling for a humanatarian pause on purely humanitarian grounds. Even if you don’t care about the hostages, that Hamas was willing to offer them means that they had an interest in such a pause as well; making Israel the only obstacle to it happening. That is to say, the severity of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is squarly on Israel’s shoulders. The most charitable reading of the situation is that they have determined that the tactical advantage of blocking a humanitarian pause outways the civilian lives they put at risk by doing so.
We’ll support you a bit less … after our elections are over and we can support you without any domestic consequence.
Remember the airdrops and logistics piers that the Biden admit spent months touting as the US’s solution to the humanitarian crises, and we just need to give them time to be implemented. Then, when they didn’t work (as anyone who was paying attention knew would happen, because they were fundamentally stupid ideas from the start), the admin quietly rolled them back without much fanfare.
This is at least slightly better in that it is in principle and actually good idea. But the Biden admin has no credibility for actually following through. The state department will release a public report saying that Israel is in compliance and military aid will continue uninterrupted; regardless of the facts on the ground.
By the time voters can see for sure that this was a lie, the election will have ended.