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WatDabney

@ WatDabney @sopuli.xyz

Posts
3
Comments
599
Joined
2 yr. ago

  • Deleted

    Permanently Deleted

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  • Nice to get that in official testimony, but duh. It was obvious all along that there was nothing even close to the sort of threat that might colorably justify the deployment.

    But of course, that was never the point. The Trump regime was just trying to establish a precedent that they could send troops in to violently suppress protests, and as far as that goes, the fact that the protests posed no real threat was a good thing, because what they want is to be able to violently suppress whatever protests they want, whenever they want, for whatever reason they want.

  • How would you react if someone said they had a dream of you in it?

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  • So years ago, I was going through chemotherapy, and was seeing an oncologist regularly. She was my age more or less and very attractive and single, but also an oncologist treating me professionally.

    We got along very well and generally ended up talking about things other than my treatment (which is how I learned she was single - she shared that fact unprompted), but even with that, I never pushed it - it just seemed too weird to actually pursue a relationship with my oncologist. I couldn't be sure how much of it was just in my head - some weird doctor/patient dependency thing - and besides, she was a responsible professional and I was a house painter living in a duplex and spending my spare time smoking pot and playing disc golf, so it wasn't like I had anything of actual value to offer. So I just contented myself with pleasant conversations every two weeks.

    Then one day, right near the end of my treatment, seemingly out of nowhere, she said, "I dreamed about you last night."

    I panicked. I couldn't imagine any follow-up to that that wasn't going to be weird or disappointing or stressful.

    I don't remember what I said or how the conversation went from there, but it was noncommittal enough that I never learned the details of her dream, and our last few appointments were straightforwardly professional, and that was that. My cancer never recurred, and I haven't seen her since.

    I've always wondered, but you know - if I had it to do over again, I doubt I'd do any differently.

  • Donald Trump Seems Intent on Sabotaging US Dominance

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  • I would've guessed that but didn't know it. Thanks for the clarification.

  • Donald Trump Seems Intent on Sabotaging US Dominance

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  • Especially notable to me that the article made its point without even getting into things like Trump effectively handing leadership in EV technology and alternative energy broadly to China, or giving the Chinese chip-making industry just the boost it needed to potentially be able to supply China's needs on its own, or making the US so hostile to scientific reseach that China will likely end up leading the world in that as well.

    Yes - he could hardly do more to more thoroughly destroy the US's standing in the world if he set out to deliberately do exactly that.

    Oddly though, that at least provides him with a bit of cover - if he wasn't such a blithering idiot, I'd suspect that that really was his goal. But I don't think he's even capable of maintaining focus on a straightforward strategy, much less a subtle and multilayered one.

  • Trump administration seeks $1 billion settlement from UCLA, a White House official says

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  • "Shoor iz a nice university you got here. Shoor would be a shame if sumpin wuz ta happen to it mmm?"

  • VP Vance meeting to discuss Epstein fallout canceled, source says

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  • I suspect sometimes that the power-brokers are preparing to dump Trump.

  • ‘They roll right over’: Many Democrats call their party weak and ineffective, AP-NORC poll finds

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  • I wouldn't call them weak and ineffective. I'd call them corrupt and compromised.

    They don't roll over because they're weak - they roll over because that's what the donor class pays them to do.

  • History is best told as a story of organised crime

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  • Years ago - I believe in one of Dostoyevsky's novels, but I haven't been able to run it down - I read a wonderful allegory on this topic.

    The basic gist of it, told nowhere near as well as it was originally:

    Once upon a time, there was a peaceful village of farmers. They went through their days, tending their fields and caring for their livestock and each other and simply living.

    Every few years though, a group of bandits would ride down out of the nearby hills and attack tge village and take all they could carry of the farmers' crops and livestock.

    Then one year, an entirely different group of bandits rode down from a different part of the hills, and they attacked the village and took everything.

    So when, a few months later, the customary bandits rode down to attack, they found the village already devastated and everything they would've stolen already gone.

    The bandits knew they couldn't allow that - they depended on their theft of the villagers' goods for their own livelihood. So they went back to their camp and, over a hard winter, thought about what to do.

    The next spring - long before the harvest, so long before their customary attack on the villagers, they rode down and they approached the village elders with a proposal.

    Instead of attacking the villagers and taking everything, they would settle for just taking half of everything, and in exchange they would protect the villagers from being attacked by those other bandits and having everything taken.

    And the villagers, with no other hope - being allowed to keep hslf of the fruits of their labors was at least better than losing everything - grudgingly agreed.

    And thus was government born.

  • Hamas vows not to lay down arms after Witkoff reportedly says it’s ready to demilitarize

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  • It's like you're trying to excuse a child-murderer by pointing out that the victim's dad is an asshole.

    Israel is murdering Palestinians and stealing their rightful land.

    No amount of diversionary finger-pointing will change those facts, or in any way excuse Israel's overt and grotesque evil.

  • Hamas vows not to lay down arms after Witkoff reportedly says it’s ready to demilitarize

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  • And no amount of predictable emotive victim-blaming will ever change the simple facts of the matter - that Israel's occupation of territory granted to Palestine inqq Resolution 181 is a clear violation of international law, and that Israel has caused FAR more harm, death and destruction to the Palestinian people than Hamas ever possibly could.

  • Hamas vows not to lay down arms after Witkoff reportedly says it’s ready to demilitarize

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  • And they're 100% right.

    International law is very simple and straightforward - land forcibly annexed is not legitimate. Israel has no legal or valid claim to any territory beyond what it was granted in UN Resolution 181 in 1948. Every single inch of land it's taken since then has been taken illegally, and in direct violation of the rights of the inhabitants.

    And that's even before getting into the overt evil that Israel has committed along the way - the terrorism and brutality and oppression and murder that it's employed to incrementally steal the rightful territory of the Palestinians.

    And yes - the Palestinians have every right to stand against Israel's brutal theft of its territory and murder of its inhabitants. Their resistance is not only morally right, but entirely in keeping with international law.

  • Saudi Arabia and France are Leading a ‘Political Genocide’

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  • International law is actually quite clear on this issue - forcible annexation of territory belonging to another sovereign power is entirely and always illegal, and therefore the final and only legitimate borders in the former Palestinian Mandate are the ones laid out in Resolution 181 in 1947.

    It really is just that simple.

  • No Doubt Left: Russiagate Was a Cover-Up

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  • Trump orders firing of labor statistics chief hours after data showed jobs growth slowed

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  • Your daily reminder that the President of the United States is a delusional narcissist with the emotional maturity of a toddler.

  • National Guard Ordered to Do ICE Paperwork at Immigration Facilities in 20 States

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  • The Pentagon has continued to insist that it is critical that troops do ICE’s scutwork. “This ongoing support, provided in response to a May 9, 2025 request for assistance from the Department of Homeland Security includes case management, transportation and logistical support, and clerical support for the in- and out-processing of illegal aliens at ICE detention facilities,”

    So ICE is going to handle disappearing people, and then the military is going to be in charge of herding them into the concentration camps.

    It's a proud day for America, hmm?

  • Israel’s attack on Syria: Protecting the Druze minority or a regional power play?

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  • How is this even a question?

    They're actively murdering Palestinians - of course they don't give a shit about anyone else's minorities.

    Their one and only goal is conquest. Regarding Syria specifically, their first goal was to cement their illegal occupation of the Golan Heights, and that morphed into their second goal - to expand further into Syria. Since the fall of Assad (literally beginning less than 48 hours after his government fell), Israel has moved an additional 12 km into Syrian territory and built military bases and roads and laid minefields to protect their newly acquired territory.

    This stuff about the Druze, just like everything else that comes out of the Israeli propaganda machine, is just there to provide their apologists with something to spin - something with which to divert attention, just a bit longer, from the simple truth that Israel is a profoundly destructive rogue state.

  • US to impose sanctions on Palestinian organisations

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  • Victim-blaming as national policy.

    At this point, I'm not even the tiniest bit surprised.

    The one reassuring thing in all of this is that it's near certain that the era in which history can be manipulated is likely over - that the advent of the internet and the proliferation of information makes it so that once the principals are out of power or dead, history is going to narrow in on the actual truth.

    And the actual truth about Israel and Palestine, and the US's involvement, is very, very ugly, and I suspect that no matter how much success the psychopaths and liars have diverting from that fact currently, it's going to come out eventually, and rightly take its place as a terribly shameful part of history.

    It'll of course be too late for the mass-murderers and their enablers and co-conspirators to face the consequences they so richly deserve, but it's something.

  • The Anti-Abundance Critique on Housing Is Dead Wrong

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  • Weird that he spends all that time and effort arguing against a position I've never seen anyone take.

    I mean... there are undoubtedly people who take it - if nobody else, the ones he cites - but still, I would think that if it was worth all of that effort, it would be common enough that I would've seen it.

    Cynically, I have to say that it looks to me like an attempt to backhandedly support his own pet theory - that zoning regulations are to blame - through a false dichotomy.

    Far and away, the most common position I've seen is not that there's an oligopoly in home building, but in home ownership - that corporations and investors are outbidding other buyers, and thereby driving up prices, then holding onto and renting those homes, decreasing the available supply of homes for sale and thus further driving up prices.

    And that's not even addressed.

  • ABC calls on Israel to allow journalists to move in and out of Gaza

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  • We already know but the average pea-brained morons don't. To the degree that they might hear about it, they just write it off as woke propaganda from Trump haters (or whatever fits their particular combination of ignorance, bigotry and wishful thinking). And they aren't going to believe it until it's streamed directly into their eyes, over and over.