Seeing as I am an American, my opinion on maters concerning Israel and Palestine are obviously limited and informed by my personal experiences in the United States, and my concerns with the crisis that is unfolding tends to focus on aspects of American involvement (and the avoidance thereof). Though, as a citizen of a nation that is definitely recognized by the international community as a legitimate country (if not one of the premier legitimate countries), I feel pretty secure in the first point I want to make regarding Israeli and Palestinian sovereignty. While the Israelis claim that Palestine isn’t a real country and Palestinians claim that Israel is a made up country, they’re both internationally recognized by the United Nations as sovereign states, and they were BOTH made up and given to the people who live there by the United Nations, more or less out of pity. So I don’t think either side has any ground to be making arguments about the sovereignty of the other.

I’ll get my most unpopular opinion out of the way early: my view on these two countries is that it’s in the best interest for the people who live there and the international community for neither of them to exist. Clearly the one-state solution isn’t working, neither side can agree to terms for a two-state solution, so that leaves a zero-state solution. The U.N. should draw new borders that divvy up the land between Egypt, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon, then give the people who lived in Egypt and Palestine the option to become citizens of one of those surrounding nations or to take a free plane ticket and U-haul gift card and find somewhere else. I’m sort of joking. Sort of.

Specifically, to hell with Zionism (and whatever the Palestinian equivalent would be, though I don’t really think there is much of a Palestinian equivalent): just because your group of people has historically been persecuted doesn’t mean that you have a God-given right to control a city that has equal significance to multiple other major world religions. To Israel and the Jews specifically, news flash: there have been plenty of persecuted people groups throughout history, and while Hitler’s “final solution” was certainly among the most egregious genocides, that doesn’t give Jews de facto entitlement to Jerusalem. And not to go too far down the rabbit hole of who the Third Reich hated most, but while the Jews were the largest group persecuted by the Nazis, only about half of the people killed in concentration camps were Jewish, roughly six million. Of the eleven million people killed, the other five million was composed of political enemies, people with disabilities, homosexuals, gypsies, and others. Those groups aren’t clamoring for free countries, in fact, their stories are all too often forgotten. The point is, I don’t think anyone has a right to that land, whether based on some alleged ancestral claims, “divine right,” or as a consolation prize for various atrocities suffered by your people throughout history.

Also with regards to Zionism and the basic idea behind it, my general belief is that adhering strongly to labels and organizing your life around one aspect of your identity is just going to make it easier for people to stereotype and persecute you in the future, and that it also leads to groupthink and exclusivity issues. There’s a difference between people making conscious decisions to preserve their culture and choosing to separate themselves from everyone else, whether geographically or metaphorically. Whether you’re saying “all the jews should live in the same place,” “all the gays should wear rainbow colors (or pink triangles),” or “all the black people should ride in the same train car ‘separately but equally,’” separating yourself from the rest of the world is a recipe for disaster, whether it’s enforced by some institution or voluntary on the part of those being labeled. Forcing people into boxes based on their identities just doesn’t work out well.

Speaking of forcing people into boxes, let’s talk more specifically about what’s going on in Palestine and Israel right now. I won’t pretend to be an expert on the sufferings of the Palestinian people, but I think it’s safe to say that they don’t exactly enjoy the benefits of a functioning government that treats them as first class citizens. My understanding is that Hamas, which is undoubtedly a hostile terrorist organization, saw an opportunity in the mid-late 2000s to take control of the Gaza Strip and seized it. Since then, the Palestinian people have been living in a small, densely populated area that they aren’t allowed to leave (literally stuffed into a box), which is severely and intentionally underfunded and neglected by Israel, thanks to the racist, nationalist policies of Benjamin Netanyahoo, who doesn’t want them to have their own country nor be a part of his country.

Some point out that it’s not fair to blame all of Israel for the policies of one corrupt leader, but I would posit that it is certainly fair to note that a majority of the Israeli electorate continue to support Netanyahoo, and therefore must take some responsibility for the actions he takes.

We can’t ignore the large role of Hamas, though. It’s obviously not okay for them to be provoking Israel, even if they know most of their attempts will fail, because the attempts that don’t fail are going to result in rockets falling on civilians who may not have been responsible for Natenyahoo’s rise to power, or upon children who had no say at all. And Hamas also doesn’t have very much to lose: they don’t give a shit about the Palestinians who will die as a result of the Israeli response to their attacks. They’re well insulated by civilians who have nothing to do with Hamas, and they do use them as human shields. Unfortunately for Israel and Netanyahoo, human shields work, and you look like an asshole when you decide to murder a bunch of children because there might be one or two baddies hiding in a basement under their school. When you’re a real country, you have to do better than that. Israel is choosing not to.

So while both sides seem eager to escalate and keep firing shots at one another, it’s worth pointing out that Hamas is pouring red gas cans full of fuel on the fire while Israel is spraying it from a tanker truck. We also can’t forget that the Palestinian citizens don’t even have water balloons filled with gas, they’re almost entirely devoid of agency. You could argue that the Israeli people also don’t get any gasoline-filled water balloons, but they did get to choose who would drive their tanker truck, and they picked a nationalist, racist asshole, so, you know, cool. Still, it’s very difficult to overstate the power imbalance between a nation whose defense budget has been propped up by the American taxpayers for decades (we’re currently giving Israel three billion dollars PER YEAR) and a rag tag terrorist group in a tiny patch of land inhabited by a bunch of civilians who didn’t have a say about who’s in charge. Imagine a fight between Conor McGregor and Madison Cawthorne: Cawthorne is gonna talk mad shit but you know he’s getting his ass whooped easily. It’s not a fair fight. McGregor = Israel, Cawthorne = Palestine. Ha.

So, Israel is starting to look a lot like a fucking bully. Sure, the terrorists who happen to be in Palestine shot a shit ton of bush league missiles at you. How dare they. BUT, the Iron Dome missile defense system (which was paid for mostly by the American taxpayers) does a pretty damn good job of swatting all those missiles away like annoying flies. Sure, every now and again one will get through. That’s about the extent of what you’re allowed to respond to in retaliatory “defense of yourself” and still have your actions be considered proportional by the worldwide community. And if your response isn’t seen as proportional, then the conversation moves to whether you’re committing war crimes, and I don’t think that’s a conversation that a perpetual victim-state wants to be having. But it seems like maybe they do want to have it, because not only are they aggressively trying to take out “Hamas operatives,” they’re using that as an excuse to indiscriminately mow down Palestinian children, apartments, and buildings that house reporters from the Associated Press and Middle Eastern news networks. Donald Trump talked about the press being an enemy of the people, and Netanyahoo clearly drank that Kool-Aid, seeing as he’s now shooting fucking missiles at reporters. Oh yeah, in the name of “both sides,” it’s worth pointing out that the United States did not buy Palestine an Iron Dome.

I started with a pretty American approach to this, so I’ll conclude with my more un-American thoughts:

1. Even if we don’t have soldiers on the ground (and under no circumstances should we), we contribute to this problem by giving Israel a shit ton of money every year for defense and that needs to be cut off immediately. The American taxpayers don’t want to pay for our own unending wars, much less someone else’s.

2. History has shown us over and over again that the more time America spends in the sandbox, the worse things get for everyone involved. It’s not America’s job to police the globe, and it would take a massive amount of hubris (lookin’ at you, Kushner) on our part to think we’re going to solve this problem. This is not our business, not our problem, not our prerogative, not our fight. Again, we need to get the hell out of the Middle East and stay out.

3. Israel is just about as much of a terrorist organization these days as Hamas, what with the whole blowing-up-journalists-and-children thing. Plus apartheid, that’s not ideal. I see no real reason for our alliance with Israel at this point. If they want to act like savages, we don’t need to be friends.

4. Zionism is stupid, regressive, and unsustainable.

5. Either the U.N. can step in with a zero-state solution, or there will be no real solution at all and we can just get used to hearing Israel/Palestine drama for the rest of our lives.

Lauren Feiner and Salvador Rodriguez, reporting for CNBC:

Facebook’s independent oversight board ruled Wednesday to uphold the company’s January decision to suspend the Facebook and Instagram accounts of former President Donald Trump.

Facebook seemingly doing something good? Nah, you know there’s a “but” coming:

But, the board said, the indefinite time frame of the suspension “was not appropriate.” The board effectively punted the decision on the length of the suspension back to Facebook, saying it “insists” the company “review this matter to determine and justify a proportionate response that is consistent with the rules that are applied to other users of its platform.”

This is good news for now, but don’t count on the decision from this “independent oversight board”* to last for very long. I’d bet a thousand dollars that Zuckerberg comes up with some bullshit excuse to allow him back on the platform before 2023, and probably by the end of this year. The only thing that drives Zuck is profit, engagement drives profit, and Donald Trump drives engagement.

*Calling this entity an ”independent oversight board” is laughable. It’s basically a new arm of Facebook, paid by Facebook, to issue faux ethical positions on decisions made by Facebook proper.

#deletefacebook

Stephen Collinson, reporting for CNN:

Former President Donald Trump's campaign of lies about a stolen election just delivered a huge victory with a new Georgia law that could suppress the votes of many of the citizens who helped eject him from the White House.

Republican state lawmakers rushed through a broad law Thursday making it harder to vote that disproportionately targets Democratic and Black voters in a battleground vital to the 2020 election and future presidential and congressional contests.

[…]

The new law in Georgia requires more stringent voter verification requirements for absentee ballots, allows state officials to take over election boards and limits ballot drop boxes that make it easier for people to vote. The law allows any Georgian to make unlimited challenges to voter registrations, and, incredibly, makes it a misdemeanor crime for anyone to offer food and water to voters stuck in long lines to cast ballots.

Black voters hampered by the restrictions of voting in urban areas have often found themselves lining up for hours to vote in inclement weather. The clear targeting of African American voters in Georgia and elsewhere recalls some of the ugliest racial episodes of America's past, and is fueling claims of open Republican racism.

The part of this bill that makes it illegal to give water to voters waiting in lines has easily gotten the most attention, but some pundits have pointed out the scariest parts are the provisions that allow the Georgia state legislature to oversee elections and toss out ballots.

In any case, this should be a warning to southern voters in states that are inching left: don’t split the ticket with your state legislature picks. Even if you vote blue at the national level because you think it’s important to get rid of someone like Trump, that’s not enough. If you don’t get rid of bad faith Republican politicians down the ballot, they’ll come for you with a vengeance. Jim Crow voter suppression is alive and well, and the link between Republicans slowly losing power and Republicans passing voter suppression laws is 100% linear.

I do take issue with Collinson for framing this story as a win for Trump, whom I think should be getting the amount of national media coverage he deserves: none. Let’s not exaggerate his influence here. Yes, there’s a connection between the “big lie” narrative and this bill, but it’s not nearly as direct as the connection to Democrats and their policies simply being more popular among Georgian voters. Republican lawmakers in Georgia don’t really believe the election was stolen, it’s just a convenient cover to pass these laws, but Republicans can create a permission structure for themselves to do horrendous things out of thin air, and I feel certain this would’ve happened without Trump. Let’s not give him undue credit.

This piece began well before the Biden Administration did, well before the election, even. I thought about this a lot, considered different directions I could go with this article to make my point, but I think it’s actually better off as a short commentary on reputations.

Donald Trump and Henry Ford are two of the most well known businessmen of the past 100 years, both seen as moguls in their fields.

The story with Ford is that while he himself was not an expert at many of the various processes vital to the growth of his company, his management skills and business savvy helped him create one of Americas most famous automobile companies. It’s said that he had a button on his desk that he could press to summon a subject matter expert on any number of topics, bridging the gap between his lack of specific expertise and the needs of his company.

Let’s quickly contrast this with Donald Trump. Trump also had a button on his desk as president, but his button summoned diet cokes, not experts. In fact, Trump’s narcissism often got in the way of him actually taking advantage of the experts he had access to. Remember when he drew his own hurricane map? Or when he said we should drink bleach?

Trump’s arrogance and ignorance led him to be an antithesis to Ford. To suggest anything else is to romanticize Trump beyond recognition.

Joe Biden’s top legislative priority was signed into law last week, and working class Americans are already enjoying the benefits of a loosened financial noose, but they didn’t get as much relief as they could've.

Thanks to peculiarly moderate Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia who wanted to appear bipartisan by kowtowing to bad faith Republicans’ cynical demands of reducing the bottom line for the COVID relief package from $1.9T to a smaller figure — their proposal was just $600B, despite the fact that they had no qualms passing Trump’s $2.2T CARES act and a $1.9T tax cut for the wealthy in 2019 — there were several last minute changes to the bill. These changes resulted in fewer people receiving stimulus checks (roughly 17 million people making between $80k-$100k were excluded, a move which saved a paltry total of $12B from the bottom line number) and a 25% decrease in the amount of supplemental unemployment insurance that would be received by those filing unemployment (keep in mind that the current unemployment rate is still roughly double what it was before the pandemic, and also that the unemployment rate disproportionately reflects a healthier workforce than we actually have, since it calculates individuals who work multiple low wage jobs as multiple employed individuals).

It’s worth noting that despite Democrats having made these legislative concessions, not a single Republican in either chamber of Congress voted for the bill. Presumably, they were too preoccupied bitching about Dr. Seuss. Though, in the time since it passed, several Republican congressmen have actually tried to take credit for elements of the bill, despite having voted ‘no.’ The hypocrisy knows no bounds.

Several of the pieces of legislation they chose to limit had broad, bipartisan support among the American electorate. At the time it passed, the bill as a whole was polling very well, with 69% of likely voters supporting it compared to 24% opposing it. When polled on specific elements of the bill, nearly every element had more support than the bill as a whole. According to Data for Progress:

Likely voters continue to overwhelmingly back the bill’s substance, including grants to small businesses (83 percent), additional stimulus checks to most Americans (78 percent), funding to help schools reopen (75 percent), and extensions to unemployment benefits (71 percent).

This should be a lesson to Democrats for the next two years, and it highlights why we need filibuster reform/abolition. They need to use the political power they earned in the 2020 elections with brute force, focusing next on the For The People Act, which aims to protect voting rights from the barrage of hundreds of Republican voter suppression bills snaking through state legislatures across the country by ending partisan gerrymandering and changing campaign finance laws to reduce the influence of money in politics.

Robert Schlesinger, writing for NBC News:

Dr. Seuss Enterprises — the very profitable company which controls the estate of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel, the man behind the pen name — has decided of its own free will to stop publishing a half-dozen of his books because, the company told The Associated Press, they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong,” deploying stereotypes about Black and Asian people in a manner that Seuss’s own estate thinks is offensive and inappropriate.

The Fox outrage machine revved itself to high dudgeon over how this private company has decided to conduct its business, bemoaning the Seussian scalp-taking; the GOP’s culture-war ambulance chasers quickly followed suit. “First, they outlaw Dr. Seuss” — mind you, Theodore Geisel died in 1991 and its his own estate taking this action — “and now they want to tell us what to say,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said in a mendacious non sequitur while debating proposed election law reforms.

[…]

Let’s get some perspective here: Seuss Enterprises made $33 million last year, more than 650 million of his books have been sold around the world and they’re available in more than 100 countries. There is no significant move — and certainly not from Seuss Enterprises — to ban, burn or otherwise cancel Dr. Seuss. A private company has made a considered business decision by pulling a small fraction of the Seuss catalog (none among its top sellers).

Exactly why is this any of the business of the federal government? Surely Republicans, who supposedly believe the government should interfere in private business decisions as little as possible, don’t think the market should cease to work its infallible will; surely if Seuss Enterprises is erring and catering to a political correctness that nobody wants, market forces will correct it.

Schlesinger hammers his broader point home with a sharp analogy to Republicans’ persistent hard-on for the “free market” and voting rights:

Republicans have long declared their supposedly unwavering obeisance to the great invisible hand of the market; as former House GOP Leader Dick Armey liked to say, “Markets are smart; government is dumb.”

And yet several recent moments have made that commitment seem situational. Whether discussing Dr. Seuss, Mr. Potato Head, voting rights or Twitter, Republicans seem ill at ease with — or just ignorant of — the ways the mighty market actually functions.

[…]

Republicans have lost the presidential popular vote in seven of the last eight elections — or to put it another way, they have been losing political market share. But instead of adjusting their product (their candidates and policies) or how they sell it (their messaging), the GOP increasingly relies on government interference to maintain power, including the distortionary nature of the Electoral College and the U.S. Senate (which is evenly split despite the fact that Democrats represent 41 million more constituents), radical gerrymandering and restrictive voting laws

The whole Seuss issue was just manufactured outrage that actually led ignorant Republican consumers to purchase more Seuss books, directly benefiting the enterprise that made the decision to stop publishing six of his books in the first place.

The Republican Party doesn’t know who they are anymore; they didn’t even put together a party platform last year. Their only agenda is to obstruct real governance and “own the libs” whenever possible, hoping that concocted fury will be enough to hold their voting bloc together because they can no longer sell most of their (racist, homophobic, intolerant, bigoted) “principles” to a majority of the American electorate.

Jorge L. Ortiz, reporting for USA Today:

Even as the USA becomes the first country to reach half-a-million COVID deaths – the actual figure was 500,071 as of Monday at 4:40 p.m. EST – there are signs the pandemic may be abating, from the decreasing number of cases, hospitalizations and fatalities to the improved vaccine rollout and production. 

Amid this hopeful scenario, the emergence of coronavirus variants scrambles the picture of what the near future may look like.

[…]

Closing in on the one-year anniversary of the coronavirus outbreak being declared a pandemic – March 11, 2020 – it’s still not clear when the United States, which has reported more than twice as many cases and deaths as any other country, will have a hold on the health crisis.

It’s hard to know who to blame at this point. China? Trump? Ignorant people who refuse to wear masks? State governments who’ve managed to fuck up the response at every step of the way? Take your pick, really. Five hundred thousand deaths leaves plenty of blame to go around.

Get rid of it. Pretty simple.

Don’t get me wrong, there are good points to be made on both sides of this debate, but I think the right answer is to either get rid of the filibuster entirely, or to at least reform it to the point where it can no longer be used to completely kill popular legislation.

As many have pointed out, the filibuster has not always been a tool in the Senate’s tool belt. It has a long and complex history, but it gained its popularity during the Jim Crow era when southern Senators used it repeatedly to halt legislation that would have benefited black people at the time, like the federal criminalization of lynching or the outlawing of requirements that people pay to be able to vote.

Getting rid of the filibuster entirely is a scary concept, because then a simple majority in the Senate would be able to pass whatever legislation they wanted. However, I think it would also force more cooperation from the minority party, who would have to be less hostile towards their across-the-aisle colleagues in order to have a say in amending the passing legislation to benefit their constituents. You would also see more unique coalitions of senators who could come together to pass legislation that isn’t perfectly aligned with one party’s platform or the other, instead bringing together more specifically focused factions of senators whose aims would be to help their constituents rather than to toe the party line. It would free up a lot of the gridlock in Washington, and even if you don’t agree with everything the party in power wants to do, at least progress could be made, unlike the past several decades of stagnation. If a law were passed that proved to be unpopular or to have negative consequences, then a faction of senators opposing the legislation would be able to remove it from the books the next time they take power (assuming the legislation in question is actually unpopular with voters, and not just the special interest groups who fund the senators’ campaigns). Everyone says they hate Congress because they never get anything done, and the filibuster is to blame for that.

Be sure to check out the whole list, but here are a few highlights from AZQuotes.com’s list of Rush Limbaugh’s top 25 quotes:

Slavery built the South. I'm not saying we should bring it back; I'm just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.

Ideal women: 36-24-36, five foot seven, flat spot on top of the head, deaf mute. The flat spot on the top of the head is for your drink.

When a gay person turns his back on you, it is anything but an insult; it's an invitation.

There is no conclusive proof that nicotine's addictive... And the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease.

Even when I think I'm wrong I'm right. I am all-knowing.

It wasn’t cancer that killed Rush Limbaugh, it was karma.

While it’s a bit uncouth to relish someone’s death, Rush Limbaugh’s absence from this world is inarguably a net good. Mourning his death would be a bit like mourning for Joseph Goebbels. Speaking of whom, I’m sure those two peas-in-a-pod propagandists will have a splendid time falling in love with each other over brunches in hell.

Don’t miss: Another tally mark in the “Fuck Florida” column, as Governor Ron DeSantis issues a brazenly partisan order to lower flags to half staff for this asshole. Disgusting. Next time Florida threatens to secede, I say we let them.

Ryan Mac and Rosie Gray, reporting for Buzzfeed News:

The Trump Organization negotiated on behalf of then-president Donald Trump to make Parler his primary social network, but it had a condition: an ownership stake in return for joining, according to documents and four people familiar with the conversations. The deal was never finalized, but legal experts said the discussions alone, which occurred while Trump was still in office, raise legal concerns with regards to anti-bribery laws.

Talks between members of Trump’s campaign and Parler about Trump’s potential involvement began last summer, and were revisited in November by the Trump Organization after Trump lost the 2020 election to the Democratic nominee and current president, Joe Biden. Documents seen by BuzzFeed News show that Parler offered the Trump Organization a 40% stake in the company. It is unclear as to what extent the former president was involved with the discussions.

Nothing says “capitalism” like shady white collar crime wherein you bribe a corrupt demagogue president with partial ownership of your company in exchange for his exclusive endorsement and use of your product.

Parler was a dangerous joke. John Matze was a dangerous joke. Donald Trump was a dangerous joke. Rebekah Mercer is still dangerous and she isn’t a joke: it’s people like her who use their money to pull the strings, and it’s people like her that we need to be paying attention to.

Adi Robertson, reporting for The Verge:

Stock trading app Robinhood is facing dozens of lawsuits after the company restricted several stocks popular on the r/WallStreetBets subreddit. At least 30 parties across 10 states have sued the company in federal court, many seeking class action status. They allege that Robinhood users lost millions of dollars because they were unable to buy or sell stock during the freeze, and that the company chose to “manipulate the market” to help other financial institutions.

[…]

Disgruntled users aren’t the only threat for Robinhood, however. The company’s decision drew bipartisan condemnation from lawmakers, with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and others calling to investigate the company’s decision.

Fuck Robinhood. What they did, regardless of the reason — let’s be clear, their own financial unpreparedness is not an excuse — was market manipulation and they should be held criminally liable. Even if their woe-is-me story about not having enough money to cover the trades makes sense, it’s much easier to believe that they did what they did because it directly benefited the hedge funds who were losing money even though it came at the expense of their users, for whom Robinhood claimed they were “democratizing the stock market.”

Many people didn’t realize this, but Robinhood is actually financed by those hedge funds. Their entire shady business model is based on selling information to hedge funds about what trades their users are making, so that the hedge funds can make split second trades before Robinhood actually processes their user’s trades. If you use Robinhood, you might as well delete your account because they’re more than willing to sell you out. I’ve already deleted my personal account.

Clearly, the free market is only free for the wealthy. When the little guy loses money on investments, they say “oh well, if you play the game you run the risk of losing,” but when it looks like big banks on Wall Street might lose, they just turn the game off.

Eat the rich.

The point of the stimulus checks is to help people who are in tough spots, and to keep people spending money so that the economy doesn’t stall and enter a downward spiral of layoffs → less spending → more layoffs → even less spending.

Many people are surprised to realize that our congressional leaders cut one specific group out of the stimulus bill with surgical precision. Anyone who was claimed as a dependent by their parents does not get a stimulus check of their own, and parents don’t get the extra stimulus for any children who are over the age of 16. This leaves a large group of people — primarily consisting of young adults (mainly college aged students) and those with disabilities who are unable to care for themselves — who get no help and whose parents receive no help for them.

The determination for who is viewed as a dependent and is therefor ineligible for a stimulus payment was made by the IRS based on the parent’s most recent tax filings, which was either for 2019’s taxes if they were prompt in filing, or 2018’s taxes if they hadn’t filed for 2019 by the time the stimulus checks were cut, which many hadn't. This means that when the stimulus checks went out this spring, they were using information about who to send them to that was outdated by anywhere from 3 months to nearly two years. This is a devastatingly porous structure. An individual could’ve flown the coop in the fall of 2018 and their parents could've claimed them as a dependent (since they lived at home for the first half of 2018). This means that by the time the checks were going out, this person could’ve been living independently and supporting themselves for nearly two years, and they would not receive the stimulus check, despite likely having mountains of student debt on top of the usual expenses of living by oneself. Furthermore, having only been out of school for a year or two, they would likely be one of the first employees to be let go when their employers need to lay off a few folks on account of the pandemic. So again, one of the most financially vulnerable groups of people, recent college students and recent graduates, were cut out of a stimulus program that would’ve benefitted them the most, and also would’ve benefitted the economy the most because they would’ve been the least likely to just throw the extra money into a savings account.

Then, with the second round of stimulus checks, they did the same thing again. It’s brutally unfair, and there’s absolutely no justification or explanation for it. It’s criminal, and young people should remember this when politicians ask for their votes.

Fortunately, it looks like President Biden’s proposed plan will include a full stimulus amount for ALL individuals claimed as dependents. Alicia Adamczyk, reporting for CNBC:

Unlike the last two relief measures, Biden’s plan includes payments for non-child dependents, including many college students and those with disabilities. It would also expand eligibility for those payments to mixed-status families in which one parent is an immigrant.

Nothing is set in stone yet and no bills have passed, but at least someone in the federal government has finally acknowledged this gaping hole in the previous stimulus packages.

Given CopyrightBro’s founder’s history of employment with Apple, Inc., we are especially well equipped to serve and inform Apple product owners of the best practices to get the most out of their devices while protecting their privacy. This PSA, like many of our PSAs, is intended for people who use Apple products, and the advice contained herein is not applicable to Android devices or non-Apple PCs. If you have an iPhone or iPad, continue on:

That’s a bold, scary headline, we get it. Here’s what you need to know: there is an intentional design flaw present in Apple’s iCloud Backup system that can allow the government to spy on you and that can provide them with complete access to the full contents of your device. But it is fixable, and we’ll tell you how.

The first question, naturally, is “why is it an intentional flaw?” This is a good question, and the answer is that Apple doesn’t see it as a flaw. iCloud Backups exist to help everyday consumers who either aren’t concerned about privacy or aren’t very tech savvy by giving them a backup plan in case something happens to their device, so that they can just log into iCloud from a new device and recover all their data without missing a beat. It’s intended to be very easy for customers: they happen automatically, they’re turned on by default, and there’s really nothing you need to do, and if you forget your password, Apple can still help you access your data because they keep a spare key. However, this ease of use comes at a price: privacy. Because Apple does keep that key to help you recover your data if you lose your password, the data can never be totally safe. The keys Apple keeps are subject to government subpoenas, meaning the government could at any time force Apple to turn over your iCloud backups, which would provide them with a snapshot of everything on your device at the moment the backup was created.

While Apple wants to be able to help their customers in case they forget their passwords and sees the spare key as a feature, CopyrightBro sees it as a design flaw. We’ve been aware of this flaw for months now, but the reality was that it wasn’t really something that everyday people needed to worry about, so we didn’t warn our readers. However, following the terrorist attack at the U.S. Capitol, the facts on the ground have changed. In recent days, there have been a lot of conversations about domestic terrorism and how the government may adapt to face the challenge that white supremacists, Qanon, and other extremist groups pose to our nation, with a lot of speculation that authorities may seek to expand their power to surveil U.S. citizens to collect intelligence that could aid in the prevention of these types of attacks.

CopyrightBro stands firmly against any and all violent extremist groups, but we don’t believe the United States government needs any more tools to allow them to spy on law abiding U.S. citizens; with just a little bit of reform, we can remove some of the institutional racism that plagues our government agencies, allowing them to be much more effective at stopping far right extremism (or any other domestic terrorism threats) without invading everyone else's privacy.

In the past few months, government officials have argued that we should get rid of end-to-end encryption altogether, but that is simply not feasible and it would put countless vital government and civilian systems in jeopardy of being exploited. Our society depends on some information being able to stay truly private, and we should not budge when it comes to protecting our right to digital privacy.

Given those pushes and the renewed interest among the intelligence community to increase surveillance of American citizens to prevent domestic terrorism, CopyrightBro feels that now is the proper time to warn our readers about this design flaw in the iCloud Backup system. Until Apple implements an option for customers to protect their backups with end-to-end encryption, knowing the risks of holding the only key to their data, iCloud Backups are simply too vulnerable to government overreach to be trusted. However, there are still iCloud tools you can use to protect the vast majority of your data in a manner that (while still not 100% secure in some cases) is much less susceptible to government surveillance.

This is what CopyrightBro recommends:

1. Go to Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud

2. Scroll down and tap “iCloud Backup,” then switch the toggle OFF.

3. Go back to the previous screen, and under the section called “Apps Using iCloud,” make sure all of the toggles here are switched ON, including “Messages.” These toggles control which of your data use iCloud to sync between devices, and are therefore preserved in iCloud. If you leave any of these switches off and you don’t have a backup, the data in that app won’t be saved if something were to happen to your device.

4. Tap “Manage Storage" near the top of the page, and then scan the list for any leftover backups. If you find one, tap on it, and then tap delete. You’ll likely have a couple, do this for each of them.

It’s unfortunate, but until such time as Apple introduces a truly private iCloud backup option, disabling it and instead relying on the iCloud syncing toggles is the best balance between privacy and protecting your data.

From a White House press release:

The National Garden will draw together and fix in the soil of a single place what Abraham Lincoln called “[t]he mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield, and patriot grave, to every living heart.” In the peace and harmony of this vast outdoor park, visitors will come and learn the amazing stories of some of the greatest Americans who have ever lived. The National Garden will feature a roll call of heroes who deserve honor, recognition, and lasting tribute because of the battles they won, the ideas they championed, the diseases they cured, the lives they saved, the heights they achieved, and the hope they passed down to all of us — that united as one American people trusting in God, there is no challenge that cannot be overcome and no dream that is beyond our reach.

I actually like this idea a lot. It sucks that it was born out of racism, a white man’s desperate attempts to coddle his base full of white people who are uncomfortable with their shrinking privilege in a society that is waking up to the injustices that were for so long perpetuated by a white ruling class, but if we include a truly diverse cast of historical figures, from various backgrounds and various areas of achievement, this statue garden could be one of the best things to come out of a nightmare of a presidency. We all have both light and dark inside us; if done properly, this garden could be a place for nuanced conversations about the often-flawed human beings that made America what it is today.

Donald Trump’s presidency has been one of many firsts (most of them very negative), but the first that will live on in textbooks forever was penned in the annals of history today, as Donald J. Trump became the first president to ever be impeached twice.

This impeachment had bipartisan consensus, with the final vote being 232 in favor and 197 opposed.

In the wake of this historic impeachment, I want to address three audiences.

First, to the people who still support Donald Trump:

This impeachment was carried out swiftly by a bipartisan majority, in fact, it was the most bipartisan impeachment vote in the history of the United States. If you are still standing with Donald Trump, you are a racist, xenophobic, homophobic, ignorant bigot. At this point, you can longer support Donald Trump despite the horrible things he’s done; no, at this point, you are with him precisely because of those horrible things. Whether you realize it or not, people still enamored by Trump never truly cared about his “policies” or his alleged business acumen. Those who still support Donald Trump do so because he offered a perpetuation of a status quo that afforded them great comfort and privilege as a result of their race and their religious beliefs.

You are not a patriot if you care more about an orange conman who easily duped you into believing his lies than you care about the sanctity of democracy in the United States. You are a fool, and you have been fooled.

Secondly, to congressional Republicans:

Over the past week, many Republican leaders have made bad faith arguments and performed gold-medal-worthy mental-gymnastics routines to explain to themselves and their constituents as to why Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached or held accountable for inciting the attack on the Capitol.

One of those arguments was that Donald Trump shouldn’t be impeached a second time because it would be too divisive at a time when the nation needs healing and unity. This is the biggest pile of dog shit I’ve ever heard. You can’t have unity without first getting closure for the transgressions that were committed. You can’t have healing before the wound has been stitched back together.

You’ve also argued that Trump shouldn’t be impeached because doing so could further enrage his base, prompting them to organize additional attacks. The response to this point is simple: the United States does not negotiate with terrorists.

A common theme of all the arguments is that the attack was a spontaneous event that occurred independently of Donald Trump and his lackey’s incitement. It’s hard to believe that this wasn’t planned: since when do innocent citizens find themselves in violent riots, just happening to have zip tie hand cuffs in their backpacks? Give me a break. And apparently, you don’t consider phrases like “fight like hell,” “let’s have trial by combat” to be incitements of violence. If that’s the case, then you’re seriously calling into question your comprehension of the English language.

Finally, to everyone else:

Trumpism has been its own plague, which took in many new followers and steeped them in hatred and emboldened them to spread that hatred far and wide, from cowardly internet intolerance to physical violence at the U.S. Capitol. Without a doubt, Trumpism has been an immeasurably destructive force in American society, and going forward, we must chastise and shame anyone who subscribes to and promotes Donald Trump’s ideology. Trumpism is a social cancer, and we must treat it as such. Chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery are aggressive, damaging treatments to get rid of cancer that come with negative impacts for healthy tissue and organs, but they are effective. We will have to employ similarly aggressive tactics to rid our society of Trumpism, and those efforts may well have negative consequences for those of us trying to do good in society. We will have to have difficult conversations with our neighbors, and we may have to burn some bridges.

However, Donald Trump was also a symptom of the sweeping problems our country has never addressed. The racism and other intolerances that lie at the root of Trumpism are problems that have been with our country since it was in the womb, Donald Trump merely came along and rebranded them for his own personal gain. We have to have real conversations about topics like race and other intolerances. For a tolerant society to survive, the only thing they cannot tolerate is intolerance. Trumpism is a doctrine that is built on intolerance, and we must now undergo the painful process of purging Trumpism from our nation. We have to remove the cancer, the fascists. Then we can work toward unity and healing.

#EXCLUSIVE: @GayleKing spoke with @Apple CEO Tim Cook about the assault on the Capitol and what he thinks needs to happen next.

See more of @tim_cook's interview Wednesday on @CBSThisMorning when he'll announce a major new initiative, that's not a new product. pic.twitter.com/QPYyoDVFv7

— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 12, 2021

I can’t quite imagine what this could be. There are a few things I think it could be, but none seem any more likely than the next.

King made it a point to clarify that Apple’s announcement is not necessarily related to Cook’s comments about holding Donald Trump accountable, and that this announcement/interview was already scheduled. It wouldn’t be like Apple to just whip something up in the days following the attack on the Capitol; this is something they’ve been working on for a while. That said, it did seem relevant enough that they made room in the interview for questions about what should happen to Trump and others who incited the insurrection, so that leads me to think this is something related to politics. Some people think it will be COVID related, but that just doesn’t seem likely to me. Apple has already done the contact tracing thing, and it was rather poorly received. I can’t think of much else they could do in that realm, especially things that would be more well-implemented.

If I’m correct that it will be more related to politics than COVID, there are a number of projects I would like for Apple to be working on that seem within their wheelhouse and could solve some of the problems with our politics. A search engine or social media network that actually values privacy and doesn’t lead people to misinformation would be great, but those both seem too close to “products”, even though they aren’t products in the physical-device sense.

If I had to guess what we’re going to see, I would say they’ll announce something along the lines of a software framework or program that is designed to spur citizens to take more initiative in shaping our politics. Maybe some sort of donation program, or a way to contact legislators and share feedback. Highly unlikely given the challenges of working with 50 different state governments, but what if they’d worked out a secure, verifiable platform for digital voting; that would be revolutionary and absolutely more exciting than any product they could announce.

Time will tell, but I’m very excited to hear what they’ve got to say.

UPDATED: 01/12/21, 23:30

Tony Romm and Rachel Lerman, reporting for The Washington Post:

Amazon suspended the pro-Trump social network Parler from its Web-hosting service this weekend, a move that threatens to darken the site indefinitely after its users glorified the recent riot at the U.S. Capitol.

Describing Parler merely as a “pro-Trump social network” is a bit rosy, let’s not get it twisted. From racism, sexism, homophobia, antisemitism, and white supremacy, to outright calls for and plans to commit physical violence and anti-democratic terrorism/insurrection like what we saw at the U.S. Capitol, hate speech and vitriol are omnipresent and essential elements of the Parler experience. It is/was a home and a breeding ground for Nazis and Proud Boys.

The e-commerce and Web-hosting giant said Parler had violated its terms of service given its inadequate content-moderation practices, adding in a letter that it would implement its punishment just before midnight Pacific time Monday.

The move by Amazon Web Services, or AWS, marks the latest and most crippling blow for the pro-Trump social network, which has emerged as a haven for conservative users who have fled more mainstream Silicon Valley sites that crack down on harmful, viral falsehoods online. Earlier this week, Apple and Google removed Parler’s app from their stores for smartphone downloads, similarly citing concerns that posts on Parler could contribute to violence.

Parler’s whole schtick was that they were going to be an unmoderated online space for free speech, but they have never been the beacon of free speech they claimed to be. The free speech cover was a thin veneer for an operation intended to provide a Wild West environment for Trump’s base to drive one another closer and closer to the edge of complete delusion and radicalization.

Private companies like Amazon, Apple, and Google have absolutely no constitutional obligation to provide their services to companies who violate their rules or whose values they disagree with. Facebook and Twitter have no obligation to allow users who incite violence and inspire coups to enjoy their platforms. Publishers have no obligation to publish books by seditious senators. It is not censorship and it is not a violation of Parler’s or anyone else’s first amendment rights, it’s the free market at work. Parler, immediately upon its launch, became an infinite cesspool of hatred. Since hate speech is not protected by the first amendment, it’s important to understand that not only can private companies refuse to do business with them, but even if it were Congress that had banned Parler, it still wouldn’t be an infringement of anyone’s first amendment rights. However, that’s exactly what Republicans have tried to assert.

Over the past few days, the far right has gotten a small taste of the social justice they deserve for the first time as the big tech companies have finally stood up to them, one by one. Faced with this incomprehensible reality where their actions have actual consequences, far right mouthpieces from Capitol Hill to trailer parks have been left spluttering, the only semi-coherent talking point they’ve been able to stitch together is that the radical left and big tech have teamed up to cancel and deplatform conservatives. Your dime-a-dozen Trumpers are embarrassing themselves by advertising their primitive understandings of “freedom of speech,” while their Republican elected officials CONTNUE to mislead those very same idiots by perpetuating misinformation about what type of speech the first amendment actually protects and from whom. Cynical assholes Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley have learned no lessons. They deserve to be expelled from the Senate and they deserve to be shamed publicly, never to be taken seriously again.

Bringing things full circle, Parler was funded by the Mercer family, who were directly involved in the Cambridge Analytica scandal that unethically collected mountains of personal data from American voters’ Facebook pages and used it to build profiles of them, which were then used to send them highly targeted ads designed to influence how they voted. Most people familiar with the Cambridge Analytica scandal know that the Trump campaign paid them to help target and turn out persuadable voters in key precincts of swing states, but most people don’t know that before Cambridge Analytica was hired by the Trump campaign (which was only after Trump won the nomination) they had previously been helping none other than Ted Cruz who, with their help and despite his perpetual “I just shit the bed” face, went from the bottom of the list of serious contenders to the last man standing before Trump ultimately clenched the nomination.

Hopefully Parler won’t find another company willing to host their site for any amount of money, but if Republicans are good at anything, it’s finding others whose morality is trumped by their greed.

I was going to title this article “Rest-in-Peace, Parler,” but after 0.5 seconds of consideration, it occurred to me that that would be far too kind a sentiment for the greedy, ill-intentioned assholes at Parler.

Should’ve happened a long time ago, but silencing this manipulative, selfish, petty monster is an important step in holding our democracy together for the next two weeks. I wonder if Elon Musk had anything to do with it, his tweet was clever and spot on.

For what it’s worth, Shopify also disabled Trump’s online store. Now Amazon needs to step up and remove all Trump merchandise from their marketplace.

The last time the Capitol Building was overrun was over two centuries ago, when it was taken by the British in 1814. As was the case in 1814, the individuals laying siege to the U.S. Capitol Building are insurrectionists, terrorists. Their actions are seditious and treasonous, but the difference is that these people hail from the United States, not Britain.

Nonetheless, they are still terrorist insurgents. They are ignorant, hateful, cowardly racists, homophobes, and xenophobes who are terrified at the thought of a United States that doesn’t go out of its way to favor and cater specifically to the whims of straight white Christians. They are not patriots.

The implications of this coup on the long term (or short term) health of our nation are unknowable. Personally, I am in awe, and I am furious.

Here’s what I think should’ve happened to them. They should have been gunned down by the United States Capitol Police. They should have been treated as enemy combatants, a threat to be neutralized as swiftly and efficiently as possible, and as enemy combatants, they should be afforded no constitutional rights. The fact that the Capitol Police were so laughably unprepared for this, juxtaposed with their ludicrous over-preparedness during the Black Lives Matter protests, is another blinding example of institutional racism.

What do I think should happen to the insurrectionists now? I think they should all be immediately arrested and held without bail to face trial for treason. The odds of that happening are slim, so here’s to hoping they spread plenty of vicious COVID cases amongst themselves and their families.

What did Donald Trump say to them? He affirmed “this election was stolen from us, it was a landslide”, and followed it up with “we love you, you’re very special.”

The question now, is what should happen to Donald Trump.

Twitter and Facebook should immediately ban him from their platforms lest he continue to pour gasoline on the flames, but that’s just the start. He is clearly unfit for office. He needs to be ousted from the presidency immediately. He deserves to be impeached and removed from office immediately. At this point, I wouldn’t put it past Mitch McConnell. If impeachment is not the solution lawmakers choose to take, then the 25th amendment should be invoked. Let Mike Pence take over for the next two weeks and facilitate the transition to Biden’s administration. I wouldn’t necessarily put it past Pence and the Cabinet at this point, either. Once he’s out of office, he needs to be put in jail to rot. I wouldn’t even take the death penalty off the table at this point: his actions have cost countless lives and had an immeasurable destructive impact on the foundations of our democracy.

As for his pathetic minions and mouthpieces who incited this rebellion, namely Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, and Rudy Giuliani, they should face jail time. All the representatives and senators who challenged the results of the election should be expelled from Congress. This parasitic weed has deeply intertwined itself in our national politics, and we must rip it out, root and stem, before it chokes the life out of the Great American Experiment.

---

If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other.

— Ulysses S. Grant

From The Guardian:

A key measure in the NDAA to which Trump objects is the move to rename US military bases currently named for leaders of the Confederacy, which seceded from the union over slavery, leading to the civil war of 1861 to 1865.

Pressure to rename the bases grew this year amid nationwide protests over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd […]

Trump also threatened a veto if the bill did not repeal part of a 1996 telecoms law which prevents online companies from being sued in relation to third-party content.

If Section 230 is not “completely terminated”, Trump tweeted earlier this month, “I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk.”

[…]

The Senate backed the bill 84-13, with the no votes coming from some of the most conservative Republicans and most liberal Democrats. The Democratic-led House backed the NDAA by 335-78, with some “no” votes also coming from liberal Democrats less likely to back a Trump veto.

The NDAA determines everything from how many ships are bought to soldiers’ pay to how to address geopolitical threats. The measure vetoed by Trump was a compromise, combining separate measures already passed in the House and Senate.

Lawmakers take pride in the bill having become law every year since 1961, saying it reflects their support for the military. Trump’s veto, if upheld, would delay a 3% pay raise for active-duty troops.

Donald Trump, bone spur survivor and champion of veterans everywhere.

I bet if you polled active duty service members, you’d find that they’d overwhelmingly want this bill (which gives them a raise) signed into law. Donald Trump is a selfish prick: this is all about catering to his base of racists, both the part about not wanting to rename military bases and the part about wanting social media companies to be held legally responsible when their users say mean things about them. Talk about snowflakes.