Well… you have to average in all the kickbacks to friends in US and Israel.

My bet is about $20B

demand an end to attacks on civilians

glances at the US definition of enemy combatant

glances at the US military’s understanding of Iranian politics

glances at the US public’s attitude towards “Muslim”

Yeah, I don’t think anyone in Iran qualifies as “civilian” under these terms.

I mean, I’d have still used a thumb drive at this point. I/O is way better.

without even realizing it

staring intensely at the CD-R drive

“Come on baby, you’ve got at least one more in you!”

Ukraine: “Help! Help! We’re being attacked!”

Middle East US Allies: “We’re busy brutally slaughtering Persian. Nothing we can do.”

Ukraine: “Oh, you’re attacking another country? We can help with that!”

Fucking bleak.

I’m checking enough that I stopped counting

Been a die hard for New Balance since college. It’s just a good shoe, dad-ness not withstanding

⬆️ This guy’s a dad

Bonus point

What a fucking heel turn.

urged

a group of leading charities, campaigners and trade unions said the chancellor could raise billions by taxing “excess profits” linked to the conflict.

New Labor will not give a single shit

Faiza Shaheen, the executive director of Tax Justice UK, who coordinated the letter and was deselected as Labour’s candidate in Chingford and Woodford Green before the last general election

They literally kicked this guy out of the fucking party

Gearing up for a slew of “Fuck the CCP” posts in this thread.

Iranian Diplomat: “No more killing us in the middle of negotiations.”

American Diplomat: “Seems reasonable.”

Israeli Diplomat: Storms out of the room, then calls in an airstrike

Three senior Israeli officials also said on Tuesday that, although Trump seemed determined to reach a deal, they viewed it as unlikely that Tehran would agree to U.S. demands, which they believed would include an end ​to Iran’s ballistic missile program

Israel: “We want you to give up your ability to hit us with conventional weapons. We will be reserving the ability to obliterate your entire country with a nuclear onslaught.”

Iran: “No”

Israel: “They’re being unreasonable. How are we supposed to negotiate with these fanatics?”

cat’s paw

“Cat’s paw”, an idiom, meaning “the dupe (or unwitting tool) of another”, derived from Jean de La Fontaine’s fable “The Monkey and the Cat”

How Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush Bonded Over Terrorism

Orban was sucking off every Silicon Valley tech executive who made a pit stop in Budapest. Nobody in NATO was going to listen.

Hell, Putin was happy to serve as a cat’s paw of the Bush Admin during the War on Terror, right up until the Russo-Georgian War in 2008.

So much of modern Eastern European geopolitics is the consequence of corrupt western businessmen and corrupt eastern politicians happily playing ball with one another, right up until an economic crisis kills the free flow of kickbacks and reach arounds.

IMO, Lina Khan was maybe the best appointment of the Biden presidency

Hard to disagree with. But then Harris did a bunch of backroom deals as part of her presidential campaign with an eye towards throwing Lina under the bus.

Unfortunately the click-to-cancel rule was struck down by the Court of Appeals

One of the more obnoxious consequences of our modern fascist turn is witnessing the role of the judiciary in theory versus practice. Identify and punish obvious predatory billers and scammers? Totally outside their scope or purview. Gut even the pretext of an administrative regulatory state? No problem.

You’re right that the legislature needs to do their job and formally outlaw these practices, rather than having this be brought up by the FTC and struck down on a procedural matter.

But we’re still back to the question of “Who does the enforcement?” Clearly not the CFPB. Clearly not the SEC or the FCC or the FTC. Clearly not the DOJ. Clearly not any state or local DAs office. Nobody is doing this work, even when they are fully empowered to it. Because if you try to challenge a powerful private entity, a bit of money changes hands and you’re fired.

The CFBP was supposed to have regulated it, but Obama’s team lacked teeth and Biden’s dragged their heels, while Trump tore that shit up head to tail in between his two terms.

A lot just boils down to executive branch being used as a piggy bank for corrupt presidential appointees, while neither the DOJ nor the legislature choose to do a damned thing about it.

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