Cedric's Big Mix: 2024-05-12

Monday, May 13, 2024

A disgrace to his race

BULLY BOY PRESS & CEDRIC'S BIG MIX & THOMAS FRIEDMAN IS A GREAT MAN & ANN'S MEGA DUB & THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS & THE COMMON ILLS -- THE KOOL AID TABLE

CROOKED CLARENCE THOMAS DECLARED AT A FRIDAY CONFERENCE, "WE'RE IN A WORLD AND WE -- CERTAINLY MY WIFE AND I THE LAST TWO OR THREE YEARS IT'S BEEN -- JUST NASTINESS AND THE LIES, IT'S JUST INCREDIBLE. BUT YOU HAVE SOME CHOICES. YOU DON'T GET TO PREVENT PEOPLE FROM DOING HORRIBLE THINGS OR SAYING HORRIBLE THINGS. BUT ONE, YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAN AND ACCEPT THE FACT THAT THEY CAN'T CHANGE YOU, UNLESS YOU PERMIT THAT."

REACHED FOR COMMENT BY THESE REPORTERS -- MUST CREDIT -- CROOKED CLARENCE ALTERNATED BETWEEN SOBBING AND RAGE.

"PEOPLE THINK I HAVE IT EASY," CROOKED CLARENCE SOBBED, "THEY DON'T KNOW ME! THEY DON'T ME! AND I'VE BEEN HURT SO BAD BY HARLAN CROW!!!"

YOU HAVE?

"PEOPLE DON'T KNOW HOW BAD OF A PAPER CUT YOU CAN GET WHEN SOMEONE PUTS 30 ONE-DOLLAR BILLS IN YOUR G-STRING ALL AT ONCE!"

AND THERE ARE OTHER PROBLEMS?

"YES! SO MUCH PAIN! DO YOU THINK ALL THE MONEY HARLAN CROW STUFFS IN MY PANTIES MAKES ME FORGET WHAT A FAILURE I AM? WHAT A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY? WHAT A TRAITOR TO MY OWN RACE?"

HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT ENDING THE BRIBES AND BEHAVING ETHICALLY?

"NO! NO! THEY CAN'T CHANGE YOU UNLESS YOU PERMIT THAT! I SAID THAT FRIDAY. AND I'M NOT GOING OUT LIKE THAT! THEY'RE NOT GOING TO IMPOSE ANY ETHICS ON ME! I'M ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS! AND FAT WHITE WOMEN!"

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

Sunday a milestone was reached in the ongoing assault on Gaza as the death toll reached (and surpassed) 35,000. THE NATIONAL notes:

Four people, including a child, were killed when Israeli forces bombed a house in the eastern part of the southern city of Rafah, Palestinian state news agency Wafa reported.

The victims were taken to the Kuwaiti Hospital. Their deaths bring the overall toll in Gaza to 35,034 people, the enclave's health authorities said. The majority of the dead are women and children.

Over 14,000 of the dead are children. There are also medical workers and aid workers on the list as well as journalists. Yesterday, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a list of the journalists known to have been killed and, in the preface to the list, noted:

The Israel-Gaza war has taken a severe toll on journalists since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack against Israel on October 7 and Israel declared war on the militant Palestinian group, launching strikes on the blockaded Gaza Strip.

CPJ is investigating all reports of journalists and media workers killed, injured, or missing in the war, which has led to the deadliest period for journalists since CPJ began gathering data in 1992.

As of May 12, 2024, CPJ’s preliminary investigations showed at least 97 journalists and media workers were among the more than 35,000 killed since the war began on October 7—with more than 34,000 Palestinian death s in Gaza and the West Bank and 1,200 deaths in Israel.

The press would have you believe another milestone was reached: The US government standing on its hind legs. But it still crawls despite articles like this insisting "No ‘credible plan’: U.S.′ Blinken issues harshest criticism yet of Israel’s Gaza operations:"

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued harsh words for Israel, criticizing its operations in the Gaza Strip and saying it lacked a plan to protect civilian life ahead of an expected assault on the city of Rafah, where more than 1.2 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.

“We believe two things,” Blinken said in an interview with CBS’ “Face The Nation” that aired Sunday.

“One, you have to have a clear, credible plan to protect civilians, which we haven’t seen. Second, we also need to see a plan for what happens after this conflict in Gaza is over, and we still haven’t seen that.”

That's the 'harshest' the administration has been in the seven months of killing? That's still mighty weak and mighty pathetic. This morning, THE NATIONAL notes:

amilies fleeing to Khan Younis amid Israeli attacks on Rafah are returning to "extensive damage" in the city, with no clean water available, according to the UN's relief agency for Palestinian refugees.

"A new level of desperation, unfolding under the world's watch," UNRWA said, publishing video footage of a badly-damaged UN shelter in the city.

Mitchell Plitnik (COMMON DREAMS) notes:

Over the seven months of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza, the United States has worked vigorously to offer maximum support for Israel while trying to give the impression that it is concerned about the massive loss of Palestinian life. The performance has been difficult to maintain, as virtually every American action contradicts the occasional words of concern for the devastation being fully abetted and enabled by American policy.

In recent weeks, political pressures have forced President Joe Biden to try to take more concrete steps to deter what he considers “excessive” Israeli actions. Such Israeli actions—which apparently do not include killing over 35,000 people; wounding over 78,000 more; completely destroying the health, education, and civic infrastructure in Gaza; and a daily flow of war crimes—raise concerns in the White House that Israel’s image around the world is becoming one of a genocidal regime and that image is reflecting on its American patron.

Rafah has become the focal point of this concern. Biden was prepared to support the horrors of the past seven months, but with some 1.4 million people stuffed into Rafah (an area that was crowded when it was home to 275,000 people before Israel’s onslaught), he realizes that a full-scale ground invasion of the kind that we witnessed in most of Gaza will cause a horror show that even Americans and Europeans—most of them, anyway—will not be able to abide.

Israel’s closing of the Rafah crossing; its assault that has forced over 100,000 Palestinians, who had already been displaced, many multiple times, to flee once again; and its devastation of an already devastated area does not meet the American standard of a “major ground operation.”

So Biden made a statement. “Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centers,” Biden told CNN’s Erin Burnett. “I made it clear that if they go into Rafah—they haven’t gone in Rafah yet—if they go into Rafah, I’m not supplying the weapons that have been used historically to deal with Rafah, to deal with the cities—that deal with that problem.”

Those words, in typical Biden fashion, were as clear as a muddy lake and left massive amounts of wiggle room for the White House to continue to arm Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. They also provided a roadmap for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to follow if he wishes to continue his genocidal campaign and not risk harming the one aspect of Israel’s relationship with the U.S. that Netanyahu cares about: the inexhaustible supply of arms.

Biden’s words are the latest in a series of statements and actions meant less to deter Netanyahu than to deter protesters and the voters who have been abandoning him in large numbers over his genocidal policy in Gaza. As we have seen over the past seven months, these words have, at best, pressed Israel to slow its genocidal attacks just a little and occasionally relent in some small, largely symbolic way, in its staunch efforts to block humanitarian aid from reaching the people in Gaza.

In related news, if there's something you want to be able to say you didn't hide it from the press, you release it on Friday in a Friday news dump so the corporate press will largely ignore it. That happens with the US State Dept report on the government of Israel's actions in Gaza.