It's an important point (because as always Trump is worse), but the vast majority of people who criticise the dems policy on Israel already know and acknowledge this. The mole hill of the few people dumb enough to vote 3rd party/vote Trump over this is being made out to be a mountain by people who would rather laser-focus on that small issue than acknowledge that their preferred candidate is supporting a genocide.

I remember watching the news interviews at the time, and some of the people who voted to Exit said they didn't really want to Exit they just wanted to put out a protest vote against Corbyn.

You are literally talking out of your arse. "Some" people may have been protesting Corbyn... not saying much?... about it. But Cameron was the face of remain. He was the logical target for a protest vote. And if you really did watch the interviews around the time of Brexit and especially the exit polls after the election you would know that most people said some nonsense about "sovereignty" but the next most common and incredibly obvious reason was immigration. The idea that is was primarily or even substantially about Corbyn is completely ludicrous.

So go ahead and single issue vote on something that will get you more of what you don't want.

1. I am actually British. 2. I would vote for Harris and have literally said as much throughout this conversation.

I am just saying I understand their perspective and pointing out that this "Trump is worse" response completely ignores the overwhelming moral case for opposing a genocide. It is pathetic as a response to what people are saying. It's myopically election focused at a time when people are dying with full US backing.

Yes, Clinton was a shitty candidate who I predicted losing because everyone hates her so much... but in the end there were a lot of people who are now worse off because they decided it would be better to vote for Stein.

So you predicted she would lose, and many other people did, and the DNC did not listen. Then some people didn't see the gravity of the situation and made bad voting decisions, absolutely. But they are just random people who may be more engaged with work and paying their bills than they are with making unintuitive voting decisions. Partially their fault, mainly the dems fault

Yeah but when the single issue is genocide? I don't know, I can understand the moral argument that is always wrong to support that. I can understand not wanting your tax dollars to pay for the death and destruction we've been watching for the past year.

I understand your point, don't agree with single issue voting in most cases and I also wouldn't vote third party or encourage anyone to do so BUT I can see the point and lecturing people about Trump does nothing whatsoever to address it.

Look at Brexit: most of those were protest votes against Labour, not actual votes for Brexit.

Lol I can only assume you are not British. Protesting Labour in the 6th year of a conservative government for.... what exactly? There are a lot of stupid things that led to the Brexit vote but this is not one of them.

Every pregnant woman in the US is at higher risk now because of those protest votes.

No. Because the democrats did not win over enough voters to take the presidency. They ran a candidate people didn't like that much and lost. That is on THEM.

Yeah I wouldn't say alarmist but this is likely a non issue. Under the current system, every legal state is breaking federal law in a bunch of ways, but the DEA and other agencies have not acted. Technically putting it in schedule III would mean it could be treated like other substances in that schedule, available only with FDA oversight, but that is not likely. Basically everything has been totally hands off so far, so it's very unlikely that the government reducing the level of control of cannabis would lead to agencies increasing their control.

The biggest threat at the moment imo is a Trump presidency, but based on his comments about Florida's ballot initiative, his "change with the wind" opinion is currently also in favor of not sending people to jail for it.

Ha stupid Palestinians not wanting to vote for someone who promised to continue arming the state that is killing their families! Wow what idiots. Do they want a Trump presidency? What dumb dumbs, they clearly don't understand democracy: you vote for us otherwise it'll get even worse.

Pressuring their preferred candidate to change their policies by saying they'll vote third party because of this issue? NO! The only way is slavish loyalty, that way they'll know they can do what they want and it won't affect their vote share.

Jokes aside: I do think Harris is better on this issue (and people should still vote for her) but surely you can see how this disingenuous criticism really side steps the issue. What if it was your family, so you tried to push change on this issue with your only tangible democratic power and then some jumped up boot licker starts lecturing you on how this is actually stupid because the other guy will kill your family FASTER? I would tell that person to fuck all the way off.

No, I'm just saying the graph is probably useless. Israel definitely is launching more and larger attacks, because that's how you win a war.

How can the graph be useless if it shows a point you agree with, that Israel is launching more and larger attacks?

Is this a joke? Hezbollah usually attacks with unguided rockets. This demonstrates zero concern for civilian casualties. Less than zero, actually, because the intent of the attacks is to cause civilian casualties. Relatively few Israeli civilians have died because Israel is successfully defending them, not because Hezbollah's policy regarding Israeli civilians is different from that of Hamas.

Not joking. Just confused. Do you have a source for this about unguided rockets targeting civilians from Hezbollah?

This article among many others don't mention this. In fact, according to them they are targeting troops and intelligence bases.

Hezbollah also fired more rockets and missiles into Israel - attacks that Mr Afif said were “only the beginning” of its response to Israel’s attacks.

Sirens sounded several times in the border town of Metula, where Hezbollah said its fighters had targeted Israeli troops with artillery and rocket fire without mentioning any incursion.

The group also claimed it had fired missiles towards two Israeli intelligence bases in the central Tel Aviv area. Paramedics said two people were injured on a highway near Kafr Qasim.

Much like with the IDF's claims, I am not eager to believe what they say. I would just like to see the evidence for these unguided attacks because the death tolls and overall number of attacks do not seem to support this conclusion at all.

Even if that is true (and it would only be true in the short term) then Israel would still be foolish to make major concessions to its persistent enemies when it has the military power necessary not to. Meanwhile Hezbollah would be more inclined to launch future attacks because it would see that they worked.

The point is they don't have to be persistent enemies. There can be peace, and the start of that is an actual two state solution. Given that the country was founded on ethnic cleansing, I totally understand why people in the region would see Israel as the enemy until they actually take genuine steps to rectify the situation. Currently, instead of this they are doing a genocide. And when this started is when Hezbollah started attacking, at least most recently. Not only that, they explicitly said that was why they attacked.

I am a bit concerned that your argument seems to be "why do peace and diplomacy when we can kill people until we're safe?" It is incredibly short sighted to think that war can solve this persistent conflict. When was Hezbollah formed again? Oh yeah after Israel invaded Lebanon. So why would more war "solve" this issue rather than create new ones?

It's easy to chest thump and drop bombs. Maybe it even makes you feel good. But all it does is guarantee more civilian deaths and displacement in future, on both sides.

Don't you want the killing to end?

Are you implying that Israel's much greater number of attacks are because they are doing really tiny attacks or something? According to Wikipedia, 1642 Lebanese dead vs 52 Israelis. I.e. 31 times more Lebanese than Israeli deaths. So if anything Israel is killing more per strike, given that they only made 5 times more attacks (or 4 times more counting up until mid September). So it's highly likely Israel is doing bigger strikes with less concern for civilian casualties. Notably, nobody is surprised about this given the horror we've all been watching for the past year.

Israeli victory would mean reducing the red bars to zero

Then good news. A cease fire in Gaza would achieve this. Shame Bibi doesn't seem interested in that but he sure does love killing children so I guess it works out for him at least.

Yeah my understanding is that since HHS said "the science suggests it should be in 3," the DEA would have a bit of a challenge making any other rule. The schedules (theoretically) tell you what the addiction risk and medical value of a substance is, with lower risk & more effective medicine being the least restricted. So since HHS made that determination and the DEA are not scientists, it would be kind of wild for them to try to argue with that.

I think technically they could propose anything they like, but 2 would never go through because there's no basis for it, and I think even keeping it in 1 would be a difficult sell with Biden having called for the review and the recommendation being what it was. Plus as you said most public comments (and experts) said they didn't go far enough.

Honestly I think they're stuck. They probably can't just come out and recommend descheduling (and going by public statements probably don't want to) but the current position is untenable. So they have to just sign up for the "better but nobody is especially happy" option HHS gave them

One thing I wish I understood more was whether Harris could just legalize through an executive order. Biden (and now Harris) said nobody should go to jail for weed but schedule III does not solve that problem at all.

all he's pushing for is reschedule to 3, which means they'll probably go to 2 because fuck you that's why

I figure you're partially joking but they can't really make it 2. The HHS recommendation was 3 and even the DEA kind of has to agree even if they don't want to. It would have been super controversial to do something else, they're mainly supposed to follow it through with the rulemaking process unless they're willing to make a serious case. And even then it would probably be to leave it where it is.

One of the theories going around as to why they added the hearing is that they wanted to take the heat off themselves for the call they've made by really drawing out the public consultation. Like people will be mad at them for following the recommendation so they want to make a big show of the fact they're listening to concerns etc.

Hopefully Harris can take some stronger action or legalize through executive order or something. Schedule III is better but it's then in the same class as ketamine. No judgement of people who like ketamine but COME ON

But it says nothing about methods of attack?

Edit: The article suggests they are air strikes: https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2024/9/25/mapping-10000-cross-border-attacks-between-israel-and-lebanon

Happy to see a source if I'm wrong!

Lol what? Where did you get that?

Not silly at all. It's a great quote and an important lesson for life

Uh huh. So no defense of what's happening, just "that's the way it is." Well great. No problem then

So because Iran and Israel have nukes, Israel can't directly fight their enemy, and that means they have to keep playing whack a mole with proxies, like, forever? All while the "collateral damage" and "accidents" are mounting and more and more innocent people die?

There will always be new "moles" popping up, eliminating Hamas creates Hamas 2 and even if you somehow eliminate Hezbollah there will be Hezbollah 2: maximum bollah. Then you will have to fight them and there will be more whoopsies and more kids end up in bodybags. And then I hope you're ready because since we're not fighting the actual enemy but we successfully stopped Hamas 2, guess what we have now?

Seriously. The only result of this is death and the most likely people to die are innocent Palestinian, Lebanese and Israeli citizens.

I think Iran should stop funding terrorists.

They won't. So yet again, do you think Israel should go to war with Iran? Why waste time fighting proxies?

Ah I see. Usually I'm not in favour of the sarcasm tag (ruins the joke) but it would have really helped here, lol.

You don't need to be on Russia's payroll to spew pro-Putin talking points

You know, if criticizing killing is a "pro-Putin talking point," then pro Putin talking points clearly aren't always bad? Should I be in favour of murder to really show how much I hate Putin? Literally what the fuck are you talking about

I agree with Putin that the sky is blue too. I'm expecting my rubles in the mail any day now.

Putin is a cunt and Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine must be stopped.

If I was on Russia's payroll that should be enough to get me arrested or at least fired.

So either I'm risking my safety OOOOORRRR not everyone opposed to Biden's support for Israel is a Russian bot. Golly gosh I wonder which one it is

Biden: