Hegar

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

I don't know that 'one of the main reasons' is fair. For profit prisons are vile cruelty-factories and have pull with lawmakers, but they hold less than 10% of incarcerated individuals. It's a reason, sure. But a main reason?

I think there are two obviously larger reasons:

1. There are more homeless people and homeowners see them. If you're a local politician, you can get very far by promising voters that they won't have to see homeless people. Here in "oregon, tolerant oregon" (to quote jello biafra) this is the most common sentiment to hear, and is reflected in policy.

2. Growing resource pressure leads to a rise in 'punching down'. As climate crisis, imperial turmoil and the rich taking ever more resources fuel poverty and scarcity, the social pressure to distinguish yourself from those further down the social ladder increases. Hating the weak identifies you as strong, which grows in value as more and more insecurity plagues our society.

Being angry at voters and calling them idiots over choices the democratic party made doesn't help defeat trump.

Anyone not voting for Biden because of Gaza is a fucking idiot.

The democracts insist on maintaining this position despite the mountain of evidence that it's driving down turn out in their base, and does not represent the wishes of the electorate.

Why is it that voters have to swallow genocide, and not that democrats have to stop perpetuating electorally unpopular genocide?

Of course trump will be worse and i'll be holding my nose and voting for biden but it makes no sense to blame voters for the inevitable and foreseeable consequences of the imperial cowardice of the democratic party.

Short answer: it isn’t

The power structures that make 'the west' a bloc in the international system are 100% defending Israel's genocide.

We're giving them weapons, vetoing on their behalf in the UN, denying that the text book genocide going on is a genocide. Netanyahu's war crimes are as obvious and publicly committed as trump's money laundering and election subversion, yet biden is pretending that the ICC warrant is unjustified.

Despite a growing number of brutally beaten protestors, it's still true to say that the west is supporting israeli war crimes.

Nah this was in like 2012 or 13 or so, before impossible burgers were a thing. The patty was a thin unidentified mat of some kind of substance. There was a sodden patch of greenish white and one of reddish white.

Reminds me of the one time I was desperate enough to order a veggie burger at burger king.

There's a similar account from the 6th century CE Roman Empire: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyrios_(whale)

Could be a whale, or a large orca. The story goes that it was a single creature, but I think a series of Orca attacks that got attributed to a single creature fits the evidence as easily.

But Hamas won, they completely control the 'unity' government and Fatah have vastly less power. If divide and conquer was the goal Netanyahu would have been funneling resources to Fatah and not Hamas. But he has consistently empowered Hamas because the international community can't accept a Hamas-led state.

That ended over 15 years ago.

I am guessing their calculation is that losing support of Israel lobby is 100% loss?

Yeah, I've been presuming that's a significant part of it. That and the importance of a dependent and dependable ally to help anchor US security architecture in a vital region. Israel needs US imperial presence in the region. Saudi just benefits from it.

US support for Israel continuing the current conflict or US support for Israel in general? If really forced into it, maybe the Democrats can withdraw their blessing for the current conflict, but I don't see how they could end support for Israel. If Putin wins the US election who knows what could happen but short of that Israel is just too important to the US empire and they know it. I mostly believe the official line from Washington that they don't have that much leverage against Israel - in the sense that Bibi&co have enough counter levers to make acting against them more costly than it's worth for the Democrats.

Hence the bullshit antisemitism law, the brutalizing of campus protests, etc. Democrats are even willing to drive down turn out among their base in one of the most important elections in US history over this - I just don't see them doing that if they had a better card to play.