Third Estate Sunday Review: When he's needed, Ron's never present

Repost of this joing- post: "In time of need, you can't count on DeSantis," "A real governor would be in his home state when it was flooding," "In times of crisis, DeSantis is never there," "THIS JUST IN! WHERE'S DOO-DOO DESANTIS!," "Where is Prancing DeSantis when Florida needs him?" and "DeSantis AWOL as Florida faces flooding"

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

PROVING YET AGAIN THAT HE IS NOT QUALIFIED TO BE PRESIDENT, FLORIDA GOVERNOR DOO-DOO RON DESANTIS SPENT SUNDAY IN IOWA WHERE HE WAS HECKLED.

WHILE DOO-DOO PRANCED AROUND IOWA, FLORIDA WAS HIT BY SE VERE WEATHER -- DUVAL COUNTY WAS FLOODED, TAMPA WAS FLOODED, GULFPORT WAS FLOODED, ST. PETERSBURG WAS FLOODED --

AND WHERE WAS THE GOVERNOR? AGAIN, IN IOWA.

ATTEMPTS TO REACH DOO-DOO TOOK FAILED DUE TO THE FACT THAT EVERYONE'S QUITTING HIS CAMPAIGN AS HE CONTINUES TO FAIL TO DELIVER VOTERS.

WE WERE ABLE TO REACH HIS CHIEF RIVAL NIKKI HALEY WHO EXPLAINED, "LITTLE RONNIE JUST WANTED THE YEARBOOK PHOTO, HE DIDN'T WANT TO DO THE ACTUAL WORK REQUIRED AND, SADLY, FLORIDIANS ARE SEEING THAT YET AGAIN IN THE CURRENT CRISIS."

FROM THE TCI WIRE:

"Intense" -- in all its forms -- is the word today when you scan through press reports. Two examples, REUTERS serves up "White House in 'intensive' talks with Israel on next phase of Gaza war, aide says" and MIDDLE EAST MONITOR offers "Report: Israel sets end of January to end 'intense phase' of Gaza war." End of January? Gaza has over 83% of its population displaced. It's not even January. The residents are supposed to endure this brutal assault for at least six more weeks? That's outrageous. And so is the White House and its weak ass position. Their cheap talk -- "intensive" or not -- is worthless. People are dying. Children are dying. Butcher Biden is complicit in this assault. Butcher Biden's been pimping for this assault since the beginning. Yesterday, Jeremy Scahill (INTERCEPT) noted:

On October 11, four days after the Hamas-led attacks in Israel, President Joe Biden addressed a group of Jewish community leaders in the Indian Treaty Room of the Executive Office Building in Washington, D.C. “I’ve been doing this a long time,” Biden said. “I never really thought that I would see and have confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

It was a jarring statement. And it was false.

Biden had seen no such pictures, nor received any such confirmation. He made those comments after Nicole Zedeck, a journalist for Israel’s i24 News, reported that 40 babies had been decapitated, citing Israeli soldiers at the scene of the attacks at Kfar Aza. A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu subsequently stated that babies and toddlers had been found with their “heads decapitated.”

Three hours later, Biden promoted the claim to the world and asserted he personally saw pictures of the horrifying scene, giving the story supreme legitimacy.

[. . .]

Biden has never publicly retracted the incendiary claims. And the Washington Post reported that the president had been urged by staffers not to make that allegation in his speech on October 11, “because those reports were unverified.”

Lies have promoted this assault and prolonged it and it's not Joe Biden suffering, it's the residents of Gaza. DEUTSCHE WELLE reports:

There is a level of acceptance that the people of Gaza will be "left to starve or even probably die of starvation," Ahmed Bayram, a spokesperson for the Norwegian Refugee Council, told DW on Friday.

"This has to stop," he said, sharing his concern that there is still no sign of a new cease-fire between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

Bayram said only two aid trucks entered Gaza during the previous day (Thursday), which is "nowhere near enough to cover the immense needs on the ground."

Giving an example of how Gaza's infrastructure has collapsed due to the assault by Israel, Bayram noted how just one day of rain had made a desperate situation worse.

"One day of rains in Gaza and the streets turned into a quagmire. Ambulance crews couldn't access people stuck under the rubble. Imagine being stuck under the rubble and there's flooding all over. No one can reach you," he said.

Bayram said the conflict between Israel and Hamas is taking Gaza back not decades but centuries.

Around the world, people protest this continued assault, these War Crimes. Jake Johnson (COMMON DREAMS) notes:

On the eighth night of Hanukkah, Jewish activists and allies took to the streets of eight U.S. cities on Thursday to demand an end to the bloodshed in Gaza, blocking traffic on bridges and highways in a show of opposition to the Biden administration's continued support for the Israeli military's atrocities.

"It is horrifying to watch the U.S. government fully fund the Israeli government's relentless bombing campaign and the destruction of the people of Gaza," said Sara Bollag of the Washington, D.C. chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), which helped organize the protests in Seattle; Philadelphia; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; Minneapolis; and Atlanta.

"I am here, as the great-granddaughter of a victim of the Holocaust, doing everything in my power to stop another genocide unfolding before our eyes," Bollag added.

In the nation's capital, demonstrators holding signs that read "Cease-Fire Now" and "Never Again for Anyone" and singing Hanukkah prayers shut down an overpass.

When does it end? When does Joe Biden demand that it in? When does Joe Biden stop supplying the weapons used to carry out this assault?

This morning, ALJAZEERA reports, "A photojournalist is severely beaten by an Israeli soldier in occupied East Jerusalem after worshippers were denied entry to Al-Aqsa Mosque." This is insanity. Every day, we see something take place that shouldn't be happening, that we can't believe is happening. And every day it gets worse. This is outrageous. In another report, ALJAZEERA provides more details on the attack:

Turkish television has broadcast footage of the attack on Anadolu Agency photographer Mustafa al-Kharouf in the Wadi al-Joz neighbourhood in occupied East Jerusalem after worshippers were denied entry to Al-Aqsa Mosque.

In the video aired by CNN Turk, an Israeli army officer is seen hitting the photographer with his personal weapon before a second one grabs him by the neck and pushes him to the ground. Al-Kharouf is then violently kicked in the head while he is down.

Reporters Without Borders has released (PDF format warning) "2023 Round-Up: Journalists Killed, Detained, Held Hostage and Missing." The good news? "According to the annual round-up compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), the number of journalists killed worldwide in connection with their work (45 as of 1 December 2023) is the lowest since 2002, despite the war in the Middle East." And the bad? "In Gaza, at least 13 journalists have been killed because of their work as journalists since the war began between Israel and Hamas, a total that rises to 56 if we include all journalists killed in the Gaza Strip, whether or not in the line of their work." From the report:

War zones: grim toll of journalists killed in Gaza in 2023

Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, in just two months, 17 journalists have lost their lives in the exercise of their duties in Gaza (13), Lebanon (3) and Israel (1), a toll that brings to 23 the number of journalists killed in war zones this year, versus 20 in 2022. Journalists have also died while covering armed clashes in northern Cameroon, northern Mali, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.

Journalists are being killed in Gaza by Israeli forces. December 7th, Human Rights Watch issued a report with the following bullet points:

Two Israeli strikes on a group of Lebanese, American, and Iraqi journalists in south Lebanon on October 13, 2023, were apparently deliberate attacks on civilians, which is a war crime.
Evidence indicates that the Israeli military knew or should have known that the group of people they were firing on were civilians.
Israel's key allies – the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Germany – should suspend military assistance and arms sales to Israel, given the risk they will be used for grave abuses.