March 12, 2024 - The Netanyahu Threat They're Not Telling Us About
… Tax-loving Democrats … Netanyahu threat … Musk’s self-driving … RNC purge …
Biden’s Raising Taxes!
You may not have noticed it — because what even is corporate journalism? — but Pres. Joe Biden yesterday proposed a tax hike. Just like a Commie!
If you’re wondering how you missed a Democratic president touting his new proposed budget with tax hikes during a campaign appearance, well, it was right there in the eighth paragraph of this CNN article. And to be fair, kudos to CNN for mentioning it at all!
And if the reason for the tax hike isn’t clear from that snippet, it’s to extend the life of Medicare Part A, the hospital insurance trust fund, which is currently forecast to be able to pay only about 89% of benefits by 2031, unless the government does something and by “something” I mean “raise a tax.”
Biden hasn’t yet rolled out a plan to extend the life of Social Security, which rich people are no longer paying into this year having hit their contribution cap already earlier this month hint fucking hint.
But the tax hikes in yesterday’s new Biden budget proposal include raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% and shutting a corporate loophole that corporations loopholed into existence to let them skip paying a Medicare tax on profits.
Biden was speaking about his budget (which will not pass, but still) at a campaign in Goffstown, NH, where they keep old people who like Social Security and Medicare and taxes on rich people to pay for them. The context was D4FRFP1 Donald Trump earlier yesterday mouth-talking with his face-mouth and ejecting mouth-things into America’s ear-listeners. Specifically, Trump said, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements.”
That was quickly walked back by a Trump spokesliar, who spokeslied that Trump “was clearly talking about cutting waste, not entitlements.” Sorry, but when you say you’re talking cutting AND … ALSO … theft and bad management, you’re now talking about both things.
In fairness, although Trump really did say what he really said, there’s a lot of evidence he doesn’t actually want to cut entitlements. The problem with Trump, though (did I just say “the” problem with Trump?) is that regardless of what he says, there’s a good chance he genuinely does want to protect Social Security (he’s said so many times) but that he will still let Republicans bamboozle him into cutting entitlements without realizing it, like by letting states cut their rolls or adding work requirements for retirees, because no one should be allowed to retire without having to work.
Intel Report Identifies Grave Threat to Netanyahu from Netanyahu
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the subject of a significant threat from himself and the stuff he does and people not liking it, according to the U.S. intelligence community’s annual global assessment of alleged threats to national security and/or ExxonMobil.
CNN reports that the, uh, report reports (goddammit) that Netanyahu’s “viability as a leader” is “in jeopardy.” A lot of his critics might say it’s long gone, but here’s CNN’s explanation of the threat Netanyahu faces:
“Distrust of Netanyahu’s ability to rule has deepened and broadened across the public from its already high levels before the war, and we expect large protests demanding his resignation and new elections. A different, more moderate government is a possibility..”
The Netanyahu threat assessment was based largely on chatter picked up by human intelligence assets and electronic surveillance watching TV.
CNN explains why Netanyahu is facing this threat to his leadership, saying that there is “fierce criticism” of his government’s failure to prevent the Oct. 7 Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people. Funny thing about that explanation is that the report doesn’t say that.
In fact, the report itself is pretty clear. Here’s the full sentence about his political prospects: “Netanyahu’s viability as leader as well as his governing coalition of far-right and ultraorthodox parties that pursued hardline policies on Palestinian and security issues may be in jeopardy.”
And here’s the actual screengrab so you can see just how unequivocal the U.S. intelligence assessment is that the Israeli people have rejected the far-right and ultraorthodox hardline policies.
No mention of anger (which is real) about the Oct. 7 security failures! Now, I didn’t wanna beat up unfairly on CNN for this, so I googled that missing sentence to see whether other news outlets left it out, too.
Dear Newsfucker, Google gave me only 12 results. Fewer when I did a Google News search:
Not a single mainstream U.S. news outlet quoted the sentence pointing at the far-right and ultraorthodox elements.
(Note: As someone who’s worked at three big mainstream news outlets, I’m pretty confident there was no order from the top to exclude that sentence. The reality is that including it would mean explaining what the fuck you were talking about and getting into the Israeli politics that left Netanyahu unable to attain power without siding with people who support monstrous policies. Which…probably worth explaining.)
GOP Hearing to Spotlight Prosecutor Who, uh, Agrees with Trump Indictment
Special counsel Robert Hur will be the star witness at today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, where Republicans want details about how old Pres. Joe Biden really is, and what Hur learned about all the crimes this senile dotard masterminded with his son, history’s greatest monster.
The committee is chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), whose decision to put Hur on TV shooting down GOP bullshit came directly from a three-pound blob of fat and protein that he keeps in his head.
It was Hur who investigated Biden’s mishandling of government documents, but advised against prosecution, saying at one point that a jury would likely see Biden as a likable but fuzzy-headed old man.
The GOP hope is that today Hur will spill new gossip/speculation about how Biden is secretly older than he olded in the State of the Union speech last week. And that Hur will reveal how a politicized Justice Department thwarted Hur’s bold efforts to uncover the truth that we can’t handle about White House crime-family boss Don Giusseppe “Joe,” “Dark Brandon,” “Stop Smelling My Hair” Biden.
And that Hur will invent the next, urgently needed lie to perpetuate the perpetually-debunked lie that Hunter Biden illegally sold his dad’s power instead of just legally trading on his dad’s name.
But what Democrats will be doing today is asking Hur to expand luxuriantly on the finding in his report that while Biden’s fuckups didn’t rise to the level of prosecution, the government-document fuckups of D4FRFP Donald Trump were criminally Fucked. Up.
Politico points out that Democrats could screw this up by grilling Hur on the Biden-old stuff, thereby drawing attention to it and opening the door for Hur to defend himself by sharing new anecdotes or embarrassing information. This would also undermine Hur’s credibility…right as smarter Democrats are hoping Hur can establish the validity of the Trump charges.
We’ll see which Democrats are strategic about this hearing today and which fail to use their three pounds of fat and protein.
SIDEBAR A key player in the Trump documents case went public with CNN yesterday. Brian Butler worked for Trump for 20 years and is best known for his star-turn role as “Trump Employee Number Five” in the recent epic Trump documents indictment, one of the many many franchise sequels to come out of the Trump crime/politics/entertainment empire.
Butler basically confirms all the bullshit we already know too much about regarding Trump’s game of Hide-the-Boxes with the FBI. “We’re all dirty,” one of Butler’s co-stars told him.
Butler says he does not think Trump should be president again, because he’s met and worked with Trump.
Musk’s Autopilot Rated “Poor”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who is definitely a genius for pioneering self-driving vehicle technology that other people pioneered first, has finally managed — over an entire decade of making self-driving cars — to achieve the coveted “poor” rating from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS).
The IIHS, which iihs fucking sick of paying out Tesla insurance claims, said they tested 14 driver-assistance systems (once known as self-driving until they were upgraded to reality). Eleven of these systems, from a variety of carmakers, were rated “poor.”
The “poor” rating for Musk’s driver-assistance system now brings it into full alignment with the identical rating achieved by Musk’s impulse-control system.
Now you may be wondering who somehow managed to do better than Musk, who is a genius? The highest-rated not-self-driving system was the Toyota Lexus’s Teammate with Advanced Drive, which blew everyone else away with a top ranking of…”Acceptable.”
So who’s the Toyota genius who managed to out-genius Musk with unchallenged “Acceptable” honors?
Meet your next tech-bro-hero, America! The victory belongs to Toyota Chairman Akio Toyoda. How did Toyoda manage to pull this off? With a combination of genius, grit, pluck, and hard work, Toyoda has successfully dedicated his entire life to being the grandson of Toyota’s founder.
Campaign Watch
CLINCHING DAY Primary contests today in Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi, and Washington could provide both Pres. Joe Biden and D4FRFP Donald Trump with enough delegates to clinch their respective nominations, which they’ve already de facto clinched.
As Trump said yesterday of Biden, “I’m his only opponent other than life, life itself.”
(Mark Jacob’s Stop the Presses substack makes a great point that I’m going to paraphrase as: Any journalist professing boredom with this race is confessing ineptitude at journalism. This is not 2020, the stakes are different, and actual things have thing-happened in the past three years that have changed actual things for actual people.)
BIDEN TURMOIL Things got so bad on the White House advance team, which plans and coordinates Pres. Joe Biden’s travel, that the office director resigned on March 1 amid a White House Counsel’s Office investigation into verbal abuse. A top official under the director also recently resigned.
Politico reports that the office has such a bad reputation that they’re having trouble getting anyone to work there. In related news, a whole batch of campaign operatives just changed their LinkedIn status to “Open To Work”...
RNC D4FRFP Donald Trump has successfully weeded out the Deep State enemies that once lurked in the bosom of .. the Republican National Committee (RNC). Within days of his people taking over the RNC, they’ve taken out dozens of RNC staffers who knew how to do things (other than preventing Trump from taking them over).
On Monday, Trump’s new loyalist RNC chief began the work of ensuring the RNC can promote Trump as a job creator by laying off dozens of RNC staffers.
CNN reports that the layoffs include people in communications (which, fair), the political department (again, I see what you’re doing there), and data (obvi). So who survived the cuts?
The crack election-integrity unit! The staffers who do so much crack they’re on a Republican election-integrity unit!
In fact, new RNC Chair Michael Whatley specializes in “election integrity” [sic] and reportedly is expected to focus on it, ensuring that Trump’s lies about the stolen election — which he for some reason let Joe Biden steal — will remain at center stage throughout the election…making it that much harder for new RNC co-chair Lara Trump (some relation) to do her new job: Fund-raising.
TCB
SEO CLICKBAIT KEYWORDS OF THE DAY Kate Middleton. Photo. Who gives a shit.
VACAY As I mentioned, after tomorrow’s edition of TFN, I’m heading out on a trip we stupidly planned before I got laid off, but I’m scrambling to ensure you’ll hear from me at least somewhat, with a variety of aspirationally big-brain “think” pieces and maybe a greatest-hits clip show… I’ll be back with your regularly scheduled newsfucking on March 22.
And I probably won’t be able to stop myself from working while I’m away on a big story I’ve got cooking. Please remember, your support makes my big-story cuisine possible, so thank you!
And please come say hi on Twitter or Facebook or Bluesky or Mastodon. I’ll follow back if you ask; the only reason I don’t automatically is that I use my feeds to curate news sources for myself. Bud I do make exceptions for Newsfuckers!
Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.