The Frankish Reich

Oh, I agree. But Biden is following Trump's script here. Trump's position on Afghanistan was always full withdrawal. So ... why are the Trump supporters complaining?

OK, I get that. I don't agree with it. All least not all of it. But doesn't this mean that you should be applauding Biden? He did what Trump promised to do, but Trump didn't deliver on that promise. Biden "put America first" (essentially what Biden was saying in his speech today) rather than some general notion of human rights or even the very specific notion of women's rights in other countries. So ... it's Two Cheers for Joe????

Well, he didn't blame Trump except in the first couple minutes (criticizing the Trump May 1 planned departure date). Look, he was willing to own it. We are out and we ain't goin' back. Not in America's vital interests. I disagree -- I think preventing a radical Islamist state from emerging in that part of the world, with access to all the apparatus of a state, including a nominally large-ish military -- IS in our vital national interest. Back in about 1981 it became fashionable to say that Barry Goldwater's Republican Party "won," it just took 16 years for it to become official. Well, today I can say George McGovern's Democratic Party has won the half century long war for the heart of the Democratic Party. We even heard it just now with Biden talking about coming to Washington in the waning days of Vietnam and pledging to himself to not let it happen again.

True. Of course they did. "Historic peace agreement" 😆

False binary choices, Part 1,000: Either: A. We finally fully disengage militarily from Afghanistan; after 20 years, if they're not ready to protect their own country, they never will be. or, B. We commit to yet another surge and keep our military in harm's way for another 2, 5, 10, 20 years at extreme cost to the American people. Steve Coll (I will re-read his "Ghost Wars" now - it is a fantastic account of the early years of all of this) sets us straight: New Yorker magazine reporter: You could argue that this shows the Biden Administration’s policy was a mistake, but you could also argue that, if this was going to happen so quickly after two decades of American troops in Afghanistan, there was no way to make this work without pledging to stay forever. How do you think about those two ways of looking at the situation, or do you think that dichotomy isn’t helpful? Coll: I think that dichotomy describes two poles that represent the range of choices that the Biden Administration faced, and in between those poles had been, more or less, the policy going back to the second term of the Barack Obama Administration—which was a smaller, sustained deployment. There were twenty-five hundred troops there when the Biden Administration came to office. The rate of casualties incurred by nato forces was almost at the level of traffic accidents for much of the past couple of years. So a sustained, smaller deployment—not free, but nothing like the expenditures of the past—linked to a search for some more sustainable political outcome had been visible. The Trump Administration followed that path, too, picking it up from the Obama Administration, and the Trump White House had become quite ambitious about it. It had negotiated with the Taliban an agreement that had a timetable, including regarding American withdrawal. But, until the Trump Administration got to that point, it had been following the same pathway as its predecessor. I think in between was this question of whether the benefits of a messy degree of stability justified having the small-to-medium deployment that America has in other parts of the world. That is what you are going to hear in Washington. The counter-argument to the Biden Administration’s policy is not going to be forever war and the defeat of the Taliban; it is going to be a critique of the haste with which it pulled the plug on what was not a large deployment, and one that was not incurring a lot of casualties. This required nothing even close to our level of commitment in South Korea, for example. Read the whole thing! https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-america-failed-in-afghanistan

Manchin, yes. Sinema, no. WV is a 70% Republican state. If Manchin can't force Biden toward the middle, his own fate will depend on jumping ship. Sinema: AZ is trending more and more blue. I don't see it happening.

I always come back to the aphorism coined by Megan McArdle and known as "Jane's Law" -- "The devotees of the party in power are smug and arrogant; the devotees of the party out of power are insane." We are clearly in peak smug/arrogant stage of Bidenism: no social welfare policy, no government spending, no sucking up to lefty interest groups is too extreme. (And the insanity of the opposition, well, that goes without saying.) Maybe a colossal failure like this will recenter this Administration. It happened with Bill Clinton, who started out acting as though his 43% of the popular vote gave him a mandate to shift the country leftward. After the 1994 midterms he was (policy wise, if not personal affairs-wise) pretty centrist. And I liked that shift ....

I can't believe I'm saying this, but ... very strong comment. (I mean, other than the gratuitous reference to "China Wins" but I'll set that aside for now.) I'm thinking about Tim Miller's comment. He has a point. Foreign policy (mixing in military actions) successes in this century, other than the one-off assassinations? - the post-9/11 action in Afghanistan, deposing the Taliban from de facto rule in large swaths of Afghanistan and it's role in providing a safe haven for al Qaeda. But this is now overcome in our collective consciousness by the undisputable fact that the Taliban has just won a 20-year war. And ... that's it. As far as active foreign policy/military initiatives: - Iraq: disastrous - reining in North Korea and its nuclear programs: failure - guiding problematic Latin American states toward democratization: there appeared to be some early successes (Colombia), but it is beyond humiliating that minor states like El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras occupy so much of our attention with their failed states spurring uncontrolled migration north, and maybe even worse that we can't seem to nudge Venezuela into toppling its corrupt communist dictatorship. This would have been easy historically. We are now two years into the USA recognizing opposition leader Juan Guaido as the "real" president of Venezuela. And on the ground, he controls absolutely nothing. - the whole "Abraham Accords" business: we've sucked up to dictatorships in the Middle East who see their own self-interest served by making peace overtures toward Israel. And on the ground, well, just watch the news. - Climate change, etc. Wherever one stands on this, the fact is we are making progress in the Western World toward a new energy future, while this happens: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-57018837#:~:text=China emits more greenhouse gas,emissions%2C the think tank said. Success stories of the 1990s turn into long-term failures (collapse of the Soviet Union, emergence of a new hybrid Hong Kong model) or, at best, works in progress (South Africa). Not to be too pessimistic: the drop in extreme poverty around the world is real and a stunningly good development, but it's hard to find a reason to ascribe this to U.S. leadership.

Kabul has fallen. Every U.S. President, former and current, should be hanging his head in shame. - George W. Bush: for deciding that the attacks on terrorist training camps and the neutralization of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan wasn't the sole limited purpose of the operation. That had succeeded by early 2002. The war went on two more decades. And for distracting the U.S. military from the mission by engaging in a pointless war with Saddam Hussein's Iraq. - Barack Obama: for vacillating between withdrawal talk and surge talk. But in retrospect, probably the most successful (well, let's say "least unsuccessful") of out post 9-11 presidencies. - Donald Trump: for brokering a joke of a peace agreement with the Taliban (the Doha agreement) and insisting on departure on a date certain, allowing the Taliban to cynically wait out the American departure - Joe Biden: for finally carrying out that departure, either knowingly allowing the descent into chaos and retribution, or naively believing that the Afghan government/army could hold off the assault. My take on it: Trump kept our troops in not so much to avoid chaos, but to postpone chaos until after the election. Biden allowed this to happen right away, hoping the debacle will be largely forgotten by the time 2024 rolls around. What a mess.

This makes sense to me. And for the USA: it looks like another fall of Saigon moment is coming. And this is very troubling. At least the military and foreign policy gurus were able to talk Trump down when he was agitating for full withdrawal. Since those people - the so-called Deep Staters - are presumably still around, it appears that Biden either: - stupidly ignored their advice, and really meant it when he said that the Afghan army was strong enough and motivated enough to withstand the obvious Taliban offensive lying in wait for our departure, or - heartlessly sacrificed our Afghan supporters and all women and girls of Afghanistan so that the USA can concentrate on his “foreign policy” agenda, namely, climate change initiatives, etc. Whichever one it is, it doesn’t reflect well on this administration. And yes, I am kind of the old school neocon (old enough to remember when “new” really meant “new”) when it comes to these matters.

You’re welcome. Yes, some did. And they too should be called out for it as it was grossly irresponsible.

A little lawyer talk here: the general category is what’s known as “crime facilitating speech.” It is a recognized exception to the 1st Amendment. But it’s a pretty high standard to prove something meets that standard, particularly when it comes to political speech. So my take is this: what Trump said on 1/6 to fire up the crowd was irresponsible, but probably not criminal. But: Morally responsible for the death of one of his none-to-bright minions? Works for me.

Ban? Who said that? If people got banned for posting stupid stuff there’d be nobody left here, including me.

I had no idea “mass transit” was not infrastructure. Some guy decides he’ll redefine infrastructure to include only roads, auto bridges, and tunnels, and then does a little arithmetic. This is what (for some people) passes as “insightful” in today’s world.

So now we’re quoting anonymous posters on some forum who are trying to evade getting banned by doing cute things like writing [VX] to frustrate the anti-vax search algorithms.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/highly-vaccinated-states-keep-worst-covid-19-outcomes-in-check-as-delta-spreads-wsj-analysis-shows-11628328602?st=eo8yj15rrix3ljc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink In the first big test of Covid- 19 vaccines during a Covid-19 surge, places with higher vaccination rates are dodging the worst outcomes so far, while cases and hospitalizations surge in less-vaccinated areas. There are more tests yet to come, including when cold weather forces people in the well-vaccinated Northeast back indoors. But as the highly contagious Delta strain tears through the country, the trends thus far suggest vaccines can turn Covid-19 into a less dangerous, more manageable disease. “Vaccines definitely make a difference,” said David Dowdy, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A Wall Street Journal analysis shows sharp geographic divides in vaccination and hospitalization levels, with every state that has an above-average vaccine rate showing below-average hospitalizations, including in well-vaccinated New England. In the South, meanwhile, fewer people are vaccinated on average and hospitalization rates are climbing faster. Thanks, Judge Williams. Common sense prevails over idiotic grandstanding DeSantis law.

Fair point. It was bad optics (particularly in it's initial version), but I'll give him a pass on HAVING the party. That's because I want to see full outdoor stadiums for the World Series, for NFL Sundays, for outdoor music festivals, etc. I am perhaps not as doctrinaire as you thought. There's always risk balancing; to me, the science doesn't support banning outdoor events or requiring masks outside. Tents are "leaky" and air turnover rates are high, even for those posh garden party things. Plus as I understand it, everyone was required to be vaccinated. As for travel to mass events: this doesn't strike me as that different from a big wedding, which I don't want to see banned. There's a cost-benefit calculation, which is why I support businesses and to some extent governments mandating vaccines.

If they were planning to run for any kind of office again, or get appointed to the Supreme Court, etc., I would have lots and lots of questions about this kind of deal. I also think it's unseemly in general. Serving in public office shouldn't come with the expectation of great wealth when your done. That means $500,000 speaking engagements, exorbitant book deals (but remember, the total compensation isn't known until the books sold are counted; that's why huge advances are suspect), lobbying contracts, etc., etc. What appropriately post-Presidential things should you do to make a living beyond that very nice pension? Well, Barack could have returned to teaching at U. Chicago. Written those boring book on foreign policy that Nixon and Carter kept pushing out. Lots of ways to have a very, very comfortable living without the bloated book and speaking fees. I'd love to see the USA return to that dignified idea of the post-presidency; ain't gonna happen. Unfortunately there's not much we can do about these post-Presidency deals except that ineffectual stuff like asking questions in a debate: "do you pledge not to engage in lobbying after your term ends?"

I dunno, but geez, could it be this? https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/3/2/14779892/barack-michelle-obama-65-million-book-deal-penguin-random-house EDIT: and this - https://www.chicagotribune.com/real-estate/elite-street/ct-re-1205-elite-street-obamas-20191205-tpd3s54jenffrjyc7ucr3ef53a-story.html I recommend this new thing they call the google. You can find out a lot of answers! Like a couple that just got $65 million can afford a $12 million house.

A little historical perspective - while this is a Wash Post opinion, the writer, Megan McArdle, is their resident libertarian, and more of a right-libertarian. So this is no wild "liberal" perspective. Example: her opinion piece today is in opposition to the unlawful expansion of the eviction moratorium. So please address the argument, not the publisher. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/08/03/where-conservatives-arguments-about-public-health-mandates-go-wrong/ Back when this country was founded, our population was routinely ravaged by disease: waterborne illnesses such as typhoid, polio and cholera; mosquito-borne illnesses such as malaria and yellow fever; bacterial infections including staph, strep and tuberculosis; and airborne viral infections such as measles and mumps. Our ancestors used the power of the law to contain those threats, at least partially. One by one, however, those diseases were neutralized through great public works projects of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and then through medical advances in vaccines and antibiotics. Thanks to them, almost no living Americans worry as much about infectious disease as their ancestors. Yet even so, we haven’t entirely given up on restrictive interventions: Tuberculosis patients who don’t comply with treatment can be, and are, forcibly isolated until they complete a lengthy and unpleasant drug regimen. In 20 years around the libertarian and conservative movements, I cannot recall ever hearing anyone denounce this practice. A vaccine passport would of course affect more people, which makes it feel more intrusive, even though in principle it is less so: You don’t have to get a vaccine in New York; you just can’t dine indoors without one. And it’s understandable that conservatives tend to think of their old existence as the natural state of affairs. But it’s actually highly abnormal — and since the outbreak of covid-19 has pushed us a little closer toward the historical “normal,” arguably our willingness to infringe on personal liberty should get more “normal” too.

I'm not an expert like some guy named Jack Posobiec, but those sure look like OUTDOOR photos to me ...

Tyrod was my favorite. Bledsoe was objectively the best. Tyrod is back with David Culley as his head coach. Who knows what happens with Deshaun Watson? And Davis Mills certainly isn't ready to start. It's very possible Tyrod plays and leads that tanking team to a 7-9 record or something like that. Hey, his strangely adequate play didn't destroy the Bills' rebuild after all. Maybe he'll do the same in Houston. Just not on Week 4 at Buffalo please. (But I'm hoping he trots out on the field to a huge ovation!)

I notice our pal Tucker now has a big ol' man crush on Victor Orban. Yeah, why not model our nation on Orban's Hungary. https://ec.europa.eu/economy_finance/forecasts/2020/summer/ecfin_forecast_summer_2020_hu_en.pdf Remember how America's economy was going wild before COVID? (Trump could hardly say two sentences without saying it.) Hungary's? Not so much. Ahh, if only we could be more like Hungary ....

Deranged Rhino, err, Blitzo, is that you? The Man Who Knew Too Little.

We're also about to hit "pretty soon" ... remember "pretty soon" we'll have zero cases? The "15 days to slow the spread" was a disastrous TRUMP idea that failed miserably. So stop referring to it as if it's some kind of CDC failure. 15 days was stupid, and it was all Trump. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/trump-coronavirus-cases-will-go-down-to-zero-ultimately.html "On February 26 [that is, February 26, 2020], President Trump boasted that the coronavirus was about to disappear altogether from the United States. “You have 15 people, and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero,” he insisted. A reporter asked him today how that prediction is holding up, given that the United States now has surpassed 1 million confirmed coronavirus cases. Trump insisted he had been right all along. “Well, it will go down to zero, ultimately,” he said. The original promise of cases going down to zero has basically been fulfilled, just that the timeline for going down to zero has been slightly extended from a couple days to “sometime before all life on Earth ceases to exist.” Oh, and on the way to zero, we’re going to have trillions of dollars in economic damages and more deaths than a major war, details Trump didn’t get around to mentioning originally. Other than that, mission accomplished!"