It was to the part that said “stable, consistent substantially immovable leadership of the Republican Party”.
That's right, so what I was talking about in that last comment was the about the way to get from here to there, and in that context I think you've got the timing wrong.
First of all, the biggest political shoe to drop from the GOP isn't who our Presidential candidate ought to be, frankly we've got a bunch of candidates who are good enough to win with if we nominate them. It's about what happens in 2022.
GOP is going to win the House for sure and probably, maybe, the Senate. This is what everybody is talking about but what's really important is the GOP winning ~240 House seats. That's the make or break for success. GOP will "control" the House with ~225 seats but if that's what the GOP has all that means is Kevin McCarthy is Nancy Pelosi without a dress.
And, what's the message fallout from 2022 leading into 2024? And assuming that we get what we need in 2022 (and I think we will), that's where the rubber is really going to meet the road.
My guess is, 2022 is going to be a really bad message environment for the Demos, and the voters are going to bite their pound of flesh out of the Demos' ass. But, after 2022, there will be some unspoken catharsis. After the Demos have taken their punishment, the voters will be in a more favorable frame of mind to listen. If the Demos have anything at all, that's when we'll see it.
By comparison right now the 2024 Presidential candidates (of either party) are much less important.
Here’s a thought – Start by admitting that Democrats actually do love America too. Just that. Repeatedly. In public. And see what happens.
Well no, I don't admit to that. It's not an ironclad rule of American politics. It's not even a reliable generality with just a few small exceptions. In fact, it's a much much more complicated question than you're allowing for.
Luckily, there's a perfect example of this particular problem with libs going on right now. That is, we're in the middle of a debt limit drama as we speak, ie not the reconciliation or the highway bill, but the debt limit. Now, push comes to shove this will probably amount to nothing, but that's not completely guaranteed.
As Senator McConnell has pointed out, Demos have the capability to resolve this issue themselves. He has also said that there won't be any Republican votes for a debt limit increase or suspension. So for Dems, they desperately want GOP buy-in for whatever they do. The problem being, is that if they raise the debt limit unilaterally they are going to take a political hit. This is compounded by a quirk of reconciliation, in that the Demos can't eliminate or suspend the debt limit. They can only raise it to a higher number. And whatever number they pick, a year from now there's going to be ads against every House Democrat in America, "Angie Craig voted to authorize increasing the national debt by 20 trillion dollars" or whatever. There's a good chance this punch will land, at least to some extent, and there very well might be a few House Demos who lose their seat behind this.
Like I said before, push comes to shove, Demos in Congress are probably just stuck. But at the very least, they're going to bitch and squirm for a while before they give in. This where the "own the libs" thing has actual purpose. By putting some ritual humiliation on the libs, we reinforce the reality that whatever political power the libs do get, is contingent on and to be exercised for the best interest of America as a whole.
Or your own point about ACA is useful as well. Truth be told, you oversold the idea that ACA "really" was a Republican idea. But the rest of the story was right. GOP doing this or that is not at all equivalent to the Demos doing the same thing. The voters especially get that. It occurs in a different context, it has a different purpose and meaning.
This is why libs' assertions of good faith ring hollow so often: for me, for conservatives in general, for voters in general. Libs capacity for political action is and ought to be subordinate to the best interest of all America. Instead libs have a strong tendency to think that the national interest is just one piece in the game that's there for them to move around and manipulate.
Cruz proved to be a hollow man and Rubio proved to be far, far too young to be playing at the level he made his way to. Maybe in the 2030s he’ll stop being so callow.
This really isn't responsive to the earlier comment, but as far the current GOP goes, the most important Republican currently in office is McConnell. The most important Republican as far as the political and cultural future of the party, it's Ron DeSantis, by a lot. And that includes Trump btw. After that it's Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, maybe Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and some other GOP governors.
Seriously: What have Conservatives conserved? The *ONLY* thing that I can think of is that they haven’t entirely given away the store on is guns.
This is what I was trying to get at in my long response to March above (which I hope was comprehensible).
Because the legislatures and the Presidential elections are finely balanced, politics is mostly about defense and playing between the 40-yard lines. Alternatively, every once in a while there's a small opening that the other side can't readily block, in which case there's a mad scramble to grab as much as you can as fast as you can like a mostly peaceful protestor looting a Target.
In that world, the GOP has done what it can, which is to advocate in solidarity with the voters. Most notably, the GOP has had no interest in entitlement reform for at least 5 years. President Trump explicitly repudiated it.
Now, the fiscal motive for entitlement reform is still as strong as ever. Though the need to address that isn't imminent now as it was ten years ago when they did the sequesters.
But even that is secondary. What is more important is that the people who are getting Social Security and Medicare benefits don't want those benefits cut. Even if they could afford to have them cut or aren't really using them or the Treasury really needs the money, they simply aren't willing to entertain any of it. They figure, if my benefits are cut, all that's going to happen is some hedge fund guys in suspenders are going to get an extra $10 million in carried interest. Fcukem, I'll keep the money thank you very much.
They could be right even.
The point being, this dynamic dominates many or most or all of our important issues. We don't deal apples-to-apples among ourselves because we don't trust each other when we talk, which is itself less often than it was.
Ie, not just entitlements but guns, leaving Afghanistan, climate, immigration, vaccines against the virus, land development, etc etc.
To that end, it is important to emphasize that value proposition of the GOP is not that it is epsilon better than the Demos. I mean, it is but that's not the point.
The point is, that under the stable, consistent substantially immovable leadership of the Republican Party, we have the possibility to unwind this pervasive sludge of alienation among ourselves.
I'm tempted to say a number of things in response to this, but for now let's just leave it at this:
Those 81 million people are not going to be there for you in general, maybe even never again. President Trump showed us, the GOP, where the votes were that we weren't getting enough of in the Obama era. But, he also pulled a pulled a whole lot of obnoxious, inflammatory stuff. And what's worse, he created the perception and the reality that he would be continuing the cheap theatrics for as long as he was around.
Now Trump is gone, we're keeping all the votes we gained in the Trump era, and we're reclaiming the ones we lost because Trump pissed them off. 2022 is not a good year to be a Demo.
I'm not sure exactly what the timeframe is supposed to refer to. That said, surprising (or maybe not), I have quite a bit of sympathy for Michael's complaint.
Unfortunately the problem is that the Democrats _are_ bad. In terms of politics, people who are talking about other things might be either oblivious to, or trying to hide this reality.
The one thing I could say that maybe could help the situation is to resist the sense of fatalism that we might otherwise be susceptible to. The Democrats are _not_ a force of nature. Leaving aside for the moment the remaining terms of office that they have been elected to, we absolutely can take them out like yesterday's garbage, and there's a quite good chance that we will.
The upshot of that is we actually can, if we choose, think wider and better on how can express our solidarity for America.
Sort of but not really. It's more about an important level of obliviousness as to the real nature of our parties and how they have changed over the past say, 30 years.
And the summary of it is basically what I just wrote above: voting Republican is fundamentally the self-expression of being an American.
If we vote Republican consistently enough we can dial down the theatrics and antagonism which devalues our politics. It is the Republican party which, in its soul carries at least the theoretical possibility that we as Americans, specifically it, can act meaningfully for the better in the name of all of us because it can represent the interest of all of us.
Whereas the Democrats are spiritually corrupted to the point where they can't do that. This is why there's a certain style of contemporary Right politics, "own the libs" that rubs me the wrong way, probably in the same way for me as it does for other commenters here. But even if I share that opinion, for me the consequences of it are much different.
As conservatives and Republicans we need to take care of our own business, which is to increase and demonstrate our commitment, solidarity and affection for America. To that end, the libs are less important than a lot of people think, and we need to quit entertaining ourselves with WWE style theatrics.
I'd say, over the next say, 3-20 years there's going to be some fairly important considerations coming due as to how we want to live: housing, climate, immigration, fiscal responsibility. And here's the thing. Even if, especially if we make good policy choices in those circumstances there's going to be losers. Big losers. Of course people can see this in advance and so they politically organize themselves to prevent that from happening. And because Washington is has been in gridlock for a while this works.
The point is, the way around that isn't by splitting hairs of the parliamentarian's ruling, as others on this thread would have you believe. It is to build up our stores of solidarity and citizenship so that the losers can see that certain things are in the best interest of America and can accept them on those terms even if they themselves don't benefit.
And to _that_ end, the Republican Party is essential. The Democrats just don't count. A lot of them want to recoil upon hearing that. But recoil or not, that's just the way it is.
I subscribe to Chaits’ position which is that all this heat is being generated by Manchins inexplicable refusal to indicate what spending level he’s willing to accept. Everything else is just the respective sides jockeying for position and trying to signal how resolute they are.
This is only half right. Chait is either ignorant or playing dumb characterizing Manchin as inexplicable. Manchin has actually been very consistent the whole cycle. As far the spending level goes, Manchin wants to know where the money is coming from, whatever the dollar figure. If he's okay with that (he might or might not be), then he'll consider the expenditure side. At least that's what he wants before he's willing to support final passage.
Libs don't have to like it but it's ridiculous to say it's inexplicable.
I've actually been very impressed with Manchin these last six months or go, quite a bit more than I expected to be in fact.
I’m not advocating this for any particular agenda, but because we’ve doinked our self-governance… and sometimes the only remedy to legislative constipation is an enema and what follows.
Not really. Voting Republican is our self-governance, and we can still do that.
But the failures were not Biden’s. They were legion among the organizations that had spent the last decade (or more) building a house of lies and selling it to the Executive.
Yeah, I'm on the other side of the fence for that one.
Like I wrote on another thread, I don't believe we're in a situation where we have to choose between blaming the brass and the deep state or blaming Biden. _But_, (and this is important), if we _do_ have to choose, I'm with the brass all the way.
Leaving Afghanistan was going to happen. I’m not one of the Panglossian “This was the Best of All Possible Evacuations” people that you will find on the board defending the evacuation as though they were defending Biden himself.
Yeah, I gotta admit that part is grinding my gears a little bit.
That said, the massive, massive failures are indicators that we should not have been there and, indeed, should have left years prior.
Yes and no. In a vacuum, yes. But in this world Joe Biden is the President and given that there are no indications he plans to resign, we have to make allowances for that.
And in _that_ world, we don't have enough information processing power at the top of our leadership pyramid, and for that reason we should still be in Afghanistan.
Well geez, maybe if we didn't draw down all our intelligence capabilities to preserve some talking points for some lib cable net news-hack, that might not have happened now, hmmm Jay?
The Socratic method is not a discussion of equals open to persuasion, but a master delivering ignorant students into enlightenment.
Combine that with a self-professed antipathy for Democrats as an identity and it seems like a poor vehicle for discussion.
Yeah, Jaybird and his Socratic style is aggravating, back when I was corresponding with him, which isn't much recently.
But then again, he is capable of stating a direct argument in simple declarative sentences, in his own voice, and when he does libs bitch at him for that too, so you can't sympathize all that much.
It is significant because the same war boosters who failed to anticipate or predict the speed at which their little project collapsed are the exact same actors who are now squalling that the withdrawal was a fiasco,....
It’s entirely relevant because the maroons making all these risible claims are the same idiots who oversaw or cheered the Afghanistan war for 20 failed years.
Yeah yeah yeah put up or shut up, who are these maroon war boosters and what are these risible claims?
All this is still just armchair quarterbacking with the benefit of hindsight.
This is silly and vague. The idea of armchair quarterbacking is that we should be reticent about criticizing say, Kirk Cousins, because even if at some level he sucks he is still way better than we would do in his position and might very well have decent reasons even for his bad decisions.
None of this applies to President Biden who is making mistakes any person of a modest amount of intelligence and initiative would avoid. Let alone a particular good executive, who we ought to be able to get for that job considering our stature as a nation.
No, at some point (ie, now) we have to hold the President accountable for the nature and the stature of the job that he has. "Well, nobody told me that the gov't would fall like a house of cards as soon as our troops left" Yeah, that works for the fry cook at McDonalds, not the President of the United States. So if Joe Biden were a fry cook at McDonalds we could give him a pass, but even then he should just be staying home and collecting Social Security because if he kept going to work he'd just burn himself with that 1000 degree cooking oil.
The report you put up has an excellent space to say “The country will collapse immediately if we withdraw”, it’s on page 9-10. They don’t. Just some vague assertions that it’ll be bad. In hindsight the report reads like the chirping of some blood drenched Pollyannah.
Btw, that report I linked to was from February and most of the drawdown stuff was about the Trump-era drawdown _to_ 2500. It was the Biden drawdown _from_ 2500 that was especially obscene and frankly from everything I've seen the brass has been pretty quiet and matter-of-fact about the whole thing, perhaps admirably so given the scale of the incompetence involved.
We’re out. We took over a hundred thousand refugees with us and we’re done with it now.
Really? Like there's nobody left Afghanistan we might want to get out, like hundreds of stranded Americans for example? Or that 100K Afghan refugees might have problems settling in the US, or any other country for that matter?
They had no clue they’d spent 2 trillion bucks, thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Afghan lives to produce a Potemkin village that.....
Come on North, this trillions and thousands thing has little or no relevance since the beginning of the Trump Administration (ie not just since the withdrawal agreement).
I've pointed this out to you before, more than once I think, and you had nothing. Why is this any more persuasive now?
I have no doubt that if they’d made such a dire prediction to the administration in advance that fact would have been leaked as part of their furious effort to cover their collective posteriors. That they haven’t leaked it suggests very strongly that the prediction was never made. It also parses with what we know about the DoD and other Afghan war boosters.
though it's from CRS, not really the either the brass or the spooks. But from your pov then, it ought to be even more credible as it pertains to the negative consequences of the troop drawdown.
But like before, this is still a wild goose chase. We don't have to know that Biden was warned a priori that if he drew down the troop strength below 2500 that the Afghan gov't would imminently fall. I'm pretty sure I've never argued that on these threads. We can more or less definitively conclude that Biden is a disaster without knowing that.
This is why in my prior correspondence to you I've emphasized the concepts of mission, capacity, and leadership. If you can keep those things in your head you won't get distracted by these risible deflections.
If we have an airbase, if we have intelligence assets, if we have equipment in theater, it means we have options. We don't have to carry a rabbit's foot for the Afghan gov't. We can react to events in nimble and time-effective ways.
And because we have, hypothetically, maintained our capacity to react, it's at least plausible that the Afghan government would still be in power because the Taliban would be afraid of provoking us.
Whereas Joe Biden's way, we bombed an American asset and his seven children with some super-cool new munition the army just invented as a retaliation for the suicide bomb against us. Some retaliation. That's a disgrace for Biden of course, but it's mainly borne of the reality that Biden managed this withdrawal in such a way as to nearly guarantee that there wouldn't be any better options.
No North, not at all. Casualties and footprint were light in Afghanistan during the Trump Administration _before_ he signed the withdrawal agreement. If we reverted to that, we'd be way better off than losing a dozen marines and some hundred Afghans at a pop.
Great. Then if all President Biden is capable of is blindly following whatever he's been told by his subordinates (and given what we've seen so far that seems to be a fair assessment) then he should have heeded what the brass told him about the drawdowns. All those marines and Afghans would still be alive today, and we'd still be in Afghanistan.
On “Parliamentarian Rules “Dreamers” Fix Can’t Be Done Through Reconciliation: Read It For Yourself”
That's right, so what I was talking about in that last comment was the about the way to get from here to there, and in that context I think you've got the timing wrong.
First of all, the biggest political shoe to drop from the GOP isn't who our Presidential candidate ought to be, frankly we've got a bunch of candidates who are good enough to win with if we nominate them. It's about what happens in 2022.
GOP is going to win the House for sure and probably, maybe, the Senate. This is what everybody is talking about but what's really important is the GOP winning ~240 House seats. That's the make or break for success. GOP will "control" the House with ~225 seats but if that's what the GOP has all that means is Kevin McCarthy is Nancy Pelosi without a dress.
And, what's the message fallout from 2022 leading into 2024? And assuming that we get what we need in 2022 (and I think we will), that's where the rubber is really going to meet the road.
My guess is, 2022 is going to be a really bad message environment for the Demos, and the voters are going to bite their pound of flesh out of the Demos' ass. But, after 2022, there will be some unspoken catharsis. After the Demos have taken their punishment, the voters will be in a more favorable frame of mind to listen. If the Demos have anything at all, that's when we'll see it.
By comparison right now the 2024 Presidential candidates (of either party) are much less important.
"
Well no, I don't admit to that. It's not an ironclad rule of American politics. It's not even a reliable generality with just a few small exceptions. In fact, it's a much much more complicated question than you're allowing for.
Luckily, there's a perfect example of this particular problem with libs going on right now. That is, we're in the middle of a debt limit drama as we speak, ie not the reconciliation or the highway bill, but the debt limit. Now, push comes to shove this will probably amount to nothing, but that's not completely guaranteed.
As Senator McConnell has pointed out, Demos have the capability to resolve this issue themselves. He has also said that there won't be any Republican votes for a debt limit increase or suspension. So for Dems, they desperately want GOP buy-in for whatever they do. The problem being, is that if they raise the debt limit unilaterally they are going to take a political hit. This is compounded by a quirk of reconciliation, in that the Demos can't eliminate or suspend the debt limit. They can only raise it to a higher number. And whatever number they pick, a year from now there's going to be ads against every House Democrat in America, "Angie Craig voted to authorize increasing the national debt by 20 trillion dollars" or whatever. There's a good chance this punch will land, at least to some extent, and there very well might be a few House Demos who lose their seat behind this.
Like I said before, push comes to shove, Demos in Congress are probably just stuck. But at the very least, they're going to bitch and squirm for a while before they give in. This where the "own the libs" thing has actual purpose. By putting some ritual humiliation on the libs, we reinforce the reality that whatever political power the libs do get, is contingent on and to be exercised for the best interest of America as a whole.
Or your own point about ACA is useful as well. Truth be told, you oversold the idea that ACA "really" was a Republican idea. But the rest of the story was right. GOP doing this or that is not at all equivalent to the Demos doing the same thing. The voters especially get that. It occurs in a different context, it has a different purpose and meaning.
This is why libs' assertions of good faith ring hollow so often: for me, for conservatives in general, for voters in general. Libs capacity for political action is and ought to be subordinate to the best interest of all America. Instead libs have a strong tendency to think that the national interest is just one piece in the game that's there for them to move around and manipulate.
"
This really isn't responsive to the earlier comment, but as far the current GOP goes, the most important Republican currently in office is McConnell. The most important Republican as far as the political and cultural future of the party, it's Ron DeSantis, by a lot. And that includes Trump btw. After that it's Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, maybe Marco Rubio, Mike Lee and some other GOP governors.
"
This is what I was trying to get at in my long response to March above (which I hope was comprehensible).
Because the legislatures and the Presidential elections are finely balanced, politics is mostly about defense and playing between the 40-yard lines. Alternatively, every once in a while there's a small opening that the other side can't readily block, in which case there's a mad scramble to grab as much as you can as fast as you can like a mostly peaceful protestor looting a Target.
In that world, the GOP has done what it can, which is to advocate in solidarity with the voters. Most notably, the GOP has had no interest in entitlement reform for at least 5 years. President Trump explicitly repudiated it.
Now, the fiscal motive for entitlement reform is still as strong as ever. Though the need to address that isn't imminent now as it was ten years ago when they did the sequesters.
But even that is secondary. What is more important is that the people who are getting Social Security and Medicare benefits don't want those benefits cut. Even if they could afford to have them cut or aren't really using them or the Treasury really needs the money, they simply aren't willing to entertain any of it. They figure, if my benefits are cut, all that's going to happen is some hedge fund guys in suspenders are going to get an extra $10 million in carried interest. Fcukem, I'll keep the money thank you very much.
They could be right even.
The point being, this dynamic dominates many or most or all of our important issues. We don't deal apples-to-apples among ourselves because we don't trust each other when we talk, which is itself less often than it was.
Ie, not just entitlements but guns, leaving Afghanistan, climate, immigration, vaccines against the virus, land development, etc etc.
To that end, it is important to emphasize that value proposition of the GOP is not that it is epsilon better than the Demos. I mean, it is but that's not the point.
The point is, that under the stable, consistent substantially immovable leadership of the Republican Party, we have the possibility to unwind this pervasive sludge of alienation among ourselves.
That's the point.
"
I'm tempted to say a number of things in response to this, but for now let's just leave it at this:
Those 81 million people are not going to be there for you in general, maybe even never again. President Trump showed us, the GOP, where the votes were that we weren't getting enough of in the Obama era. But, he also pulled a pulled a whole lot of obnoxious, inflammatory stuff. And what's worse, he created the perception and the reality that he would be continuing the cheap theatrics for as long as he was around.
Now Trump is gone, we're keeping all the votes we gained in the Trump era, and we're reclaiming the ones we lost because Trump pissed them off. 2022 is not a good year to be a Demo.
"
I'm not sure exactly what the timeframe is supposed to refer to. That said, surprising (or maybe not), I have quite a bit of sympathy for Michael's complaint.
Unfortunately the problem is that the Democrats _are_ bad. In terms of politics, people who are talking about other things might be either oblivious to, or trying to hide this reality.
The one thing I could say that maybe could help the situation is to resist the sense of fatalism that we might otherwise be susceptible to. The Democrats are _not_ a force of nature. Leaving aside for the moment the remaining terms of office that they have been elected to, we absolutely can take them out like yesterday's garbage, and there's a quite good chance that we will.
The upshot of that is we actually can, if we choose, think wider and better on how can express our solidarity for America.
"
Sort of but not really. It's more about an important level of obliviousness as to the real nature of our parties and how they have changed over the past say, 30 years.
And the summary of it is basically what I just wrote above: voting Republican is fundamentally the self-expression of being an American.
If we vote Republican consistently enough we can dial down the theatrics and antagonism which devalues our politics. It is the Republican party which, in its soul carries at least the theoretical possibility that we as Americans, specifically it, can act meaningfully for the better in the name of all of us because it can represent the interest of all of us.
Whereas the Democrats are spiritually corrupted to the point where they can't do that. This is why there's a certain style of contemporary Right politics, "own the libs" that rubs me the wrong way, probably in the same way for me as it does for other commenters here. But even if I share that opinion, for me the consequences of it are much different.
As conservatives and Republicans we need to take care of our own business, which is to increase and demonstrate our commitment, solidarity and affection for America. To that end, the libs are less important than a lot of people think, and we need to quit entertaining ourselves with WWE style theatrics.
I'd say, over the next say, 3-20 years there's going to be some fairly important considerations coming due as to how we want to live: housing, climate, immigration, fiscal responsibility. And here's the thing. Even if, especially if we make good policy choices in those circumstances there's going to be losers. Big losers. Of course people can see this in advance and so they politically organize themselves to prevent that from happening. And because Washington is has been in gridlock for a while this works.
The point is, the way around that isn't by splitting hairs of the parliamentarian's ruling, as others on this thread would have you believe. It is to build up our stores of solidarity and citizenship so that the losers can see that certain things are in the best interest of America and can accept them on those terms even if they themselves don't benefit.
And to _that_ end, the Republican Party is essential. The Democrats just don't count. A lot of them want to recoil upon hearing that. But recoil or not, that's just the way it is.
"
Yeah, he hasn't exactly said that but that's the best guess considering the payfors he and the other Demos are willing to sign off on.
"
This is only half right. Chait is either ignorant or playing dumb characterizing Manchin as inexplicable. Manchin has actually been very consistent the whole cycle. As far the spending level goes, Manchin wants to know where the money is coming from, whatever the dollar figure. If he's okay with that (he might or might not be), then he'll consider the expenditure side. At least that's what he wants before he's willing to support final passage.
Libs don't have to like it but it's ridiculous to say it's inexplicable.
I've actually been very impressed with Manchin these last six months or go, quite a bit more than I expected to be in fact.
"
Not really. Voting Republican is our self-governance, and we can still do that.
On “DOD Admits Kabul Drone Strike Killed “As Many As 10 Civilians, Including Up To 7 Children””
Yeah, I'm on the other side of the fence for that one.
Like I wrote on another thread, I don't believe we're in a situation where we have to choose between blaming the brass and the deep state or blaming Biden. _But_, (and this is important), if we _do_ have to choose, I'm with the brass all the way.
"
Yeah, I gotta admit that part is grinding my gears a little bit.
Yes and no. In a vacuum, yes. But in this world Joe Biden is the President and given that there are no indications he plans to resign, we have to make allowances for that.
And in _that_ world, we don't have enough information processing power at the top of our leadership pyramid, and for that reason we should still be in Afghanistan.
"
Well geez, maybe if we didn't draw down all our intelligence capabilities to preserve some talking points for some lib cable net news-hack, that might not have happened now, hmmm Jay?
"
Basically for the same reason you articulated in your comment above.
It was Biden who's political stature and approval rating that was cratering, he was the one who had to do something.
"
Joe Biden is so smart and dreamy. Whee!
On “Listed: AOC, The Met Gala, and That Dress”
Yeah, Jaybird and his Socratic style is aggravating, back when I was corresponding with him, which isn't much recently.
But then again, he is capable of stating a direct argument in simple declarative sentences, in his own voice, and when he does libs bitch at him for that too, so you can't sympathize all that much.
On “President Biden Gives Vote of Confidence to CJCS General Milley”
Yeah yeah yeah put up or shut up, who are these maroon war boosters and what are these risible claims?
"
This is silly and vague. The idea of armchair quarterbacking is that we should be reticent about criticizing say, Kirk Cousins, because even if at some level he sucks he is still way better than we would do in his position and might very well have decent reasons even for his bad decisions.
None of this applies to President Biden who is making mistakes any person of a modest amount of intelligence and initiative would avoid. Let alone a particular good executive, who we ought to be able to get for that job considering our stature as a nation.
No, at some point (ie, now) we have to hold the President accountable for the nature and the stature of the job that he has. "Well, nobody told me that the gov't would fall like a house of cards as soon as our troops left" Yeah, that works for the fry cook at McDonalds, not the President of the United States. So if Joe Biden were a fry cook at McDonalds we could give him a pass, but even then he should just be staying home and collecting Social Security because if he kept going to work he'd just burn himself with that 1000 degree cooking oil.
Btw, that report I linked to was from February and most of the drawdown stuff was about the Trump-era drawdown _to_ 2500. It was the Biden drawdown _from_ 2500 that was especially obscene and frankly from everything I've seen the brass has been pretty quiet and matter-of-fact about the whole thing, perhaps admirably so given the scale of the incompetence involved.
"
Really? Like there's nobody left Afghanistan we might want to get out, like hundreds of stranded Americans for example? Or that 100K Afghan refugees might have problems settling in the US, or any other country for that matter?
"
Come on North, this trillions and thousands thing has little or no relevance since the beginning of the Trump Administration (ie not just since the withdrawal agreement).
I've pointed this out to you before, more than once I think, and you had nothing. Why is this any more persuasive now?
"
This is a useful resource, I think:
https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46670
though it's from CRS, not really the either the brass or the spooks. But from your pov then, it ought to be even more credible as it pertains to the negative consequences of the troop drawdown.
But like before, this is still a wild goose chase. We don't have to know that Biden was warned a priori that if he drew down the troop strength below 2500 that the Afghan gov't would imminently fall. I'm pretty sure I've never argued that on these threads. We can more or less definitively conclude that Biden is a disaster without knowing that.
This is why in my prior correspondence to you I've emphasized the concepts of mission, capacity, and leadership. If you can keep those things in your head you won't get distracted by these risible deflections.
If we have an airbase, if we have intelligence assets, if we have equipment in theater, it means we have options. We don't have to carry a rabbit's foot for the Afghan gov't. We can react to events in nimble and time-effective ways.
And because we have, hypothetically, maintained our capacity to react, it's at least plausible that the Afghan government would still be in power because the Taliban would be afraid of provoking us.
Whereas Joe Biden's way, we bombed an American asset and his seven children with some super-cool new munition the army just invented as a retaliation for the suicide bomb against us. Some retaliation. That's a disgrace for Biden of course, but it's mainly borne of the reality that Biden managed this withdrawal in such a way as to nearly guarantee that there wouldn't be any better options.
"
Really? What have you seen relating to this. Frankly, I haven't seen very much. It seems like you're just guessing at this without any basis in fact.
"
No North, not at all. Casualties and footprint were light in Afghanistan during the Trump Administration _before_ he signed the withdrawal agreement. If we reverted to that, we'd be way better off than losing a dozen marines and some hundred Afghans at a pop.
"
Great. Then if all President Biden is capable of is blindly following whatever he's been told by his subordinates (and given what we've seen so far that seems to be a fair assessment) then he should have heeded what the brass told him about the drawdowns. All those marines and Afghans would still be alive today, and we'd still be in Afghanistan.
"
Ok, let's stipulate to that. From there, it seems much better to conclude that we should be blaming President Biden as opposed to exonerating him.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.