I didn't think that he was. I thought I made that clear in the earlier comment, but I guess not.
One upshot of what I was trying to get at is that the GOP is going to win the 2022 election, in at least some sense of the word win. What's not clear is whether the GOP will functionally wipe out the Democratic Party, either in 2022, 2024 or ever. That's what's in the best interest of America, but some people will be reluctant to do it for ego reasons.
Whether the Military and intelligence services knew their project was a total lemon that would collapse immediately or not simply delineates the line between how much they were malevolent vs how much they were inept.
I don't know right now, exactly how much we have to choose between blaming Joe and the White House versus the brass and the intelligence community.
I do know that, somehow, if we have to come down on one side or the other I'm with the brass. If it were Trump, I'd probably be with Trump. But it's pretty clear that Biden is checked out way beyond anything Trump ever was. Trump was a nasty piece of work but always had plenty of his own sort of feral, cagey energy.
There's hospice patients with more on the ball than Joe.
And what's worse, now that things have gone sideways the Nice Old Man Joe is gone and we're back to the old thin-skinned blowhard jerk. For a lot of voters, the point of voting for Joe in the first place was to get rid of Trump's narcissism, callousness, ignorance and vulgarity. I guess Joe isn't as gratuitously vulgar as Trump was, but I don't think they're going to put up with what we've seen over the last week.
I get that you’re all team red propaganda all the time… but that doesn’t impress me or move my assessments very much.
Propaganda or not, it should impress you more than it does, apparently.
Hopefully he can fire a few generals and such. I suppose he is capable of doing that. If he does, that's probably a good thing in its own right, on balance. That's not the same thing as a major reorganization of our defense/diplomatic/intelligence establishment, much less a successful one.
That would be much harder to do than overseeing a relatively simple evacuation operation, and he failed at that.
From what I can see, you're not much of a lib as League people go. Even so, I think its difficult for you to appreciate the success of America, if America is going to be successful again, is going to happen on what looks like partisan and ideological grounds (and of course it's going to be that much the worse for actual libs). I see more or less what's going on, but the truth is Right propaganda so I have to hedge against that. No, that doesn't work, that's how we got in the problem in the first place.
Except reality seems to be that, bluntly, he’s doing what the public wants. They’ve wanted out of Afghanistan for years, possibly a decade or more.
Yeah yeah I ain't havin' it. You don't think voters or poll respondents won't conveniently forget this or change their mind when it's pointed out to them that we 2500 troops in Afghanistan when Biden took office and 7000 there now? I do.
(And probably more coming since will still haven't made a legit effort to evacuate the Americans there)
I'm not getting your point. Are you saying this is backdoor deep state demonstration project to demonstrate the incompetence of civilian Demo leadership? Or something else?
In a different world, we could have intelligent civilian leadership over military affairs and the intelligence/diplomatic apparatus directed toward prudent judgment and the national interest. In this world we have drooling incompetent Demo Joe Biden as President, so that's probably the best we can do.
There are a lot of negative things that one can say about the voting public but on this issue I think they are a million miles ahead of the permanent state and its hangers on. Maybe it’s because their livelihoods don’t depend on believing all the obvious falsehoods and spin on Afghanistan broadcast over the last 20 years. Maybe our institutions are just that stupid. In either case Biden is still the one coming off closer to an adult. Adults don’t believe in fairy tales and have to act accordingly even when it sucks. Apparently the DoD, state dept, huge swathes of the intelligence community, related NGOs, and the weeping talking heads not only want magic and unicorns, they think they can get them.
Yeah yeah yeah I ain't havin' it. This idea of cold-eyed strategic realism works for smart people. If you're a mewling ignorant emptyhead doofus, ie Demo President Joe Biden, you're better off just doing what the brass tells you.
Gotta admit, I'm not following this sockpuppet crap, don't really care very much or another.
But, this is so extreme it defies words. Joe Biden is the special needs kid working at McDonalds who can't go near the fryer 'cause he'll burn himself. Utterly diabolical.
Yeah that's true for the most part, but it's also true that that's been baked into the cake for several months now and they still don't have the votes, at least not yet.
Now while they were trying to thread that needle, a new thing comes along where the Demos and their senile leader at clearly at blame.
This reconciliation bill, or more accurately a reconciliation bill, may still go through, but my gut says it won't. I don't know how, there's a lot of stuff in the air, but I suspect President Biden's declining approval ratings will be big factor.
The reconciliation bill is certainly going to be an interesting political exercise to watch. I’m surprised you were so bullish on its odds of passing to begin with. I’d have put odds of it passing around fifty to sixty percent well prior to Afghanistan and I think they’re in the same place now.
Basically, the bullish case for reconciliation is there's a huge variety of possibilities as to what the bill ends up being. Specifically, if Manchin and Sinema are on board, at least theoretically, then the topline number can be bid all the way down to zero, asymptotically speaking, and still be viable. If the final bill ends up being, say $700 billion of random lib appropriations, are the libs really going to vote against it? I don't think so. Even if it's smaller than they wanted, it's still that much more than they had before.
Now, I suspect this is going to be overtaken by the events in Afghanistan. People are going to be looking to take a bite out of Biden's ass and this looks to be the place to do it.
Jeez I dunno, maybe because there are ~10K Americans who are in imminent danger of death by decapitation from the Taliban due to this particular chapter of Demo incompetence.
I’d say the only misinformation merchants are those in the neo-imperial blob trying to scapegoat everyone they can for their own lies and incompetence.
There certainly have been those, but it is a mistake to say those have been the only ones. That just whitewashes the particular mendacity and distortions of the Demo misinformation artists in the service of the witless Demo President.
The idea that the Administration's hands were tied by what they inherited from President Trump, that there was no alternative other than remaining in Afghanistan for another 20 years, that as of a week or a month ago, that the withdrawal of America from Afghanistan was going all peachy, these things weren't just not true, they were obviously absurd to anyone paying any attention at all. Yet the Demo misinformation establishment is still trying to sell them to us.
I predict there won't be a lot of customers for that.
It is especially blameworthy that the Administration obscures some important considerations which illustrate the horrifying level of President Biden's obliviousness. Eg, that there hasn't been a single American KIA in Afghanistan for a year and a half or so and very few in the years before that. That the President is ordering airborne divisions into Afghanistan now and as soon as they get there there will be more American troops in Afghanistan now than there was when Trump left office. That the American footprint in Afghanistan will be much bigger now to rescue Americans and Afghan friendlies than it was before. That it's perfectly plausible to secure military aircraft and high-technology equipment away from terrorists, etc etc.
It's important to emphasize the particular Demo failures of this debacle instead of indulging "both sides do it" faux evenhandedness
I doubt. There was one poll, I forget which one it was, shows Biden at 46% already and under water. Doesn't matter really, we'll all find out soon enough.
Demo misinformation merchants are already desperately hoping to move the news cycle onto something else. I don't think this will happen soon though, mainly because there are 5-10 thousand American civilians of whatever situation in Afghanistan now. Getting those people out, or watching them get killed by terrorists on television, is going to bring the attention of the American people back to Afghanistan, and the Demo failures instigating the events of the last week.
Absent, of course, is any connecting tissue explaining why the mess in Afghanistan would necessitate Biden and his party putting their domestic priorities on hold. Trump and the GOP rammed their deficit fueled giveaway to the plutocrats come what may. The Dems should most assuredly push forward with presenting their alternatives. To do any less would be political malpractice and a betrayal of their voters.
Like I wrote before, it looks tenuous for some people but it really ain't.
Joe Biden can have one thought in his head at a time, at most. Right now, in the middle of the worst foreign policy disaster since 911/Iran hostages/Saigon/Pearl Harbor/whatever, our chief executive is spending his days at Camp David eating ice cream and watching television.
At this time, it is important to focus the attention of our Establishment towards our actual national interest, instead of 1/2/3/whatever trillion dollars worth of random lib grab bag crap.
In fact, in a bank shot way, I actually do expect this to happen. I don't have any legitimate solid information, but if you asked me last week, I'd venture there would be a reconciliation bill of some sort become law. Now, I'd guess 50%+ probability there won't be any.
Yeah, libs (or others for that matter) might think the connection between Afghanistan and the reconciliation bill is too tenuous to matter. But I don't think so.
First and most obvious, the particular nature of this debacle is a consequence of the incompetence and lack of capacity of this particular Demo President.
Second, the optics, messaging and such. In objective terms, the cataclysmic failure of Demo foreign policy in terms of American national interest and human rights dwarfs any considerations about messaging. But in subjective terms, messaging matters a lot. And the messaging here is typical of many other failures of American political culture.
There is a horrible negative symbiosis between mainstream lib information conveyors and mainstream lib information consumers. The consumers desperately want reassurances of an odd kind against the American Right. They want to believe that, pertaining to policy issues, that intellectually speaking they are in the right, relative to typical mainstream conservatives. They also want to believe that conservatives are immoral in various ways, and that conservatives are or ought to be politically weak.
Furthermore, the demand for such information, or misinformation, doesn't go down just because such things aren't true. In fact, it goes up. Libs demand to be lied to.
This week in Afghanistan is a unique event, in that it is so dramatic that the usual damage control probably isn't going to work. And it's probably losing it's practical value. We're taking over anyway. What's the point of the Baghdad Bob act?
Basically what I said before. Libs got nuthin', they got no filibuster, no SCOTUS, no HR1, no Jan 6 Commission blah blah blah. They may not even get any infrastructure, and what they do get is going to be constrained by whatever Manchin and/or some GOP's are willing to agree to.
In this world, libs are not going to be motivated to be team players. And though they don't like our team any more than they did before, for the most part they're not going to be angry at us. They're going to be angry at the Demo's in Washington, and be looking to take it out on them.
I saw a lawn sign for a Governor candidate that proudly and explicitly identified him as pro Trump.
Yeah, that's the one tangible influence Trump has left.
He can endorse (or decline to endorse) non-incumbent politicians with low-ish profiles in competitive primaries. It's not nothing, but it's not much either.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “The Fall of Saigon and the Afghanistan Moment”
I didn't think that he was. I thought I made that clear in the earlier comment, but I guess not.
One upshot of what I was trying to get at is that the GOP is going to win the 2022 election, in at least some sense of the word win. What's not clear is whether the GOP will functionally wipe out the Democratic Party, either in 2022, 2024 or ever. That's what's in the best interest of America, but some people will be reluctant to do it for ego reasons.
"
Yeah right, this is my nephew watching Paw Patrol, except that my nephew has better information retention.
https://twitter.com/SeanTrende/status/1427046538400915460
"
I don't know right now, exactly how much we have to choose between blaming Joe and the White House versus the brass and the intelligence community.
I do know that, somehow, if we have to come down on one side or the other I'm with the brass. If it were Trump, I'd probably be with Trump. But it's pretty clear that Biden is checked out way beyond anything Trump ever was. Trump was a nasty piece of work but always had plenty of his own sort of feral, cagey energy.
There's hospice patients with more on the ball than Joe.
And what's worse, now that things have gone sideways the Nice Old Man Joe is gone and we're back to the old thin-skinned blowhard jerk. For a lot of voters, the point of voting for Joe in the first place was to get rid of Trump's narcissism, callousness, ignorance and vulgarity. I guess Joe isn't as gratuitously vulgar as Trump was, but I don't think they're going to put up with what we've seen over the last week.
"
Propaganda or not, it should impress you more than it does, apparently.
Hopefully he can fire a few generals and such. I suppose he is capable of doing that. If he does, that's probably a good thing in its own right, on balance. That's not the same thing as a major reorganization of our defense/diplomatic/intelligence establishment, much less a successful one.
That would be much harder to do than overseeing a relatively simple evacuation operation, and he failed at that.
From what I can see, you're not much of a lib as League people go. Even so, I think its difficult for you to appreciate the success of America, if America is going to be successful again, is going to happen on what looks like partisan and ideological grounds (and of course it's going to be that much the worse for actual libs). I see more or less what's going on, but the truth is Right propaganda so I have to hedge against that. No, that doesn't work, that's how we got in the problem in the first place.
"
O rely? Like the voters can't see Joe Biden hiding out in Camp David eating ice cream and watching television and come to the appropriate conclusions?
"
Yeah yeah I ain't havin' it. You don't think voters or poll respondents won't conveniently forget this or change their mind when it's pointed out to them that we 2500 troops in Afghanistan when Biden took office and 7000 there now? I do.
(And probably more coming since will still haven't made a legit effort to evacuate the Americans there)
"
I'm not getting your point. Are you saying this is backdoor deep state demonstration project to demonstrate the incompetence of civilian Demo leadership? Or something else?
"
Well, yeah.
In a different world, we could have intelligent civilian leadership over military affairs and the intelligence/diplomatic apparatus directed toward prudent judgment and the national interest. In this world we have drooling incompetent Demo Joe Biden as President, so that's probably the best we can do.
"
"
Yeah yeah yeah I ain't havin' it. This idea of cold-eyed strategic realism works for smart people. If you're a mewling ignorant emptyhead doofus, ie Demo President Joe Biden, you're better off just doing what the brass tells you.
On “What The Biden Administration is Not Saying About Afghanistan Is Getting Louder”
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Gotta admit, I'm not following this sockpuppet crap, don't really care very much or another.
But, this is so extreme it defies words. Joe Biden is the special needs kid working at McDonalds who can't go near the fryer 'cause he'll burn himself. Utterly diabolical.
On “Biden Administration, Speaker Pelosi Have Their Hands Full With $3.5 Trillion Budget Resolution”
Yeah that's true for the most part, but it's also true that that's been baked into the cake for several months now and they still don't have the votes, at least not yet.
Now while they were trying to thread that needle, a new thing comes along where the Demos and their senile leader at clearly at blame.
This reconciliation bill, or more accurately a reconciliation bill, may still go through, but my gut says it won't. I don't know how, there's a lot of stuff in the air, but I suspect President Biden's declining approval ratings will be big factor.
"
Basically, the bullish case for reconciliation is there's a huge variety of possibilities as to what the bill ends up being. Specifically, if Manchin and Sinema are on board, at least theoretically, then the topline number can be bid all the way down to zero, asymptotically speaking, and still be viable. If the final bill ends up being, say $700 billion of random lib appropriations, are the libs really going to vote against it? I don't think so. Even if it's smaller than they wanted, it's still that much more than they had before.
Now, I suspect this is going to be overtaken by the events in Afghanistan. People are going to be looking to take a bite out of Biden's ass and this looks to be the place to do it.
"
Jeez I dunno, maybe because there are ~10K Americans who are in imminent danger of death by decapitation from the Taliban due to this particular chapter of Demo incompetence.
"
There certainly have been those, but it is a mistake to say those have been the only ones. That just whitewashes the particular mendacity and distortions of the Demo misinformation artists in the service of the witless Demo President.
The idea that the Administration's hands were tied by what they inherited from President Trump, that there was no alternative other than remaining in Afghanistan for another 20 years, that as of a week or a month ago, that the withdrawal of America from Afghanistan was going all peachy, these things weren't just not true, they were obviously absurd to anyone paying any attention at all. Yet the Demo misinformation establishment is still trying to sell them to us.
I predict there won't be a lot of customers for that.
It is especially blameworthy that the Administration obscures some important considerations which illustrate the horrifying level of President Biden's obliviousness. Eg, that there hasn't been a single American KIA in Afghanistan for a year and a half or so and very few in the years before that. That the President is ordering airborne divisions into Afghanistan now and as soon as they get there there will be more American troops in Afghanistan now than there was when Trump left office. That the American footprint in Afghanistan will be much bigger now to rescue Americans and Afghan friendlies than it was before. That it's perfectly plausible to secure military aircraft and high-technology equipment away from terrorists, etc etc.
It's important to emphasize the particular Demo failures of this debacle instead of indulging "both sides do it" faux evenhandedness
"
I doubt. There was one poll, I forget which one it was, shows Biden at 46% already and under water. Doesn't matter really, we'll all find out soon enough.
Demo misinformation merchants are already desperately hoping to move the news cycle onto something else. I don't think this will happen soon though, mainly because there are 5-10 thousand American civilians of whatever situation in Afghanistan now. Getting those people out, or watching them get killed by terrorists on television, is going to bring the attention of the American people back to Afghanistan, and the Demo failures instigating the events of the last week.
"
Like I wrote before, it looks tenuous for some people but it really ain't.
Joe Biden can have one thought in his head at a time, at most. Right now, in the middle of the worst foreign policy disaster since 911/Iran hostages/Saigon/Pearl Harbor/whatever, our chief executive is spending his days at Camp David eating ice cream and watching television.
At this time, it is important to focus the attention of our Establishment towards our actual national interest, instead of 1/2/3/whatever trillion dollars worth of random lib grab bag crap.
In fact, in a bank shot way, I actually do expect this to happen. I don't have any legitimate solid information, but if you asked me last week, I'd venture there would be a reconciliation bill of some sort become law. Now, I'd guess 50%+ probability there won't be any.
"
Yeah, libs (or others for that matter) might think the connection between Afghanistan and the reconciliation bill is too tenuous to matter. But I don't think so.
First and most obvious, the particular nature of this debacle is a consequence of the incompetence and lack of capacity of this particular Demo President.
Second, the optics, messaging and such. In objective terms, the cataclysmic failure of Demo foreign policy in terms of American national interest and human rights dwarfs any considerations about messaging. But in subjective terms, messaging matters a lot. And the messaging here is typical of many other failures of American political culture.
There is a horrible negative symbiosis between mainstream lib information conveyors and mainstream lib information consumers. The consumers desperately want reassurances of an odd kind against the American Right. They want to believe that, pertaining to policy issues, that intellectually speaking they are in the right, relative to typical mainstream conservatives. They also want to believe that conservatives are immoral in various ways, and that conservatives are or ought to be politically weak.
Furthermore, the demand for such information, or misinformation, doesn't go down just because such things aren't true. In fact, it goes up. Libs demand to be lied to.
This week in Afghanistan is a unique event, in that it is so dramatic that the usual damage control probably isn't going to work. And it's probably losing it's practical value. We're taking over anyway. What's the point of the Baghdad Bob act?
On “The Final Stages of the Con: Donald Trump, Stolen Elections, and Delusion”
Once more, with feeling, could I get my comments unmoderated again?
"
mods, again, still nothing
"
Bueller, Bueller, anybody?
"
mod needed, comments gone
On “Past is Prologue: January 6th Commission Edition”
Basically what I said before. Libs got nuthin', they got no filibuster, no SCOTUS, no HR1, no Jan 6 Commission blah blah blah. They may not even get any infrastructure, and what they do get is going to be constrained by whatever Manchin and/or some GOP's are willing to agree to.
In this world, libs are not going to be motivated to be team players. And though they don't like our team any more than they did before, for the most part they're not going to be angry at us. They're going to be angry at the Demo's in Washington, and be looking to take it out on them.
"
Having second thoughts on this one already, hmmmm Philip?
On “Senate Republicans Successfully Block January 6th Commission”
Yeah, that's the one tangible influence Trump has left.
He can endorse (or decline to endorse) non-incumbent politicians with low-ish profiles in competitive primaries. It's not nothing, but it's not much either.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.