Just imagining Bill Kristol and John Bolton driving around in a car with beer bottle molotov cocktails... like the two lawyers who got nabbed during the mostly-peaceful riots.
Who gets evacuated and who doesn't is predicated on a cease fire with the Taliban; and it's the Taliban who controls the checkpoints which determine who can and cannot depart.
We'll likely never know how many or who didn't make it out... but as North has previously observed, as long as those folks are indigenous, well, who's gonna care?
Which points back to the baseline assumption that no contingency plans were necessary because the evacuation zone would obviously be under Govt. control for the duration.
We're preparing to head out on a family vacation... our first since we did the camino back in 2019. I think it's also the first proper vacation from work since March 2020. Sure, I've taken days off (hey, we have UNLIMITED vacation!), but this is the first time I'll 'unplug' for a week. And by unplug I mean only work on a few deals and skip all the corporate/regional meetings...
We're even taking the train for extra adventure and fun... and just to make neo-liberal twitter mad about taking trains. I'm ready tho... prepared a few spreadsheets and charts with cost benefit analysis; I've even separated hard dollars from soft dollars and intangible QOL benefits. Thinking creating a graphic that is just a straight line from my house to the nearest city to illustrate the train route. Man, it's exhausting to go on Vacation on twitter. It's only possible because we can even take our car on the train, so packing is little more than throwing crap into bags ... AS MANY AS CAN FIT IN THE CAR ... and that's it. We're even packing a case of sparkling water, because we can. Anyhow, back to excel... these tweets don't thread themselves.
Ugh, Schmitt. When I went back to revisit owing to his uptick in mentions... remembered why he's a D-Lister. Decent prose, but so obviously inconsistent that there's no real development of thought... less a political theorist than a political journalist.
Although, I concur with your assessment of the Neo-cons... my cynicism there says that the right will not hesitate to engage in 'who lost Afghanistan' diatribes regardless. Old habits, any stick with which to beat the dog, and all that.
This is right. Fidesz is broadly popular with a plurality of voters in an electoral system that allows for factions. If anything it is a counter-point to my constant harping on more factionalized voting! Then again, the problem with Fidesz isn't that it's popular in Hungary, its that opposition is split on axes that don't make for a natural coalition. Still, it happened in Israel and it might happen in Hungary that an unnatural coalition emerges to challenge a ruling coalition.
So +1 for my constant harping on factionalized voting?!
I'm sure Tucker Carlson and others have said stupid things about Hungary but man, the rebuttals I've seen beggar my belief in rebuttals. Yglesias in particular sounded like he ate a bucket of stupid for about a week.
All plausible... which means that Biden has to publicly fire some Pentagon folks for advising him on the slow collapse theory... for the good of the organization.
I'd maybe redirect a little to suggest that if we accept that the Pentagon was attempting to thwart policy for it's own interests (and I'm sure it has been) then this might be a passive aggressive attempt by the Pentagon to make the policy look like a debacle... which the President should publicly flog. High profile careers should be ruined for not executing a withdrawal well.
Which is to concur that if the only option was to stand on a desk at the Pentagon (metaphorically) and demand immediate withdrawal... then that should also have been part of Biden's management of the process.
On the one hand, I really don't think anyone will care about Kandahar (or Afghanistan at all) returning to the Taliban, and I suspect the Embassy will be fine until everyone leaves - then some sort of public 'desecration' - it will be the couple/few thousand dead collaborators that will be the bad press...
Yeah, this is one of those things where even if the policy decision is correct... we still have to account for 20-years of activity that needs unwinding. I had a bad feeling when we abandoned the Bagram Airbase like hikers from an air BnB. The scary thing is that it has all the appearance of believing our own bullshit/PR about Afghanistan's puppet govt prospects.
I was fully prepared to witness a debacle under Trump... I'm a little surprised that team Biden is surprised by the debacle... we were supposed to be getting people who 'know about these things'. Then again, witness the Masktastrophe debacle and various other less than well managed episodes, and I'm left wondering if Biden/Harris just doesn't have enough Clinton machinery to be effective. Boring might be *a* selling point, but only when its coupled with competent.
Sometimes doing your job is understanding how your job works with the other people doing their jobs:
"The problems stem partly from the fact that Congress has never thrown so much money at an anti-eviction program, so officials at lower levels of government have struggled to find their footing.
"In most cases they couldn’t scale up an already-existing program, or if they could scale up an existing program, that program was tiny compared to the funding available now,” said Ann Oliva, a housing policy expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “That explains some of the lag."
HuffPost reached out to every area that hadn’t handed out any ERAP money through June. The ones who responded cited the difficulty of getting a new program off the ground, inter-governmental coordination struggles, burdensome requirements and even trouble attracting applicants. Many of them also stressed that they have been sending out other housing assistance funds, and others have managed to get their programs up and running in July and August. "
But the money quotation comes from the newly liberated Oracle of New York City, Mayor de Blasio's office:
"“The main the reason is that the application was fucking impossible,” said Bill Neidhardt, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s spokesperson. “I think it’s strategic incompetence. That’s why they delayed it, and that’s why they rolled out a mind-bogglingly unusable interface. Both those things show they didn’t want people to get the money.”"
Ironically, using it for crabgrass might be better than using it for soybeans/corn.
You are correct that dandelions are a gift. Bees like them, their greens are edible, and they are lovely... definitely pre-fall (in the biblical sense) creations.
dunno dude... Republicans typically just shovel money at the corporations... so if I had to guess?
The 'we' was making sure that help went to people who were housing the sort of people who needed help, not people who were housing people who could likely pay but would rather not take the hit to savings. That we.
WW7 is a much bigger deal than I think we appreciate. If the courts are really stating (and they seem to be) that the evidence is overwhelming that Monsanto was willfully hiding 'scientific' facts that it knew it's product was harmful... it's akin to the tobacco industry.
But, while Tobacco is a personal pleasure/vice... our entire (grain) farming infrastructure is built around glyphosate tolerant crops. One article I read says that Monsanto is removing Round-up from consumer access by 2023, but will still manufacture for commercial agricultural use (it *has* to) ... presumably under the guidance that this is a hazardous chemical to be handled only by professionals in hazmat suits.
That's a band-aid for now... one of the persistent 'rumors' for a few decades has been the medically substantiated (but legally disputed) fact that glyphosate (and other chemicals edited in to plants, a'la GMO's) were argued not to have a pathway into human neurological systems... various intestinal/blood/brain barriers protected us from direct ingestion/exposure. Most of the 'studies' challenging these findings were/are funded by the industry.
As in interested bystander, I've followed from a distance... but google glyphosate and blood/brain barriers and it's like the blinkers have fallen from the eyes of scientists. Which is to say, that even use by hazmat farm workers could still have downstream impact on consumers.
A breaking of standards when the other people do it, acts of prudence/necessity when we do it.
You can read the Emergency Rental Assistance FAQs if you want... they basically acknowledge that the hurdles we placed in front of the program to make sure only the deserving folks got the assistance are the hurdles they are working on improving so that only the deserving folks get the assistance:
"In March 2021, Treasury substantially revised ERA program rules to provide grantees with flexibility and encourage rapid assistance. On May 7, Treasury announced the launch of the second round of Emergency Rental Assistance made available under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021and made significant additional updates to program rules to allow grantees to speed assistance to eligible households. Feedback from grantees indicates that Treasury’s guidance has accelerated the pace of funds being used to support renters
-- for example, numerous state and local grantees have implemented fact-specific proxies as described in
Treasury’s FAQs to speed up income verification, which is often the most time-consuming part of the
eligibility verification process."
Which is govt speak for why UBI payments are better than 'assistance programs' and/or why PPP type programs to the landlords would be more efficient but would put $$ in big pockets and have worse optics. But, what's the objective here?
Bottom line, we're poorly governed... which leads to defection.
"Reality proves the vaccines are safe. Reality also proves the vaccines protect against severe morbidity and death. And like the flu vaccine that needs to be renewed from time to time, it is the same in this case."
And the additional context is that Israel is recommending 3rd doses for people over 60... many of whom were vaccinated in Jan/Feb and who will be dosed again in Aug/Sept/Oct... as they would be for ordinary flu.
I could see needing booster shots for this as the global roll-out of vaccines will likely take a year or two additionally. Likely there will be a taper as the virus becomes merely endemic and immunity is high, but never perfect.
It is already the public policy recommendation that people over 60 get Flu Shots *every* year.
This though is the weird libertarian/economist blind spot:
Assume a game with rules.
Altering the rules can have unintended consequences.
Theoretically there should be no rules
But for the rules we've assumed in the game.
The premise I agree with is that the rules of the game are so unimaginably complex that thinking we could order them to our whim is fraught with unintended consequences.
Where I part ways is the idea that the rules are sui-generis and that we aren't already laboring under anything *other* than unintended consequences.
Yes? That's the point. Inflation is deemed normal to stabilize debt markets on behalf of the creditors. Which is why 'runs' of inflation are great for debtors, bad for wanna-be debtors, and perplexing for creditors. Which isn't to overlook the danger of runaway or extended inflation, just to note that we privilege low inflation for various reasons, some of which are very good.
On “US Forces Suffer 13 Dead, 15 Wounded In Kabul Airport Terror Bomber Attacks, Many Civilian Casualties”
Just imagining Bill Kristol and John Bolton driving around in a car with beer bottle molotov cocktails... like the two lawyers who got nabbed during the mostly-peaceful riots.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/06/07/nyregion/07nyunrest-molotov/07nyunrest-molotov-mobileMasterAt3x.jpg
On “Jeopardy! And What Are Things That Are Different Are Not The Same”
^ Your honor, redirect.
"
Ryan Reynolds is busy.
On “President Biden Remarks on Storm Henri and Afghanistan Evacuations: Watch & Discuss”
The US isn’t in control of the evacuation zone...
On “Jeopardy! And What Are Things That Are Different Are Not The Same”
Ken Jennings has baggage?
Wait, who's Ken Jennings?
On “President Biden Remarks on Storm Henri and Afghanistan Evacuations: Watch & Discuss”
"Tell me again why the US has botched this?"
The US isn't in control of the evacuation zone.
Who gets evacuated and who doesn't is predicated on a cease fire with the Taliban; and it's the Taliban who controls the checkpoints which determine who can and cannot depart.
We'll likely never know how many or who didn't make it out... but as North has previously observed, as long as those folks are indigenous, well, who's gonna care?
Which points back to the baseline assumption that no contingency plans were necessary because the evacuation zone would obviously be under Govt. control for the duration.
On “Weekend Plans Post: Trust and Failing and Getting Over Oneself At The Climbing Gym”
We're preparing to head out on a family vacation... our first since we did the camino back in 2019. I think it's also the first proper vacation from work since March 2020. Sure, I've taken days off (hey, we have UNLIMITED vacation!), but this is the first time I'll 'unplug' for a week. And by unplug I mean only work on a few deals and skip all the corporate/regional meetings...
We're even taking the train for extra adventure and fun... and just to make neo-liberal twitter mad about taking trains. I'm ready tho... prepared a few spreadsheets and charts with cost benefit analysis; I've even separated hard dollars from soft dollars and intangible QOL benefits. Thinking creating a graphic that is just a straight line from my house to the nearest city to illustrate the train route. Man, it's exhausting to go on Vacation on twitter. It's only possible because we can even take our car on the train, so packing is little more than throwing crap into bags ... AS MANY AS CAN FIT IN THE CAR ... and that's it. We're even packing a case of sparkling water, because we can. Anyhow, back to excel... these tweets don't thread themselves.
On “Hungary and The Dangerous Polarization of Foreign Policy”
Ugh, Schmitt. When I went back to revisit owing to his uptick in mentions... remembered why he's a D-Lister. Decent prose, but so obviously inconsistent that there's no real development of thought... less a political theorist than a political journalist.
On “Thousands of US Troops Headed to Afghanistan To Cover Embassy Withdrawl”
How dare you question my cynicism, sir.
Although, I concur with your assessment of the Neo-cons... my cynicism there says that the right will not hesitate to engage in 'who lost Afghanistan' diatribes regardless. Old habits, any stick with which to beat the dog, and all that.
On “Hungary and The Dangerous Polarization of Foreign Policy”
This is right. Fidesz is broadly popular with a plurality of voters in an electoral system that allows for factions. If anything it is a counter-point to my constant harping on more factionalized voting! Then again, the problem with Fidesz isn't that it's popular in Hungary, its that opposition is split on axes that don't make for a natural coalition. Still, it happened in Israel and it might happen in Hungary that an unnatural coalition emerges to challenge a ruling coalition.
So +1 for my constant harping on factionalized voting?!
I'm sure Tucker Carlson and others have said stupid things about Hungary but man, the rebuttals I've seen beggar my belief in rebuttals. Yglesias in particular sounded like he ate a bucket of stupid for about a week.
https://www.politico.eu/europe-poll-of-polls/hungary/
On “Thousands of US Troops Headed to Afghanistan To Cover Embassy Withdrawl”
All plausible... which means that Biden has to publicly fire some Pentagon folks for advising him on the slow collapse theory... for the good of the organization.
I'd maybe redirect a little to suggest that if we accept that the Pentagon was attempting to thwart policy for it's own interests (and I'm sure it has been) then this might be a passive aggressive attempt by the Pentagon to make the policy look like a debacle... which the President should publicly flog. High profile careers should be ruined for not executing a withdrawal well.
Which is to concur that if the only option was to stand on a desk at the Pentagon (metaphorically) and demand immediate withdrawal... then that should also have been part of Biden's management of the process.
On the one hand, I really don't think anyone will care about Kandahar (or Afghanistan at all) returning to the Taliban, and I suspect the Embassy will be fine until everyone leaves - then some sort of public 'desecration' - it will be the couple/few thousand dead collaborators that will be the bad press...
"
Yeah, this is one of those things where even if the policy decision is correct... we still have to account for 20-years of activity that needs unwinding. I had a bad feeling when we abandoned the Bagram Airbase like hikers from an air BnB. The scary thing is that it has all the appearance of believing our own bullshit/PR about Afghanistan's puppet govt prospects.
I was fully prepared to witness a debacle under Trump... I'm a little surprised that team Biden is surprised by the debacle... we were supposed to be getting people who 'know about these things'. Then again, witness the Masktastrophe debacle and various other less than well managed episodes, and I'm left wondering if Biden/Harris just doesn't have enough Clinton machinery to be effective. Boring might be *a* selling point, but only when its coupled with competent.
On “Watch The Whale Explode”
Clearly they *under* calculated as the bits of whale hadn't reached the "disintegration" status they were hoping to achieve.
I blame slide rules.
On “Wednesday Writs: Court Is Not Choose Your Own Adventures Book Edition”
Sometimes doing your job is understanding how your job works with the other people doing their jobs:
"The problems stem partly from the fact that Congress has never thrown so much money at an anti-eviction program, so officials at lower levels of government have struggled to find their footing.
"In most cases they couldn’t scale up an already-existing program, or if they could scale up an existing program, that program was tiny compared to the funding available now,” said Ann Oliva, a housing policy expert at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “That explains some of the lag."
HuffPost reached out to every area that hadn’t handed out any ERAP money through June. The ones who responded cited the difficulty of getting a new program off the ground, inter-governmental coordination struggles, burdensome requirements and even trouble attracting applicants. Many of them also stressed that they have been sending out other housing assistance funds, and others have managed to get their programs up and running in July and August. "
But the money quotation comes from the newly liberated Oracle of New York City, Mayor de Blasio's office:
"“The main the reason is that the application was fucking impossible,” said Bill Neidhardt, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s spokesperson. “I think it’s strategic incompetence. That’s why they delayed it, and that’s why they rolled out a mind-bogglingly unusable interface. Both those things show they didn’t want people to get the money.”"
Which is my point exactly too.
"
Yeah... its structural. Too big to fail.
Ironically, using it for crabgrass might be better than using it for soybeans/corn.
You are correct that dandelions are a gift. Bees like them, their greens are edible, and they are lovely... definitely pre-fall (in the biblical sense) creations.
"
Overwhelming is the most common term.
USDA stats that combine the general concept of herbicide tolerant places it at 94% (usually in conjunction with Bt insecticide treatment too).
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/adoption-of-genetically-engineered-crops-in-the-us/recent-trends-in-ge-adoption.aspx
"
dunno dude... Republicans typically just shovel money at the corporations... so if I had to guess?
The 'we' was making sure that help went to people who were housing the sort of people who needed help, not people who were housing people who could likely pay but would rather not take the hit to savings. That we.
"
WW7 is a much bigger deal than I think we appreciate. If the courts are really stating (and they seem to be) that the evidence is overwhelming that Monsanto was willfully hiding 'scientific' facts that it knew it's product was harmful... it's akin to the tobacco industry.
But, while Tobacco is a personal pleasure/vice... our entire (grain) farming infrastructure is built around glyphosate tolerant crops. One article I read says that Monsanto is removing Round-up from consumer access by 2023, but will still manufacture for commercial agricultural use (it *has* to) ... presumably under the guidance that this is a hazardous chemical to be handled only by professionals in hazmat suits.
That's a band-aid for now... one of the persistent 'rumors' for a few decades has been the medically substantiated (but legally disputed) fact that glyphosate (and other chemicals edited in to plants, a'la GMO's) were argued not to have a pathway into human neurological systems... various intestinal/blood/brain barriers protected us from direct ingestion/exposure. Most of the 'studies' challenging these findings were/are funded by the industry.
As in interested bystander, I've followed from a distance... but google glyphosate and blood/brain barriers and it's like the blinkers have fallen from the eyes of scientists. Which is to say, that even use by hazmat farm workers could still have downstream impact on consumers.
There's more here than meets the eye.
"
Defection Lowers Trust
Increases Defection
Lowers Trust
Increases Defection...
A breaking of standards when the other people do it, acts of prudence/necessity when we do it.
You can read the Emergency Rental Assistance FAQs if you want... they basically acknowledge that the hurdles we placed in front of the program to make sure only the deserving folks got the assistance are the hurdles they are working on improving so that only the deserving folks get the assistance:
"In March 2021, Treasury substantially revised ERA program rules to provide grantees with flexibility and encourage rapid assistance. On May 7, Treasury announced the launch of the second round of Emergency Rental Assistance made available under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021and made significant additional updates to program rules to allow grantees to speed assistance to eligible households. Feedback from grantees indicates that Treasury’s guidance has accelerated the pace of funds being used to support renters
-- for example, numerous state and local grantees have implemented fact-specific proxies as described in
Treasury’s FAQs to speed up income verification, which is often the most time-consuming part of the
eligibility verification process."
Which is govt speak for why UBI payments are better than 'assistance programs' and/or why PPP type programs to the landlords would be more efficient but would put $$ in big pockets and have worse optics. But, what's the objective here?
Bottom line, we're poorly governed... which leads to defection.
On “Biden Administration Reverses Itself, To Issue New Eviction Moratorium”
When people don't post quotations they are quoting, I go look them up.
This is the quotation:
"Reality proves the vaccines are safe. Reality also proves the vaccines protect against severe morbidity and death. And like the flu vaccine that needs to be renewed from time to time, it is the same in this case."
And the additional context is that Israel is recommending 3rd doses for people over 60... many of whom were vaccinated in Jan/Feb and who will be dosed again in Aug/Sept/Oct... as they would be for ordinary flu.
I could see needing booster shots for this as the global roll-out of vaccines will likely take a year or two additionally. Likely there will be a taper as the virus becomes merely endemic and immunity is high, but never perfect.
It is already the public policy recommendation that people over 60 get Flu Shots *every* year.
On “The Automobile Salesman”
Toughest thing to teach: when to shut up.
On “Money For Nothing: Inflation Is Not Free”
This though is the weird libertarian/economist blind spot:
Assume a game with rules.
Altering the rules can have unintended consequences.
Theoretically there should be no rules
But for the rules we've assumed in the game.
The premise I agree with is that the rules of the game are so unimaginably complex that thinking we could order them to our whim is fraught with unintended consequences.
Where I part ways is the idea that the rules are sui-generis and that we aren't already laboring under anything *other* than unintended consequences.
"
libertarians & Distributists: Saving Capitalism from Capitalists.Armwrestle.gif
"
Not to the folks that produced the capital to enable the productivity investments/gains... at least not at a proportional level.
"
Yes? That's the point. Inflation is deemed normal to stabilize debt markets on behalf of the creditors. Which is why 'runs' of inflation are great for debtors, bad for wanna-be debtors, and perplexing for creditors. Which isn't to overlook the danger of runaway or extended inflation, just to note that we privilege low inflation for various reasons, some of which are very good.