Pissing match deleted.

Me. too!

Been a pretty good week so far for Biden on the evacuation, covid and domestic front.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/polit...ion/index.html

Random political thoughy: Why does no party favor getting rid of the car dealership mandate? Why can't I buy straight from car makers? Why do I have to pay for an expensive middle man?

I'm not sure what Biden can do but leaving up to 1,500 Americans, that want to leave, in Afghanistan after Aug 31 is untenable.

I can understand some wanting to stay for whatever reason, some being left behind because we don't know about them, but leaving a large number (presumably wanting to leave) is not tenable. But then going on a city wide roundup doesn't seem wise either.

Hopefully the negotiations with the Taliban are really doing well. And they can force whatever ISIS elements to behave.

Are the 500 who have been contacted actually Americans or did we think they were Americans and realized they were not? Also how are we making the determination that they are actually American in the next 5 plus days if we don't know if they are by now?

For one thing, it's not a federal prohibition, it's regulated state-by-state (in 48 of the 50 anyhow)

Like Jon said, it is a state prohibition.

And this is one of those areas where you have a policy that most people have lukewarm feelings about--sure we'd all like to pay less for cars, but I can't imagine anyone voting for or against someone based on that. But a small group of people (i.e. car dealers) have VERY strong feelings about and will donate to politicians accordingly.

(It's like how pennies cost more to make than they are worth and we'd all be slightly better off if we got rid of pennies. But no one really cares. So the people who own copper mines make sure we never get rid of pennies.)

The justification I heard supporting dealerships is that they employ a fair number of people at a pretty decent wage, so if you get rid of them, you are hurting the local economies where those people work and just shifting more profits to the shareholders of the manufacturers. Which, IMO, is actually a pretty decent argument. Not sure if I still agree with dealerships, but I do think that most of the savings from getting rid of them will go to the manufacturers and not the buying public.

More headache for Biden. Not good. Wonder how many civilians.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/26/asia/...ntl/index.html

WASHINGTON (AP) — Two US officials say 11 Marines and a Navy medic were killed in the Afghanistan attacks.

— Nick Riccardi (@NickRiccardi) August 26, 2021

The opposition didn't take long to respond.

"If President Trump can be impeached over a phone call, then the time has come to IMPEACH Biden for gross negligence in Afghanistan," said Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas.

Nikki Haley, former ambassador to the United Nations, called for Biden's resignation but worried about leaving Vice President Kamala Harris in charge.

"Should Biden step down or be removed for his handling of Afghanistan? Yes," she tweeted. "But that would leave us with Kamala Harris which would be ten times worse. God help us."

Yup. It would definitely be a "cheaper" process, but I doubt hardly any of the savings would go to the consumer.

It is funny/sad that Republican decisions have cost many hundreds if not thousands more lives than this.

Thoughts and prayers? I mean, that would work if this was a school, right?

Am I rememering wrong that it was Trump who negotiated & negotiated the timescale for withdrawal? I thought all Biden did was continue what Trump agreed?

It's almost as if we don't have 20 years of previous history in Afghanistan to gauge just how earnest all these concerns are.

Trump negotiated a May withdrawal. Biden actually pushed it back to the end of August. Everything was done to make it as difficult as possible for an incoming administration. People can point fingers all around and find some blame, but there's no doubt that the Trump administration played with people's lives in order to put the next administration in a bad spot.

Like they're going to let that stop them. Remember how much mileage they got out of Benghazi?

SI

"We will hunt you down and make you pay." ????

I'm not sure how Biden plans to do that, given that the Taliban is going to let these terrorist organizations flourish again. They'll say they're powerless to do anything to stop it (although they have no problem brutalizing, terrorizing and performing summary executions of their own citizens with impunity).

The speed with which the MAGA GOP shifted from, why won't Biden end the forever war, to, why won't Biden continue the forever war, is breathtaking?

It's hard to see a good outcome for the country when so many are willing to be so dishonest and then suffer no consequences for doing so.

I believe we still have jets and missiles.

We have been pretty good at blowing people up anywhere without having troops on the ground. It is just like Biden just said, there are countries all over the world that have terror cells much more immediately dangerous, and we haven't invaded those countries.

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What's your solution? Another trillion to sit around getting our ass-kicked for awhile? Everyone complaining about this has no solution and is certainly not going to enlist.

And if your concern is terrorism, you should be mad we aren't going after the people and countries that fund and support it. Saudi Arabia plays a MUCH bigger role in international terrorism than the Taliban.

Trump got them to drop 15 years of "War on Terror is good" rhetoric with a few comments during a debate (also destroyed Jeb Bush's career).

They stand for nothing.

Oh man, I mean, These guys are going to get away like Bin Laden, no wait, like Gaddifi, no no, they got him too. Like Saddam Hussein...nope, oh his kids...nope, got them too. Uh.

Well, al-Zarqawi got away...nope, he got blow'd up too. Man, I'm finding it hard to recall all the ones that did get away. Even the head of ISIS got blow'd up, al-Baghdadi was terminated.

So, if there's one thing I know, if there is a mastermind, he'll be targeted...and he'll be wiped off the Earth in a drone strike.

But I guess some people forget this, and just want to bitch about Biden dealing once again with Trump's slash and burn style.

I can't talk on social media about the trip, but it was eye opening. I've never had a flight that even came close to what that was. There were numerous challenges that tried our patience, but I'm happy to have had the experience. A little piece of history I get to claim and something I can point to and say "I was a part of that."

It was a pretty humbling experience overall. Lots of kids, a set of twins that were maybe 8 weeks old. Lots of families who supported the operation. Maybe 10-15% spoke English. More than one medical issue during that had to be handled, and strict 'you will not divert, unless it's the last resort' orders. Once they were allowed to deplane (all I'll say is that these people were so patient, that they were willing to endure all that was just wow) they were covid tested, then processed. I think after all that the military is housing them on a base. As with most things, it's a lot of waiting, but we did everything we could to make it not suck. We brought 336 back on that flight.

Nice job, Pilotman.

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What a great story Pilotman. Definitely a part of history with that flight.

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On pure politics, I think the Dems are missing a big opportunity to hang this around the necks of all the spineless GOPers that pacified Trump’s ego over losing and made the transition so drawn out and difficult. It seems like a pretty easy sell to say that a peaceful/cooperative change in administrations, with appropriately shared intel could have helped prevent stuff like this and the loss of all the military equipment and weapons. Our government is just pathetic right now.

You're a fucking hero buddy...

GOP supporters just wont care. They need something to be angry about.

Yeah, the world trade center gets destroyed killing thousands of Americans and the republican president "kept us safe"

A bomb goes off halfway around the world killing a couple Americans and the democratic president should be impeached.

Glad you are back safely PM, and a big thank you and hug for your part in getting them out of that country.:bowdown:

Amazing work! I salute you!

I also need to say that it's the flight attendants who really should be applauded here. They were fantastic with what they had to deal with. I don't know how many 'average' people could have done what they did. It wasn't the cleanest working environment keep in mind. They were fantastic.

Wow. A quagmire we should have gotten out of 15 years ago. You are not going to fix a stone age culture.

And well done PM, you were a person that saved the day for hundreds. Impressive.

Supreme Court throws out Biden administration eviction moratorium

I'm not sure how this was constitutional in the first place when Trumpy first enacted it.

Wow. Great work. In addition to you helping so many people, I'm glad you got something personally from it also.

(1) The moratorium was probably an executive overreach, but it was a close call with good arguments on both sides.

(2) The Supreme Court deciding a close legal issue that will affect millions of people via a shadow docket order without briefing & argument is a huge judicial overreach.

tl;dr They probably reached the right result, but they did it in a norm-eroding way.

dola--once it became clear that the Dems were not going to make a filibuster exception for Court reform, that really let the GOP activists on the Court off their leash.

Credit to the GOP. They saw the importance of the federal courts for decades, while the Dems only just now woke up to it (and still aren't doing anything meaningful about it).

So people who were screaming for years we needed out of Afghanistan and applauded Trump for the agreement got mad when we.....pulled out of Afghanistan are now mad because we went back into Afghanistan and soldiers were bombed....

There's a reason that Bush, Obama, and Trump didn't do this. It was always going to be messy and painful.

absolutely.

It's just amazing how the goalposts shift so fast you can get whiplash.

Regardless of party, their main concern was if terrorism would regain a foothold again in Afghanistan, and if so, how long would it take. We now have an answer, -5 days.

It never left.

It never really leaves any country, but in this case there are known terrorists holding key positions in the new Taliban “government.”

Ones released by the Trump administration.

Should we have just stayed there permanently?

Some would say that same about terrorists in the US government.

After 4 years of trying to cover a monster as if he was a normal human,

The media is monstrously struggling to cover a normal human…

— NeuroPsychoPhD (@SethN12) August 27, 2021

5000 Taliban prisoners in Afghanistan were released in the questionable deal made by Trump in 2020. Several now hold positions in the Taliban.

However, the most dangerous threat to the U.S. will come from the pool of 700+ that were released from Guantanamo Bay from the previous administration, with assurances that they would be kept in Qatar, etc. In the face of that concern, Biden is reconsidering his stated goal of closing Gitmo.

Our biggest threat is white supremacist terrorists in our own country.

Nice job, Pilotman!

I think it's the "red meat" blowhard Republicans who are getting the headlines and generating the "click baits" right now. Little or no coverage is given to the others.


Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn't even mention Biden by name in his statement:

Don't think of it as dying, think of it as a fast track to eternal life!

With Miss. hospitals at crisis levels, and a likely CAT4 hurricane bearing down, Gov Tate Reeves says that people in the Deep South are “less scared” of covid because, “When you believe in eternal life, then you don’t have to be so scared of things.”https://t.co/9rqDifF0yN

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 28, 2021

Clearly Covid deaths are the Rapture.

The GOP can pass laws to effectively cull voters from registration rolls, but the Dems can just sit back and allow the GOP's supporters to cull themselves.

How soon until a state in the Deep South tries to make working from home for companies with in person facilities illegal? If we can’t avoid dying from Covid then nobody can.

"Fuck it, let's get this over with and get to heaven" would explain the Republican policy on COVID and several other issues.

Actually, I expect something like this to be a thing at some point. I mean, there are a ton of rich people/companies with money tied up in commercial real estate. Something's got to give.

You are 100% correct.

I own a building with a major retailer as a renter. Can't imagine being stuck with that building with no renter, and that is one building, not several.

Good gosh. I just learned that the missiles used to take out those Isis-k guys where the Hellcat with the "flying ginsu" warhead. It doesn't explode, but instead shoots out 6 foot blades that shreds the target. Holy cow.

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Maybe that's true

But I'm listening to local Ohio radio and they are filled with "experts" that suggest the Taliban could've been eliminated except that Biden is weak. They don't offer any suggestions except that the Taliban would've folded under American military power which it hasn't in 20 years.

Every candidate for the republican senate race is trying out trump one another by saying Biden is weak for following through with agreements made by Trump

I've seen/heard complaints on the right about negotiating with terrorists (the Taliban in this instance) while ignoring the fact that Trump invited them to Camp David and negotiated a treaty.

I seriously don't understand how you can be either that stupid or just not care how much of a hypocrite you are.

Supposedly another "credible threat" against the airport. Don't think we can avoid civilian deaths since they are so exposed but hopefully reduce US.

I wonder if Taliban and AQ are somewhat complicit in this. I read somewhere that Taliban acknowledge many of theirs dying also in the blast so maybe they are PO'd. But is the Taliban letting AQ doing what they want as it serves same purpose without getting their hands dirty. There really is no fear of the US staying past the deadline so why not take kick us in the groin a couple more times.

I read about Biden wanting the troops to go out of the airport and round up a bunch of stray Americans (sometime early last week?). Haven't read anything about that so assume that hasn't happened.

I really hope the no news is because we are doing something behind the scenes and for operational security. Otherwise we are going to have a bunch of Americans held "hostage" for a while and others sneaking out over the next few months/years.

US airstrike took out a sucide bomber in a vehicle heading toward the airport about an hour ago.

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Correction: it was a car with several sucide bombers.

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Nice. They must be having a good time right now with all the virgins.

Hey, those were covid deaths according to the fake news media.

About that reward...

They have to tread lightly, but I think that Afghanistan could be a pretty good issue for the anti-Trump GOPers.

It is an issue that lets them criticize Biden AND Trump. It is probably Biden's biggest weakness right now. And it isn't one that Trump can really jump on like some of the other ones because he is tied to it.

Indeed, you can start talking about it as the failed Trump/Biden surrender. I could see the media jumping on that framing pretty easily.

dola:

All assuming that this isn't forgotten in 3 months in the wake of COVID, the hurricane aftermath, the holidays, and whatever other 7 disasters seem destined to hit us between now and then.

Oh com'on. 5 min of video and you cant direct me to the right min:sec?

It will not be forgotten, but the Trumpsters are never going to tie anything to Trump. It will always only be a complete failure of the Biden administration, and Trump could have left without any casualties. Their fiction is their only reality.

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Doesn't matter. Not like the Trumpanzies were going to vote Biden anyway.

They need to be careful w/ independents and even some dems. This has been really bad for Biden, there was an afghani-American woan earlier on CNN, her husband is still there and she flat out said it is Bidens fault and he needs to fix it, but like Al said, it will be forgotten soon enough.

There's like 30 anti-Trump GOPers in existence and most of them are just running a grift to get moderate Democrats to give them money.

The Lincoln Project

I don't think we as a nation are prepared to see the Americans who were not evacuated from Afghanistan on Taliban TV.

FB gave me a good laugh today. I was scrolling through and since 1 of every 3 posts now are ads, I come upon one sponsored by the Republican National Committee - a poll about how I think the Biden/Harris presidency has gone. The two choices were Bad and Neutral. I lol'd!

We shrugged our shoulders at 20+ elementary school kids getting slaughtered. Half the country cheered on as hundreds of thousands died from a virus. Not sure there is much you can do to make us care about human life at this point.

Rainmaker is correct, and the people that scream the loudest are going to be the same that screamed the loudest against any type of gun measure after that school shooting.

Politics as usual

And were most in favor of pulling out a month ago, shockingly ignorant of what it would look like

SI

It is very American that we want everything we want with no consequences.

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Maybe. Maybe not. Stay tuned.

A US drone strike killed 10 Afghan civilians in Kabul on Sunday

The sucide bombs at the airport killed nearly 200. Destroying this one on the way to the airport killed 10. Loss of life is always sad, but I think you have to take out the car before it gets to its target. You disagree?

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No, I don't disagree. I'm just waiting for confirmation that a suicide bomber was actually taken out and that the ten civilian deaths were collateral damage, instead of, God forbid, ten innocent people being wasted in some kind of miscommunication or faulty information.

The Biden Presidency - 2020
 

I read this article and it’s just so so hard to know what he means at each time the words come out of his mouth. Its just whiplash but I’m sure he means every word he says as he says it:

Cawthorn talks of 'bloodshed' over future elections as he pushes voting lies https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/30/polit...ons/index.html

What a shame that we’re still going to have to pursue this crap until maybe even the next presidential election. Such a stain on the country. Putin wins.


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Maybe my local pub will set up a long table with 10 beers with no drinkers in honor of the Afghan civilians that were falsely killed in a horrendous Biden drone strike. I'm sure there is such sadness in the patriot community over it

Can't figure out why they don't fight for us over there.

Also never trust the military's reports. Wait for real verification. That "car bomber" story felt like straight propaganda after a few bad news cycles.

There's got to me more there than just "US bombed car with suspected suicide bombers in it, and oops, it's a car full of civilians"

Our military incessantly lies. The intentions may have been good and it just ended up being bad intelligence. But no matter who they kill, they will always lie about it.

Farzah Ahmadi, age 9
Faisal Ahmadi, age 10
Zemari Ahmadi, age 40
Zamir Ahmadi, age 20
Naseer Ahmadi, age 30
Binyamen Ahmadi, age 3
Armin Ahmadi, age 4
Sumaya Ahmadi, age 2
Malika Ahmadi, age 2
Ahmad Naser, age 30

Killed on August 29, 2021 via American drone strike in Kabul.

— Left Flank Veterans (@LeftFlankVets) August 31, 2021

Crazy how the federal courts look like they are just going to ignore challenges to Texas' 6-week abortion ban and let it take effect tomorrow.

And they did. This effectively ends Rowe, and bans abortions in almost every red state.

fairly unique angle they took in putting it on the citizens to sue with civil penalties.

I don't know if you call it game theory or what, but it is a rational response by the Court.

The Court is very conservative. But it is susceptible to pressure. Once Congressional Dems indicated that they were not going to break the filibuster for Court reform, they signaled to the Court that it could pretty much do what it wanted without fear of Congress stepping in.

So, they have this window of time where they have a 6-3 majority and nothing to stop them from maximizing conservative activism while they have it.

So, yeah. This is the obvious result. Not sure what else the Dems expected.

It's devious AF to leave Roe on the books, but just refuse to enforce it. I think politically it's the best outcome for the GOP. There's never a moment when abortion was effectively outlawed, so there's less risk of a major backlash.

The damage to the legitimacy of the courts is great, but I doubt anyone in the GOP cares if they are winning.

dola

What? pic.twitter.com/X87vxRMpl6

— Radley Balko (@radleybalko) September 1, 2021

I see their true colors shining through.

My wife and I used to argue about hypocrisy. I'd say that if someone believed something horrible, I'd just want them to own it and say it. I didn't want them hiding behind the veneer of respectability. She would counter that the "veneer of respectability" served an important purpose because it still acknowledged that certain ideas were outside of the mainstream.

Turns out, I 100% agree with her now. Because she was right.

We live in a worse world now that people who are opposed to inter-racial marriage are just shouting it from the rooftops.

It is worse. It was a better world when they were too ashamed of their ignorance and hate to speak it aloud.

I had to go and read the entire story and it basically comes down to something that started the end of July with one parent directly attacking and running this guy down, and through a ratcheting up of anger and emotion by racist (?) "karens" the guy finally defends himself publicly, then the whole wedding anniversary photo where without accusing him of of miscegenation, they basically do that very thing, and he's suspended. Maybe there's more here, but this is either textbook slander and defamation, mixed in with full on 'cancel culture' or it's just blatant racism. Not sure where else you can go with it since there's been zero proof of anything else. This was the part that stuck out to me.

A quote from him in his own defense: