Over Memorial Day weekend 2012, the Tragedy Assistance Program For Survivors (TAPS) held a National Military Survivor Seminar. Here is Vice President Biden’s keynote address to the 2,000 attendees at the conference:
The contrast with what Jeffrey Goldberg has reported about the President’s attitudes towards Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines, veterans, POWs, and US service members who gave their lives in service to the US, which has now been confirmed to Jim LaPorta at The Associated Press and Colby Itkowitz, Alex Horton, and Carole Leonig at The Washington Post, could not be clearer.
That said, I don’t expect this to move the needle among the President’s supporters and GOP elected and appointed officials will just say they haven’t read the reporting, don’t have anything to say, and are late for lunch or a meeting. The response will be what it always is:
He never said it.He said it, but it doesn’t mean what you say it means.He said it, it means what you say it means, but it doesn’t matter.He said it; it means what you say it means; but it doesn’t matter because he loves the troops and has done more for them than anyone else; nah, nah, nah, I’m not listening; suck it libtards!
Open thread!
Another Scott
(Welcome back, stranger. We’ve missed you. Hope things are going well.)
Thanks for this.
Cheers,
Scott.
jackmac
Next up: a series of Trump events praising and pandering to “the troops.”
cope
MIssing from that tweet is the “It’s only a joke” step.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
You know, this is just Biblical Fundamentalism applied to Donald Trump. I wonder if they think even Trump doesn’t understand himself correctly?
raven
John Stewart Mill
Jeffro
I think we should quit assuming that absolutely no trumpov supporters will be bothered by this, act on this, etc etc. Obviously the man has bled at least a little support over the past few years, and when we assume he won’t lose any no matter what he does, we’re effectively giving him and them a pass.
Instead of “he won’t lose any support”, turn and beat (verbally! verbally!) on the nearest trumpov supporter, trumpov-enabling GOP elected official, or trumpov-excusing national snooze media member and ask them, “Where are your standards? Why aren’t you saying something about this? How can you still support/enable/excuse this behavior?”
Just like every vote counts, every single trumpov supporter we peel away counts, even if they vote for Kanye (hell, especially if they vote for Kanye…it’s STILL not a trumpov vote). But let’s not let them off the hook just because trumpov lies constantly and shamelessly.
waspuppet
Isn’t it remarkable that they never “have a chance to read” something that points out what a sociopath Trump is? Like, maybe that’s something you wanna take 10 minutes and read?
They always had time to read up* on the latest Hillary email story though.
*(OK, they did really read it; they just watched a clip of what Hannity had to say about it. But the principle is the same.)
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
So IOW, not even a recording of his voice saying that shit would change their minds?
Not that I think it honestly matters. Active military despise him, as does a majority of the American voting public; including I might add in the states that need to be won in the EC. We just need to make sure our people can vote.
Do you find it interesting Adam that the vast majority of the attacks on Biden have seemingly failed to land? I am disappointed to see the “Biden has dementia” and “Biden will be Bush III!” every once in a while.
I especially “love” the morons on Tumblr who complain that Biden won’t give a shit about marginalized peoples because Standing Rock. They can’t see the forest for the trees and it frustrates me to no end. I know most of them are teenagers and thus too young to vote anyway, but it still bothers me
Kropacetic
FakeOld news…Archon
Republican elected officials are in a real bind. If they come about and say this report isn’t true they risk being forced to either admit the story is true or call some 4 star general who ends up going public as the source, a liar.
Wouldn’t want to be a Republican strategist or official right now. That being said couldn’t have happened to a worse group of people.
Amir Khalid
I’ve heard this speech before, but I’m listening to it again. The sound of decent, compassionate, and empathetic words is always a balm to the soul.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Like, here’s a whopper I saw come across my dash last week that I’ve been meaning to share here. The OP post and a reply:
westcoastranger
I believe this is probably round 1 in what is likely to be a continuous drip of negative reporting leading up to November 3. As long as it keeps DJT on the defensive, it’s alright by me.
Lyrebird
I’m gonna cry if I listen to this one & I’m working, so…. bookmarked for later. Thank you AS!
I already lost a few minutes watching the new Biden/Harris ad on racial justice. Or there were a million onions being cut or something.
This invictus games video
is just 2 minutes and change and is a little lighter, for anyone else who needs to stay a little lighter for now.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think it’s interesting, encouraging and a little odd that the strongest attacks don’t even seem to be aimed at Biden.
The right is obsessed with Nancy Pelosi’s haircut; who even gives a damn about Nancy Pelosi’s personal behavior at this point? She’s not the presidential nominee and has little to do with him. Her seat and Speakership are not particularly in danger.
The Twitter purity left, meanwhile, seems to be still preoccupied with bashing Barack Obama, which is just quixotic.
The difference from 2016, when everything was about how much everyone hated Hillary Clinton, is palpable.
crm114
“These are anonymous sources can’t trust ‘em.”
Alexander Vindman and Brett Crozier raise their hands.
”Alexander Vindman was a swamp creature and Trump hater and he couldn’t know what Trump meant. Brett Crozier was a lib and spread the China Virus hoax.”
James Mattis raises hand.
”Mattis is just a hater.”
I am undecided how much Trumpers really believe that fake news is really “fake,” since they are clearly getting news from somewhere. It must be understood that “fake news” is just a slogan, there’s nothing that can be proven or disclosed that makes a report fake or not. It’s fake because it hurts Trump, no one should pretend for a moment there is any other basis for the claim or that there’s some crucial fact that, if reported, will prove a “fake” story is true. It’s all just game for losers on Twitter.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I have noticed that this latest business with Trump and the military has gotten some predictable responses from the anti-anti-Trump left, who think Trump is just being a peace advocate and the liberals disgusted by him are expressing their crypto-neocon agenda. Michael Tracey (who, admittedly, is not “left” any more in any detectable sense) got there in about thirty seconds.
Shalimar
@jackmac: Remember, Trump did an event praising and honoring the troops during the campaign. Megyn Kelly had been mean to him during a debate, so he refused to attend another Fox debate with her as a moderator. Instead, he scheduled a competing fundraiser for a military charity where several million dollars were raised. Not surprisingly, he pocketed this money until further reporting months later forced him to turn it over.
Tl;Dr Trump does not have a good history with events honoring the troops
gvg
One thing I recall from early in this administration is that after a bunch of leaks, they started confiscating cell phones and such in meetings with Trump so that people couldn’t record. If they kept that up, this stuff might not be recorded to prove it, so I am trying not to get my hopes up.
West of the Rockies
I wonder, from a psychological perspective, why a Rubin or David Jolly or Steve Schmidt will recoil from the team (to whatever authentic degree they recoil) and others double down. I think it must be a psychologically marred person who still supports Trump.
Here’s the thing… If HRC had won and been as vile as Trump, you know we Democrats would have fled in droves and lambasted her.
Kropacetic
From what I’ve heard around my house, they certainly talk to one another as though they believe a lot of media reporting is fake. Some of the arguments I’ve heard about it actually mirror a lot of my own complaints about how the media covers politics and the government, but seem completely unaware of who the media’s perfidy is benefiting.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: This story broke while the House and Senate are on recess, in their districts.
Make sure to ask the Republicans what they think of Trump’s behavior towards the troops.
Put them on the spot.
I think Goldberg and The Atlantic timed this article well. And I am sure more is to follow. Maybe from the military. Very much expect more from the intelligence community. National security types.
Trump was awful when he began his tenure, and he is worse and more crazy now. Clear and present danger.
Clearly a traitor, too.
Shalimar
@gvg: Iirc, they started confiscating cellphones after Omarosa started playing tapes in August 2018 to support her book. So that leaves 18 months of comments that could have been taped, including the Belleau Wood cemetary event in 2017. Alas, it was a few weeks before John McCain died so the flag bitching was probably not recorded.
SiubhanDuinne
Glad to see you back, Adam. What’s your take on the planned and imminent shutdown of Stars and Stripes?
raven
My father took your place in Vietnam and was killed in action.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gvg:
Would small, dedicated voice recorders also be confiscated? I would think those could be better hidden/shielded?
Mike in NC
The “losers and suckers” story is on the front page of the Washington Post and presumably elsewhere. Might we expect it to be a subject that the Sunday morning talking heads will want to discuss in detail?
West of the Rockies
@Shalimar:
I had forgotten about Omarosa. I suppose she made some money on the book, but probably not enough to retire. She’s damaged goods now. No one on the left or right will trust her. I don’t see her becoming an academic. She had her 15 minutes. I wonder if she regrets how she spent it.
Elizabelle
Momentarily: WaPost:
It would be nice to have a live feed about that.
Calouste
@West of the Rockies: Wasn’t she a pastor? There’s a lot of money in that business.
West of the Rockies
@Calouste:
I don’t know. I see she’s written a couple of basically self-help books. She sets herself up as some sort of sage, but who her audience would now be, I am uncertain.
zhena gogolia
This is wrenching.
Adam L Silverman
@Another Scott: You’re welcome.
Adam L Silverman
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I am aware.
Adam L Silverman
@Jeffro: His base will not be moved. Elected and appointed GOP officials will take no stands as the former are afraid of the President’s base and mean tweets and the latter are all dependent on the President for their jobs. With, perhaps, the exception of Senator Romney.
Omnes Omnibus
So I just called Ron Johnson’s office and got voicemail. I still left a message asking if, like the president, Johnson thought I was a sucker for serving as an army officer from 1987-92.
Adam L Silverman
@waspuppet: Or in Trey Gowdy’s case he had time to fabricate the evidence he was presenting against Secretary Clinton.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The Access Hollywood tape didn’t make a dent. That was both audio and video. Why would anything else make a dent with these folks?
Adam L Silverman
@Archon: The sources will not go public. I’m comfortable speculating that Gen (ret) Kelly had a trusted other retired Marine general provide the details to Goldberg, as well as other retired Marine generals and senior officers who cold confirm it. My guess is the retired Marine 4 star referenced by Goldberg is either Gen (ret) Dunford, who was the CJCS at the time, or Gen (ret) Neller, who was the USMC Commandant at the time.
But the reality is that they won’t go public. There’s probably a post on CIV-MIL in all this, but the reality is that after being indoctrinated for 40 years to not publicly take political positions or make a stand in public, and, unfortunately, also in private, when the civilian leadership does something you professionally disagree with, it is a hard habit to break. Moreover, because all your peers, friends, and colleagues are all indoctrinated to the same norm, those that due, like MG Eaton, ADM McCraven, GEN McCaffrey, Gen Allen, Gen. Hayden, etc get publicly and privately scolded. This is why, ultimately, that Kelly, Mattis, and McMaster were failures in their appointed positions. They couldn’t bring themselves to publicly or privately pushback. The President is the Commander in Chief, even though they were out of uniform except for McMaster (which is why the NSA shouldn’t be a uniformed officer and the uniformed officers in the National Security Staff all report to civilians!), neither Kelly nor Mattis could break the norm they were socialized to for over 40 years. Not even McMaster could and he wrote the book on the need for senior military leaders, in addition to senior civilian ones, to push back on the most senior decision makers and the president.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Link?
Matt McIrvin
@Adam L Silverman: Most of the time, this reticence is probably more good than bad. But that combined with the need to follow orders except under the most extreme circumstances does allow the sitting administration to abuse military personnel as political props.
germy
Adam L Silverman
@crm114: It is a combination of epistemic closure and epistemic overload. The official, for lack of a better term, news sources for the President’s base is Fox News, OANN, and right wing talk radio (Limbaugh, Levin, Hewitt, etc) combined with whatever is pushed across their Facebook pages from Gateway Pundit, Breitbart, Daily Caller, Daily Signal or whatever Shapiro’s site and his sock puppet accounts are called, RT, Sputnik, and then a whole host of even more extreme sites out on the far right fringe including the chans, /k/ (basically a chan dedicated to QAnon), etc. Plus whatever the Russians are pushing through false front accounts in an attempt to push it through this ecosystem so that Fox News will pick it up.
The dynamic is a closed feed of information made up of sites and sources that aren’t interested in accuracy, but ideological purity and conformity amplifying outrage, fear, and anger through emphasis on key themes, which is the epistemic closure. The epistemic overload is the overwhelming amount of this material that is pumped out and pushed through these various platforms – from cable news to talk radio to conservative and hard right digital “news” platforms to the people on those platforms podcasts, twitter feeds, Facebook pages, and YouTube channels, to Facebook and Twitter and YouTube and Instagram in general – to overwhelm the intended targets with a never ending stream of inaccurate information from outright lies to just slanted coverage that is still rooted in reality.
Bluegirlfromwyo
@waspuppet: Most of my conservative friends don’t read news at all. It’s all TV watching and talk radio. If I had $100 for everytime I had an “independent” conservative friend brag about the amount of TV and radio news he/she consumed (from both sides, of course), I’d have millions. I can’t talk to them anymore. I can’t speak in the sound bites they understand.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh I don’t have one sorry. I just copied the text from the post. I never liked or reblogged it, so I have no way of finding it again
The Pale Scot
Adam,
I dropped this in Betty’s thread, you might be interested also
Pasco’s sheriff created a futuristic program to stop crime before it happens. It monitors and harasses families across the county.
Another Scott
Hello Virginians! Help me out here.
1) Sam Wang says the proposed anti-gerrymandering VA constitutional amendment is great –
That points to a 40 page .pdf of his analysis, which at quick glance seems reasonable (tl;dr – it depends on the enabling legislation, and the VA supreme court keeping to its traditional role).
(via LOLGOP)
2) lowkell at BlueVirginia.US says it is being backed by outside GOP money and has all kinds of flaws and loopholes and invitations for the GOP-dominated VA supreme court to make a hash of real representative districts – https://bluevirginia.us/2020/09/money-supporting-virginia-redistricting-amendment-pours-in-from-out-of-state-major-gop-donors-including-to-mitch-mcconnell-and-kevin-mccarthy
3) notlarrysabato on Twitter says (IIRC) that anti-passage efforts are doomed because amendments always pass.
Where do you come down and why?
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Adam L Silverman
@SiubhanDuinne: It is an attempt to force the troops to get all their news from Fox News, which is the default channel on the TV on all military installations.
Also, all of these things that close something, restrict something, defund something are intended as land mines should the President not be reelected and actually leave office. The intention is to make it impossible for a President Biden and a Biden administration to reverse them. Not because reversing them isn’t going to just require issuing new paperwork doing so, but because the cost to do so, which will begin with congressional Republicans running to Fox News or Rush Limbaugh or Hugh Hewitt and then Meet the Press and Robert Costa to denounce these usurpations of power and violations of the will of the people as expressed through Congress and then amplified through the conservative media ecosystem across all platforms until Andrea Mitchell is asking questions about it at noon on MSNBC, is intended to be widespread outrage. Right now, the US accepts no refugees, nor do we even allow asylum seekers to remain while their requests are processed. This is a paperwork change that Stephen Miller created through his trusted lieutenants he’s placed at DHS and State. Reversing them is literally a ten minute process of issuing new guidance. But doing so is intended to generate huge amounts of outrage, which will be used to increase the political costs between January 2021 and the November 2022 mid term elections. Same thing with fixing the national monuments and public lands mess. Same with everything else that’s been done by executive order.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Trumped has fired a lot of his staff at lest twice. Very likely the people who were in possession of confiscated recording devices are among the Disgruntled Former Trump Admin members.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
I despise the anti-anti Trump people. They’re useful idiots
Adam L Silverman
@raven: And, unfortunately, MG Eaton will once again be slammed by his peers for not keeping his mouth shut and breaking CIV-MIL norms.
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Yes.
Elizabelle
BIDEN UP
Speaking about The Atlantic article now. Calls it disgusting. Trump not fit to be the CIC.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?475440-1/joe-biden-remarks-august-2020-jobs-report&live
planetjanet
@Another Scott: Here is another perspective from Linda Perriello.
https://bluevirginia.us/2020/08/linda-perriello-after-devoting-eight-years-of-my-life-to-ending-partisan-gerrymandering-i-will-sadly-vote-no-on-the-amendment-this-november
raven
@Adam L Silverman: I guess some things are worth standing up for.
Omnes Omnibus
@Adam L Silverman: I agree with you on Mattis and McMaster. I think, however, that Kelly was an ideological fellow traveler on, at least, immigration. He had to balance letting his freak flag fly against his military training. He ended up looking bad on both counts.
Adam L Silverman
@The Pale Scot: I’ve already seen it. Before I read it I forwarded it to my boss with the following: “Wanna bet they’re using Palantir software? And this is going to be a stupidly done, bad mashup of all the wrong ways we’ve done counter-terrorism and military intelligence for targeting over the past 20 years”. And then I read it and got to the section where the guy running this thing was a “senior official” at the National Counter-terrorism Center and the deputy is a former Army intelligence officer. I have spent a good chunk of the past 15 years trying to work with the Army, the DOD, the Interagency, and the outside companies providing the hardware and software to fix the mess we’ve made with how we look at intelligence coming out of places like Iraq and Afghanistan and then use it, or, rather, misuse it. I spent at least 50% of my time from November 2009 through to April 2011 working on this stuff. I helped write and QA/QC SOCOM’s Joint Civil Information Management (J-CIM) manual, which specifically explains how to collect, bin, analyze, package, and use this type of information. I spent a week locked into a SCIF at CENTCOM in 2009 on a working group on this stuff regarding what we were and weren’t doing and were doing wrong in collecting, binning, analyzing, packaging, and using this information for Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ve had my work on it plagiarized because points I made in classified settings, specifically my description of what we do as a form of alchemy – if we can just bring the base metal/information and touch it to the philosopher’s stone/the right hardware and software, then we’ll wind up with gold/the solution to whatever the question being asked or problem being faced – and then published in an unclassified journal with no credit to me.
Adam L Silverman
@Elizabelle: He’s giving a great speech. And he started just right.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: They are.
Adam L Silverman
@Omnes Omnibus: I think that is a reasonable assessment of Kelly.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
If we have control of Congress, then all we have to do is ram through the legislation required to make these changes. Executive orders too. Same with judges. If Andrea Mitchell raises Serious Questions about it, the Dems can just tell her to fuck off and point to what the GOP and Trump did by destroying these long term programs
No apologies. Fuck them
Elizabelle
@Adam L Silverman: Yes, Joe did.
NEW THREAD UP on the Biden speech.
Jeffro
@West of the Rockies: it’s because some folks – right or left – have principles, and some just don’t. Those that don’t are attracted to serving trumpov
Adam L Silverman
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You missed my point. It doesn’t matter how they fix it. By simply vacating the Executive Orders and regulatory changes or if they do it by legislation or by a combination of the two, the dynamic I’ve described is what is going to happen and it is going to be used to try to make it out that a Biden administration is selling out America by opening the borders and letting America be overrun. One of Miller’s proteges actually explained this to a reporter about two weeks ago.
raven
@Adam L Silverman: That means you got a job??
Jeffro
@Adam L Silverman: his base – the GOP – used to be bigger, and now it’s smaller. Not by much, but still.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Adam L Silverman:
No, I got your point. I’m just saying we need to be just as aggressive, dismissive and in your face as the Republicans have been to the media and us in order to combat that dynamic
Besides, doing the things I described will help for the next time around. We’ll be ahead if we fill as many judgeships as possible
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I hate them too, but there’s a much larger contingent of DNC-hating Bernie leftists who include many people I fundamentally like for non-political reasons (often artists, writers, comedians). I hate that I have to choose between continuing to listen to them and keeping myself sane over politics. Just saw an artist I like a lot complaining that the Democrats are bound to lose again because the dopes haven’t learned that “I’m not Trump” isn’t a winning message.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: No. There’s no work for anyone who actually explains what does work versus what large companies with former senior military and civilian officials pitch to Federal, state, and local authorities. Everyone wants magic, when what they need is hard work. I guarantee that the position at Savannah PD that you know I applied for and didn’t get four years back, and the team they built out under the person they hired – a former Army intel officer at the rank of O3 when he separated from the Army – is doing something like what I’ve described, rather than what should be done. There’s a right way to do this, which is usually not easy or quick to set up, and there’s dozens of wrong ways, which are usually easy to do, quick to set up, don’t produce anything worth having, and lead to problems. Care to guess who gets hired and which programs, processes, and procedures get established?
raven
@Adam L Silverman: UGH, when you said “boss”. . . .
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I have billable hours as a consultant with the same company I’ve been with since I left SOCOM after blowing the whistle there and quietly moving on. I do not have a new job.
Elizabelle
@Matt McIrvin:
Mute them. Unfollow them. It’s only 60 days. You have better things to watch, read, do.
Spend the time making calls to GOTV for Joe and Kamala. Those sell-out morons. (The DNC neo-nominees!)
Just Chuck
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I think the person who least understands Donald Trump is Donald Trump.
VOR
@Adam L Silverman: Palantir filed their S-1 form for their IPO last week. I had to read it for my job. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1321655/000119312520230013/d904406ds1.htm
Adam L Silverman
@VOR: Lucky you.
Van Buren
@Adam L Silverman: I have to say I don’t recall a whole lot of criticism of Gen. Flynn trashing Obama.
J R in WV
@Adam L Silverman:
Seems to me that a single page XO from Biden ending all executive orders issued by the previous administration would do the job, in one fell swoop.
Just word it to reverse Trump’s orders, and in each case to reinstate the previous standard operating procedures and status quo.
Give the R Wurms one shot at complaining about it.
The Pale Scot
@Adam L Silverman:
I can’t imagine that tech is ever going to be able to do that. Databases can reveal links, associations and tendencies maybe. But intentions? That’s Smiley’s People. Analyzing human intel, judging it’s veracity will always be an art with a shitload of luck involved. I’d always assume that the subject was running his own Maskirovka, as demonstrated in the clip from the Princess Bride.
That’s until Deep Thought is fabricated anyway, “Hmmm… Tricky”
Adam L Silverman
@The Pale Scot: Have I got bad news for you…
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/k7q55x/police-across-canada-are-using-predictive-policing-algorithms-report-finds?__twitter_impression=true