Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

John Fetterman: Too Manly for Pennsylvania.  Paid for by the Oz for Senator campaign.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

This really is a full service blog.

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You cannot shame the shameless.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

This fight is for everything.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Biden Live: Hermantown, MN

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103Comments

  4. 4.

    trollhattan

    Somebody asked whether regular military–not National Guard–can help with firefighting tasks. Turns out, yes they can.

    The Creek Fire, burning in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Forest, has scorched 248,256 acres in Fresno and Madera counties and was 20% contained as of Friday morning.

    Fire officials warn that strong winds, which are expected to increase within the next several days, combined with dry weather conditions, may encourage the fire to grow. Full containment of the Creek Fire, located among the communities of Shaver Lake, Big Creek, and Huntington Lake, and other fires in the Sierra National Forest, is not expected until mid-October.

    About 250 U.S. Marines and sailors will be deployed into the region to help fight the ongoing fire, the second military support effort initiated this month. The marine unit from Camp Pendleton began fire training on Thursday.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/california/fires/article245831455.html#storylink=cpy

    The help will be welcome, as manpower and equipment are stretched badly and some fires are 0% contained after weeks.

  6. 6.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @trollhattan: The Yellowstone fires in ’88 and some fires in Eastern Oregon in ’89 had active duty units fighting them.  This makes sense, because the soldiers are pretty much all in good to great physical shape, and the training required to fight fires is given to quick studies.  I was deployed to Eastern Oregon in ’89.

    Now active duty forces are really stretched from deployments around the globe in utterly ridiculous armed conflicts started by a deserting coward.

  8. 8.

    JPL

    @Baud: It’s a good message. That along with mentions of Mar-a-lago just points at trump as being out of touch. Loved how he mentioned to his pals at his club that they were going to become a whole lot richer.

  10. 10.

    Zinsky

    Biden is well-liked in most parts of Minnesota, despite all of Trump’s bluster about “taking back Minnesota”.  Funny that he is speaking in Hermantown.   I live in the Twin Cities but a small town about 90 miles south east of here called New Ulm has a giant statue of an old German whose name was Hermann the Cheruscan but locals call the statue “Hermann the German”.  It celebrates a German victory over Roman troops at the Battle of Teutoborg Forest that ended Roman rule of the Germanic people.  The location in New Ulm is well-known and a popular place to get drunk/high, etc. and survey the area.  The annual Oktoberfest there draws hundreds (pre-COVID).

    Here is the link to the statue.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Villago Delenda Est: Actually select units are stretched. About 85% of the US Army in CONUS at this point aren’t rotating into or out of Iraq or Afghanistan. SOF is completely pegged out. We’ve got a LOT of tail, not a lot of tooth. And the tooth we have needs some serious TLC after the past 20 years.

  14. 14.

    Leto

    @trollhattan: @Villago Delenda Est: Suckers and losers, every one of them. (Eternal fucking hate for the entire Trumpublican Party and every fucker that votes for them)

    We routinely do humanitarian missions and this is no different. Semper Fi devil dogs, and anchors away my Navy mates. Was going to go with “Ahoy, matey!” for the Navy but I honestly don’t know what any Navy motto might be :P

  18. 18.

    cain

    I was looking at the merchandise at the biden campaign website and I really was infatuated with the Biden aviator socks!

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @cain: They’re an aspirational purchase. You get the aviator socks if you are thinking about taking flying lessons or maybe buying your own plane.

  21. 21.

    Leto

    @Adam L Silverman: I’m sure you saw CSAF (Chief of Staff of the AF) Brown’s strategic approach memo. Salient part which is emblematic of overall US forces:

    “Tomorrow’s Airmen are more likely to fight in highly contested environments, and must be prepared to fight through combat attrition rates and risks to the nation that are more akin to the World War II era than the uncontested environments to which we have since become accustomed,” Brown writes. “The forces and operational concepts we need must be different.”

    In the call with reporters, Brown said if the Air Force just ignores this possible reality “and [does] not talk about what’s at risk and the potential for high attrition rates, and we just kind of continue on the path we’re on, then shame on us. … I think I owe it to the Air Force, to our senior leadership, the discussion on what the potential is. And when you talk about a peer competitor and a high-end fight, that is one of the facts that we have to be thinking about. We can’t just wish that part away.”

    Brown: Change Now or Risk ‘Losing a High-End Fight,’ and ‘Quality Airmen’

  25. 25.

    Another Scott

    @Zinsky: My MIL’s family was from New Prague.  She often told stories about her relatives owning a hotel there and getting advance word to pack up and hide the booze when the Revenuers came during Prohibition.

    There’s lots of great stories in those little towns.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  26. 26.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: Well I tried GA wine thirty years ago, and the taste stayed with me.   Since I hold a grudge, I haven’t tried it since.   Although I prefer CA wines, NY is tolerable.

    Actually French wines are good, but I’m not that rich.

  27. 27.

    Leto

    @Immanentize: Idk about higher, but I know we’ve (BJ) spoken about  America being the lynchpin of the NATO alliance, as well as the general enforcer of the post WW2 global security infrastructure wrt to open sea lanes, human rights, etc… BUT maybe with the self immolation we’ve undergone over the past 4 years we won’t need it! Who do we cede that to? Idk. Maybe this is where we move to a more drone centric force, but that has a good number of pitfalls too concerning operational deployment that we’d need to address. Air Force hardware is fucking expensive. Try to shoe horn everything into one plane (F35) and it can’t really do anything well and it’s fucking expensive. Try to have a diverse force of different planes that can do 1-2 things extremely well and it’s still expensive. Pilots don’t want to compete against other pilots with similar capabilities, they want every advantage they can get. Same with soldiers/Marines on the ground. I know that the plan was to economically wrap nations together so much that going to war would be unthinkable but here we are.

    (I know that was probably a snark reply but wanted to answer semi-serious :P )

  28. 28.

    Ken

    @trollhattan: There seems to be an analogy here.

    We cut Forest Service funding and increase Defense funding, and soldiers end up fighting fires.

    We cut social service funding and increase police funding, and end up sending armed police officers when a mother is having trouble with an autistic child.

  30. 30.

    Anonymous At Work

    Breaking News: Trump discovers that tons of displaced Puerto Ricans live in Florida and are pissed about his mistreatment of the island. Apparently, he’s ordering billions in aid be sent suddenly, months to years after the money was approved by Congress.
    Hopefully, the obvious cynicism will not sway voters.

  31. 31.

    JPL

    Wow Fulton Cty is adding GA Tech Basketball arena, along with the High Museum and Ga Int Convention center for early voting locations.  They’ll be thirty locations in Fulton Cty to vote early and with the additional locations, the lines should be minimal.

  33. 33.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Leto: I don’t know what uncontested territories he’s talking about. I welcome him wanting to shift the strategic conceptualization, but the problem he is describing that he wants to fix is a perfect example of senior officer cohort leadership in the USAF not understanding that just because they have strategic superiority and overmatch in the air that provides them with complete tactical superiority, does not mean that the Land domain is equally uncontested. And the Land domain is where war has been taking place for the past 20 years and it has never been uncontested even if a lot of the contestation was by irregular forces. This misconceptualization he’s trying to fix is rooted in successive senior officer cohort leadership in the USAF, rooted in a really whacked Air Power theory literature, not understanding that wars are not fought or won in the Air domain and is, perhaps, the best reason why there should not be an independent Air Force, just Air Components for the Army, Navy, and Marines. It is also a major driver why every Chief of Staff of the Air Force tells every president that the US Air Force can win every war for the US without anyone on the ground ever having to fight. Which has never been true. So if he can fix this, it would be great.

  35. 35.

    Kent

    @clay:@Baud: Soledad O’Brien, who I usually think is great, is clowning herself over the Park Ave statement.

    What is she getting butt hurt about?  He’s not dissing all of New York City, just Park Ave/Upper East Side uber-wealthy.   He’s not dissing the Bronx.

  37. 37.

    japa21

    @Kent: He’s not even dissing Park Ave. He’s pointing out how ridiculous it is for Trump to project himself as of the people when he has had such a coddled upbringing.

  40. 40.

    David Evans

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s impressive. I have all the Lucas Davenport and Virgil Flowers books on Kindle and have been re-reading them. Also the Kidd books. I have a nagging feeling there’s something not in those series that I’ve missed.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Immanentize: @Leto: Immanentize, please see my response to Leto at comment #33. What Gen. Brown seems to be trying to do is fix a major problem, which is that because the US Air Force worked very hard to achieve complete dominance in the Air domain, US Air power theory has become terribly skewed. It has a major blind spot, which is that with the exception of a fully cyberwar or political warfare, which purposefully avoids using the military elements of national power (the subject of my recent professional article published at the end of July at The Cipher Brief), wars are fought in the Land domain. And while the US Air Force, as well as the air components of the other Services have major roles to play in winning the overall campaign, what the US Air Force is actually doing is fighting either battles in the air domain (sorties) or providing strategic and tactical air support to those fighting in the Land domain (the US Army and the US Marine Corps). The problem Gen. Brown is trying to address is that US Air power theory doesn’t get this disconnect. Because the US has largely uncontested superiority in the Air domain, American Air power theorists misunderstand that despite what we spend, the standard we train and educate to, and our overall capabilities in the Land domain, the Land domain is never uncontested. Now for the past 20 years we’ve largely fought irregular forces in the Land domain, but they have given us fits precisely because they’re irregular and even after 20 years the conventional Army is still really set up to fight conventional enemies in an interstate war. This is a major problem. Especially given the budgetary inequities between the Services. The Air Force is a platform and equipment and tech heavy service in budgetary terms. The Army, for all the equipment, is a personnel heavy service in budgetary terms.

    Now over the past 30 years, the US Air Force, as well as the air component of the US Navy and Marine Corps and, to a lesser extend of the US Army, has been at constant war. From Desert Shield/Desert Storm on through the no fly zones in Iraq to Kosovo and the Balkans through the post 9-11 operations, the USAF and Naval, Marine, and Army aviators have been at constant war. Even as the vast, vast, vast majority of their targets were in the Land domain, meaning that eventually the Army would have to go in and put boots on the ground. We have more experience now than any other Air Force since the use of aviation in combat and that experience is overworked and exhausted, both personnel and material/equipment, while the Air power theorists are talking about war as if it is something completely other than what war actually is in general and what we’ve been doing in specific.

  42. 42.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anonymous At Work: Breaking news: the Florida Democratic Party has been walking all over its crank in golf cleats with the Floridians of Puerto Rican descent and Puerto Ricans who have come to Florida, at least nominally temporarily, to live and work while the post Maria reconstruction is being done. This is why Rick Scott is Florida’ junior senator rather than Bill Nelson being Florida’s senior senator.

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @David Evans: The next one, which may be the last Davenport one as he keeps teasing he’s going to bring that series to an end, is a hybrid. I was looking for my annual that fucking Flowers novel to come out in October and I’ve got to wait until the Spring as he’s combining the next one in each series into a joint Davenport/Flowers novel.

  44. 44.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: Don’t ignore the French!  Because people think French wine is expensive, market share has decreased.  So, price has gone down vis a vis comparable Californian wines.  Great french wines are available cheap.  Spanish wines too!

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    @Kent:

    Nobody ever calls out Gingrich-Huckabee on their “coastal elites” bullshit. Never ever, ever. Doesn’t something like 3/4 of the country live within a hundred miles of the coast? That makes me elite, so give me respect, yo! Also money.

  51. 51.

    Immanentize

    @Adam L Silverman: This makes sense.  I get it.  Return to the constitutional limitation of services to army and navy for perhaps better balances of missions suited to the fight?

    I know.  Not gonna happen.  But it would at least partially force the strategic planning you see is missing?

  52. 52.

    Leto

    @Adam L Silverman:  I see you made a pretty massive edit to that original post which makes it a bit more incoherent. Want to go for a third draft?

    not understanding that wars are not fought or won in the Air domain

    Here’s where I’ve pretty much seen the same argument against the Air Force for the past like 20+ years. I mean I guess if this is the conventional wisdom then there was really no reason to smash the Luftwaffe, right? The Allies would’ve been able to push on to Berlin without that top cover. Same with Korea and Vietnam wrt to Soviet MiGs/air power. Which leads to:

    just Air Components for the Army, Navy, and Marines.

    Why stop there? I’ll posit back that no wars are not fought or won in the Sea domain for the same reasons. Why does nobody propose folding the Navy/Maries into the Army? I’m sure that Army generals will be just as well versed/competent in naval warfare as they are in air warfare. (Make shit go boom; go!)

    Which has never been true.

    That’s true. Of course, the Army hasn’t won a war since 1945 and they’ve been promising the same thing.

  54. 54.

    Immanentize

    @JPL: Riojas can be as excellent as any French or Californian red.  I have a love of vino verde also — which is white  light and frizzante like prosecco but a completely different fresh taste.  Yummmm. There are other excellent (but not costy) Spanish wines.  Then, ITALY!  OMG. Save money and buy mediterranean.

  55. 55.

    oatler.

    @Ken:

    “Somebody had left a promotional magnum of Grand Cru de Muskogee Demi Sec, made from a Concord grape variety imported from Arkansas in a wastebasket full of ice. It had a nearly opaque deeply purple color bordering on the ultraviolet and a body comparable to that of maple syrup, through which its bubbles, though multitudinous, were obliged to rise slowly and alas, invisibly.”

  62. 62.

    Coolpapabell

    Oregon wines are fantastic, especially the Pinot Noirs.  Some are quite expensive but there a lot of reasonable options.

  74. 74.

    cwmoss

    @JPL: Lots of good wine made here in the Beaver State. Hold your breath while you’re here, though. Still bad air quality.

  76. 76.

    zhena gogolia

    @cwmoss:

    Oh, Oregon pinot noir is so fabulous. I love Oregon. I only got to visit once (Eugene, Portland, and Yachats, otherwise known as Paradise!). I was supposed to go to Portland with my husband last summer, but arthritis intervened.

  78. 78.

    Miss Bianca

    @Immanentize:

    Interrupting to remind folks that Jimmie Hendrix died FIFTY years ago. Only the good die young.

    True dat. I mean, he died on my seventh birthday and *I’m* still here, so QED, all y’all.

  80. 80.

    JPL

    @Immanentize: Bookmarked

    The olive oil I like is Mis Raices.   Years ago I found one at Harry’s which was in a Spanish oil in rectangular bottle covered in silver or gold foil.  Anyway Whole Food’s bought the store and stopped carrying it.

  84. 84.

    Ken

    @cwmoss: Lots of good wine made here in the Beaver State. Hold your breath while you’re here, though. Still bad air quality.

    “The 2020 Cabernet is notable for its smoky quality, with undertones of turpentine and a distinct ashy aftertaste.”

    (I will never understand wine reviewers, who apparently think that leather, chalk, tar, and petrichor are desirable tastes.)

  85. 85.

    Leto

    @Immanentize:@Kent: 

    Here, I’ll drop this part from Brown’s memo:

    Without the U.S. Air Force’s unprecedented control of the air and enabling domains, no other U.S. military mission enjoys full freedom of maneuver.

    This is where land-centric theorists haven’t updated their theories. If the AF is guilty of thinking we can win the war all by themselves, the land commanders are in the same boat. Adam’s correct regarding our past 20 years of fighting: they’ve all been irregular, where we’ve enjoyed basic air dominance from hour 0. That in turn lets our land forces move uncontested where ever they want. But here’s the thing: most of our war fighting strategy is predicated upon the fact that we control the air. They took the lessons from WW2, where we didn’t fully control the air picture, and applied them forward.

    Now if we want to rework that, posit that we don’t control the air, that we’re not going to FIRST go in and take out the enemies Air Force, command and control systems, and ground-to-air defenses, then SECOND send in land force… well ok. That’ll go back to casualty numbers that we haven’t seen since WW2 (which, again, is something Brown talks about), and also requires a rework of joint doctrine. Of course nobody is positing that, just like nobody is positing wrapping up the Navy into the Army (even though, to paraphrase Adam again, wars aren’t fought or won on the sea).

    There’s also a distinct lack of recognition that each domain is a separate specialty that requires specific training. Air power is different from land power is different from sea power. They each have their guiding doctrines. There’s a lot of overlap between the three (not even going to cover cyber/space which are distinct from the other three), but each are distinct. Ask yourself when’s the last time you had a general in command of a carrier strike group and why that might be?

  89. 89.

    Immanentize

    @Leto:

    each domain is a separate specialty that requires specific training. Air power is different from land power is different from sea power.

    This may be where I disagree at all with you. The insurance that the three require some isolated training, purpose, etc. Would (as my comment about our constitution suggests) that the baby should not have its own airforce and nor should the army. If they are really separate. But they are not. Which may be Adams point?

  91. 91.

    Repatriated

    @Leto: Part of this is something dating back to Iraq II: The USAF used to be able to count on the Army for base protection and operations “outside the wire”.  However, the Army is stretched so thin that Air Force personnel are tasked with a lot of that now.  That and we’re forward-deployed into unfriendly locations rather than operating from bases out of theater.

  93. 93.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Immanentize: Unless the founders had access to Obama’s time machine, they didn’t know about airplanes.  If they had, they might have also created an Air Force along with the Army and Navy.

    When Adam cites inter-service issues, it seems to me he’s blaming the tool when there’s in fact a shitty carpenter(Executive and Legislature).

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Leto: I think it is two different arguments. No arguments from me that the Army cannot bring a campaign to successful battlefield termination, aka victory aka winning since 1945. But that’s a separate issue from the question of whether the US Air Force is fighting Air wars or wars in the Air domain versus fighting battles. I’m honestly not trying to crap on the Air Force. What the Air Force does in terms of capabilities and outcomes is amazing. I’m just not a fan of the Air power theory that backs it up.

  96. 96.

    Leto

    @Immanentize: Adam’s point is that the AF doesn’t understand that it’s only there to support the Army. There’s no other function the AF has than to support the Army, so it should just be folded back into the Army. If that isn’t his point, he can clarify that because that’s what’s he’s stipulated. Which can be used to fold the Navy/Space Force into the Army. (JFC, I’m not even going to touch the Space Farce and I hate even writing it. If they were going to create a new, separate branch, cyber should’ve gotten the nod as space is basically there for cyber/ISR purposes.)

    Here, I’ll explain it like this: why we do we have different lawyers? It’s all the Law, correct? A criminal lawyer should be just as well versed on Constitutional law, as well as property law, as well as medical law, correct? I mean, you all go to law school so you should be able to execute all the different law types at an expert level. No? Same thing here. (If they are really separate. But they are not. :P )

    @Repatriated: I don’t know about that. The AF has provided primary base defense going back to Vietnam. We’re all stretched thin, and we’re all operating out of austere locations. We’re eventually going to disentangle ourselves from these place but leave them in worse shape. Something the AF has pushed since the start of the Afghan/Iraq wars are their joint nature. It’s a JOINT endeavor. Which is why most in the AF were so pissed when the Army basically said we were lazy fucks, in front of a Senate Armed Forces hearing, back in 2005. But that’s a different topic for a different time.

  98. 98.

    Gvg

    I think the fact of US military dominance causes all the other rivals to concentrate of irregular and or terrorist fighting. It’s basically hopeless to fight our kind of war toe to toe traditionally, so they look for something they have a chance at. This is IMO why Osama attacked the way he did and also all the other insurgents before him and after. It’s probably why Russia is doing cyber propaganda, bribery and blackmail.

    if we ever really slipped in overall superiority, the whole world would rethink their own choices.

    our air superiority is even more out front of the rest of the world, I think even of our allies. Consequently, no one attacks that point of us. I think assuming wars aren’t won in the air, may be more untested than Adam thinks because no one is challenging us there. It is always smarter to attack where someone is weak not strong right?

    we, also haven’t been in a war where we desperately needed the air. In fact we haven’t really been in wars except the Cold War that were as important to us as our leaders claimed. Too many wars of choice IMO.

    If an enemy was really attacking us and had air superiority to bring a fight to our shores….well I think that is a war where it could be decided in the air. It was pretty darned important in WWII. Japan surrendered after we dropped 2 bombs from the air. I bet they would have liked to have had home air superiority.

  99. 99.

    Leto

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ll say that I’m not seeing those theories being presented, specifically, “wars in the Air domain versus fighting battles.” A lot of the Air War College lit that I’ve read (up until 2019) was speaking in terms of wars in the air in the context of fighting a near peer adversary, as well as the joint doctrine of supporting the land forces (one of the AF’s 8 core doctrines). I’ve read plenty of the core Air Power theory because it’s the same shit that was developed back in the 20s and is still part of the teaching. BUT I honestly think that most of the AFs doctrine since 2001 is evolving in a more joint fashion and how the AF help utilize it’s unique capabilities to execute the overall strategic mission.

    Also I know you’re not shitting on the AF. I honestly enjoy these because it helps sharpen my own thinking on these matters because it usually leads me to reading more. So as always, thanks :)

  100. 100.

    Leto

    @Gvg: You’re correct in the fact that we have the best Air Force in the world, and our adversaries recognize that. What they’ve done though is ramped up their developments in radar, surface-to-air missiles, and C2 systems. That was a big driver, on our part, in stealth technology. Which in turn led to China/Russia developing better radar/SAM/C2 systems, which in turn led us to developing better stealth tech (F35/F22). That’s part of the reason why we can’t quite compare Air Forces. Or why a direct apples to apples comparison is not quite correct.

  102. 102.

    J R in WV

    @Immanentize:

    regarding wine:

    Then, ITALY! OMG. Save money and buy mediterranean.

    THIS ~!~ There was no bad wine in Italy, although there was not so good wine being made in Italy. Cava, Prosecco, Sparkling White Gamay from France. Even less expensive French Champagne, all great. Some west coast sparkling wine is good too.

  103. 103.

    Leto

    @J R in WV: Going to echo this; when we lived in Italy, some of the best wine I’ve ever had was about 8 euro (maybe $13 at the time?). The amount of amazing wine to be had in the 5-15 euro range (15 if you were feeling really fancy). I was in the Brescia region and the amount of just amazing wine there (from the local vineyards) was just silly.

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