I was out and about all morning, but when I returned I just saw Biden at Arlington Cemetary. Here’s his brief speech on troop withdrawals.
If I find video of him at the cemetery, I’ll embed that and update the post.
So much news going on today so use this as your catch-all for discussing…
Afternoon open thread
Benw
I’m just slammed at work this week. Can’t cross things off the to-do list faster than I’m putting things on!
raven
Minneapolis-area police officer was arrested on Wednesday after she shot and killed Daunte Wright, 20, last weekend during a traffic stop, officials said.
Washington County Attorney Pete Orput said he plans to charge former Brooklyn Center officer Kim Potter with second-degree manslaughter. He is expected to release more information later Wednesday. The case was sent to the office to avoid a conflict of interest with the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office, which works closely with Brooklyn Center police on criminal cases, as first reported by KSTP-TV on Tuesday.
HumboldtBlue
I’m glad this is happening, but it’s still infuriating. What a fucking waste, an absolute waste of humanity, of treasure, of time.
Fucking absurd.
Here, enjoy this dog being adopted instead.
Martin
@raven: That seems like a fair charge assuming what we know now.
Kay
I appreciate the clarity.
I think the experts and the politicians who want to stay there have to explain to the public when they plan on leaving, because to me staying certainly looks like kicking the can down the road.
Biden is taking the risk of making an actual decision, and I’m grateful to him for doing that.
Baud
@Kay:
Agreed.
raven
@Martin: Yea, I agree.
CaseyL
What I find fascinating is that Biden, who appears to be governing as if he will be a single term President (i.e., pissing off powerful interest groups), may by so doing enact such dramatic, much-needed, long overdue changes that he will be re-elected overwhelmingly, simply by accomplishing such huge goals.
dww44
@CaseyL: I’m sure sane and logical Americans will agree. Not so much over there on the right, seeing as how their brains are rightly warped by 2 1/2 decades of Murdoch sponsored and Limbaugh conservative propaganda. Plus there’s always the element that if a Democrat or liberal says it then they will always take the other side even in the face of overwhelming logic. Seriously, they’re never gonna come around. We have to beat them into the literal ground and then salt it for a couple of decades.
mrmoshpotato
@CaseyL: Given how long Biden has been in Washington, he definitely knows he has a two year timeframe to
ram it down Rethuglican throatsget as much done as possible.raven
@mrmoshpotato: In the dead of night hopefully.
James E Powell
@CaseyL:
I see Biden as a guy who has been adjacent to the driver from a variety of positions his entire life. There was never a time when he wasn’t watching and never a time he wasn’t learning. Then he spent four years out of government. For the first time in decades he had time to reflect. Now he is applying all that to accomplish what he sees as the good of the country.
I compare him to second time Governor Jerry Brown, only on a national perspective.
wvng
I called my brother about this decision this morning, he is an Afghan hand from the pre Soviet days. He is deeply saddened by this decision,he loves the country and the people, but he agrees that it is the right thing to do. He saw no sign that it was ever going to get better after W dropped the ball and shifted his eye to Iraq. There was a time when better was hard but possible, and it was squandered.
MomSense
O/T but sad news in the dog world. A dear kayaking friend and breeder of champion Bernese Mountain dogs is losing his battle with cancer. His condition took a bad turn today. We haven’t been able to see them to help or say our goodbyes because of the damned pandemic.
He is also a wonderful guitarist and we will miss his playing and our group singing after paddles and dinner. His wife jokes that she thought she was marrying a rock star and ended up the wife of a dentist! He provided a lot of much needed dental care to people in need.
Fuck fucking cancer.
MattF
Jen Rubin has avoided foreign policy in her (relatively) recent turn to political sanity, so it’s notable that her attitude towards US troops leaving Afghanistan is quite rational, including a list of a long run of errors by various unnamed individuals. She’s not happy about it, but appears very aware that prediction is hard, especially about the future.
NotMax
Moderna #1, 43 hours later: vaccinated arm a bit better, still subpar compared to before. Whether the goop has aggravated arthritis or whether I rolled over onto that side’s arm while sleeping (or both), new wrinkle is the shoulder insistently making its complaints known.
Avoiding any pills as a precaution for now; smeared on some smurf jelly and that has muted things down to a dull roar.
SiubhanDuinne
@raven:
Good.
dmsilev
@CaseyL: I’m sure Biden knows that this will be effectively his last act in public life. Putting any potential health catastrophes aside, he’ll be either 82 or 86 when leaving office, and he’s probably going to be taking things at a somewhat more relaxed pace. Gives a certain amount of freedom to do what you think is best without worrying about pissing off too many people.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense:
I’m sorry, that is very sad. He sounds like a wonderful person.
SiubhanDuinne
Dog makes me happy.
ETA: This was meant for @Humboldt Blue. Dunno why the reply button didn’t link properly.
Martin
@CaseyL: I think Trump broke the power of the special interest groups. Look at how the Dems are now capturing Chamber of Commerce and large cap support on voting rights.
The balance of power has shifted to the Dem energized voting base.
Edit: Put another way, if Biden wants a second term, this is what he should be doing.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Huh? He gave them everything they wanted, including tax cuts.
Dems definitely appear to currently have an advantage, but I am not sure exactly how this has happened.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
Prediction about the past – much easier! ?
Ohio Mom
Dmsilev:
Biden appears to be in great shape and good health, he’s full of energy and good cheer, and I can imagine him continuing to sail through this term.
But staying in the Oval Office until 86? All the people I know in their mid-80s (okay, not a scientific sample) have started to show their age. And the presidency is a terrifically demanding job.
I am not expecting two terms, I am relishing every moment of this one.
trollhattan
@HumboldtBlue:
Well, I sure melted. :-)
different-church-lady
@CaseyL: When your goal is to do the right things, big things just follow.
Martin
@Brachiator: Yeah, but that’s not where their power comes from.
Their power came from convincing voters that the policies that helped them were also good for voters. The GOPs job then was to provide that cover by ensuring that the corporations didn’t obviously benefit at the expense of voters. And Trump failed there. Giving them everything backfires.
The NRA was allowed to self-destruct. Voting rights and anti-trans bills are way out of bounds, even with interest groups that the GOP always tried to hold onto. White christian nationalism is not a winning proposition for commerce and most interest groups but Trump pushed the GOP to make that the entire platform.
trollhattan
Is this not another example of saying the quiet things out loud?
And oddly, countering McConnell, who simply wants corporations to “shut up and gimme ya money!”
rikyrah
@MomSense:
So sorry :(
And, without hesitation
Phuck cancer.
VeniceRiley
@MomSense: I’m so sorry! F cancer! Berners are excellent dogs. Your friend had taste. I was just looking at mini bernedoodles yesterday.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MattF: Nicolle Wallace started out her show with James Stavridis and another guy talking about how we’re letting the Afghans down, they deserve better, it’s only 2,500 troops…. I’m sympathetic to all those arguments, but I had to turn it off. Whatever slim chance we had to make Afghanistan a better place, we threw away when Bush II decided to bring his oedipal issues to Bagdad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@James E Powell:
that’s interesting, though I don’t know enough about the two parts of Brown’s career, other than that killer moment in his debate with Whitman when she said we need California to be what it was thirty (?) years ago….
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Agreed. At this point, no one has a plan for doing something different where everyone who should win wins.
Baud
Wanna get paid for being Cole’s neighbor?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this is good news, it’s also funny news
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s great!
NobodySpecial
@Brachiator: Corporations suck at human rights, but they understand math and finance quite well, and they know that a few billionaires won’t keep the lights on, but tons and tons of urban and suburban people will.
They understand that from a financial perspective, backing Republicans to the hilt while they’re on the white socialist bender isn’t the winning play. Especially given that Republicans are on the back foot in Senate elections in 2022, and there’s no guarantee they win the House, either, if we weather coronavirus and stuff comes back 95% to normal by 2022.
Frankensteinbeck
I don’t like this decision, but I can’t think of any decision about Afghanistan I would like. There are no good answers here.
@wvng:
This. Bush and Cheney thought that all it took was stomping a weak country militarily and everyone would line up to be good little colonies. After 7 years of letting the devastation fester, there was nothing anyone could do. We’ll never know if Iraq and Afghanistan could have been peacefully rebuilt, because Bush didn’t try.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
Mostly unnamed. She’s honest about which side she was on, including cases where she got it wrong. In this case admitting her mistakes is a critical point, since the fallibility of the foreign policy establishment, including her, is the whole point of the column. It’s more convincing to say “we need to be humble in light of our past mistakes” when you’re explicitly including yourself in “we”.
Mary G
@MomSense: Oh, what a loss; you are lucky to know him. Condolences and fuck cancer.
MattF
@Roger Moore: Agree, it’s an important point. I should have pointed that out.
Mary G
@HumboldtBlue: Sound up for the twist:
Good news in another area:
JMG
If Alexander the Great couldn’t pacify (conquer, subdue, use whatever verb you wish) Afghanistan, and he couldn’t, whatever made us think we could do it.
different-church-lady
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Same poll after respondents are told they’d be getting Amazon Prime:
Support 93%
Oppose: -3%
Omnes Omnibus
@JMG: Alexander didn’t have artillery.
different-church-lady
“Siri, give me something to write down in my “Sentences I never thought I’d hear” notebook:
Mary G
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Baud: Vermont has been doing that for a few years now. I live in MD so it wouldn’t be that big a move…it’s a wee bit tempting if a) there were a town in WV that I thought I’d like to live in and b) I was sure my employer would keep me on max telework. If I was sure of b) I might move to VT anyway as I have two cousins that live there (well, one is technically across the river in Hanover NH) and it’s nice to be close to family. Plus, there ARE towns in VT that I think I’d like to live.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can’t speak too much about his first time as governor, but he was exactly what we needed the second time around. He still had the heart of a dreamer but with the experience of someone who had been around politics for decades. He got a hell of a lot done, and not just because he was around when the Democrats finally got a strong enough grip on the state government to have their way. He knew how to work the levers of power in Sacramento, refrained from overplaying his hand, and went straight to the public when it was the best way to get around Republican obstructionism.
I also learned from him one of the big lessons I will remember about politics. When times are tough, politicians love to talk about the need to make tough choices, but that’s a lot of BS. Hard times force us to make choices we might rather not make, but that pressure makes the choices easier. The really hard choices- the choices Jerry Brown was willing to make- are to say no to your own people when everything is going well. We had a budget surplus because of the tax increases he stumped for, and he insisted we build up a rainy day fund instead of paying for everyone’s pet project. That stood us in good stead over the past year, because we had money when we needed it. Gavin Newsom wasn’t forced to make so many hard choices during COVID because Jerry Brown made them for him back in the mid 2010s.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I can interpret this two ways. One is that people actually want higher taxes on corporations and see them as a good thing independent of the jobs bill*. The other is that tax and spend is more popular than spending without a plan to pay for it. Shorter: Biden’s insistence on paying for the bill with new taxes may be bad economics, but it’s good politics.
*Biden is selling it as a jobs bill, not an infrastructure bill, and I think we should stick with it. It blows up a lot of Republican complaints about what is and isn’t infrastructure.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
My requirements are proximity to a Costco and Trader Joe’s. Do any towns in those states qualify?
Amir Khalid
@Roger Moore:
All I really remember about Jerry Brown’s first time as Governor is that he was dating Linda Ronstadt at the time.
MattF
Somewhat OT. Liz Cheney, asked on FOX whether she would support TFG if he was the nominee in 2024: ‘I would not’.
Ken
@Baud: I want the corporate version of the deal:
Brachiator
@Martin:
Trump obviously failed with the majority of voters. But his base and the GOP leadership is unrepentant.
And the sad, crazy thing is that there are still voters who refuse to give the Democrats credit for their efforts.
Gun sales continue to skyrocket. Some states are passing open carry laws.
Red states continue to pass voter suppression laws, using the lie that they are protecting the integrity of the vote. Idiots like Tucker Carlson are openly espousing noxious white nationalist views. By the way, I do believe that a lot of people are repelled by this, but Fox News and other venues continue to push this crap vigorously.
This is sad, but interesting. Corporations are backing away from the white nationalist stuff even though various CEOs were happy to hang with Trump and sometimes implied they shared his views. So some of them may be trying to play it both ways.
different-church-lady
@Ken: 5. You don’t even have to go through with moving there.
Roger Moore
@MattF:
One of the things that makes me respect Rubin and Max Boot more than most of the other neocons who turned on Trump is that they’ve been willing to admit their role in creating him. I will accept help from any former Republicans interested in burning their old party to the ground and salting the ashes, but I will never trust them until they admit to having been mistaken in supporting it before Trump.
Yutsano
@Omnes Omnibus: The Mongols had no problem holding that area. Same with the Sassanids. But they had far fewer people in the area at the time as well. Plus they committed many more troops than the British and us Americans did.
Brachiator
@Amir Khalid:
And they remained friends. She still speaks fondly about him.
But Jerry Brown was my governor. He did a hell of a job both times around. And he is an example of a political family who believed in public service. He did a damned good job as governor.
And he was lucky as hell to have dated Linda Ronstadt.
Steve in the ATL
@Yutsano: sure, thanks to the fabled Mongol redlegs!
Cermet
One thing that makes the withdraw something fox with have trouble attacking for any length of time is this is tRumps withdraw; President Biden is simply following through with tRumps (one and only) good policy (and I know it was for many wrong reasons but the fact is, he did the treaty and is responsible for it, not Biden.) Dems need to say that every time and make it clear this is tRumps policy and president Biden is just doing ultimately what the treaty requires.
Roger Moore
@Amir Khalid:
The big thing about Brown’s first term is that he was governor when Prop 13 passed. He had big dreams but had to shrink them when the state budget was gutted. My impression is that it had two lasting effects on him:
Cermet
@Yutsano: The Mongols destroyed the entire man made water system that enable the people to produce huge crop surpluses; afterwards, the destruction was so though it was never possible to rebuild – basically, they destroyed the economics of the place so they could conquered the place.
Mary G
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
@Roger Moore:
I can personally attest that Jerry Brown cleaned up a lot of crap that Reagan left in his first term. In 1974 I applied for the best summer job around here, at the state park. It paid a whopping $2.85/hour and did not involve frying things all day. Usually those jobs went to cheerleaders, football players, and rich kids and I had no hope of it at all. I was surprised to be offered the job. Turned out there was a catch. The state was projected to be out of money before the end of the fiscal year and Gov. Reagan (they said him specifically) did not want a deficit on the books, because he (they said Reagan specifically again) would look bad, so I would be working for free all summer and be paid sometime in the fall in a lump sum.
You will not be surprised that I was not paid when Reagan was still in charge, but 11 months later when enough of the temps had screamed loud enough for Brown’s people to track down the hidden accounting flim flams. The thousand and some dollars I finally got was an astronomical sum at the time and I took a six-week trip to Europe on it, so I wasn’t fussed, but it was a long hard summer of working without pay and finding odd jobs to put gas in my car.
Gov. Brown was also the Mayor of Oakland in between, where he learned a lot about politics and government from the bottom of the ladder. In his second time around as governor, he cut spending as well as raising taxes a couple of times, taking flak from both sides, but he grew into as honest a politician I’ve ever seen by the time he retired with NFLTG. I wish we could clone him.
trollhattan
@Mary G:
Jerry also functioned as his own Jen Psaki. Do NOT ask Jerry either a stupid question or a question on a topic about which you know nothing.
“Fools are not suffered here.”
–Management
He was also known to (and may still) challenge people to pullup contests.
Martin
@Brachiator: They’re always happy to go along provided the public doesn’t see it for what it is. Trump shifted the power within the GOP from those that were smart enough to not say the quiet stuff out loud, to those that believe saying it out loud furthers the goal.
Give corporations credit for one thing – PR runs the show. Once you tie them to the unpopular stuff, they jump out. The GOP used to be pretty good at giving them cover, but no more. All of the stuff you are listing above are just illustrations of how it’s going wrong because the GOP is losing corporations along the way. Home Depots founder is now a Biden supporter.
The NRA provided cover. It provided the necessary veneer that gun owners were the constituency, when we knew all along it was gun manufacturers. It gave Republicans enough cover for the NYT to both sides it and add additional credibility. But without the NRA, that stops working. If we can’t pretend that gun owners oppose universal background checks, they’ll have to resort to independent polling which shows that 90% of the public supports it. The charade falls apart completely.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Steve in the ATL: Burlington VT does and is a very nice little city. Not really familiar enough with WV to know if any towns meet those requirements.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF:
Narrator: Gentle listener, you’re not a dumbshit. You don’t believe this crap, right?
(Not calling MattF a dumbshit)
Kathleen
@MomSense: I’m so sorry.
Roger Moore
@Martin:
I’m not even sure if it’s gun manufacturers anymore. It’s political operatives who understand it’s important to do the gun thing as a cover for more generic right wing political donations and laundering Russian money.
planetjanet
@Ken:
Bravo!