Refugees who lived their entire lives in Afghanistan are arriving in the US after fleeing the Taliban.
One such refugee, 30-year-old Tamana, tells @GaryTuchmanCNN she felt she was dreaming when she finally touched down in the Washington DC area. pic.twitter.com/zC2F9v7js1
— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) August 19, 2021
Hopefully, maybe, eventually, some bittersweet ones…
“However difficult this vote may be…Let’s just pause, just for a minute and think through the implications of our actions today, so that this does not spiral out of control.”
– Rep. Barbara Lee in 2001
She was the only member of Congress to vote against the war in Afghanistan pic.twitter.com/Kr5hDSyfOU
— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) August 12, 2021
Barbara Lee doesn’t feel vindicated for voting against the Afghan war: “I almost wish … I had been wrong” https://t.co/sUcRr2DQin
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) August 18, 2021
… Suddenly, Lee is the voice everyone wants to hear. Every cable pundit wants her opinion. Her office is inundated with media requests, even as she is scrambling to protect and evacuate U.S. citizens and Afghans fleeing the Taliban. Once reviled, her solitary vote against the Afghan invasion is now being reframed as an important, prescient moment in American history.
There is no sense of vindication. What she’s feeling right this moment is “worry and sadness and anxiety.” More than anything, there’s a sense of urgency.
“I’ve got to do more,” she sighed. More to protect women and children, more for the Afghans who helped American soldiers and journalists. As chair of the House Appropriations subcommittee on foreign operations — which funds diplomatic missions and humanitarian assistance — Lee is desperately trying to bring some order to chaos and make sure there are enough assets in the region to get everyone out safely. That means cutting through some of the bureaucracy to expedite special immigrant visas and pressure the Defense and State departments to move more quickly…
Throughout it all, voters in Oakland kept reelecting Lee, who’s also the subject of the new documentary “Barbara Lee: Speaking Truth To Power,” scheduled for release on Friday. The liberal Democrat has worked tirelessly to repeal the Iraq resolution and the 2001 authorization, partnering with veterans groups to build political support. Any president can respond to an imminent threat with military force, she said, but Congress cannot give up its role in declaring war. “It’s not easy, but again, I always say, as a Black woman in America, we have to be persistent.”
She supports President Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan but was stunned by the rapid collapse of the country. “I think we’re caught — I won’t say caught off guard — but surprised we didn’t calculate how ready the Taliban were,” she said. Our soldiers did everything we asked of them, she added. There will inevitably be hearings, the emotional deep dives into the what and how and why.
But for now, Lee hopes there are lessons to be learned. That America should not be in the business of nation-building. That the three aspects of foreign policy — defense, diplomacy and development — need to be reconsidered and rebalanced. As chair of the appropriations subcommittee, she oversees a budget of about $2 billion for diplomacy and development. The defense budget? $714 billion in 2020…
On The Road – arrieve – The Galapagos, part 7
John S.
There is rarely satisfaction in being able to say “I told you so.”
debbie
I classify this as an Excellent Link: Larry David vs. Alan Dershowitz on Martha’s Vineyard.
OzarkHillbilly
Funny. As the only anti invasion voice in my largish circle of friends, coworkers, and cavers, nobody is asking me what I think of the latest developments. I wonder why?
Spanky
Fuck you, CNN.
Feeds right into the “senile” meme.
Assholes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
No, Douche – they just don’t want to talk to you.
Does he even hear himself anymore?
OzarkHillbilly
Today’s Moment of “Duh!”:
Spanky
Meanwhile, WaPo reports
Wheeeee!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@debbie:
Then there’s this:
For these “principled voices of contrarianism”, there’s an unstated and stupid presumption that there isn’t a well-funded ecosphere of RWNJ asshole lawyers who are more than happy to do this work.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
O.J. taught him not to listen to himself. //
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: No. SATSQ.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Those first five words absolutely confirm your first quote. He cannot imagine a single word of his not being an absolute jewel. //
OzarkHillbilly
I guess his principles don’t require him to actually read the damn thing first.
Tony Jay
@Spanky:
They have entire filing cabinets stuffed to the gills with rejected headlines from the Trump era. Accurate summations of his disastrous mismanagement that were toned down because they feared the hit to their social standing and ability to garner anonymously sourced titbits for their reputation-enhancing book deal that would follow if they actually did their jobs properly.
Now they’re just repurposing them to toss crap at Biden, facts be damned. Get them a bit squiffy and they’ll tell you it’s his own fault for not respecting their vitally important role in making or breaking his Presidency.
SHDD
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
Harvard Law has a lot to answer for. Burn it down, scatter the rubble and salt the site.
Kay
The “ordererly withdrawal” is the same fantasy as the success of the nation building was. The precondition to an orderly withdrawal was the success of the nation building project.
hueyplong
I’m actually surprised that Lee is getting any attention. The usual procedure when a lefty/dove turns out to be correct about something is to mutter briefly about the America-hater’s similarity to a stopped clock and then move on to the next costly misadventure without evidencing any interest in what she thinks about that.
hueyplong
@Kay: I wish someone/anyone would actually say that – word for word – on teevee. Ever.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone???
Ten Bears
And she apologized for being right. That’s just wrong …
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Dear god, am I supposed to care what’s happening “on the Vineyard”? Get an honest job, man!
Geminid
Polling has begun for the 2022 contest betwen Florida Senator Marco Rubio and presumptive Democratic nominee Representative Val Demings. The latest from St. Pete Polls shows Rubio 48%, Demings 46%.
Kay
@hueyplong:
An orderly withdrawal would require at least a functioning Afghan government- not even Afghan security forces because we can replace them with our own military for the withdrawal which is what we’re doing- but a functioning government. There’s that “need a functioning Afghan government” problem again. As much a problem in the withdrawal as it was in the nation building.
Princess
This a great article on Afghanistan by a former NPR reporter who spent many years living there, after ceasing to be a reporter. It furthers my feeling that none of the American news is capable of telling us what has really happened there. American media is too in love with its myths of American exceptionalism.
https://www.sarahchayes.org/post/the-ides-of-august
WaterGirl
@Geminid: Is that a poll of everyone or of registered voters? When I saw those numbers I assumed that the poll is really registering Republican vs. Democrat and tells us nothing more than that.
Maybe I woke up cynical this morning.
debbie
@Geminid:
Doesn’t Marco have a competitor in his primary who’s polling pretty well? I saw something on Twitter last night (dick nixon, most likely) about it.
OzarkHillbilly
I never read anything like that.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: I’m guessing it’s of registered voters. St. Pete Polls probably has it’s own website that gives methodology. I just picked the poll on @Ragnarok Lobster’s twitter feed, followed it to some state newspaper.
Geminid
@debbie: I hope Rubio does have a challenger. Republicans seem to have zeal for primarying their own officeholders these days. RINO hunting.
Barbara
@Princess: Everyone should read that.
Butter Emails
@Kay:
I think it required functioning Afghan security forces as well. At some point the US and NATO forces have to pull out. Afghanistan is landlocked, so we can’t just have them all on a beach and pull them out simultaneously using landing craft into an ocean we control.
The options are fly out or retreat across the border. I don’t think any of the bordering countries would be comfortable with a force of several thousand US marines and other soldiers crossing their borders even if such a retreat were safe and feasible.
Flying out means at some point there will be insufficient forces to secure the airport and at a later point there will literally be no forces securing the airport – all troops will be on a plane. I wonder which troops will be selected as the rear guard.
Cermet
So the media and the lying thugs wanted a faster withdraw of Afghans and complain this should have been done earlier; yet first off, the thug party and its political news arm, fake (aka fox) news would have screamed bloody murder if a mass of Afghans were airlifted to the US months ago. Next, no one and I mean NO ONE guessed the Afghan government would fall so fast (and with so very little blood shed.)
Finally, why isn’t the media pointing out the fake …fox commentators and some thug congress assholes are even now saying Afghans that helped the us shouldn’t even now be airlifted out to the US?
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I’ve avoided coverage of the Afghanistan withdrawal for the most part because the only hot takes I’m interested in hearing are from people who identified the former Afghan government as vaporware 10 years ago. And those people are not on TV nor bylined in the major dailies.
It doesn’t take foreign policy or military expertise to make simple inferences, such as that ramping up exits from Afghanistan earlier would have moved up the collapse timetable. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even bottle rocket science.
I’ve got no problem with criticizing Biden for poor decisions, as long as the criticism takes place within the framework of reality, i.e., pertains to actual alternatives in the real world. Fantasyland alternatives, not so much.
Cermet
@Butter Emails: As for those in the last plane to leave the Afghan airport, they will be very proud volunteers. Of course, the taliban will do all they can to encourage and permit those troops to get out safely.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Butter Emails: Its a genuinely shitty problem – I suspect it plans out like the Son Tay raid in Vietnam, far in the North.
Quiltingfool
Trae Crowder’s take on Taliban and Pence: https://twitter.com/traecrowder/status/1428079605559164935?s=20
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Geminid:
So that doesn’t bode well for Val Demings or the Dems keeping the Senate, does it? I guess a lot can change in a year but Rubio is an incumbent and I distinctly remember Adam saying that statewide candidates in Florida need to poll a certain amount above their opponents to have a chance of winning
Woodrow/asim
@Princess:
Thank you for sharing this. I wrote on Facebook about how little most Americans — including myself! — know about what is the day-to-day in the region, much less the forces driving this current situation.
I confess to some concerns given the writer’s close ties to our American military, and dependence on “this is what people in the area tell me.” It’s easy — as we see today with crap like QAnon — to get the story you want to hear/they want you to hear, over a more nuanced survey of a situation. Yet it feels “of a piece” with what I’ve been reading, mostly thru Twitter, from other people with even closer ties than this writer.
Butter Emails
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That would only be true if the election were tomorrow. At this point in the race, the poll is actually good news.
Ohio Mom
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yeah, I read Barbara Lee’s comment along the lines of: “As soon as I saw that blue car run the red light, I could see it was going to crash into the black car. It was horrible. The fire department had to cut through the cars to get the drivers out. I wish my prediction had been wrong.”
That’s not an apology, that’s pure ruefulness. She has too much heart to be self-congratulatory and say, “Told you so.” Definitely a better person than me.
WaterGirl
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s more than a year out! She hasn’t declared her candidacy and she is most certainly not running ads yet. This far out, and not declared yet? 46-48 looks really good.
Mary G
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Polls this far out mean nothing.
Shalimar
@debbie: “I admire Pompeo’s work bringing peace to Afghanistan” is an even worse defense than “I’m always a Trump toady”.
OzarkHillbilly
@Ohio Mom: Yep. Saying, “I wish I had been wrong.” is not an apology, it’s an acknowledgement of how much things suck.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
It’s thinking that sees the US as the only actor with agency and an agenda. It’s weird that it’s always presented as super sophisticated because it’s so simplistic. It’s wrong now and it will always be wrong. They have to recognize we’re not the only actors. They have to let that go.
Shalimar
@hueyplong: Lee is getting attention because it was just her and that isn’t threatening. If there had been 30 votes against the war, all of them would be ignored now including Lee.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think that with the election a year away and Demings still building name recognition among Florida’s 8 million+ voters, 48-46 is a good number.
Demings has plenty of name recognition here, but that’s because of her role as House Manager in the first first impeachment. Before that, a lot of people would have been like, Val who?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Butter Emails:
@WaterGirl:
@Mary G:
@Geminid:
Oh well, forget what I said then. I suppose I remember how Gillum lost to Death Sentence in 2018 and he (Gillum) was polling ahead a point or two and that’s what my reasoning was based on. That, and 2022 may not necessarily be a good year for Dems, given the first midterms of a President’s term don’t go well for his party historically. Also, I’ve read that FL is trending more red
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
“We do THIS and then they do THAT”. They’ll only recognize the first part of that. How can anyone talk to them about it? It’s “well, but those other people will also be doing their thing and at the same time” then you’d just kind of trail off and give up, realizing it’s futile :)
WaterGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: Being right isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Such a simple concept, and yet it eludes people who are paid a lot to analyze complex situations with more than one actor.
sdhays
@WaterGirl: Hasn’t she declared? She has at least opened an exploratory committee.
This poll will no doubt help Demmings raise a ton of money. While Marco is the favorite, he’s going to have a tough race on his hands. If he can make it to the general election, that is.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
And why is it always put in this childish frame of “blame”? “Don’t blame the Afghan government- instead blame their parents in the US government”. What? How do you respect someone’s autonomy and agency while not holding them responsible for their individual actions? I, unlike CNN, believe the Afghan government is or was composed of adults. I think that’s respectful.
Soprano2
None of them seem to be able to articulate how an “orderly withdrawal” could have happened, and the press mostly lets them skate.
Geminid
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Well, I hope you don’t give up on Ohio’s Senare race. Ohio can be said to be trending red also, but Sherrod Brown won reelection in 2018 by 300,000 votes.
In a way, I kind of envy Ohio Democrats. They will have a real battle to fight. Virginia hasn’t had a close Senate race since 2014. Since then, Virginians have reelected moderately liberal Tim Kaine and liberally moderate Mark Warner by comfortable margins. Not that Democrats have become complacent here. They seem very motivated for this year’s statewide races.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@OzarkHillbilly: if ever there were proof that shaun king is a white man, his not being arrested during this crackdown is it.
Geminid
@sdhays: Demings has raised $3.1 million already. Florida is an expensive place to run statewide, but I expect she will be competitive with Rubio in funding. Since the Impeachment hearings Demings has a good name among Democrats nationally.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: no way in hell capt. underpants voted against el jefe maximo de maralago.
Citizen Alan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I will never stop believing this: Gwen Graham would have won.
Woodrow/asim
@Kay: To me, all this — at least media-wise — always seems like it’s all about chasing the dopamine boost and money flow that was the 1st Iraq War for CNN/etc. That was the War that seems to have created so much of the modern media coverage of such events, and even other events that could be “leveraged” into War-like ratings.
Every War since then, from a media lens, seems to gets built around re-creating that situation, both in terms of framing and in terms of the kind of coverage that tries to get Americans invested. That framing requires our media to shape everything in ways they think/know Americans will invest in watching, for good and ill.
That said: it’s not the media singular “fault”. There’s tons of blame to go around on how American Exceptionism keeps blinding us to truths. But they are far from helping us to understand the real depths of these situations, much less to grapple with how other cultures and countries see America.
It’s really damn exhausting.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: among harvard alumni, i would take ted kaczynski over ted cruz. & also over kayleigh mc enany, jared kushner, tom cotton, brieannah-joy gray, & mark zuckerberg*.
*he attended long enough, even if he didn’t graduate
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I guess it’s part of the “who’s up, who’s down” horserace bullshit that has made political reporting in the U.S. so dysfunctional.
sixthdoctor
With the Washington Post running Afghanistan op-eds from all of their right wing hacks like Marc Theissen and guests like Condoleeza g*ddamn Rice, I’m glad I cancelled my subscription before I saw Richard Sackler’s op-ed on pain management.
Gin & Tonic
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
He never did.
WaterGirl
@sdhays: I don’t think she has declared yet, but it’s pretty obvious that she plans to – to people like us who are paying attention.
But this poll included regular people who are most likely not tuned in like we are. So for all intents and purposes, I consider her undeclared.
edit: I stand corrected! I googled, and Val Demmings formally declared on June 9.
sab
@Princess: I had been wondering what became of her.
debbie
@Shalimar:
The man cannot sink low enough.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Shalimar: ding! just like russ feingold’s lone senate nay vote against the usa-patriot act. (though in russ’s case, it was as much grandstanding by mc cain, jr., as it was principle. whereas i am pretty sure barb lee is a pacifist.)
Gin & Tonic
Maybe, after that, somebody can devote a staff member or two to processing regular immigrant visas.
OzarkHillbilly
@WaterGirl: Exactly.
J R in WV
@Spanky:
Just as our Christianist taliban in TX, FL, LA. MS, AL, etc… wish to keep people from getting vaccinated, wearing masks, make everyone catch Covid. Asses everywhere!
wvng
My brother was in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan in the 70s, prior to the Russian invasion that led to 30 years of horror for the country. His “family” there was the extended family of his cook and offered a microcosm of what life was like then. My brother never met or even saw his cook’s wife, who was isolated from men not of her family, but was friends with his cook’s brother’s wife, who was totally out in society and in no way constrained. These were family decisions in those days.
At some point after the Russians invaded (not sure when, could have been when the Taliban took control), the entire family fled to Iran. They returned after the US deposed the Taliban from rule, an action that was greeted with joy by a very solid majority of Afghans, and my brother was able to re-establish contact (in person as well as electronic) with them, after so many years of silence. Now they have to make a choice again; they really don’t want to be refugees again and it is not clear that Iran will accept refugees.
Nothing about this is easy or simple.
mali muso
@Woodrow/asim: I think you are onto something there.
zhena gogolia
@sixthdoctor:
Hahaha
J R in WV
@WaterGirl:
She’s emailing me repeatedly, I’m on a regularly scheduled donation via Act Blue… seems like a declared race to me, ever since I got the email where she declared. We are talking about the she which is Val D, right?
Another Scott
There’s a new AP/NORC poll out, and the writers are spinning like mad to make it bad news for Biden.
They write of “grim scenes”, as people are evacuated with few signs of violence…
https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-asia-pacific-afghanistan-only-on-ap-503a50cd8074ced7bc36d9c12e9fd2e4
(sigh)
Cheers,
Scott.
MomSense
Good news – my friend is not in Afghanistan! She’s in Pakistan. Yay?
wvng
@Betty Cracker: “It doesn’t take foreign policy or military expertise to make simple inferences, such as that ramping up exits from Afghanistan earlier would have moved up the collapse timetable. It’s not rocket science. It’s not even bottle rocket science.”
Bingo. Biden said as much.
Kay
@Another Scott:
52% approve on national security is good for a Democrat. Democrats have to overcome the completely untrue operating assumption that Republicans are better at it.
WaterGirl
@J R in WV: I stand corrected!
Val Demmings formally declared on June 9.
Another Scott
@WaterGirl: She announced she was running weeks ago. There’s a comment thread here somewhere about it. I donated the first day.
:-)
Cheers,
Scott.
geg6
@WaterGirl:
I believe she has declared. But maybe I’m misremembering.
Soprano2
Since it’s an open thread, I want to thank everyone for their support the past couple of weeks while I’ve dealt with the death of my mother. I can’t possibly find everyone’s posts to thank them individually, and I’ve probably missed some since I’ve only been reading sporadically. Know that it helped to see how many people cared about me and my situation. Jackals come through again!
Now I want to say something from the heart. Stated baldly, I had to make the decision whether to allow my mother to die peacefully. She had an advanced directive that said she didn’t want to be kept alive with a feeding tube if there was no hope of recovery. Knowing her wishes made a hard decision a little bit easier. Having an advanced directive is an act of love toward those who will be left to make decisions for you if you can’t make them. If you’ve ever had any doubts about whether you wanted to do an advanced health care directive, let me ease those doubts. Making your wishes known before a situation like the one I faced arises is an act of caring, and if your children or other loved ones are resistant to talking or even thinking about it, tell them you’re doing it out of love for them. It’s the truth. I also can’t say enough good things about the hospice people and the people at the care home my mother went to at the end. It’s a good thing that there are people called to do that work; I cannot imagine doing what they do, especially with the caring and grace they display doing it.
zhena gogolia
@MomSense: I would say so.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
There’s a Herman Cain Award Reddit for people like me to chortle about.
https://www.reddit.com/r/HermanCainAward/
zhena gogolia
@Soprano2: I’ve been thinking about you often. Your love for your mother has shone through all your posts. She felt that.
Ken
Believability aside… Ew. “I got you a gift, let me take it off.” At least it didn’t require dropping trousers.
rp
@Another Scott: That article is a straight up editorial.
zhena gogolia
My husband is so worried that all this is going to gravely hurt Biden. I hope he’s wrong.
Kay
@wvng:
They’re not going to accept it though. Instead they’ve decided to accept the alternate hypothetical that an orderly withdrawal was possible. It goes back to them assuming that the government was functioning. They’re clinging to that assumption. Biden no longer had that assumption. He’s ahead of them. He began his acceptance process in 2011.
Kay
@zhena gogolia:
I think there’s a group of hawks in DC who are hoping they can really hurt him with it, because if he wins the public argument they’re discredited.
Steeplejack
Classic Japanese cinema on TCM all day today, starting in just a minute:
9:45 EDT: Repast (Meshi, 1951). Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara. “Michiyo is unhappy living in a small home in Osaka cooking and cleaning for her husband.”
Anne Laurie
Well, except our Failed Media Pundits. They’re very simple, and extremely easy! (Just tickle their self-importance a little.)
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack: I think you made that up.
mrmoshpotato
@Spanky: What the fuck? Get fucked Empty Podium Network!
WaterGirl
@Another Scott: I apparently beat you by mere seconds!
WaterGirl
@geg6: Yes, on June 9. I corrected my comment above.
Cermet
@Princess: Fantastic article; must read for everyone – but that means no one that makes policy or thugs will bother or ever want to know the truth for that cluster fuck we called Afghanistan policy.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia:
No ma’am. Not “On. Those. Trays”, “Uno. Dos. Tres.”
sab
@Soprano2: I want to frame your comment and post it on the wall. Thank you for taking the time and energy to think it out and write it.
wvng
@Anne Laurie: regarding the not simple part, Sarah Chayes piece is essential reading. The Ides of August (sarahchayes.org)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@mrmoshpotato:
“Cuatro cinco cinco seis…Pretty fly for a white guy…”
Sorry – the ear worm happens EVERY time.
Uncle Cosmo
@debbie: IMHO if it doesn’t show Larry turning Derpowitless into a Cubist caricature with repeated application of a tire iron, it’s not excellent enough to click on.
frosty
@Soprano2: I missed your news earlier, and I’m sorry for your loss. I completely agree on the advanced directive. My mother had one also, “No extraordinary measures” or something like that. She had an infection and the nursing staff told us she would never come off the antibiotics. My siblings and I discussed it and told them that Mom wouldn’t have wanted that. She passed about a week later.
The directive made the decision much easier. We knew what she wanted.
OGLiberal
@Spanky: They are so late to the game. Obama, Huma and Ilhan Omar implemented it here in the US many years ago! And George Soros…can’t forget Soros.
Soprano2
Yep, and they’ll have the help of a lot of the press who have been trying to prove their “bothsides” bona fides by pinning a scandal on Biden since he was sworn in. They think they’ve found a “scandal” that they can pin on Biden – he “lost” Afghanistan.
Soprano2
@sab: You have my permission if you want. I never thought about it like this until I actually had to face the situation.
burnspbesq
@Butter Emails:
One imagines a truckload of SA-25s carefully making its way over a narrow mountain road from Uzbekistan toward Mazar-a-Sharif.
Raven
@Soprano2: I’m sorry you had to do it and I’m glad you had it in yourself to do so.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
I am so stealing that one. :-)
Another Scott
@Soprano2: Well said and thanks for sharing this with us.
Peace to you in this difficult time.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Mary G
@Soprano2: My mom’s doctor was so great. He had called me to say he did not know what was causing her symptoms. I asked him if she was going to die and he said yes, if he couldn’t get them solved and they went on for any length of time, but he had more tests to try. About a week later he called me up and said it was time. We met in her room and I told her and tried not to cry. He explained that he had ruled out anything he could cure, but if she wanted to, she could have more tests to pin it down. She said no, I want to go home. I told to set to set up home hospice and he started waffling around about it may be all booked up (he didn’t think I could handle it alone. I told him to do it. She told him to do it. She won. I took her home that afternoon and there was already a hospital bed in the living room. You are right that hospice nurses are a gift from Dog, and people came out of the woodwork to help. She got to say goodbye to a lot of people and we apologized to each other for old hurts. If she showed signs of pain, I had morphine to give her, and more prescriptions could be delivered 24/7, which in the days before DoorDash felt like an immense luxury. My 19-year-old cat, who had always wanted nothing to do with my mom, just jumped up into the hospital bed and snuggled.
it was pain and magic at the same time.
sixthdoctor
I’m really getting Obamacare website/Ebola scare vibes from the media; they help the Republicans milk the narrative and when the Republicans wring out all of the outrage they want you never hear of it again.
This is not to say, of course, that we don’t need an honest accounting, just that we won’t get an honest one.
Steeplejack
@mrmoshpotato:
Pretty sure she was joking.
germy
Illustrated man:
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: When my cousins were following my aunt’s DNR, they received much gratitude from the doctors and other staff, basically for not making a bad situation worse.
The staff complimented my aunt’s paperwork — she had worked in nursing homes as an OT so she was very informed and had left detailed instructions — and that made my cousins proud.
Kay
@Soprano2:
I don’t mind it as much as some of the other scandals; emails, Benghazi, because this is a real difference. There was no “emails should be insecure” side. There was no “attacks in Benghazi are something Clinton supports” side.
They’re seizing on the withdrawal and insisting it’s about logistics and planning but the bigger argument is about the US role in invading, occupying and then nation building. I think Biden can win that argument with the public.
They don’t want to have that argument, they want to have the narrower one where they argue over conducting the withdrawal. Biden is insisting they have it, so they’re mad. They want to set the terms of this to a really narrow discussion about securing an airport. He’s not accepting their terms, hence the anger.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@OzarkHillbilly: Looks like some of the in the closet hood heads still haven’t got the memo Black people are White now. I mean Jesus fucking Christ, these dimwits will destroy the economy if they get their wish and destroy the Black Middle class. There is no one to replace them.
Another Scott
Dean Baker’s latest at CEPR – The $26/hour minimum wage:
If you’re thinking that it’s been tougher to stay in place, let alone get ahead, in the US economy since about 1968, you’re right. Just look at the graph.
Much more at the link.
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
Too many of our ruling-class geenyusses treat policy as if it were analogous to an exercise in theoretical mathematics: Find the closed-form solution and wallah! In fact it’s generally a drawn-out complex scenario in game theory. Because the other side always gets a move in response. And (doghelpus) sometimes moves first.
germy
Pundit sad about the withdrawal:
https://thenib.com/crocodile-fears/
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It works in the “Democrats are in disarray” narrative.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: I stole it from someone here. Uncle Cosmo maybe?
Gin & Tonic
@Soprano2: Agree 100% on the advanced directive. It helped a great deal with my mother’s case, as it did with yours – what also helped is that she had been *very* vocal about her wishes for years and years (she viewed Jack Kevorkian as a national hero.)
Anyway, my dear wife and I made sure that was part of our estate planning as well. My plug: if you have any assets to speak of, and want assurance that things will go smoothly after your inevitable demise, get a good attorney who specializes in this and spend the bucks. It will just cost your executor more later if you don’t.
Kathleen
@Betty Cracker: I’ve concluded they’re not paid to do that. They’re paid to advance an agenda (TFG For King!) hence they are no more than purveyors of propatainment.
Kay
@Soprano2:
The FURY with which they respond to Biden making his own broader argument instead of the narrower one they want is to me almost amusing. He’s allowed to set the terms of the debate just like they’re setting the terms. Why are they the deciders of what the question is? When was the decision made that we may only discuss orderly transport to the airport? Because that discussion is what the hawks want to talk about because if it’s broader than that they lose?
Biden’s not a fool. There’s no requirement he accept their framing of the question. He won’t.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
A flight of B-52s carpet bombing the airport with dollar bills will solve that problem. Not to mention cheaper than shooting our way out.
gvg
@Citizen Alan: I am not so sure of that. She was know as her fathers daughter but barely. What I read about her was unthreatening but bland or boring. Maybe she would have. it was NOT close to a sure thing. Lots of people were also far more enthused about Gillum. Shrug, we can’t go back in time for a redo.
Gin & Tonic
@Butter Emails: There was a last heli out of Saigon. It departed with no issues I can recall.
Kay
@Uncle Cosmo:
But that’s a denial of Afghan autonomy and agency. It’s a recognition that it’s not a real government. If the United States is wholly responsible for whether their government actors function then it’s the United States government. It’s not theirs.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
They had 8 years of Bush who was one of them, then 8 years of Obama who couldn’t push back lest he be seen as uppity, then 4 years of Trump gaslighting himself. So Biden is the first time The Blob is facing someone it can’t make shut up.
Kathleen
@Kay: Thank you for articulating the root cause of the propatainment complex’s fury. It makes sense. I agree that he can make his case successfully with American people. He’s one of the very few public figures that regular normal people don’t seem to have an overwhelming desire to villify.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo: A pedant might say that game theory *is* theoretical mathematics – von Neumann used a theorem from topology for a seminal proof.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@MomSense: the cricket is pretty good.
BellyCat
@Princess: Remarkable and courageous narrative. Hoping she has a very good security detail. :-/
Uncle Cosmo
@lowtechcyclist: Then you can steal it from me, the same way Cracker said she was going to do (& did) a few months ago when I posted it here (after using it for years in other circles).
(ETA: Cracker at #122 supra steped up already! Thanky kindly, ma’am!)
But hey, no prob with either of you, so long as you use it liberally! :^D
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Ken: dersh only enly enjoyed the donnas early material, anyway.
Brachiator
@Princess:
This is excellent background material. I have seen some similar critiques before, but few so clear and eloquent as this.
Thanks very much for this link.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@OGLiberal: soros?
it’s as if the habsburgs lost the battle of vienna.
Kay
@Uncle Cosmo:
And they can do that! They can say the United States is wholly responsible for the actions of the Afghan government. We certainly set it up. I have no interest in defending the US from blame. But they can’t say it WHILE insisting it was a legitimate, autonomous government. It can’t be both.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
While the rest of the Right is working themselves into a rage about the Afghanistan refugees the Mormons in Utah are welcoming the refugees specifically because of Mormon history. Nice to see not everyone on the Right has lost all their humanity.
Kay
@Kathleen:
We know this because they do it with everything. It’s never the idea or the concept- it’s always the execution. That way the idea stays pristine and untested and can be tried again. We don’t need fewer invasions and occupations- we need safe and orderly withdrawals.
Uncle Cosmo
And a pragmatic person would reply, So fucking what? The point is that the “classical” concept of theoretical math (theorem – proof, theorem – proof, lemma – lemma – lemma** – proof) that focuses on closed-form solutions is utterly incapable of “solving” problems where the game you’re blasting away at is able to blast right back atcha.
** FTR, Lemma Lemma Lemma is the fraternity chapter in the math geek reboot of Animal House…
Steeplejack
I made these notes for something else, but I’ll go ahead and drop them here for anyone who might be interested. If you’re feeling stressed out or angry about the “real world,” or just having a bout of pandemic cabin fever, you could do worse than dip into one of these movies.
Foreign films usually get short shrift on TCM, and it’s extraordinary for them to air a whole day and night of Japanese movies. Subtitles! Black and white! The set also contains a pretty good retrospective of director Yasujiro Ozu’s work. From Roger Ebert’s 1993 assessment:
(All times EDT.)
11:30 a.m. Sound of the Mountain (1954). So Yamamura, Setsuko Hara, Ken Uehara. “A kindly Japanese father becomes closer to his son’s unhappy wife than he is to his own daughter.” Directed by Mikio Naruse.
1:30 p.m. Late Autumn (1960). “A Japanese widow (Setsuko Hara) needs to marry off her daughter, but some of the potential suitors are more interested in her.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
3:45 p.m. The End of Summer (1961). Ganjiro Kakamura, Setsuko Hara, Yoko Tsukasa. “A man deals with his declining business, a former mistress and two daughters searching for love.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
5:30 p.m. Tokyo Twilight (1957). Setsuko Hara, Ineko Arima, Chishu Ryu. “Two sisters learn their long-lost mother is not dead.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
8:00 p.m. Late Spring (1949). Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu. “A widowed professor fakes an impending marriage to spur his adult daughter to get on with her life.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
10:00 p.m. Early Summer (1951). Setsuko Hara, Chishu Ryu. “A 28-year-old Japanese woman resists parental and societal pressures to marry.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
12:15 a.m. Tokyo Story (1953). Chishu Ryu, Chieko Higashiyama, Setsuko Hara. “An elderly couple visit their busy children but receive no respect.” Directed by Yasujiro Ozu.
2:45 a.m. The Idiot (1951). Masayuki Mori, Setsuko Hara, Toshiro Mifune. “A Japanese veteran, driven partially mad from the war, travels to the snowy island of Hokkaido, where he soon enters a love triangle with his best friend and a disgraced woman.” Directed by Akira Kurosawa.
laura
@Soprano2: Thank you for this! An advanced directive can alleviate so much guilt, or when there isn’t unanimity accross a family about what should be done, provide a roadmap. When our dad died in 2018, hospice was truly a miracle, the Roadie Brothers and I cared for dad in his home for the final week – the first time we’d been together under one roof for that long in 30 years. It was the most intimate and loving experience as a family and further cemented our already close sibling relationship. We worked as a team to get the old man sailing off to the distant shore where our mother waited for him. Thank you Soprano2, your words speak a great truth.
zhena gogolia
I’m reading the St. Petersburg version of that right now. Too bad I got rid of TCM :(
Maybe HBO Max has it.
Mary G
@Kay: They’re really mad because they only got the one day of desperate men trying to get onto the plane as it was lifting off and falling to their deaths. The next day there was none of that sweet disaster porn to keep them in clicks. Every media outlet is getting 30% less attention than they did during the years of TFG and it’s killing them.
Butter Emails
@Kay:
They’re trying to have it both ways. They’re trying to pin the entire Afghanistan debacle on him using a couple days of chaos at the airport.
Felanius Kootea
@Steeplejack: Is Sound of the Mountain based on Yasunari Kawabata’s book?
Anyway
@zhena gogolia:
I am sooo worried that Afghanistan on top of Delta+news of needing boosters is going to hurt Biden.
Steeplejack
@zhena gogolia:
It’s available in the Criterion Collection ( also which has a channel on Amazon Prime).
zhena gogolia
@Steeplejack:
Oh, good to know. I’ll look into it
ETA: It’s available with “Filmbox.” But I’m only a few pages into the novel — I’ll have to wait until I’m done. (Although I’ve read it five times and know how it ends, but I’m a little crazy that way.)
wvng
@Uncle Cosmo: It’s as if “if-then-else” logic strings are one step too many for these people.
Steeplejack
@Felanius Kootea:
Yes! I like Kawabata a lot. Thousand Cranes is one of my favorite novels. Snow Country is close behind.
Brachiator
@Steeplejack:
Great movie list. Tokyo Story is all the more magnificent for the deceptive simplicity of its filmmaking.
wvng
My daughter just came downstairs in tears over a news item she just saw. An Afghan woman, with one semester left to finish here bachelors degree, was in class when news came that the Taliban had taken over. The men in her class started laughing at the women right then and there. “Back to the burka.”
Mary G
Bit scary – saw a tweet that the RNC was ordered to evacuate their building a few minutes ago, now this:
Gin & Tonic
@Steeplejack: As a (occasional) Go player myself, I read and thoroughly enjoyed The Master of Go some years ago.
germy
germy
Oh, so a white guy then.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
That was a good one. I’ve read almost all of his stuff (that’s available in English). I discovered him in high school on Okinawa. There was a little newsstand/bookshop, Tuttle’s, by the Marine camp in Machinato where I used to go to get the latest Marvel Comics. The company (Charles E. Tuttle) had their own editions of Japanese authors in translation—Kawabata, Kobo Abe, Yukio Mishima (I think), Junichiro Tanizaki, etc. It was a great introduction to Japanese literature.
Steeplejack
@Gin & Tonic:
Have you ever looked for a software version of Go?
Another Scott
@germy: My shocked, shocked face.
It’ll be interesting to see JJMacNab’s eventual take. It looks like I need to put her on my daily scan list again.
(The second one is about the Black militia that (supposedly) ran out of gas.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
Completely seconded. She has a trust, which will help me a lot. Unfortunately, she left a significant amount of money to the forces of evil. Larry Klayman, mother – really? Evidently she wanted to enable pointless lawsuits, go figure. She gave money to a good animal rescue, too – I wish she had given them more.
sixthdoctor
PST
I can’t resist making a comment on the Larry David vs. Alan Dershowitz story. My wife used to manage sales at a cemetery in South Florida where David’s parents are buried. She says that in person he was indistinguishable from the character he played on Curb Your Enthusiasm. He dressed the same, talked the same, etc. She also says he was pleasant and polite, something not always true of the celebrities who buried parents there. Dershowitz I remember as an egotistical douche half a century ago, so nothing about him surprises me.
Kay
@wvng:
I read another account that was similiar to that one. The stories are heartbreaking but they also point to the folly of our “nation building”. The men laughing at her are not the Taliban and they’re not the Afghanistan version of rural Trumpsters. They’re university students. If men who are her classmates at the university don’t support women attending school we didn’t make much progress.
She’s going to need a critical mass of men, because men still have most of the power. If she can’t find them in a university where are they?
Captain C
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
By
I think he actually means “if they think you’re a pedophile.”
PJ
@zhena gogolia:
There’s a loose Czech adaptation of The Idiot (Navrat Idiota, directed by Sasa Gedeon) from the ’90’s which is also very good (it’s set in contemporary times, and has a much happier ending than the book.)
Ruckus
@debbie:
It may not be the seventh level of hell deep but Marianas Trench deep is pretty far down…..
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
A great band name?
PJ
@Kay: It’s not just that they are discredited, but also that the gravy train will dry up. If they can’t sell their consulting or contracting services, or get themselves on the TV as “experts”, or (for journalists) advance their career by exploiting a humanitarian disaster involving US policy, or (for active military and intelligence) advance their careers through a foreign adventure, they are afraid that sweet tap will be turned off for as long as Biden has influence.
There’s been a lot more news recently about the insane levels of corruption in the Afghan government and in the US government and contractors in Afghanistan, but this kind of careerism, predicated on the US getting involved in and maintaining military disasters overseas, is another kind of corruption. It’s not illegal, but it’s just as pernicious.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Another Scott: The Magna Charter group going to invite a French prince in to replace the Queen like what the barons tried on King John?
Suburban Mom
@Geminid: For what it’s worth, St. Pete Polls has a B+ rating from 538. Over 26 polls they called 56% of the races correctly. This is what St.PetePolls.org says about their list “The list of people to poll comes from the publicly available state-registered voters list for the state of Florida. It is not a complete list of registered voters, it is only those voters that added their phone numbers when they registered to vote(which is optional) in addition to white pages phone book listings for registered voters.”
Ruckus
@Soprano2:
I would agree 1000%.
I had to go through this with both my parents and it was never easy but it was easier with their directives. And their directives weren’t as explicit, possibly because of how long ago they were written.
I was also exposed to the opposite side of the issue with my sister. Some of her friends wanted her to be committed so that her directive and wishes could be overridden. That shocked me a lot, I didn’t expect that.
This is never an easy time, it’s often a time of irrationality by a lot of people, maybe the majority of people. Giving them direction and rules helps make it work better. And that’s as good as it gets.
Geminid
@Suburban Mom: Interesting. I might check out how close the Saint Pete people were to actual results in last year’s Florida races..
Polls are only more or less accurate, and vary widely. I may keep following the St. Pete poll, though. Month over month results from the same poll can at least provide good information as to trend, I think.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
It is good but yes, I’ve heard it before as well.
I doubt the person that came up with it first will mind, it is a great phrase.
Geminid
@Geminid: So, the final St. Pete poll of last year’s Presidential election showed Biden up 1 point, 49%-48% (poll taken Oct. 29-30). In the event, Biden lost by 3.36%.
It seemed like last year’s Republican turnout showed a trump bump. I think one question hanging over next year’s elections is, will there be a post-trump slump? I guess we won’t know the answer until the elections.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Thinking this threw with the Afghans and The Blob.
You have a bunch of American elites who think they are master strategists and persuaders because no one around them is allowed to object. Even when someone calls them on their stupidity their own staffs protect them. The view their fellow Americans as contemptible fools, much less little brown people over seas.
verses
A group of tribal leaders in a society were there is no law, their authority is more from respect from other members of their tribe and the consequences to them if they get stupid is death. These Tribal leaders may not see the big picture, but one on one they know a liar when they see one.
I think from start the Afghanis saw right threw The Blob’s Forever War scheme and sensed the Afghanis would be left to die by The Blob if things went to bad and that’s why the Afghanistan government was always a farce.
Captain C
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I don’t think I believe him.
Soprano2
This is exactly right. I think part of the reason for the collapse of the Afghan government we propped up is that the majority of the men in the country didn’t support it, and didn’t support women’s rights much at all.
Captain C
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: A few years ago I was in SLC visiting a friend, and we went to see an Afghan musician at a branch library, and then went to eat dinner at an Afghan restaurant. I suspect there’s already a small community, and that will be helpful to any arriving refugees.
TriassicSands
He probably begged them to give him the placebo.