Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If you can’t control your emotions, someone else will.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Every one of the “Roberts Six” lied to get on the court.

He really is that stupid.

When we show up, we win.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

People are weird.

Not all heroes wear capes.

The “burn-it-down” people are good with that until they become part of the kindling.

The republican speaker is a slippery little devil.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

We still have time to mess this up!

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

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Giving up is unforgivable.

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

You come for women, you’re gonna get your ass kicked.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Sunday Afternoon Open Thread

Sunday Afternoon Open Thread

by | 145 Comments

This post is in: 

Here’s an open thread to go along with the Authors post.

This is my white bleeding heart vine, which blooms all summer and into the fall.

Do you see how fuzzy the photo looks on the left-hand side?  I have an iPhone 11 with the 3-lens camera, and I am wondering if maybe I got something on one of the lenses?  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

Otherwise, totally open thread!

Update: Lens cleaned with a dry microfiber cloth from the eyeglass place.  Thank you.

 

Reader Interactions

145Comments

  1. 1.

    debbie

    I’m of no help regarding your technical question, but good god, no artist can possibly surpass nature. What a beautiful photo (bleeding heart?)!

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: Yeah, it’s not the bleeding heart that blooms in the spring.  This is called bleeding heart vine, and they are hard to find, but I finally found a place that carries them.

    I have two bigger ones, but I love these so much that I don’t ever want to be without one, so I decided to start with a new little guy this spring as a backup. :-)

    The way I learned about them was when a couple came into a garden store and showed their photo to the clerk, saying they LOVED this plant and theirs had died that winter so they wanted to replace it.

    It was stunning so I went on the hunt, because I never wanted to be them at some point in the future.

  3. 3.

    cope

    Maybe you went from cool, air conditioned inside to hot, steamy outside and got some condensation on your lens?  That’s a problem that plagues me down here in Florida.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    @WaterGirl:

    Worth the searching, for sure!

    Have you tried taking several photos of the same plant, framing it differently each time to see if/how the fuzziness changes?

  6. 6.

    NotMax

    A short open missive to Netflix, Prime, et al.

    Howzabout instituting a search function within your services whereby one can look for available programming by country of origin?

    Pretty please?

  7. 7.

    Benw

    @Gin & Tonic: same. Looks like it passed us LI’ers by.

    The NYT is still so oddly parochial in some ways. I’d been refreshing their storm tracker on the online front page, and the minute Henri went by LI and into the sound they took it down and put up a photo gallery of NY being wet!

  9. 9.

    WaterGirl

    @debbie: Here is my photo of the big one from last year (which I still have):

    Sunday Morning Garden Chat: WaterGirl's Summer Vistas 6

    And this is what it does later in the fall when the blooms get older and it gets chillier. (before I bring it inside for the winter)

    Last Minute Garden-ish Thread 4

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    @cope: That was a good idea!

    Hmm. I just checked the back of the phone, and it looks like there is a smear of something on part of one of the top lenses.

    How might one clean that off?

  11. 11.

    Dagaetch

    @WaterGirl: same way you’d clean eye glasses.  Put a drop off soap in some water and swirl it around, then dip a clean cloth in. Use the damp cloth to clean the lens, then a dry cloth.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Jackal paws crossed we here escape the worst of the remnants of tropical storm Linda, expected to roll through later today and into Monday.

    Right now there’s talk of 10 inches of rain. Last time they forecast that we ended up getting 16 in deluge prone areas.

  17. 17.

    cope

    @WaterGirl: Never clean lenses with paper products, always use a soft cloth. I use the ones I get with every pair of new eyeglasses. Don’t use any kind of soap or solvent is what I was taught but one of our photo experts will probably give a better answer.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    @cope: This is why I’m afraid to do anything to fix it, but it definitely needs fixing.  The whole reason I got the iPhone 11 instead of something older and cheaper was for the photos.

  19. 19.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: She made flower and plant handbags out of vintage fabric. Her “signature” bag was an artichoke bag that got her on the front page of the local paper.

  20. 20.

    trollhattan

    @WaterGirl: ​
    They smudge very easily and a clean, lint-free cloth like those used for glasses can wipe it clean. If it’s stubborn, maybe a wet wipe then dry and polish.

    IDK how, but my phone cam tells me when a lens needs cleaning. It’s like having a mother-in-law in your pocket.

    ETA you’re not cleaning the lens, but the protective glass in front of the lens.

  21. 21.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: So she made a bag that was shaped like a bleeding heart?  Do you have photos?

    I will put in a plug one more time for your bride to submit something for this series, whenever time and interest intersect.

  22. 22.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Dagaetch: You’re very good to your glasses, but I guess you can’t run a camera lens under running water and then dry it off. ?

  28. 28.

    Geo Wilcox

    Whatever you do, do NOT use any material that has that water wicking technology. My husband made a BIG mistake wiping his glasses with his golf shirt and scratched the hell out of them. Needed a new pair as they were totally trashed.

    I have worn glasses since childhood and just fog them with my breath and wipe with 100% cotton tee shirts. Works like a champ.

  31. 31.

    NotMax

    @WaterGirl

    First, don’t know about phone lenses, so feel free to ignore this.

    Second, do you have any microfiber cloths lying about? The kind used for cleaning TV screens, computer monitors and laptop screens?

    General method for those is to just barely dampen a section of the cloth with water and gently wipe*, then again with a dry portion of the cloth. May require repeated doing.

    Gently is the key as pressure can affect the coating on screens and such, plus the minerals present in tap water can be capable of acting as an abrasive if cloth is too wet. Also if too wet it is possible some moisture can inadvertently seep into non-screen crevices where it doesn’t belong.

    *Some places recommend using a circular motion, others don’t put any particular stress on direction.

  32. 32.

    Ohio Mom

    During Ohio Dad’s cousins’ most recent Zoom, for some reason they decided a reunion here in Cincinnati in October (during Delta?!) was necessary.

    Ohio Dad is now looking up local hotel rates and grumbling about wonky sites that make finding out the simpliest information a chore.

    It’s probably bad for a marriage to compare extended families but mine thankfully stays put.

  34. 34.

    zhena gogolia

    We have a lot of rain, not much wind yet, but I don’t know how long this is supposed to go on here in CT. All the anxiety is keeping me from doing any work. Just crosswords (although no NYT today, so no extra puzzles until I can get to a printer).

  38. 38.

    zhena gogolia

    @debbie: For whatever reason, Weather Underground had it right all along (so far). They never called it a hurricane but a tropical storm, although we were officially under hurricane warning since yesterday.

  39. 39.

    Madeleine

    This comment really belongs two posts down (Afghanistan) but it’s a dying thread and I want it seen. A commenter used the c-word that names a female body part to insult another commenter. I hope never to see that word used in that way again on Balloon Juice. I find it even more offensive than I do most body part insults and compliments—most of which I just live with. This one? NO.

  40. 40.

    Madeleine

    And now what I’d prefer to comment on. I love bleeding hearts and I have never seen one so brilliantly white and red. The fall change of color is magical, too.

  43. 43.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ohio Mom:

    I find Weather Underground to be the most trustworthy weather site. 

    You can also find a weather station that’s spitting distance away.

  47. 47.

    Dagaetch

    @WaterGirl: already answered, but yeah a micro fiber lens cloth is the way to go. The bit of soap is in case there’s anything oily on the lens, something about surfactants and not smearing.

    @mrmoshpotato: lol some of my Pentax lenses could have gone underwater! I’ve seen videos of people cleaning mud off their Pentax setups by putting them in a running river, they put strong seals on those things.

  50. 50.

    WaterGirl

    @Madeleine: I love both kinds of bleeding hearts.

    I have the bleeding heart perennial that blooms here in the spring, and then the foliage eventually melts away and it comes up again next spring.  I have that in white and in pink.

    The bleeding heart vine is not the right zone for the midwest, so it’s more of a tropical that I bring inside over the winter.  The bleeding heart vine also comes in pink and white, and with variegated leaves, and not variegated.

    Both the pink and the white varieties have the little read flower, but to me it looks 100x more striking with the white heart-shaped flowers and the dab of bright red.

  53. 53.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    President Biden’s job approval ratings drop as Covid cases rise and crisis in Afghanistan mounts

    Key Points:

    • An NBC News poll released on Sunday shows 49% of all adults surveyed say they strongly approve of the job Biden is doing as president while 48% disapprove.
    • A vast majority of those polled say they disapprove of Biden’s handling of the current situation in Afghanistan, with only 25% noting they approve of the way he’s dealt with the crisis

    I hope this is just temporary. It’s one poll, but that Afghanistan number is very concerning imo

  54. 54.

    Another Scott

    Virginia’s new redistricting commission (enshrined in the state constitution now) is working about as well as I feared (I voted against it).

    BlueVirginia.US.

    Grr…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  55. 55.

    Chacal Charles Caltrop

    @Gin & Tonic: to quote John Updike, “The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.”

    Never knew not to use paper or moisture-wicking cloth on iPhone lenses or glasses. Thanks!

  56. 56.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): there’s a lot going on right now, it would be weird if his approval ratings went up!

    I’m in the “surely we could be evacuating people better, and who the hell told him the Afghan security forces wouldn’t immediately surrender?” camp myself. A big fuckup! I guess I’d overall be in the ‘approve’ camp since he’s actually doing it though.

  60. 60.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @Benw: So, Henri stood you up like your cousin’s best friend who just wasn’t into you?

    There is a weird kind of excitement about “predicted” bad weather events. You don’t want them to be bad like hurt your loved ones or your property bad, but sort of bad enough to say, I lived through ____________.

  64. 64.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This seems…. significant

    Matt Viser @mviser · 3h
    Adm. Mike Mullen on @ThisWeekABC reflects with regret on advice to boost US troops under Obama and attempt to build an Afghan army.
    “What I thought we could do, and I advised President Obama accordingly, is I thought we could turn it around,” he said. “Obviously I was wrong.”

    Adm. Mike Mullen says the US should have started leaving after killing bin Laden: “I think in retrospect, yeah we should have…clearly we could have gone earlier than we did.”
    “President Biden had it right back then,” he added. “I give him credit for that.“

    but what do Andrea Mitchell and Leon Panetta say (just to pick the two people are, to me, the Blobbiest of Blobbers)?

  69. 69.

    Scout211

    After doing some googling on the candidates who claim to be Democrats on Newsom recall ballot, I think I am leaning toward no choice for question #2. I now kind of get why the state Dems recommend leaving that question blank.

    Any thoughts?

  70. 70.

    Baud

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    @zhena gogolia:

    There’s a significant portion of Dems who unfortunately reflexively blame our officeholders for negative press.  Even many who understand media bias believe it’s the officeholder’s job is to avoid negative reportimg at all costs.  It’s simply not feasible as a standard.  We need to find a middle ground between this and the blind loyalty of the GOP base.

  71. 71.

    WaterGirl

    @Scout211: If you leave it blank AND Newsom is recalled, you guarantee that the replacement will be a republican.

    That seems like a terrible outcome to me

    I keep meaning to put up a post and leave it in the sidebar so you CA peeps can talk about that and hear what other CA peeps think, even if you’re not in the thread at the same time.

  73. 73.

    Steeplejack

    @Spanky:

    Yeah, I was going to recommend exactly this. I ordered a box a while back, and it has lasted a long time. WaterGirl, each wipe is individually wrapped, so you can keep them handy anywhere—your purse, the car, wherever. I use them on my glasses, cell phone screen, tablet screen, etc. Not quite big enough for my notebook screen, I have found. For that I use a microfiber cloth and a dab of water.

  74. 74.

    Quiltingfool

    If Wearbear is out there, this is for you!  I remember your story about choosing a kitty for Mr. Wearbear, a heart kitty, and you were successful.  A black kitty, right?   Well, I just finished a Halloween lap quilt that features black cat fabric.  I kept thinking about the heart kitty when I was making it!  I love making Halloween quilts, and I think what I really like is that lots of  Halloween fabric features black cats.  Well, I like fabric with cats on it, but I have to tell myself that not everybody is as fond of cats as I am…

    https://pin.it/3aLkivT

  77. 77.

    Scout211

    @WaterGirl:

    If they were real Democrats with some government experience, maybe I would agree. But “ a recent community college graduate” who looks 14 ? Or a “lead actor, screenwriter, movie producer, expert in global film finance?”

    The only one that seems like a real Democrat calls himself a “Bernicrat.”  Ugh. I may have to vote for that guy while holding my nose.  He is the only one with any kind of public service experience.  Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

  80. 80.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We can’t do what we need to do until we beat back the shrieking media hordes.

    It’s like trying to hold a town council meeting with people yelling in the background.

    ETA: We’re also still in the middle of the operation.

  82. 82.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The crowd at Trump’s rally bood him when he urged them to get vaccinated. My hunch was right that Trump really wasn’t leading that group, he is just the voice they like to hear.

  86. 86.

    Scout211

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Paffrath is not listed in my voter information booklet but I see he is on my ballot. I will look him up and see if I can stomach a vote for him, or maybe the Bernie guy.

    Ha ha! Autocorrect kindly changed “booklet” to “bloodletting.” True dat!

  87. 87.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’ve seen plenty of criticism of the president.  But we also have to prioritize the most important fights, and the two most important fights are winning the battle against the principle of permanent wartime footing and the related battle against emo media distortions. IMHO.

  88. 88.

    eddie blake

    every single one of those naysaying fuckwits needs to be asked, “what, exactly did you expect the 2,500 servicemen left in country to do?”

    figure without a MASSIVE escalation, they had two options: get killed until they were dead or get captured. sooo what exactly do these nattering nabobs of negativism wanna do?

    biden was %100 right when he said, had bin laden hit us from yemen, we’d never have gone into afghanistan in the first place, and bin laden is dead. what exactly did those mouthbreathing knuckle-draggers wanna do?

  90. 90.

    Steeplejack

    @Quiltingfool:

    Nice work!

    My mom was an accomplished quilter until she “retired” from that (she’s still alive), and I took as many of hers as I could when she was downsizing a few years ago. I think her greatest hit was a crib-sized alphabet quilt that I asked her to make for some friends’ first baby. Jeez, that was 25 years ago. How time flies.

  91. 91.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    How is that a fight? Everyone who’s not a Republican agrees about doing what we can for them, although I guess we may disagree on whether to send in troops back in  to fight to get them out.

    ETA: Just saw your ETA. We’re cool.

  92. 92.

    Kay

    By bringing chaos to the capital and abandoning those who had risked their lives to aid the U.S., it surely inspired many Afghans to wish for someone to restore order.

    I’m now questioning how this is always worded – and it’s always worded exactly like this.

    Were the Afghans risking their lives to aid the US? I certainly hope not. I hope they were risking their lives to improve their country.
    The more I read about how these people think about this, the more I understand why it failed. Twenty years into it we’re still so far out front and so much in a director’s role we imagine that these people had as their main objective “aiding the U.S ?”

  94. 94.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’m honestly getting there myself. I’ve been hesitant to say so thus far. Apparently SecDef Austin was contradicting Biden’s accounting about what was going on; Americans fleeing were being beaten on the way to the airport, etc

    There was this interview that CNN did with the author of the Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini, and they asked him about his thoughts on the current Afghanistan situation:

    CNN: Other foreign powers have invaded Afghanistan only to have their missions end in failure. Was it inevitable that the US operation would end the same way? Would a sustained US troop presence have made a meaningful difference?

    I initially supported the American operation in Afghanistan — millions of Afghans did.

    There were legitimate grievances about the way the Americans did business in Afghanistan. There were incidents over the years that eroded some of the Afghan goodwill and confidence of the Americans. But for the most part, most Afghans realized that the American presence in Afghanistan was a buffer against the fall of the country into the hands of insurgents. That’s proving to be prophetically true.

    President Biden gave a speech the other day, and I guess I would ask him: What is the legacy of the last 20 years? What was all this for? On the American side, the country’s back in the hands of the very people that we went there to throw out. On the Afghan side, thousands and thousands of civilians died, so many people became displaced, so many villages were bombed, so many people suffered in the hope that the country might have a better future.

    Now, they’re at the mercy of a group that the US itself has designated as a terrorist group, who enforced a real rule of terror on the Afghan people in the mid ’90s and made Afghanistan into a safe haven for terrorist groups. So it’s a very bitter pill to swallow. And from the Afghan perspective, it’s hard to blame them for feeling betrayed.

    I can understand, given his ties to Afghanistan, how he feels, but I’m not sure what he expected the US government to do. What happened was baked in from the beginning imo because Bush and Co didn’t have any concrete plans on what they wanted to do. We couldn’t stay there indefinitely. It’s not like Germany, Japan, or S. Korea where there’s stability. In any event, even when we surged troops in Afghanistan a few years back the Taliban still made gains

  95. 95.

    Scout211

    @Scout211:

    Paffrath is the social media influencer.  I think nah.

    Kevin Paffrath, is an American YouTuber, financial analyst, landlord, and real estate broker. Paffrath’s videos mostly relate to real estate and finance. In 2019, he was described by Curbed as a “landlord influencer”. Wikipedia

  97. 97.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: but it’s not true that everybody agrees about that, at least to the degree of doing everything they can to help. This includes the Biden administration which is blocking people from leaving because they like, misplaced their letters of recommendation.

  98. 98.

    Kay

    Joe Biden “brought chaos to the capital”. He brought it. It wasn’t a condition that existed but for the occupation, he called it up from the winds and rained it down upon them.

    It’s just incredible how deeply they all believe this absolute nonsense.

  99. 99.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Look, it’s fair to criticize process requirements, which can be very frustrating.  But I’m not sure what people on the ground are supposed to do when someone doesn’t have the papers they need. Maybe there’s a solution, but it’s not obvious to me.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    If your perspective on these people is such that it leads you to repeat over and over that they were “aiding the US” then you’re not “nation building”. You’re doing something TO them and not WITH them.

  102. 102.

    eddie blake

    @Kay:  the fall of kabul was a done deal the minute pompeo and tang the conqueror made the agreement with the taliban. it wsa inevitable. biden didn’t start the avalanche he’s being buried under. you would think more journalists would report that.

  106. 106.

    Kay

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Because they can’t take 10 million. So they have to have a process to identify which of the tens of thousands who might want to come should be in the front of the line. If they don’t they will reach whatever the capacity is people they should have put at the front of the line will be in the back.

    These media people must know this. Many of them were in the front of the line and they’re out. How was that decided, I wonder? Would they prefer it just be random?

  107. 107.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    Maybe. But there’s limited capacity, isn’t there?   Waving people through has consequences. Would we be ok if the next story is that someone with the right papers didn’t get through?

    I don’t know the answer.  Like I said, I just don’t have confidence that I know what the obvious solution is.

  108. 108.

    Steeplejack

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Khaled Hosseini: “President Biden gave a speech the other day, and I guess I would ask him: What is the legacy of the last 20 years?”

    Why should that be a question (only) for Biden, who “owns” exactly seven months of that 20 years? And “legacy” is kind of a vague, philosophical question. Certainly not one that can be answered while the endgame is still winding down.

    I wish more pundits and thought leaders realized that you don’t have to issue a sound bite every time you’re asked for one.

  109. 109.

    laura

    @Scout211:  I struggled to find a candidate that would dilute the impact of Republican votes, and I am unwilling to vote for any of the self-identified Dems because IMHO it gives a shred a legitimacy to the recall – but because this attempted election nullification two years after the fact is absolutely infuriating. I’m leaving question 2 blank because fuck these fucking fuckers. Although this is a CA special election, the dark money behind this would take it nation-wide in a heartbeat, so consider yourselves warned. Maybe mention it in your outreach to get the Voting Rights bills passed.

  110. 110.

    Kay

    @debbie:

    I’m not blaming anything on the Afghans. Not any of this. I don’t know what they think.

    But if they were fighting for their country, which I assume and hope they were, then stop using this ridiculous “for the U.S.” recitation. It had to be for Afghanistan. That’s supposedly the operating premise.

  111. 111.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: this isn’t a wild eyed solution I pulled out of my ass, it’s what we did in Vietnam. We should have evacuated people with mostly complete paperwork weeks ago when it was easier. But we chose not to. We are still doing this.

    if trump had pursued this exact policy towards refugees…

  112. 112.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I didn’t say your solution was wide eyed. What I said was how to handle the current situation isn’t obvious to me, where we have to scramble and there’s limited capacity.

     

    ETA: Regarding your ETA, I’ve read that Trump refused to begin the process at all.  Biden started the process when he took office.  Have you read something different?

     

    ETA: I also trust Biden’s good faith  and don’t believe Trump has any.

  113. 113.

    persistentillusion

    @eclare: ​
     @Quiltingfool Eclare, as the proud owner of one of Quiltingfool’s quilts, you would be amazed. Mine has such beautiful patterns in the quilting itself as well as a lovely choice of blue fabrics. Love it!

  115. 115.

    JMG

    Kabul’s airport isn’t exactly O’Hare or Hartsfield. The primary cause of the “chaos” a/k/a video of too many people in too little space there is physical. But somehow, about 30,000 people have been evacuated from Afghanistan so far. A couple more weeks (no idea if the Taliban will allow that), 100,000 could be evacuated. That would be a pretty fair accomplishment “chaos” notwithstanding.

  119. 119.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Steeplejack:

    Right. I’m not even sure why they asked him that specific question, which he didn’t actually answer anyway. He’s just a fiction writer, to my knowledge, not a military strategist or a PoliSci. It’s fine if they wanted to ask him about his personal reaction to the events, but this detailed question was inappropriate imo.

    I will cut this guy some slack however. He’s from Afghanistan, has family and friends living there, and traveled there several times over the last 20 years. I have some sympathy for his feelings, but he’s wrong about US troops staying. He’s right that we need to do everything in our power for the refugees, however, which I believe Biden wants to do

  120. 120.

    Geminid

    @JMG: If this evacuation continues as it is now going, it could end up as one of the few successful U.S. operations in our entire Afghan misadventure.

  123. 123.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Baud: regardless of what trump did, i believe that if Biden had agreed with me that nothing mattered more than getting everybody out, he would have handled it differently. For example, since he knew Trump had sabotaged the process, he could have ignored some of the sabotage while evacuating people to an intermediate location while he sorted everything out. Maybe this is just a fog of war situation but I believe that his actions will result in the abandonment of thousands of families.

    Or, if you think he had the plan he did because it was based on an intelligence failure, then I’d say we should have a full blown IG investigation into how the intel went so horribly wrong.

  124. 124.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    For folks interested in Hurricane Henri, here’s a report from Mr DAW’s sister in Rhode Island:

     Henri came ashore at Westerly, RI, this morning. A tropical storm. We got 2 inches of rain and some wind. Tops broke off a couple of trees, but did no real damage. Of course the power failed and may take days to be restored. No forecast yet from National Grid on restoration. Cell phone service is poor here, and there was excessive traffic as soon as the power failed.

  125. 125.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major:

    We’re talking about different things.  It’s possible, even likely, that Biden or his peoplade mistakes in the run up.  We agree that there should be an inquiry into the process.  But that doesn’t tell us, or me at least, what we should be doing now to best help the people trying to get out in the next few weeks.

  126. 126.

    Kay

    Matthew Yglesias
    @mattyglesias
    ·3h
    What’s happening is that leaving is popular, but it’s unpopular with natsec elites and their allies in the media.
    So to punish Biden and send a message to future presidents they’ve cooked up this fake middle ground position that you are now espousing.

  127. 127.

    waratah

    @Kay: I think the news people asked in a group for help to get their employees and families and Afghans that worked for them.

  129. 129.

    debbie

    @Baud:

    Troye’s been doing this for a few days now. TFG must be blasting her wherever he’s blasting these days.

  131. 131.

    JMG

    Here on outer Cape it’s like the storm never happened. Water at the beach is high and choppy, but there are still people there sitting in perfect comfort, surfcasting people, etc. Wind is at 10 mph. Hope those affected get their power back quickly, it’s supposed to be a heat wave in New England this week.

  133. 133.

    Kay

    @waratah:

    All I’m saying is this fictional scenario they have cooked up where there’s limited capacity yet everyone should be “waived thru” doesn’t make any sense. It’s a limiting process. Exclusionary.

  134. 134.

    Kay

    @waratah:

    OK, so US news people and their interpreters were first on the lifeboat. That’s fine with me, I don’t set the priority, but they’re aware there is a process that excludes, then. Necessarily.

  135. 135.

    gene108

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    I hope this is just temporary. It’s one poll, but that Afghanistan number is very concerning imo

    I use my mom as a bellwether for how the MSM affects people’s judgement, as she gets news from NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and the Philadelphia Inquirer and she is not happy how Biden’s handled Afghanistan.

    Most people, even very intelligent people, have other things to do and do not focus on much other than the headlines of “Biden’s Afghanistan Blunder”, “Biden Unleashed Chaos in Afghanistan”, etc. Even if they read a news article or watch a segment on TV, they will be heavily influenced by how the news is framed, because they do not have context for the reporting outside of the framing.

    I’m not surprised non-stop “Biden failed” reporting has left its mark.

  137. 137.

    zhena gogolia

    @gene108:

    Yeah, that’s my fear too.

    I just hope it blows over soon. But of course things are not likely to go smoothly in that country, so he’ll continue to get the blame.

  138. 138.

    Scout211

    @Mary G:

    Paffrath is TFG v2.0

    Thank you.  I figured that out quickly when I looked him up.  I was using my voter information booklet and I guess he was too late to be included or chose not to be included.  Yeah, right away he was off my possible choices.  I still am leaning toward not voting on question #2 but who knows . . .

  139. 139.

    gene108

    @Major Major Major Major:

    we can’t criticize the president until we “beat back the shrieking media hordes”?

    It’s hard to nuanced meaningful criticism, when at least 50% of the media – Fox News, OANN, NewsMax, Republicans in the MSM, and disillusioned former Democrats like George Stephanapolus – are dedicated to nothing else other than tearing down any popular Democratic President.

    Any and all criticism, no matter how sincere, gets rolled in the “Democratic President failed” right-wing megaphone

  141. 141.

    gene108

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I think the most important fight is the one that will determine the fate of tens of thousands of refugees.

    You mean MILLIONS of refugees. Whatever number the U.S. takes in will be a drop in the bucket of Afghan refugees.

    An estimated 270,000 Afghans have been newly displaced inside the country since January 2021 – primarily due to insecurity and violence – bringing the total uprooted population to over 3.5 million.

    https://www.unhcr.org/en-us/news/briefing/2021/7/60ed3ba34/unhcr-warns-imminent-humanitarian-crisis-afghanistan.html

  142. 142.

    gene108

    @Major Major Major Major:

    For example, since he knew Trump had sabotaged the process, he could have ignored some of the sabotage while evacuating people to an intermediate location while he sorted everything out.

    Trump left agencies totally hollowed out.

    The people trained to manage this sort of thing are not in place.

    Sen. Cruz is holding up a bunch of other nominations, despite the current crisis.

    I was struck in the past few days of crisis surrounding the sudden collapse of the Afghan government and subsequent rush to deploy thousands of U.S. military forces to Kabul to conduct an emergency evacuation of thousands of American citizens, Afghan translators and other vulnerable Afghans and allied citizens that there is no similar sense of common urgency between Congress and the administration over the staggering number of unfilled senior US government posts, in particular at the State Department.

    Despite the emergency and risk to thousands of lives, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) apparently persists in having a blanket hold on all State Department and USAID nominees, allegedly to protest the Biden administration not issuing sanctions on German entities involved in the construction of the Nordstream II pipeline. The Biden administration has said that more than 90% of the pipeline from Russia to western Europe was completed by the time it took office.

    There is no confirmed US Ambassador to NATO, for instance. There is an acting Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, who came out of retirement in Jan. 2020 to serve as the charge d’affaires at the embassy in Afghanistan and who has been working heroically out of the Kabul airport in recent days to assist the evacuation. There is also no confirmed Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration; Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs; Assistant Secretary of European and Eurasian Affairs; Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs; Assistant Secretary for Political-Military Affairs; Assistant Secretary for international organizational affairs; Assistant Secretary for Intelligence; Assistant Secretary for international security and nonproliferation affairs, …no Ambassador to Turkey…. No confirmed Director General of the Foreign Service. The list goes on and on.

    SNIP

    “We are not operating at the top of our game,” a former senior State Department official, speaking not for attribution, told me, referring to the US government. “Even where there are great career people in acting positions, we are not at full strength…In order to be doing that, we need to be fully staffed, in the department, and out in the posts around the world.”

    The former senior official noted that in one way or another, all posts around the world are going to be dealing with the fallout of the Afghanistan decision. “It is impacting how allies see us,” the former official said. And it’s not the only crisis in the world.

    https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/afghan-crisis-reveals-broken-us-nomination

  144. 144.

    J R in WV

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: ​
     

    I always thought soft cotton cloth, like a clean tee shirt or bandanna, after a squirt of lens cleaner, was the nuts for len cleaning. Of all types.

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