Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

American History and Black History can not be separated.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

You are so fucked. Still, I wish you the best of luck.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The willow is too close to the house.

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

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

An unpunished coup is a training exercise.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The words do not have to be perfect.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Thursday Morning Open Thread: Getting Out of the Quagmire

Thursday Morning Open Thread: Getting Out of the Quagmire

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(Except, y’know, Peter Alexander’s exceedingly stupid question… )

It’s very much in the Taliban’s interest to get every godsdamned American out of Afghanistan, ASAP. It’s very much in America’s interest to insist that we’ll get every American out, preferably before next Tuesday’s deadline. That’s why I’m assuming (hoping) twitter rando Kilgore Trout is correct:

Meanwhile, the Taliban has IS / ISIS, we have the GOP Death Cult:

Reader Interactions

179Comments

  6. 6.

    Mousebumples

    @rikyrah: I look forward to seeing how Nancy makes Moulton pay for going against her and the administration. Are there any Kennedys that live in his district that could mount a primary challenge? Or an Ayanna Presley/AOC type young rising star that could take down a man that seems high on his own self-importance?

  8. 8.

    SiubhanDuinne

    So funny, I didn’t know who Peter Alexander was so I went to Google his name just now, and literally at the very second his Wiki bio popped up on my screen, he was announced on Morning Joe to file a report.

    That kind of thing happens a lot.

  14. 14.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    UGH.

    ETA: Yes, only because I didn’t hear the NPR interview that everyone was talking about yesterday and I wanted to hear for myself whether Sasse could be as awful as people were claiming.

    (Narrator: He was.)

  15. 15.

    Geminid

    @rikyrah: I read that Moulton no longer advocates for extending the August 31 deadline, so that’s one good thing. He is taking a beating over this trip, and Pentagon spokesman John Kirby kicked him under the bus in yesterday’s briefing.

    Moulton may not suffer too much politically, though. Even after angering district Democrats with his short-lived revolt against Nancy Pelosi’s Speakership, Moulton won his last primary with 78% of the vote, and went on to win the general election 65-35%.

  16. 16.

    narya

    Good morning, all! I’ve been trying to help my (86-year-old never-had-counseling-or-therapy) mom find a therapist. She’s been basically not sleeping. I personally think it’s a lot of grief–her generation is all gone now, and four died in the past two years–plus she’s dealing with her partner of 65 years fading away in front of her. But I’m so proud of her for asking for help

    ETA: Nancy SMASH is still my heroine.

  19. 19.

    Soprano2

    Boy, that first tweet. Biden is truly tired of the press and their idiocy, isn’t he?

    I got into my mom’s computer and e-mail account last night. Her bookmarks are like a who’s who of the people we think are way out there on the right.  You name a prominent right-wing Web site, it’s probably in her bookmarks. Same with her e-mail account, too – it’s full of political e-mails. I’m not sure it’s even worth it to go through all of them, according to Yahoo there are 999+ e-mails in there! *sigh* Of course, my personal e-mail isn’t much better than that. LOL She had several notebooks by her computer where she had written down all kinds of Web sites, names of movies/TV shows, and so on. I also found where she had written down one of those prayers they used to pray that Obama would die soon; it was labeled “Prayer for Obama”. So now you have a better picture of why we couldn’t talk about politics. Notes, notes, notes all over those books. When I have time I’ll probably go through them to see if there is anything worth saving. I did see some names and phone numbers written down among all the other stuff.

    I’m tempted to have a bonfire with all of her political books. Is that wrong?

  21. 21.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Pro-Publica: What the US Didn’t Learn in Afghanistan, According to the Government’s Own Inspector General

    The chaotic collapse of the Afghan military in recent months made starkly clear that the $83 billion U.S. taxpayers spent to create and fund those security forces achieved little. But a new report this week by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction also reveals the depths of failure of the United States’ entire 20-year, $145 billion effort to reconstruct (or construct, in some cases) Afghanistan’s civil society.

    John Sopko, the special inspector general since 2012, has long chronicled the government’s miscalculations. In his latest lacerating assessment, he concluded that “the U.S. government continuously struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy for what it hoped to achieve.” The U.S. effort was clumsy and ignorant, the report says, calling out the hubris of a superpower thinking it could reshape a country it didn’t understand by tossing gobs of money around.

    The new report is a sweeping look back over America’s two decades in Afghanistan, which left 2,443 U.S. servicemembers and more than 114,000 Afghans dead. The watchdog agency has, for 13 years, consistently and accurately pointed out consequential flaws of the many reconstruction programs at play.
    ……………………….
    “This was not a matter of ignoring what was said as much as not wanting to come to grips with the issue, and it was a deliberate choice not to deal with the problems,” said Anthony Cordesman, a policy expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “It wasn’t even a triumph of hope over experience; it was a triumph of political expediency over meaningful policy making.”
    ………………………
    “If the goal was to rebuild and leave behind a country that can sustain itself and pose little threat to U.S. national security interests,” the report says, “the overall picture is bleak.”

    SIGAR’s analysis of the future is equally forbidding. The U.S. is exiting Afghanistan, but history shows we’ll likely jump into nation building again. SIGAR’s report notes that it’s the “11th lessons learned report” in the series, but the heading for the report makes it quite clear that, if the U.S. government is the student, the message hasn’t sunk in. It’s called “What We Need to Learn: Lessons from Twenty Years of Afghanistan Reconstruction.”

    But go ahead and tell me how terrible it is that Biden finished the job trump was too gutless to.

  22. 22.

    p.a.

    @Geminid: How are Dem committee assignments doled out?  He may not be damaged back home, but he’s given NSmash ‘hand’.  NSmash knows what to do with ‘hand’.

  25. 25.

    Anne Laurie

    @Mousebumples: I look forward to seeing how Nancy makes Moulton pay for going against her and the administration.

    One of the longer clips on the local evening news had Ed Markey & some other Mass-VIPs talking about how President Biden’s infrastructure bill has *big* money allocated to fix some of our worst bridges.  Rep. Moulton’s district doesn’t need those dollars as badly as many others, but I think Madam Speaker will point out that *no* district likes to lose out on free money just because their rep had to f*ck around, find out…

  27. 27.

    Soprano2

    @Geminid: I could wait until it was wet enough. Her house is outside the city limits, so I could set up a fire pit in the driveway and do it there. She has lots of them. *sigh* I think she even has a recent book by Sydney Powell.

  28. 28.

    Catherine D.

    @Soprano2:

    I’m tempted to have a bonfire with all of her political books. Is that wrong?

    Nope. My mother has a shrine to TFG on her couch, and I plan to torch that crap.

  30. 30.

    Kay

    Untold thousands of at-risk Afghans, however, still are struggling to get into the Kabul airport, while many thousands of other Afghans already have been flown to safety in 12 days of round-the-clock flights.

    It’s just junk.

    “Untold thousands”. The working definition is now “at-risk Afghans”?

    So that would be all of them? These aren’t news reports. They are editorials.

  31. 31.

    stinger

    @Soprano2:  This makes me so sad. I feel lucky that my own mother’s late-life interests were religious, rather than political. What you describe seems so ugly somehow.

  32. 32.

    satby

    You know that FedEx shipment I mentioned on Monday or maybe Tuesday that was supposed to be delivered last Saturday?  Now it looks like they’ve completely lost it. I just notified the shipper. Yesterday I stayed home from the doctor’s office because FE was supposed to deliver a replacement for my Google Pixel. That didn’t show up either. At least I got laundry done.

  36. 36.

    Soprano2

    @stinger: What you describe seems so ugly somehow.

    It feels really ugly to me, too. When I found that prayer in her notebooks I sighed, but wasn’t that surprised. I don’t have a problem with political disagreement – if people are willing to actually talk about it I find political debate like that can be useful, but actively praying for the death of the president is wrong on so many levels (even when it was TFG it was wrong). I tried to talk to her about the bad turn the Republican Party was taking, but it was futile. I’m only glad she was smart enough not to buy that QAnon stuff, and that she knew it was important for her to get vaccinated. I blame her second husband, the asshole – she wasn’t like this before she met him. My mother put a lot of store in how smart she thought people were, and for some reason she thought he was extremely smart, and he was a RWNJ.

  37. 37.

    Baud

    @Soprano2:

    Boy, that first tweet. Biden is truly tired of the press and their idiocy, isn’t he?

    He’s been needling the press for their idiocy since the campaign.

    Sorry to hear about your mom’s web habits.  Too bad she couldn’t be into porn like regular folks.

  38. 38.

    Chief Oshkosh

    Headline of WaPo Ed Bd opinion piece: “Resettling Afghan refugees without delay could be a modest saving grace for the bungled departure”

    What a bunch of wanking posers. I know that the FNYFT is worse, but good god, we’ve (as in Biden and those executing on his orders) gotten 80,000 people out in 10 days with no American deaths. If only I subscribed, I’d be able to unsubscribe.

  41. 41.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @rikyrah: seth moulton was dumb enough to think his bluedogass could ride to glory as house speaker in 2019 on the wave of #ourrevolution animus to neoliberal nancy pelosi the fancy ice cream woman*

    i’ll be first to admit the fauxgressive movement is first last & always an exercise in petty jealousy & bloodlust over picayune difference, but the elected fauxgressives are not the pettiest of the scene & in the end would not pick gary condit jr over nancy pelosi

    *i remember scahill tweeting that pelosi’s ice cream freezer was more expensive than the typical house in scahill’s (sort of) hometown, milwaukee (dude’s from wauwatosa, in a time when that was quite distinct from its neighbor)

  42. 42.

    Wapiti

    Yeah, any American citizen that stayed in (or went into!) Afghanistan after the State Department said not to… they have a responsibility for their situation. The only group I have *some* sympathy for would be U.S. women married to Afghan men*, and their children, but again, what was their exit plan?

    * Due the the severe patriarchy in the society, a U.S. man married to an Afghan woman falls into my first sentence.

  43. 43.

    Nicole

    @Soprano2: I’m sorry.  It’s tough with right-wing family members.  They didn’t reason themselves into their current position so you can’t reason them out.  Thank God for Cuomo being the ONE political topic we could all discuss when I visited family this week.   I mean, I dislike him for different reasons than they do, but at least we could talk about one political event.  And it gave me an opening to opine positively on Hochul and since they don’t know anything about her they didn’t have an objection they could reasonably lodge. ;)

    Oh, and speaking of Madame Governor- I met her new Lt. Gov., Brian Benjamin, at a fundraiser right after he was elected to State Senate and he was really nice.  It was a very, very small scale fundraiser (like, held in the rec room of someone’s apartment building), but he was kind and generous with his time with everyone.  She could have picked someone with a higher profile, but I think she picked someone she thought would be good at the job.  I was really happy to see the news.

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Thirty years ago today, I became a baseball fan and a Braves fanatic. It was my dad’s birthday* and I asked him what he’d like to do to celebrate. I was all ready to take him out to his favourite Chinese restaurant. But he said he was beginning to get interested in the Braves (who were just beginning their spectacular worst-to-first run) and he just wanted to stay home and watch the game. I said in that case I’d make the big sacrifice and watch it with him, but I knew nothing about baseball — pretty sure I’d never seen a whole game; I certainly had never paid attention — and he’d have to explain it to me. We sat at the kitchen table, he gave me a clear and understandable baseball for dummies tutorial, and we switched on TBS.

    By sheer dumb luck, I couldn’t possibly have begun my baseball fandom with a better game. It was a home game; visitors were the Montreal Expos (I worked for the Canadian government at the time, so there was an extra connection); the Braves trailed through the first few innings; then the Braves got a GRAND SLAM, which Daddy assured me was a rare and wonderful event; and in the end the Braves won 14-9. I was hooked, and for the next three years got to share America’s Game with my father, the way kids and their dads have done since the beginning of time.

    *His 77th birthday. So weird to realise I’m older now than he was then.

  45. 45.

    JR

    @rikyrah: Moulton is probably positioning himself as a party switch candidate if the GOP ever swings back to Neocon “conservative liberalism” type politics.

    Doubtful but his path to higher office is closed within the Democratic party, IMHO.

  47. 47.

    different-church-lady

    @satby: FedEx created such a consistent record of delivery screw ups to my place that I now refuse to use them whenever possible.

    My most recent experience was having them leave a $5000 rental recorder on my porch unattended in the age of rampant package theft even though it was sent signature required, and I had rearranged my day to be there for it.

  48. 48.

    sab

    @Chief Oshkosh: In my city the whole refugee resettlement structure has kind of collapsed because TFG blocked all refugees for so long. Hundred year old agency stripped down to a skeleton crew because no refugees coming in.

  50. 50.

    Geminid

    @p.a.: Commitee assignments are made by the Democratic Caucus Steering and Policy Commitee. Presumably they could strip Moulton of his commitee assignments.

    But it’s not like Moulton actually defied the Speaker in this instance. She issued her strong discouragement of trips to Kabul after she found out Moulton and Meijer had gone.

    People want to see Pelosi punish Moulton, but she may well decide she has bigger fish to fry. If she wanted, Speaker Pelosi certainly could make an example out of Moulton, but to what end?

  51. 51.

    George

    @Soprano2:  My 80-something-year-old ma has the same sort of thing going on. Rightwing websites visited. Notes taken on scratch paper all around her apartment with snippets she got online or saw on Fox News, the sum of which is to disprove every Democratic claim by countering it with a rightwing noise claim.​ She is too stingy to buy rightwing books, so she gets them at the library.​

  54. 54.

    different-church-lady

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose:

    i’ll be first to admit the fauxgressive movement is first last & always an exercise in petty jealousy & bloodlust over picayune difference…

    Nonsense! They are first last & always an exercise in perfomative petty jealousy & bloodlust over picayune difference!

  60. 60.

    Chief Oshkosh

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose:

    “untold thousands” is a smarter way of saying “many, many people”

    It’s also an admission that the “reporter” or writer is too fucking lazy to research how many people might be involved and who those people are. If I told you that there were 75,000* Americans and legit US-tainted Afghans in Afghanistan prior to August, and we’ve transported 80,000** people out up to now (and are on our way to topping 100,000), what would you conclude? Well shit, you’d conclude that we’ve done a great fucking job. But no, we can’t have that. We don’t even get THAT level of lazy analysis. Fuck no. We get “untold thousands” because the various numbnuts don’t know and have no interest in knowing what the number is and who these folks are.

    After all, the real data might not support their childish and destructive narrative.

    *Totally made up number.
    **Actual number based on real Pentagon records.

  61. 61.

    Ken

    @MontyTheClipArtMongoose: “untold thousands” is a smarter way of saying “many, many people”

    I was thinking it’s a way to say “more than whatever number are eventually taken out”, so that no matter what happens the operation can be painted as a failure.

  63. 63.

    raven

    @WaterGirl: Nuthin, it’s time. They have been month-to-month for over a year. They need more room and we have major work to do to allow us to more than break even on the damn thing.

  64. 64.

    germy

    Beltway press is like a child of divorce. They save all their anger for Mom (Dems) because they’re afraid if they display anger toward Dad (GOP), he’ll stomp off and they’ll never see him again.

    — Suburban Guerrilla Ω (@SusieMadrak) August 23, 2021

  65. 65.

    raven

    @SiubhanDuinne: The “got” a grand slam!!!  Hell yes. I took my wife to her first Cubbie game a few years back and the Mets hir two in one inning!

     

    CHICAGO — Cliff Floyd and Carlos Beltran hit grand slams,
    and David Wright added a two-run homer in the sixth inning as the
    New York Mets scored a club-record 11 runs in the frame against the
    Chicago Cubs on Sunday night.

    The Mets sent 16 batters to the plate in the 41-minute half
    inning and benefited from two errors on Chicago second baseman Todd Walker. Eight of the 11 runs were unearned. Chicago pitchers threw
    70 pitches in the inning.

    According to team historian Ed Hartig, it is the first time in
    club history the Cubs had given up two grand slams in the same
    inning. It is the fifth time they yielded two in the same game.

  66. 66.

    OGLiberal

    A few things about all of this:

    • The people who bring up how many troops we have in Germany, South Korea and Japan – “Why can’t we just keep in place the 2,500 troops we have in Afghanistan?…it’s such a low number.”  Drives me nuts for so many reasons.
    • Related to the above – at any time in the last year or so, given our low number of troops and the apparent corruption in the Afghanistan government and military, the Taliban could have moved to take over most of the country (instead of waiting until we were on our way out the door, like now), forcing us to make the decision to either leave sooner or send a bunch more troops to Afghanistan.  Was the country at all ready to do the latter?  Was Trump?
    • Call me crazy but while the Taliban has medieval ideas about a bunch of things, from a political and strategic standpoint they seem pretty rational and pragmatic.  Am I wrong?  Yeah, they wouldn’t give Bin Laden to us on a platter but they offered alternatives that we turned down.  And I think they realize what a mistake it was to let Bin Laden hang in their country – doubt they want to make that mistake again.
    • The Taliban is not and never was a terrorist group – at least certainly not one planning and launching attacks outside of Afghanistan – so stop acting like they are.  The Taliban is not planning on inserting terrorist plants among Afghan refugees to our country or to any other.
  67. 67.

    Subsole

    @Kay:

    Worse. Less than editorials.

    Tantrums.

    I think at this point it isn’t political. It isn’t that they lose all their war coverage/ratings. I mean they are taking this personal. 

    I am beginning to suspect that they are getting their asses eaten alive on Twitter (because they ALL hang out there) and elsewhere by the groundlings, and are by gawd gonna show us. I mean, this feels  like a comedian screaming ‘fuck you’ at the audience because their latest set is getting panned.

  68. 68.

    Booger

    @Soprano2: Books are a lot harder to burn than Ray Bradbury would have you think. There’s a lot of smoldering to be expected, but it can be cathartic.

  69. 69.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @raven:

    Wow! I’ve seen two GS in one game, but not in a single inning. Too bad they weren’t in the Cubbies’ favour.

  70. 70.

    geg6

    @Geminid: ​
     

    People want to see Pelosi punish Moulton, but she may well decide she has bigger fish to fry. If she wanted, Speaker Pelosi certainly could make an example out of Moulton, but to what end?

    My guess is that she has had him in for a little talk or maybe Hakeem Jeffries has had him in for a little talk. Either way, he’s not getting off scot free but it is happening behind the scenes. He’s an idiot. Just a total idiot.

  75. 75.

    Subsole

    @Chief Oshkosh:

    Our media: very, very good at smarter ways of saying nothing.

     

     

     

    Cannot believe I thought about doing that for a living in my misspent youth…

  76. 76.

    Ken

    @OGLiberal: The people who bring up how many troops we have in Germany, South Korea and Japan – “Why can’t we just keep in place the 2,500 troops we have in Afghanistan?…it’s such a low number.”  Drives me nuts for so many reasons.

    It would be nice to see those people questioned about the purpose they see for those troops. For Germany and South Korea, at least, it’s a sign that if they were attacked the US would immediately come to their defense. That doesn’t apply to Afghanistan, unless they’re proposing that we pledge ourselves to protecting the Taliban government.

    I suspect, as do others, that some large fraction of the press has been using Afghanistan as an excuse to spend two weeks at the UAE resorts, then take a day trip to Kabul and send back a report. Keeping US troops there would facilitate that mission.

  77. 77.

    Subsole

    @germy:

    Uh…one of Daddy’s friends mailed a pipebomb to their office…

     

    Oh who am I kidding. Like any of The Talent would care if some mail clerk got their fingers blown off…

  78. 78.

    Immanentize

    @SiubhanDuinne: My son’s first baseball game (at Fenway) a couple of days after his 2nd birthday was Derek Lowe’s no-hitter. We kept the tickets and the newspaper articles for him.

  79. 79.

    Immanentize

    @JR: Moulton cannot switch parties and maintain his seat in MA 6. Thank you for attending my TED talk.

  80. 80.

    germy

    A Polk County teacher just told me that a student coughed on her colleague at the school. The teacher asked if the student had COVID. The student replied “my mom had me tested and we will get the results back in 3 to 5 days.” This is how it spreads.

    — Allen Ellison Democrat for US Senate Florida (@AllenLEllison) August 26, 2021

  81. 81.

    frosty

    @SiubhanDuinne: ​@raven: ​
       Late 70s, early 80s I saw one of the Orioles (I think it might have been Eddie Murray) “homer for the cycle” a stat no one keeps. In one game he hit a 1-run, 2-run, 3-run homer and a Grand Slam.I was a huge fan until they moved to Camden Yards and it was almost impossible to get tickets, which is definitely not the case now. It’s been a sad 20-25 years for what was once regularly a contender in the AL East. FTFY. And Boston too.​​

  82. 82.

    germy

    Daughter gets special escort to first day of kindergarten as dad, Firefighter Wayne Davis, fights COVID-19. He missed his daughter’s first day of kindergarten. But his Houston Fire family stepped in big time. https://t.co/ixmqEdZypm via @KHOU @FireChiefofHFD

    — Houston Fire Dept (@HoustonFire) August 25, 2021

    Although their heart is in the right place, as first responders they should be sending the message of wearing masks in small gatherings (vaccinated or not). Especially, during this surge. Remember, father is in the hospital from COVID…there’s no mask mandates in public schools…

    — Henro (@reesehe) August 26, 2021

  85. 85.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @frosty:

    I wonder why that’s not a stat anyone keeps. It seems like the kind of thing SABR would be all over. And it would look good in headlines and on trading cards.

  86. 86.

    frosty

    @Immanentize: ​My son’s first game was the last home game at Memorial Stadium. We took a picture but didn’t save anything. He didn’t become a baseball fan but in case he did I wanted him to have that stadium in his collection, same way I have Forbes Field.

  87. 87.

    OGLiberal

    @frosty: Went to Camden yards soon after it opened on a weekend trip (I’m from NJ) – the Os v. the Yankees.  I’m not a fan of either team (sadly, I’m a Mets fan) so was mostly there for the experience.  And it was a great experience – especially since we took the train in (from Townson, where we were staying) so didn’t have to worry about parking.  If I recall it was one of the first new, old timey parks constructed after years of ugly modern-style behemoths.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    Yep ??

    Hershel Walker Belongs in Hell! (@Geechee4Kamala) tweeted at 8:47 AM on Thu, Aug 26, 2021:
    ⁦@politico⁩ AKA Political TMZ is sold to Axel Springer (which is worse than Fox News) for over $1 billion.

    Expect their awful coverage towards Democrats, BIPOC politicians and female politicians to be far worse than what you get from Murdoch brands https://t.co/u8mCdETEpw

  89. 89.

    WaterGirl

    @raven: I knew you thought it was time quite some time ago, but I didn’t realize they agreed.  Glad to hear it’s happening.

    Say, do we know any more about the pup that needed a home?  How are things going on the local front?

  93. 93.

    frosty

    @OGLiberal: It’s a great ballpark. One of the last games I went to was against the FTFYs. Three-quarters of the fans were New Yorkers. I was livid, the O’s fans (probably mostly from the DC area) were too polite. My take: if it had been Memorial Stadium, they would have all been drenched in beer and pummeled. You don’t cheer for the other team in my stadium, dammit!!!
    ETA: You could afford to pour beer on them at Memorial, when you could bring in a cooler of your own instead of paying $8.00 each.

  95. 95.

    cmorenc

    @Soprano2:

    My mother put a lot of store in how smart she thought people were, and for some reason she thought he was extremely smart, and he was a RWNJ.

    A lot of RW glibertarian rhetoric about “freedom” does superficially sound impressive when abstracted from the actual dynamics of the real world, where it shatters into shards of antisocial callousness and irresponsibility.

  96. 96.

    Another Scott

    @OGLiberal: +1

    Yeah, things were going swimmingly with 2500 troops in the country before mid-August.  (groucho-roll-eyes.gif)

    https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan

    People who think that 2500 troops were keeping the Taliban in a box should look at those maps of April 13 and July 31 and explain them.  Hint – 2500 troops weren’t keeping the Taliban in a box.  The Taliban were simply taking territory without fighting the US because we had agreed we were going to leave.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  97. 97.

    Subsole

    @germy:

    Shame you didn’t see it all coming and warn someone, Richie.

    What with you bein’ on the ground all them years, and havin’ all them contacts, I mean.

    Abloo bloo bloo.

  98. 98.

    geg6

    @rikyrah:

    Good for them.  I can’t imagine the hell they’ve been through.  And I imagine, it being Mississippi and all, that they don’t get paid nearly enough to make this shit worth it.

  99. 99.

    CliosFanBoy

    @Soprano2: I’m tempted to have a bonfire with all of her political books. Is that wrong?

     

    Only in that it adds more carbon to the air.  Can they be recycled or mulched. :)

  100. 100.

    germy

    @WaterGirl:

    Average new unemployment claims have dropped by over 55% — from 830,000 to 366,500 – since President Biden took office.

    When was the last time the economy was growing this fast?

    Ronald Reagan was telling us it was “Morning in America.”

    — Emilie Simons (@EmilieSimons46) August 26, 2021

    Right now every third conservative is demanding Biden resign because he got us out of Afghanistan https://t.co/dzxTLDS4Zm

    — Roy Edroso (@edroso) August 26, 2021

  101. 101.

    Soprano2

    @OGLiberal: The people who bring up how many troops we have in Germany, South Korea and Japan – “Why can’t we just keep in place the 2,500 troops we have in Afghanistan?…it’s such a low number.”  Drives me nuts for so many reasons.

    Me, too. It’s a refusal to acknowledge that the troops we have in other countries perform a much different function than the troops that were in Afghanistan. Biden had two choices. #1 was to break TFG’s deal with the Taliban and ramp up our forces in Afghanistan in anticipation of new Taliban attacks. #2 was to do what he’s doing now. The press seems to believe there was a #3 choice, which was to break the deal and keep the number of troops we have there the same, but that was never an option. I wish they would tell the truth about that.

  102. 102.

    rikyrah

    THIS ??????

    Sabrina (@Charmed86) tweeted at 6:44 AM on Thu, Aug 26, 2021:
    Americans have been told for months to LEAVE. This is not a surprise to any of them. They knew the war was ending and if they wanted to leave they should have. Stop trying to act like this shit just popped off out of the blue.

  103. 103.

    soapdish

    @Soprano2: I knew my mom was a Birther and let her know how disappointed I was when I found out back in 2010 or 2011.  I saw Stormfront in her web browser history back in 2021 and I thought I would somehow be able to live with that but when TFG won in 2016 I realized what a horrible mistake that was.  You’ve got to cut all those horrible people out of your life as much as possible no matter what their relationship is to you.  Yes, it’s easier for me because I don’t have kids so it’s not like I’m keeping them from seeing Memaw.
    It’s a damn shame because she’s an otherwise wonderful person who has done a whole lot of good in her life but to me it’s all overshadowed by her racism and her support for really terrible people with really terrible policies that will hurt a lot of other people.
    And no, she’s not vaccinated even after spending three days in the hospital with COVID back in March.  She’s full-on dunk the kool-aid.

  104. 104.

    geg6

    @frosty: ​ For me, it’s Three Rivers Stadium and Pitt Stadium. But never for baseball (ugh, boring). It’s for football.
    In college, I had lots of classes in and my advisor’s office was located in the building that was erected on the spot of the old Forbes Field, in Pitt’s Forbes Quad. They have the old home base embedded in the floor there, exactly where it was. There is also a piece of Maz’s wall just outside the building.​

  105. 105.

    Steve in the ATL

    @SiubhanDuinne: baseball is a lot like cricket, except that baseball is not so boring it’s unwatchable.

    14-9 was a rare score in those days.  The Braves were all about pitching.  I was at a Braves-Reds game around that time and the Reds pitcher was en fuego and threw a one-hitter.  Sadly for him, that one hit was a David Justice home run, and the Braves pitcher of course tossed a shutout. Braves won 1-0, obviously, and it was incredibly exciting.  Not boring like it seems it would have been.

    Semi-related, but there must be a rapidly growing Indian population in the Johns Creek/Alpharetta area as they are lobbying for a dedicated cricket field in a local park.

  106. 106.

    cmorenc

    @Soprano2:

    My mother put a lot of store in how smart she thought people were, and for some reason she thought he was extremely smart, and he was a RWNJ.

    A lot of RW glibertarian rhetoric about “freedom” does superficially sound impressive when abstracted from the actual dynamics of the real world, where they turn out to be as actually sound in practice as other perpetual motion machines.  It also can sound superficially quite noble, until you realize it’s just a cover for justifying callous social irresponsibility toward everyone else.

  107. 107.

    geg6

    @germy: ​
     
    Man, I have lost every ounce of respect I’ve ever had for that dude. He’s really shown his true colors here. What a hack.

    Afghans had so much hope, they couldn’t be bothered to fight for their own country. Fuck that shit.

  108. 108.

    germy

    NEW: Suicide bomber “complex SBIED attack” with firefight at Abbey Gate outside Kabul airport; Afghan casualties: US official

    — Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) August 26, 2021

    This is what Fox News has been praying for.

    #Breaking: Explosion hits outside Kabul airport after terror attack warnings as thousands rush to evacuate https://t.co/45A8PCE5cK

    — Gabe Gutierrez (@gabegutierrez) August 26, 2021

  109. 109.

    Immanentize

    @frosty: my wife, my in-laws and I went to the next-to last game played at the Astrodome! I have a sweet Astrodome snow globe (irony!) that was the Astros final gimme.

  110. 110.

    Soprano2

    @Subsole: I mean they are taking this personal. 

    I think they believe they have found an incident that lets them disprove that they have “liberal bias”, so they’ve gone all-in on the criticism of it, and they get mad when people point out how wrong they’ve been about some of it. They have their narrative of “Biden’s withdrawal was bad/irresponsible/poorly managed” and they’re sticking to that no matter what evidence there is to the contrary.

  111. 111.

    geg6

    @Steve in the ATL: ​

    except that baseball is not so boring it’s unwatchable.

    Speak for yourself. I’d rather watch golf. It’s much more exciting.
    The only thing worse than baseball on tv is NASCAR. Turn left! Turn left! Turn left! Stupidest thing I’ve ever seen.

  112. 112.

    oldgold

    @germy

    Richard Engel and Marissa Ward have been beyond horrible. They need to be brought home and reassigned to covering city hall for a local station in Minot, North Dakota. They are that damn bad.

  113. 113.

    Steve in the ATL

    @rikyrah:

     

    Aug 25, 2021:
    Carville: There’s no elegant way to lose a war. We lost this war 15 years ago.

    Counterpoint: we lost that war the day we decided to start it. Carville should know that.

  115. 115.

    Steve in the ATL

    @geg6: who doesn’t love watching golf?  Women’s golf is actually more fun because it’s so much closer to what normal humans can do on the links.  The men are just ridiculous.

  116. 116.

    OGLiberal

    @Ken: RE: the underlying press reasons you mentioned.  I definitely think that’s part of it.  They want to accompany Seth Moulton on some “exploratory” mission and wear camo, kevlar vests and – for the women – a hijab and feel like they are “in the shite” and have war stories to tell for years to come.

  118. 118.

    LadySuzy

    Pentagon confirms there has been an explosion near one of the gates of Kabul’s airport. No details yet on how big it was, and on the casualties. The administration was pretty concerned about the threats from Isis-K. They were right.

    Damn.

  119. 119.

    OGLiberal

    @germy: Not just Fox News…basically all of them.

    That it could have been caused by a militant group that they Taliban hates will be lost on them.  The Taliban is trying to keep ISIS-K from attacking the airport, the goal of which would be not to capture the airport but to cause chaos.  I guess maybe we should stay in Afghanistan now to help the Taliban fight ISIS-K?

  120. 120.

    Mike in NC

    Local rag reports that Lindsey Graham is calling for the impeachment of President Biden because Graham’s lips are permanently attached to the Orange Clown’s butthole. Film at 11?

  123. 123.

    Ken

    @geg6: The only thing worse than baseball on tv is NASCAR. Turn left! Turn left! Turn left!

    They should build them like model race tracks with a bunch of switchbacks and a spiral ramp. Or at least in a figure-8.

  124. 124.

    Nelle

    @narya: You might find help from a chaplain. My friend, who is Sikh, is frustrated with the relentlessly Christian beat of US chaplains, but the best can help someone walk through grief.

  125. 125.

    different-church-lady

    @Immanentize: ​  Reminds me of a story from the early days of golf in America. One of the early advocates (might have been Francis Ouimet, but my Google-fu continues to be terrible) took some folks out for a demonstration of the sport. On his very first shot he made a hole in one. Apparently all that did was make the novice group terribly disappointed with the rest of the round.​
    ​
    ​

  128. 128.

    MontyTheClipArtMongoose

    @germy: i thought “homicide-bomber” was foxnews housestyle

    or did the nashville truckbomber shift fox’s position?

  129. 129.

    OGLiberal

    @geg6: Don’t forget the crashes.  And drinking on top of the roof of the RV. (I could actually get into the latter)

  131. 131.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    baseball is a lot like cricket, except that baseball is not so boring it’s unwatchable.

    From my beloved Gaudy Night:

    Harriet said sedately that she always enjoyed a good cricket match.

    “Do you? I thought it was politeness. It’s pretty slow work, if you ask me. But I was never any good at it myself. It’s all right for old Peter. He can always work himself into a stew thinking how much better he’d have done it himself.”

    Harriet offered him coffee. “I didn’t know anybody ever got into a stew at Lord’s. I thought it wasn’t done.”

    “Well, the atmosphere doesn’t exactly remind one of the Cup Final; but mild old gentlemen do sometimes break out into a spot of tut-tuttery.“

  132. 132.

    Lyrebird

    @satby: ​
     

    Oh what a hassle!

    Totally OT: just wanted to say I really appreciated what you shared the other day about wrongs done to you and others and perspective and maybe redemption and stuff like that. Thank you.

  133. 133.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: I didn’t realize he was an Open Borders fanantic. Did he really think that from a population of 38 million that we would take in everyone who wants a better life? Everyone he’s ever met abroad who was nice to him? All the girls in school? Just take them from their parents and raise them over here?

  135. 135.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Steve in the ATL:

    Semi-related, but there must be a rapidly growing Indian population in the Johns Creek/Alpharetta area as they are lobbying for a dedicated cricket field in a local park.

    I’d love to see a dedicated cricket pitch in this area. I’d go see a game.

    Even a decade ago, I’d often go to the Sharon Forks Library and as often as not would be the only customer there who was not of South Asian descent. You’re right, the Indian population around here is growing like mad. Very refreshing. I’ve been at SFL a few times when the Library-sponsored Diwali and Holi celebrations were going on. They’re great!

  136. 136.

    Another Scott

    @LadySuzy: Al Jazeera is saying that the Taliban is saying that 11 people were killed.  :-(

    Reuters is saying that some US troops were injured.

    Everything is still in the “fog of war” phase so expect the reporting to change.

    Cheers,

    Scott.

  140. 140.

    trollhattan

    @germy: ​
     The Beeb is saying two attackers, one suicide bomber and the other a gunman. Aimed at civilians, because that’s how they roll. “At least 11” killed.

  142. 142.

    trollhattan

    @geg6: If golf had crashes and fires, then maybe it could crawl up to NASCAR level. OTOH it holds well against bowling and cage fighting.

  143. 143.

    schrodingers_cat

    @rikyrah: They didn’t give a damn about permanent residents who were stranded all across the US airports when the Orange Despot signed the Muslim ban executive order. Their lives turned upside down after a routine trip abroad to find that they could not enter the country they called their home.

    And now we are supposed to believe that the Beltway media pundits and FP experts really care about the Afghans? What they care about is knee-capping the Dem president.

  146. 146.

    Baud

    @schrodingers_cat:

    And now we are supposed to believe that the Beltway media pundits and FP experts really care about the Afghans

     
    About as much as they really cared about email server best practices.

  148. 148.

    Betty Cracker

    This is bad.

  150. 150.

    lowtechcyclist

    @frosty: While Camden Yards is unquestionably a much nicer facility than Memorial Stadium ever was, it just never did that much for me; I missed the old ballpark from the get-go.

    I think it was that OP@CY attracted a very different group of fans, if you can call them that.  Seemed to me that most of them were there to talk with their friends, and the game was there in case the conversation died down.  At Memorial Stadium, I always felt surrounded by people who were there for the game, and who were usually pretty knowledgeable about baseball.

  152. 152.

    Soprano2

    @soapdish: You’ve got to cut all those horrible people out of your life as much as possible no matter what their relationship is to you.

    Well, we had a strained relationship, and her right-wing views was one reason why. When she was in the hospital I mentioned that she could have been watching the Olympics. Seems neutral, right? Well, the first thing out of her mouth was that she hoped the women’s soccer team lost their matches because they hate America, they turned their back on the flag (no, that’s not what they did either). *sigh* So then we argued about that for awhile, and she finally said she wanted to stop talking about it. I said to her that she brought up politics, not me! That’s one reason I didn’t have a warm, close relationship with her, although there are others too.

  153. 153.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker: That’s unfortunate.  They knew something was coming.

    Afghanistan Airlift Ops Have Rescued 101,300 From Kabul
    U.S. military and chartered aircraft have evacuated 101,300 people from Kabul, and almost 96,000 of those were airlifted out in just the last 12 days.

    However, the number of U.S. military aircraft taking off had dropped significantly as of Thursday: 17 Wednesday compared to 42 the day before. The number of people getting off the ground is also falling each day: 13,400 on Wednesday compared to 19,600 the day before.

    On Wednesday, the Taliban directed that no more Afghans could leave the country, and a security scare that night at Hamid Karzai International Airport led the State Department to send a security alert that  “U.S. citizens who are at the Abbey Gate, East Gate, or North Gate now should leave immediately.”

    The sheer number getting rescued has created a secondary challenge: At staging bases throughout the Middle East, such as Al Udeid in Qatar, thousands of evacuees must wait in three-digit temperatures to be processed.

    The military is planning to be completely gone from Kabul airport as of Aug. 31. To get all the weapons, helicopters, vehicles, and approximately 5,000 U.S. troops out safely by that date, the last few days of the operation will have to focus on retrograde, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Wednesday.

  154. 154.

    frosty

    @Steve in the ATL: The O’s used to be all about pitching too. Earl Weaver’s mantra was “Pitching, defense, and three-run homers.” For me there’s nothing more exciting than a 0-0 pitcher’s duel going into the late innings. Somebody’s got to break!

  155. 155.

    Geminid

    @Baud: I see that Turkey has started bringing it’s troops out of the airport. The Taliban has requested that Turkey continue to provide technical assistance in operating the airport, and the Turks say they expect to work this out.

  156. 156.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @frosty:

    For me there’s nothing more exciting than a 0-0 pitcher’s duel going into the late innings.

    I agree! Although I have nothing against a good hearty laugher.

  157. 157.

    Baud

    @Geminid: It’ll be interesting to see what the Taliban do after Aug. 31.  It’s impossible to make solid predictions, but I suspect they won’t keep U.S. citizens who are still them from leaving the old fashioned way — by commercial air.

  161. 161.

    schrodingers_cat

    BTW both the right wing and left wing Twitter in India are echoing anti-Biden talking points.

    This is a quote from Brahma Chellamy a foreign policy expert with over 100K followers

    After helping to install the Taliban in power and sending the CIA chief to Kabul to cut some kind of deal, Team Biden is now saying publicly that it is ready to work with the new terrorist regime on “counterterrorism.” No wonder U.S. never designated Taliban as a terrorist group.

  162. 162.

    Geminid

    @SiubhanDuinne: These could be some good playoffs. It looks like Atlanta will be playing. I’ve been a Braves fan since I was a kid living in Milwaukee in the 1950’s, when they went to the World Series twice and won once. Back then it was Big Lou Adcock at first base; now it’s Hardhitting Freddie Freeman.

    My loyalties are divided, though. I am a Max Scherzer fan, so I find myself rooting for the Dodgers every fifth day. And I am also a Dusty Baker fan, and I’d like to see him win a World series despite him managing the nefarious Astros.

    Dusty Baker was a Brave. He told a funny story about the advice Hank Aaron gave when Baker was going to face Bob Gibson for the first time:

    “…don’t dig in. [Gibson] would hit his own grandmother if she dug in on him…”

  165. 165.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: Yes it is. BJP as per its MO is using the Taliban takeover to tar Indian Muslims with that brush.

    Also the foreign policy establishment is deeply suspicious of American motives thanks in large part to the Cold War decisions made by our FP establishment.

    Anti-Americanism works well politically for both for the left and right in India and some of that is based on past history.

  167. 167.

    WaterGirl

    @germy: It’s the Emperor Has No Clothes all over again.

    As long as we were over there in Afghanistan, they could pretend that we were winning.

    Joe Biden has the balls to call it what it is and get the hell out.  Finally not throwing good money after bad.  And they want to blame him as if Biden suddenly lost what had been a winning venture.

    Totally pathetic respond from the media

    edit: so this Emperor Has No Clothes thing did not start with Trump.  It’s even more sad to realize that

    edit 2: Fuck the Blob.

  168. 168.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Baud: BJP is trying to emulate Likud by embracing Republican narratives. The current foreign minister is terrible. He is a long time diplomat with zero political experience or clout of his own. I am not too hopeful.

  169. 169.

    Cermet

    @Old School: Little doubt some middle east airlines will arrange for some gates; profit is there and certainly the taliban want a functioning airport. So, might take a few days to a week for a proper setup before aircraft can land and use the airport but by then, travel to the airport will be relatively safe. Guessing but can’t see why not.

  170. 170.

    StringOnAStick

    I’m surprised it took this long before a bombing happened outside the airport gates, especially after the Taliban said officially that they didn’t want any more Afghans leaving.  Any Afghans outside the gates trying to get in to leave aren’t the regime’s favourite people right now, and  we obviously had intelligence that the risk of such an event had greatly increased.  I suspect some in the Taliban are as angry at our airlift success rate as the US media appears to be.

  172. 172.

    JaneE

    If the bombing was IS then the Taliban may have their work cut out for them.

    I always thought that Biden might only be planning on one term, if only because of his age. I expect he has never cared less about being re-elected than he does now. If he can get the pandemic under control and get us out of Afghanistan he will have accomplished something that the GOP was betting could not be done, Trump agreements notwithstanding.

  173. 173.

    JustRuss

    @SiubhanDuinne: 

    Thanks for sharing that. Sports Illustrated, which I guess the previous tenant had a subscription, has a nice article about the Braves manager. Quite a story. Played with Hank Aaron, then spent most of his coaching career in the minors, got his big break at 60 years old. Interestingly, even though he spent his entire career with the Braves, he wasn’t eligible for a pension before he became manager. That seems messed up.

  174. 174.

    catclub

    @JustRuss: even though he spent his entire career with the Braves, he wasn’t eligible for a pension before he became manager. That seems messed up.

     

    people who devote their lives to playing baseball are not really in it for the money.  You have to beat off all the people who want to do it.  I feel people that want to fly airplanes are similar.  They really really like flying. So contract negotiations are not top of mind.

  175. 175.

    BobinPDX

    In addition to the media not mentioning this pull out was bartered with the prior guy, I’d like to have someone ask what was the evacuation plan made at the time of signing.  Did the prior admin have a plan? Probably not.

    I bet they were hoping for exactly this scenario to make the current admin look bad.

  176. 176.

    CaseyL

    @JaneE: ​
    I’ve wondered about that, too. He’s certainly been governing like NFLTG, and responding to MSM like (NFLTG)x2 (which is great).

    A President who governs like he doesn’t care about re-election, or at least it’s not uppermost in his mind, can accomplish amazing things. Maybe transform the country for the better.

  178. 178.

    billcinsd

    @Subsole: I had an uncle and aunt got injured in a terrorist bombing on the one year anniversary of the OK City bombing. My uncle worked for MSHA and the building their office was in got a bomb threat. When he and my aunt were driving home, a bomb went off under their truck causing them to have an accident on the interstate, luckily they were pulled from the truck before the gas tank exploded.

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