Afghanistan Exit, Blame Biden, Texas, Terrorism, Horse & Mask, Clapton, GOP

  • Tommy Christopher carries the tragic story of loss and bitterness as a few families of slain Marines express fury at President Biden.
     
    One of the several times I was proud of President George W. Bush was when his visit to a hospital to be with wounded military personnel was interrupted by an angry mother of one of the wounded. Aides tried to get him out. He refused to leave until he had absorbed her anguish. He simply stood and took it.
     
    Conservatives, on the other hand, were vicious in their public attacks on a another angry parent, Cindy Sheehan, whose son had been killed in Iraq.
     
    Let’s hope those of us on the left of today’s center line possess more empathy, more compassion, in the face of horrible grief and bitter fury.
     
  • At The Onion, our nation is stunned to see that a 20-year catastrophe could end so catastrophically.
     
  • Robert Levine, at The Moderate Voice, traces how our mission in Afghanistan transmuted from necessary and doable to tragically impossible. We went way past our original intention: get bin Laden and get out.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life says that, of the many reasons for our 20 year debacle in Afghanistan, the most salient is our failure to understand the importance of culture.
     
  • ISIS-K and the Taliban have been fighting with each other for years, two extremist militant groups who hate Shiite Muslims, Sunni Muslims who do not sufficiently hate Shiite Muslims, the United States, and most of all each other.
     
    About 3 months before last year’s US presidential election, as then president Donald Trump was making concessions to the Taliban in Afghanistan, ISIS-K forces attacked a prison, letting 1000 inmates escape.
     
    News Corpse watches as Senator Lindsey Graham goes on air to slam President Biden for a host of things that happened when he was citizen Biden, including the prison break that happened when Trump was in charge.
     
  • My long time conservative friend, Unabashedly American Darrell Michaels writes an open letter demanding his Congressional Representative remove President Biden from office.
     
    He quotes such widely accepted authorities as right wing Nigel Farage in Britain and right wing Glenn Beck here. His charges include withdrawing all forces from Afghanistan without any advance warning, which should surprise those who followed the activities of Donald Trump before Biden took over.
     
    Biden announced early on that he would respect Donald Trump’s notification that all troops would be withdrawn. I think my calculation is correct, that Mr. Trump’s follow up on that pledge was to withdraw 83% of our forces, and secure the release from Afghanistan prisons of 5,000 Taliban fighters.
     
  • Security matters, like any set of technical issues, attract televised experts who speak in bewildering techno-language that tends to obscure what they want to explain. In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reviews our exit from Afghanistan and provides a clear (thank you) overview of the case that the exit enhances our security.
     
    Has to do with devoting anti-terrorism resources to fighting threats as they exist now, rather than getting bogged down forever fighting threats as they existed decades ago.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil picks out a few data points as a September rally approaches and racist incidents get more violent. I suppose the white supremacists in the US cheering the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan could count as a concern. They praise it as a template they can follow here.

  • Green Eagle has a thought on the deworming medication ivermectin.
     
    Yeah, yeah, I know. Ivermectin can be prescribed to humans as well as horses.
     
    In much different concentrations; and to get rid of parasites, not viruses.
     
    What is prescribed for humans and what is given to livestock is the same only in the same sense that coal, diamonds, oil, and dinosaur bones are identical because they are all made of carbon. So give your bride a ring made of coal and explain that it’s actually a diamond.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has figured out how to talk convincingly to those tempted to take horse dewormer rather than get vaccinated.
     
  • Yeah, I remember watching Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid. And I did enjoy Mr. Peabody with his zany explanations of history. NOJO uses the janitor at the very end of each episode as an analogy for the wonderfully wacky, seriously deadly substitution of dewormer for vaccines that have been actual researched and tested.
     
  • MadMikesAmerica Glenn Geist analyzes COVID from a motivational perspective: just what makes so many willing and eager to march with enthusiasm straight into the bright, blazing fire.
     
  • Remember Eric Clapton? Layla? Derek and the Dominos? God of Rock?
    Well-l-l-l-l Eric goes to the other side of COVID, refusing to play anywhere there is a mask mandate.
     
    Ant Farmer’s Almanac carries the debate in the Council of Deities on whether Eric Clapton can retain his position as a god.
     
  • Frances Langum notices as a Republican state representative in Illinois files an official demand for all responses from parents to the unreasonably imposed mask mandate in public schools. Let’s get those angry complains out in the open.
     
    So the Governor delivers. The representative goes back to her office to find the response is composed mostly of hundred and hundreds of thank you notes.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz dwells a bit on those who hold simultaneous opposition to COVID precautions and support for pro-life activism. He suggests that we are witnessing a highly selective form of zealotry.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is interviewed by radio host Steve Scaffidi on future of the Republican Party. James seems a bit despondent about a movement that is moving from traditional conservatism into a fantasyland of COVID hoaxes, strange remedies, racism, conspiracy theories, and stolen elections.
     
  • Matt Lewis is a Never Trumper who who wonders Why Isn’t Anyone Trying to Seduce the Never Trumpers? (Don’t bother. It’s behind a paywall). Matt seems a bit mournful that Republican faithful do not lust for the votes of folks like …well… himself.
     
    driftglass is having none of it. Admittedly, driftglass seems to want recovering conservatives, past enemies, to eat broken glass from his kitchen floor before admitting them to the ranks of the resistance. But he has a wonderful way with words. Consider:
     
    And even though you Never Trumpers may have been seated every Sunday morning, starched and proper, in the front pew of the Church of Reagan, loudly singing hymns about deficits and small gummint, all of us dirty hippies could see you sneaking out every Saturday night, heading down to the Limbaugh Roadhouse to dance dirty with the bad boys and their throbbing fascism.
     
    Nobody has a right to such eloquence.
     
  • Let’s be plain. Former mine owner Don Blankenship is not a nice person. He was scornful about bothersome regulations concerning industrial waste as people living in the area came down with serious illnesses. He pretty much scoffed at the idea of mine safety, and dozens of miners died in an explosion that ought to have been avoided.
     
    But American justice is not divine, and Mr. Blankenship was convicted only of the misdemeanor offense of conspiracy to dodge government regulations. Then he became a fringe candidate for West Virginia Senate.
     
    Donald Trump, Jr. attacked him. Good. He deserved to be attacked. And his evil ways provided a lot of ammunition.
     
    But Don was witless enough to attack him falsely. Generally, it is not a good idea to accuse someone of being a felon unless they have …you know… been convicted of a felony. So Blankenship is suing. For a lot.
     
    The Palmer Report explains why the ever hapless Donald Trump, Jr might be less happy now than a few days ago. Seems he got a bit of bad legal news.
     
    As baby Jesus is in my heart, and may God in heaven forgive me, I really hope Trump wins this one.
     
  • Television’s The West Wing, with a fictional Democratic President, helped me through the Bush years at the beginning of the century. I remember this scene as a congressional candidate talks in a bar over drinks with a long-time associate and frequent antagonist.
     
    Sam Seaborn : I’m gonna lose.
    Toby Ziegler : Yeah.
    Sam Seaborn : There’s no chance of a miracle?
    Toby Ziegler : No.
    Sam Seaborn : Then why are you here?
    Toby Ziegler : You’re gonna lose, and you’re gonna lose huge. They’re gonna throw rocks at you next week, and I wanted to be standing next to you when they did.
    Sam Seaborn : [sarcastically] Oh, really?
    Toby Ziegler : Yeah.
    Sam Seaborn : [Sam is touched and seriously asks] Really?
    Toby Ziegler : Yeah.
     
    Here in Missouri, Democrat Lindsey Simmons lost huge last year, substantially worse than 2 to 1, with less than 30% in the general election. No actual rocks but, as Dave Dubya allows her to speak on his site, there was violence, intimidation, gunshots, fire, and cars following moms and kids.
     
    Democrats in Washington should do more than give careful thought to restricting legitimate election campaigns to the legitimate seeking of legitimate votes from all legitimate voters. Leave terrorism out of it.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has a helpful suggestion for those Jan 6 insurrectionists awaiting trial when merciful judges allow them to wait at home.
     
  • Hackwhackers has some detail as the Congressional committee investigating the Jan 6 insurrection lynch mob tells phone companies to preserve call records. The records include those of several members of Congress. Phone companies will be required by law to produce any subpoenaed records, so preserving them makes sense.  
    Republicans are going all Scarface on the phone companies: Better NOT comply.
    As in Nice phone company ya got there.
    Be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

     
  • Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group provide an expert (they really are) overview of the new anti-abortion bounty hunting law in Texas, and suggest Texas is just the start of this crisis. Your choice of a podcast or a transcript.
     
    My completely non-expert take:
     

  • In addition to mismanaging electricity, water, and COVID, and unleashing vigilantes on women who might want abortions, Texas is making it harder for minorities to vote. But tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors brings some good news from the great Lone Star State. Beto O’Rourke is going all Stacey Abrams on them, organizing with volunteers and technology to make voting easier.
     
  • You recall, do you not, the early tryouts for restricting abortions? Counseling to be required. Information to educate pregnant women on the evils of what they intend.
     
    Since Texas wants to discourage voting, Andy Borowitz has an idea. The new anti-voting law could require Texans to submit to counselling before being allowed to vote.
     
    After all, many people who think that voting is something they have to do haven’t gotten all of the information available to them.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has been looking at the polls. To say that Texas Governor Greg Abbott is heading downward is an understatement. He’s probably a bit more popular than an onion milkshake, but he has to get past September and October before the November election. It ain’t over til it’s over, so a mustard shake might have a chance by then.
     
  • Here in Missouri, the legislature feels it necessary to honor Civil War Confederate defenders of slavery. After all, we must acknowledge all of our history. Well, almost all. Scotties Toy Box has the flip side of the story: we must remove a display on the history of gay rights progress in the state.
     
  • In debate, we sometimes encounter the difference between 1st Amendment rights and the non-governmental consequence of our opinions. Infidel753 acknowledges the distinction, but points out that the absence of government imposed penalty is not the same as effective free speech.
     
    I know from vicarious experience that he is correct in that.
     
    My father was a writer in his spare time. In one article he made a passing reference to a row of sweatshops in the village in which he lived. The owner launched a personal vendetta, getting him banished from the small news journal that published his piece, and getting him fired from his day job. The host of a minor show on a small local radio station commented that the article had made points worth considering. She was fired soon after.
     
    Most of us have some familiarity with parallel situations.
     
    I once worked with an outspoken libertarian. He seemed to fall into arguments that had nothing to do with work. When he eventually left for a better opportunity, he sought me out to thank me for debating him during lunch breaks with respect and good humor.
     
    He told me he was aware that I had kept management from dismissing him for the sake of workplace harmony. He would not accept my assurance that I had done no such thing, that it had never been necessary to defend him.
     
    The fact that professional danger was even plausible to him speaks to our culture.
     
    And yet. It is still hard for me to gin up indignation when some instances of free speech carry professional or social consequences.
     
    Infidel writes with such clarity and force, I somehow find it in my heart to forgive him for forcing me to think.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara goes back a couple hundred years to arguments about mandatory education for children. He’s against it. He’s especially against government administered schools, which is to say the public schools most of attended as kids. He does think education is a good thing, on balance, especially home schooling. But which schools and whether to school should be a parent’s choice.
     
    He quotes Milton Friedman on the obvious point that education and schooling are not synonyms and cites the all-purpose libertarian mantra on pretty much everything: Only a free market can sort that out.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce describes, movingly and clearly, the pain ill health and age have brought to him.
     
    I have never met the man, but his written words very much remind me of those I have known, loved, and admired, and who are now gone: People whose example I wish I had the strength of character to follow as long as I walk the earth.
     
    If I pray for him, he will never know it. I have no wish to offend or to impose my beliefs.
     
    So I simply wish him recovery.
     
  • Crooks and Liars has a daily feature, Mike’s Blog round up, devoted to giving lesser known quality sites a boost. It was started by accomplished musician Mike Finnigan. Vagabond Scholar expresses gratitude on behalf of readers and writers and mourns the loss of his friend.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook contains her surprise as she discovers a Christian who can admit that, when objecting to scientific facts, religion is pretty much always wrong. I wonder if I should mention that to our pastor.
     
  • PZ Myers is happy that the scourge of religious creationism is on the decline. It has become tired, old, uncreative, and people are losing interest. His happiness at that is overcome by the slowness of the decline, and by the increasingly urgent lunacy of remaining adherents.
     
  • @momwino98 teaches an arrogant young an obvious lesson about Amish people:
     

    @momwino98

    ##stitch with @bullspits ##amish ##tiktokmom ##themoreyouknow ##foryourpage ##simplelife

    ♬ original sound – @Momwino98

  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study by researchers in Japan that documents clone devaluation: how folks get weirded out when encountering several people who look exactly alike.
     
  • You think I’m crazy? Well people said that about Galileo!
    Except Julian Sanchez has a rejoinder:
     

  • Everyone wants to be cool. Reductress provides a few quick ways to ask a 13‑year‑old for fashion advice without getting arrested.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes thinks through life and figures out how to know what it is we need to know.

– Podcasts –
 

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