Shame on me for laughing:
- My long time conservative friend, Darrell Michaels at Unabashedly American, wants to help out our President. Wow.
He helpfully links to a suggested speech, pretty much a mea culpa for President Biden, in which the President proclaims that it is obviously his fault things in Afghanistan are so chaotic, and promises to try to be more levelheaded, which is to say conservative.
- Green Eagle seems to feel that the most accurate way to look at the Afghanistan withdrawal is to consider the long ago entry into the war, the conduct of the war, the eventual commitment by one President to get out, as well as the fulfillment of that commitment by the next.
He seems dissatisfied with press coverage that extends only to Let’s blame Biden Cause He’s There.
Seems Green Eagle has more than a point.
- driftglass makes a compelling argument with numbers, tracking casualties in Afghanistan with time devoted by mainstream news outlets. Not a good record for the press.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors shows Mr. Trump explaining how he completely destroyed ISIS and that bin Laden was not really a big deal. After all, he only had one big hit on 9/11/2001. Just a couple of buildings is all he got.
- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson is taken aback by Republican responses to the Kabul explosions.
- As News Corpse reports, there is a hell-freezes-over moment as a Fox Network personality scolds the GOP for its knee-jerk attack on Biden after the Afghanistan terrorism attack.
- Various snafus would have been logistically inevitable while evacuating after an American loss. And people have died. Conservatives are shocked that you don’t control what you want when you lose.
But there have been bureaucratic tangles as well. Hackwhackers documents the role white supremacist Stephen Miller played, while in the Trump administration, in deliberately making each step more and more convoluted. The idea was to keep inferior people out – those with deficient cultural, racial, or religious characteristics.
Even without the snarled matrix, people would have died. Seems car bombs don’t care about paperwork. But the tangles didn’t help.
- Certainly we feel anger and frustration, even denial, at an unambiguous loss in Afghanistan. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged suggests we should know that, early on, American officials said no to an unambiguous win in Afghanistan. The Bush administration would not take yes for an answer.
- In the Palmer Report, James Sullivan recounts another televised White House appearance by Fox network personality Peter Doocy, who momentarily graduated from being embarrassed a couple times a week by White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki to finally being humiliated by President Biden himself on Afghanistan.
- We are all surprised and frustrated by the loss of life. Well, maybe not everyone. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil notices gleeful celebration from some right wing groups at the takeover in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Seems they hope to replicate that takeover here.
- The Pentagon has announced an airstrike against the group responsible for the car bombings that killed nearly 200 including 13 US Marines. They believe the retaliatory airstrike killed at least one planner.
- Sometimes satire gets overtaken by ridiculous reality. At The Onion, an apologetic nurse explains to a critical heart attack victim an extended delay in emergency treatment during a wait for the next COVID patient to die.
- Sarah Cooper speculates on a vaccination substitute:
- Daniel Darling, senior vice president of communications for the National Religious Broadcasters has been fired for suggesting anti-COVID vaccines are good. CATO Institute’s Julian Sanchez finds that firing intensely discouraging:
- In MadMikesAmerica, Bill Formby seems to suggest that America’s most destructive enemy can be found in American willful ignorance.
- Scotties Toy Box finds that Twitter covers pretty well a strange school board meeting in Colorado as they consider masking policy.
- @momwino98 is more than a little nervous about the new school year.
@momwino98 When is this going to end?!! ##kindergarten ##mychild ##tiktokmom ##foryourpage ##nervous ##herwego ##yikes
- Nan’s Notebook contains a frustrating conversation between mother and grown daughter about COVID precautions at school.
- Seems obvious that the resurgence of COVID, with mutated variants, can be sourced to those declining vaccinations and refusing to mask. CalicoJack in The Psy of Life predicts that one tactic by conservative public figures, blaming minorities and immigrants for rising numbers, will result in an increase in racist violence.
- Conservatives are attacking Black people as the REAL reason COVID hospitalizations are rising. After all, they aren’t getting vaccinated.
Welll-l-l-l, seems facts on the ground don’t support that. Tommy Christopher brings us new numbers on vaccinations. Black Americans are now substantially more likely than White people to have gotten vaccinated.
- PZ Myers carefully considers a balanced, empathetic reaction to the COVID death of an anti-vaxxing conservative talk radio host, and comes down on the side of mirthful schadenfreude.
- Andy Borowitz reports on a Florida judicial ruling that residents have a right to a smarter governor.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger runs the poll numbers.
The public, on balance, has a somewhat negative opinion of the Democratic Party.
Opinion of the Republican Party, on the other hand, is remarkably horrible.
- Lots of important news this week. Easy to miss one item. Frances Langum is on the alert, though. Seems we may not have to keep hearing unsubstantiated rumors of conservative accessory-before-the-fact on the Jan 6 lynch mob riot. The House committee investigating the insurrection will be getting records of phone call, including those of Members of Congress.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit says at least one neo-Nazi organizer will discover that a felony conviction promotes individual change.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara educates us on the right way to overcome bigotry.
It’s the duct tape of libertarianism, the universal fix for everything. No government intervention. No legal support. Government should be neutral or nonexistent.
Essentially the answer is individual action. If F. W. Woolworth won’t let you sit at their lunch counter (think Greensboro, North Carolina, 1965), just don’t shop at Woolworth.
For youngsters, meaning those born AFTER the Truman administration (damn I’m old), here’s Greensboro:
- Change the song about California. It never rains in Greenland, except it now does. Nojo explains why the fact that it is raining in Greenland for the first time on record is not just an effect of climate change. It also is itself a contributor to the danger.
- Imani Gandy explains that the new Texas anti-abortion law deputizes pretty much everyone. There is a reward for turning in any person suspected of getting an abortion, performing an abortion, or assisting the obtaining of an abortion. A right-to-life group has been using the law to repeatedly sue one pro-choice attorney, tying her into multiple appearances in court. So what’s an attorney to do? Well, she has filed a lawsuit asking for a temporary restraining order prohibiting any more lawsuits. A lawsuit against lawsuits. Let’s keep watch.
- At The Moderate Voice, Kathy Gill takes a look at the Senate candidacy of football legend Herschel Walker and concludes his selection in the upcoming primary will be a disaster for Georgia Republicans.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce left the ministry years ago. Seems a good move for someone who moved from belief to atheism. These days, he gets messages from an Evangelical preacher angrily calling him a quitter.
Maybe I should run this one by our pastor. Should clergy stay on if they become atheists? Or would that indeed make them quitters? Should they tell their congregations?
- All who believe, all of us church folk, are convinced we have THE right religion, the one and only way to worship.
Years ago, I wrote about how I wound up a friendly debate about rites and traditions. You worship God in your way, I wrote, I’ll worship Him in His.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a way for each of us to know if we have the wrong religion. Seems a good test.
- Infidel753 covers the ban on pornography by the site OnlyFans, the widespread protest, followed within days by a backtrack.
Does remind me of the futile attempts from the beginning to purge adult communications of improper language and imagery.
Lyrics from Tom Lehrer in 1967:
Stories of tortures
Used by debauchers,
Lurid, licentious, and vile,
Make me smile.
- Dave Dubya discusses whether it is ever appropriate to compare anything to German Nazis in the 1930s and 40s.
- The Propaganda Professor is okay with anecdotes to illustrate a point, but suggests we become suspicious if anecdotes are a substitute for evidence and logic.
- Ant Farmer’s Almanac has a bit of fun with studies into research.
- John Scalzi at Whatever mourns the loss of one of the best drummers ever.
- Reductress highlights an underreported threat to democracy. People don’t throw shoes at political leaders like they used to.
– Podcasts –
Howdy y’all!
If we really did throw shoes to express our displeasure with politicians, we would be unable to buy shoes because the conservatives woulda bought ’em all up to throw whenever a liberal politician had the temerity to speak in public. It would become like those intersections where you see sneakers tied together and thrown over a powerline, meaningless. Why do people do that again?
Huzzah!
Jack
Anecdotes are vital to science!!!
Where else can you get fully organic, heritage cultivar, hand-curated, artisinal data like that???