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“In a commentary directed at Hong Kong, China's state-run Global Times cited Afghanistan in a signal to democracy activists not to heed repeated American promises to ‘stand by’ Hong Kong.” https://t.co/ov8rMsXGBg
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) August 16, 2021
This is what I’m more worried about. The foreign policy implications of this debacle are much more dire than we know.
For those of you confused about why this is a disaster and Trump’s plan to pull out in May had a higher probability of success, this is a good primer.
TL;DR
Trump, for better or worse, understood that the Taliban wanted to be treated like a credible threat. Trump negotiated a phased pull-out, with triggers if the Taliban broke their promises. By unilaterally breaking the negotiated pull-out, and then delaying the pull-out by seven months, Biden gave the Taliban 1) time to prepare an offensive, and 2) cover for the offensive because he broke the deal. You’re telling me that we couldn’t pull out our Blackhawks, drones, and humvees once the administration decided to pull out? Now our tech will be going to China and Iran. There are literally Afghan army forces fleeing into Iran with our vehicles and weapons. Delaying the pull-out to 9/11 shows the arrogance of this administration (and knowledge that they have the media will run PR for them) to try to generate a PR opportunity while failing to take reasonable contingency measures.
Trump, for all his faults, understands when he’s being lied to. The “Intelligence Community” is now full of woke idiots who can’t distinguish between the truth and propaganda. Trump realized that the situation in Afghanistan was worse than he was being told, and decided to try to salvage the situation. Do you remember when the media was livid that he wanted to invite the Taliban to the table? Turns out he was more right about what was going on than the intelligence community.
US intelligence agencies who said just 4 days ago that Kabul could fall in 90 days have revised the figure to 72 hours
https://t.co/v2XUuPVcKX— Bruno Maçães (@MacaesBruno) August 14, 2021
What a disaster. The depth of corruption in Afghanistan is why nation building is now impossible. As much as I have sympathy for the Afghan people, their leaders failed them because they made their people essentially dependent on their local warlord / government. When faced with an organized opposition, the leaders fled without a fight and now the Afghan people will once again be ruled by an Islamist fundamentalist theocracy.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/grocery-prices-rise-supermarkets/
This has been a long-standing tactic when supply chain prices have gone up. My local grocery store provides unit prices (i.e. cents / ounce) for most foods, so that helps comparison shopping. As for the taste, I would be curious if you looked at the ingredients and noticed some differences. Some, such as the elimination of trans fats, will affect the mouth feel of foods, but are ultimately healthier.
The #Taliban not only seized appr. a hundred US humvees and (MaxxPro) MRAPs at Kunduz airport, but also several US ScanEagle drones.
Billions of US tax payer $ going to Islamist extremists, thanks to the administration's hasty withdrawal without a peace deal or follow up mission. pic.twitter.com/Fb5MTpdLKK— Julian Röpcke (@JulianRoepcke) August 12, 2021
Yikes. Those drones will be going straight to Iran, who will use them to do who knows what.
Well, it appears vaccine passports are systemically racist.
I think people are confusing the media narrative (GOP = anti-vaccination) with reality. Trump obviously is very pro-vaccine, because he wants credit for it. Ron Desantis is also very pro-vaccine, because he not only vaccinated more of his citizens than the average state, but he has some of the highest senior vaccination rates in the country. Journo / Twitter world view demonizing aside, it’s pretty clear at this point that the real barriers are income, race, and education (both ends of the spectrum, apparently). But because we’ve raised a generation of journalists without the credentials to be pundits, who also want to be political operatives, instead of addressing the real issues, we get the blame game.
https://www.upmc.com/media/news/072621-king-mejia-vaccine-hesitancy
So what are we left with? COVID-19 is going to become the fifth endemic coronavirus. We’ll all get a variant at some point in our lives. We can continue to vaccinate to try to reduce the fatality rate / severity of infection, but it’s pretty much inevitable. Zero infections are not a realistic possibility, as demonstrated everywhere. Given this reality, what freedoms are you willing to sacrifice, perhaps permanently?
Here's @PressSec on same topic: "Aside from putting forward a peace proposal that was dead on arrival, we don’t think [Trump admin] did anything constructive, really, to bring an end to the longstanding conflict in the Middle East."
But what would the Saudi FM know about that? https://t.co/intNP1c6xn
— Omri Ceren (@omriceren) August 3, 2021
Biden’s foreign policy has been an unmitigated disaster. And his administration keeps pushing out quotes like this.
Don’t get me wrong, there was no positive endgame in Afghanistan.
Every piece of data from real-life shows the vaccines work very, very well— yes, even against Delta. Just checked US vaccine breakthrough hospitalizations. It's 6,587 people among the ~163,000,000 vaccinated: or 0.004%. Three fourths are elderly— as happens with other diseases. https://t.co/TmZkxRlETk pic.twitter.com/fUaTyXprey
— zeynep tufekci (@zeynep) August 1, 2021
Here’s more data on “breakthrough” infections. What are we doing and why?
White House: Here's the data we are basing our new frightening covid policy on
Media: This data is frightening!
WH: Wait, no, stop. Don't say that
Media: Same viral loads!
WH: No but–
Media: THREE QUARTERS OF INFECTED ARE VACCINATED!
WH: Can we blame Tucker for this?
— Noam Blum (@neontaster) July 31, 2021
This is a great summary of what happened (without the White House basically saying we’re imposing new restrictions for… reasons (because “health experts have determined” and “you don’t need to know why” and “we’re following the science”).
A more balanced view, this time discussing the relative correlations between certain variables. Hey, actual journalism instead of political journactivism.
A lot of people are saying it’s more than stress (it may be stress-induced, but it’s more than just feeling stressed). They’re saying Biles experienced aerial disorientation, which would explain her landing and bailing out on the skill on the vault. Basically, if you can’t orient yourself in the air, you can’t do a bunch of stuff in gymnastics (high bar, uneven bars). She might be okay on floor exercise, but even those flips would be risky if she’s lost her ability to orient to the ground.
I hope she gets her head right. Natasha Luskin said Biles was on the way to training to see if she could give it a go for the all-around and individual events.
Just curious, what’s the correlation coefficient (r) of the data? There seems to be a lot of noise in that chart. It would be easy to “find” a correlation with political party and ignore stronger correlations to other factors / variables. Why isn’t that in the study? Probably because the journalists / “academics” wanted to find a result and found it. I could probably get a stronger correlation to, say, income, education, autoimmune disease incidence, and population density.
That being said, isn’t the solution simple, given your one-variable way of thinking? Give Trump credit for the vaccines.
This blog does a good job of aggregating and analyzing the information. It also provides “misery index” (unemployment + inflation) and predictions based on various factors (and the Fed’s actions).
Of interest, the current inflation trend is outpacing even the most extreme inflation scenario. YET THE FED WANTS TO HOLD RATES LOW.
That’s the problem with modern journalism. Everything has to have a political angle to it, and blame must be assigned. You had Ken Klippenstein from “The Intercept” trying to blame DeSantis’ deregulation event in 2019 for the building collapse. It was a licensing reform event, and would not have affected the inspection of the building or prevented the HOA from ignoring problems relating to a poorly designed pool drainage system. You have Sec. Granholm trying to blame it on climate change. Why don’t people wait for the actual investigation and evidence before trying to assign blame? (Well, because journos want to play the blame game immediately, and often to further a political agenda, rather than to get a scoop).
