What should be a n item on how America's government prevents terrorist attacks when led by a competent leader is being spun into an account of how America's government is a failure because it prevented a terrorist attack.
We get all conservatives botched your multiple opportunities to prevent 9/11. We get the contrast between conservative failure to protect America and liberal's success pains all y'all.
But srysly, claiming success is actually failure because it doesn't serve your ideology is bad faith on the face of it, and exemplifies why none of you should be allowed within a country mile of power in your remaining lifetimes.
Preventing a terrorist attack ≠ allowing a terrorist attack.
The piece claiming otherwise was not written by me, but by a person with a partisan axe to grind. The item is not about protecting America, it is about claiming Biden has =failed= to protect America contrary to all available evidence.
The US can survive another terrorist attack. It won’t survive another term of trump. Biden’s #1 job is to defeat trump.. Biden is the real bulwark. Additionally, I didn’t find the Will article to be compelling. Given that it was Juneteenth and Mays just died, I don’t think Will’s take was the best one to highlight. Maybe highlight someone who has actually experienced racism personally? Just a thought. (I do appreciate the morning shots generally and know they take a lot of work, so please know that this is an isolated comment)
Terror threats are increasing for one reason - Vladimir Putin. He is behind the scenes in the clandestine disruption of riots, deaths, and election issues in the United States. He was behind the timing of the Israel-Hamas war, and is refueling the Hezbollah terrorists in Syrian-Lebanese-Israel friction. Once the Israel war began, the American media dropped coverage of the Ukraine war for months and months. Where do you think Hamas got their weapons?
Chances are very high that most of the big election polls in the United States are already compromised by Russian hacking. Microsoft has PROVED that nearly 60% of all cyber attacks into the U.S. come from Russia. This includes our: health and hospitals, food and supplies, cell phones, gas and oil, military data bases, and any information related to our elections - INCLUDING OUR POLLS. Knowing what to believe in the U.S. is a toss-up. Even our major hotel chains such as Marriott carries RT (Russian Television) in English which is simply propaganda.
The shadow cast by Putin over the landscape of American democracy and his influence and CONTROL over Donald Trump grows larger and darker by the moment. Putin's presidential goals were revealed in 1997 in a book called The Foundations of Geopolitics. This book lists: the destruction of the U.S. democracy, annihilation of Ukraine, return Russia to it's pre-NATO time, and on and on. Putin's strategies are right on target and he uses Trump - a dumb American who went to Russia and was caught in a typical Russian spy trap (read From Democracy to Democrazy, by Graham) as nothing more than a tool to accomplish his goals. He assumed office as the President of Russia in 2000. I was living and working in Moscow at this time. About 80+ independent reporters and media personnel were killed in contract-style murders as he quickly took control of all information sources.
It is not that Biden's campaign to save democracy is failing, it's that his opponent in this political race is not simply Trump but the world-leader in misinformation, disinformation, brainwashing, and propaganda - Russia. This entire concept goes beyond the normal American voter comprehension - ability to understand - how our democratic election system works and how it can also be used to disperse counter-information and even brainwashing, which is repetitive slogans.
I spent most of my life studying, living, working, and transitioning into an American-Russian. I lived in six dictator-led countries for about 20 years and my two younger children attended Moscow Public Schools. I interviewed 3 public schools in Moscow before deciding which school to enroll my children. Each school asked me to sit in a classroom, and the children could tell me - in English - American history and the development steps of the American flag. How many school children in the U.S. could tell you - in any foreign language never mind in Russian - the history of another country? Russian government thinks of the U.S. as their enemy and they begin to train their children with this indoctrination at an early age. Russia is three-times larger than the U.S. and their schools are required to teach English. For Putin, the Cold War did not end and he is reconstructing Russia to think in terms of “the U.S. is our enemy.”
Since 2015, I have been SHOUTING at Americans to "wake up" and see how our country has been infiltrated by anti-democracy government and pro-dictator publicity. Many, many people in the U.S. just do not get it, there are also many who support this concept, and many more who are now completely brainwashed - something that no one recognizes or talks about. Brainwashing is defined (Wikipedia) as telling lies over and over until they are perceived as the truth. If a lie contains hatred, which is an exact reflection of Trump’s daily verbal communication, then it releases a chemical in the human brain to enact violence, i.e., January 6th.
Our economy under Biden has now become the fastest growing in the entire world. He has reduced our debt by one trillion dollars. Unemployment has been the lowest in several decades. He has restored manufacturing and created more jobs. He is repairing the immigration system despite the Republican roadblocks. There is NO logical choice in this upcoming election. It is between a man who has 50 years of successful public service experience and a man who is convicted of FRAUD, of SEXUAL ASSAULT, and 34 counts of FELONY - AND WHO TALKS OF DESTROYING OUR CONSTITUTION, BECOMING A DICTATOR, AND EVEN SAYS THERE WILL BE A “BLOODBATH” IF HE DOESN’T WIN THIS ELECTION.
I have lived in dictator-led countries for a long, long time and have traveled the globe as a consultant to heads of state in Africa, South America, Mid-East, and Far-East. I CHOSE to live in the United States - not just because I was born here, but because our democracy is the best system of government on this earth.
There may well be terror threats, but there are lots of countries beyond Afghanistan that harbor terrorists and we can't occupy all of them. Even before the withdrawal, we didn't occupy all of Afghanistan any more. I'm sure there is some impairment because of loss of eyes on the ground, but we would still need to be on watch even without withdrawal.
So I'm still not convinced the withdrawal was wrong, especially since there would be other risks of Russian mischief and limitations on supply to our forces if we were still operating there. Didn't Al Qaeda just move to Yemen (which we don't occupy) when we were in Afghanistan?
I read the article that was connected about Afghanistan et al.
What should Biden say about Afghanistan with candor? That we already had too few troops to do anything? That to extend our stay would have taken the addition of many more men and supplies and TIME. And to do this, the US would have had to create even more relationships with Afghanis that would only mean more folks to get out when...
The buck truly stopped with the president. It is understood that he was upset that things did not go swimmingly but if we look at how conflicts end they are always messy.
So sorry there is not need for candor re Afghanistan other than to point out that by the 2021 it was too late.
So..you hit us with an article about the gazillion terrorists who are looking to kill us all, and then you tell us to relax, forget about the world, watch baseball. ( I guess we should have skipped the first story.)
Can I just remind Bill Kristol that it was Donald Trump who made the initial agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan by July of 2020, followed by a complete withdrawal of all US troops by May of 2021! Trump then recklessly withdrew US forces from 1300 troops to 8600 troops. By the time President Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, there were only 2500 troops remaining in Afghanistan!
President Biden actually extended the final US troop withdrawal to Aug. 31, 2O21. So, as messy as the US withdrawal was, it was Donald Trump who made the initial agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan, & it was Donald Trump who bears responsibility for the low number of US troops who remained there, thus severely hindering our exit on Aug. 31, 2021.
Thank you so much for your comment! I was thinking the same thing as I read this article. It happens too often that President Biden gets the blame for policies and situations that were initiated by Trump. Biden did the best he could with the sh*t sandwiches he was handed by Trump and his administration.
With respect to your mention of the two NYT articles about the "fundraising battle" between the Biden and Trump campaigns . . . are we actually pretending the $ Trump raises will be spent on campaign expenses more than or even as much as on legal fees? If not, what is the point of the article? I'm actually *not* trying to be snarky, I'm curious, because I thought it was a fact that much of Trump's fundraising is going to his massive legal expenses, but that fact got zero mentions in the article, as if this election involved two normal candidates who spent their fundraising dollars on campaign goals in equal measure. Help me understand here, please.
"Predicting the risk of terrorist action is a gloomy and imprecise business,"
Well, you got that right. Mr. Kristol for one has an ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE RECORD when it comes to predicting, well, just about anything, but especially terror. I acknowledge that I'm not even trying to be polite here, but Mr. Kristol's record of deliberate misinformation regarding terrorist threats, particularly regarding Iraq, but, really, just about anywhere in the Middle East, scarcely merits the soft soap approach. Maybe Mr. Selber is a "real" expert, but Mr. Kristol has touted so many false ones, that I prefer to err on the side of skepticism on this one.
I think the bulk of voting Americans have moved on from Afghanistan and that will remain so as long as Trump doesn't call attention to it because he is provably responsible for the mess that it became. His anti-interventionist allies hardly mention it at all.
The only people who care at this point are the people who thought that a 20 year occupation was a good thing and thought saving a fairly corrupt and ineffective regime was in anyone's best interest. Policy wonks, the punditocracy, political elites and think tank intelligentsia. Most others feel no moral stain from abandoning Afghanistan.
The calling attention to the wider threat of terrorism within the country is a good idea. It justifies the surveillance powers of the government which has, as of late, suffered much criticism. It isn't a matter of IF terrorists will strike only WHEN and how they will strike. Psychologically preparing the people for this will help to minimize the inevitable blame the administration will be given for not being able to stop the inevitable.
Most of us think 9/11 when we contemplate terrorist attacks but perhaps smaller sabotage on the ground aided by cyber-attacks from unknown sources which could paralyze whole sectors of our infrastructure is also just as possible.
Not surprising terrorist activity brewing while we are forced to pay attention, spend precious resources and time on the traitorous Orange Idiot. God help us.
Re: Baseball. Forget George Will and the other guy. George Carlin's baseball v football monologue explains what I love about baseball as he contrasts the two sports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkqNiBASfI
Well, in these troubling times with Russian and Chinese aggression on nearly all continents, my skills in gluten free cooking are critical to world peace. I am sure I can melt Mr. Putin heart with my delightful recipe for gluten free borscht. Also, my familiarity with TurboTax Deluxe will severe the country well when I revise the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. All by myself! Making America the best country in the world will be so much fun. Thank you.
Love the baseball respite and the Kagan link. As usual, I disagree with most of his premises while admiring his writing.
As it turned out, they didn't have a real beef: today's baseball combines Kagan's hero ball with Will's Moneyball. So, I guess that's better than the '50's? At least they agree that the arrival of Willie Mays and his cohort from the Negro league ranks made a qualitative difference.
Interesting to re-read the Will and Kagan essays after all these years. Neither realized just how the analytical approach to the game would cement the importance of the three true outcomes. Gotta give the argument to Will, however, if only because Kagan concluded his description of Ted Williams with, "His last game was a fitting end to the career of a great hitter and stylist but not of a hero."
Imagine writing that Ted Williams was "not a hero."
Nicole Shanahan's job qualifications gave me a LinkedIn flashback. We've trained hard, for at least a generation now, to produce BS like that and accept it from others. But she has achieved the pinnacle. Well, the vice pinnacle. Congratulations America, this R us now 🤣😢😳
What should be a n item on how America's government prevents terrorist attacks when led by a competent leader is being spun into an account of how America's government is a failure because it prevented a terrorist attack.
We get all conservatives botched your multiple opportunities to prevent 9/11. We get the contrast between conservative failure to protect America and liberal's success pains all y'all.
But srysly, claiming success is actually failure because it doesn't serve your ideology is bad faith on the face of it, and exemplifies why none of you should be allowed within a country mile of power in your remaining lifetimes.
Nice partisan dunking. Is this X or the Bulwark? Come on man.
Preventing a terrorist attack ≠ allowing a terrorist attack.
The piece claiming otherwise was not written by me, but by a person with a partisan axe to grind. The item is not about protecting America, it is about claiming Biden has =failed= to protect America contrary to all available evidence.
You have a better explanation? Happy to read it.
The US can survive another terrorist attack. It won’t survive another term of trump. Biden’s #1 job is to defeat trump.. Biden is the real bulwark. Additionally, I didn’t find the Will article to be compelling. Given that it was Juneteenth and Mays just died, I don’t think Will’s take was the best one to highlight. Maybe highlight someone who has actually experienced racism personally? Just a thought. (I do appreciate the morning shots generally and know they take a lot of work, so please know that this is an isolated comment)
Terror threats are increasing for one reason - Vladimir Putin. He is behind the scenes in the clandestine disruption of riots, deaths, and election issues in the United States. He was behind the timing of the Israel-Hamas war, and is refueling the Hezbollah terrorists in Syrian-Lebanese-Israel friction. Once the Israel war began, the American media dropped coverage of the Ukraine war for months and months. Where do you think Hamas got their weapons?
Chances are very high that most of the big election polls in the United States are already compromised by Russian hacking. Microsoft has PROVED that nearly 60% of all cyber attacks into the U.S. come from Russia. This includes our: health and hospitals, food and supplies, cell phones, gas and oil, military data bases, and any information related to our elections - INCLUDING OUR POLLS. Knowing what to believe in the U.S. is a toss-up. Even our major hotel chains such as Marriott carries RT (Russian Television) in English which is simply propaganda.
The shadow cast by Putin over the landscape of American democracy and his influence and CONTROL over Donald Trump grows larger and darker by the moment. Putin's presidential goals were revealed in 1997 in a book called The Foundations of Geopolitics. This book lists: the destruction of the U.S. democracy, annihilation of Ukraine, return Russia to it's pre-NATO time, and on and on. Putin's strategies are right on target and he uses Trump - a dumb American who went to Russia and was caught in a typical Russian spy trap (read From Democracy to Democrazy, by Graham) as nothing more than a tool to accomplish his goals. He assumed office as the President of Russia in 2000. I was living and working in Moscow at this time. About 80+ independent reporters and media personnel were killed in contract-style murders as he quickly took control of all information sources.
It is not that Biden's campaign to save democracy is failing, it's that his opponent in this political race is not simply Trump but the world-leader in misinformation, disinformation, brainwashing, and propaganda - Russia. This entire concept goes beyond the normal American voter comprehension - ability to understand - how our democratic election system works and how it can also be used to disperse counter-information and even brainwashing, which is repetitive slogans.
I spent most of my life studying, living, working, and transitioning into an American-Russian. I lived in six dictator-led countries for about 20 years and my two younger children attended Moscow Public Schools. I interviewed 3 public schools in Moscow before deciding which school to enroll my children. Each school asked me to sit in a classroom, and the children could tell me - in English - American history and the development steps of the American flag. How many school children in the U.S. could tell you - in any foreign language never mind in Russian - the history of another country? Russian government thinks of the U.S. as their enemy and they begin to train their children with this indoctrination at an early age. Russia is three-times larger than the U.S. and their schools are required to teach English. For Putin, the Cold War did not end and he is reconstructing Russia to think in terms of “the U.S. is our enemy.”
Since 2015, I have been SHOUTING at Americans to "wake up" and see how our country has been infiltrated by anti-democracy government and pro-dictator publicity. Many, many people in the U.S. just do not get it, there are also many who support this concept, and many more who are now completely brainwashed - something that no one recognizes or talks about. Brainwashing is defined (Wikipedia) as telling lies over and over until they are perceived as the truth. If a lie contains hatred, which is an exact reflection of Trump’s daily verbal communication, then it releases a chemical in the human brain to enact violence, i.e., January 6th.
Our economy under Biden has now become the fastest growing in the entire world. He has reduced our debt by one trillion dollars. Unemployment has been the lowest in several decades. He has restored manufacturing and created more jobs. He is repairing the immigration system despite the Republican roadblocks. There is NO logical choice in this upcoming election. It is between a man who has 50 years of successful public service experience and a man who is convicted of FRAUD, of SEXUAL ASSAULT, and 34 counts of FELONY - AND WHO TALKS OF DESTROYING OUR CONSTITUTION, BECOMING A DICTATOR, AND EVEN SAYS THERE WILL BE A “BLOODBATH” IF HE DOESN’T WIN THIS ELECTION.
I have lived in dictator-led countries for a long, long time and have traveled the globe as a consultant to heads of state in Africa, South America, Mid-East, and Far-East. I CHOSE to live in the United States - not just because I was born here, but because our democracy is the best system of government on this earth.
Elizabeth
www.democrazy2020.org
There may well be terror threats, but there are lots of countries beyond Afghanistan that harbor terrorists and we can't occupy all of them. Even before the withdrawal, we didn't occupy all of Afghanistan any more. I'm sure there is some impairment because of loss of eyes on the ground, but we would still need to be on watch even without withdrawal.
So I'm still not convinced the withdrawal was wrong, especially since there would be other risks of Russian mischief and limitations on supply to our forces if we were still operating there. Didn't Al Qaeda just move to Yemen (which we don't occupy) when we were in Afghanistan?
I read the article that was connected about Afghanistan et al.
What should Biden say about Afghanistan with candor? That we already had too few troops to do anything? That to extend our stay would have taken the addition of many more men and supplies and TIME. And to do this, the US would have had to create even more relationships with Afghanis that would only mean more folks to get out when...
The buck truly stopped with the president. It is understood that he was upset that things did not go swimmingly but if we look at how conflicts end they are always messy.
So sorry there is not need for candor re Afghanistan other than to point out that by the 2021 it was too late.
You know what I wish you would have posted instead of always-smug George Will about last night's game, which was, yes, about remembering Willie Mays, but also about remembering the travesty that was Jim Crow apartheid? I wish you would have posted this: https://x.com/GaryParrishCBS/status/1803976410563850245?emci=5863fcad-e32f-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&emdi=8d916d58-e62f-ef11-86d2-6045bdd9e096&ceid=380108
So..you hit us with an article about the gazillion terrorists who are looking to kill us all, and then you tell us to relax, forget about the world, watch baseball. ( I guess we should have skipped the first story.)
Can I just remind Bill Kristol that it was Donald Trump who made the initial agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan by July of 2020, followed by a complete withdrawal of all US troops by May of 2021! Trump then recklessly withdrew US forces from 1300 troops to 8600 troops. By the time President Biden was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2021, there were only 2500 troops remaining in Afghanistan!
President Biden actually extended the final US troop withdrawal to Aug. 31, 2O21. So, as messy as the US withdrawal was, it was Donald Trump who made the initial agreement with the Taliban to withdraw from Afghanistan, & it was Donald Trump who bears responsibility for the low number of US troops who remained there, thus severely hindering our exit on Aug. 31, 2021.
Thank you so much for your comment! I was thinking the same thing as I read this article. It happens too often that President Biden gets the blame for policies and situations that were initiated by Trump. Biden did the best he could with the sh*t sandwiches he was handed by Trump and his administration.
With respect to your mention of the two NYT articles about the "fundraising battle" between the Biden and Trump campaigns . . . are we actually pretending the $ Trump raises will be spent on campaign expenses more than or even as much as on legal fees? If not, what is the point of the article? I'm actually *not* trying to be snarky, I'm curious, because I thought it was a fact that much of Trump's fundraising is going to his massive legal expenses, but that fact got zero mentions in the article, as if this election involved two normal candidates who spent their fundraising dollars on campaign goals in equal measure. Help me understand here, please.
He got $50 million from one billionaire after his felony conviction. I think it was Richard Uihlein.
Correction, it was Mellon.
The NYT has devolved into a MAGAzine. Their narrative is that everything is terrible for Biden and rosy for Trump.
Or maybe they’re just trying to make JVL’s head explode 🤣🤣
Maybe when the billionaires give money they can make him spend it on actual election stuff?
Who knows? If they trust Trump to follow through on promises though, it’s on them lol.
"Predicting the risk of terrorist action is a gloomy and imprecise business,"
Well, you got that right. Mr. Kristol for one has an ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE RECORD when it comes to predicting, well, just about anything, but especially terror. I acknowledge that I'm not even trying to be polite here, but Mr. Kristol's record of deliberate misinformation regarding terrorist threats, particularly regarding Iraq, but, really, just about anywhere in the Middle East, scarcely merits the soft soap approach. Maybe Mr. Selber is a "real" expert, but Mr. Kristol has touted so many false ones, that I prefer to err on the side of skepticism on this one.
Bill wrote the piece about baseball—Andrew and Will wrote the rest.
I think the bulk of voting Americans have moved on from Afghanistan and that will remain so as long as Trump doesn't call attention to it because he is provably responsible for the mess that it became. His anti-interventionist allies hardly mention it at all.
The only people who care at this point are the people who thought that a 20 year occupation was a good thing and thought saving a fairly corrupt and ineffective regime was in anyone's best interest. Policy wonks, the punditocracy, political elites and think tank intelligentsia. Most others feel no moral stain from abandoning Afghanistan.
The calling attention to the wider threat of terrorism within the country is a good idea. It justifies the surveillance powers of the government which has, as of late, suffered much criticism. It isn't a matter of IF terrorists will strike only WHEN and how they will strike. Psychologically preparing the people for this will help to minimize the inevitable blame the administration will be given for not being able to stop the inevitable.
Most of us think 9/11 when we contemplate terrorist attacks but perhaps smaller sabotage on the ground aided by cyber-attacks from unknown sources which could paralyze whole sectors of our infrastructure is also just as possible.
Not surprising terrorist activity brewing while we are forced to pay attention, spend precious resources and time on the traitorous Orange Idiot. God help us.
Re: Baseball. Forget George Will and the other guy. George Carlin's baseball v football monologue explains what I love about baseball as he contrasts the two sports. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIkqNiBASfI
What prepares me to be commander-in-chief?
Well, in these troubling times with Russian and Chinese aggression on nearly all continents, my skills in gluten free cooking are critical to world peace. I am sure I can melt Mr. Putin heart with my delightful recipe for gluten free borscht. Also, my familiarity with TurboTax Deluxe will severe the country well when I revise the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. All by myself! Making America the best country in the world will be so much fun. Thank you.
and... such as...
Love the baseball respite and the Kagan link. As usual, I disagree with most of his premises while admiring his writing.
As it turned out, they didn't have a real beef: today's baseball combines Kagan's hero ball with Will's Moneyball. So, I guess that's better than the '50's? At least they agree that the arrival of Willie Mays and his cohort from the Negro league ranks made a qualitative difference.
Interesting to re-read the Will and Kagan essays after all these years. Neither realized just how the analytical approach to the game would cement the importance of the three true outcomes. Gotta give the argument to Will, however, if only because Kagan concluded his description of Ted Williams with, "His last game was a fitting end to the career of a great hitter and stylist but not of a hero."
Imagine writing that Ted Williams was "not a hero."
Nicole Shanahan's job qualifications gave me a LinkedIn flashback. We've trained hard, for at least a generation now, to produce BS like that and accept it from others. But she has achieved the pinnacle. Well, the vice pinnacle. Congratulations America, this R us now 🤣😢😳