All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[babyblob]

I suppose we could’ve tried to relocate the citizens who wanted to leave before the Taliban took control again but good luck making it happen with half our government ready to gin up islamophobia at the drop of a hat.
One positive that arose from this is that an entire generation of Afghans grew up without the Taliban and were able to experience freedom for whatever that’s worth.
The US will still maintain an embassy there and I’m certain the CIA will continue to foment rebellion under Taliban rule.

Its funny because the Noon News said the State Department asked the Taliban to leave the Embassy alone in return for future aid for the country. I dont know how true that is but its pretty damn embarrassing if it is true.

[Jack Dracula]

Its funny because the Noon News said the State Department asked the Taliban to leave the Embassy alone in return for future aid for the country. I dont know how true that is but its pretty damn embarrassing if it is true.

We had established some avenues of communication between the Afghan government and the Taliban so I imagine the Biden administration feels it’s worthwhile to maintain that for as long as possible. If it can help mitigate the suffering of the citizenry during the transition then it’s worth it in my opinion. The embassy will help the CIA run their operations in the region as well.

[babyblob]

We had established some avenues of communication between the Afghan government and the Taliban so I imagine the Biden administration feels it’s worthwhile to maintain that for as long as possible. If it can help mitigate the suffering of the citizenry during the transition then it’s worth it in my opinion. The embassy will help the CIA run their operations in the region as well.

How much of the aide meant to help the citizenry will get to them though? How much of it will be stolen by the Taliban? I mean if there are physical things like food and water and such. Even if there is financial help to the Afgan goverment how much will that help the people at the end of the day since the Afgan Governments time left can be counted in months if not weeks? I dont see the Taliban attacking the Embassy anyway. Why risk drawing the US back to the country when just by sitting on their hands and waiting they have pretty much gotten what they wanted. it is too high risk little reward for them. I mean they dont even need the propaganda victory of attacking the Embassy Since the Us is pretty much gone any way.

[worstblogever]

The Taliban trying to return to power while the American version plot how to steal an election in 2022 and 2024 to do the same.

If both do, we'll be back in Afghanistan within five years' time, ready to continue waging a war pushed by both nations' religious extremists.

Or, we could NOT do that.

[Jack Dracula]

How much of the aide meant to help the citizenry will get to them though? How much of it will be stolen by the Taliban? I mean if there are physical things like food and water and such. Even if there is financial help to the Afgan goverment how much will that help the people at the end of the day since the Afgan Governments time left can be counted in months if not weeks? I dont see the Taliban attacking the Embassy anyway. Why risk drawing the US back to the country when just by sitting on their hands and waiting they have pretty much gotten what they wanted. it is too high risk little reward for them. I mean they dont even need the propaganda victory of attacking the Embassy Since the Us is pretty much gone any way.

Sorry. I wasn’t implying the money would help the citizenry. I meant the US maintaining an embassy and facilitating communication between the Taliban and the existing Afghan government might help the citizenry during and after the transition.
I should also point out the China is reportedly making inroads with the Taliban now too so having diplomats there to monitor that situation is a good thing.

[BeastieRunner]

Beastie's Cartoons of the Week

[BeastieRunner]

For a change of pace, I thought this was cool and wanted to share.

As African superheroes come on screen, more kids see themselves.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

For a change of pace, I thought this was cool and wanted to share.

As African superheroes come on screen, more kids see themselves.

Yeah, that was cool!

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on David Earl Williams III, the former candidate for U.S. Congress to represent Illinois’ 9th District who on the way towards his challenge of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, actually managed to get beat by Susan Atanus, a fellow Republican who believed that God created things like tornadoes and autism to punish us for abortions and tolerance of gays. How in the world could that happen? Williams was accused of domestic violence by an ex-girlfriend, and that’s already not good… but then he got caught impersonating her online and making posts to try and get her fired from her job and thrown out of the college she was attending. When the court recommended Williams undergo a psychiatcric evaluation, he refused to attend… and then only made it seem like he was hiding some diagnosis that would have truly sabotaged his chances even further.

One this date in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Bill Connor, a Tea Party Challenger to Lindsay Graham for his U.S. Senate seat in the Republican Primary during the 2014 elections. Connor did not get into detail on too many of his issue positions, but he was a big fan of the 10th Amendment and "states' rights", believing that they should be honored so that South Carolina and other states could reject the Affordable Care Act, if they chose. During the primary debate between Graham's challengers, Bill Connor's main tactic to appear the best candidate was to wave a copy of the Constitution around at the podium while occasionally giving assertions that European soldiers he fought alongside in Afghanistan were less hard-working and ingenious than American soldiers because “Europe had gone socialist” and “post-Christian”, that a separation of church and state has led “atheism to be our national religion”; and that Congress should disband federal appeals courts that enforce church-state separation because “if you’re being biblical, you’re doing your job as a judge.” To cement his conservative credentials even further, he insisted that Congress should impeach President Obama over his executive orders on immigration, and flat-out called climate change science "gobbledy-gook". He then asked, sarcastically, that the entire collected audience to take a deep breath, and then exhale it, declaring that since they all just released carbon dioxide, they had just contributed to climate change.

On this date in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile about Kay Daly, who was originally one of the primary challengers vying to unseat incumbent Congresswoman Renee Ellmers in North Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District in the 2016 elections, even creating her own campaign ad to go “RINO Hunting” against her. And WOW what a memorable advertisement it was, where over the course of 30 seconds, Daly accused Ellmers of being a “feminist” who “let homosexuals pretend they’re married”, a “RINO who voted to fund Obamacare and raise the debt ceiling", and that offered “special protections to immigrant child molesters”. Daly’s ad then looped Renee Ellmers saying “RINO” three times, before cutting to a shot of herself in the woods, declaring that she was “hunting RINOS” and inviting others to join her, before firing off a blast of buckshot. Now for reference… we’re talking about RENEE ELLMERS here, the Tea Party Republican who got elected by stirring up fears about a “9/11 Victory Mosque”, whose only real moderate moment of note is that she hesitated on voting for HR 7, a piece of anti-abortion legislation in early 2015. But still, Daly wasn’t done. She then sent out a follow-up e-mail to prospective voters where she charged that Ellmers "Hispanders" to "interlopers" and "deportables." (aka undocumented immigrants) and also took issue with Ellmers' support foran Equal Rights Amendment as "the one lesbians used to burn their bras over" and taking her to task for "Hillary Clinton's Feminist Museum bill" (translation: the National Women's History Museum). After all that bluster and vitriol directed at Renee Ellmers, though… Kay Daly saw a redistricting shift happen in North Carolina, and ended up changing her mind to instead run in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District, as one of seventeen (yes, 17) Republicans in a primary for the seat. She was proud of her efforts to weaken Ellmers, though, declaring in her new announcement that she was opposed to women serving in the military, and that with Ellmers’ difficulties “the last Southern White RINO has been driven to extinction.” Considering that Kay Daly also feels there is a gay mafia persecuting her because she supports transphobic bathroom bans (no irony, there), and refers to trangendered people are “perverts and deviants”, or “transgenderrhoids” we in no way feel bad for her for finishing way back in eleventh in the Republican Primary for that Congressional seat with only 2.8% of the vote.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profiled John Faircloth, a former police chief of Fair Point, North Carolina who first ran for office to serve District 61 in the North Carolina House of Representatives in… you guessed it, the 2010 Tea Party Wave. It’s unfortunate that Faircloth’s previous profession in law enforcement seems to be affecting his role as a legislator. On two occasions in the past years, Faircloth has sponsored legislation to make it impossible for citizens to have police body-cam footage released. In 2015, Faircloth had a failed attempt in the form of HB 713 and then turned around in 2016 to file HB 972.

Now, with incidents of police violence around the country against suspects and even police officers in Baltimore being caught on their own body-cams planting evidence on suspects they’re shaking down, the ability for someone victimized by police to have their accounts being verified by the video footage can be crucial to assuring accountability from police departments. But a conservative former cop doesn’t like the sound of that, and would like sheriffs to be immune to the concept of transparency, and just tell the public to get bent if someone’s beat by police. Shockingly, towards the tail end of the turbulent reign of former North Carolina Governor Pat McCrory, Faircloth’s bill managed to get passed through the legislature, and signed into law.

Now, you might say, “Well, it’s hypothetically bad. It’s not like police violating the public trust is common throughout North Carolina. (HA!) And it’s still up to the sheriff, who wouldn’t suppress the footage if a rogue cop beat up an innocent citizen as this law permits.”

Well, guess what? It didn’t even take more than a few months for such a scenario to arise, and be met with a legal challenge. At a 2017 Fourth of July celebration in Greensboro, North Carolina, a 15-year-old young man by the name of Josh Charles was waiting outside a restroom while his mother was taking younger siblings to got to the bathroom, and in the time it took her to get back, Charles was accused of fighting with police, resisting arrest, and spitting blood in their face. In the time it took for a couple kids to go potty, all that supposedly happened and his mother walks back with the rest of the family to find her teenaged son on the ground in a pool of blood with a cop holding his hand around her son’s neck, as if to choke him. And guess what the Greensboro police don’t want the public to see? The body camera footage from the cops on scene.

So you can thank John Faircloth for this scenario.

But suppressing body camera footage isn’t the only way that John Faircloth would like to empower the cops in North Carolina. Since 2010, the shenanigans that the North Carolina GOP have pulled have caused frequent protests, most famously those on Moral Mondays and being led by the Rev. William Barber. And there’s no better idea to put a stop to that than to sponsor legislation to suppress the First Amendment right to protest. John Faircloth co-sponsored HB 249, which would allow police to label protests that “block traffic” as “economic terrorists”, and allow police to arrest them. Why, that doesn’t sound like something out of an Orwell novel, does it?

The rest of Faircloth’s voting record is pretty troubling, as well. On top of anti-choice votes and voting to cut voting rights, he voted to block the Medicaid expansion in North Carolina, and for the conservative but unconstitutional staple of drug testing welfare recipients.

Perhaps most dubious are his votes for anti-LGBTQ measures, as in 2011, he voted to amend the North Carolina state constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman, and more recently in 2016, voted for HB 2, North Carolina’s anti-LGBT bill that includes a transgender bathroom ban, and causes boycotts of the state. In his current term in office, he went hard to work trying to spend all of his time in office protecting any member of law enforcement who guns down a citizen, trying again to prevent who can access police body camera footage without the consent of a judge (because that’s going to re-establish the public trust in police).

At the age of 81, Faircloth won re-election with 57% of the vote, so he could return to the state legislature to do, what else… sponsor a fetal heartbeat abortion bill.

Republican priorities, man.

[BeastieRunner]

Here's a laugh. YouTube's largest law channel got Rudy to congratulate them.



The roast that follows is epic.

[Tami]

The Taliban trying to return to power while the American version plot how to steal an election in 2022 and 2024 to do the same.

If both do, we'll be back in Afghanistan within five years' time, ready to continue waging a war pushed by both nations' religious extremists.

Or, we could NOT do that.

Biden is ripping the bandage off of Afghanistan, but will the patient survive?

[AnakinFlair]

The locals had some 20 years to get their act together

There's no easy answers here. It's just a disaster to see unfold. I can't help but feel this is almost like the end of the Vietnam War. There's just going to be something like that final shot of the helicopter evacuating at the end of this.

Yeah. How fast we forgot the lessons of Vietnam is astounding. It's the same damn thing happening all over again- we can spend decades training local troops; but if they don't have the will to fight, or if the government in charge is or seems crooked, it will never work.

I still believe that Biden and others in his Admin could have handled this much better. So much so that I can't watch the news reports on Afghanistan without getting upset and frustrated.

This I agree with- we should have airlifted out our interpreters and their families before we closed down that base.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Stop me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't Trump supposed to have been reinstated as president today according to The Pillow Guy?

[Tami]

Stop me if I'm mistaken, but wasn't Trump supposed to have been reinstated as president today according to The Pillow Guy?

Last I heard, the Pillow Guy's crack team of Computer experts determined that the evidence he said he had, was garbage.