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

[CSTowle]

I never said that they wanted us to liberate them. We were only in the country because they harbored terrorists. And while our actions were far from perfect, we were far better than the Taliban.

The country had twenty years to change for the better, and it didn't happen. Why is it everyone else's fault but theirs?

They might have a different idea of what "better" means. And when you're starting with almost no infrastructure, no national identity (other than to resist foreign occupiers, not a point in our favor), and were as likely to know someone killed or oppressed by the foreign occupiers as by the Taliban or their kind it's not hard to see why there was little resistance.

Trump set up a trap for Biden, and Biden gleefully jumped right into it.

I understand Biden wanting to end this ASAP, but he did is A**backwards.

Evacuate the civilians, the Afgans who need to be evacuated, then and only then remove the troops.

There are several questions to be asked. 1. Was there ever an ideal time to do this (my answer would be no, but the closest time to ideal was 10 years ago after killing Bin Laden in a neighboring country)? 2. Would Republicans ever be happy with the way a Democratic President handled a withdrawal (2A. Would they be criticizing the exact same scenario and outcome if Trump were in the White House? no need to answer, clearly rhetorical)? 3. What could be changed to make the Afghanistan regime and military we installed and funded strong enough to prevent this happening? If such changes do exist, would we be willing to pay the cost to achieve them as we already dropped trillions into that war to no gain and hardly a token resistance?

If I am to recall the distant past of a few weeks ago, it was Democrat Jason Crow who sponsored a bill to expedite getting our Afghan allies out faster, Biden signed that bill, and the only people who voted against it were 16 die-hard white nationalists of the Republican Party.

Seems to be I'm not the one who needs to save my comments, or my political clout.

Newsflash for you..Joe Biden is President, Commander in Chief of our military. He make the finals decisions. He did. It's a disaster. People who helped us fight will now die. They don't care about your white supremacist obsession.

I'm glad to see some more Republicans crawling out of the woodwork and feeling confident enough to comment on politics again, even if it's only because they think they might sense a weakness. But if you don't think white supremacists are a threat or a growing issue then you either haven't been paying attention to our history or the news or you're willfully ignoring the issue. Nonpartisan experts and intelligence organizations rate them as the greatest threat to our country for a reason. While they're by no means a majority it doesn't take many people to tear things down if they choose. We can't hope every attempt will fall as flat as 1/6, there will be more OKC bombing-level terrorist events as demographics shift and their voices and influence wane in legitimate politics.

Trump screwed the Kurds, who were largely self reliant.

There's no one he wouldn't screw over to save himself two minute's time.

People forget the Kurds, and I doubt many of the Republicans clutching their pearls at the "abandonment of the Afghani people" made a peep when Trump stabbed them in the back.

Except we don't. He originally wanted to pull everyone out of Syria but then was persuaded to leave a small force. You simply can't state what he would have done, it's unknowable.

Well then clearly we should assume the best, given Trump's track record. If there's one guy known for careful planning, forethought, standing by allies, consistency, and toughness it's definitely Donald J. Trump. Right?

[Spidey5640]

Trumps head is not exactly a closed book. Whatever decision he would make, it's not good. Every decision he made as president was not bad, it redefined "worst possible"

Yeah, that just shows your bias. Criminal Justice reform worst possible? Mid-east peace deals worst possible? You can certainly disagree with some of his decisions but blanket statements like yours just destroys credibility.

[green_garnish]

Yeah, that just shows your bias. Criminal Justice reform worst possible? Mid-east peace deals worst possible? You can certainly disagree with some of his decisions but blanket statements like yours just destroys credibility.

Well, someone's credibility was damaged in this discussion. Pretty sure it's not mine,

[Spidey5640]

People forget the Kurds, and I doubt many of the Republicans clutching their pearls at the "abandonment of the Afghani people" made a peep when Trump stabbed them in the back.

Yeah, except he did leave a small force in place after initially stating he would withdraw all of them. Haven't seen any reports of Kurds being rounded up like is happening in Afghanistan..

Well then clearly we should assume the best, given Trump's track record. If there's one guy known for careful planning, forethought, standing by allies, consistency, and toughness it's definitely Donald J. Trump. Right?[/QUOTE]

Assume at your own risk, that's kind of my point

[Spidey5640]

Well, someone's credibility was damaged in this discussion. Pretty sure it's not mine,

See things as you wish, you obviously do already...

[green_garnish]

People forget the Kurds, and I doubt many of the Republicans clutching their pearls at the "abandonment of the Afghani people" made a peep when Trump stabbed them in the back.

Yeah, except he did leave a small force in place after initially stating he would withdraw all of them. Haven't seen any reports of Kurds being rounded up like is happening in Afghanistan..

Well then clearly we should assume the best, given Trump's track record. If there's one guy known for careful planning, forethought, standing by allies, consistency, and toughness it's definitely Donald J. Trump. Right?

Assume at your own risk, that's kind of my point[/QUOTE]

Credibility point made

[The Cool Thatguy]

Yeah, that just shows your bias. Criminal Justice reform worst possible? Mid-east peace deals worst possible? You can certainly disagree with some of his decisions but blanket statements like yours just destroys credibility.

Oh yeah, Trump made peace in the middle east! I totally forgot!

[babyblob]

Okay found an answer or partial answer to how many people Trump let in from Afghanistan or rather did not let in. In 2020 according to the state department there were more 7000 special visas allocated to Afgans by Congress that were not used. Not given out to the Afgan people. So there are at least 7000 people who are stuck there during the last year of Trumps presidency. Since he signed the withdraw agreement on Feb 29th a good many of these are on him.

So it is a small number compared to Biden but these are 7000 lives that are in danger right now. If people blame Biden for the delays with the State Department processing visas and such and not stepping in then we can aslo blame Trump for the same on these 7000.

As of September 2019 over 19,000 visa applications were stuck in the processing stage.

[JackDaw]

Okay found an answer or partial answer to how many people Trump let in from Afghanistan or rather did not let in. In 2020 according to the state department there were more 7000 special visas allocated to Afgans by Congress that were not used. Not given out to the Afgan people. So there are at least 7000 people who are stuck there during the last year of Trumps presidency. Since he signed the withdraw agreement on Feb 29th a good many of these are on him.

So it is a small number compared to Biden but these are 7000 lives that are in danger right now. If people blame Biden for the delays with the State Department processing visas and such and not stepping in then we can aslo blame Trump for the same on these 7000.

As of September 2019 over 19,000 visa applications were stuck in the processing stage.

But isn’t it the sort of detail one would almost expect the Donald to get “wrong”, but expect Joe to get right?

I say “detail” but of course it’s thousands of life’s at stake.

It’s always baffled me how often the UK has made this mistake….let down people like interpreters who have served them well in some overseas “adventure” when the time for withdrawal comes. It baffles me just as much when the US do it.

The present administration could and should have done some things more effectively before withdrawal….it’s no real comfort that the previous lot may well have even worse.

[worstblogever]

On this date, in both 2014, as well as in 2015, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled former Georgia Congressman Paul Broun, who became infamous for giving a speech in front of a backdrop of dozens of deer trophies where he claimed that evolution and the Big Bang Theory were "lies from the pit of Hell", which was really sad considering he was on the House Science Committee. He was also a big climate change denier, telling the John Birch Society that "global warming is a hoax" in 2010, advocating for racial profiling by the TSA to harass people that appeared to be Middle Eastern, and repeatedly calling the Obama administration socialist or comparing its policies to Nazi Germany. Broun’s affection for appearing around dead animals also didn’t serve him so well after the death of Zimbabwe's cherished Cecil the Lion in July of 2015, when Broun responded to the controversy by bragging about killing and eating a lion himself in Zimbabwe, displaying the taxidermied remains in his office. Broun tried running for Georgia's U.S. Senate seat in 2014, and lost in the primary to David Perdue. Because of Georgia election law, that left him unable to also run for his U.S. House seat, which he had to give up in January 2015, and he decided to try and weasel his way back into Congress in 2016 by challenging incumbent Republican Doug Collins for his seat to represent Georgia’s 9th District, instead of his old one back in Georgia’s 10th District, that is now occupied by Jody Hice. Broun got crushed in that race, only receiving 22% of the vote. In 2020, Broun again attempted to return to office in his old seat in Georgia’s 9th Congressional District and this time finished in third, not even qualifying for a runoff. He’s now in his seventies and we’re unsure if he’ll ever weasel his way back to Washington, D.C., but we’re watching, just in case.

In 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented our original profile of the one-term U.S. House Representative for Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, Jason Lewis, who did manage to win office in 2016 over Democrat Angie Craig by about 6,000 votes, to replaces former House Rep. John Kline in Congress. This is unfortunate, as we have discussed, Lewis was most famous for being a radically conservative radio talk show host in Minnesota, who famously quit live on air right after promoting his own Ayn Rand-inspired libertarian website that has interesting topics like “exposing the global warming hoax,” promoting a “Free Market Education,” and championing states’ rights. Lewis just up and walked off the job in about the most unprofessional manner possible. No matter how good the results have been for Governor Mark Dayton in Minnesota as the state has come to boom under Democrats’ policies, Lewis has refused to give an iota of credit to them for it, clinging to ideology before any reason. And that’s putting it mildly… Let’s just recap some of the highlights from Jason Lewis’ time on air… in 2011, he brushed off sexual assault accusations against Republican presidential candidate, the late Herman Cain, because he hadn’t raped anyone, saying, ”I don't want to be callous here, but how traumatizing was it? [...] How many women at some point in their life have a man come on to them, place their hand on their shoulder or maybe even their thigh, kiss them, and they would rather not have it happen, but is that really something that's going to be seared in your memory that you'll need therapy for? You'll never get over? It was the most traumatizing experience? Come on! She wasn't raped!” On November 9th, 2012, he reacted to the election loss of Mitt Romney by looking at the racial demographics of it… and lamenting, how white people were committing “cultural suicide” and “political suicide” with their failure to procreate at the same level as Hispanics. “I don’t want to make a racial thing out of this. I’m just stating a fact.” he said, beside himself about President Obama having won a second term. Two days later on November 11th, 2012, Lewis was still looking at demographics that the Republicans lost, this time female voters, and he called women “ignorant” for voting for Obama. Yeah, Lewis is that terrible, and then some. How much of an ***hole does someone have to be to pitch-hit for Rush Limbaugh? Because Lewis got to do that back in in 2008, where he compared taxing the rich to “slavery”, and in 2009 he decided to start demonizing victims of Hurricane Katrina were “a bunch of whiners”. He’s used the Supreme Court’s previous rulings on slavery as well when discussing their rulings on same sex marriage, and even since leaving talk radio, has spoken about the income disparity between whites and African Americans in less than endearing ways, saying, “the median income for blacks in America would make them rich in most African nations.” Of course, there are two phrases we’ve seen in discussing Jason Lewis’ opinions that seem to have a common thread. What do you think of when you think of when you see “states’ rights”, and “slavery”? It might be that you just thought of the Civil War, and guess what? Lewis has some opinions on that. He once suggested a Constitutional amendment to allow states the right to secede from the union, and also questions why the Civil War needed to be fought, arguing that it was fought over “states’ rights” and not slavery, at all (which is false). And we all know how important defending the Confederacy is to voters way north of the Mason-Dixon line in Minnesota, right? Lewis flat out refused to hold a town hall and explain his vote for Trumpcare or say even his vote to prevent federal funding to go to his own state to fund a light rail project in Minnesota and his constituents have responded by protesting outside his actual home. Prior to Jason Lewis’ rematch in 2018 against Angie Craig, … even more audio recordings have emerged of him from his days in talk radio, including even more thoughts on race, which were all just bigoted false assumptions about the African-American community. Audio also was uncovered where Jason Lewis gave his thoughts about Rush Limbaugh’s sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke, and big surprise, he’s an ***hole who had Rush’s back, and longed out loud for the “good old days” when a man could call a woman a slut without being called a sexist for it. That had a lot to do with why Jason Lewis was bounced from office, only getting 47% of the vote against Angie Craig and why he failed to unseat Senator Tina Smith in 2020. As he is now unlikely to ever get back into office, we will set aside his profile at this time, however, to cover another wacky Republican today instead. (Current crazy/stupid scoreboard, is now 1015-50, since this was established in July 2014.


Billy Earley

Welcome to what is the 1015th original profile here at “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day”, where we’ll be profiling Billy Earley, a 2020 candidate for U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 44th Congressional District, and a guy we’re perplexed as to the reasons why he was running for Congress as a Republican, given his posing for photos in front of a mural of George Floyd and his commitment to combating alleged discrimination by the California medical board targeted against African-American doctors.

That makes him an unlikely GOP candidate given how the Republican Party has taken quite the turn towards white nationalist ideology the past few years. Still, we have to include Earley in our far-too-long list of Republican Congressional candidates from 2020 who were touting the Qanon conspiracy theory, which Earley promoted on both his Twitter and Facebook pages. We’ll note he also was promoting conspiracies about Hunter Biden and Burisma on his Instagram page, so he seemed to be diversifying in the amount of right-wing conspiracies he was peddling.

Billy Earley finished in third place in the primary for California’s 44th Congressional District in the House of Representatives, getting 13% of the vote as the top Republican to run for the seat. We’re not sure if this was a one-off campaign, or if he’s going to continue resurfacing in California elections going forward.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The situation in Afghanistan was as no-win for the U.S. as it could possibly get, and everyone from Biden on down knew it. I've said this before, and it bears repeating: the Taliban were playing the long game, willing to wait for as long as it took to reclaim the country, whether it was a year, ten years or another twenty, time meant nothing to them when it came to their endgame. While I don't blame Biden for his decision not to kick this can down the road for a FIFTH administration to wrangle over, I will say he never should made public the date for the pullout of troops, that just gave the Taliban a date to circle on their calendar for their blitz, and we all saw what happened from there. When it came to evacuations, Biden should've made that a priority BEFORE the pullout, chances are that could've prevented the clusterfuck at the airport seen on TV screens the world over.

Meanwhile, anyone who chooses to ignore the threat of white militant terrorism, said by experts to be a far greater concern to the country at present than Islamic extremism is SERIOUSLY failing to pay attention. As a person of color, I have more to fear from homegrown white lunatics than nutbags from abroad.

[babyblob]

Meanwhile, anyone who chooses to ignore the threat of white militant terrorism, said by experts to be a far greater concern to the country at present than Islamic extremism is SERIOUSLY failing to pay attention. As a person of color, I have more to fear from homegrown white lunatics than nutbags from abroad.

The sad and really scary thing is there are way to many people who not only ignore the threat but also go out of their way to down play the threat even after the events of the 6th. And that is setting this country up for something bad down the road. it may take a couple years but I think there will be a major mass shooting or Oklahoma style bombing attack coming for the USA because there are people in power encouraging and courting these people every day.

mean hell we had a couple members in the house who tried to hold that BS protest to get people arrested on the 6th released and called them political prisoners. And the only problem the member of their own party and talking heads who back them had with the whole thing is when the reporters tried to call out and ask Getz about his ties to underage sex trafficking. it is so sick I cant even put it into words and more.

[Kirby101]

This isn't to take blame away from Biden, he is President and made the decisions. But he was also listening to the people at the Intelligence Agencies and Pentagon on the Taliban and how Afghan would defend itself. Maybe I missed a story that he went against his top Generals and Agency heads. But however you want to see Biden in this, it was also a giant failure of our Intelligence and Military Command.

[InformationGeek]

Oh shut up Scott!

Sen. Rick Scott, who is widely viewed as a potential 2024 presidential candidate tweeted: “We must confront a serious question: Is Joe Biden capable of discharging the duties of his office or has time come to exercise the provisions of the 25th Amendment?” https://t.co/D5PHxvyI1q

[SUPERECWFAN1]

This isn't to take blame away from Biden, he is President and made the decisions. But he was also listening to the people at the Intelligence Agencies and Pentagon on the Taliban and how Afghan would defend itself. Maybe I missed a story that he went against his top Generals and Agency heads. But however you want to see Biden in this, it was also a giant failure of our Intelligence and Military Command.

And this stretches back for years by the way. The same people told the prior administration as well that the Afghan army could stand up as well. Its how we got more troops drawn down and why we saw that treaty set etc. Because the belief was the army and all could hold up. Instead it seems no one knew corruption was in and that reports coming where Afghan soldiers were not getting food , supplies or help.

Its sad but this entire thing was something that everyone had a hand in failure. Republicans trying to act like they didn't have a hand in it , yet trying to delete the page where Trump did his peace treaty is wild. I feel for those innocent people there , they didn't deserve any of this.