R.I.P. Republican Party

dusty7 wrote:Can anyone here tell me that Biden is a better President than Clinton or Obama? That he has actually conquered the issues we face today?  This is the guy that asked a reporter if the "Reps think we are sucking the blood of children?" What in the hell does that mean?

You are kidding, right?

He has been president for six months. "Conquered the issues we face"? Were those issues things that take six months to fix?

The jury is still out on Biden. Nobody can tell you he is better or worse than Obama or Clinton. He has been president for six months.

He asked if there are any republicans who think he sucks the blood of children. He was talking about the Q-anon conspiracy and it's followers, (some of whom serve in Congress) that DOES portray the democrats as controlling a pedophilia ring that takes children in order to suck their blood. Q-anon people like Marjorie Taylor Green...whichever party she belongs to.

Teetime wrote:

dusty7 wrote:Can anyone here tell me that Biden is a better President than Clinton or Obama? That he has actually conquered the issues we face today?  This is the guy that asked a reporter if the "Reps think we are sucking the blood of children?" What in the hell does that mean?

You are kidding, right?

He has been president for six months. "Conquered the issues we face"? Were those issues things that take six months to fix?

The jury is still out on Biden. Nobody can tell you he is better or worse than Obama or Clinton. He has been president for six months.

He asked if there are any republicans who think he sucks the blood of children. He was talking about the Q-anon conspiracy and it's followers, (some of whom serve in Congress) that DOES portray the democrats as controlling a pedophilia ring that takes children in order to suck their blood. Q-anon people like Marjorie Taylor Green...whichever party she belongs to.

He hasn't done much to even improve the problems he inherited when he entered office. Many of them have actually gotten worse, inflation, immigration, labor crisis, healthcare costs, vaccination efforts, and crime.

Why would he make a remark like this?  It's very in presidential and I would expect something like this from Trump bit I always thought Biden was above this. Of it is a conspiracy then is shouldn't draw the attention of the President.  How about answering the reporters question without some sarcastic remark?  Even if you disagree with the question a good leader should be able to deflect and answer the question in a Presidential manner.  Biden seems to always get angry when he gets a challenging question of which he does not have the scripted answer.

Also, the transparency he promised with COVID is not happening either.  If getting vaccinated is so important, why not require White House staff get it?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/07/24/biden-white-house-coronavirus-transparency-pamela-brown-for-the-record-nr-vpx.cnn

Optimism about the future is also falling.  I take this with a grain of salt because I don't trust polls but both Dems and Reps were surveyed.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-direction-year-drops-20-points/story?id=79036435&cid=clicksource_4380645_1_heads_hero_live_hero_hed

dusty7 wrote:He hasn't done much to even improve the problems he inherited when he entered office.  Many of them have actually gotten worse, inflation, immigration, labor crisis, healthcare costs, vaccination efforts, and crime.  

Why would he make a remark like this?  It's very in presidential and I would expect something like this from Trump bit I always thought Biden was above this. Of it is a conspiracy then is shouldn't draw the attention of the President.  How about answering the reporters question without some sarcastic remark?  Even if you disagree with the question a good leader should be able to deflect and answer the question in a Presidential manner.  Biden seems to always get angry when he gets a challenging question of which he does not have the scripted answer.

Also, the transparency he promised with COVID is not happening either.  If getting vaccinated is so important, why not require White House staff get it?

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2021/07/24/biden-white-house-coronavirus-transparency-pamela-brown-for-the-record-nr-vpx.cnn

Optimism about the future is also falling.  I take this with a grain of salt because I don't trust polls but both Dems and Reps were surveyed.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/americans-optimism-countrys-direction-year-drops-20-points/story?id=79036435&cid=clicksource_4380645_1_heads_hero_live_hero_hed

First, I don't see how you can say vaccination efforts have gotten worse over the last six months. They were a running like a well oiled machine until Americans willing to be vaccinated ran out.

What does requiring White House staff to be vaccinated (which I think is a great idea) have to do with transparency? I think requiring nearly everyone to get vaccinated would be a good idea. That has nothing to do with transparency.

Yes. People are less optimistic. I'm sure that poll is correct. I think that has to do with the talk of new mask requirements and potential shut-downs.

I just read an article in Bloomberg Opinion Today entitled "Humanity is caught in a DOOM Loop". It starts out...

"Last week on the East Coast the moon turned blood-red. Birds are dropping from the sky. Billionaires are frantically building rockets to flee the planet. It all feels a little apocalyptic, and maybe it should: The world is wracked with drought, floods, wildfires, hunger, plague, more plague, political upheaval and jorts, to name a few examples."

Of course people are less optimistic.

This explains it all....

https://twitter.com/WayneDupreeShow/status/1421872345069785094?s=20

Still believe there is no crisis at the border?Homeland Secretary states that what we are doing at the border is unsustainable and we are going to lose.  Also, talks about how Biden Admin is working hard on extending Trump's Title 42. Insure this will be see as not true because Fox news discovered the recording but it was clearly stated on tape.

https://www.polishnews.co.uk/sec-mayorkas-says-border-crisis-unsustainable-and-were-going-to-lose-in-leaked-audio/

I'm sure this turned out exactly how Biden expected!  Say what you will about US involvement in Afghanistan, obviously it was a losing battle from the get go and whatever president was in office and pulled troops out would face the Taliban taking back control.  

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/politics/story/2021-08-12/biden-sending-troops-to-afghanistan-to-help-pull-americans-out-as-taliban-surges%3f_amp=true

I am always skeptical of poll numbers but some here say they are accurate, but Biden's approval seems to be slipping across both parties
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/08/03/bidens-approval-rating-on-handling-of-covid-and-economy-fall-in-latest-cnbc-all-america-survey.html

Now Biden is also looking into mandating vaccines for interstate travel but doesn't want to "further polarize' America.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2021-08-12/biden-eyes-tougher-vaccine-rules-without-provoking-backlash%3fcontext=amp

What happens in 3-4 months when more are vaccinated, people get boosters, we are all wearing masks, and we start to see another increase? Who is going to receive the blame? Will we continue the same mitigations that have not proven to work?

How would a mitigation procedure prove to work? Would a drop in hospitalizations or deaths provide the proof?

If so, the mitigations have proven to work.

Teetime wrote:How would a mitigation procedure prove to work? Would a drop in hospitalizations or deaths provide the proof?

If so, the mitigations have proven to work.

O guess should have clarified, mitigations are not successful in stopping the spread.

Because you are going to continue to see cases increase every 3-4 months for 5-8 weeks regardless of what you do.  

If the mitigations were successful in stopping the spread then we would not have seen a rise after the lockdowns in March of 2020, mask mandate in July of 20, and continued mitigations last Winter.  If these were successful then we wouldn't be seeing the rises or as the left calls them, surge in cases.  

If you look at hospitalizations and deaths then yes they are successful in limiting those and that is my point.  Case numbers are not a true measure of the severity of the situation.  We never see daily case numbers for flu or other illnesses. COVID is never going away and people need to start realizing that the vaccine will stop the death but never stop the spread.

Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. British, Soviets and now The US were all unsuccessful there. What’s going on now is reminiscent of the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. The North Vietnamese were much more civilized than the Taliban though. I feel sorry for the Afghans left behind. I don’t blame Biden for wanting to get us out of the 20 year quagmire.
His administration’s handling of the situation on the Mexican border has been disastrous, there’s no doubt about it.
I don’t blame Biden for the inflation we’re experiencing. Basically we wouldn’t be having inflation if Covid have never happened.

OSUBucks wrote:Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires. British, Soviets and now The US were all unsuccessful there. What’s going on now is reminiscent of the fall of Saigon at the end of the Vietnam war. The North Vietnamese were much more civilized than the Taliban though. I feel sorry for the Afghans left behind. I don’t blame Biden for wanting to get us out of the 20 year quagmire.
His administration’s handling of the situation on the Mexican border has been disastrous, there’s no doubt about it.
I don’t blame Biden for the inflation we’re experiencing. Basically we wouldn’t be having inflation if Covid have never happened.

I agree 100% with all of this but it would be nice to see Biden at least address the situation. He said just a few weeks ago that it was very unlikely that the Taliban would take over Afghanistan. Was they a lie or a very bad estimation based on intelligence? America failed in Afghanistan and it was a failure for all President's Bush - Biden and should have been a mission to capture Bin Laden rather than an all out war. Now the billions of dollars spent and the weapons used are in the hands of the Taliban, the very group we ousted from power.

I hope Joe had a relaxing weekend off because he's coming back to work with a number of different issues and as an American, I would like to see some real solutions, especially to the labor shortage and inflation among other things.

Biden was on TV not long ago touting the strength of Afghanistan’s 300k standing army. He looks like a fool now, obviously he was clueless to what was the real situation. What he needs to do now is make sure that the Afghans that worked with the US can be brought back to the US if they choose. This is a real tragedy for Afghanistan and a black eye for the US.

I think it's safe to say Biden has mishandled this situation horribly...but so did the last 3 Presidents. It's clear where our nation is today when Republicans, many of which voted against measures that would have ensured Afghan people who had helped the U.S. over the last 20 years be taken care of, are now blaming everything on the Democrats and Biden. It's all a blame game...and they're both ridiculously guilty. Biden is jacking this situation up something fierce...but what Republicans don't want to own is their guy is the one who put much of what's happened the last 72 hours in motion over the last 2-3 years. It's really hard to be a Social Studies teacher in the U.S. right now, that's for damn sure.

I get what you’re saying Lefty. In the last year or so of his Administration Trump was actually negotiating with the Taliban. They should have known that the Taliban couldn’t be trusted. I’m concerned that the Taliban will now provide safe haven again to Al Queda to return to Afghanistan. I don’t want to see another 9/11 style attack in my lifetime.

lefty120 wrote:I think it's safe to say Biden has mishandled this situation horribly...but so did the last 3 Presidents.  It's clear where our nation is today when Republicans, many of which voted against measures that would have ensured Afghan people who had helped the U.S. over the last 20 years be taken care of, are now blaming everything on the Democrats and Biden.  It's all a blame game...and they're both ridiculously guilty.  Biden is jacking this situation up something fierce...but what Republicans don't want to own is their guy is the one who put much of what's happened the last 72 hours in motion over the last 2-3 years.  It's really hard to be a Social Studies teacher in the U.S. right now, that's for damn sure.

You are correct my friend.  When I polled kids last year their number 1 source for news was Twitter and Tic Toc, which are obviously terrible sources for news.  Actually today, one student athlete asked if I had seen the meme where it shows CNN with a headline saying "Liberal Applaud Taliban Use of Masks" and thought it was true.  After further research there are actually adults, both Rep and Dem on Twitter and Facebook that think it is true.  Simply put, our students do not know the difference between factual news, analysis, opinion. and even memes.  

I will be taking more time in the first few days and throughout the year teaching kids the difference between real and fake news along with the different types of bias and how to spot them.  We will never stop the constant blame game until we create informed citizens who actually believe in the system.  Right now, very few in the young generation believe in the system and the blame rests with both political parties.

In his campaign for the presidency Biden promised that he would get us out of Afghanistan.

He is keeping that promise.

The Biden administration thinks it has the ability to get out all of the Afghans who worked with the American forces (2500 to 3000) and their families, the American citizens and other foreign nationals that can make it to the airport and has been negotiating to get all of those safe passage to the airport (which they now seem to have secured).

That does NOT mean that we will be able to get every single Afghani out of his own country that wants out now that the Taliban is in charge. That was never our job, our promise or our sacred duty.

This reminded me of so many things:

https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan

Teetime wrote:In his campaign for the presidency Biden promised that he would get us out of Afghanistan.

He is keeping that promise.

The Biden administration thinks it has the ability to get out all of the Afghans who worked with the American forces (2500 to 3000) and their families, the American citizens and other foreign nationals that can make it to the airport and has been negotiating to get all of those safe passage to the airport (which they now seem to have secured).

That does NOT mean that we will be able to get every single Afghani out of his own country that wants out now that the Taliban is in charge. That was never our job, our promise or our sacred duty.

This reminded me of so many things:

https://www.cfr.org/timeline/us-war-afghanistan

While I agree with a lot you’re saying Tee you’ve got to admit that this administration really bungled the withdrawal.

OSUBucks wrote:
While I agree with a lot you’re saying Tee you’ve got to admit that this administration really bungled the withdrawal.

Not yet they haven’t. The withdrawal is supposed to end by August 31.

It’s true that the administration didn’t expect Kabul to fall into the hands of the Taliban before 8/31 and that caused a panic among those expecting to leave. That panic seems to have subsided and the US is being allowed to continue with an orderly withdrawal for now.

The left seems pretty optimistic that tht Taliban has changed while the right is more pessimistic. As usual, both sides are reporting completely different stories that only contain partial truths.

My question is do we ret trust that the Taliban has changed? They say their are modernized, changed their ideology somewhat, and will give women some rights. Sure that sounds good now but what happens when the cameras are gone and Afghanistan is no longer the leading story? There is a reason we see people clinging to the planes leaving. The Afghanis may have some freedom in the short term but in the long term I'm skeptical.

Fact is Biden and his admin bungled their approach had had terrible intelligence. This combined with the recent cyber attacks and the willingness to pay the ransoms show the weakness of the US in geopolitics. This will end up hurting the Dems in 2022 and 2024.

the 'news' said 1 evac flight an hour with as many as 9000 evacuees a day.

dusty7 wrote:The left seems pretty optimistic that tht Taliban has changed while the right is more pessimistic. As usual, both sides are reporting completely different stories that only contain partial truths.  

My question is do we ret trust that the Taliban has changed?  They say their are modernized, changed their ideology somewhat, and will give women some rights. Sure that sounds good now but what happens when the cameras are gone and Afghanistan is no longer the leading story?  There is a reason we see people clinging to the planes leaving.  The Afghanis may have some freedom in the short term but in the long term I'm skeptical.

I'm on the left and I'm skeptical as well. But we don't invade countries that have strange laws or that are mean to women. Look at Saudi Arabia. That wasn't the purpose of our 20 year adventure into Afghanistan. It certainly isn't the reason we should maintain a presence there.

If the Afghan people want to change the rulers of their country then they have to find the will to make a change.

We were there in order to keep terrorists from attacking the USA. In spite of the fact that NONE of the 9/11 terrorists were from Afghanistan, they did run and hide in that country once they escaped the USA. Our objective was to find those terrorists and jail them or kill them. That mission was mostly accomplished during the Bush and Obama administrations. It was time to go. We are NOT nation builders.

Teetime wrote:

We were there in order to keep terrorists from attacking the USA. In spite of the fact that NONE of the 9/11 terrorists were from Afghanistan, they did run and hide in that country once they escaped the USA. Our objective was to find those terrorists and jail them or kill them. That mission was mostly accomplished during the Bush and Obama administrations. It was time to go. We are NOT nation builders.

I agree with you on this we are not nation builders but I think that we are being forced to leave could have been prevented. It was time to leave but it could have been done in due time rather than ripping a ripping off a band-aid type of approach. As I said, the intelligence must have been bad or we put too much faith in the Afgan army's willingness to put up a resistance. Biden is the commander-in-chief and the foreign policy leader of the US and was in control of how we handled the situation and it was handled in the wrong manner, it's as simple as that.  Biden and his administration made a mistake and the optics of him being on vacation while Kabul fell didn't look good either.  I really don't care where he was and I am sure he was attuned to what was happening but the optics of it look bad and will damage the political future of those who advised him on the decision. In a presser today the Secretary of Defense saidthey’ll only evacuate Americans “until the clock runs out or we run out of capability.” But I thought this administration that said they planned for every contingency. What happened to never leaving an American behind?  

My point is what is the real story of what is happening there? All news outlets seem to be reporting entirely different stories and which side is really telling the truth? The left keep saying it was the right thing to do, the Taliban are different than the past because they don't want to paint the picture of this being a bad decision.  The right will be all doom and gloom to make the situation look worse than is really is.  It is just like COVID but the complete opposite.  I am sure if this was done under Trump's command both sides would be the opposite of what they are right now. Just shows people how shallow politics have become in America.

dusty7 wrote:My point is what is the real story of what is happening there? All news outlets seem to be reporting entirely different stories and which side is really telling the truth? The left keep saying it was the right thing to do, the Taliban are different than the past because they don't want to paint the picture of this being a bad decision.  The right will be all doom and gloom to make the situation look worse than is really is.

So your point was that there are biased news reports coming out of Afghanistan?

Surely some reporter can count the number of jumbo jets leaving the airport each day. That ought to represent the "truth"

I thought you were talking about "freedom loving" Afganis clinging to the airplanes, and the political fallout.


Again, I'm on the left, it WAS the right thing to do. It makes no difference in that decision as to the the believability of the Taliban. For now, they have won the civil war in that country and they are in charge. How they behave toward their fellow citizens is just not our problem today any more than it was between 1965 and 2000 when we just stayed out of their domestic politics and funded the Mujahideen fighting the Russians.

There are Democrats demanding that this debacle be investigated. That’s the difference between Democrats and Republicans. If this had happened under the Trump administration most Republicans would be circling the wagons and defending their President. See Trumps big lie about the election. Very few Republicans spoke out and called him on it. Those that did like Liz Cheney were punished for it by the GOP leadership.

Sure looks like the Taliban are cooperating letting people get to the airport. ABC is also reporting that the planes leaving are leaving half -full and Biden said that troops will remain there past the Aug 31 date if Americans are still there.

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/afghanistan-withdrawal-live-updates/?id=79482353

dusty7 wrote:Sure looks like the Taliban are cooperating letting people get to the airport.  ABC is also reporting that the planes leaving are leaving half -full and Biden said that troops will remain there past the Aug 31 date if Americans are still there.  

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/live-updates/afghanistan-withdrawal-live-updates/?id=79482353

Fingers crossed!

I think the situation is that the Taliban has come to respect the American military over time. They fear the alternative.