Why bother to ask if Abbott has any decency? It's clear he does not. As for the fiasco in Afghanistan, it was more or less inevitable. Donald Trump made sure to "negotiate" with the Taliban so as to exclude the Afghan government, and tightened restrictions on immigrants to make it virtually impossible to bring in people who had been helping the U.S. military. Could the Biden administration done things better? Of course? Would Donald Trump have done a better job? Ha. Don't make me laugh. Would Obama have done a better job? I don't know. Would George Bush have done a better job? Surely not the same George Bush who stole resources from the Afghan effort in order to turn attention to Iraq on the mistaken claim that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. I think the media was just poised to find anything Biden did that they could pounce on. Why? 1) As a way of "proving" that they weren't just going after Donald Trump, that they can in fact give negative coverage of a Democratic president as well, 2) Because conflict sells.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Robert, I'm old enough to get this reference to the HUAC McCarthy hearings in the '50's. McCarthy's hitman was Roy Cohn. Cohn was the friend and mentor of one Donald J. Trump.
The person with no shame is Trump. Never forget the sight of him after barely escaping death, climbing the stairs to enter the White House, breathing hard but ripping off his mask! De Santis and Abbott are Trump acolytes and are merely mimicking his actions; Trump's distain for anyone other than himself and what serves his interests!
Thank you for encouraging readers to resist the American spin-to-hysteria media machine, and for counseling restraint. So far, the Taliban has behaved with more restraint than the awful-izers, and it makes me wonder how much any of us really know about these militants after twenty years of wartime propaganda. It is way too early for any pundit to forecast a presidential legacy. Let us look to our own barbaric tendencies as exemplified in gubernatorial threats against mask mandates!
Would also note the mostly overlooked point that Abbott received monoclonal antibodies after simply testing positive for Covid with no symptoms. What glaring and ugly evidence of the disparity of care based on wealth and power. This is his back up plan when not masking doesn't work? So surprising that more hasn't been made of this.
Thank you, Robert, once again for your clear-headedness and direct delivery. I so appreciate your publishing the link to the text of Pres. Biden's speech from Monday. I watched it but was able to absorb so much more of its content by reading it. I admire him even more now than I had. For a President, sitting or otherwise, to take full responsibility for such a tragic event is indeed refreshing and heartening. I do hope the media will eventually step back a bit, but I have little hope of that happening. For me, President Biden represents the soul of integrity, decency and fortitude, with a solid dose of humility, in a country that seems to only want to play the "blame game" ad infinitum.
A cynical question: Did Greg Abbott really test positive after his third vaccination, or is this a way to help repay one of his largest donors, who is heavily invested in Regeneron Phamaceuticals? DeSantis and Trump have both heavily touted Regeneron as well (which appears to be affordable only for the wealthy). They all sound like snake oil salesmen to me!
Salon yesterday:
Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund, has $15.9 million in shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has donated $10.75 million to a political committee that supports DeSantis — $5.75 million in 2018 and $5 million last April.
Thank you very much for your mentioning the after action review the blame seems completely unhelpful and weakening at this particular moment. Everyone working on this needs focus on nothing but the matters at hand . May we give them strength and mot weaken them.
Trump cared not one whit for the Afghan allies who helped the American troops just like he cared not one whit for the Kurds who helped defeat ISIS in Syria. He and his lackeys were too busy trying to overthrow our government.
Meanwhile, Abbott, thrice vaccinated and now on Regeneron, is the epitome of Republican callousness. How many of those who get Covid because of his prohibition on vaccine and mask mandates will be able to afford the level of (taxpayer funded) care he’s receiving???
Meanwhile, my son received the following text message this morning: “F_ _ _ YOU AND F_ _ _ BIDEN F_ _ _ HARRIS F_ _ _DEMOCRATS AND F_ _ _THE LEFT.” How does one respond to that??? (A rhetorical question, of course.)
Finally, today’s NY Times has an article titled “How to Avoid a Surprise Bill for Your Coronavirus Test” (see link below). As the top Reader’s Pick commentator wrote:
“Only in America do you have to prepare like a lawyer going into court to get a virus test during a global pandemic to avoid being ambushed by astronomical bills. People from civilized first-world countries where universal healthcare as a human right must be astounded by articles like this and wonder why people in the richest nation on Earth tolerate this.”
Yes, an after-action report on Afghanistan is needed. But not just of Joe Biden's handling of the endgame (with which, as you know, I have found fault), but with the whole 20 years of American involvemen in the Graveyard of Empires. Indeed, we need to examine the whole history of misbegotten US attempts to remake other nations in our image--and not in a good way. Americanizing Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq did not work. We may well have been justified in getting involved in each of those places (though I don't believe Iraq had any substantial reason), but the way we handled the process meant shooting ourselves in the foot. Maybe both feet.
This angst over the Afghanistan exit collapse is hard to take. The fact is that the highest ranks of our military and the CIA led us down again. Having lived through the Vietnam War collapse in 1975 and finished about two months ago Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" about that collapse in detail, I have a hard time accepting the hypocrisy of the hand wringers at the NY Times or radical right writers there like Bret Stephens jumping on Joe Biden. We were lied to by our military , our spy agencies and sat through a disastrous four years of a corrupt Trump administration that did nothing to hand over a situation that would have helped the Biden administration to create an orderly exit. Guys like Jim Mattis owed it to the American people to speak out about what was going on . He did not. He let us down. Maybe we needed this kind of a disaster to make us realize that we can't shore up a house build on sand. Viet Nam leadership was a creature of our hands as was Hamid Karzai and Ghani . We never learn. There are no innocents in this disaster Republican or Democrat. It is an American disaster not one of a single party. Let's wrap it up and move on as well as we can.
Why bother to ask if Abbott has any decency? It's clear he does not. As for the fiasco in Afghanistan, it was more or less inevitable. Donald Trump made sure to "negotiate" with the Taliban so as to exclude the Afghan government, and tightened restrictions on immigrants to make it virtually impossible to bring in people who had been helping the U.S. military. Could the Biden administration done things better? Of course? Would Donald Trump have done a better job? Ha. Don't make me laugh. Would Obama have done a better job? I don't know. Would George Bush have done a better job? Surely not the same George Bush who stole resources from the Afghan effort in order to turn attention to Iraq on the mistaken claim that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. I think the media was just poised to find anything Biden did that they could pounce on. Why? 1) As a way of "proving" that they weren't just going after Donald Trump, that they can in fact give negative coverage of a Democratic president as well, 2) Because conflict sells.
“Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?” Robert, I'm old enough to get this reference to the HUAC McCarthy hearings in the '50's. McCarthy's hitman was Roy Cohn. Cohn was the friend and mentor of one Donald J. Trump.
The person with no shame is Trump. Never forget the sight of him after barely escaping death, climbing the stairs to enter the White House, breathing hard but ripping off his mask! De Santis and Abbott are Trump acolytes and are merely mimicking his actions; Trump's distain for anyone other than himself and what serves his interests!
Thank you for encouraging readers to resist the American spin-to-hysteria media machine, and for counseling restraint. So far, the Taliban has behaved with more restraint than the awful-izers, and it makes me wonder how much any of us really know about these militants after twenty years of wartime propaganda. It is way too early for any pundit to forecast a presidential legacy. Let us look to our own barbaric tendencies as exemplified in gubernatorial threats against mask mandates!
Would also note the mostly overlooked point that Abbott received monoclonal antibodies after simply testing positive for Covid with no symptoms. What glaring and ugly evidence of the disparity of care based on wealth and power. This is his back up plan when not masking doesn't work? So surprising that more hasn't been made of this.
Thank you, Robert, once again for your clear-headedness and direct delivery. I so appreciate your publishing the link to the text of Pres. Biden's speech from Monday. I watched it but was able to absorb so much more of its content by reading it. I admire him even more now than I had. For a President, sitting or otherwise, to take full responsibility for such a tragic event is indeed refreshing and heartening. I do hope the media will eventually step back a bit, but I have little hope of that happening. For me, President Biden represents the soul of integrity, decency and fortitude, with a solid dose of humility, in a country that seems to only want to play the "blame game" ad infinitum.
Thomas freedman has an op-Ed in NYT worth reading!
A cynical question: Did Greg Abbott really test positive after his third vaccination, or is this a way to help repay one of his largest donors, who is heavily invested in Regeneron Phamaceuticals? DeSantis and Trump have both heavily touted Regeneron as well (which appears to be affordable only for the wealthy). They all sound like snake oil salesmen to me!
Salon yesterday:
Citadel, a Chicago-based hedge fund, has $15.9 million in shares of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin has donated $10.75 million to a political committee that supports DeSantis — $5.75 million in 2018 and $5 million last April.
Dear Robert,
Thank you very much for your mentioning the after action review the blame seems completely unhelpful and weakening at this particular moment. Everyone working on this needs focus on nothing but the matters at hand . May we give them strength and mot weaken them.
Thank you, dear Robert
Trump cared not one whit for the Afghan allies who helped the American troops just like he cared not one whit for the Kurds who helped defeat ISIS in Syria. He and his lackeys were too busy trying to overthrow our government.
Meanwhile, Abbott, thrice vaccinated and now on Regeneron, is the epitome of Republican callousness. How many of those who get Covid because of his prohibition on vaccine and mask mandates will be able to afford the level of (taxpayer funded) care he’s receiving???
Meanwhile, my son received the following text message this morning: “F_ _ _ YOU AND F_ _ _ BIDEN F_ _ _ HARRIS F_ _ _DEMOCRATS AND F_ _ _THE LEFT.” How does one respond to that??? (A rhetorical question, of course.)
Finally, today’s NY Times has an article titled “How to Avoid a Surprise Bill for Your Coronavirus Test” (see link below). As the top Reader’s Pick commentator wrote:
“Only in America do you have to prepare like a lawyer going into court to get a virus test during a global pandemic to avoid being ambushed by astronomical bills. People from civilized first-world countries where universal healthcare as a human right must be astounded by articles like this and wonder why people in the richest nation on Earth tolerate this.”
It could not be any better stated.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/upshot/coronavirus-test-bill-cost.html?referringSource=articleShare)
Yes, an after-action report on Afghanistan is needed. But not just of Joe Biden's handling of the endgame (with which, as you know, I have found fault), but with the whole 20 years of American involvemen in the Graveyard of Empires. Indeed, we need to examine the whole history of misbegotten US attempts to remake other nations in our image--and not in a good way. Americanizing Vietnam, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Iraq did not work. We may well have been justified in getting involved in each of those places (though I don't believe Iraq had any substantial reason), but the way we handled the process meant shooting ourselves in the foot. Maybe both feet.
This angst over the Afghanistan exit collapse is hard to take. The fact is that the highest ranks of our military and the CIA led us down again. Having lived through the Vietnam War collapse in 1975 and finished about two months ago Neil Sheehan's "A Bright Shining Lie" about that collapse in detail, I have a hard time accepting the hypocrisy of the hand wringers at the NY Times or radical right writers there like Bret Stephens jumping on Joe Biden. We were lied to by our military , our spy agencies and sat through a disastrous four years of a corrupt Trump administration that did nothing to hand over a situation that would have helped the Biden administration to create an orderly exit. Guys like Jim Mattis owed it to the American people to speak out about what was going on . He did not. He let us down. Maybe we needed this kind of a disaster to make us realize that we can't shore up a house build on sand. Viet Nam leadership was a creature of our hands as was Hamid Karzai and Ghani . We never learn. There are no innocents in this disaster Republican or Democrat. It is an American disaster not one of a single party. Let's wrap it up and move on as well as we can.