President Biden's first term in office

[alhoon]

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ke...-us/ar-AANHU2J

Remember how Bidet a couple months ago practically said "mission accomplished" and told people to follow the stupid, financially motivated suggestions of CDC that vaccinated people don't need to wear masks?
When I rightfully warned everyone that this was a very dangerous thing to do?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/ke...-us/ar-AANHU2J
The efficacy of the vaccines goes down with time. It's not just the Delta variant, it's all variants.
The more time passes the more variants and mutations will appear that partially bypass the vaccine.
And on top of that, the vaccine doesn't give immunity for long. A few months later your body starts to bypass it. As a note, that seems to be true even for those that had covid. You may catch a different variant again.

Sure, the vaccine even if it doesn't completely protect lowers the danger for hospitalization and death.
But for old people that is still problematic.

Had Bidet not been foolish, delta would not have been as widespread. The first days of the outbreak are very important.
The PotUS should never have suggested such a thing.

[Lord Thesaurian]

The NYpost is a tabloid that will print anything. I can almost guarantee this is a complete fabrication on par with stories of Iraqi army killing newborns in Kuwait.

And once again, no Americans have been taken hostage. You and BW won't get a hostage crisis to gloat over.

The Post is simply reporting on information from other sources. And once again, I’m not sure where you get your information, but the fact the thousands of Americans stranded in Afghanistan are at the mercy of the Taliban, thanks entirely to the Biden Admin, is nothing to gloat over. Claiming the Republicans are fabricating Biden’s incompetence to make him look bad is exactly the kind of slavish conspiracy mindset for which Trump supporters have been psychoanalyzed as mentally ill terrorists, every day for the last 4 years.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers Friday that Americans trying to leave Afghanistan have been beaten by Taliban fighters, according to several people who participated in a briefing call with Austin and other top officials.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/0...-defeat-506475

The Pentagon acknowledged that it does not currently have the capability to safely escort Americans in Kabul to the airport for evacuation.

The Defense secretary's admission comes after the U.S. Embassy in Kabul issued a dire warning to U.S. citizens there stating that it "cannot ensure safe passage" to the airport.

The U.S. is currently relying an agreement with the Taliban to guarantee the safe passage of Americans.

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/18/us-f...hief-says.html

On CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, host Major Garrett asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken : “Someone in our audience might listen to you, Mr. Secretary, and say, ‘Oh, so we have to ask the Taliban for permission for American citizens to leave.’ True or not true?”

Mr. Blinken replied: “They are in control of Kabul. That is the reality. That’s the reality that we have to deal with.”

Spokesman John Kirby said an extension past Aug. 31 “would require additional conversations with the Taliban.” So is the Taliban also dictating how long the U.S. can stay to evacuate its people? On Sunday Mr. Biden ducked that question.

This should be unacceptable to an American Commander in Chief. As Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse put it on “Fox News Sunday,” “Number one, we need enough troops to be sure we can evacuate all our people. Number two, we need to damn these deadlines. August 31 was a stupid, arbitrary, politically driven deadline. The Taliban needs to know they don’t dictate the timetable on American lives.”

A fair question is whether the President simply plans to declare victory on Aug. 31 and assert that everyone is out. Meanwhile, Mr. Biden is humiliating the U.S. and making himself look weak and out of touch with reality.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/taliban...te-11629664446

Regarding the treatment of women, Zabihullah Mujahid, a Taliban spokesman suggested in a press conference yesterday that:

“Sometimes our security teams are not well trained enough in dealing with women. So they do encounter problems sometimes for that reason, So we’ve requested that women remain in their homes, until we develop a procedure. They won’t be terminated [from their jobs]. They will continue receiving their salaries, even if they’re not showing up to work.”

BBC

What one might extrapolate from this, is that there is an intent from the Taliban leadership to at least appear to be more moderate in the short term - they do after all need access to international finance institutions and currently, government departments, banks, finance agencies etc are ghostly empty. And they definitely don't want to continue to bleed expertise (They have already accused the US of 'stealing' Afghan experts, rather thank acknowledging that the flight of expertise might be because of the previous iteration stoned them for blasphemy).

One might also suggest that this implies that the Taliban HQ might be trying to grab the moral high ground and appear like they're a good government, but the local Taliban - both long term, and those who just discovered their inner Taliban last week - are still thinking they're the Taliban of 1999.

The problem isn’t that the Taliban are having trouble lining up the actions of their membership with the PR narrative they’re giving to the outside world. It’s that the POTUS has completely checked out of reality and assured everyone that he has an “agreement”with the kind of people who “hunt for slaves” that they will be nice to the American citizens he left stranded there.

[B. W.]

I can only imagine what sort of corruption and debauchery occurred in Joe and Hunter's Beijing condo, which they still own BTW. Whatever it was, you can be sure the Chinese have some goods on sleepy Joe.

[antaeus]

The problem isn’t that the Taliban are having trouble lining up the actions of their membership with the PR narrative they’re giving to the outside world. It’s that the POTUS has completely checked out of reality and assured everyone that he has an “agreement”with the kind of people who “hunt for slaves” that they will be nice to the American citizens he left stranded there.

Even with an arch-Democrat, Post-Trump, "America is back", Globalist, etc hat on, some of his actions are illogical at the moment (at-least within that lens). After spending the last 2 years trying to (in his view) "repair" America's standing in the world, a lot of international allies are feeling a little Trumped by Biden at the moment. Certainly the editorial landscape outside the US is wondering why Biden is so stubbornly doubling down here.

[Cyclops]

US allies haven't really been trumped, this is no more Trumps doing than it is Biden's (though they are both incompetent). They have been Cheneyed.

[antaeus]

US allies haven't really been trumped, this is no more Trumps doing than it is Biden's (though they are both incompetent). They have been Cheneyed.

I thought being Cheneyed was having the US invade you for oil?

[Cyclops]

I thought being Cheneyed was having the US invade you for oil?

Nah that rat dismantled Nixons' healthcare plan and opened the door for the current nightmare in US public health in his first stint under Ford, so its not just Oil he serves, its predatory Big Health. Any time you get the rough end up your sensitive areas its a Cheney.

[Lord Thesaurian]

Yeah nah, this whole “it’s really Bush and Trump’s fault” thing is a load of crap.

My Lords, all my life I have been pro-American and favourably disposed to the United States, but not any more at this moment. What Biden has done in Afghanistan will go down in ignominy as one of the most shameful and despicable acts of betrayal by any American President. Tens of thousands of men will be slaughtered, thousands of young girls forced to marry these Taliban brutes and 14 million women driven back into slavery. Afghanistan was emerging into the light with freedoms for women and children, who will now be ruled with 500 year-old barbaric religious laws. That is Biden’s legacy. He cannot blame it on Trump; Biden boasted that in his first 100 days he issued a record 24 executive orders, all of which were direct reversals of Trump policies. He should have listened to his generals and changed this policy also.

This is not like Saigon; it is far worse. First, the retaliation against the population by Islamist fanatics is likely to be far greater than what the North Vietnamese did to the beaten south. Secondly, the appalling humanitarian crisis described in this House today will centre on Afghanistan but the terrorist consequences of this US sell-out will affect us all. The Viet Cong had no agenda outside Vietnam but Afghanistan is now under the control of Islamist fanatics who want to wage war on every western democracy.

The US spent billions equipping the Afghan army. A few weeks ago, Biden said:

“We provided our Afghan partners with all the tools—let me emphasize: all the tools”.

He has just donated all those tools to the Taliban—the largest arms haul in history. He has given the Taliban and al-Qaeda state-of-the-art military equipment. The Taliban of course will not need all those weapons and will pass them on to terrorists around the world. Just as the Stingers that the CIA gave the Taliban to fight the Soviets in the 1980s were used against the Americans from 2001 onwards, so these US weapons will now be used against us. The Taliban will empty the bank vaults but fill the opium factories. They will fund terrorism around the world, aided and abetted by their corrupt ally and partner Pakistan, with its totally treacherous ISI security service.

The final disaster in this is the question of who will stand up to China now. China has been working with the Taliban hand-in-glove so that it can get into Afghanistan and rob it of every mineral that it can get its hands on. I am afraid that this blundering President—who, according to press reports, apparently got lost in his own garden—has now lost the credibility of US leadership with this surrender.

Biden has put America back, all right—back into the bunker. The lesson for China is this: play a long game and America will not have the stomach to stick it out. China is a threat to world peace, but how can we now trust the US to lead the long battle against it? Biden may have condemned the world to Chinese domination in future and the end of western liberal democracy.

https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/...99/Afghanistan

Tfw your parents let you know you’re a failure and an embarrassment to the entire family - and they’re right.

[Gaidin]

Yeah nah, this whole “it’s really Bush and Trump’s fault” thing is a load of crap.

Tfw your parents let you know you’re a failure and an embarrassment to the entire family - and they’re right.

It's telling that the consequences for America's foreign policy wrongs come for those who admit failure and try to change course. Not those who instigate and perpetuate.

Though, if you really think this will have long-term political consequences for Biden, you should read up on political history. The situation on the ground is more of a humanitarian crisis, and for foreign policy to cause truly harsh consequences for the president in power with the voters you need something particularly bloody. Like, say, the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Reagan withdrew from Beirut after the bombing and proceeded to win in a landslide a year later. Biden's got three. HW was hilariously popular after Desert Storm. That wasn't enough to save his presidency when the economy dipped.

This is...perversely just how it works. They can do something right and proper. End a war, prevent a famine, no real credit for it. There are a number of other areas where accountability is fundamentally built into the system and performing well means they keep their job. Foreign policy is not really one of those places.

[Heathen Hammer]

Biden was in the government throughout the past 4 decades, 2 of which fell on Afghan war, which he unconditionally supported through and through and he only continued withdrawal that was started by Trump, his only "contribution" being... sabotaging it by postponing the date of withdrawal and breaking ceasefire agreement with Taliban.

[Lord Thesaurian]

It's telling that the consequences for America's foreign policy wrongs come for those who admit failure and try to change course. Not those who instigate and perpetuate.

Though, if you really think this will have long-term political consequences for Biden, you should read up on political history. The situation on the ground is more of a humanitarian crisis, and for foreign policy to cause truly harsh consequences for the president in power with the voters you need something particularly bloody. Like, say, the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Reagan withdrew from Beirut after the bombing and proceeded to win in a landslide a year later. Biden's got three. HW was hilariously popular after Desert Storm. That wasn't enough to save his presidency when the economy dipped.

This is...perversely just how it works. They can do something right and proper. End a war, prevent a famine, no real credit for it. There are a number of other areas where accountability is fundamentally built into the system and performing well means they keep their job. Foreign policy is not really one of those places.

Yeah there’s no question Biden’s deflect and deny strategy will probably work for him politically. Look what it did for Trump. At a minimum it’s a shame the best Biden will be is Trump without the Twitter addiction.

[alhoon]

Biden was in the government throughout the past 4 decades, 2 of which fell on Afghan war, which he unconditionally supported through and through and he only continued withdrawal that was started by Trump, his only "contribution" being... sabotaging it by postponing the date of withdrawal and breaking ceasefire agreement with Taliban.

No, he didn't. Biden was against the war from at least 2007 and vocally against it since 2010. Obama tried to leave from Afghanistan.

It's telling that the consequences for America's foreign policy wrongs come for those who admit failure and try to change course. Not those who instigate and perpetuate.

Though, if you really think this will have long-term political consequences for Biden, you should read up on political history. The situation on the ground is more of a humanitarian crisis, and for foreign policy to cause truly harsh consequences for the president in power with the voters you need something particularly bloody. Like, say, the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Reagan withdrew from Beirut after the bombing and proceeded to win in a landslide a year later. Biden's got three. HW was hilariously popular after Desert Storm. That wasn't enough to save his presidency when the economy dipped.

This is...perversely just how it works. They can do something right and proper. End a war, prevent a famine, no real credit for it. There are a number of other areas where accountability is fundamentally built into the system and performing well means they keep their job. Foreign policy is not really one of those places.

Biden's retreat will cost him politically in 3 years, but I agree it won't cost him much. However, it would help to solidify Republican opposition and bring out the Republican vote in the midterms. Saying that the dip Biden sees in his numbers won't have any effect at all is as naive as assuming that Biden's base would still be shaken about this in 3 years.

[Heathen Hammer]

No, he didn't. Biden was against the war from at least 2007 and vocally against it since 2010. Obama tried to leave from Afghanistan.

Um, what? Obama escalated Afghan war and US withdrawal wasn't even on the table when he was president. "We will have to leave someday" isn't being against war, his was in government for decades and never acted against it until he was indirectly forced to withdraw as POTUS 20 years later. He also supported other Obama wars like the aggression against Libya and attempts to do so in Syria as well. Biden is a generic globalist warhawk and only went through with withdrawal because he literally had no choice.

[Gaidin]

Biden's retreat will cost him politically in 3 years, but I agree it won't cost him much. However, it would help to solidify Republican opposition and bring out the Republican vote in the midterms. Saying that the dip Biden sees in his numbers won't have any effect at all is as naive as assuming that Biden's base would still be shaken about this in 3 years.

The American people, no matter which side you want to talk about, are a bit too easy to distract. Your best odds for Biden having something resembling a consequence here is in 2022, and that's mostly iff the Republicans can stay on message. The problem is, the Democrats AND the Republicans agree with the idea of getting the refugees out. And after a few days of working out the logistics of how the takeoffs and landings would work, it's actually a fairly safe bet the operation can hit more than 100,000 people getting out. So with both parties on record as agreeing it's harder than you think to hit Biden truly hard over this.

And then, past that, it's down to the economy, and whether anybody really believes the centrists really got a deal from Pelosi, much less if the progressives won't bomb the entire thing if they don't get they don't get the larger bill. And that, alhoon, is the economy. And if Biden doesn't get those two bills, then that is when 2024 actually gets interesting for him. Not because of this past two weeks.

And that's Biden's first year in office. Where administrations have to multi-task.

[Heathen Hammer]

It is a fairly safe bet that Biden's administration will up the evacuations ... just like it ed up everything else it tried its hand in. Without a doubt, many US citizens will be left behind, primarily because of ineptitude and incompetence of US government, intelligence and military brass.
Whether it "affects" election is a stretching question, given how elections will likely be decided in how many loopholes each side will get to exploit, and whether vegetable-in-chief can ride the mailed-in-ballot gravy train again in 22.

[B. W.]

Even with an arch-Democrat, Post-Trump, "America is back", Globalist, etc hat on, some of his actions are illogical at the moment (at-least within that lens). After spending the last 2 years trying to (in his view) "repair" America's standing in the world, a lot of international allies are feeling a little Trumped by Biden at the moment. Certainly the editorial landscape outside the US is wondering why Biden is so stubbornly doubling down here.

I suspect the answer to that question lies somewhere in a condo in Beijing.

It's telling that the consequences for America's foreign policy wrongs come for those who admit failure and try to change course. Not those who instigate and perpetuate.

Though, if you really think this will have long-term political consequences for Biden, you should read up on political history. The situation on the ground is more of a humanitarian crisis, and for foreign policy to cause truly harsh consequences for the president in power with the voters you need something particularly bloody. Like, say, the Korean or Vietnam Wars. Reagan withdrew from Beirut after the bombing and proceeded to win in a landslide a year later. Biden's got three. HW was hilariously popular after Desert Storm. That wasn't enough to save his presidency when the economy dipped.

This is...perversely just how it works. They can do something right and proper. End a war, prevent a famine, no real credit for it. There are a number of other areas where accountability is fundamentally built into the system and performing well means they keep their job. Foreign policy is not really one of those places.

You must be living in a bubble. Reagan got through the Beirut bombing and the Iran contra scandal because he was well liked. Nobody likes Chairman Xiden.

As far as the legislation you're speaking up being the key to Xiden's success, you must believe that American drivers are going to like being taxed by the miles they drive.

[Gaidin]

Without a doubt, many US citizens will be left behind, primarily because of ineptitude and incompetence of US government, intelligence and military brass.

Not to put to fine a point on your lack of knowledge. But there is only one subgroup of American citizens over there that the US Government can order out of there. People that in some shape, form, or fashion are US Government employees.

Everybody else, they can only request get to the airport as soon as possible in any way possible or arrange transport if something else happens that otherwise blocks their progress to the airport. The US government has never had this kind of power over it's citizens.

[Heathen Hammer]

Here comes "Its US citizen's own responsibility to save themselves, tehehe." take that I predicted a few pages ago.
Moral of the story is, don't trust US government if you don't like being stranded in area controlled by a fundamentalist group. Even Saigon quagmire wasn't as bad, at least administration at that time did not just simply abandon US citizens to fend for themselves.

[Gaidin]

Here comes "Its US citizen's own responsibility to save themselves, tehehe." take that I predicted a few pages ago.
Moral of the story is, don't trust US government if you don't like being stranded in area controlled by a fundamentalist group. Even Saigon quagmire wasn't as bad, at least administration at that time did not just simply abandon US citizens to fend for themselves.

We can’t order US citizens to take vaccinations either. Shocking, I know. Quite the conundrum.

Right now we have a number of issues to deal with that if we could enforce an order both legally and culturally things would go a lot smoother.

Your lack of knowledge as ever, comes through.

[alhoon]

The American people, no matter which side you want to talk about, are a bit too easy to distract. Your best odds for Biden having something resembling a consequence here is in 2022, and that's mostly iff the Republicans can stay on message. The problem is, the Democrats AND the Republicans agree with the idea of getting the refugees out. And after a few days of working out the logistics of how the takeoffs and landings would work, it's actually a fairly safe bet the operation can hit more than 100,000 people getting out. So with both parties on record as agreeing it's harder than you think to hit Biden truly hard over this.

And then, past that, it's down to the economy, and whether anybody really believes the centrists really got a deal from Pelosi, much less if the progressives won't bomb the entire thing if they don't get they don't get the larger bill. And that, alhoon, is the economy. And if Biden doesn't get those two bills, then that is when 2024 actually gets interesting for him. Not because of this past two weeks.

And that's Biden's first year in office. Where administrations have to multi-task.

I agree that the economy in 2024 will be FAR more influential than a belated retreat from a mountainous area somewhere in Asia, because that's what this is.

But Republicans biting the Democrats in the midterms of 2022 (which are actually quite far away) by pointing the finger and running stories in October 2022 about Biden's "knife in the back" and the humiliation of USA etc etc would make it even MORE difficult for Bidet to pass those bills you mention.

But yes, in 2024, it comes down to economy.
And the economy would be somewhat influenced by who wins in 2022.
And who wins is 2022 would be ... slightly influenced by the retreat.

So... yeah, it would have some effect. Not big effect but some effect.

Here comes "Its US citizen's own responsibility to save themselves, tehehe." take that I predicted a few pages ago.
Moral of the story is, don't trust US government if you don't like being stranded in area controlled by a fundamentalist group. Even Saigon quagmire wasn't as bad, at least administration at that time did not just simply abandon US citizens to fend for themselves.

Dude, democracy and liberty have downsides. One of those downsides are... you can't order people to act responsibly. You have to leave it to them.

Don't be a leftwing. It is a good thing that the USA government cannot order its citizens to act in the way the government wants.
It has some downsides, but it is much better than the alternative.
Also, the USA cannot stop you from emigrating to a dictatorship if you want the government to dictate what you can do to such an extend.