Thursday blend: useless edition

Happy Thursday.

Not much satire today: More States Pass Abortion Laws In Hopes Of Triggering Travel Ban From Portland

 "I'm like, 'whatever' on abortion," said North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, "but the prospect of being completely cut off from Portland in every way is seriously tempting."

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We left a lot of people behind in Afghanistan.

Veteran-led rescue groups say the Biden administration’s estimate that no more than 200 U.S. citizens were left behind in Afghanistan is too low and also overlooks hundreds of other people they consider to be equally American: permanent legal residents with green cards.

Some groups say they continue to be contacted by American citizens in Afghanistan who did not register with the U.S. Embassy before it closed and by others not included in previous counts because they expressed misgivings about leaving loved ones behind.

As for green card holders, they have lived in the U.S. for years, paid taxes, become part of their communities and often have children who are U.S. citizens. Yet the administration says it does not have an estimate on the number of such permanent residents who are in Afghanistan and desperately trying to escape Taliban rule.

So private citizens and NGOs stepped up with chartered planes to get people out. But the U.S. State Department is/was not being helpful. Depending on the source, the State Dept. is/was either blocking some of those flights, or pathetically slow and inept at helping them leave Afghanistan.

Reports of several charter planes grounded in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif sparked outrage over the weekend when the organizers of private flights spoke out against the State Department for inaction. Dozens of Americans and Afghan citizens are trapped in the city as they await permission from the Taliban for their flights to take off for Doha, Qatar, while State Department officials say they have no way of vetting the people waiting for the planes.

So the government stepped up. The Qatar government, I should say. Biden administration on sidelines as Americans trapped in Afghanistan get Taliban permission to leave:

More Americans appear to finally be leaving Afghanistan Thursday as Qatar works with the Taliban to allow them to exit the country following the U.S. military's withdrawal and the White House acknowledges the significant role the Middle Eastern country is playing in getting Americans out.

Qatari officials told the Associated Press that between 100 and 150 Americans will be leaving on a Qatar Airways flight out of the airport in Kabul.

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I miss Trump. He just needed to scale back his more absurd/outrageous comments a smidge and get a Twitter editor.

Gutfeld asks Trump what he'd say to Gutfeld's wife to try to convince her to get vaccinated (he announces she's unvaccinated). Trump responds by saying he recommends she get vaccinated but if she doesn't want to, that's okay too. pic.twitter.com/rrn010vS4o

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 9, 2021

Thursday blend: the shitshow continues

Happy Thursday.

I'll start out with the satire this time.

Republican Politicians Vow To Get Real Mad And Stuff Following Afghanistan Crisis [note to the Bee staff: this isn't satire] 

 

Brian Williams Tearfully Recounts Clinging To Outside Of Airplane To Escape Kabul

 

Psaki: 'A Record 331 Million Americans Have Not Been Abandoned In Afghanistan'

 

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The Afghanistan failure

Psaki refuses to discuss leaked Biden call with Ghani that shows he knew Afghan army was collapsing

Politifact-style fact check: Pants on fire! Biden knew the Afghan army would probably collapse, but he could not have possibly known how fast it would've collapsed.

In other words, the leaked phone call pretty clearly demonstrates Biden knew the Afghan army was in poor shape, but requested Ghani to lie about that if necessary. The evidence increasingly points to a royal fuckup of epic proportions, largely thanks to our increasingly worthless political, military, and intelligence "elite."

 

Biden Administration Erased Afghan Weapons Reports From Federal Websites:

According to an admission obtained from the State Department, Biden officials recently directed federal agencies to scrub their websites of official reports detailing the $82.9 billion in military equipment and training provided to the Afghan security forces since 2001.

The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters, and armored vehicles.

Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly 1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers.

The justification for all this scrubbing? Possible "security risk." The article then deftly points out one of the administration's recent genius 4-D chess moves:

It’s worth noting that the Biden administration already put these partners at risk when officials provided lists of Afghan nationals to the Taliban in a misguided attempt to clear them for evacuation. 

Nobody has been fired for any of this yet.

 

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says "we all have pain and anger" after 20-year war in Afghanistan.

"We all have pain and anger when we see what has unfolded over the last 20 years and the last 20 days, that creates pain and anger," Milley said. "I'm a professional soldier, I'm going to contain my pain and anger and execute my mission."

YOU'RE STILL TALKING, WHY ARE YOU NOT FIRED? Your mission should be to shut the fuck up and retire, preferably in Antarctica. 20 goddamn years and the Taliban are still in control, the country is ripe for brewing terrorism. Get the fuck out already.

That reminds me of a video I watched recently--sometimes the Youtube algorithm is helpful. Generals need to be fired. Frequently:

 

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SpaceX says Amazon is trying to delay Starlink because it can't compete

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Wealth inequality may not be as bad as we are told. Lately, few things seem to be as bad as we are told, except when the government is in charge--then it's worse.

 

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In other news, cryptocurrency is continuing to rise (I wish I could buy much more):

 

 

"Nothing so concentrates the senses as austerity..."

Just wanted to share that, which is from Glenn Reynold's senior military acquaintance, who has a few things to say about Afghanistan. Here's a little, but read the whole thing:

Unreformed, DoD is an inscrutable labyrinth which invites fraud, waste, and abuse. The excess attracts unscrupulous camp followers. Amazon did not choose Crystal City to locate its new headquarters because of low rents and ease of transportation access for its 25,000 employees. It chose the Arlington, Virginia neighborhood because it is two blocks from the Pentagon. That building controls the distribution of three-quarters of a trillion dollars every year. Most of it is wasted. The excess is apparent in the scores of class-A high rises housing defense contractors just blocks from the Pentagon.

Much of what is written feels so disturbingly similar to Vietnam.

Leaving Afghanistan

We should've left long ago. I'd say after about 6 (probably fewer) or so years of, ahem, occupying--or whatever word you want to use to indicate a sustained military presence in a foreign land--Afghanistan, most Americans wanted our troops to come home. 

Let's be honest with ourselves, we go to war with the intelligence services, generals and politicians we have, not the ones we want. Leaving Afghanistan would have always been messy, whether we left in 2001 or a few months ago.

Maybe Biden screwed up, I mean it'd be hard for a man that age to not screw something up. I don't think Trump would've fared better, but I know Trump's response would've differed, for good or ill.

This will probably come back to bite us, someday. "This" being staying way too long and leaving so hastily, with an intelligence service that couldn't see it coming after 20 years there. The whole situation oozes with complacency.

When the right-wing blames Biden, I'm not very swayed (even though the image above is rather cogent). But when they point at military and intelligence engaged in political and social activism while failing terribly in Afghanistan, it's rather persuasive. People need to be fired, and military and intelligence reforms are overdue.

The Entertaining Drama of Online FPS Games

I used to play an online FPS game, and still probably would today if I felt like getting sucked in to an overwhelming addiction (or play casual and suck at it). So for me, this YouTube series I stumbled onto was hilariously salient. But I think most people would find it entertaining.

We all love to hate stupid people. In the world of gaming, we call these players noobs, and they are abundant (yes, even veteran players can be noobs--noobness no longer is limited to newness).

In real life, stupid has consequences and only rarely is it funny. In games however, while stupid people are frustrating, often they are the source of unlimited amusement.

So enjoy about 1.5 hours worth of solid satirical FPS gaming entertainment:

Props to Hank and Jed. If you like what you saw, that was all from them.

ISAF killing Taliban leaders by the dozens. Also meaning of the word "leader"

Frustrating news from Spencer Ackerman at the Danger Room:

Since January 2011, the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan claims it’s killed or captured over 100 insurgent “leaders.” Too bad it doesn’t have any clear idea what “leader” means. Any insurgent who commands another person apparently qualifies. And worse, by that criteria, Taliban and aligned insurgents have killed twice as many U.S. troops in the same time period.

We're losing a lot more "leaders" than they are? We're approaching 11 years in Afghanistan. That's several years too long.

Be sure to read the whole thing.