The Fall of Afghanistan

While we're coping with pandemic horrors here in the United States, we have to cope with the horror of our foreign policies failing as our decades-long military and political intervention into Afghanistan falls apart. 

To quote Mike Jason at the Atlantic (paywalled): 

Watching the rapid deterioration of the security situation in Afghanistan—the Taliban have captured a third of the country’s provincial capitals in the weeks since the U.S. military pulled its troops out—has evoked a feeling of déjà vu for me.

In 2005, I was an adviser to an Iraqi infantry battalion conducting counterinsurgency operations in and around Baghdad, one of the most violent parts of Iraq during one of the most violent periods in that conflict. It was difficult to have any hope at the time. I returned to Iraq in 2009, this time in Mosul, where my unit advised and supported two Iraqi-army divisions, one Iraqi-federal-police division, and thousands of local police officers. This time, I sensed more progress: Leaving Iraq in 2010, I felt we had done a great job, turning a corner and building a capable and competent security force. A year later, I found myself in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, recruiting and training Afghan police units and commandos. After nine months there, I again rotated home thinking we had done some good.

I would be proved wrong on both counts. In 2014, by then stationed at the Pentagon, I watched in dismay as the Iraqi divisions I’d helped train collapsed in a matter of days when faced with the Islamic State. Today, as the Taliban seizes terrain across Afghanistan, including in what was my area of operations, I cannot help but stop and reflect on my role. What did my colleagues and I get wrong? Plenty...

To quote John Cole (who served out there) at Balloon Juice:

What is happening right now in Afghanistan is horrifying. It’s awful. Tens of thousands of people will be slaughtered, the women and children of the area will be sent backwards in history hundreds of years, chaos and brutality and backwards ass theology will rule the day, and it will be awful for a long time to come. And it was all entirely predictable and completely inevitable...

We’ll see a lot of blame thrown at Joe Biden over the next couple of months, and no doubt right-wingers will blame him for “losing” Afghanistan, but most of it is bullshit. Are there some things that could possibly have been done better? Sure. Much of the bitching by our warrior class is focused on the timing of the withdrawal (often ignoring the fact that it was Trump who set the original date), saying we should have waited until the winter when the majority of the Taliban will be at home and it won’t be “the fighting season,” the name for what you and I know as summer and fall. And I suppose he could have. And then we would be reading all of these headlines next spring and summer instead of right now. That’s the thing about delaying the inevitable, it is, in fact, just a delay. This was going to happen no matter when we left and there is nothing anyone can say that will convince me otherwise...

I'd quote from Fred Kaplan at Slate, but he's behind a paywall I haven't subscribed to so all you get are the links. But he's pretty pissed and bummed as well.

So what the hell went wrong with American intervention in Afghanistan?

If you ask me, it all went wrong at the beginning when we charged into Afghanistan back in 2001.

We went into Afghanistan not for any humanitarian reason, not to stop the Taliban's horrific abuse of women. We went in because September 11 happened, Osama Bid Laden pulled off his big attack on the United States and wounded us far worse than any enemy nation ever could. And so wounded, and angry, and vicious, and blind, we charged into the country that was giving him safe haven in order to hunt him down and punish his extremist allies.

We went into Afghanistan out of revenge.

We didn't go in with a grand objective, and we certainly didn't go in with a coherent plan on how we were going to get out of Afghanistan in a timely fashion. We had no exit strategy in the first place.

Oh, our political leadership - George W. Bush's administration at the time - thought they had a plan: clear out the Taliban, kill Bin Laden, install a puppet regime that would perform like a westernized democracy (but really leave in place a corrupt autocrat), and get out. 

Except we never did any of that right.

We couldn't clear out the Taliban because the Taliban had allies right across the border in Pakistan, where they could hide out because Pakistan was technically an ally of the United States and we didn't have the political might to force Pakistan to abandon the Taliban to us.

We hunted Bin Laden alright, at least as far as Tora Bora, but then for some goddamn reason Dubya's administration let him slip away. It was left to the next administration under Obama to bring justice to one of the persons most responsible for 9/11, but by then it had been TEN YEARS during which our occupation of Afghanistan had turned into a quagmire far greater than Vietnam.

As for our nation-building efforts to stabilize a nation that had been literally The Graveyard of Empires for 1000 years, let's refer back to Mike Jason: 

From the very beginning, nearly two decades ago, the American military’s effort to advise and mentor Iraqi and Afghan forces was treated like a pickup game—informal, ad hoc, and absent of strategy. We patched together small teams of soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen, taught them some basic survival skills, and gave them an hour-long lesson in the local language before placing them with foreign units...

But from my tours in Iraq through to my time in Afghanistan, larger systemic problems were never truly addressed. We did not successfully build the Iraqi and Afghan forces as institutions. We failed to establish the necessary infrastructure that dealt effectively with military education, training, pay systems, career progression, personnel, accountability—all the things that make a professional security force. Rotating teams through tours of six months to a year, we could not resolve the vexing problems facing Iraq’s and Afghanistan’s armies and police: endemic corruption, plummeting morale, rampant drug use, abysmal maintenance, and inept logistics. We got really good at preparing platoons and companies to conduct raids and operate checkpoints, but little worked behind them...

Over these past 20 years, there have been many failings. We checked the box when it came to saying that we had trained our partners, spun a rosy narrative of progress, and perhaps prioritized the safety and well-being of our troops over the mission of buttressing partner capacity... We didn’t send the right people, prepare them well, or reward them afterward. We rotated strangers on tours of up to a year and expected them to build relationships, then replaced them. We were overly optimistic and largely made things up as we went along. We didn’t like oversight or tough questions from Washington, and no one really bothered to hold us accountable anyway. We had no capacity or experience with some of our tasks, and we stumbled...

In short: We failed to nation-build in Afghanistan because nobody at the political level - not in Washington DC and not in corrupt Kabul - took it serious enough to follow through. We got stuck going through the motions, posing for the cameras, cheering on the minor successes while sweeping the major disasters under the rugs.

Even shorter: We had no exit strategy.

Unspoken in all of this was how Bush the Lesser shifted focus away from Afghanistan onto the more "glorious" and desired target of overthrowing Saddam in Iraq. While we were still engaged on the ground in Afghanistan, our military under Rumsfeld - and pushed along by Dick Cheney (aka Halliburton's Best Bud) and other neoconservatives eager for war as a profiteering scam - pursued an invasion of Iraq that was under-manned and under-planned, and ended up becoming a quagmire just like Afghanistan did. But where the disasters in Iraq made the front pages - thanks to the Big Lies of WMDs that turned out to be fake - the disasters in Afghanistan got shunted to Page 16 of the newspapers and rarely talked about on the cable pundit shows: It all turned into a forgotten Shadow War that nobody cared about.

And Afghanistan turned into this Thing That Would Not Go Away for the administrations that followed Bush the Lesser's into the White House and Pentagon. Obama inherited this mess, and went through enough headaches evacuating Iraq that getting out of Afghanistan seemed impossible. He ended up pursuing a military agenda of getting after Taliban leadership with drone airstrikes, but it never broke the will of the Taliban itself. Like the Viet Cong did to LBJ and Nixon, the Taliban realized they didn't have to beat the United States, they just have to outlast us...

Leading up to trump taking over in 2016. A blustering amateur at foreign policy and nowhere near being "smarter than the generals," trump made the big show of figuring out a ceasefire plan with the Taliban in 2020... which was so full of loopholes that the Taliban are exploiting in 2021 as they retake most of the major cities. The peace deal was more trump's attempt to win a Nobel Peace Prize and win over voters for 2020 than it was a serious attempt to broker a lasting peace in a part of the world that's known only war for generations.

Again, we had no exit strategy.

We were blinded by rage when we invaded Afghanistan in 2001, and we are now stumbling out blind and drunk 20 years later with nothing to show for it but the tears and blood of the Taliban's victims.

Are we doing enough now to help evacuate the thousands of Afghanis - especially women - who are going to suffer under Taliban rule? Because we can't stop them from retaking that nation. It's no longer a question of "If" but of "When."

And are we ever going to learn our lessons as John Cole asks of us:

...There is a reason terms like “mission creep” exist. There is a reason when I was a young E-3 my tank commander and Troop CO gave me reading lists, and included on those lists were books like Bernard Fall’s Street Without Joy and A Bright Shining Lie and All Quiet on the Western Front and About Face and so many others that sit on my bookshelf to this day. There were lessons to be learned. And we didn’t learn them, myself included. I will grapple with my own culpability the rest of my life.

And I know that my seeming nonchalant writing here about this can seem smarmy and irritating, and I hope that is not what you are taking from this. It’s horrible. I feel terrible for all those innocents. I feel terrible for all our guys who served there and are dealing with trauma and injuries, barely getting their lives back together finally, only to turn on the tv, stare at the horrible images unfolding while glancing at the scarred stumps where their legs and arms used to be, realizing everything they gave everything for has turned out to be nothing.

But while this horror is occurring right now, we can still take advantage of the opportunity to learn this lesson once more. Maybe this will save us a couple generations of needless military adventurism, like Vietnam did before we went and fucked up our memories in Gulf War I and thought war was easy again. Stop listening to the war pigs. Ignore them. Stop listening to the Kagans and Ledeens and the Cheneys and the Kristols and the Tom Cottons and the Friedmans and that one curly hair young twat name Michael something or other who was all over the tv in the late aughts. Don’t let this happen again...

It's all tragic, there's nothing we can do - other than to continue pumping in more bodies and spilling more blood - to stop it, and we're likely setting ourselves up for the next cycle of international terrorism that will drive us back into roaring rampages flattening the countryside and solving nothing.

Even Charlie Wilson saw this coming and nobody else cared enough to stop it coming.

WE FUCKED UP THE ENDGAME.

Update: Not more than thirty minutes after I posted this, reports are now out that the Afghan President has fled the country, and the Taliban are in Kabul itself. This is a nightmare.

Biden Going Big

As we go past the official "First 100 Days" of a Biden Presidency, the common refrain in the Beltway media is how "Biden is going big" in terms of pushing an aggressive economic agenda rivalling the New Deal for ambition and scope.

To Elia Nilsen at Vox.com: 

The Biden administration’s theory of policy so far is to go big. The same goes for its politics.

Taken together, President Joe Biden’s $2.25 trillion American Jobs Plan and newly introduced $1.8 trillion American Families Plan come out to slightly over $4 trillion in proposed new spending. It’s an enormous investment in American job creation; the last bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed in 2015 clocked in at about $305 billion — about one-thirteenth the size of Biden’s proposed plan. And Obama’s $800 billion stimulus plan of 2009 was about one-fifth of Biden’s plan, not even taking into account the $1.9 trillion in Covid-19 relief that has already been signed into law.

That sheer amount of proposed federal funding is meant to do a lot of things, but the main goal is to get as many jobs to as many people in as many voter constituencies as possible. Under Biden’s plan, infrastructure no longer calls to mind images of white men in hard hats; it includes working mothers, home health aides who care for the nation’s elderly, and workers of color across the nation. Women and people of color were crucial to Biden’s presidential win, and they are also crucial elements in his jobs plan...

To EJ Dionne at the Washington Post (watch out for paywall) Biden is harking back to the Democratic glory days of FDR and LBJ:

President Biden on Wednesday night went big, populist, folksy, hopeful, urgent — and bipartisan and partisan at the same time.

Addressing a pandemic-reduced gathering of lawmakers at the Capitol, Biden proposed a sweeping program of change that would create four more years of free schooling, expand child care and family leave, and attempt to beat back climate change through large infrastructure investments...

Biden welcomed the help of Republicans again and again, but he took clear aim at their favored economic doctrines. “My fellow Americans, trickle-down economics has never worked,” he declared. “It’s time to grow the economy from the bottom up and middle-out.”

And he took a victory lap on progress against covid-19, proclaiming that widespread vaccinations were offering “a dose of hope.”

This address wasn’t exactly the New Deal or the Great Society, but it was equally ambitious. Biden, reassuringly unradical with his plain, avuncular demeanor, is bidding to create a new common sense rooted in political lessons that Democrats have learned the hard way...

Going big - pushing for ambitious national programs on scale the United States hasn't seen since the 1960s - is more than just pushing back against the economic malaise we find ourselves in thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic: This is basically pushback against the last 40 years of the Far Right's "glorious" Pax Reaganica, where Big Government was "evil", deficits from massive tax cuts starved our public sector into a broken mess, and the rich got richer while the rest of us suffered.

This is Biden playing not only to the national audience - offering them a way out of low wages and little hope - but playing to a liberal and Progressive base eager to change the direction of the nation away from massive inequality the Far Right has been creating.  

The good news for Biden and the Democrats is how well the public is responding to these proposals. Back to Nilsen at Vox:

A range of polling shows that Biden’s expansive view of what counts as infrastructure has fairly broad support among the American public.

A recent NBC News poll found that 59 percent of respondents supported Biden’s American Jobs Plan. A recent Vox and Data for Progress poll found that 68 percent of likely voters support the plan. And a Monmouth University poll released Monday found 68 percent of respondents supported Biden’s infrastructure bill, with another 64 percent supportive of the ideas in Biden’s American Families Plan, which aims to make child care, higher education, and health care more affordable.

As Republicans and Democrats argue over the semantics of what constitutes “infrastructure,” Monmouth polling director Patrick Murray told Vox that Biden’s broad brush does not appear to be turning off voters so far.

For instance, Vox and Data for Progress polling found that a majority of likely voters of all parties supported Biden’s proposal of putting $400 billion into bringing down the costs of long-term care: 88 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of independents, and 55 percent of Republicans support the idea. And recent polling from Politico and Morning Consult shows that a large majority of Black voters support Biden’s pledge to increase housing options for low-income Americans; 80 percent of Black voters support that measure, and 58 percent “strongly” support it.

In other words, voters seem to care more about things that directly impact their lives than they do about whether these things meet a strict definition of “infrastructure...”

In short: People are back into believing that government can be a positive force in their lives, generating better jobs and better wages and better lives. The "Government is the Problem" meme is dying off, much to the horror of the Far Right clinging to the strands of political power.

But why exactly is this happening?

Isn't Biden supposed to be a Centrist, a post-LBJ pro-business Democrat who wasn't so great on issues of race and women's rights or on liberal issues in general, who tacked to the middle in order to push bipartisan deals through a Congress that is no longer the bipartisan haven he knew?

Well, kind of. This is all due to Biden's Presidential Character of being a Congenial Passive-Positive at the head of a Big Tent political party.

This isn't from my 2019 review of Biden's Character - where I worried Biden's easy-going nature made him vulnerable to Republican treachery - but from my 2020 followup that found Biden was doing a good job of building "the Big Tent" coalition of Democratic Moderates and Progressives. In fact, let's go to the direct quote from Aubrey Immelman about Biden's skills in forging that Big Tent:

Leaders with Biden’s personality profile are likely to exhibit an interpersonal leadership style, characterized by flexibility, compromise, and an emphasis on teamwork. The general tenor of a Biden presidency likely will be conciliatory, which could render a prospective President Biden vulnerable to manipulation by pressure groups and handicap him in negotiations or conflicts with foreign adversaries...

In short: Biden is someone willing to dance with those that brung him (got this from Molly Ivins). But where Immelman - and myself - might view that openness as a vulnerability to manipulation, there IS another way to view it as Biden building his teamwork between the various factions of his own party. To make that Big Tent work and push a broad, Big-Fucking-Deal agenda in a successful fashion.

Biden is pushing a big Progressive/Liberal agenda in the mold of FDR's New Deal because it's what his own Democratic ranks want. He will be more congenial and flexible with them, even as he tries to reach out to obstructionist Republicans, because he is a Democrat and they are Democrats and this is their Big Tent and that's how he'll roll, son. As long as Republicans refuse to barter or deal with Biden in any sane fashion, Biden's agenda won't reflect their interests, doubling down on their obstruction but also their obsolescence as Biden happily bulldozes forward.

Edit: I just found this article on MSNBC by Medhi Hasan and need to include it here as emphasis:

This was definitely how Biden behaved, at times, during the Democratic primaries. He never pretended to be at the head of a transformational movement, a la his former boss, Barack Obama. He didn’t enter office backed by a loyal cult, as his predecessor, Donald Trump, did.

Yet he and his administration have spent these first 100 days embracing the progressive wing of his party, along with labor unions, youth groups, climate campaigners and sundry activists. “Progressives say they’re being included, heard and respected by the Biden White House,” Politico reported in February.

Compare and contrast this outreach with the Obama era, in which White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed people on the “professional left” who “ought to be drug-tested,” and White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel denounced liberal activists as "f---ing retarded.”

Biden, on the other hand, proudly invoked Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ support for the American Rescue Plan in the immediate aftermath of its passage through the Senate. His chief of staff, Ronald Klain, has been dubbed the “left whisperer,” having become “a point of rapid response for many on the left who are angling to get within earshot of the president,” The Daily Beast wrote.

Real access has been matched by real impact. Does anyone really believe the Biden who launched his presidential campaign in 2019 looking for a “middle ground” on climate issues would have committed to cutting U.S. carbon emissions in half by 2030 without pressure from groups like the Sunrise Movement...?

Here's the thing: Biden is listening. It's what Congenial characters do. And it's how he builds his world around him.

This IS what I wrote before about Biden: He's the Democratic Party answer to Ronald Reagan. Not Reagan the hard-core Conservative, but Reagan the Uniter, Reagan the Big Tent builder. Reagan was able to pull together divided Republican factions into a cohesive whole, dominating the electoral cycle of the 1980s in a way that only a Passive-Positive Congenial figure could. For all the damage Reagan did as President to the liberal foundations of 20th Century America, you have to admit his administration oversaw a massive, active period of policy changes and formation you wouldn't expect from a "passive" leader.

Biden can be the same way as President overseeing a massive wave of policy changes, only in favor of that liberal foundation that can be re-forged for the 21st Century America.

All Biden has to do is break loose the remaining obstructionist logjams - sadly enough, from Democratic Senator Centrists unwilling to see this moment in history for what it can be - and get his American Families Plan working.

This can be a big moment. Biden knows it. He knows it'll be good for his Democrats and it'll be good for his fellow Americans.

Any day now. All he has to do is get a few more Democrats to join this Big Tent moment and let it roll forth.

The trumpian Failure at Presidential Accountability

(update 3/16/20: dammit as always when I least expect it, Batocchio adds me as a link to Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up. Sigh. I DID NOT HAVE CAKE OR PIE READY... nevermind, just hope you enjoy the site, please leave valid and life-affirming comments, and learn the Vulcan greeting salute because handshakes are no longer safe)

Still dealing with a number of real-life issues - things are changing at work, not to mention how my work at a public library is going to get affected by the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic - to where the best I can blog about right now is WHAT THE EVERLOVING F-CK DID trump SAY NOW???

This past week we witnessed trump's White House try to control the messaging on the likely spread of COVID-19 while doing little to nothing about pressing for more testing kits and isolation policies to reduce the risk of that spread. He performed a televised speech to allay fears... during which he ad-libbed falsehoods that caused more panic than calm.

By trying to play to the concerns of Wall Street, trump actually caused two of the greatest stock market crashes in financial history within three days of each other. And as this all went on, most Americans went on a panic run at the grocery store buying up all the hand sanitizer (they should have bought more soap, that helps better) and toilet paper on the shelves (to be fair, if you end up stuck at home for more than two weeks if a quarantine becomes necessary, you'd want the security of reliable bathroom trips too).

So for this Friday, in order to present himself as in charge and in control, trump scheduled a big televised press conference, timed exactly just as the stock markets were closing... just so he could end up showing how little control he had and even worse openly admit he was in charge of nothing.

Think I'm exaggerating? Here's the ABC News clip about it:

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all." Doesn't matter what he's avoiding responsibility for, the fact that he's AVOIDING responsibility ought to anger every American living and past.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, RESPONSIBILITY FOR SERVING AND PROTECTING THIS NATION IS IN THE JOB DESCRIPTION.

Let's look back at all the Presidents confronted with the demands of responsibility.

Harry S. Truman, a personal fave, famously had a desk sign:


This photo of Harry S. Truman Library and Museum is courtesy of Tripadvisor

"The BUCK STOPS HERE!" This is now a required meme for anyone sitting in the Oval Office (except of course for the cowardly current occupant who dares not utter it).

Here's somebody that trump won't like to hear from: President Barack Obama taking responsibility for intelligence failures back in 2010. Via Josh Gerstein at Politico:

President Barack Obama on Thursday accepted responsibility for intelligence shortcomings that led to a failed Christmas Day bombing plot on a Detroit-bound airliner, saying, “Ultimately, the buck stops with me.

“As president, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people, and when the system fails, it is my responsibility,” Obama said...

Obama’s buck-stops-here message marks a change in tone from earlier statements in which Obama and other officials repeatedly noted that the watch-listing system that failed to flag the suspect, Umar AbdulMatallab, was put in place under the Bush administration.

But while Obama promised to bring more accountability into the counterterrorism system, he indicated he had no plans to fire anyone involved in the missteps prior to Christmas.

“It appears this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies. … I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer,” Obama said...

Want more?

While this isn't a quote that happened during his Presidency, Dwight D. "Ike" Eisenhower spoke of responsibility serving as the Allied Commander overseeing the Western European theater. For the Normandy Invasion he wrote two letters. The First Letter congratulated the Allied troops and exhorted them to victory. The Second Letter was in case the landings failed (given the harsh weather and stout German defenses, this was a legitimate concern):

"Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops... My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone."

The letter wasn't needed: D-Day was a bloody but successful landing and led to the Liberation of France within months. Less than a year later, the Nazis fell between the pincers of Ike's forces in the West and the Soviets to the East. However, that letter highlighted character of the man: Eisenhower accepted the responsibility of leadership... and the people knew it. That's one reason "I Like Ike" worked as a slogan, that's a reason why Americans elected him President.

So here comes trump, facing a global pandemic health care crisis that requires bold thinking, getting out ahead of the problem, staying in touch with all players to make sure things get done properly and to the good of all.

Unfortunately, trump's spent the last three years dismantling the government systems, understaffing agencies if not outright sabotaging them. Redirecting efforts towards projects that won't help in this crisis or any other. He oversaw the dismantling of a National Security panel tasked with coordinating pandemic responses, which left much of the federal and state agencies in the dark on who was in charge during the first months of this crisis (starting back in December 2019).

trump's response to all of this? Shifting blame on Obama instead of admitting his own involvement. Arguing that it's Obama's fault there's not enough test kits for this crisis when it should have been something trump's administration ordered done the minute it became clear - mid-January - that the coronavirus was going global. Like Obama would have known back in 2016 this particular virus was going to erupt three years after he left office.

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all."

This isn't even the first time trump has shifted blame in his life. He avoided accountability for his many bankruptcies, he avoided accountability by settling out of his many fraud trials, he avoided accountability for his destruction of a sports league, he avoided accountability for every broken promise and every theft made. And these were all before he ran for the Presidency.

"I'm not taking any responsibility at all."

Here's the one thing required by law in the Constitution, written out as the Oath one must take when entering the Oval Office:

"I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Those words REQUIRE the oath-taker to execute the office of the Presidency, to preserve protect and defend the Constitution of the United States which means ensuring the safety of the People - all of US - who keep that Constitution standing. These are words, this is an Oath that REQUIRES responsibility out of the person who swears to it.

trump won't take that responsibility. he's openly admitting to it now, something a lot of us knew for years and we saw this moment coming.

We're in a major crisis this month and the person most responsible to lead us through it won't be responsible at all.

We are so very royally extremely sickeningly fucked.

Predicting Character (again): The Jocularity of Joe Biden

Okay, that WAS the title was I going to use back in 2015 for the 2016 Presidential campaign. Gods, the time flies...

It's been almost four years since then, so has anything really changed for Joe Biden? In terms of biography, his career is something that reaches back as far as 1974 (!) and covers a lot of ground. If we can refer to Evan Osnos' New Yorker article on him from 2014 (highlighting character traits):

Over the years, Biden has acquired a singular place in the pop culture of American politics. In a White House that privileges self-containment, Biden ambles between exuberant and self-defeating. He was barely in the West Wing before the Onion declared, in a headline, “shirtless Biden washes trans am in white house driveway,” establishing a theme—“Amtrak Joe,” the hell-raiser at the end of the bar—that is so enduring that it obscures the fact that he is a lifelong teetotaller. (Too many alcoholics in his family, he says. He grew up sharing a room with his mother’s brother, and recalled of the experience, “Even as kids, we noticed Uncle Boo-Boo drank a bit heavily.”)

Instead of raging against the indignities of the Vice-Presidency, Biden luxuriates in the job. Perched in his chair during the State of the Union address, peering down on his former congressional colleagues, Biden makes a pistol out of his finger and thumb, and blasts away, winking and gunning with no evident irony... The full package—the Ray-Ban aviators, the shameless schmalz, the echoes of the Fonz—has never endeared him to the establishment, but it lends him an air of authenticity that is rare in his profession. It has also produced a whiff of cult appeal, such that his image now has more in common with Betty White than with John Boehner. In May, after a teenager invited Biden to her prom, he replied with a corsage and a handwritten note encouraging her to “enjoy your prom as much as I did mine.” On Twitter, people went affectionately berserk.

Other than the President, nobody in the White House attracts more divergent public appraisals than Biden. In a column before the 2012 election, Bill Keller, the former executive editor of the Times, urged Obama to drop Biden as a running mate and replace him with the Secretary of State at the time, Hillary Clinton. (The campaign studied the idea, too, until polls showed that it would make no difference.) ...That summer, a survey by the Pew Research Center and the Washington Post asked people to come up with a single word to describe Biden; the most frequent responses, nearly equal in number, were “good” and “idiot.” Republicans rejoice in casting Biden as the consummate pol, careless, blustery, and a fogy. “Vice-President Joe Biden’s in town,” Senator Ted Cruz said, at a dinner for South Carolina conservatives last year. “You know the great thing is you don’t even need a punch line? You just say that and people laugh.”

And, yet, in the final month of the campaign, Biden reminded everyone why he was on the ticket. After Obama’s disastrously muted performance in a debate against Romney, the Vice-President prepared to face his counterpart, Paul Ryan, the then forty-two-year-old Wisconsin congressman, who has the eyes of a foal. Onstage, Biden wore a lupine grin. He guffawed, taunted, and interrupted. (When Ryan said, “Jack Kennedy lowered tax rates and creates growth,” Biden cut him off: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy!”) The theatrics drove some viewers crazy, but the campaign was thrilled; Biden had arrested the slide, and when Obama prepared for his next debate advisers reportedly told him to channel some of Biden’s pugnacious energy. In the months that followed, the President deployed Biden again, this time to Capitol Hill, where he tapped relationships built during thirty-six years in the Senate to strike a deal that averted the fiscal cliff one day before the deadline. By the end of 2012, the White House was extending him the ritual courtesy of hailing the power of its No. 2. A headline in The Atlantic asked, “the most influential vice president in history...?”

That last bit is a bit of a historical joke itself: Over the years, most Veeps had no influence at all, not until the Cold War against the Soviets where the chain of succession required better informed VPs. It is also a rebuke of the previous Veep ahead of Biden - Dick Cheney - who *did* wield incredible influence in Bush the Lesser's administration to where historians (and myself) consider Cheney a shadow President.

Back to the bio:

In contrast to Dick Cheney, Biden has made his mark by reinforcing the President’s supremacy, rather than maneuvering around it. “Cheney’s influence, while significant, was always overstated, and Cheney got dialled back as the Administration went further along,” David Rothkopf, the editor of Foreign Policy, said. “While Biden has been a strong voice on foreign policy, it has never been asserted, as it was about Cheney, that he was trying to advance his own agenda. Even when there were differences of opinion, Biden was seen as being loyal and supportive of the President...”

Leon Panetta recalled listening to Biden work the phone at the White House: “You didn’t know whether he was talking to a world leader or the head of the political party in Delaware.” Biden has an inexhaustible appetite for “the connect”—the rope line, the hand cupped around the back of the head, the eye contact with a skeptic in the crowd. “He kind of brings them in and hugs them, verbally, and sometimes physically,” Secretary of State John Kerry told me. “He’s a very tactile politician, and it’s all real. None of it’s put on.” ...To a degree that is rare among politicians, Marttila said, “the process of meeting people energizes him.” Biden is such a close talker that he occasionally bumps his forehead into you mid-chat, a gesture so minor that it’s notable only when you try to picture Barack Obama doing the same thing.

The full Biden plays better around the Mediterranean and in Latin America than in, say, England and Germany. A former British official who attended White House meetings with Biden said, “He’s a bit like a spigot that you can turn on and can’t turn off.” He added, “For all of the genuine charm, it is frustrating that you do feel as if he doesn’t leave enough oxygen in the room to get your points across, particularly for those who are polite and don’t interrupt..."

Getting, and staying, “in the deal” is one of Biden’s favorite ways to describe relevance, and he has elevated the acquisition and maintenance of respect to the level of ideology. Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr., is the son of a car salesman. His father had been wealthy as a young man, but business soured; vestiges of his brush with prosperity were a polo mallet in the closet and an acute sensitivity to signs of disrespect. Once, at an office Christmas party, the boss tossed a bucket of silver dollars onto the dance floor and watched the salesmen scramble to pick them up. “Dad sat frozen for a second,” his son wrote, in a 2007 memoir called “Promises to Keep.” Then “he stood up, took my mom’s hand, and walked out of the party,” losing his job in the process. Biden’s mother, Catherine Finnegan Biden, reinforced the hyper-alertness to status. “She told us, from the time we were little kids: Nobody is better than you,” his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, said. “And you’re no better than anybody else...”

There are also the tragedies in Biden's personal life that define a lot of the habits he sticks with to this day:

In the weeks before he was sworn in, Biden worked out of a borrowed office in Washington. His sister was helping him get organized. One day, his brother Jimmy called and asked to talk to her. She turned white. “There’s been a slight accident,” she said. Biden sensed something in her voice; he felt it in his chest. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” he said. (His wife) Neilia had been driving with the kids to get a Christmas tree when their station wagon was hit by a tractor-trailer. Neilia and (daughter) Naomi were killed. Beau, age three, and Hunter, age two, were hospitalized. Biden said later that he considered suicide. He could not imagine taking his seat in the Senate, but senior members urged him to try Washington for six months. “They had lost their mom and their sister, so they cannot lose their father, and that’s what made him get out of bed in the morning,” Valerie said. She moved in and lived with her brother and the boys for four years. He never moved from Wilmington. And so began the ninety-minute commute each way on Amtrak, the ritual that would become a fixture of his life...

(After disastrous behavior from his first Presidential campaign and bad choices during his Senate Judiciary Chair duties) Biden worked hard to rebuild his reputation. In 1994, he led the effort to pass the Violence Against Women Act, which heightened protections against abusive partners, and helped him win back the support of women’s groups. Biden always liked the old bipartisan courtesies in the Senate, and he mourned the arrival of more combative members who “really had no respect for the institution of the Senate,” he told me. “By that, I mean they wanted to make it the House. I’ll never forget the first time I heard someone on the floor of the Senate refer to the President as Bubba.” Biden’s friendships were so varied that he was the only senator who was asked to speak at funerals for both Strom Thurmond, the former segregationist, and Frank Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat, who called Biden “the only Catholic Jew...”

Biden became an envoy to an implacable Congress. David Plouffe, one of Obama’s political advisers, saw Biden’s mission as a question: “Where is the deal space?” His belief in compromise over ideology put him closer to the President. “They really have the same mind-set there,” Plouffe said. Biden held on to his locker at the Senate gym, where he liked to kibbitz. He coached Sonia Sotomayor before her Supreme Court confirmation hearings. When the White House needed to pass the $787-billion stimulus plan, Emanuel asked Biden to call six Republican senators. He got yes votes from three of them, and the bill passed by three votes. He became a willing deal-maker. Too willing, in the eyes of Harry Reid and other Democratic lawmakers, who faulted Biden for not driving a harder bargain in the fiscal negotiations...

There's a lot more at Osnos' biography, so I encourage you to read the whole thing.

So how does this translate for Crazy Joe Biden?

Joe Biden - Vice President, Delaware
Positives: Extensive, comprehensive political career from nearly 30 years in the Senate to Vice-Presidency. Knows as much about legislative procedures as anyone on the ticket (definitely way more than trump). Has staked out the "Establishment" Centrist position and the "Moderate White Male" role in the horse race, giving him a comfortable portion of the voter base (this is why most of the other moderate White guys running for the Dem ticket are polling under 2 percent). Is already well-positioned to appeal to non-party voters that trump is clearly losing through his partisan (and racist) governance. Is the biggest defender - outside of Obama himself - of the ACA/Obamacare reforms which many Americans now view as the baseline of healthcare (which makes him a more comfortable vote vs. the more radical Dems promoting wholesale changes with "Medicare For All"). Has a personal biography - personal brush with death, dying son which motivates Biden's healthcare ideas - that few Republicans can mock (trump will still try). Basically he's running on his association with Obama who is STILL the most respected man in the United States, and while coat-tails are hard to prove this is a legacy campaign that can attract all the voters from 2012 that made states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin go Blue.

Negatives: This is his third serious attempt at the Presidency, and even on his third try is making gaffes and miscues that would have - and did - sunk his first two tries. Is seriously not a good campaigner on the national stage. Is running a Centrist bipartisan campaign during a primary when he OUGHT to be appealing to the more left-leaning voter base. Has openly stated he thinks once trump is out of the White House that the Republicans - even Obstructionist "Moscow Mitch" - will regain their senses and behave themselves (insert headdesking here). His platform boils down to "I'm not trump" (which also counts as a positive because there's at least 65 million people who will vote on that point alone). Does not necessarily flip any battleground states. Will get confronted on his age and personal health (even though he's barely older than trump), and is already showing signs of not keeping his facts straight.

Chances: Surprisingly steady. Where his off-color tone-deaf "jokes" - and willfully blind pandering to a bipartisanship that no longer exists - would have killed a lesser candidate's campaign, Biden's been coasting on two key traits: 1) Enough people know him from his Veep days serving with Obama to trust him, 2) and he's not leaning too far Left on the electoral spectrum to scare off the more moderate Dem voters who usually sit out these primaries. Even after getting pummeled by Harris in the first debate (where Biden lost support in the double digits) he regained those numbers and is back in the high 30s of the polling numbers. His second debate didn't create any further disasters, which for him is a major step forward and solidified his lead. Thing is, this is a long primary process and anything between now and March 2020 - when things heat up - could still crash his momentum.

Character Chart: Biden's more noticeable acts in office - both in the Senate and in the Veep's office - points to a Congenial nature. He's passed an extraordinary number of bills while in the Senate - benefits of a long career there - and during that time worked with a large number of both Democrats and Republicans to get them passed. That required knowing how to barter for votes, which requires either an Active-Negative view - like LBJ, who understood power and how to horse-trade for it - or a Passive-Positive view that required checking your Ego at the door and doing what was best to get the deals done.

This explains, partly, why he's convinced that a more bipartisan Senate/Congress is possible if he wins the Presidency in 2020: Biden still thinks of himself as a Senator, as part of a select clubhouse that despite political opposition and ambitions still share the same workspace.

It may explain why Obama picked him to serve as Vice-President: Biden was not only the counter-balance to Obama's weakness with inexperience in 2008, but Biden was a deal-maker who knew how Congress worked and could help Obama pass legislation like healthcare reform that required such skills. (The Congenial nature would also mask any personal ambitions that most politicians have, which gave Obama the room to grow into the role of national leader without a "mentor" hogging the same spotlight) Unlike the more ambitious Hillary - or most other choices Obama could have gone with as Veep - an Active-Positive like Obama could have lived with the likes of Biden without worrying about internal power struggles.

If you want the simplest, easiest-to-understand description of him: Joe Biden is the Democratic Party's answer to Ronald Reagan. The affable elder who can draw in a big tent of party voters and not upset the independent/moderate voters needed to make that tent bigger.

This explains why Biden's polling keeps leveling up instead of sinking down as the primaries drag on. Democratic voters, having been burned in 2016 by the loss of moderate-leaning Midwest/Rust Belt voters who flipped from Obama to trump, may be terrified of supporting more proactive, progressive options and want the most likable, most "electable" candidate they know. And they know Joe: Perceived in public opinion as the wacky uncle / comic sidekick to the more professional, cooler Obama. One of the more shocking polling numbers is the support among Black voters (especially Black women voters) that Biden currently enjoys. Even after getting burned on his busing stance by an actual Black Woman campaigning for the office, Biden is still the preferred choice because he's the more likable choice.

And this is in spite of the reality - something I've noted before - that Biden himself isn't all that charismatic or memorable.

Which is where the concerns kick in by the other factions within the Democratic party worried that Biden may win the nomination but then campaign poorly against a dark force like trump and lose that November. trump may not be an effective debater, but as 2016 proved the debates are almost meaningless anymore. What will matter to voters in the booths when the choice has to be made is "Will this person lead?" Granted, a lot of Americans have seen trump in action and know damn well he isn't leading he's destroying, but can Biden prove a better choice?

Biden is insanely conciliatory towards a Republican party that has shown harsh partisan behavior towards both the Democrats and the nation ever since Obama was sworn into office in 2009. There is every possibility that if the Republicans retain the Senate (and worse, win back the House) they can easily refuse to work with a Biden administration, even to the point of refusing to appoint his Cabinet and judicial nominations outright. This is not a position that can win over a lot of Democratic primary voters who have only known McConnell's obstructionist ways over that time period, but is also not a position that can win over moderate voters who want things done.

It's not that the voters will stick with trump in this situation, but that they might not show up to vote (again, but for slightly different reasons) at all. Which can hurt the down-ballot votes, etc. etc. Biden is not that safe a choice, unless the Democratic Party across the entire voter base is on board with him (and with the BernieBros already threatening to no-show against anyone NOT Bernie, this is a problem).

These are concerns, not great ones, but they need being answered well before the Convention should Biden win the primaries: He'll need to select a near-perfect Veep for the ticket one that can appease enough Progressives, and he will need to agree to a more left-leaning platform than he already has (which may mean agreeing to a Medicare-For-Many compromise), AND he will need to push hard (the whole party has to) on a campaign to flip enough Senate seats to avoid outright obstructionism. Unfortunately, Passive-Positive types like to work in a comfort zone, and some of these efforts may burst that particular bubble to where Biden won't campaign better than he needs to.

If he wins, Biden will also have to confront a lot of problems that most Passive-Positives aren't happy to confront. trump has already dismantled much of the operations of the Executive branch, probably to the point of a full rebuild of many agencies. Foreign policy issues have to fight through the toxic environments trump has created with almost all of our allies (on the bright side, those allies will be happy to get ANYBODY not trump and may forgive a few bumps while re-establishing relations). Biden would have to cope with the reality that his faith in a bipartisan Congress won't really be there when he starts working.

One other concern will be how he sets up his own White House. The potential for inviting in some of the more unsavory types - not only corrupt power brokers among Democrats but also corrupt Republicans Biden is likely to invite to create a diverse administration - will be high. While a lot of Passive-Positive Presidents (Grant, Harding, Reagan, Dubya) end up presiding over corrupt administrations - because they bring in friends or party hacks who abuse the President's trust - there is a good chance Biden won't rule over such an administration. There have been Pass-Pos leaders like Taft who worked as reasonable and relatively scandal-free leaders. A lot depends on who Biden brings with him, not only his Veep choice but also his Chief of Staff, his Cabinet, and any Congressional allies he relies on to get an agenda passed.

As a personal note: I've made a personal preference already - Harris, followed by Warren - but in all likelihood I will support the Democratic nominee in 2020. Biden will NOT worry me as much as this article may seem - I am throwing out there a lot of hypotheticals anyway - but I do worry about the poor campaign performance. At some point, the gaffes become inexcusable and the loss of general voter support could happen. I just want the best possible Democratic candidate winning in 2020. I'm not entirely sure that's Joe.

Next Up On Predicting Character: ...Sigh. Yes, I *have* to give him a fair shake...

Acts of Hypocrisy From America's Greatest Monster

While trump is a nightmarish monster rampaging across the countryside, I would argue that Mitch McConnell is the greatest evil our nation has known since the 1800s.

Because McConnell knows exactly what he's doing: Obstructing and breaking the political system to where it favors only himself and his party, and to Hell with the rest of the world.

The most obvious sin Mitch committed in his tenure as Senate Majority Leader was to block President Obama's nomination for the Supreme Court in 2016, when Justice Scalia suddenly died to leave a vacancy. Mitch's excuse for SCOTUS-blocking Obama was "Well, it's an election year and we should let the American People decide who should fill that judicial vacancy" even though there was no written law or legal code proscribing such a move. The GOP tried pointing the blame onto then Vice President Biden, who during his Senate career in 1992 blocked Bush the Elder from filling lower court vacancies under the same excuse. Problem was (and still is), Mitch and the Republicans were the ones pulling the trigger on this particular scheme. They had no genuine legal excuse to pull that stunt.

As I wrote back then:

He's essentially arguing that President Obama no longer has any political authority to fill a Supreme Court vacancy. Even though - by law - Obama is still President of the United States until January 2017 when his successor gets sworn in.

Dear Mitch McConnell, let this amateur historian of the American Constitution explain a little thing: The American people ALREADY HAVE A VOICE in the selection of the next SCOTUS Justice. THEY VOTED BARACK OBAMA TO DO THE JOB BACK IN 2008 AND AGAIN IN 2012 TO DO THIS VERY THING. Nothing in the Constitution says the President should be prevented from doing his job the last year of his tenure. There. Done. Explained to you, you obstructionist bastard...

But it didn't matter in the end, did it? For all my hopes that McConnell would waver or that the voters would reject him and the Republicans in 2016, in the end that sonofabitch won: He got what he wanted in a trump electoral victory, which ensured the Supreme Court would remain under Far Right Conservative control.

So here we are, three years later coming into another Presidential Election Cycle, only this time the President Loser of the Popular Vote is donald trump and a Republican. So what does Mitch think should happen if there's a Supreme Court vacancy during 2020?

Via Russell Berman at The Atlantic:

With four words and a proud smile, the Senate majority leader this week confirmed what those who have watched him closely have long understood to be true: If a vacancy on the high court occurs in the election year of 2020, the Republican majority that McConnell leads would vote to confirm President Donald Trump’s nominee. “Oh, we’d fill it,” McConnell said in response to a what-if question about the Supreme Court during an appearance in his home state of Kentucky.

Mitch is grinning over this because THIS time if there's a sudden vacancy it'll likely be a Democratic-nominated jurist, giving the Republicans a chance to make the Court a 6-to-3 supermajority. Because THIS time he doesn't have to worry about Obama's legacy, only his own.

McConnell’s longer-term goal—indeed, his bid for a lasting legacy as Senate leader—is no secret. His aim is to install as many conservatives to lifetime federal judgeships, and in particular on the Supreme Court, as possible. He is well on his way to success in this area, having prioritized judicial nominations over legislation during Trump’s first two years in office. Key to the effort has been McConnell’s embrace of shrewd, arguably ruthless tactics. After blocking Garland in 2016, he didn’t bat an eye in swiftly deciding to nuke the Senate’s 60-vote threshold for judicial nominations in the face of a Democratic filibuster of Judge Neil Gorsuch a year later. In 2018, McConnell steered Brett Kavanaugh to confirmation despite multiple accusations of sexual misconduct  against the appellate judge; the majority leader held the vote weeks before a midterm election that could have handed control of the Senate to the Democrats.

This is all that matters to McConnell: Skewing as much of the federal system to a conservative ideology even at the expense of needed legislation and Congressional action. He has burned every in-house courtesy, he has rewritten every legislative norm, he has mocked the entire nation in this quest to leave a Far Right legacy for an era that will likely skew more Progressive Left.

Mitch is essentially making sure our nation remains in a state of social/economic/political civil war for the next 40 years.

This should be carved into his tombstone no matter how many times his family tries to repair the vandalism: The Deepest Pit of Hell Is Not Enough For Mitch McConnell.

Where Zero Sum in Breaking Treaties Leaves The United States At Zero

So for my birthday today, the Shitgibbon decided to shit on international relations by having the United States drop its commitment to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that severely limited Iran's capability to build nuclear weapons.

This is in spite of lack of evidence that Iran is cheating on the deal (whenever they came to a point of breaking one of the rules, they reported the problem and complied), in spite of the evidence that trump and his hard-line foreign policy "experts" (cough Bolton cough) want war regardless of the facts or the cost, in spite of how our nation's most prominent allies (France, Germany and the UK) are against this move.

From my perspective, this is really happening because:

1) trump is obsessed with destroying Obama's Presidential accomplishments. Not just by eliminating Obama's executive orders and turning back regulations set by Obama's administration, but by decimating every foreign policy success Obama gained. The JCPOA deal Obama worked out - despite heavy Republican interference - was an international accord that signaled America's strength and the nation's commitment to reducing nuclear conflict, and did so sharing our stance with our allies in a way to keep those alliances healthy.

2) trump despises any deals made that he thinks he can get a better deal out of it. he's convinced by making this move it could force Iran back to the table with him, at which point he can bully out of them a sweet deal for himself - trump Towers in Tehran! - and make himself look good for the Nobel Peace Prize at the same go.

3) trump got talked into this - either directly or indirectly - by his Russian handlers working for Putin. Because getting trump to balk at international cooperation and deal-making gives Putin more political sway and prestige on the global stage. Who do you think Iran is gonna deal with now? Everybody BUT the United States, and in terms of military and foreign aid that means getting it from the likes of Russia and China more than the Western European nations struggling to get out of ties with a U.S. that's no longer sane.

Don't listen to me on this. Here's Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice providing better foreign policy insight:

Iran’s stated strategy here is to continue to comply with the agreement, keeping it in place with the other signatories – China, France, Russia, the UK, Germany, and the European Union. By doing so Iran intends to isolate the US. As future IAEA reports of compliance are reported, and as Iran maintains the deal with the other signatories to mitigate the reimposition of US sanctions and the imposition of any new ones, Iran will have positioned itself as the good citizen of the global system and the US, under the current President, as the rogue nation...

The US withdrawal from the JCPOA, despite the IAEA certifying Iran’s ongoing compliance because the President and his enablers don’t understand the agreement and how it works or because they’d rather go their own way and threaten military attacks and war, is another example of the devolution of the US from a superpower, the diminution of its power and influence within the international system, and the end of the American century. Here America First clearly means America Alone...

Despite the President’s zero sum, hyperbolic style of negotiation, the Trump Doctrine isn’t in play with the Iranians. They don’t care if the President feels as if he, and by extension the US, is being treated fairly. They’re not going to invite him for a summit, roll out the red carpet, and schedule a military review for his edification. They’re also not going to empower someone close to the government to do business with his companies... The Iranians are not concerned with a reimposition of US sanctions because they’ve decided that if they stay in compliance with the JCPOA that France, German, the EU, China, and their strategic partner in the region Russia will not reimpose their own sanctions or go along with reimposed US sanctions. Moreover, because the leadership of our British, French, and German allies personally intervened to ask the President to stay in the JCPOA and he disregarded their entreaties, he has further isolated the US from its traditional allies...

This is the end result of today's move: The United States can't be trusted to keep its deals, especially under a deal-breaker like trump. As a result, few if any nations will actively deal with us on any foreign policy or trade issue. We're already getting kicked around Asia for ignoring earlier trade pacts, and China's rebuffing any outreach because of trump's earlier tariff war maneuvers.

The United States is no longer a superpower nation. We used to be the only one standing after the end of the (First) Cold War in the early 1990s. Now we're crawling in the gutters screaming "America First" and wondering why no one's taking our calls.

And let's hear from David Frum. You know, the guy who NAMED the "Axis of Evil" that included Iran as a major threat in Dubya/Cheney's Global War on Terror. He's not happy about trump at all right now:

President Trump has just pushed the plunger on a sequence of crises...

...China has emerged as Iran’s largest trading partner. Its trade with Iran jumped 30 percent in the first six months of 2017. China has extended credits to Iran totaling some $35 billion, a significant sum for the shaky Iranian economy. Who will make China stop?

America’s European allies have been more cautious about expanding trade with Iran. Yet will their publics allow their governments to follow the despised and distrusted Trump administration into an escalating confrontation with Iran? Fifty-six percent of Germans describe relations with the United States as bad or very bad...

trump was going into this with bad footing to begin with: On bad terms with an angry China and on worse terms with European nations we used to rely on. And the insane thing, trump won't care:

Trump has never valued allies or partners. The only relationship he understands is one of power: He commands; others obey. But on Iran, the most relevant partners are precisely those who cannot be compelled to obey. Perhaps he imagines he can blackmail them: Join me in imposing new sanctions or else I’ll start a war that you will like even less. That is a bluff at serious risk of being called...

Frum also points out that Iran's no longer as isolated as it was, by having complied with the treaty on their own terms they have become a greater risk in the Middle East, but one that can't be stopped by bullying anymore:

The second is a crisis with Iran itself. One bad consequence of President Obama’s 2015 deal is that Iran is now a better-armed, better-financed adversary than it was then. Thanks in great measure to Trump’s own decisions, Iran has also gained a big victory for Assad’s client regime in Syria. It can retaliate against U.S. interests in all kinds of ways. It can escalate its terror campaign against Israel by using Hezbollah and Hamas. It can green-light a hot war against Israel in Gaza. It can also accelerate its drive for outright nuclear-weapons-state status...

While noted earlier that Iran promises to stick to the JCPOA - it profits them better as a public relations coup to stay away from nukes at the moment - if things do get dicey they can rebuild their weapons program... and with Russia and China as trading partners at this moment they can rebuild faster than expected (and in ways any bombing attacks by the U.S. or Isral can't stop). I don't think Frum's fears of a nuclear Iran is a major concern: What's more dangerous is just more instability in a region that's been unstable since the fall of the Ottomans.

The third crisis—the most ominous of them all—is a potential crisis with North Korea. Trump admirers are debating whether he should display his Nobel Prize at Mar-a-Lago or Trump Tower. On the evidence of his Twitter feed, Trump has convinced himself that the Kim regime has been subdued, ready to surrender its nuclear weapons at a grand summit with Trump. He may soon face the rude shock of discovering that the Kim regime believes instead that it has bested him...

This is a side story I hadn't been mentioning often because it was too unstable to get any hopes up. Recently, North Korea has opened up to the possibility of stopping its nuclear buildup altogether, something that has gotten all the pro-trump hardliners crowing about their big stick of bullying tactics to get Kim to the table. Thing is, so far all the deals have been between North Korea and SOUTH KOREA, and it has more to do with South Korea terrified of the fallout (literal) of any U.S. plans to invade the NK. And where Kim Jong Un is talking about "denuclearization", some observers note he's talking more about "getting the U.S. out of Korea altogether" instead of unilaterally quitting his nukes. That means trying to get trump to agree to something - troop withdrawals from a war zone his hardliners feel they can win - that would play bad back home.

And that's just one possibility. Jong Un may be willing to talk, but for all intents it'll be hot air and making jokes at trump's expense while he sits there without a Korean translator to help him out. And it'll catch trump in a situation where he'll be forced (by his own twisted Id) to wage two wars - against Iran and North Korea - at a moment where the United States can't afford to wage even one.

And it'll be at a moment when the United States will have few if any allies to come to our aid. Western Europe won't help in either case. Japan and Asia will refuse to back an invasion of North Korea (and South Korea might balk fearing NK reprisals). The only nations we could count on against Iran would be Israel and Saudi Arabia, and even then those nations would likely get tied down by uprisings at home. We could even face dire reactions across the globe - at the U.N. level - of having nations impose sanctions on us for trump's transgressions.

What the hell happened to a nation that twenty years ago was the most powerful on Earth? We squandered it all, chasing demons in the Iraqi desert we had no sane reason to chase. We succumbed to a massive military budget demand that spent and spent on junk that won't work while wasting our manpower on lousy pay and soul-breaking endless battles between Iraq and Afghanistan.

We let our jingoism and fear of Other drive half our nation into a drunken rage against the rest of the world.

And now that drunken rage is lashing out in ways that even our allies find repugnant and dangerous.

We're no longer a superpower. We're a wrestling has-been, tossed over the ropes onto the announcers' table, forcing Jim Ross to scream BAH GAWD at the devastation collapsed onto the floor.

This is definitely not going to end well.

I once noted the Republican Party was dead. Well, here's the zombie, come back for the United States, and we're getting bitten and there's nothing stopping us from becoming a shambling ghoul ourselves...

Everything Is Broken. Burn In Hell, Mitch McConnell

(Update: Good morning, everybody from Crooks & Liars! Thank you again Batacchio for the link to Mike's Blog Round-Up! Just a note to visitors, I'm currently distracted from blogging due to a severe case of "I GOT TO FINISH MY NOVEL" project, so please don't worry about the lack of new content here. And if there's any of you from Albany GA, I hope to see you in August at Epicon)

So let's list the various sins of Mitch McConnell:

• He plotted from Day One of Barack Obama's Presidential administration to hinder, delay, and obstruct any agenda Obama had. McConnell did this while as Minority Leader using Senate rules of Cloture and Filibuster to prevent the Senate from voting on almost everything that came to the floor. You wanna know how Congress stopped working? This is one major part of the problem (the other part is goddamn Far Right Wingnuts)

Look at how it DOUBLED when McConnell became Minority Leader (chart provided by The Week)

• McConnell took the Obstructionist game to its most horrifying conclusion by blocking Obama's RIGHT AS PRESIDENT to nominate and fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court with Merrick Garland, blocking the nominee for a FULL YEAR - UNHEARD OF IN 200-PLUS YEARS OF CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT - all in the hopes of a Republican winning the 2016 Election to make sure the GOP retains political control of the Court. Well, the sonofabitch got what he wanted, denying Garland a legitimate seat on the Court and giving it to Gorsuch, a trump nominee with a shit-ton of red flags and a likelihood of making our lives worse. (and before any wingnuts show up here screaming "Biden Rule! It's Biden's idea!" let me point out that McCONNELL IS THE ONE WHO USED IT. This is the McConnell Rule. SUCK ON THAT)

• There have been reports - more of them coming out now as investigations into trump's dealings with Russian businessmen and trump handlers' dealings with Russian AGENTS get serious - that the Intelligence agencies informed Republican leaders in Congress as far back as October (maybe even in August) that trump's campaign was actively engaged with Russian hackers and other forces to manipulate the 2016 Elections. Word is, McConnell refused to do anything about it, accusing Obama of playing politics with the intel. As it becomes clearer that trump DID deal with the Russians to mess with the elections, it becomes likely that McConnell allowed treasonous acts to occur just so he could stay in power.

The deepest pit in Hell is not enough for McConnell.

And worse, every evil act he committed was rewarded by an American electorate who bought into McConnell's kabuki theater. Every time the Republicans obstructed and blocked Obama and the Democrats, they won more elections. Any attempt at accountability got flushed down the nation's toilet.

All that's left us is an America under the control of a wingnut-driven party that can't even compromise with itself.

All that's left us is an America under the control of a Congress that can't even unify under one party to get anything done (even the stuff that could make things worse).

All that's left us is an America under the thumb of a goddamn bankrupt con artist bully breaking constitutional rules and executive office ethics - and likely committing TREASON working with a foreign power against our country - all in the glory of his goddamn brand name.

Let me repeat: The deepest pit in Hell is not enough for Mitch McConnell.

They Can't Quit Hating Obamacare, Baby

Jeez. Just when you thought the Republicans learned their lesson not to fuck with Obama's legacy, they're right back on the "Repeal" bandwagon trying to nuke Obamacre from orbit for, what, the 97th time?

To reference David Anderson (previously Richard Mayhew when he needed a pseudonym as he worked in the HC industry) on Balloon-Juice:

In simple terms, a carrier can’t deny a hemophiliac coverage but they can charge an actuarial fair premium of $90,000 per year. A carrier can’t deny a young woman who either is or intends to become pregnant. They just don’t have to cover the prenatal or labor and delivery costs.

It is effectively a slightly modified option 3 of Cassidy-Collins where states can return to the 2009 status quo if they so actively elect to do so. If we combine a single state choosing this route and sell across state lines, it would lead the entire country’s individual market back to 2009...

From what I can tell: The Republicans in Congress are basically going to kill any coverage in health care, and they're going to try and shift the blame onto the states to get away with it.

The way David Anderson describes it, the Replacement-to-the-Replacement Bill (AHCA 2.0) is worse than the original AHCA.

Why are the Republicans even bothering?

Because somewhere in that shared reptilian brain of the party is the evil desire to wreck ANYTHING with Obama's name on it, and they want to prove they can actually do this without the party falling apart like it did two weeks ago.

Frances Langum at Crooks and Liars is in agreement:

And here's the background: the current Congress (and especially the Freedumb Caucus) is chock full of Class of 2010 and later numbnuts who have NO congressional experience when Obama wasn't president, and NO platform other than "repeal and replace" that Obamacare.

They don't know what else to do.

And this latest incarnation is just. terrible.

They are getting rid of preexisting conditions, people. Because who wants to cover sick people?

By the way, it's always been about getting rid of preexisting conditions and yielding a big tax cut for the rich...

According to Langum, the current follow-up on this is that the Freedom Caucus is stepping back from any deal on AHCA 2.0. Still, this is worrisome. The Republicans are not learning from their mistakes. They never had to before. Every time they caused damage to the nation since 2009, they've been rewarded with election wins (sans 2012). But now they don't have the excuses and scapegoats to point at anymore: they can't rely on the Democrats - Obama in the White House - to stop themselves from driving over that cliff.

Keep calling, America. Keep resisting. Make damn sure the Republican Congresscritters realize this time there are consequences for their bullshit.

And start getting worried about that fiscal cliff too. That Debt Ceiling problem is coming back and this lineup of Jokers to the Right are not focusing on a solution for that at all...

This Will Cut Deep

So what exactly just happened?

Republicans had campaigned for 8 years on obstructing Obama's Presidency as best they could, and spent 7 years campaigning against Obama's signature Healthcare reform package Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA Obamacare).

Republicans finally had full control of the federal government. They controlled the House under Speaker Paul "Ayn Rand Is My Goddess" Ryan. They controlled the Senate - slightly - under Majority Leader Mitch "Burn In Hell For Your Obstruction" McConnell. They pulled off getting trump into the Presidency due to Russian involvement voter suppression and a broken Electoral College. Anything they passed in Congress, trump would happily sign off on. No more vetoes from Obama.

Republicans simply had to draft up a Health Care Replacement plan that could give them their desired Tax Cuts, give them their desired deregulation of industry, and still provide some semblance of coverage to make it look effective in comparison to a "flawed and broken" Obamacare they warned was going to make things bad.

Republicans came out with a Replacement bill - the AHCA - that actually kicked millions of Americans off health care coverage, reduced Medicaid AND Medicare funding, forced millions more Americans to pay more costs out-of-pocket, threatened to close hospitals and nursing homes, ruined health care protections for women, and did nothing to fix the dreaded deficits.

Republicans suddenly got an earful from millions of Americans protesting at town halls against their Replacement plan. They found no allies among their valued business buddies, many of whom were facing uncertainty and possible financial collapse with AHCA. They couldn't come up with sufficient excuses about why 24 million - at least - would lose health care.

Republicans could not rally around one coherent plan. When Ryan offered to make changes to the existing bill, the Far Right Freedom Caucus made harsher demands that actually made more Moderate members of The Tuesday Group (really? there's Moderate Republicans still around?!) reject those changes. And the Freedom Caucus wouldn't commit to the new changes either. It got ugly, fast.

Republicans just had to cancel in the House of Representatives their floor vote on their flawed, destructive Replacement plan, meaning they can't go through with their Repeal plan, basically meaning Obamacare remains intact (albeit vulnerable to Executive branch sabotage down the road).

In short:

MEEP motherfucking MEEP.

As I noted often before:

...The other thing Obama leaves behind is a broken Republican Party. Sure, they won the 2016 elections: but they lost every last shred of integrity, honesty, maturity, intelligence, wisdom, and long-term survival in the process. They ran on a platform of destruction: massive tax cuts for the rich a majority of Americans don't support, nuking health care that a majority of Americans are beginning to realize is gonna hurt them if it's taken away, rolling back civil rights gains, and discrediting every foreign policy success of the last 70 years (!) just to appease their new best friend Putin.

And having made this fantasy world of lies - where OBAMA was a FAILURE - the Republicans are going to try to reshape the real world to that fantasy. And they're going to find the real world doesn't work that way (and that Obama was more successful than they feared)...

...We're already watching the Republicans stumble on their attempt to purge Obamacare/ACA, but while they're setting up the first stage of launch they're finding out that "Repealing" is harder than they thought: Obamacare isn't just a layer added onto our existing Health Care laws, it BECAME our Health Care laws meaning any removal is going to leave a gaping hole in our economy that Congress HAS to Replace. Oh they'll still repeal Obamacare because they've made their Narrative and dare not deviate from script, but they're finding out NOW there's a huge price to pay and the Democratic Party is NOT going to be there to cover their asses...

I wasn't exaggerating. All they did was lie about Obama and Obamacare for seven years plus, and when it came time to deal with the Truth - that Obamacare was actually good for most Americans, that any repeal or cutbacks would cause damage to millions of lives - they had nothing.

The Republicans will still lie about this, of course. They'll point fingers, blame the Democrats for being so obstructionist - GEE, WHO TAUGHT THEM THAT, BOYS? - and they'll do everything to try and keep their base angry at the usual suspects. But it's out there, it's public and it's on the record: The Republicans themselves had Majority Control of the House of Representatives and they COULD NOT FULFILL THEIR BIGGEST CAMPAIGN PLEDGE OF KILLING OBAMACARE. This is on them. This is on a dying dysfunctional Party so obsessed with staying On Message for their Fox Not-News appearances - do read Frum's Waterloo follow-up he posted today - that they've forgotten how to do anything else.

This is what's called an unforced error: The Republicans had control of both wings of Congress, control of the Presidency, technically control of the Supreme Court, they had all the pieces in place to pass ANY bills they want... and they couldn't even agree on the biggest target they were aiming at, all because they fractured over the reality that their solutions were more disastrous than the "disaster" they were claiming to replace. For all the reputation Republicans have for being organized and On Message with their Narrative, this is a public display of ineptitude and incompetence that is rarely seen in our nation's history.

All those complaints about Democrats being too moderate, too calculating, too passive at times? It's called competence. They might screw up here and there, and act like cowards when they shouldn't, but the Democrats genuinely want to govern and make things work. When they passed ACA/Obamacare, it was with an eye towards making it work with the right organizations. Obama made sure to include the Health Care Industry as partners on the legislation: It may have pissed off the liberals who wanted socialized universal care, but it paid off long-term because those businesses recoiled from the Republican AHCA plan that created industry-wide chaos.

Like I noted before: Obama had to have known taking on a conservative model like ACA would wreck any future Republican sabotage because it took away any viable alternative the GOP could offer.

MEEP Motherfucking MEEP.

Tomorrow we keep fighting. The Republicans still have an agenda to dismantle every last bit of functioning government they can. Ryan may be wounded by this fight - can he still govern as Speaker if he can't even get his own Party aligned to vote his way? - but he still wants his precious precious TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH.

Tomorrow is another battle.

TONIGHT WE DANCE.

Obama Forever

I'm gonna try to focus on the positive here.

I do have to admit I may have jumped the gun back in May 2016 when I wrote this bit about the two legacies of Barack Obama:

What the 2016 Election is turning into is a Legacy election. Given the overall stability and economic recovery during the Obama years, and given the great strides in women's and gay rights under Obama's executive orders, and given the passage of health care reforms that are beginning to show positive results - everyone should be seriously following Richard Mayhew's health care updates on Balloon Juice - voters are going to have to look at what's at stake this November.

I admit now that I was projecting: I was HOPING the election would be one where the voters would work to uphold Obama's record and deny the Republicans any chance to dismantle his tenure. To be fair, a majority of Americans DID vote for Hillary Clinton to continue Obama's work, but the archaic and broken Electoral College (and a helping of voter suppression in key states) made that moot.

Thing is, even in the wake of a disastrous election where the Republicans did win out and are now poised to destroy every last bit of Obama's Presidential acts... I still think Obama will still leave powerful legacies to posterity.

I pointed out in that Legacy article that the other thing Obama leaves behind is a broken Republican Party. Sure, they won the 2016 elections: but they lost every last shred of integrity, honesty, maturity, intelligence, wisdom, and long-term survival in the process. They ran on a platform of destruction: massive tax cuts for the rich a majority of Americans don't support, nuking health care that a majority of Americans are beginning to realize is gonna hurt them if it's taken away, rolling back civil rights gains, and discrediting every foreign policy success of the last 70 years (!) just to appease their new best friend Putin.

And having made this fantasy world of lies - where OBAMA was a FAILURE - the Republicans are going to try to reshape the real world to that fantasy. And they're going to find the real world doesn't work that way (and that Obama was more successful than they feared).

We're going to witness over at least the next two years attempts by the Republicans to turn Obama into a damned memory (damnatio memoriae), trying to take his name off every ledger, removing every policy Obama had a hand in crafting. They'll do what they can to darken every story involving him, that somehow Obama was wrong in his logic, that he failed to achieve even a modicum of success. It'll probably get to a point where they won't utter his name at all and will drop hints to the media to keep his name out of everything, as though erasing him from existence.

It won't work. Even if they remove Obamacare, even if they wipe out every civil rights gain like gay marriage, the Republicans can never remove Obama from the office of the President. People are going to remember what he did in office, and what he spoke to. The void that the Republicans are going to carve out will be a reminder to us of the shape of what the world ought to be, and what we can get back to when the Republicans - unavoidable in their fate, as we've seen this movie before - implode on their own failures.

We're already watching the Republicans stumble on their attempt to purge Obamacare/ACA, but while they're setting up the first stage of launch they're finding out that "Repealing" is harder than they thought: Obamacare isn't just a layer added onto our existing Health Care laws, it BECAME our Health Care laws meaning any removal is going to leave a gaping hole in our economy that Congress HAS to Replace. Oh they'll still repeal Obamacare because they've made their Narrative and dare not deviate from script, but they're finding out NOW there's a huge price to pay and the Democratic Party is NOT going to be there to cover their asses...

I doubt the Republicans and their Far Right Noise Machine will ever purge Obama from the history books. They may write 100,000 screeds accusing Obama as "Worst Ever" and they may fly off the shelves for their intended audience of haters, but the real Obama biographies and retrospectives will be read in the classrooms 40 years from now while the anti-Obama books get shipped back to recycling.

There's 60 percent of Americans who are watching Barack Obama leave office with a favorable view of him. The Republicans will continue to label Obama a failed President - "A Disaster! We're cleaning up his mess! Everything bad that happens from 2017 onward is STILL HIS FAULT!" - but more and more Americans won't buy that shit. We'll know better.

We'll remember Obama as a level-headed, optimistic, groundbreaking leader. We'll remember the jobs that did come back during his eight years of office. We'll remember he opened the doors for gays and women, that he tried to speak to our better angels on race relations. We'll remember the good - he was the one who gave the order to take out Bin Laden, he set a nuclear armament deal with Iran that the Republicans can't readily block, and he helped open up Cuba that can signal the end of 40-plus years of bad behavior between neighboring countries - and the bad - he didn't do enough for the Middle East in places like Libya and Syria, he continued a War on Terror using questionable tactics - on his foreign policies.

We're going to remember Obama's place in our culture and history, not JUST as the first African-American President, but also as a major geek, a comic-book fan and wannabe Jedi, who was cool enough to be the Adult In The Room and yet still cool enough to be a guy who can chill at a backyard grill and talk about how bad the Chicago Bulls have gotten.

And we're never giving up the Joe Biden memes, the ones where he's like a clueless yet lovable prankster uncle figure.

The Onion's not going to know what to do with itself.

For myself...

I've lived now through eight Presidents (starting with Nixon) of whom only six - Carter, Reagan, Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser, Obama - I have any memory regarding their eras. I became fully aware of politics my college years (Bush I) so since then I have to say that Obama has left on me the most sincere, effective impression. I've had my issues - positive and negative - with each President, and I've come to terms with both Bushes for the most part while viewing Clinton as intelligent and effective but flawed. Obama is the one with the fewest disappointments for me.

I revel in the fact that for ALL the slime and falsehoods aimed at Obama over the last eight years, he is leaving the White House with the cleanest reputation. For all of the "scandals" and investigations into his office, no one from his West Wing has been charged, indicted, convicted of crimes. There have been at most resignations for failures in policy - a Secretary for Veterans Affairs had to resign over problems with service and medical aid to our hospitalized vets - but I view those as steps towards accountability.

Obama never had anything on the scale of an Iran-Contra, or the S&L Bailout, or a Lewinsky sex scandal, or a number of officials getting charged and convicted over corruption or other criminal wrong-doings. The Far Right thrilled to such things as Solyandra, Fast and Furious, and BENGHAZI ZOMG, but even their partisan witch-hunts turned into nothingburgers (problems that had more to do with a corrupt or broken Congress, or far down the chain of command among corrupt or inept grunts that the White House had no control over).

Obama, who crawled through a river of Republican shit and came out clean on the other side.

Today, he's leaving office for good. Eight years gone. Where did the time fly?

I can't rank Obama at the moment compared to all the historical Presidents - I dread knocking Truman out of the Top Ten - but he's got to well up there in the Top Twenty (out of 44), and likely well above Clinton, his closest contemporary.

To hell with the incoming administration. I'm doing my best today to not even mention the name.

I'm now living by one simple mantra.

Obama is STILL my President.

Update: Obama is starting up the Presidential Library project on his Obama Foundation page.

I GOTTA SEND IN MY LIBRARIAN RESUME!