Biden blunders

[Kraken]

There haven't been many, yet, but of course some are inevitable, both great and small. Let's start with yesterday's announcement about refugee quotas.

Biden ran on raising the limit on refugees from trump's ridiculous 15,000 to a promised 125,000. Yesterday he unexpectedly said that the cap will remain at 15,000, then quickly reversed himself in the ensuing uproar. We don't know what the new number will be yet; I've seen 65,000 mentioned in a couple of places.

The initial announcement was probably due to the optics at the southern border -- allowing more immigrants is not a politically wise thing to do right now, even though refugees and asylum seekers are two completely different categories handled by separate systems. Refugees have to apply for that status and undergo thorough vetting that can take years. Immigration in general is a hot potato right now and yesterday's action was at least a minor blunder.

[Jaymann]

The AOC shadow government jumped on that one like brown on brown rice.

[Kraken]

It's a weak contender for "blunder," but For Biden, the White House is a M-F place.

Since taking office four months ago, the President has spent more weekends away from the White House than he has stayed there, almost three times as many. Counting this Memorial Day weekend, Biden has been in Wilmington nine weekends and passed five weekends at the presidential retreat, Camp David, in rural Maryland. The numbers far exceed any modern president's weekends off-campus at this point in his tenure.

"He thinks of (the White House) more like a Monday-through-Friday kind of place," said one of several people familiar with Biden's thinking who spoke to CNN for this story and were granted anonymity in order to preserve relationships. This person said the people's house was akin to presidential corporate housing. "Really, really high-end corporate housing."

"Joe Biden has always been the guy who goes home to Delaware," said another person who has worked with the President. "The White House isn't going to change that."

As long as Joe's not just smoking weed and playing Nintendo, good on him for working from home. The article is sympathetic. Kinda makes you rethink your criticism of trump's endless golfing, though. To the extent that he worked at all, he could shake people down for money and tweet insults as easily on the links as anywhere else.

[Kraken]

Desi Lydic Foxsplains everything, including a segment on Biden's blunders starting around 4 min in. The trips to DE made the cut, just as I predicted!

[Holman]

It's a pretty sure bet that Biden does more actual presidenting on a Monday than Trump did in a month.

[malchior]

Maybe we have massive inequality but "we" can still unite to equally obsess on the one thing all Americans care about - the amount of work someone else might not be doing.

[Defiant]

A Harris blunder, rather than a Biden blunder, but apparently, she's getting attacked after this controversial tweet:

https://twitter.com/VP/status/1398717990376546304

My god, this administration is just as bad as the last administration. When will she be removed from twitter for this horrifying tweet? /s

[Holman]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1398 ... 14912?s=20

[El Guapo]

It doesn't seem too long until Fox just replaces a bunch of its tweets with a formal Two Minute Hate.

[Holman]

It doesn't seem too long until Fox just replaces a bunch of its tweets with a formal Two Minute Hate.

Carlson-Hannity-Ingraham is already three hours.

[Isgrimnur]

He’s right, you know.

[YellowKing]

Are these the same people who have so much respect for our veterans that they're willing to throw away the democracy those veterans died to protect? Just making sure.

[Unagi]

https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1398 ... 14912?s=20

Proof, once again: they have no sense of irony.

[El Guapo]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

[Pyperkub]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

What for? The voters don't hold the politicos responsible as long as they shout guns/abortion, and the viewers keep coming back for the outrage! . The issue is the market for this BS, though the shovelers of it do have some blame, it's the people who eat it and think it's Filet Mignon that are the real issue.

[El Guapo]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

What for? The voters don't hold the politicos responsible as long as they shout guns/abortion, and the viewers keep coming back for the outrage! . The issue is the market for this BS, though the shovelers of it do have some blame, it's the people who eat it and think it's Filet Mignon that are the real issue.

Well, the real problem is that our broken institutions allow the GOP to exercise a veto on policy as long as they hold onto the Fox News base and a small number of other conservatives.

[Pyperkub]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

What for? The voters don't hold the politicos responsible as long as they shout guns/abortion, and the viewers keep coming back for the outrage! . The issue is the market for this BS, though the shovelers of it do have some blame, it's the people who eat it and think it's Filet Mignon that are the real issue.

Well, the real problem is that our broken institutions allow the GOP to exercise a veto on policy as long as they hold onto the Fox News base and a small number of other conservatives.

It's still the zero-sum nature of the outrage! machine. Politics doesn't work if you aren't interested in win-win scenarios. Of course, now the goal is just pwn-teh-libs for fun (voters) and graft (politicos/RW media).

[El Guapo]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

What for? The voters don't hold the politicos responsible as long as they shout guns/abortion, and the viewers keep coming back for the outrage! . The issue is the market for this BS, though the shovelers of it do have some blame, it's the people who eat it and think it's Filet Mignon that are the real issue.

Well, the real problem is that our broken institutions allow the GOP to exercise a veto on policy as long as they hold onto the Fox News base and a small number of other conservatives.

It's still the zero-sum nature of the outrage! machine. Politics doesn't work if you aren't interested in win-win scenarios. Of course, now the goal is just pwn-teh-libs for fun (voters) and graft (politicos/RW media).

Right, but if the GOP had to appeal beyond the Fox News base, then they would face real costs for their current approach.

[Pyperkub]

It's more that there's no sense of shame.

What for? The voters don't hold the politicos responsible as long as they shout guns/abortion, and the viewers keep coming back for the outrage! . The issue is the market for this BS, though the shovelers of it do have some blame, it's the people who eat it and think it's Filet Mignon that are the real issue.

Well, the real problem is that our broken institutions allow the GOP to exercise a veto on policy as long as they hold onto the Fox News base and a small number of other conservatives.

It's still the zero-sum nature of the outrage! machine. Politics doesn't work if you aren't interested in win-win scenarios. Of course, now the goal is just pwn-teh-libs for fun (voters) and graft (politicos/RW media).

Right, but if the GOP had to appeal beyond the Fox News base, then they would face real costs for their current approach.

Well, yeah, but the Fox News base *is* the GOP base. They've done well at that.

[malchior]

You might find it odd I'm posting this video clip as a Biden blunder but I think this all ties back to a blunder. If you don't know what the clip below is about, there is a lawsuit ongoing about a decision by the National Park Service to cancel July 4th fireworks at Mount Rushmore for various reasons: COVID-19, tribal opposition, and environmental concerns. They won't address the actual attack on our democracy but instead they are willing lay out fuel by the roaring fire for these guys by cancelling some fireworks show. There is a fire risk but they instead framed it out with all these social issues which provided red meat for their opponents.

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1 ... 7086930944

[Kraken]

The withdrawal from Afghanistan sure belongs here. It's Biden's biggest apparent blunder to date. Let's talk specifically about his role, apart from all the history leading up to it.

On one hand, nearly everyone agrees that we were done in Afghanistan. Biden was bound by a deal that trump signed to leave by May; he merely extended the date for logistics reasons. The real failure was overestimating the Afghan defense forces. From an AP story (via Snopes):

even after President Joe Biden announced in April he was withdrawing all U.S. troops, the intelligence agencies did not foresee a Taliban final offensive that would succeed so spectacularly.

“If we wouldn’t have used hope as a course of action, … we would have realized the rapid drawdown of U.S. forces sent a signal to the Afghan national forces that they were being abandoned,” said Chris Miller, who saw combat in Afghanistan in 2001 and was acting secretary of defense at the end of President Donald Trump’s term.

Stephen Biddle, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University and a former adviser to U.S. commanders in Afghanistan, said Biden’s announcement set the final collapse in motion.

“The problem of the U.S. withdrawal is that it sent a nationwide signal that the jig is up — a sudden, nationwide signal that everyone read the same way,” Biddle said. Before April, the Afghan government troops were slowly but steadily losing the war, he said. When they learned that their American partners were going home, an impulse to give up without a fight “spread like wildfire.”

Maybe Biden's decision to rip off the bandaid would have been sound if his intelligence had been good. A decisive withdrawal seemed like a better idea than a long drawn-out process with reversals and stalls. The optics were going to be bad anyway; better to get it over with. But yikes. Even though we didn't foresee the overnight collapse of the Afghan army, we should have had a worst-case contingency plan.

[El Guapo]

I guess I don't really see the alternative to having an announced departure time frame. Were we supposed to just have all U.S. troops leave suddenly in the middle of the night or something?

[malchior]

I guess I don't really see the alternative to having an announced departure time frame. Were we supposed to just have all U.S. troops leave suddenly in the middle of the night or something?

I said some of this in the other thread but I think this isn't the right way to think about it. Exiting was going to be a mess but they weren't diligent about foreseeable risks. Why were people even in a position to climb on our airplanes to fall to their deaths on camera? We were just haphazardly landing and departing planes on an occupied runway. What is one of those guys had an IED or some munition on them? Things could have gone much, much worse. Thankfully they didn't but I don't see how anyone can see that and think...that was UNAVOIDABLE. Of course it was avoidable if we expressed even a little foresight even a week ago. The country was collapsing quickly so perhaps we should have established a safe perimeter for instance...just in case. Instead it was all last minute stuff. I'm in the incident response business and maybe that informs me but when I see someone reacting in real0time...it is usually because they didn't plan for it. The inference is that they didn't have a plan for the collapse of the Government of Afghanistan that was fighting (and losing) a civil war for the last few years. How is that even possible?

Another quick example, there was a segment last night on Nicole Wallace's show that featured a gentleman (name escapes me right now) who has been working to get Afghans out of the country on the SIV backlog. They prepared lists of people. He made a lot of great (and angry) points about how incompetent we were. He said that for months his organization tried to get lists of people to the US government even with the support of Congresspersons like Jason Crow. They had collected an exhaustive list of people in-country who might be eligible, they had locations, contact details, and importantly they had done the hard work of vetting them to the point that they could be verified in the US Governments biometric database. He said the US Government asked him for the list...2 days ago. Atrocious.

[$iljanus]

I guess I don't really see the alternative to having an announced departure time frame. Were we supposed to just have all U.S. troops leave suddenly in the middle of the night or something?

In the end, it's true we would have to leave. But at the least we could have made the attempt to have a bit of stability to get people out. We probably couldn't have gotten everyone safely out that wanted to leave anyway but I think we could have gotten out more with a greater troop presence than what we're seeing now. Regional governors would still have folded against the Taliban because we would be heading towards withdrawal but with the prize in sight, perhaps the Taliban would have let us proceed with evacuating all those who wanted to leave because why engage in needless battle? They've essentially won. I'm also under no illusions that there wouldn't be crowds gathering at the airport and the security situation would still be dangerous at times. A drawn out evacuation would probably have been the "Saigon Withdrawal" replayed constantly on the news cycle. But it could also have saved more lives, people who have worked with the US and put their lives on the line like any soldier and Biden is getting some bad press over this anyway and rightfully so since being so surprised at what has unfolded makes him and his foreign policy team look like idiots.

[LawBeefaroni]

Absolute blunder. We condemned a lot of people to horrible deaths unnecessarily. And in doing so we also lost a lot of valuable intelligence assets.

The outside optics are horrible. We send billionaire tourists on joyrides in space but we can't come up with a plan to evacuate people who put their lives on the line for Americans?

[stimpy]

For someone who has been a politician as long as Biden has and for all of his spouting about his vast experience in diplomatic and foreign issues, this has been a huge blunder under his watch.

[malchior]

Nothing says we didn't fuck up than IC folks trying to leak that Biden ignored (and lied) about the IC assessments too. Luckily the NY Times didn't totally fall for that story either but it paints a picture of more institutional chaos. Whatever the truth it looks like we're a total mess.

https://twitter.com/MarkMazzettiNYT/sta ... 6941839361

[Anonymous Bosch]

I guess I don't really see the alternative to having an announced departure time frame. Were we supposed to just have all U.S. troops leave suddenly in the middle of the night or something?

I said some of this in the other thread but I think this isn't the right way to think about it. Exiting was going to be a mess but they weren't diligent about foreseeable risks. Why were people even in a position to climb on our airplanes to fall to their deaths on camera? We were just haphazardly landing and departing planes on an occupied runway. What is one of those guys had an IED or some munition on them? Things could have gone much, much worse. Thankfully they didn't but I don't see how anyone can see that and think...that was UNAVOIDABLE. Of course it was avoidable if we expressed even a little foresight even a week ago. The country was collapsing quickly so perhaps we should have established a safe perimeter for instance...just in case. Instead it was all last minute stuff. I'm in the incident response business and maybe that informs me but when I see someone reacting in real0time...it is usually because they didn't plan for it. The inference is that they didn't have a plan for the collapse of the Government of Afghanistan that was fighting (and losing) a civil war for the last few years. How is that even possible?

Another quick example, there was a segment last night on Nicole Wallace's show that featured a gentleman (name escapes me right now) who has been working to get Afghans out of the country on the SIV backlog. They prepared lists of people. He made a lot of great (and angry) points about how incompetent we were. He said that for months his organization tried to get lists of people to the US government even with the support of Congresspersons like Jason Crow. They had collected an exhaustive list of people in-country who might be eligible, they had locations, contact details, and importantly they had done the hard work of vetting them to the point that they could be verified in the US Governments biometric database. He said the US Government asked him for the list...2 days ago. Atrocious.

Indeed, here is the specific video segment malchior is referring to with Afghanistan war veteran Matt Zeller, which is WELL worth watching in its entirety.

[gameoverman]

Maybe Biden's decision to rip off the bandaid would have been sound if his intelligence had been good. A decisive withdrawal seemed like a better idea than a long drawn-out process with reversals and stalls. The optics were going to be bad anyway; better to get it over with. But yikes. Even though we didn't foresee the overnight collapse of the Afghan army, we should have had a worst-case contingency plan.

I think this was a case of plausible deniability. I think they did know the national forces would fold like a house of cards. They did it this way anyway. I think the reason is what you wrote, the alternative is having US forces fighting the Taliban while the exit is taking place over an extended period of time. In other words, continue with the same thing that has been going on for 20 years. I don't think Biden wanted to continue on that path.

I give Biden credit for getting us out, that's far more than Bush-Obama-Trump managed. I know Trump is the one who made this agreement but he was President for 4 years and this exit didn't happen in his 4 years. Biden is taking the heat so he gets the credit.

Could it have been handled better? Well, there were years and years of opportunity for Presidents from the right and left to show how to do it the better way and they all failed to do so, so maybe not.

[LawBeefaroni]

Maybe Biden's decision to rip off the bandaid would have been sound if his intelligence had been good. A decisive withdrawal seemed like a better idea than a long drawn-out process with reversals and stalls. The optics were going to be bad anyway; better to get it over with. But yikes. Even though we didn't foresee the overnight collapse of the Afghan army, we should have had a worst-case contingency plan.

I think this was a case of plausible deniability. I think they did know the national forces would fold like a house of cards. They did it this way anyway. I think the reason is what you wrote, the alternative is having US forces fighting the Taliban while the exit is taking place over an extended period of time. In other words, continue with the same thing that has been going on for 20 years. I don't think Biden wanted to continue on that path.

I give Biden credit for getting us out, that's far more than Bush-Obama-Trump managed. I know Trump is the one who made this agreement but he was President for 4 years and this exit didn't happen in his 4 years. Biden is taking the heat so he gets the credit.

Could it have been handled better? Well, there were years and years of opportunity for Presidents from the right and left to show how to do it the better way and they all failed to do so, so maybe not.

Lack of previous success doesn't mean there wasn't a better way. It just means there was no other way that was stomach-able from a political perspective.

[malchior]

Also there are just signs if you are looking that there was deep incompetence involved. Not having an exit plan for even the embassy? That's bare minimum stuff. We really need to think things over because something is very wrong with the people we put in charge of things. I just read that the rapid reaction force was staged in Iwo Jima. 7000 KM away. I don't know what is going on but I'll sell you a house if you think this was 'the real plan' for contingencies. I expect the real story to come out in a year or so when it has cooled down.

Edit: Bad read on my part - it is the Iwo Jima task force and they were mostly in Saudi Arabia. That makes a *ton* more sense at least.

[Alefroth]

Also there are just signs if you are looking that there was deep incompetence involved. Not having an exit plan for even the embassy? That's bare minimum stuff. We really need to think things over because something is very wrong with the people we put in charge of things. I just read that the rapid reaction force was staged in Iwo Jima. 7000 KM away. I don't know what is going on but I'll sell you a house if you think this was 'the real plan' for contingencies. I expect the real story to come out in a year or so when it has cooled down.

I'm sure there will be no shortage of investigations.

[malchior]

Also there are just signs if you are looking that there was deep incompetence involved. Not having an exit plan for even the embassy? That's bare minimum stuff. We really need to think things over because something is very wrong with the people we put in charge of things. I just read that the rapid reaction force was staged in Iwo Jima. 7000 KM away. I don't know what is going on but I'll sell you a house if you think this was 'the real plan' for contingencies. I expect the real story to come out in a year or so when it has cooled down.

I'm sure there will be no shortage of investigations.

Especially early 2023 when/if the GOP storms the House.

[Alefroth]

Exactly. It'll make Benghazi look like the minor leagues.

[The Meal]

The best time to leave Afghanistan was 20 years ago. The second best time was now.

[Jaymann]

Great minds think alike.

[stimpy]

And yet another bold faced lie to the American people from the life-long politician.
Shocking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp

[malchior]

And yet another bold faced lie to the American people from the life-long politician.
Shocking.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics ... d=msedgntp

Eh. This is pretty nuanced. He said several things that are being mixed together but the upshot is that small businesses often are taxed as pass through to individuals. If the household is making more than the limits below at the 37% line then yeah their taxes would go up under this plan (or any plan). It is impossible to raise taxes and avoid every possible business. Is that lying? In the grand scheme, I guess it depends on how you define a small business. One that pulls in a half million of household income? I do not think that is what most people would call a "small business". Also, he ran on a pretty hard line of no tax increases under 400K. That part is holding. Opinions will vary on the "small business" angle but this is going to impact about like 2 or maybe 3% of the population who can easily afford it. We are talking about 3 cents per dollar increase of earnings over a half million or so.

What Biden ran on

President Biden proposed higher taxes only for households with income of more than $400,000. The revenue would fund initiatives in the American Families Plan to expand the social safety net.

Code: Select all

                Single	                Married Filing Jointly	    Married Filing Separately	   Head of Household
35%	$207,351 – $518,400	         $414,701 – $622,050	       $207,351 – $311,025	    $207,351 – $518,400
37%	      $518,401+                      $622,051+	               $311,026+	                 $518,401+

[Kraken]

Yeah, I don't understand the wailing about C corps. Most small businesses are S corps (including Kraken Enterprises), LLCs, or sole proprietorships, whereas virtually all big businesses are C corps. I'm skeptical that there are a million "small" C corps.

[LordMortis]

Yeah, I don't understand the wailing about C corps. Most small businesses are S corps (including Kraken Enterprises), LLCs, or sole proprietorships, whereas virtually all big businesses are C corps. I'm skeptical that there are a million "small" C corps.

I'm not. I'm skeptical that there are anything approaching a million meaningful small C corps that aren't anything more than the desire to achieve legal protection or play tax games.

I won't pretend to know what the tax increase means. Congress plays so many games "to protect..." that ultimately feed large private "corporations" I won't believe in tax increases on anyone until I digest in more than one line in single news source. At the same time, I have no reason to believe Biden isn't playing fast and loose with "promises." It would be par for the course with every president. COVID handling was his big early win. I haven't seen much, other than he's not advancing the GOP agenda, that I consider a win from him. His bar is exceptionally low and that makes me sad. We need a reasonable bar. But hey, he's not 45 or a 45 protege. That carries you pretty far.

Also, I'm all for re-vamping the inheritance tax. I don't know enough to know his tax change proposals in this manner are good or bad. Some wealth should be protected but corporate wealth protecting an inheritance, instinctively sounds like puppies. I don't often need a Zarathud to tell me what to think but I probably need a Zarathud to tell me what to think.