Quote of the Day posts

“You're basically trying to create a new country in a country that's been around for centuries. ... If we're not planning to stay forever, why do we think Afghans will side with us or the government they know we're paying for? Whenever we leave, it's going to fall apart.”

-- Spc. Joshua Duren, to reporter Martin Kuz, in Logar province, Afghanistan, 2011, as remembered in Kuz's article “Looking back at Afghanistan as the past returns,” in The Christian Science Monitor. The feel is that throughout our attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan, everyone on the ground knew what the brass wouldn't say: It wasn't working. Kuz also reminds us that the Taliban offered to surrender in December 2001, but Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld rejected the offer. Add that to his list. 

“The expression 'what doesn't kill you makes you stronger' actually isn't usually true for human beings. It is for bacteria, however.”

-- Michael Lewis, “The Premonition,” his new book about how America was best-prepared to handle a worldwide pandemic and how we botched it worse than anyone. It's mostly about the amazing people who saw what was coming and were willing to make the hard decisions to save lives; who was listened to, who wasn't, and why. The book was published before the delta variant became too much of a thing, but this line anticipates it. In mid-June we were averaging 79k cases a week in the U.S., down from our high of 1.7 million cases a week in mid-January. We're now back up to nearly a million cases a week. 

“Florida is in the grip of a Covid surge worse than it experienced before the vaccines. More than 10,000 Floridians are hospitalized, around 10 times the number in New York, which has about as many residents; an average of 58 Florida residents are dying each day, compared with six in New York. And the Florida hospital system is under extreme stress.

”There's no mystery about why this has happened. At every stage of the pandemic DeSantis has effectively acted as an ally of the coronavirus, for example by issuing orders blocking businesses from requiring that their patrons show proof of vaccination and schools from requiring masks. More generally, he has helped create a state of mind in which vaccine skepticism flourishes and refusal to take precautions is normalized.“

-- Paul Krugman, ”'Freedom,' Florida and the Delta Variant Disaster," in The New York Times

“Monday's virtual proceedings did not bode well for Team Kraken. U.S. District Court Judge Linda Parker expressed skepticism bordering on dismay about some of the evidence and experts from the original case [challenging the legitimacy of the 2020 election]. 'I don't think I've ever seen an affidavit that has made so many leaps,' she marveled at one point. 'How could any of you as officers of the court present this affidavit?'

”Generally speaking, it's not a good sign when a judge is characterizing one's evidence in terms such as 'fantastical,' 'speculative,' 'bad faith,' 'obviously questionable' and 'layers of hearsay.' Judge Parker brushed back Ms. [Sidney] Powell's assertion that the complaint's 960 pages of affidavits proved 'due diligence,' countering, 'Volume, certainly for this court, doesn't equate with legitimacy or veracity.'

-- from Trump's 'Team Kraken' Lands in Hot Water' by Michelle Cottle in The New York Times

Follow Judd here. 

“The invaders may be full of contempt for a system that they think doesn't represent them, but on Wednesday they managed to prove that it does. The system, which shrugged off their violence like it had been a toddler's tantrum, represents them. It's the rest of us it's failing to protect.”

-- Masha Gessen, “The Capitol Invaders Enjoyed the Privilege of Not Being Taken Seriously,” The New Yorker. Great piece. Why was the Capitol Hill Police unprepared? Gessen thinks it's because they didn't take the protesters seriously. They weren't afraid of them. Because what are we afraid of? The other. “Black Lives Matter protesters are other to the Capitol Police,” Gessen writes. “So are survivors of sexual assault or women who protest for the right to choose. But an armed mob storming the Capitol, and their Instigator-in-Chief, are, apparently, familiar enough to be dismissed as clowns.”

“Every one of the almost 60 Trump challenges to the election has been rebuffed in state and federal courts, including the Supreme Court, involving more than 90 judges, nominated by presidents of both parties. But for scores of millions of mesmerized Trump Republicans, who think the absence of evidence is the most sinister evidence, this proves that the courts, too, are tentacles of the 'deep state.' Hawley and Cruz, both of whom clerked for chief justices of the Supreme Court, hope to be wafted into the White House by gusts of such paranoia.”

-- George Will, “Hawley, Cruz and their Senate cohort are the Constitution's most dangerous domestic enemies,” The Washington Post

After accusing Biden of being on drugs and Bloomberg of bribery, calling for the impeachment of a senator, repeating his usual vague insinuations about ballots and his usual vague promise of an Obamacare replacement, Trump has arrived at his golf club.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) September 27, 2020

“Biden said that the year's events had dismantled a myth deeply embedded in his consciousness. For years, he'd been telling a parable about the morning of Obama's Inauguration: 'I called my two sons and my daughter up, and I said, ”Guys, don't tell me things can't change.“' Hunching forward in his seat, he told me that Trump had made a mockery of that parable. 'I'm embarrassed to say, I thought you could defeat hate. You can't. It only hides. It crawls under the rocks, and, when given oxygen by any person in authority, it comes roaring back out. And what I realized is, the words of a President, even a lousy President, matter. They can take you to war, they can bring peace, they can make the market rise, they can make it fall. But they can also give hate oxygen.'”

--from Evan Osnos' piece, “Can Biden's Center Hold?,” in The New Yorker. Thanks to Adam for alerting me to it. 

The simple truth is Donald Trump failed to protect America. So now, he’s trying to scare America.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 31, 2020

“The main theme of the convention seemed to be: telling lies in front of flags. Because it was four days of a full-throated denial of objective reality.”

-- John Oliver, on last week's Republican National Convention

From the column “Trump's Favorite Four-Letter Word” by Brian Stelter in The New York Times. 

Donald Trump has shouted “hoax” hundreds of times, about everything from climate change to Supreme Court rulings to impeachment. At this point, his copious claims about hoaxes add up to a hoax. And through the history of his use of this single word, we can see how he has fooled his biggest fans but failed to persuade almost everyone else.

During his 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump didn't rely on the word “hoax.” He didn't even say “fake news.” He called the news media “sick” and biased, but he didn't seriously start to deny its legitimacy until January 2017, when he was confronted by evidence that the Russian government aided his election. That's when he truly needed the news to be fake.

Looking back, Mr. Trump's exploitation of the term “fake news” to smear journalists was the single most consequential thing he did during the transition period. He built the scaffolding for his supporters to reject any and all information that wasn't Trump-approved. ...

In the first year of his presidency, Mr. Trump cried “Hoax!” 18 times; in 2018, 63 times; and in 2019, a whopping 345 times...

The scaffolding line is killer. I assume the article is an excerpt from Stelter's book, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth,” which I might have to read even though I'm sick of anything Trumpian. But the book also condemns Fox, which will be around, fucking things up, after Trump is gone. With no Fox, no Trump. It's all about Fox. We're the henhouse. 

Read to the end of Stelter's column. 

!!! Trump is told that QAnon believes he's saving the world from a secret satanic cult of cannibals and pedophiles. He says, “Well, I haven't heard that. But uh, is that supposed to be a bad thing? Or a good thing? If I can help save the world from problems...”

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 19, 2020

When 2 died of Ebola they said Obama should resign.

When 4 died in Benghazi they said Hillary should go to jail.

When 162,000 died from the Trump Virus, they said put him on Mount Rushmore.

— Chip Franklin (@chipfranklin) August 9, 2020