Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

No surprises. The two-tiered justice system is in full effect.

It's fascinating what being a Republican shooting victim does for the concept of evidence and due process. Ashli Babbitt was unarmed and not resisting arrest. Nor was she, in any remotely reasonable sense, a threat to anyone's safety. There was no politician being protected. Nancy Pelosi was not directly on the other side of that door.

We don't even know the officer's name who shot her.

The guy who rushed the stage and got just a few feet away from Trump didn't get shot.Not only did he not get shot, but he got turned into a hero by CNN.

Pelosi was gone by that time but I'm pretty the House chamber had not been fully evacuated at the time Babbitt started to climb through the window they had just broken, ignoring countless orders not to do so. The mob would have been one set of doors away from being in the same room as Congresspeople at that point if they had all followed her through the window unmolested, and there weren't that many cops guarding them.

[Mike]

We’ve been through this all before but she was within about 10 feet of the entrance to the House floor and there were still members of Congress inside at the time.

Now, OTOH, we have situations where rioters literally burn down police stations and the cops don’t shoot a single person. It happened again last night. In Seattle last summer the anarchists were nailing the doors shut to trap police inside while they torched the place. They need to blast those fuckers without prejudice.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I think Geraghty makes some pretty good points re Afghanistan: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...t=morning-jolt

The gist is that it's no longer much of a combative presence as a small, non-combative force to support the government. 3,500 soldiers and the last death was in November. He also points out that the likely consquence of withdrawal is the return of the Taliban. I think it goes well beyond likely to virtually certain.

There are arguments on both sides of this, but I do think we need to be clear about what will most likely happen.

The thing about this and he gives a nod to it at the end is that there's basically no one that can describe with any accuracy an endgame where we secure unmistakable victory or how long it would take for that to happen.

I get that the Taliban will likely end up taking over everything again. That would be true in 5 years even if we stay, true in 10 years if we stay, likely true in 25 years if we stay. Let Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia, whoever, deal with that for a while. Is it a propaganda victory for them? I suppose, but we've been unable to crush them after 20 years of trying. That's a propaganda victory too.

Side note, but I saw a factoid somewhere that almost 900,000 individual Americans did at least one tour in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

[crashcourse]

BLM supporter black guy from Dc was the one that shot her. She did look like she was trying to bust a window.

Just such a contrast with backs shooting whites versus white shooting black

The nfl player who killed 5 people in carolina was black and all his victims were white

[Mike]

The window was already busted out and she was climbing through it. But there definitely is a difference in how crimes are reported and portrayed. If the perpetrator is white and the victims are people of color, it is AUTOMATICALLY assumed that it was a racist act. When the scenario is reversed, there is no mention at all about race as a possible motive. Personally, I think very, very few of any of these shootings have anything to do with racial animus one way or the other. They're just wackadoos doing wackadoo shit.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Mike did you ever see anything like an autopsy report for her? I've seen some reports that she was shot in the shoulder and bled out; I've seen some say the neck; others say the shot was more in the chest and pretty fatal even if she had gotten decent medical assistance right away. Most of the videos now have her blurred out once she's shot.

Maybe now that the investigation into the cop is over there will finally be some sort of briefing.

[Hannibal]

The window was already busted out and she was climbing through it. But there definitely is a difference in how crimes are reported and portrayed. If the perpetrator is white and the victims are people of color, it is AUTOMATICALLY assumed that it was a racist act. When the scenario is reversed, there is no mention at all about race as a possible motive. Personally, I think very, very few of any of these shootings have anything to do with racial animus one way or the other. They're just wackadoos doing wackadoo shit.

She was climbing through a window? Oh, the horror. She could have very easily been pushed back onto her ass. Unlike Ahmaud Arbury, she wasn't trying to grab somebody's weapon Leftists have occupied government buildings with the precious politicians still inside on countless occasions.. They did it for the Kavanaugh hearings. None of them ever got shot for it. They do it to police stations and courthouses all the time. Nothing ever happens. Loony L eft Wing activists who rush at Republican politicians don't get shot. They get tackled. In Trump's case, they get much closer than Ashli Babbitt was to any politician, and the media turns them into folks heroes.

Look, if you're OK with the shooting, then fine. Just recognize that you're throwing your side under the bus and your enemies are absolutely never going to do the same. BLM and Antifa will absolutely never be treated like Ashli Babbitt. Were they to be treated the same, we would have been piling up their bodies in mass graves last year. What you are seeing is a two-tiered justice system. In the past 12 months if there were 5,000 individuals who deserved to eat a bullet because they were putting somebody else's life at risk during a civil disturbance, then Ashli Babbitt would be at the very bottom of that list. Watch the Kyle Rittenhouse videos again, see how Rittenhouse is facing three murder charges, and then tell me again how Ashli Babbitt is literally the only accepted use of lethal self defense in the country in the last year, even though there is nobody in the entire picture whose life is at stake.

[iam416]

The thing about this and he gives a nod to it at the end is that there's basically no one that can describe with any accuracy an endgame where we secure unmistakable victory or how long it would take for that to happen.

I get that the Taliban will likely end up taking over everything again. That would be true in 5 years even if we stay, true in 10 years if we stay, likely true in 25 years if we stay. Let Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia, whoever, deal with that for a while. Is it a propaganda victory for them? I suppose, but we've been unable to crush them after 20 years of trying. That's a propaganda victory too.

Side note, but I saw a factoid somewhere that almost 900,000 individual Americans did at least one tour in Afghanistan over the past 20 years.

I'm really not sure that would be true if the US maintained a small presence.

[iam416]

The window was already busted out and she was climbing through it. But there definitely is a difference in how crimes are reported and portrayed. If the perpetrator is white and the victims are people of color, it is AUTOMATICALLY assumed that it was a racist act. When the scenario is reversed, there is no mention at all about race as a possible motive. Personally, I think very, very few of any of these shootings have anything to do with racial animus one way or the other. They're just wackadoos doing wackadoo shit.

The NRO had a column on how The Party finds racism EVERYWHERE. The analogy they drew was to the old Dana Carvery "Church Lady" character and the "Oh, I don't know...could it be SATAN!!" line that obviously blamed everything on Satan.

As I noted earlier today, The Media's complicity in driving this message creates a perception amongst a lot of people that is wildly detached from facts and that creates a whole nother set of problems.

[Hannibal]

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't give a shit if the Taliban takes back over again.

[Mike]

Mike did you ever see anything like an autopsy report for her? I've seen some reports that she was shot in the shoulder and bled out; I've seen some say the neck; others say the shot was more in the chest and pretty fatal even if she had gotten decent medical assistance right away. Most of the videos now have her blurred out once she's shot.

Maybe now that the investigation into the cop is over there will finally be some sort of briefing.

I have not but I usually hear it referred to as a shot to the neck. I think she died pretty quickly and if she was shot in the shoulder she would have been screaming.

[Mike]

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't give a shit if the Taliban takes back over again.

It will happen 5 minutes after the last American leaves. That’s been a foregone conclusion for me since 2003/4.

[Mike]

Hanni, I agree with pretty much all your points. I happen to think Babbit’s shooting was justified and I’d say the same thing if some BLM rioters took a well-earned bullet to the noggin.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Up to somewhere around 8-10y ago, having a reasonably friendly government in Kabul was a cornerstone of US FP in that region. Lots of reasons for it that are no longer valid. More recently, tamping down the opium trade that was financing Islamist terror operations was an important aspect of the Bush and then Obama administration. Unfortunately, it was a failure like most US initiatives being undertaken in concert with conventional warfare to "win over the hearts and minds" of Afghanis. Delusional liberal thought that seeps into national strategy and dilutes the overwhelming capacity of the US military to force favorable political outcomes when talking, as usual, doesn't do shit.

If you're going in with guns blazing, you damn well better finish the work you set out to do. That lesson was lost after the NVA took Saigon and renamed it Ho Chi Minh City, this after US forces had bombed and battled soldiers and unconventional forces fighting for the North Vietnamese Communists in Hanoi to the peace table and Kissinger gave it all away, after Schwarzkoph pulled up at the gates of Baghdad, having just engineered one of the most complete military victories over a conventionally armed enemy since Normandy, and now Afghanistan.

I'm with Hanni. At this point continuing to have any US military presence in Afghanistan isn't smart.

[Hannibal]

Why are we spending a dime overseas to combat terrorism when we already essentially run our country as if everyone is a domestic terrorist?

20 years ago, I could just walk through the building's front door to get through the office. Now I have to go through security doors everywhere and armed policemen patrol our office buildings. Parking near the doors is restricted (it didn't use to be) and steel pillars prevent Trucks of Peace from driving a bomb into the entrance.

20 years ago, I didn't have to take my shoes off, go through an X-Ray machine, and empty all of my shit onto the belt to get through airport security. I didn't have to show my boarding pass to a TSA agent before the security checkpoint. Now I do. For that matter, I didn't even need to have a boarding pass to get through security. I could go to the airport and pick somebody up at their gate. I even used to be able to take a normal-sized bottle of shampoo onto an airplane!

What the fuck is the point of all of this shit if we need to keep troops overseas to prevent the next 9-11?