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Open thread 11/18/2024

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  • ghostsniper November 18, 2024, 8:07 AM

    Roll it on the River.
    (left a good job in the city)

  • Anne November 18, 2024, 9:01 AM

    This is one of the ferries running in/around Seattle. Neo often visited Seattle and Gerard lived there for several years. I wondering if Neo took this photo?

  • Anonymous November 18, 2024, 2:48 PM

    Vashon express.

  • neo November 18, 2024, 3:03 PM

    Anne:

    No, but you’re correct that we took those ferries quite a few times.

  • Casey Klahn November 18, 2024, 3:33 PM

    What’s more romantic than the ferry rides on Puget Sound?

    Great memories. This funny looking ferry has what? Is it a Turkish flag? No matter, I always personalize everything I read here. Did you know the Washington ferry routes form the longest anywhere? So do the boarding lines, but it’s a great time to relax.

  • Casey Klahn November 19, 2024, 7:05 AM

    I’m going out on a limb, here. Far enough to hear it beginning to crack…but I’m seeking understanding. Probably a fool’s errand, but I persist anyway.

    I’m thinking about recrimination. Much was done under Biden, in the halls of DC and on the political front, that was anywhere from unseemly to downright criminal. LARPing feds marching down the street with Naughtzee banner: tasteless. Legal actions against Trump and J6 participants who did nothing, and at the same time nothing done against agents provocateurs in the J6 crowds. Nothing done against Ashli Babbitt’s killer. Criminal neglect, or worse, at the USSS. Criminal-level corruption at FEMA. Vax mandates proven to be unnecessary and in some cases politically motivated.

    You might be surprised to read that I don’t favor political recriminations. Coming from Trump, that is. If certain congressional or independent panels find really egregious crimes done by evil bureaucrats, possibly there will be some court cases. I think the communications with Facebook and Twitter to effect the 2020 election might rise to this level. But, in general terms, I feel the president should avoid political recriminations. I was shocked enough when Ford pardoned Nixon, but years later I get the reasoning.

    Here’s the big “but”. Military investigations of crimes, insubordination and malfeasance are on the table. Trump, some are saying (and it may not even be true), may impanel an investigative body to look into the Kabul withdrawal. It’s my feeling that the military defeat of the withdrawal is wide open for scrutiny. Especially if it leads to Biden, but at that point all you can do is damage Biden politically; damage his brand and his political cohort.

    What happened at Kabul airport requires a deep look. At the time, I was certain that no military commander in his right mind would ever evacuate anything with direct fire on the runway. The USAF planes were firing flares or chaff while landing or taking off! That is bullshit of the first order and any general of any caliber would demand a 1 mile perimeter around that runway. The fact that it happened as it did made me think it wasn’t planned or ordered to be executed by any military man, but felt like a state department operation! It was criminally stupid. But wait! There’s more! Far more insane, from a military standpoint, was the giving up of Kandahar before the final evac from Kabul. If that plan and order came from a military guy, or was even executed by a military guy, I’d say he’s criminally liable.

    Probably the media is larping us, and no such investigation is planned. But, it causes you to think back on the criminality of Biden’s whole shipt show. What about the “Warrior Panel” that I believe is actually being revealed by the Trump crew? There is nothing new in this. The military has peer reviews all the time. It’s a great way to go past rank and reveal the character of an individual. I say empty out as much of the pentagon as you possibly can. The reason I say this is: look at Milley, Austin, and the serving CNO: all extreme examples of incompetence and politically based. Add Brown (JCOS) to that list. When your top layer is that bad, the whole loaf is suspect.

    I’m for recriminations at some level, but very limited on the political level. We’ll have to wait and see what Trump does. Your thoughts?

    • ghostsniper November 19, 2024, 11:27 AM

      This constant lack of recrimination in all things gov’t is, for me, one of the more loathsome aspects of all of it. Crime without penalty. As far as I’m concerned when people assigned the well paid position of levying sentence upon those that have committed crime but choose to not do so have in fact committed a crime.

      When you examine anything to do with this rotten assed gov’t you quickly encounter criminalities stacked to the rafters in all directions, making it impossible for me to ever have anything positive to say about it. I hold all of it in the highest contempt.

    • azlibertarian November 20, 2024, 4:02 PM

      …I’m for recriminations at some level, but very limited on the political level….

      Trump has been mischaracterized and ill-treated by the media, Big Tech, and the Deep State actors in the .gov. [Citation]

      In his first term, he had ample opportunities to thump his opponents, but yet chose not to. Cases-in–point…
      * In 2019, the Iranians shot down a RQ-4A Global Hawk drone. Trump had initially ordered US strikes against Iranian radar and missile sites, but then backed down and instead launched sanctions and cyber attacks. With this attack, Iran hadn’t shed US blood, and Trump elected to respond with non-lethal means.
      * It is hard to argue that Trump isn’t a showman. He’s probably the greatest showman-as-a-politican that this country has ever had. But every politician running for office makes promises and says things in the election-run that he knows he cannot accomplish once in office. Most are more subtle than Trump is, but this is true for all of them. Here, I count all of his “On Day 1, I’m going to do [this] and I’m going to do [that]” promises. Stop the wars in Ukraine and the Mideast? No. That’s not going to happen. At least not until the belligerants themselves believe that their war is no longer fruitful. “No tax on tips? No tax on overtime? No tax on Social Security?” None of that’s going to happen either. Insert any politician of any party here and the results are the same: Campaign promises are what we vote for, but at the same time, they are largely empty. Also here, I go back to the 2016 and 2020 chants of “Lock her up”, referring to Hillary Clinton. Was there a good basis to lock Clinton up? Sure there was. But Trump45 knew that doing so would create more problems for his administration than it would solve, so Clinton got off scot-free-from-prosecution, but the stain to her reputation remains. As with his dealings with Iran, Trump was kinder than he could have been, but got no credit for it.

      But that’s my view of our history. The question now is “What will Trump do in our future?” I think that in the end, Trump47 will be both tougher on his enemies than Trump45 was, as well as offering a grace to large swathes of them.
      A few predictions…
      * The DoD. Milley will be recalled from his retirement and put through a Courts Martial. There, he’ll be made to answer for his insubordination-bordering-on-treason of telling his Chinese counter-part that he’d give him a heads-up before the US attacked China. Nothing will come of it, but Milley will be dragged through the process none-the-less. Trump needs to remind the Pentagon that the military is subordinate to the President and the people who elected him. Everyone down to the newest E-1’s in service needs this lesson (I’m looking at you, LtCol Vindmann). While there will be few, if any, other legal proceedings against those in the DoD, we will see some flags who are fired, and quite a few others from 2- or 3-levels deep on the organizational charts who will choose to terminate their service earlier than they may have planned.
      *DOJ. Gaetz will get confirmed. He is of the same mold as Trump….loud, noisy, and he doesn’t give AF about being nice….so Trump will go to bat for him. This’ll be a litmus test for both the GOPe Senate and for Trump. Who has more power now….MAGA or the Deep State? There is no one who wants a thorough house cleaning of the DOJ more than Trump. Trump wants to have the Senators put their names to votes as opposed to allowing their largely-anonymous pre-confirmation-hearing pushback to get Gaetz to remove his name from consideration. I agree with Mark Halperin’s point earlier this week: In addition to concerns about whether they’ll be primaried in their next race, these Senators each have staff, donors, and family members who all want positions in or influence with the .gov. Confirming Trumps cabinet choices, especially those considered controversial, is the key to seeing those around these Senators get what they want. The key at the DOJ will be the replacements of the second and third levels. Recriminations? There may be a couple of high-profile criminal cases but they’ll be difficult to convict. As they’ve demonstrated with Trump, et al., the process will be the punishment. In the end, one way or another, Trump and Gaetz will get most, but not all of the problem-children to leave.
      * Cutting the Bureaucracy. DOGE or not, there won’t be substantial changes made to the size of the fed.gov. There’ll be some trimming around the edges, and maybe, if he’s very, very successful, he’ll be able to move some agencies, bureaus and maybe a complete department away from Washington, DC. While many on the Right very much want to cut our government and our budget, pretty much everyone enjoys some benefit or service provided by the .gov, and almost none of us is willing to have it cut.

  • Anonymous November 19, 2024, 12:39 PM
    • azlibertarian November 19, 2024, 1:03 PM

      Very funny, but alarming at the same time. The genie is out of the bottle, but we may soon regret these AI-generated Deep Fakes.

    • DT November 19, 2024, 4:18 PM

      Interesting video but I don’t know that Fortunate Son is the appropriate song.

    • Casey Klahn November 20, 2024, 7:19 AM

      I’m certain there’s a name for this in the film arts, where a song or passage will oppose its original meaning based on feeling or structure. I get Fortunate Son for this, and I was laughing my aspect off.

      I’ll say this again when the Wednesday post drops, but I want to go on record saying that it looks like Trump’s appointments are revealing a pattern. He is nominating or choosing people with a celebrity or media personality. Just like himself, in that regard!

      No doubt I’m seeing this pattern later than some, and take no joy in being late to the bar on this. But, I will order up a big pilsner of liberal tears as I watch the liberal media and celebrity complex explode in pieces under the power of the Trump dynamism. Freudenschade at its absolute best.

  • ghostsniper November 19, 2024, 3:30 PM

    With his historic re-election to the presidency, it would seem that Donald Trump’s legal problems are over. Trump, as practically everybody knows, has been the target over the last two years of numerous federal, state, and local prosecutions. Now that Trump will be returning to the nation’s highest office, these cases will be put indefinitely on hold or dropped altogether.

    But if Trump’s problems in this respect are over, America’s are not. These cases present a problem for the nation because of the popular perception that they were merely a form of political “lawfare” brought to damage Trump, impair his candidacy, and prevent his return to power. Polls have shown that substantial numbers of Americans view these cases as politically motivated. Indeed, in what may come as a galling surprise to Trump’s political enemies, exit polls indicate that he won a majority of the votes of those Americans who believe democracy is under threat. This result surely reflects these voters’ sense that the various prosecutions of Trump were really an attempt to undermine democratic self-government by depriving the people of a free choice in the presidential contest.

    Moreover, the sense that the anti-Trump cases were politicized and abusive is obviously well-founded. All of these cases—the federal prosecutions of Trump in relation to the events of January 6 and his retention of official documents, the New York state fraud case, the New York “hush money” case, and the Georgia RICO prosecution—were absolutely unprecedented. It is, or should be, impossible for any honest person to pretend that they were dictated by some real law enforcement necessity. Trump did not tell any of his supporters to enter the capitol illegally. He is not the only former president (or vice president) to have retained official documents. His alleged real estate fraud harmed nobody. A non-disclosure agreement is not a crime. And there is nothing felonious in a defeated politician arguing to election officials that he would have won if different rules had been followed.

    There is, then, ample reason to think that these legal cases were abuses of official power intended to skew the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, either by damaging Trump politically or by making it impossible for him to campaign at all. They were intended not just to harm Donald Trump but also effectively to disenfranchise his supporters. In this sense they represent an unprecedented attack on American self-government.

    But what is to be done about them?

    https://americanmind.org/salvo/congressional-accountability-for-anti-trump-lawfare/

  • DT November 19, 2024, 4:23 PM

    While I have no doubt a Harris administration would have finished us as a nation (and perhaps us as living beings), I doubt Trump’s administration will be as great as everyone hopes and expects. The forces of evil have not gone away and too many Republicans are sitting at the gravy trough and don’t wish to upset the status quo. It’s too bad every single incumbent of any party wasn’t kicked out of office.

    • Anonymous November 20, 2024, 6:15 AM

      DT. Very well said. The main objective of the dem hierarchy is to extinguish America as we know it.

    • azlibertarian November 20, 2024, 3:46 PM

      “…Trump’s administration will [not] be as great as everyone hopes and expects….

      I am in long agreement with you here, and not just with Trump. I go forward with the view that things will turn out to be neither as good as I had hoped nor as bad as I had feared.

  • Snakepit Kansas November 20, 2024, 4:05 AM

    I have taken the Edmonds/Kingston ferry a number of times over the year when I visit clients in Lynnwood. The ferry is 90% empty most of the time. You can buy a locally made draft beer during the trip and take the stairs to the top outside deck to enjoy the view.

  • Nunnya Bidnez, jr November 20, 2024, 2:20 PM

    That’s not the Seattle Ferry; it is in fact the ferry that travels between Byzantium and Constantinople, give or take a few years, in the town mistakenly called Istanbul. Ain’t nobody’s business but the Turks. Take a looksee at the opposite shore just aft of the stern, you can see the minarets and dome of the invader’s mosque; or you could just look at the flag fluttering on the stern of said batteau.
    When I was last there in the olden times, it was a rite of passage for young lads to swim across, from Europe on the western shore, to Asia on the eastern. Alas! Progress! …there is now a bridge across the straits, and the rites are to walk across if you can’t grab a jitney.
    Hmmm, “Turks”. Are there really any Turks? A thousand years ago Anatolia was populated by Greeks in the west, Armenians in the northeast, Kurds in the southeast. When the Turks swept in from central asia, dragging islam along with them, they were a very small invading scourge, never more than ten percent of the population. After centuries of intermixing with the native ethnicities, how could anyone consider them to be “Turkish”. Why have the natives taken on the cloak of “turkishness”? Ah, Progress!

    Anyways, nice to see the old gang is still here at Gerard’s place.

    • DT November 20, 2024, 3:37 PM

      Had a great time in Istanbul (and Izmir – and Gallipoli) when I was there. Helped that I was with locals and had a chance to visit places outside the tourist spots. That was then – not sure an American would be welcome anymore outside the tourist areas now though.