Althouse: At the Sunrise Café...

October 7, 2020

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can write about whatever you like — except the VP debate, which has its own post, one post down.

41 comments:

TheThinMan said...: I can’t watch more than 30 seconds of Kamela’s theatrics without turning off the TV. Pence wanted to know why she didn’t sign a particular bipartisan police reform bill and her response was to tick off her CV bulletin points then repeat the lie that Trump didn’t disavow imaginary white supremacists.; 10/7/20, 9:38 PM
TheOne Who Is Not Obeyed said...: Looks like there's a little action going on in 'Tosa, where a black cop who shot a black criminal was not indicted by a grand jury. Guess it's "white supremacy" to accept the judgement of a grand jury.

We'll see if 'Tosa is in ashes before the sun rises tomorrow.; 10/7/20, 9:41 PM
wishfulthinking said...: The left is smashing windows in private homes is Wisconsin althouse. Tell me at what point are white women going to stop supporting people who want them dead or enslaved.; 10/7/20, 11:07 PM
Readering said...: Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA. Time to send him back to Walter Reed without his phone.; 10/8/20, 12:31 AM
Milwaukie guy said...: I watched the debate tonight but this is not quite about that. There are five voters in our little Milwaukie commune. Three of them are planning on voting for Biden, coincidently, the three youngest. The household white working class men have more common sense.

I was working on "giving the talk" to the Dem voters, about how Biden/Harris would completely fuck up the economy and how Comrade Kate, our governor, is screwing Oregon. We've had less than 150 Covid deaths and, as I wrote here some months ago, a close friend was #22 and I've felt the pain. My son works on the Portland Spirit party boat and he's still on like 1/3-time. I wasn't going to ask for a Trump vote but to just vote Green or something.

Now, after watching the first two debates, I'm going to point out to the young'uns that packing the SCOTUS or any attempts to void the federal bargain of the Electoral College will mean civil war. Having been a revolutionary in the 70s, I'm not woofing, not selling gorilla biscuits [wherever we learned that slang from].

I've been in a cell before. I've read the 1928 Comintern handbook "Armed Insurrection." I'm a big Mao fan, where the countryside surrounds the cities. One of my coffee table books is "Light Infantry Tactics for Small Teams." I have all the Kurt Schlichter novels.

Civil War re-enacting was Covid-cancelled this year. But our 1st Minnesota unit is having a small campout this weekend. I know one topic that will be talked about around the campfire....

In Lincoln's Second Inaugural, IIRC, he spoke about the "mystic chords of memory" that tied us to our ancestors. And three of my GG-Grandfathers fought for Father Abraham, the messiah of America. Another ancestor, a GGGG?-Grandfather, Nathanial Chapman was a Minuteman that fought at Lexington and Concord, Bunker Hill and stayed with the Continental Army through Yorktown. Of course, he's Scots-Irish.

Give me Liberty or give me Death. Albeit, it's easier to say at age 69 than when you still have little bread-crushers to raise. OTOH, John Brown was a pretty old dude.

The Left is really playing with fire.; 10/8/20, 1:12 AM
Milwaukie guy said...: Thinking more of those "mystic chords of memory" I am reminded of my friend's dad, Jack Boardman, when Bill B. and I lived a few blocks apart in South Chicago.

Jack, a somewhat wiry kind of small guy, is classic Greatest Generation. For some major D-Day anniversary, possibly during Reagan, Jack was the guest for an entire Tom Brokaw segment. I forget what they talked exactly about.

Since I talked to Jack more than Brokaw, I'm going to tell the whole story. If you've seen those Robert Capra photos of infantry going in to Omaha Beach, there's a Sherman tank or two often in the picture.

There were 11 3-tank platoons in the first wave at Omaha. They were DD, or Dual Drive, where they were supposed to be released 1000 yards out and "swim" to shore. They had some kind of flotation pods and a snorkel for the exhaust. Jack's a Sherman gunner and his platoon is in a landing craft heading in with the other 10 platoons. His boat is a bit behind so is the last to get to the 1000 yard line.

The first 30 tanks sink like stones and everyone drowns. The naval Lt. JG tells the tank Lt. that its time to launch the tanks. The tank Lt. is all like no way, the other 30 tanks are in the soup and the infantry needs some fire support on the beach. Run the fucking boat all the way in. Boat Lt. is like I have my orders, 1000 yards and I turn around for more. Tank Lt. puts his .45 to Lt. JG's forehead and says, all the way in please. That's how that one tank platoon made it onto the beach in the first wave at Omaha.

This is a country worth fighting for.; 10/8/20, 1:51 AM
Mr. Forward said...: Almost any deer can jump an eight foot fence from a standing start, big bucks on the run can clear 12 feet. Asked the guy at the apple orchard how they got by with a six foot fence. He says “deer are lazy.”; 10/8/20, 6:34 AM
Howard said...: MG. Great story. Never focused on the armor portion of D-Day. You bet your sweet bippie the USA is worth fighting for. We'll find out who fights harder after Nov 3rd. Libtards v Deplorables 2020. Lucky for you people, Trump is so flush with cash that he'll crush Biden with a flood of swing State ad buys.; 10/8/20, 6:38 AM
Tank said...: Road trip up and down the East coast this past two weeks. The Covid reduction in traffic has cleared all the previous trouble spots on Route 95. Yay. Zoomed passed DC and Richmond and around the Boston area (not on 95).; 10/8/20, 6:47 AM
iowan2 said...: Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA. Time to send him back to Walter Reed without his phone.

Looky here, we have identified readering as Lt Co. Vindman.

One of those leftist that have never looked at the Constitution and stupidly think the unelected bureaucracy is in charge and gives orders to the President. Reducing the Presidency to hosting symbolic diplomatic meetings with foreign powers, but no power to act.
Too stupid to know about the Constitutions specific Article II powers that give the President of the United States singular plenary power of the Military. The Constitution actually defines the President as Commander in Chief of all Military actions. Strange how the NSA, not mentioned in the Constitution, has somehow shouldered the President from his enumerated Constitutional power... in the mind of leftist. No wonder they are always upset, they have no idea how the United States Constitution works.; 10/8/20, 6:57 AM
tim maguire said...: Readering said...Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan

I sometimes wonder what planet you live on. Trump has been trying to extricate us from Afghanistan for years. Gen. Mattis quit over Trump's plans to leave Afghanistan.; 10/8/20, 7:39 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “ Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA. Time to send him back to Walter Reed without his phone.”

I expect that even nuclear weapons wouldn’t be enough to actually end Afghanistan. It is geographically a very sparsely populated country and I expect that any thing short of significantly raising the planet’s ambient radiation level isn’t going to end the country, or its people. Perhaps, you meant that Trump is ending our military involvement there, instead of the country itself.

Why “impulsively”? Nothing really impulsive there. He has been working towards getting our military out of that country for most of his four years in office. Yes, there are those working for him who refuse to acknowledge that their refusing to obey his wishes violates their oath of office. And, yes, billions are being made by the military industrial complex by prolonging our involvement in that war. The difference between Trump pulling out from Afghanistan, and Obama from Iraq, is that it really was premature on Obama’s part, since Iraq wasn’t quite ready, and our military had to intervene again fairly quickly. I seriously doubt that our military will have to reintervene there for at least a generation.

Not sure what Trump tweeted in regards to the NSA. Googled (intentionally committing trademark genericde there because I used DuckDuckGo instead for the search) what you wrote there, and nothing came up. I do expect that Haskell at the CIA and Wray at the FBI will be pursuing other employment opportunities after Trump’s re-election for refusing his orders to declassify SpyGate documents that (rightfully) embarrass their agencies. Embarrassment is not a legitimate reason to maintain classification of documents, esp against orders by POTUS.; 10/8/20, 7:41 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “Almost any deer can jump an eight foot fence from a standing start, big bucks on the run can clear 12 feet. Asked the guy at the apple orchard how they got by with a six foot fence. He says “deer are lazy.””

Saw that yesterday. Went out to the farm where the guy who did the excavation, etc, work on my subdivision lives and runs his business yesterday. I need some of his drawings, so we can find where the sewer stubs are. As I walked up to the backdoor, probably most of a dozen deer exploded from grazing right by the house exploded and bounded away. Even this year’s crop of youngsters were clearing the lower fences, and the bucks fences almost twice that high. Impressive. Not surprisingly, the Couple who lived there weren’t home.; 10/8/20, 7:49 AM
wendybar said...: Trump isn't going to do the virtual hit job on him. Joe will have the questions ahead of time, and the answers on his teleprompter. Why bother?? Why should Trump and Pence have to debate 2 people all the time??; 10/8/20, 7:53 AM
tcrosse said...: This season's flu shots are now available, and we are urged to get them. But the wife and I have been isolated and socially distanced as mandated by our Governor. This ostensibly protects us from the pandemic, so would it not also protect us from the flu?; 10/8/20, 8:23 AM
The Cracker Emcee Refulgent said...: “Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan”

I frequently have 20 year-long impulses.; 10/8/20, 8:24 AM
gilbar said...: https://www.blileys.com/obituaries/Lyon-Gardiner-Tyler?obId=18487727; 10/8/20, 8:29 AM
JML said...: gilbar, thanks for sharing.

Rest In Peace.; 10/8/20, 8:42 AM
narciso said...: i think the intervention in haiti ran as long as afghanistan, part of the first wave of interventions,; 10/8/20, 8:44 AM
AllenS said...: Readering said...
Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA.

A statement obviously spoken by someone who has never had his/her ass in danger.; 10/8/20, 8:45 AM
narciso said...: national security adviser o'brien, they want to continue this long war without a strategy,; 10/8/20, 8:54 AM
J. Farmer said...: Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA. Time to send him back to Walter Reed without his phone.

Impulsively?! What are you smoking? It's a disgrace they're still there at all. For over a decade now, US troop deployments have been used as little more than a political football. The military brass and foreign policy intelligentsia are addicted to the myth of "credibility," and it is is this addiction that so often keeps us stuck to the carcass of dead policies. The Taliban "peace agreement" was little more than a face-saving effort. The war is lost. It's a bitter realization that every death and every dollar spent in Afghanistan was flushed down the toilet, but ignoring it will only guarantee more pointless death and destruction.; 10/8/20, 9:16 AM
Chuck said...: Althouse with all due respect, there’s no need to carefully dissect the VP debate. Because just hours later, Trump has gone live in yet another batshit crazy interview rant on Fox (Business); this one with Maria Bartiromo.

Where he criticizes “Bill Barr” for not prosecuting Obama, FBI Director Wray for not investigating Mrs. Clinton, and Mike Pompeo for not finding her State Department emails.

And calls Senator Harris a “monster.”

The news cycle immediately returns, from semi-normal politics, to Trump craziness. As he plunged into double-digit polling deficits.; 10/8/20, 9:23 AM
Michael K said...: One of those leftist that have never looked at the Constitution and stupidly think the unelected bureaucracy is in charge and gives orders to the President. Reducing the Presidency to hosting symbolic diplomatic meetings with foreign powers, but no power to act.

Those are their plans for Joe.; 10/8/20, 9:24 AM
Michael K said...: Blogger Readering said...
Now POTUS impulsively decides to end Afghanistan and announces by tweet to overrule NSA. Time to send him back to Walter Reed without his phone.

Others have answered this idiot but here is an example of the strategic vision of a Biden voter.; 10/8/20, 9:26 AM
Jaq said...: It’s amazing how pro war the left has become, even putting up a toadie to defense contractors as candidate for president, and impeaching Trump for delaying defense contractor money by a couple of weeks.; 10/8/20, 9:32 AM
Jaq said...: It’s amazing how somebody as physically attractive as Harris is so hard to watch. I guess that’s why Hollywood does screen tests.; 10/8/20, 9:33 AM
Jaq said...: "they want to continue this long war without a strategy,”

As. long as they are still selling weapons, and it’s only the children of deplorables getting killed, where is the harm?; 10/8/20, 9:34 AM
buwaya said...: "the unelected bureaucracy is in charge and gives orders to the President. Reducing the Presidency to hosting symbolic diplomatic meetings with foreign powers, but no power to act."

That is the usual case. The laws can say one thing, but reality is something else. Once you create a bureaucracy they are their own actual power, whatever the laws say.

A "normal" executive will work with the bureaucracy as he would with his parliamentary allies and opponents, recognizing their power and value and horse-trading as needed. But this was largely precluded with Trump, as the bureaucracy greeted him, generally, with active operations against him, trying to depose him even, and resisting everything without pretence of normal business.

This is not new. The Romans struggled with this. Bureaucrats had Emperors murdered for purely bureaucratic reasons. Chinese Emperors were routinely sidelined by their own servants.

Or, if you like, just watch the old British TV Series "Yes, Minister"; 10/8/20, 9:53 AM
buwaya said...: Among your many other problems in the US is the outright revolt of your bureaucratic system against your own people. It is part of the general cold Civil War, but a particular case.

These systems, closed societies really, are hostile to the persons they are supposed to be the servants of. It sounds silly but this is fairly common historically. Closed systems immune from feedback develop their own internal priorities in preference to what their mandated purpose is. You see this in all kinds of nonprofit institutions, monopolies, and failing businesses as well.

Its amazing how often the above has been said, and acknowledged, and yet everyone seems to constantly forget it.

In the US all these conflicts have gotten so bad that there is not, and never can be a "normal" anymore, until one side wins and utterly crushes the other.; 10/8/20, 10:03 AM
buwaya said...: Needless to say, international policies are moot when you are in a state of civil war and the state institutions are still being fought for. What are treaties worth, if they are likely to be cancelled by some other faction in months, or even sabotaged by the officials supposed to implement them?; 10/8/20, 10:06 AM
buwaya said...: The death of the Emperor Aurelian, from Zosimus, Book 1

"During his stay at Perinthus, now called Heraclea, a conspiracy was thus formed against him. There was in the court a man named Eros, whose office was to carry out the answers of the emperor. This man had been for some fault threatened by the emperor, and put in great fear. Dreading therefore lest the emperor should realize his menaces by actions, he went to some of the guard, whom he knew to be the boldest men in the court; be told them a plausible story, and shewed them a letter of his own writing, in the character of the emperor (which he had long before learned to counterfeit), and persuading them first that they themselves were to be put to death, which was the meaning expressed by the letter, he endeavoured to prevail on them to murder the emperor. The deception answered. Observing Aurelianus to go out of the city with a small retinue, they ran out upon him and murdered him. He was buried on the spot with great magnificence by the army in consideration of the great services he had performed, and the dangers he had undergone for the good of the public."; 10/8/20, 10:42 AM
J. Farmer said...: i think the intervention in haiti ran as long as afghanistan, part of the first wave of interventions,

Well, it wasn't a "first wave," but you're talking about the interventions taken under the so called "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine, including occupying Dominican Republic, Haiti, Nicaragua, Cuba.; 10/8/20, 10:49 AM
wildswan said...: It keeps going through my mind that, as terrible as the response to the Rona has been, still that response is being kept in place because people are using it to put through changes that might otherwise have taken years or might not have happened. I don't mean trying to sneak in socialism as public health emergency decrees though that is being attempted. But take major league sports and the BLM takeover there and the catastrophic drop in TV watchers. Would that drop have have happened if covid hadn't caused a break in people's habits by stopping sports for awhile? I think people might have accepted the BLM lecture series if there hadn't been the break. But with the sports viewing habit broken cold turkey, people re-evaluated costs and time as well as the unpleasant hectoring and, unexpectedly, were willing to turn off sports as reimagined by BLM. Same with schools. Would 10% of the kids now be out of the public school system if that system had never closed? Or is it that people reconsidered the public schools (as they were doing anyway) but with the habit of accepting the public school system broken by the covid response nationwide with one swift blow? Same with leaving the cities. Something people were thinking about became reality because the response to covid broke habits. Same with telecommuting. And the covid response may be usefully breaking other habits. People have fallen back on family (if they have family to fall back on.) Kids have to spend more time with adults. People are eating together because they can't eat out. And insofar as they can eat out there is less crowding which is nice. In short, we might not go back to January but we also might not go forward to being Venezuela because radically breaking people's habits has led to sudden transformations going in unexpected, uncontrollable directions adding up to one sudden deep social transformation caused by millions of individual choices. And that transformation makes many things seem dated or unwanted - but which/ and how? The rigid left thinks now is a good time for socialism - but look at attendance at major league sports when they resumed as wokey sports. Is that the true image of the future or is that an outlier?; 10/8/20, 11:15 AM
Readering said...: Whatever else one might think about Robert O'Brien he is a self-described staff person who does not make policy, but carries out Trump's bidding. So for Trump to contradict him in this way is one more indicator that Trump is unwell. But Chuck rightly points out this morning's call-in interview as the best recent indicator of his unwellness.

But flattered so many see a comment with my name and attack without pausing to analyze it.; 10/8/20, 1:48 PM
iowan2 said...: But flattered so many see a comment with my name and attack without pausing to analyze it.

Says Lt Col. Vindman. Too stupid to look up simple constitutional principles; 10/8/20, 2:23 PM
Michael K said...: So for Trump to contradict him in this way is one more indicator that Trump is unwell. But Chuck rightly points out this morning's call-in interview as the best recent indicator of his unwellness.

Hilarious. You and Chuck make a nice tag team. The president disagrees with a staffer. So he is unwell? Could it be that the staffer is wrong ?

You people are just amazing.; 10/8/20, 2:56 PM
Michael K said...: These systems, closed societies really, are hostile to the persons they are supposed to be the servants of. It sounds silly but this is fairly common historically.

I have previously discussed that and it is A Principle Agent Problem.

The principal–agent problem, in political science and economics, (also known as agency dilemma or the agency problem) occurs when one person or entity (the “agent”) is able to make decisions on behalf of, or that impact, another person or entity: the “principal”.[1] This dilemma exists in circumstances where agents are motivated to act in their own best interests, which are contrary to those of their principals, and is an example of moral hazard.

The Founders were well aware of this problem and tried to protect the citizens with certain provisions of the Constitution.

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time.

This provision was violated by Barack Obama who spent billions to subsidize insurance companies to support his “Affordable Care Act” which was not successful.; 10/8/20, 2:59 PM
readering said...: Invincible ignorance, Michael K. The staffer announces the president's decision on a critical foreign policy/war matter, and the President, late at night, changes his mind and repudiates it by tweet. He is unwell.; 10/8/20, 4:10 PM
Rusty said...: So. readering is pro war now?; 10/9/20, 7:06 AM
Readering said...: No.; 10/9/20, 9:13 AM