Take The Keys Away

 

Back during the early days of The Trump Administration, Trump fired the FBI Director James Comey. It caused a massive reaction from the press and, naturally, Twitter, which is really where the press looks to decide what is and is not news.

My wife and I were watching the news.  Trump seemed especially in over his head in those days.  My wife asked me if I thought Trump was going to make it through the year.  I told her I didn't know if he was going to make it through the week.

Well, he made it through four years with only two impeachments and a single solidarity pandemic.

I always had the feeling that Trump was making it up as he was going along. He was winging it.

I got the same feeling this week with President Biden.  

He was supposed to be the grown-up.  No more of this self-centered, bombastic slop like we had with Trump.  He, like his old boss, was going to be no drama.

To say that hasn't happened is an understatement.

There is one word to describe Biden's performance this past week.

Awful.

I know he is from my side of the river, but Jim Geraghty said, "The transcript of President Joe Biden’s interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos dropped, and the president’s incoherence, insistence that he was incorrectly briefed, denial that he was warned by his military advisers, and oddly low profile in the past week raise troubling questions about his ability to perform his duties."

I would have written the same thing but would have ended it with "prove his ability to perform his duties are, as Dan Rather would have said, slim to none and Slim has left town."

As we say in the church, you need to look into your heart of hearts. You need to ask yourself one question: Will this get better?  The answer is no. It will not get better. There is a reason Biden never got into the double digits the other two times he ran for President is that he wasn't that great to begin with.

Let's put it this way:  there's no snap in his fastball, if you catch my drift.  He is an old man that is looking and acting older every day.

I'm not being ugly or mean.  The Presidency is a tough job. Biden is 78 years old. He should be enjoying his grandchildren, not sitting around trying to come up with some dopey excuse for how everything went terribly wrong.

On top of this, Grandpa is lying to us.

On July 8, 2021, there was this exchange.

Q: Mr. President, thank you very much. Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true.

Q: Is it — can you please clarify what they have told you about whether that will happen or not?
THE PRESIDENT: That is not true. They did not — they didn’t — did not reach that conclusion.

In an interview with George Stephanopoulos, Biden said the following:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But you know that Senator McConnell, others say this was not only predictable, it was predicted, including by him, based on intelligence briefings he was getting.
BIDEN: What — what did he say was predicted?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Senator McConnell said it was predictable that the Taliban was gonna take over.
BIDEN: Well, by the end of the year, I said that’s that was — that was a real possibility. But no one said it was gonna take over then when it was bein’ asked.

Either the President didn't remember what he said on July 8, 2021, or he lied to Stephanopoulos. 

STEPHANOPOULOS: So when you look at what’s happened over the last week, was it a failure of intelligence, planning, execution or judgment?
BIDEN: Look, I don’t think it was a fa– look, it was a simple choice, George. When the– when the Taliban — let me back — put it another way. When you had the government of Afghanistan, the leader of that government get in a plane and taking off and going to another country, when you saw the significant collapse of the ta– of the– Afghan troops we had trained — up to 300,000 of them just leaving their equipment and taking off, that was — you know, I’m not– this — that — that’s what happened. That’s simply what happened.

I guess he is saying that it wasn't a failure of intelligence, planning, execution, or judgment. It was just one of those things, you know. 

STEPHANOPOULOS:  So, you don’t think this could have been handled — this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?

BIDEN:   No, I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that, we’re gonna go back in hindsight and look — but the idea that somehow, there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don’t know how that happens. I don’t know how that happened.

 

At least we got a promise to go back and look so that maybe next time we don't have people falling off of planes when we are trying to leave a country. 

Look, I have no idea what would have happened if Trump had been re-elected and pulled out of Afghanistan in May like he wanted.  We probably would have heard speeches and press conferences about "the best pull out ever" and a "beautiful evacuation, probably the best that anyone has ever seen".

I've just know what happened under Biden's watch. We'll have a national conversation about taking away the keys from Grandpa, sooner or later. Bet on sooner.

 

After Twenty Years

 

 

So, after twenty years, we have entered a new phase of the War Against Terror.

The phase is called:  "Boy Did We Look Stupid".

For those who have short memories, we went into Afghanistan to destroy the "safe havens" the Taliban set up for terrorists like Osama Bin Laden.

It seemed to work, I guess.

There hasn't been a major terrorist event like 9/11 in twenty years.  

But The War In Afghanistan was a major pain in the rear. So instead of just getting rid of the safe havens, we tried to build a country. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a mistake because we first had to teach the Afghans to read so they could shoot the rifles, drive the tanks, fix the jeeps, treat women like human beings, et.al. 

Then we decided to pop Iraq, which people are still arguing about today.  In the last years of The Bush 2.0 administration, we had to do a surge to make sure Iraq didn't completely fall apart.

At the time, I remember many people, like a Senator from Delaware, talk about how The War In Afghanistan was "the good war."

The War On Terror, with a total meltdown of the economy, contributed to the election of Barack Obama.

The War on Terror was not popular with a caller into "Imus In The Morning" named Donald Trump, who was starring in a game show at the time.

In the last months of the Trump administration, we began meeting with the Taliban to negotiate a withdrawal from Afghanistan.   

Mr. Tough Man Queens agreed to withdraw from Afghanistan.

Well, as we all know, Obama's Vice President, Joseph Sominex, won the Presidency last November.  We all know that, right?   Right?

As a matter of course, President Sominex started to unravel the policies of President Trump. First, he canceled the Keystone pipeline, which caused gas prices to rise and the unemployment of the dear union workers the President loves.

There were others with the main theme being "If Trump liked it, I don't" except for one:  withdrawal from Afghanistan.

The President added his little cherry on top of this pie:  We would leave by August 31st.   

I will be the first to tell you that I am not an Ivy League-educated person.      

I barely graduated from Cobb County Public Schools and went on to barely graduate from Kennesaw State University.  But I knew The Taliban would not play nice and we would be back where we were twenty years ago.

I was shaking my head when I heard the Sominex Administration talking about the Taliban caring about the reaction from "The International Community."  I don't see the memos and the intel, but I've always been under the impression that the Taliban didn't really care what the Ambassador of Luxembourg thought of them.

At this writing, the President of Afghanistan got out of Dodge when he heard the Taliban were in Kabul.  NBC News reports, "Twenty years after toppling the militant regime, the United States rushed to exit the country after the loss of thousands of American lives and billions of dollars failed to bring lasting democracy to the nation."

In the understatement of the year, NBC News says, "U.S. officials had clearly not anticipated a possible fall of Kabul this quickly after President Joe Biden announced the full withdrawal of U.S. forces, and were scrambling both to protect their staff and to explain the defeat politically."   Yes, they had clearly not anticipated this as quickly.

What a mess.  We put all of that time, money, resources, and lives into Afghanistan, and it will be just like it was before.

We've had twenty years to think about a way to leave. This wasn't it.

 

Enjoying Every Sandwich

 

 I'm at the age where you don't celebrate birthdays as much as you tolerate them.

I'm sort of like the great Warren Zevon. Warren wrote and sang such classic rock songs as "Werewolf Of London" ("His hair was perfect"). 

Zevon came down with Mesothelioma, and David Letterman asked how he was doing. Zevon said, "I'm enjoying every sandwich."

That's what I've decided to do. I'm going to enjoy every sandwich, as long as it is the sandwich I ordered and it has what I want on it.   

It is sort of weird for me.  I was the last child born in my family and the last child born in my mother's extended family.  I am down on the bottom on my father's side too.  I'm used to being the youngest. 

It is not that way anymore.

I remember when it first hit me that I am one of the "seniors".  We were watching Sheryl Crow sing "Steve McQueen" on television, and a friend's daughter asked, "Who is Steve McQueen?".

I find myself explaining things to younger people, like why Thurston Howell the Third carried so much money and clothes on The Minnow. But first, I have to explain The Minnow. Then I have to explain why The Skipper never called Gilligan by his first name. Or The Professor by his first name.  Or why nobody ever made a play for Ginger and Mary Anne. It gets lonely on an island, you know. 

Don't get me started on "The Brady Bunch".  Two people who just happen to have three children apiece, marry and they pile into Mr. Brady's three-bedroom house.  I'm not sure where the maid slept or why they even had one. Carol didn't work, and she could have gotten the kids to help. 

One of the things "Mad Men" got right was the amount of smoking people used to do.  Back when I was coming along, adults smoked everywhere, including surgeons in the operating room.

Doctor:  "Scalpel."
Nurse:   "Scalpel."
Doctor:  "Marlboro Menthol."
Nurse:    "Marlboro  Menthol."

Even my dear old Alma Mater, Wheeler High School, (Motto: "Where the leaders of tomorrow are putting gum under the desks of today") we had a smoking section of the campus where all of the potheads students, could light up a smoke between classes.

You can't smoke on that campus or any campus anymore. You can't smoke in any building.  It is like what  Cedric the Entertainer said, "You can't smoke on earth no more".

People that smoked dope were considered outlaws and hoodlums. Now, they get tv commercials. I see Snoop Dogg on TV more than Shaquille O'Neal, and that's saying something!

Men's fashion. When I was coming along, all men wore at least a tie to everything, including baseball games and ditch diggings.  Now, if you tuck your shirt in at Church, they think you're an aristocrat or maybe an Episcopalian visiting from out of town.

Baseball.  Back in the old days, Hank Aaron would hit a home run and go back to the dugout and spoke a cigarette.  Now, a player hits a home run, stares at it from home plate and does the Watusi around the bases.  When he reaches the dugout, he hugs everybody on the team then posts a story on Instagram.

I guess the problem is when I look in the mirror, I don't see a sixty-two-year-old man.  I see the same guy I saw in 1982.  Okay, maybe I weigh a little more.  At this point in my life, every brownie just attaches itself to my belly.

Yes, I have some laugh lines. How could I not?  I've been blessed to live at a time of some hilarious people, and I'm not just talking about politicians.

When I was born, people couldn't imagine President Eisenhower having a girlfriend and cheating on Mamie.  We used to have First Ladies named Mamie.  Now we have to call the First Lady by her terminal degree, or we are some sort of misogynist.

That's nothing. Did you know you are two internet clicks away from seeing the previous First Lady naked?  Or so I'm told.

I know I'm sounding the old man yelling at the cloud, but things have changed. Change is a part of life. Some of it is good. Some of it isn't good. Some of it is just meh.

Seriously, I wish people would think more and not spend a good part of their life trying to dunk on people that disagree with them. But things aren't that bad.  Really.

Come on, sit on the porch when me. I'll make sandwiches. We can yell at the kids to get off my lawn. 

 

The Reason For The Fall

 

 Believe it or not, there is something called Evangelicalism and it is more than a bunch of people trying to be a big wet blanket on culture.

There's a lot to "Evangelicalism." It includes many denominations and many different types of people. It is hard to define, but it does mean more than "People Who Vote Republican."

I will give you my definition of an "Evangelical".  An Evangelical is someone who can repeat The Apostles' Creed without crossing their fingers.

The flagship publication of American Evangelicalism is Christianity Today magazine which Billy Graham founded. You may have heard of him.

Christianity Today has branched out into the podcasting business and released a series called "The Rise And Fall Of Mars Hill."

 Mars Hill was a church in Seattle, Washington and the pastor was Mark Driscoll. I wrote about Driscoll several years ago in a post called "I Dreamed A Dream".   Here it is:  https://manisville.blogspot.com/2012/01/cussing-preachers-real-marriage.html

Mars Hill was a massive church in a town not known for their large churches of any kind, much less an Evangelical one. Yet, from almost out of nowhere, Mars Hill exploded into one of the most influential evangelical churches in the country. Driscoll became a sought-after speaker at conferences and clinics.

Then one day, the church disintegrated and Driscoll left Seattle and moved to Phoenix. However, he still speaks at conferences.

The podcast seeks to discover how a church can be humongous one day and the next day non-existent.

The reason is quite simple. Mark Driscoll.

Driscoll first came to national attention in a book called "Blue Like Jazz," where he is called "The Cussing Preacher." He would sprinkle his sermons with mild swear words.  In private, he would talk like a sailor if you catch my drift.

Back in the 1990s, the Evangelical church was undergoing some big-time change.   No longer were sanctuaries well lit-they became darker. Out went the piano and organ. In came "The Praise Team," a couple of guitars, keyboards, bass, drums, and many singers.  The hymns of Christiandom fell out of favor for snappy songs that sounded like something you'd hear on the radio.

The preacher didn't wear a robe or stand behind a pulpit.  No, he dressed casually, sometimes in jeans, and never wore a tie.  

It was called being "Seeker Sensitive ."

Driscoll followed all of that, except he zigged when the other ones zagged.  Driscoll targeted men and he wasn't particularly sensitive.

Because he was different, Driscoll became a big deal.

Mike Gosper hosts the podcast, and it is very well produced.  There are many interviews with friends of Driscoll and his critics too.  I think some of the criticisms are a little esoteric.  I mean, I don't think Mars Hill became a big church due to men's insecurities at the end of The Cold War.

Like every "product", Mars Hill became large because it tapped an underserved market. There was a market for a large vibrant Evangelical church in Seattle.  

Additionally, Driscoll is an engaging speaker, even if he goes on and on with hour-long sermons.  He is witty and has a comedian's timing on telling a story.

But Driscoll didn't have anybody near him that would say, "Hey, Mark, was that a really good idea to say that?"

Here's an example.  The podcast plays of tape of  Driscoll telling a story about a woman in the church who couldn't get her husband interested in coming to church. However (I didn't quite get how this next part came up in the conversation), he was very interested in a sexual act that she did not want to do.

Driscoll, to hoots and laughs from the church crowd, tells the woman that "Jesus compels you" to do this particular act.   The next week the man is at church and tells Driscoll that he really likes the Mars Hill Church.  Haw, Haw.  You know, because......

Well now.  Besides the fundamental crassness of this story, there is some awful theology involved.  As my mother would say, Jesus did no such a thing.  It is almost a nasty quid quo pro going here.

On top of everything else, if a "preacher" was not telling the story, it sounds like something from a mid-70s issue of The National Lampoon and Christians everywhere would have called it sacrilegious.

As Driscoll became more famous, his dictatorial bullying ways got the best of him, and he left the church. As a result, the church imploded and is no longer there.

It is really a shame. Most of the time when you hear about church scandals, you hear about the preacher running off with a secretary. I know of two off the top of my head.  The problem with Mars Hill was really Mark Driscoll and his ego. 

However, the results were the same.