A package like Caitlin Clark is of course going to bring up their stuff

 https://www.catholicleague.org/bigoted-attack-on-caitlin-clark/spoils the party for those who wanted someone with some intersectionality bona fides to be he hone to astronomically boost WNBA ticket sales:

Clark is a white heterosexual Irish Catholic with a boyfriend. 

And she's serious about the Catholic part:

Clark’s Catholic faith is important to her. In 2018, she gave an interview to the Des Moines Register about her time at Dowling Catholic High School. “We get to live our faith every day. Dowling starts every day with prayer and ends every day with prayer. This is a big reason why Dowling has such a special culture and is such a special place to go to school.”

That will never do for the identity politics militants:

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin argues that “There is a thing called white privilege. There is a thing called tall privilege, and we have to acknowledge that… I do think that she is more relatable to more people because she’s white, because she’s attractive, and unfortunately, there still is that stigma against the LGBTQ+ community. Seventy percent of the WNBA is black. A third of the players are in the LGBTQ+ community and we have to do something about that stigma in this country.”

WNBA player A’ja Wilson claims that racism is buoying Caitlin Clark’s success. “I think a lot of people may say it’s not about black and white, but to me, it is.”

Atlantic sports writer and former ESPN commentator Jamele Hill claims, “We would all be very naive if we didn’t say race and her sexuality played a role in her popularity….”

Mike Freeman, a columnist for USA Today, contends it was a moral outrage that Clark received a shoe deal while none of the black WNBA players had a similar sponsorship offer. He maintains that it “shows how black women are being ignored in a league that they dominate.” He went on to say, “What so much of this comes down to is a lack of respect for the black women of the WNBA.”

In an effort to dismiss Clark’s potential, former WNBA player Sheryl Swoopes says that Clark is overrated because she played in college for five years, was a 25-year-old and could easily dominate the opposition, and took over 40 shots a game. When critics pointed out that Swoopes was factually wrong on all of these claims, she responded to the blowback by saying, “For people to come at me and say that I made those comments because I’m a ‘racist’, like, first of all, black people can’t be racist.”

Once again, nothing happens in post-American vulture without getting an ideological charge. 

 

 

 

US women soccer players and the matter of who starts culture-war battles

 Real Clear Politics often usefully juxtaposes two opposing takes on an issue currently on the national radar. Today there was an example involving the US Women's Soccer Team.

There's Olivia Luppino's piece at Salon, which employs as what she sees as the most useful arrow in her quiver the fact that the Very Stable Genius and his drool-besotted leg-humpers chimed in. This, in her formulation, delegitimizes any aspersions that might be cast on the team.

This, boys and girls, is the kind of situation I've been trying to bring to the fore of your attention since 2015: Letting that opportunistic, rudderless, bombastic fool anywhere near the classic conservative argument sets conservatism up as a punching bag for progressives. And in the years following the establishment of his cult, its memes and slogans - and his social-media posts - have for all intents and purposes drowned out the reasoned and history-steeped arguments by which conservatives had always made their case.

Anyway, along with citing Trumpist examples of childish reactions to the team's World Cup loss, she trots out the equal-pay "issue." She also does mention instances in which women soccer players have explicitly dissed the United States on the playing field, as well as Megan Rapinoe's history of vocally wading into sociocultural matters - from the left, of course. Luppino just reports this with no commentary, as if anybody reading it would, of course, find that perfectly acceptable.

Listed immediately below Luppino's column is a piece about this at National Review by Noah Rothman entitled "No, Republicans Did Not Politicize Women's Soccer." He offers, shall we say, a different perspective:

For the better part of a decade now, the U.S. women’s soccer team has served — often willingly and with the direct participation of its members — as the avatars of a campaign to illustrate the supposed “pay gap” endured by women performing the exact same roles as men. President Barack Obama deployed the team’s members as human props in a campaign to popularize the injustice of the so-called pay gap — a claim so baseless Obama’s own Bureau of Labor Statistics and a handful of U.S. district courts disputed the pay gap’s very existence.

U.S. women’s national soccer team co-captain Megan Rapinoe has delighted in starting political feuds with Republican lawmakers and using her celebrity to advance divisive political causes. She is not shy about using the most incendiary language available to make her points, even at the risk of alienating would-be consumers of her sport. She has so deliberately inserted herself into the national political debate that Democratic pollsters tested her appeal in a hypothetical presidential election against Donald Trump. And Rapinoe isn’t alone. In 2019, the Associated Press celebrated the team’s “off-the-field activist role” as champions for a variety of “social-justice causes.”

Rapinoe and her teammates engaged in polarizing political debates, and that activism has had a polarizing effect. Republican lawmakers are not responsible for injecting politics into the apolitical conduct of professional athletics; they’ve merely noticed its injection and singled out those doing the injecting for criticism.

This inversion of cause and effect is the foundation upon which all “Republicans pounce” commentary rests. It is a bankrupt style of journalism that seeks to redirect a reader’s attention away from an event — usually, one Democrats find discomfiting — by highlighting the Republican reaction to the event. If the enterprise is successful, the public becomes conditioned to the idea the GOP’s response to a controversy is more newsworthy than the controversy itself.

BTW, let's look at the key paragraph of the district-courts link Rothman provides, just to be sure the record is set straight:

Klauser ruled May 1 the women could not prove discrimination over pay and granted in part the USSF’s motion for a partial summary judgment. He said the union for the women’s national team rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay-to-play structure as the men’s national team’s collective bargaining agreement and the women accepted guaranteed salaries and greater benefits along with a different bonus structure.

The team collectively, as an organization, chose to go a different route regarding pay.

But two groups need to understand truths each will find uncomfortable. MAGA needs to see -but won't, which is why the next year and three months is going to be such a political clusterf--- -  that it has precluded any possibility of persuasion or decisive prevalence with its schoolyard gloating. Progressives need to see that by no means is a majority okay with their intention to uproot norms, institutions and understandings about the way the universe is designed that have been distilled over millennia. 

 

 

 

NBC's Olympics opening-ceremony coverage was quite the soft-pedal

 Probably the most egregious portion of it came from Savannah Guthrie, in which she characterizes the co-lighting of the Olympic flame by Dinigeer Yilamujiang, a cross-country skier selected from the Uyghur population as "an in-your-face response to those Western nations, including the U.S., who have called this Chinese treatment of that group genocide and diplomatically boycotted those games."

But Andrew Browne's remarks were pretty rancid as well:

An NBC commentator offered what sounded like a defense of the Chinese Communist regime during the Olympics opening ceremony on Friday.

“It’s worth remembering that while Western countries may be boycotting these Olympics over human rights issues, China styles itself as a champion of the developing world, and it has plenty of support in countries from Africa to Latin America where its investments are building up local economies,” said former Wall Street Journal senior correspondent and columnist Andrew Browne, referring to China’s Belt and Road initiative.

Is this just a matter of a giddy response to the pageantry of the moment? Or were they keen to avoid the humiliation of being dragged by Chinese authorities away from giving a report like Dutch journalist Sjoerd den Haas?

In any event, this is the kind of awkwardness that results from participating in a Potemkin village-style dog and pony show by one of the world's cruelest and most ambitiously expansionist regimes on Earth.

 

Friday roundup

 There used to be a frequent commenter here at LITD who, when Supreme Court rulings like Roe v. Wade and Obergefell v. Hodges would come up, would chime in with some variant on "stare decisis, baby!" to which I'd respond by bringing up Dredd Scott or Plessey v. Ferguson, and a stalemate would ensue. For anyone interested in a sound contemplation of the concept, I recommend an essay at Law & Liberty by Marc O. DiGirolami entitled "Integrating Originalism and Stare Decisis." The author says that judges should heed the guidance of a "legal thread connecting a long and lasting line of cases," but also take heed of instances when their gut tells them that evil is afoot.

Peter Heck at The Resurgent on the latest degree to which Jen Hatmaker has departed from sound Christian doctrine:

[W]hat strikes me . . . is why someone like Hatmaker, who is so infatuated with gaining earthly audiences and inviting the thunderous applause of men that she willfully invents her own religion, is so stubborn in her desire to rebrand her humanist idolatry as Christianity.

If she wasn’t, this wouldn’t be a column worth writing. If she wasn’t, her Facebook meanderings would be indistinguishable from, and no more noteworthy than, the vast majority of posts made by the world for the world. But Hatmaker is intent not only on identifying herself as a Christian, but misleading whoever will pay attention to her that her mind is a better barometer for real faith than the teachings of Christ’s church.

The post-American public's estimation of the sports world is underwater:

The sports industry now has a negative image, on balance, among Americans as a whole, with 30% viewing it positively and 40% negatively, for a -10 net-positive score. This contrasts with the +20 net positive image it enjoyed in 2019, when 45% viewed it positively and 25% negatively.

This slide in the sports industry's image comes as professional and college leagues are struggling, and not always successfully, to maintain regular schedules and playing seasons amid the pandemic. Professional football, baseball and basketball games have also become focal points for public displays of support for the Black Lives Matter movement.

While it's not clear how much the various challenges and controversies swirling around the industry are each responsible for its slide in popularity, it is notable that sports has lost more support from Republicans and independents than from Democrats. In fact, Democrats' view of the sports industry has not changed significantly in the past year, while Republicans' has slipped from a +11 net-positive score in 2019 to a net -35 today, and independents' from +26 to -10.

I know that in some quarters Ben Sasse has come in for castigation for not seeming to maintain the fierce opposition to the Very Stable Genius on display in his legendary February 2016 open letter to Trump supporters , but I've never lost faith in him. There are a great many Republican legislators, state and federal, who I have watched with dismay suffocate their principles to climb aboard the Trump train, but I'm confident Ben has never done so. More than that, he acts on his principles in concrete ways, such as with his latest proposal:

Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) called to repeal the 17th Amendment on Tuesday, which would eliminate the requirement that U.S. senators be elected by popular votes.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled “Make the Senate Great Again,” Sasse called for an end to the amendment, among other changes to the Senate “aimed at promoting debate, not ending it.”

He also recommended abolishing standing committees, requiring senators to show up for debates, implementing 12-year term limits, and requiring senators to live together in dorms when in Washington.

“What would the Founding Fathers think of America if they came back to life?” Sasse wrote. “Their eyes would surely bug out first at our technology and wealth. But I suspect they’d also be stunned by the deformed structure of our government. The Congress they envisioned is all but dead. The Senate in particular is supposed to be the place where Americans hammer out our biggest challenges with debate. That hasn’t happened for decades—and the rot is bipartisan.”

Love this paragraph:

“Different states bring different solutions to the table, and that ought to be reflected in the Senate’s national debate,” he wrote. “The old saying used to be that all politics is local, but today—thanks to the internet, 24/7 cable news and a cottage industry dedicated to political addiction—politics is polarized and national. That would change if state legislatures had direct control over who serves in the Senate.”

A Chinese pharmaceutical company that is ultimately state-owned has been injecting thousands of people with experimental COVID-19 vaccines before Phase 3 clinical trials are completed. 

Dave Boucher and Todd Spangler at the Detroit Free Press enumerate the wild claims the VSG made at last night's rally about the auto industry in Michigan:

President Donald Trump made wildly inaccurate claims at a rally outside Saginaw on Thursday night, suggesting he has revitalized auto manufacturing in the state when it actually lost jobs even before coronavirus hit in March.

"We brought you a lot of car plants, we brought you a lot ... and we’re going to bring you a lot more," Trump began his speech at MBS International Airport in Freeland.

But only one new major assembly facility, a Jeep plant on Detroit's east side, has been announced during Trump's term, while General Motors underwent a divisive 40-day strike last year and announced the idling of four U.S. plants, including two in Michigan. One of those, Detroit-Hamtramck, has since been revived and is being retooled to build electric cars and SUVs. Warren transmission was revived most recently to make face masks, though its future is uncertain.

Navya, a French shuttle maker, announced it could employ 50 or so people at a plant in Saline, said Kristin Dziczek, vice president of industry, labor and economics with the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor; Waymo, which makes self-driving cars, said last year it would employ 100 people at an assembly plant in Detroit and could someday expand that number to 400.

That's hardly a signal of a vast resurgence. Trump has also apparently made similar exaggerated claims in other campaign stops, with the Washington Post saying he has been "bragging about imaginary auto plants."

His signature foul mouth and his signature transactional framing of the case for his reelection were on display:

At another point in the wide-ranging speech, Trump repeated, "You better vote for me, I got you so many damn car plants."

Over 10 percent of Oregon residents have been told to flee the fires scorching their state. 

An NBC Sports writer gets what Christianity is and what America is all wrong

First, let's look at what San Francisco Giants pitcher Sam Coonrod said about taking the knee:

San Francisco Giants pitcher Sam Coonrod refused to kneel in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement ahead of the team’s season opener Friday, saying he would feel “like a hypocrite” because of his Christian faith and personal beliefs.

“I don’t think I’m better than anybody. I’m just a Christian,” he told reporters. “I believe I can’t kneel before anything but God, Jesus Christ. I chose not to kneel. I feel if I did kneel I’d be a hypocrite. I don’t want to be a hypocrite.”

He added that he “just can’t get on board with a couple things I’ve read about Black Lives Matter. How they lean towards Marxism and … they said some negative things about the nuclear family.”

All his teammates, as well as all the opposing Los Angeles Dodgers, knelt before their game last week. Giants manager Gabe Kapler was gracious about Coonrod's decision, and Coonrod returned the graciousness:

“The one thing we said is we were going to let people express themselves,” Kapler said. “We were going to give them the choice on whether they were going to stand, kneel or do something else. That was a personal decision for Sam.”

Coonrod said he meant “no ill will” by his gesture and added, “I’m not mad at someone who decided to kneel. I just don’t think it’s too much to ask that I just get the same respect.”

Now, NBC Sports journalist Monte Poole seeks to get in on the graciousness vibe, but you can see from the setup that it's going to be backhanded:

All the Giants pitcher did was exercise the right that all Americans have, at least theoretically. Freedom of choice. The right for which millions of Americans fought, with many dying. For that reason, Coonrod’s decision to stand rather than join his kneeling manager and teammates during a pregame moment of unity at Dodger Stadium should be above criticism.

He did nothing wrong.

Okay. So that's the long and the short of it, right?

Not so fast. You see, Coonrod self-identifies as a Christian, and Poole deigns to have the real understanding of what a Christian is - and, for that matter, how humanity is defined:

He said plenty wrong, though, offering up an explanation that slid off his tongue and went dribbling down his chest like liquid contradiction.

"I'm a Christian,” he said.

When did real Christianity opt out of humanity? Give a pass to injustice and inequality? Decide that it’s disrespectful to offer support, if not shelter, to those in need? Does Coonrod not realize that pastors of all faiths are joining crowds around the world fighting for these very ideals?

So being uncomfortable with the significance with which taking a knee is fraught means one is ignoring injustice and inequality? And it seems we're veering awfully close here to saying that America - whose anthem is played when athletes take a knee - is inherently unjust and unequal.

In Poole's formulation, well, yeah, because focusing on BLM's inherent radicalism is just an excuse to take exception to the claim America obviously that it has a core flaw. You see, one is morally obligated to agree that it has a core flaw and bring it to light whenever expressions of patriotism are on the agenda:

But if Coonrod had taken a moment to inform himself, he would see motive behind this movement need not be affiliated with BLM but, rather, to bring greater awareness to the racial injustices that is its focus.

Ian Williams, NBC Sports Bay Area analyst and former 49ers defensive lineman, responded to Coonrod’s reasoning by calling BS on it.

“Let me make this clear,” Williams tweeted. “You don’t have to be on board with BLACK LIVES MATTER. But I do need you to be on board with EQUALITY FOR ALL and ENDING RACISM.

“It’s simple. If you don’t want those 2 simple things, you know what you are.”

Which is to imply Coonrod’s own interests are in conflict with protesting racial inequality.

Why Poole is up to here is really insidious. He's trying to forever, from 2020 on, change the point of sports in American life. It's not just about home runs, three-pointers and touchdowns, about players establishing the status of legends with career achievements, or the legacies of teams. It's about drumming into the heads of all who follow sports that America is wretched and we can't let a little entertainment take our minds off of that. It would be downright un-Christian. 

I don't post about this in order to make some small effort to reverse the tide. The tide is irreversible. The self-ruination of professional sports is now complete. 

All that's left is to stomp the few remaining patriotic Christians involved in that sector of this nation's life into the dust. 

 

 

 

 

Barney & Clyde - Episode 17

Here it is. 

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 1 - He's Not Playing 5-D Chess... The Very Stable Genius's recent doozies 2 - When a Lefty Leader gets a clue and it doesn't go over well... Ecuadoran unrest in the wake of President Moreno trying to claw the country back to solvency 3 - Madam Bleachbit Unfiltered... How's that again, Hillary? 4 - Corporate America's left turn... the NBA kowtows to China and the Business Roundtable whets Fauxcahontas's appetite! Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com Comment here or at: https://www.facebook.com/barneyandcly... Please consider supporting us! https://www.patreon.com/barneyandclyde Links we referenced in this episode: https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/.p... https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

The NBA seems to have become another garbage institution

Steve Kerr serves up a steaming pile of moral equivalency:

Golden State Warrior coach Steve Kerr was in China and he said that during his visit to that country, no one had asked him about Chinese human rights abuses . . . nor “our record of human rights abuses”, either, referring to the United States.

“As far as North Korea, I don’t know much about North Korea. As far as the Ukraine situation, I don’t know much about the Ukraine situation. We could just go around the world and maybe I can pinpoint a couple others I’m comfortable about, but this whole thing is so ridiculous. Again, we’re fortunate in this country to have free speech. I exercise that. But part of having free speech is also electing not to speak if you don’t feel comfortable about something.”

“It has not come up in terms of people asking about it, people discussing it,” Kerr said. “Nor has our record of human rights abuses come up, either. Things that our country needs to look at and resolve. That hasn’t come up either. None of us are perfect. We all have different issues we have to get to. Saying that is my right as an American. It doesn’t mean that I hate my country. It means I want to address the issue. But people in China didn’t ask me about, you know, people owning AR-15s and mowing each other down in a mall. I wasn’t asked that question."

Got that? Private citizens owning AR-15s (and, according to Kerr, "mowing each other down in [malls]") is the same thing as the government hauling citizens off to gulags for speaking out against a system that empowers the government to haul citizens off to gulags.

And another NBA team caves to Jew-haters even as it tiptoes around the Chinese totalitarian regime:

The Portland Trail Blazers announced that they have severed relations with a company that does business with Israel following a pressure campaign by activists tied to the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement.

As the NBA is facing outrage after the general manager of the Houston Rockets capitulated to censorship by the Chinese communist government, the Trail Blazers quietly severed ties with the manufacturer Leupold, which has a contract to produce accessories for the Israeli Defense Forces.

Trail Blazers president and CEO Chris McGowan recently announced the decision to bow to pressure from BDS activists, telling a reporter for the Bleacher Reportthat "Leupold is no longer a part of the organization."

The move was celebrated by anti-Israel activists and picked up by the pro-BDS blog Mondoweiss, which stated that the decision came "after a year-long campaign by local activists to pressure the Blazers to drop the sponsor."

The NBA has been facing fierce backlash following the fallout from the Rockets incident. The controversy erupted after the Rockets general manager tweeted—and subsequently deleted—a tweet expressing support for pro-democracy protesters who are being met with violence by the Chinese government.

The NBA, which has deep business interests in China, has sought to quell the controversy, sparking accusations it is capitulating to China’s censorship regulations.

A league of cowards.

Thursday roundup

Another hurl-inducing instance of post-American corporate cowardice in the face of Chinese intimidation:

Houston Rockets sneakers and other merchandise were pulled from several Nike stores in major Chinese cities amid the furor surrounding a tweet from the team’s general manager in support of anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

Managers at five Nike stores in Beijing and Shanghai told Reuters during visits on Thursday they had been told in recent days via a memo from management that all Rockets merchandise had to be removed. Reuters was unable to view the memo.

Although Rockets general manager Daryl Morey has since apologized for his tweet last week, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver further angered authorities when he said the league backed Morey’s right to exercise his freedom of expression.

Despite the controversy, the NBA was pressing ahead with an exhibition game between the Los Angeles Lakers and Brooklyn Nets in Shanghai on Thursday night. Promotional events earlier in the week had been canceled.

From the "identity politics inevitably winds up eating its own" file:

A group of minority rights activists are challenging the anti-climate change movement’s unquestioning embrace of sixteen year old Greta Thunberg and calling support for Thunberg over “woker” eco-spokespeople “racism,” and evidence of “white supremacy.”

A New Zealand news outlet reports that activists who push for greater rights for indigenous peoples — some of the very same activists who are at the forefront of the global anti-climate change movement — are concerned that putting a young, white teenager at the helm of a movement that largely affects the third world sends the wrong message, especially since indigineous people have been pressing the same message for decades.

The activists took to social media to express their distaste in light of Thunberg’s recent appearance in front of the United Nations.

“Y’all need to ask yourselves why you find it so much easier to hear from white people, regardless of age, when it comes to the violence they have caused across the world,” one tweeted. “Our GOBAL climate is in CRISIS. We need EVERYONE to care about this & take action. With that said, it is high time that the very people who have caused such problems STOP getting praised & recognized for finally doing the RIGHT THING.”

“It is a SYMPTOM of global white supremacy that certain people are HEARD & given a platform, certain people have access to the RESOURCES to be the HEROES that the world will pay attention to,” said another. 

In 2016, James Shupe became the first legally recognized non-binary person in post-America. By 2018, he was having misgivings, and went back to being a male. He now thinks all the gender fluidity business is a dangerous delusion. Nicole Russell at The Federalist has an interview with him.

I resonated with Dominic Green's essay at Spectator USA entitled "Who Killed The American Arts?" Longtime LITD readers know that my position, which is also Green's, is that post-American culture is rotten through and through. He goes so far as to say that we've descended into barbarism, which, as I think about it, I really cannot argue with.

There are two Florida businessmen, Lev Parnas and and Igor Fruman, who have a company called Global Energy Producers. They also raise lots of money for Republican political candidates. They also are buds with Rudy Giuliani. They also introduced Giuliani to three former and current Ukrainian prosecutors, with whom Giuliani discussed getting dirt on the Bidens. 

A heart-wrenching series of tweets from FNC's Jennifer Griffin:

Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC

I just spoke to a distraught US Special Forces soldier who is among the 1000 or so US troops in Syria tonight who is serving alongside the SDF Kurdish forces. It was one of the hardest phone calls I have ever taken. "I am ashamed for the first time in my career."

3:02 PM - 9 Oct 2019

• 55,154 Retweets
• 111,311 Likes
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5,803 replies55,154 retweets111,311 likes

1. New conversation
   
   
   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   This veteran US Special forces soldier has trained indigenous forces on multiple continents. He is on the frontlines tonight and said they are witnessing Turkish atrocities. "Turkey is not doing what it agreed to. It's horrible," this military source on the ground told me.
   373 replies8,898 retweets23,143 likes
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   "We met every single security agreement. The Kurds met every single agreement. There was NO threat to the Turks - NONE - from this side of the border." "This is insanity," the concerned US service member told me. ""I don't know what they call atrocities but they are happening."
   265 replies9,788 retweets25,453 likes
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   This American soldier told me the Kurds have not left their positions guarding the ISIS prisoners. In fact "they prevented a prison break last night without us." "They are not abandoning our side (yet)." The Kurds are "pleading for our support." We are doing "nothing."
   487 replies12,836 retweets28,776 likes
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   Troops on the ground in Syria and their commanders were "surprised" by the decision Sunday night. Of the President's decision: "He doesn't understand the problem. He doesn't understand the repercussions of this. Erdogan is an Islamist, not a level headed actor."
   270 replies6,805 retweets20,980 likes
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   Acc to this US soldier on the ground tonight in Syria: "The Kurds are as close to Western thinking in the Middle East as anyone. "It's a shame. It's horrible." "This is not helping the ISIS fight." Re: ISIS prisoners: "Many of them will be free in the coming days and weeks."
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   Jennifer Griffin‏Verified account @JenGriffinFNC 20h20 hours ago
   
   This US Special Forces soldier wanted me to know: "The Kurds are sticking by us. No other partner I have ever dealt with would stand by us." Disappointed in the decisions coming from their senior leaders.
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Which makes the VSG's smart-ass remark about the Kurds and D-Day all the more vomit-inducing:

He shrugged off the likely escape of ISIS fighters from Kurdish prisons, essentially saying it is Europe's problem, not his. "Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe, that's where they want to go," Trump said. He added that "we have no soldiers in the area." 

Trump downplayed the alliance with the Kurds, 11,000 of whom died fighting to help the US mission against ISIS. "They didn't help us in the second World War, they didn't help us with Normandy for example," Trump said. "They're there to help us with their land, and that's a different thing." Normandy is an area of France, not the US. 

Great Steve Berman essay at The Resurgent entitled "Trump Can't Deliver The Goods He's Promised." It's a good summation of the VSG's foreign-policy failures, including China, North Korea, Russia and Turkey.

It’s all a show to Trump. None of this is “real” except his ratings and what he sees on late-night Fox News shows. He cares much more for what CNN and MSNBC are saying than what he should say on a phone call to a foreign leader.

Trump treats friendly nations like he treated contractors bidding for work on a new resort hotel. But hostiles are handled with kid gloves. If anything were impeachable conduct, it’s that, not asking Ukraine for dirt on Hunter Biden.

Don’t talk to me about other nations paying their “fair share.” Of course, we want that. But not at the cost of letting tyrants, communists, and criminal regimes enjoy carte blanche while America holds the door for them.

Apropos the delusion discussed in the above-linked Federalist piece, Fauxcahontas, the liar who says Daren Wilson murdered Michael Brown, would have male felons suffering from that delusion serve their sentences in women's prisons.