A lot of this will sound familiar to a lot of people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/11/20/cedric-wins-vmi-white-alumni-attacks/

«These self-styled foreign-policy adults evidently failed to notice that America’s protracted negotiations with the Taliban had nothing to do with the Biden administration’s ending of that war with a skedaddle rather than a deal.

Russia’s Afghan war ended the same way, although it executed its withdrawal more brutally and more skillfully than America’s. The 1991 Iraq War ended with a cease-fire negotiated (badly, on the American part) at gunpoint; the 2003 war in surrender. One need not reach for Winston Churchill’s refusal to negotiate with Adolf Hitler or Abraham Lincoln’s refusal to negotiate with Jefferson Davis to realize that not all wars end in a diplomatically arranged peace.»

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/11/russia-ukraine-negotations-mark-milley/672198/

Unless I’m misremembering, I think Eliot Cohen was George Shultz’s assistant whom Congress wanted to charge with contempt at one point.

Good opinion piece, though.

https://how.complexsystems.fail/

Oof:

«On Monday, the AP fired James LaPorta, the investigative reporter responsible for that story….

It is unclear who edited LaPorta’s reporting in question or whether they faced any discipline for the error.»

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ap-fires-reporter-behind-retracted-russian-missiles-story

«…and a general indifference by Russian commanders toward getting the details right doomed what many thought would be easy advance on Kyiv.»

https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-ew-campaign-in-ukraine-undermined-by-electronic-fratricide-2022-11

WSJ with some numbers:

«Republicans have won nearly 5.5 million more votes in House races than have Democrats, a tally by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report finds, as many voters were motivated by anxiety over high inflation and a low opinion of President Biden’s response.»

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-independent-voters-broke-for-democrats-in-the-midterms-11668249002

Emphasis mine. Horseshit WSJ’s (probably). I believe a lot of us are unthinking racists, in that we parrot the thoughts placed in our heads by more clever racists.

«Nationally, Republican candidates this year had the advantage of a favorable voter mix. Some 49% of midterm voters were Republicans, and 43% were Democrats, a 6-point GOP advantage, AP VoteCast, a large survey of the midterm electorate, found.»

«Undercutting the GOP advantage was that independents favored Democrats by 4 points nationally, the survey found, and by a far more substantial 18 points in Pennsylvania, 28 points in Georgia and more than 30 points in Arizona.»

«Jennifer Borzone, 52, a stay-at-home mother in Phoenix, said she voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 and couldn’t remember whom she voted for in 2020.»

COULDN’T REMEMBER???

GTFO.

«In North Carolina, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 7 percentage points in the midterm voter pool, and the victorious GOP Rep. Ted Budd limited his loss among independents to 9 points, a narrower deficit than for many other GOP Senate candidates.»

Thanks, fellow Tarheels. We could’ve had a well-qualified senator, but now you’ve given us a putz.

«There was no fraud in the 2020 election widespread enough to change the result, federal officials have said»

HEY, #WSJ!! You could’ve just struck that last part, right??

«Independent voters have been an essential ingredient in both parties’ successful campaigns to win control of the House. Republicans carried independents by 14 points in 1994 and by 19 points in 2010, when they claimed the speaker’s gavel, Mr. Winston said. Democrats won independents by 18 points in 2006 and 12 points in 2018, years when they reclaimed control of the House.»

The mushy middle!

---

Update: why I called the WSJ’s editorializing horseshit:

2022 wasn't a change election. Very few incumbents lost. My thinking here is that people felt like we were getting to other side of COVD, the recovery was happening, Biden closed very strong.

Things were good enough for most people, MAGA=chaos. 3/https://t.co/1yiB0Mfh5t

— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) November 12, 2022

Republicans may had a red wave in NC, but nationally, looks like Cook’s “red ripple” scenario is what happened. Fetterman in PA, of course, but also OH-13 was *D+5*, according to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/11/08/us/elections/results-ohio-us-house-district-13.html.

https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/national/national-politics/three-most-likely-scenarios-tuesday

Sigh….

Ok, it’s a red year in NC, but, seriously, Dems: judgeships matter. These folks are going to be making rulings on election law.

«It’s the second election in a row Republicans have swept the statewide judicial races. Democrats held six of the seven Supreme Court seats heading into the 2020 elections. But after Republicans won all three races in 2020, and then both seats this year, the court will now have a five-seat GOP majority.»

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article268185877.html#storylink=cpy

North Carolina’s abortion rights saved by one seat in the state house of representatives. (Probably.) Elections matter.

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article268204282.html

This is good:

PSA: If you keep thinking about it, write it down, set an alarm, emotionally process it (somatically, not narratively), make a decision.

Looping is a sign of something that doesn't fit in working memory. Ignore your own assumption that it is trivial.

— RomeoStevens (@RomeoStevens76) November 8, 2022