A lot of good things are happening in Texas lately, and while the focus has been on the passage of an election integrity bill, the biggest victory for decency and good has come via a new abortion law. The law in question essentially bans abortion after six weeks and provides mechanisms for violations to be reported.
That has the ACLU losing its mind, and you just hate to see it.
The ACLU went on to claim the law is a “racial” catastrophe, which is code for “we are really mad more black babies won’t be killed.” It’s astonishing how so many abortion supporters have somehow convinced themselves they aren’t the bad guy in this equation.
Take CBS News’ former “reproductive rights” reporter. In an absolutely shocking twist, she turned out to be a rabid pro-abortion activist.
Pay special attention to the assertion that the “damage is done” even if the law eventually gets blocked. What she’s talking about are the babies that will now get a chance at life for some period of time until a court possibly strikes down the law. To Smith, that’s irreparable damage because the children can’t be executed after birth. The sheer evil of such a comment is hard to critique in this setting as there are limits to how animated I can get in my wording.
Notably, Smith blocked me after I responded to her comments because these snowflakes can stump for killing children but they can’t handle any pushback of their ghoulish behavior. Guilty conscience, perhaps? For her sake, I hope so she still has the ability to feel at that level.
Then there was Rep. Cori Bush, queen of bad takes, who let it be known that this abortion ban (and yes, I’m perfectly fine calling it that) will disproportionately affect “queer” folks.
Now, I’m no biology expert, but I’m pretty sure “queer” folks are not disproportionately affected by this ban because I’m pretty sure they aren’t affected at all. You see, when someone is gay, they lose the ability to reproduce outside of artificial insemination, and no one has an abortion after artificial insemination. So what is Bush even talking about here?
I’ll tell you what she’s talking about. She’s a woke automaton, just spewing words without any meaning or thought. She’s also disapproving of the fact that fewer “black” and “brown” babies will be killed due to this law, which is odd considering her entire schtick is to scream “black lives matter” at every issue.
Frankly, as someone who is unabashedly pro-life and completely confident in my assessment, I love seeing these people squirm. They need to be made to face the realities of what they support, and laws like the one in Texas make them take a position they might otherwise obfuscate from. Want to kill babies because of some selfish, distorted idea of racial and economic justice? Then they should be made to own every bit of that position. Do not give these ghouls an inch.
Throughout the tragicomedy that has been the first year of the Biden Administration, there has been no shortage of reasons for outrage. The reasons stem from a broad array of issues—the border, Afghanistan, energy policy, and inflation, to name a few—but there is a common denominator to all of them. It is this administration’s thinly veiled contempt for the American people, the very people it swore to represent and protect. A clear example of this can be found in the current refugee policy.
It should be noted that the American people are incredibly fair and generous, maybe the fairest and most generous people on the planet. We regularly step up to help others in need around the world, no matter their race, religion, or affiliation. What we cannot abide is a double standard of treatment for one group over another, yet the Biden Administration seems to be giving us the short end of a double standard on a routine basis.
When our government told us that COVID-19 was a once-in-a-generation pandemic, we wanted to do our part to help. We endured mask mandates, worked from home, and kept our children away from their schools. We were told it was of the utmost importance for everyone to be vaccinated, and we largely complied.
As our nation seemed to be turning the corner on COVID, the incoming Biden Administration inexplicably decided to go full-speed ahead on bringing more foreign nationals into the country. When the wisdom of this decision was questioned, those on the Left insulted us further by suggesting that incoming migrants are somehow more American than we.
On the House floor earlier this year, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) referred to DACA children as “the true and legitimate heirs” of our founding fathers. The obvious inference is that we, the actual tax-paying citizens of America, are the false and illegitimate heirs.
Then we witnessed Biden’s utter incompetence on our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Tens of thousands of Afghans are being flown into the United States, to ultimately be settled in American communities, without the consent or even consultation of any residents of those communities.
Photos of the airlift revealed hundreds of Afghans crammed into military transport planes, none of them wearing masks. Back home in America, citizens are arrested by police for refusing to wear masks on domestic commercial flights. Most of those Afghans will end up in the United States. Why are they allowed to fly in the close quarters of an airplane without a mask but American citizens are not?
It gets worse. White House officials have stated that, while arriving Afghans will be tested for COVID-19, they will be “offered” vaccinations but “they are not mandatory.” Our government has told us that we have a duty and obligation as American citizens to get vaccinated. According to the World Health Organization, Afghanistan has over 150,000 COVID-19 cases, and barely three percent of its population has been vaccinated. Aside from the faulty logic of bringing large numbers of people from a country with those COVID statistics into the U.S., why is vaccination for Afghans only offered and not a requirement for entry?
The report is no better at our southern border, another stable situation that Biden inherited and has proceeded to turn into a disaster zone. There we see growing numbers of Border Patrol agents testing positive for COVID-19 from processing migrants. The surge of people north has led to COVID outbreaks in border towns. But while migrants are being tested for the virus, vaccinations are also “offered” but not mandatory.
The COVID double standard is pervasive throughout this administration’s policies. Earlier this year, Democrats in Congress blocked a bill that would have required illegal aliens to test negative for COVID before being released into the United States. Border states have been forced to file lawsuits against this White House to seek redress for the costly and dangerous consequences of allowing large numbers of infected aliens into their states. At every turn, this administration has sought policies that bring more COVID risk into the country, while chiding American citizens for their lack of compliance with what many people see as draconian policies.
Not only does this administration treat us worse than it does foreign nationals, it also doesn’t feel the need to give us any explanation for the double standard. The American people have more common sense than we are ever given credit for by our politicians. If a policy makes sense and is applied fairly to all people, most people will go along with it, even if it is difficult. When certain groups are exempted from the policy for no good reason, we deserve answers from those in office.
Don’t expect the courtesy of an explanation from this administration, however, as none is likely coming. Why show courtesy to people you hold in contempt? It is past time for Americans to demand respect and fair treatment from those we allow to govern us.
I've been following this guy on Telegram all year, he's been driving across the country making these videos, mostly around DC. DC has been a ghost town for months, there's almost no traffic going in or out, buildings have been boarded up, military activity is consistent. And recently, he allowed people to submit videos of how 'busy' some hospitals in various cities have been, most of the ones in the videos are either completely empty, or hardly even full!
If anyone has wondered why I continue to believe in what looks to be a huge conspiracy theory, here's why: If this was a real administration, would DC be a ghost town? If this was a real 'pandemic', would there be empty hospitals in some cities?
There's been way too much bizarre activity happening all year for ANYTHING this so called 'administration' has done to even be considered normal or even real! Which is why I firmly believe that there is a lot of stuff happening behind the scenes that neither of us know about. And this is also why I also believe that we've been living in a movie since January, a movie designed for us all to see who the evil ones really are, and for us to see who the real good guys are in this forsaken government.
Do I know when this movie will end? No, that is always changing. But, I believe that there are good guys at the helm of this, and that God is looking after us, and that the bad guys will meet their rightful end, if they haven't already.
Twitter
is launching a feature that it hopes will help crack down on abuse and
trolling, both of which have become huge issues for the platform.
Safety
Mode will flag accounts using hateful remarks, or those bombarding
people with uninvited comments, and block them for seven days.
The feature will work automatically once enabled, taking the burden off users to deal with unwelcome tweets.
It will initially be tested on a small group of users.
The
feature can be turned on in settings, and the system will assess both
the tweet's content and the relationship between the tweet author and
replier. Accounts that are followed by the user or frequently interacted
with, will not be autoblocked.
Katy
Minshall, head of Twitter UK Public Policy, said: "While we have made
strides in giving people greater control over their safety experience on
Twitter, there is always more to be done.
"We're
introducing Safety Mode; a feature that allows you to automatically
reduce disruptive interactions on Twitter, which in turn improves the
health of the public conversation."
Like other social media platforms, Twitter relies on a combination of automated and human moderation.
While
it has never formally said how many human moderators it uses, a 2020
report by New York business school NYU Stern suggested that it had about
1,500 to cope with the 199 million daily Twitter users worldwide.
A
recent study on hate speech produced by Facts Against Hate on behalf
of the Finnish government found that Twitter was "the worst of the tech
giants" when it came to hate speech.
The
answer, according to study author Dr Mari-Sanna Paukkeri, is to utilise
artificial intelligence systems which have been trained by humans.
"There are so many different ways to say bad things, and it is rocket science to build tools that can spot these," she said.
Simply highlighting certain words or phrases, a technique many social networks rely on, was not sufficient, she added.
Alongside
dealing with abuse on the platform, Twitter has become more determined
to crack down on misinformation. In August it partnered with Reuters and
the Associated Press to debunk misleading information and stop its
spread.
It
has previously introduced Birdwatch, a community-moderation system,
which allowed volunteers to label tweets they found to be inaccurate.
The Taliban getting the weaponry was earning Joe Biden a lot of
criticism — that more of it wasn’t destroyed or prevented from falling
into the enemy hands.
So it’s more than a little troubling to read that the Biden
administration told federal agencies to scrub their websites of the
official reports about the $82.9 billion in weaponry the U.S. has
provided to the Afghan army since 2001 (which is now largely in Taliban
hands).
The scrubbed audits and reports included detailed
accounting of what the U.S. had provided to Afghan forces, down to the
number of night vision devices, hand grenades, Black Hawk helicopters,
and armored vehicles.
Reports further quantified 208 aircraft and helicopters; 75,000 war
vehicles – including 22 Humvees, 50,000 tactical vehicles and nearly
1,000 mine resistant vehicles; and 600,000 weapons – including 350,000
M4 and M16 rifles, 60,000 machine guns, and 25,000 grenade launchers.
The State Department admitted to removing the reports but justified
the move as a way to protect Afghan allies. According to a spokesperson:
“The safety of our Afghan contacts is of utmost importance to us. The
State Department advised other federal agencies of to [sic] review
their web properties for content that highlights
cooperation/participation between an Afghan citizen and the USG or a USG
partner and remove from public view if it poses a security risk.”
Oh, please.
First, you left thousands of those “contacts” behind, completely burning them and leaving them to the Taliban.
You also gave lists of Afghan allies to the Taliban to supposedly
help them clear Taliban checkpoints, an incredibly stupid move that put
their lives at risk.
Don’t even try to go there now after the debacle that you left there for those poor people.
In addition, many of the removed audit reports merely
quantified military equipment without identifying personnel. Here are
two important examples:
#1. Government Accountability Office (GAO): OpenTheBooks.com reposted
an audit of U.S. provided military gear in Afghanistan (August 2017)
after it was removed from its official location.
#2. Special Inspector General For Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR):
OpenTheBooks.com reposted an audit of $174 million in lost ScanEagle
drones (July 2020) after the report was removed from its official
location.
As Forbes explains, “these reports do not include recipient
information, and the Taliban already likely controls the war chest in
question.”
So this is basically an excuse for what’s going on here — which would
appear to be an effort to cloud how much of a mess this has really left
us in. So not only is the Biden administration lying directly to our
faces about what is going on in Afghanistan, they are trying to clean up
the records as well.
Modern science as a discipline carries within itself the seeds of tyrannical rule, for the scientific method requires controlled experiments. But human beings want to be free and reject rules they did not create. Applied directly to society, the methods of natural science would destroy the ways of a free nation.
Of course free men and women use science to uncover knowledge and apply it to improve the human condition. Today the crucial distinction between following science and using it is lost on people and politicians. Without observing that difference, Americans might readily confuse their need for science with a dangerous embrace of the tyranny it demands when imprudently applied to human behavior.
Now comes the U.S. Supreme Court espying tyranny in a bureaucratic Center for Disease Control (CDC) regulation preposterously claiming to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Perhaps the court caught some anti-tyranny virus, for just 48 hours before, it denied the bureaucracy the ability to preserve and enhance the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) program—which allows “Dreamers” to remain in the United States illegally and indefinitely. Whatever the epidemiology of its jurisprudence, the court’s unsigned per curiam opinion in Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHShas exposed the tyranny of the administrative state. Both the CDC and the DACA examples illustrate the extent to which the federal government is governed not by an elected congress or president, or even the unelected courts but by the administrative state, the nexus of bureaucracy, academia, and media that effectively rules America on behalf of increasingly leftist policies.
The allegedly anti-COVID regulation is quicker to analyze and ridicule and better illustrates the vices of the administrative state.
First, the CDC justification for regulation of any activity that might contribute to the spread of disease rests on one assertion: because COVID. But government agencies must justify their powers on the basis of a law. In this instance, the court declared, “It strains credulity to believe that this [1944] statute grants the CDC the sweeping authority that it asserts.” Specifically, the CDC “has imposed a nationwide moratorium on [housing] evictions in reliance on a decades-old statute that authorizes it to implement measures like fumigation and pest extermination.”
The CDC has enough trouble with the science behind diseases. But when it comes to evictions and COVID the surgeon general and the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services concur.It’s bad enough that the CDC has the power to order the destruction of all the cattle in Texas to prevent the spread of a disease. But the Biden Administration, on top of this, also argued that the CDC has the power to act to mitigate concern that renters forced out of their apartments might spread COVID to homeless shelters and people on the streets. Therefore, the administration argued, renters must be allowed to stay in their homes as a means of preventing the spread of this infectious disease.
In response to this astonishing reasoning, the six-member majority sneered, “Could the CDC, for example, mandate free grocery delivery to the homes of the sick or vulnerable? Require manufacturers to provide free computers to enable people to work from home? Order telecommunications companies to provide free high-speed Internet service to facilitate remote work?”
The three dissenting justices, in a flabby opinion by Justice Stephen Breyer, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, could only whimper about the CDC’s having revised its eviction guidelines and plead the necessity for “a full briefing and argument . . . We should not set aside the CDC’s eviction moratorium in this summary proceeding.”
Unmentioned in both opinions are the penalties for violating the moratorium: “criminal penalties of up to a $250,000 fine and one year in jail.”
As the court maintains, “It is hard to see what measures this interpretation would place outside the CDC’s reach, and the Government has identified no limit . . . beyond the requirement that the CDC deem a measure ‘necessary.’”
The deadbeat renter, whatever his motives for withholding his rent, may spread disease by being forced to mingle in the streets. The authority to subsidize renters reminds one of the farmer in Wickard v. Filburn who was fined for exceeding his planting quota by growing wheat to feed his chickens. The court’s opinion concludes, “ . . . our system does not permit agencies to act unlawfully even in pursuit of desirable ends. Cf. Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer.”
Professor Josh Blackman contends this mention of the infamous steel seizure case, when President Harry Truman seized steel mills to keep them operating during the Korean War, is a tell that the per curiam was authored by Chief Justice Roberts. In fact, Truman’s lawless action there and the CDC power grab have different motives, as the “Cf.” may indicate.
Roberts, no friend of the administrative state, wants to make the CDC an extremist in our day, as Truman was then. But at least Truman tried, however spuriously, to claim patriotism as his motive.
Moreover, the Biden CDC ignores basic economics, as the majority notes:
The moratorium has put the applicants, along with millions of landlords across the country, at risk of irreparable harm by depriving them of rent payments with no guarantee of eventual recovery. Despite the CDC’s determination that landlords should bear a significant financial cost of the pandemic, many landlords have modest means. And preventing them from evicting tenants who breach their leases intrudes on one of the most fundamental elements of property ownership—the right to exclude.
Of course, the homeless renters here may have been fully vaccinated, but that won’t lose them their federal benefits. Indeed, where will landlords pay the semiannual taxes they owe on their property?
Ultimately, the Congress might well propose a law that would bail out renters and landlords both. In the meantime, perhaps Facebook, Twitter, and other social media will declare this Supreme Court opinion to be against the CDC guidelines and therefore disseminating it must be banned. Because they follow the science.
A defensive President Biden sought to move on from the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan on Tuesday, with a White House speech marking the end of the 20-year war.
Biden insisted that the evacuation operation had been a “success” and pushed back hard against critics who have argued for an ongoing but modest American military presence.
The president also sought to reframe the underlying argument. He asserted that the U.S. had no “vital interest” in Afghanistan that had been left unaccomplished, given that Osama bin Laden had been killed in neighboring Pakistan a decade ago and al-Qaeda had been long ago weakened.
Still, some of Biden’s claims strained credulity, especially his implication that the U.S. withdrawal had gone broadly to plan.
Biden had previously promised that there would be no “Saigon Moment” in Kabul. There was.
He said in a recent interview with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News that he was committed to getting every American out who wanted to leave. He has not done so.
His administration had promised that the U.S. would maintain diplomatic engagement with Afghanistan even after troops pulled out. But the American embassy has been closed. The acting ambassador, Ross Wilson, was on the last plane out.
It’s impossible to reconcile those facts with the positive picture Biden sought to paint — even if the total number of people evacuated from Afghanistan, at around 120,000, is unarguably impressive.
Biden’s speech, from the ornate State Dining Room, was by turns aggressive and somber. At times, his hands chopped the air in front of him for emphasis. He took no questions from four long rows of journalists seated to his left.
Biden paid tribute to the 13 members of the American military who were killed in the recent suicide bombing outside Kabul’s airport, and to the other U.S. troops — more than 2,400 of them — who lost their lives during the course of the war.
But he acknowledged that there was a relatively small number of Americans who wanted to leave the country and could not do so. Biden claimed that “there is no deadline” for getting those people out and that his administration remains “committed” to doing so — but what that looks like in practice is anyone’s guess.
There are also a huge number of Afghans who assisted the U.S. occupation in some fashion who were left behind. Some groups have estimated that number to be as high as 60,000.
They now face an ominous fate as the Taliban tighten their grip on power and the gaze of the western world in all likelihood begins to shift elsewhere. It would be vastly out of character for the Taliban to show mercy to those whom they deem collaborators.
Refugees who have successfully reached the United States seem to face better odds — though they will have to endure nativist sentiments being ginned up by demagogic figures in conservative media in their new homeland.
Politically, Biden has clearly paid a price for the ignominy of the American withdrawal, which has been replete with searing images of desperate Afghans clinging to a U.S. military plane and the carnage inflicted by the Kabul airport bombing.
An ABC News/Ipsos poll released in recent days found just 38 percent of Americans approved of how Biden had handled the withdrawal from Afghanistan, while 59 percent disapproved. As The Wall Street Journal noted Tuesday, an equivalent survey from July had found 55 percent approving of Biden’s approach.
Biden is betting that the American people’s horror at the scenes of the past few weeks will fade — particularly given that they appear to agree with him on the more fundamental question of U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
Polls have shown pluralities of the American public against the war in Afghanistan for years. Then-President Trump also opposed the war — and made the deal with the Taliban for a full American withdrawal in February of 2020. A recent Associated Press-NORC poll found that 62 percent of Americans believed that the war had not been worth fighting.
Biden’s speech on Tuesday will get refracted through the partisan prism, as everything does these days. A spokesman for the Republican National Committee (RNC) blasted it as “shameful” in an email to reporters shortly after it ended. Calls for Biden’s resignation or impeachment are growing louder from the GOP — including, on Tuesday, from RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
There is no chance of resignation and, for now, none of impeachment either. The latter option may become more plausible if Republicans deprive Democrats of their slim House majority in next year’s midterm elections.
The later, more effective segments of Biden’s speech made the case that the U.S. must face a new set of challenges. The threats, he suggested, are more likely to come in nebulous form from an economic rival like China than in the shape of murderous plots hatched in Tora Bora.
It was time, he argued, to “turn the page” on a foreign policy worldview that was formed in the traumatic crucible of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A new approach could not involve getting “bogged down for another decade” in Afghanistan, he said.
That argument may well prove broadly popular. But it will not necessarily erase the dismay many Americans have felt watching the events of the past few weeks.
At the White House on Tuesday, Biden told a room quiet but for the clicking of cameras that there was a “new world” the United States must embrace.
The horrors of the old world are still fresh in many Americans’ minds.
Article by J. Robert Smith in The American Thinker
Biden’s Unspoken Aim: Demoralize Americans
If you take the time
to piece together the puzzle, you begin to see a very disturbing
picture. In seven short months, the Biden administration hasn’t only,
via policy and executive decisions, precipitated a dire crisis on the
U.S. southern border and an unforced debacle in Afghanistan -- the
latter with dark strategic implications vis-à-vis the PRC, Russia, Iran,
and North Korea, along with an anticipated resurgence in terrorism but
appears to seek to break the American spirit.
The picture emerging strongly suggests that demoralizing Americans isn’t merely a consequence of bad policies, poor decision-making, and incompetence.
We know this: control requires submission. Saul Alinsky summed up the argument
for demoralization to achieve control: “Rule 3: Whenever possible, go
outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion,
fear, and retreat.”
In a nation of 330 million souls, accustomed
as birthright to independence, submission must be exacted through the
threat or use of force and through the enervation of spirit. A beaten
down people are an acquiescent people. Go ask Russians -- those still
living who endured the Soviet era and who suffer under Putin’s
authoritarianism.
The COVID pandemic provided the excuse
for the abridgement of our constitutional rights. Threat of force has
been a constant should citizens, enterprises, and institutions fail to
comply with lockdown and mask edicts. Talk of vaccination passports is
increasing. Democrat governors, in the main, manipulated fear to induce
compliance. Across the nation, lockdowns led to soaring drug and
alcohol abuse and depression and suicide spikes, particularly among children and adolescents. Domestic violence increased.
The left-dominated Democratic Party is trying to destroy the compact
between a free people and their government. Their “reset” is to replace
constitutional government with one-party rule while pushing the charade
of two-party competition. This isn’t supposition. Democrats are actively pursuing legislation to end free and fair elections.
Last
year, Democrat-run cities were turned over to Antifa- and BLM-incited
mobs. Stores were looted, violence went unchecked, and cities burned.
Joe Biden and national Democrats sat by, mostly mute, though some
Democrats condoned the mayhem.
Though the riots were testaments to the
moral squalor and impotence of Democrat governors, mayors, and city
councils, the explosions had a larger, unstated message to Americans:
“Law and order are no longer guaranteed. Mobs rule. Government won’t
protect you from the power of mobs.”
While the principal
goal of dissolving America’s southern border is crass politics
(Democrats want to grow their constituencies and voter base with
illegals), an ancillary advantage is the message that an evaporated
border sends to us Americans: We’re no longer a people in charge of our
destiny.
America is being reduced to an open-air market, with
anyone from anywhere coming as pleases -- of course, under the
protective eye of the Democratic Party, who’s worldview dovetails with globalist goals.
The Washington Examiner reported on
August 22 that U.S. border agents’ morale is cratering. The
U.S.-Mexican border was thrown wide-open in January thanks to Biden
administration policy. Two million illegals are streaming into the U.S.
this year alone. Agents aren’t just overwhelmed; they’ve been
handcuffed by the nation’s chief executive.
“Morale is in the toilet,” said Jon Anfinsen, a spokesman for the
Border Patrol's union. "Morale is low because agents aren't allowed to
do their job — if our job is to be out patrolling the border in between
the ports of entry and actively searching for people who have crossed
illegally, but we're not allowed to go do that job, it basically creates
this defeated feeling in everyone."
But the border patrol isn’t alone in taking a hit to
morale. The U.S. military -- rank-and-file soldiers and field officers
-- are being subjected to heavy doses of “woke.”
The woke priorities are now trickling down to our troops, and reports
are now surfacing about some humiliating drills and exercises that
boost neither morale nor preparedness among our service personnel.
To begin with, active duty members of the Navy in San Diego were
recently forced to take part in a mandatory ‘diversity hike’ during
which they flew LGBT flags. Of course, American flags were nowhere to be seen.
Then there’s the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley. Milley went before the House Armed Services Committee in June. In his remarks, the general rationalized Critical Race Theory.
Milley’s
openness to CRT, in fact, defends a Marxist construct calculated to
foster crippling divisions and has as its practical consequence ongoing
conflict. No? Check out the disastrous effects that similar doctrine
had on Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and is having on South Africa.
CRT seeks to separate Americans by skin color and denigrates whites as
culprits in the left’s false claim of “systemic racism.”
Are
we to believe that there’s no adverse impact on troop morale when the
joint chiefs chairman testifies favorably, if mealy-mouthed, for a
doctrine that will, if implemented, pit white against black, and blacks
against every other race?
But Milley’s damage isn’t limited to
injecting the poison of CRT into the military’s bloodstream -- as
horrific as that alone is.
Milley damn well knew that the
situation on the ground in Afghanistan had been deteriorating for months
-- if he didn’t, he’s a gross incompetent -- yet he openly and
repeatedly lied to conform to the Biden administration’s false
narrative.
In a withering estimate of Milley, Joy Pullmann wrote this at the Federalist on August 18:
What has Milley been doing as these events culminated in a
spectacular national failure? Defying elected civilian control of the
U.S. military, participating in top generals’ decades of big lies to
foment their greed at America’s expense, demoralizing troops by
endorsing the same racial extremism the Chinese Communist Party uses to
destabilize the United States, and training military resources on
American citizens over nonviolent political views. These are grounds for
his resignation, firing, and prosecution. [italics added.]
The damage this man is doing to the armed services and the espirit de corps of the men and women who wear uniforms is profound.
And
what of the Biden administration’s Afghanistan surrender? America’s
warriors are ready, willing, and able to rescue Americans and Afghani
allies stranded behind Taliban perimeters and checkpoints. Yet, Joe
Biden and his handlers refuse to permit our military to engage in operations to save these innocents from the Taliban’s clutches.
As to the continuing disaster and humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, when has a U.S. president abandoned countrymen
to fates that will surely involve imprisonment, torture, and death at
the hands of an enemy? Including Afghani loyalists, the scope of the
depravity and carnage to come will be mind-numbing.
Biden has rendered our world-class military impotent
in Afghanistan. This imposed feebleness is bad enough, but it sends
another message to Americans: “The United States is no longer the
world’s dominant power. We’re capitulating to an irregular army of
mostly Pashtun tribesmen. We must accept their terms and abide their
directives. The vanquished must submit.”
Which brings us back to a
people’s submission. That’s indeed a goal of the elites who underwrite
the Democratic Party, the left that provides votes and muscle, and the
establishment players who profit from it. It’s easier to conquer the
downtrodden.
Whether or not this sinister Biden-fronted coalition
succeeds is in our hands -- the hands of tens of millions of patriotic
Americans. Our spirits can only break if we allow it. Unbroken, we can -- we must -- defeat this gathering tyranny.
The first seven months of Joe Biden’s presidency have been fraught with crises. First it was the coronavirus pandemic and the vaccine rollout. Then it was the border crisis. Then it was the economy.
And now Afghanistan, where the Taliban are now reportedly hanging people by the neck from U.S.-supplied Blackhawk helicopters, and the U.S. withdrawal has left behind hundreds of Americans and perhaps thousands of Green Card holders in what now amounts to the largest hostage crisis in American history.
The administration is stumbling from one disaster to the next, with no end in sight and public opinionplummeting on nearly every major issue. In each case, the disaster has been entirely of the Biden administration’s own making. Events are not overtaking Biden, his own rank incompetence is.
(Just about the only disaster facing Biden right now that’s not a result of his administration’s policies is the hurricane slamming into the Gulf Coast. But there’s a decent chance he might well botch that, too.)
The events now unfolding in Afghanistan, where the Taliban control about $83 billion worth of U.S. military equipment, are by far the most dramatic and disturbing display of incompetency and horrible policy from the Biden administration, which recent polling reflects. But the Afghanistan disaster follows a train of incompetence that left the station on day one of this presidency.
As soon as Biden came into office, he signed executive orders that guaranteed we would have a migrant crisis on our southwest border. By reversing a raft of Trump-era policies that had managed to control illegal immigration amid a worsening pandemic, Biden effectively opened the borders, sending the message to would-be asylum seekers that if they could manage to get across the Rio Grande with at least one child in tow, they could stay — and if they sent their child alone, he or she would definitely stay.
The results were predictable: a 20-year record surge in illegal border crossings that continues to worsen by the month. Corporate media has largely stopped covering the border crisis, but July was the worst month for illegal immigration since March of 2000. We’re on track to arrest more than 1.6 million people at the southwest border this year,more than we ever have before.
This historic migrant surge wasn’t inevitable. It was a direct result of Biden’s policies, which played out in an entirely predictable manner.
The same goes for the administration’s COVID-19 response. Biden campaigned on having a plan to “shut down” the virus and end the pandemic, but so far there seems to be no plan at all — or even a coordinated and consistent message from the White House. Contradictory and ever-shifting policies and recommendations on everything from school closures to mask and vaccine mandates have sown confusion and mistrust among Americans desperate to get back to work and their children to school.
Biden’s Centers for Disease Control has become lawless, attempting to impose an unconstitutional eviction moratorium on landlords, which the Supreme Courtstruck down last week, and announcing that it will bepushing for gun controlin the name of public health, because that’s really what we need the CDC to focus on right now.
Other pandemic policies from Biden’s team have made economic recovery from last year’s lockdowns well-nigh impossible. Federal unemployment benefits, which the Biden administration has extended to millions of Americans for months now, have exacerbated a worker shortage that’s hobbling the recovery.
And then of course there’s Afghanistan. The Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal will be the subject of many op-eds and think pieces and, eventually, history books. For now, it suffices to say that each passing day we learn something new about how Biden and the Pentagon botched the job.
Over the weekend, for example, we learned from a report in the Washington Post that on the day Kabul fell to the Taliban, Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban’s political wing, gave U.S. Gen. Kenneth Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, a choice: either American troops secure Kabul, or the Taliban would. McKenzie told Baradar that he only needed the airport. “On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.”
Of course, as we now know, the Taliban couldn’t control the city, and last week 13 U.S. soldiers, along with hundreds of Afghans, were killed by a suicide bomber in a pair of coordinated attacks near the airport.
The corporate press, keenly aware that things are not going well for this White House, will soon back away from their critical tone on Afghanistan and resume their usual routine of running cover for Biden. In the coming days we’ll almost certainly see outlandish and highly suspect polls showing that, aside from Afghanistan, Biden is doing pretty well, actually, considering all the crises his young administration has had to face.
Don’t buy this line. Biden has not been overtaken by events, he is not a hapless victim of history or coincidence. Every problem his White House has encountered, it has made worse. Every crisis his administration has faced has been of its own making. And as bad as things have been thus far, they are going to get worse.
