SEE JOHN LOTT ON C-SPAN’S BOOK TV, talking about his book, Gun Control Myths: How politicians, the media, and botched “studies” have twisted the facts on gun control.
SO THEY’RE GOING TO LIFT FAUCI’S LICENSE? Calls grow to discipline doctors spreading virus misinformation.
“Spreading misinformation” is a joke term in this dishonest environment of politicized science.
BRENDAN LOY ON NEW ORLEANS AND IDA.
OPEN THREAD: Comments are your weapon of choice.
OUR RULING CLASS HAS ITS PRIORITIES:
THE NEW SPACE RACE: China researching challenges of kilometer-scale ultra-large spacecraft. “The National Natural Science Foundation of China has outlined a five-year project for researchers to study the assembly of ultra-large spacecraft. Scientists are being directed to meet the ‘urgent need’ for the construction of ultra-large spacecraft. Preliminary research is to include studying the challenges of developing lightweight structures and subsequent on-orbit assembly and control.”
Orion is the key. If the Chinese beat us to this, don’t say you weren’t warned.
BUT THEN WHO WILL BUY THE HIGH-FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP? Reducing sugar in packaged foods can prevent disease in millions.
I’M NOT SO OPTIMISTIC: Ida might tell us if we learned anything from Katrina.
UPDATE: It seems my lack of confidence was not misplaced.
When you have the political class of a banana republic, eventually things start to look like a banana republic.
ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments: “To tie it back to another commenter’s point in another thread, we have a managerial class who have MBAs and other credentials from all the correct schools, but are utter incompetents. They learned to game the system, and have relied on decades worth of accumulated social, political, cultural, and economic capital to carry them through these crises. Now that capital is almost used up, and they’re discovering that they are vastly overleveraged.”
IS THERE ANYTHING IT CAN’T DO? Light-to-moderate coffee drinking associated with health benefits. “Our results suggest that regular coffee consumption is safe, as even high daily intake was not associated with adverse cardiovascular outcomes and all-cause mortality after a follow-up of 10 to 15 years. Moreover, 0.5 to 3 cups of coffee per day was independently associated with lower risks of stroke, death from cardiovascular disease, and death from any cause.”
WHY DOES THE TALIBAN REPORTEDLY WANT A U.S. DIPLOMATIC PRESENCE IN AFGHANISTAN? “Why the Biden administration would consider reopening the embassy doors in the run-up to the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, is a mystery. Most of us are old enough to remember another embassy attack on a similar anniversary. Many of the same geniuses who made the Sunday show rounds to tell us a YouTube video caused the attack on Benghazi hold positions of power in the Biden administration. These people would do anything to cover their incompetence and should not be trusted. The lights at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul went out on August 15. They should stay off. Under no circumstances should the United States legitimize the terrorist regime now in power. And the disastrous retreat to the Kabul airport and subsequent evacuation of Americans ‘who want to leave’ should be the last time our nation negotiates with or relies in any way on the Taliban.”
IT’S THE RETURN OF SUPPLY-LINE DISRUPTIONS! More than 40 ships waiting outside LA and Long Beach setting new record. “Retailers in the US are battling record low inventories, likely meaning the container crunch will worsen in the coming weeks.”
WILL THEY LEARN TO CODE OR BUILD SOLAR PANELS? Layoffs are just the beginning of bad news for Vice and Buzzfeed.
HMM: Study: Long-used cholesterol drug may help fight severe COVID-19. “In lab experiments, they found that the cholesterol-lowering drug fenofibrate, marketed as TriCor, effectively reduced damage to lung cells and stopped the COVID-19 virus from replicating. A study in 15 patients confirmed the lab results.”
Not a very big study.
NOT THE BABYLON BEE: This news clip from Australia is unbelievably dystopian (video).
1984: A warning for the rest of us, a how-to guide for the left. And a whole lot of people in Australian government need to be asking themselves: Are we the baddies?
ONE OF THESE THINGS IS NOT LIKE THE OTHER: Tim Blair on Presidential Profiles in Courage.
DON SURBER: To Survive, We Must Fire Them All.
The survival of America depends on firing them all. The good, the bad, and the indifferent must all go because we must send a clear signal to the mediocrities running the military and the Department of State.
The message must be failure gets you canned.
We failed 20 years ago to do so, and it cost us dearly.
9/11 resulted in no firings. Instead of dismissing the people in charge of an intelligence community that failed the nation, Bush 43 appointed a 9/11 commission, which included many of the people responsible for the 9/11 whiff. The commission was a bipartisan circle jerk and coverup. After months of interviews, it concluded that the FBI and CIA had “not well served” Presidents Clinton and Bush.
No shit, Sherlock.
Contrast and compare to FDR’s response to the REAL Pearl Harbor.
Indeed.
READER RECOMMENDATION: Old Mr. Boston Deluxe Official Bartender’s Guide.
HELP! MY DAUGHTER IS MARRYING A WHITE MAN AGAINST MY WISHES.
Perhaps judge him by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin. Or is that too quaint an idea?
“DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F*** THINGS UP.”
● Shot: Biden Pledges To Strike Back After Attack Kills 13 U.S. Service Members In Kabul. “’Know this,’ Biden said to the attackers. ‘We will not forgive. We will not forget. We will hunt you down and make you pay.’”
—NPR, Thursday.
● Chaser: Pentagon: Two ‘High Profile’ ISIS-K Targets Killed in Retaliatory Drone Strike.
—NRO, today.
● Hangover: Pentagon spox says names of 2 ‘high profile’ ISIS-K planners killed in airstrike won’t be released.
—Twitchy, today.
● The D.T.s: Joe Biden’s Afghanistan Drone Strike Against ISIS-K Is a Joke, and We Are the Punchline.
—Red State, today.
BOB ZUBRIN: We Need Fusion Power.
CHINA, INC. WAS ANOTHER OVERHYPED AND DESTRUCTIVE MANAGEMENT FAD:
During a recent conference of regional business leaders at which I was in attendance, an executive of one company was asked about tariffs and the global supply chain squeeze, and what impact they were having. He started his response by stating that “China, Inc. was another overhyped and destructive management fad.” He went on to state that Trump’s Chinese tariffs turned out to be a welcome catalyst for many businesses to finally start disengaging from China, and that businesses shocked by current supply-chain problems from China are as delusional as the GE executives who believe their company keeps struggling because it just isn’t pushing Six Sigma hard enough.
His comment about China, Inc. caused me to recall two conversations I had about ten years ago with two separate business executives.
Flashback to November of 2019: How to Conduct Business with Chinese Companies That See a Dark Future.
SOD OFF, SWAMPY: Vox: It’s time to reconsider air conditioning for the sake of ‘cooling justice.’
Of course, if Vox would like to test their theories out, why not start here? Ban A/C for DC!
MORE LIKE THIS, PLEASE: Denmark To Scrap All Covid-19 Restrictions.
TO BE HONEST, THIS DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A LOT: 1 in 5 people with COVID-19 pass it to others in household, study finds.
ANOTHER NEW BOOK: Crisis Preparedness Guide: How to Survive the Coming Collapse.
AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: Taliban Opens Chain Of U.S. Army Surplus Stores.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: Daily Show Hilariously Mocks ‘Epic News Bro’ Chris Cuomo. “Yes, ladies and gentlemen, THAT Daily Show.“
AN ODE TO CHARLIE WATTS, THE POLITEST MAN IN ROCK MUSIC:
Watts himself was later to remark, ‘Part of my problem was that I was never a teenager. I’d be off in the corner talking about Kierkegaard. I always took myself too seriously, and thought Buddy Holly was a great joke.’ It’s true that there was something a bit melancholic about the London lad with the long, Buster Keaton face who only ever wanted to read about cowboys or play the drums. He acquired his first kit at Christmas 1955, after at least a year of practicing nonstop on his mother’s pots and pans. At 18, Watts had only one ambition, which was to somehow find himself at Birdland in New York, wearing a hipster suit and sitting in behind the likes of Stan Getz or Miles Davis. Instead, he drifted in to a smoke-filled suburban London blues club one evening, to be confronted by the embryonic Rolling Stones. They courted him for about two years before he agreed to join, and even then he contained his excitement. The Stones’ roadie and sometime piano player Ian Stewart remembered that he’d simply driven up to the Watts’s front door one night in his van. ‘I said to Charlie, “Look, you’re in the band. That’s it.” And Charlie said, “Yeah, all right, then, but I don’t know what my mum’s gonna say”.’
Amid all the subsequent stories about Mars Bars, drug busts and Margaret Trudeau, Charlie remained the calm eye of the storm. He bought the former Archbishop of Canterbury’s home, raised sheepdogs and collected American Civil War memorabilia. He was the politest man in rock music. Once, in Detroit, a record executive named Mo Schulman invited the drummer up for a drink in his hotel suite, which was awash in champagne, caviar and an impressive variety of recreational drugs. When Schulman was then urgently called away on business, he affably told his guest to help himself from the display. ‘Anything you want,’ he stressed. Charlie took a bottle of beer, leaving both a five-dollar bill and a polite thank-you note on the counter. A few years later the Stones were yukking it up one night in the pinball room of Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Mansion with its underwater bar and hot and cold running Bunnies. Charlie took one look at the Satyricon-like scene, rolled his eyes, said, ‘Uh-oh, this is star situation’, and retired alone with a good book.
Still though, there were limits to Watts’ politeness, as this classic Stones story recalls:
One night in Amsterdam in the 1980s, when Richards was celebrating his marriage, he and Jagger stayed up most of the night drinking. At 5 a.m., Jagger called Mr. Watts’s hotel room, according to Richards’s autobiography, and said, “Where’s my drummer?” “About twenty minutes later,” Richards went on, “there was a knock at the door. There was Charlie Watts, Savile Row suit, perfectly dressed, tie, shaved. . . . I opened the door and he didn’t even look at me, he walked straight past me, got hold of Mick and said, ‘Never call me your drummer again.’ Then he hauled him up by the lapels . . . and gave him a right hook. Mick fell back onto a silver platter of smoked salmon on the table and began to slide towards the open window and the canal below it. . . . [I] caught Mick just before he slid into the Amsterdam canal.”
Here are some thoughts from Stewart Copeland of the Police, another brilliant drummer, about Watts’ drum technique, and how he drove the Stones:
As for the surviving Stones, not surprisingly for a band led by Mick Jagger, the show (read: the money machine) must go on: Rolling Stones ‘moving ahead’ on tour despite Charlie Watts’ death.
On the other hand, as Mark Hemingway responds to the above story, “Watts was on record saying he wanted and expected The Stones to continue without him. ZZ Top is also playing this fall and Dusty wanted them to continue. Also, Stones tours employ hundreds of people who likely were out of work all pandemic.“
IN STAND ON ZANZIBAR, “NIPICAPS” LET WOMEN CONTROL THIS PHENOMENON: “The Effect of Nipple Erection on Intended and Expected Altruism.”
ONE MORE TODAY FROM YOURS TRULY FOR OUR VIP SUPPORTERS: Trump and the Chicago Way: How We Used to Strike Back at Terrorists.
SPENGLER: The Federal Reserve Is in the Monetary Equivalent of the Kabul Airport.
Real income is falling and families are losing ground. [Federal Reserve System, Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s] performance recalls Groucho’s line, “Who are you going to believe — me or your own eyes?” Anyone who has tried to buy a pound of hamburger, rent a house, buy a used car or a household appliance, or any other item in the consumption basket knows that inflation is out of control.
Note to Republicans: Stay on message. It’s the Biden inflation, and it’s theft. He’s taking food off the table of middle-class families to hand out bribes to his favorite constituencies.
Along with his administration’s unspeakable incompetence and mendacity in Afghanistan, this sets up a Republican landslide for 2022.
Don’t get cocky.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
AJ Kaufman: Is State Department Spokesman Ned Price Gaslighting All of Us? “According to the 38-year-old Georgetown and Harvard graduate Price, barbaric Al-Qaeda-allied jihadists like the Taliban are our partners, yet the equally barbaric Al-Qaeda-allied jihadists of the Haqqani network are not.”
Bryan Preston: Who’s Really Driving the Afghanistan Disaster? Here’s a Clue. “It clearly says the State Department is driving the operation and DoD is merely providing support.”
Yours Truly: Even the Soviets Managed to Achieve Something in the ‘Graveyard of Empires’ That Joe Biden Couldn’t—Or Chose Not To. “The Soviet effort to withdraw in good order was well-executed and can serve as a model for other disengagements from similar nations.”
ALWAYS THE LAST TO KNOW: New York magazine’s shocking revelation: The liberal media are biased!
In defending President Biden’s debacle in Afghanistan, New York magazine’s Eric Levitz has come to an earth-shaking revelation. You ready? The liberal media are biased. They “manufactured” the crisis.
Levitz is shocked, shocked to discover that “straight news” stories in the New York Times are laden with judgmental adjectives and the writers’ own opinions.
Who knew? Flashback: Is The New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.
—Headline and lede, The New York Times, July 25, 2004.
THAT’S GOOD, BUT THE OFFICIALS SHOULD BE PERSONALLY LIABLE: Baltimore Might Be Liable for Riot Damage to Businesses: A federal court so holds, applying Maryland’s Riot Act, and quoting the Mayor’s famous line that the City “gave those who wished to destroy space to do that.”
FOR THE NATION, CERTAINLY. THE RULING CLASS HASN’T PAID MUCH OF A PRICE THOUGH. Conrad Black: Evicting Donald Trump was clearly a catastrophe. “Despite the frenzied, wall-to-wall, linked-armed international effort to present Trump as a brutal, crooked, moron, he almost eliminated unemployment and illegal immigration, did eliminate energy imports, and by identifying and incentivizing “enterprise zones,” he created conditions in which the lowest 20 per cent of American income earners were gaining income in percentage terms compared to the top 10 per cent on the income scale. President Trump, without demagogy or hyperbole, attracted American attention to the commercial and geopolitical threat from China. He incited NATO to stop sponging off America and raise the national defence commitments to figures much more closely approximating their long-standing promises to the United States.”
Plus: “There is open discussion of trying to reconstruct the Western alliance without American leadership. Biden’s own partisans are silent as his standing in the eyes of his countrymen crumbles. Is there any sane person who in the dark and quiet of their bedroom in the dead, vast, and middle of the night would not prefer Trump with his gaucheries to this horrifying immolation of American national credibility and of the unbroken right of the West over 2500 years to be the preeminent influence in the world? Possibly, but they are no longer numerous or outspoken.”
GRANHOLM GOT MILITARY JET DURING AFGHAN EVAC: Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm had a summit to get to in Ukraine, so, naturally, her minions dialed up the Pentagon and presto! There was a U.S. military jet that could possibly have been better utilized a good ways further east of Ukraine.
“C’MON NOW” WITH BRYAN PRESTON: Gen. Mark Milley’s Bagram Blunder Should End His Military Cosplay Act.
AFGHANISTAN IS BIDEN’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE: Who knew His Fraudulency would become the procurement chief for the Taliban. If you doubt that, consider this Issues & Insights:
“The country is now a modern arms bazaar, overflowing with designed-to-kill equipment for the Taliban to use on Americans and anyone else they choose to murder, or sell to unsavory characters who want to massacre Westerners. Remaining in Afghanistan after the U.S. quits will be nearly 76,000 military vehicles, 208 American airplanes and helicopters, and almost 600,000 arms.”
MICHAEL BYRD IS A HERO FOR KILLING ASHLI BABBITT, HAVE YOU NOT HEARD HIM SAY? “Ask yourself: when was the last time you celebrated a cop for killing an unarmed man or woman? If your answer is ‘never’ — which is likely — why have you made an exception for Ashli Babbitt? Before you answer, hopefully, NBC can explain its doubled standard. So keep all of this in mind as Michael Byrd makes the rounds on CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS, and then gets rich off a tell-all book. Byrd will have a lot to tell, by the way. He’s been a victim for years. Just ask him.”
HOW ABOUT “SHUT UP, BAIZUO!” Brandeis University expands list of ‘oppressive’ words and phrases to avoid using.
If you’re at Brandeis University and want to tell someone they’re “killing it” or to follow a “rule of thumb,” you better bite your tongue.
The phrases, among many others, are considered violent according to a recently expanded “suggested language list” put together by the Prevention, Advocacy and Resource Center at the Waltham university.
Instead of “killing it,” the group recommends saying “great job” because, “If someone is doing well, there are other ways to say so without equating it to murder.”
The phrase “rule of thumb” should be replaced with “general rule,” because the saying allegedly comes from an old British law allowing men to beat their wives with sticks no wider than their thumb.
But even Brandeis concedes that “no written record of this law exists today.”
Dumb, bossy rules based on fake history: Academic leftism as usual.
HE’S GONE WAY PAST CARTER ALREADY: Biden morphs into Carter faster than Jimmy did.
THIS KAMALA HARRIS IMPERSONATION is both cruel and accurate.
COVID POLICY IS DRIVEN BY FRIGHTENED KARENS, AND THE FRIGHTENED KARENS WANT BOOSTERS: Booster Overkill: Getting more people vaccinated remains far more important than additional Covid shots for those who have already gotten them.
STILL #1 IN ARGENTINIAN HISTORY: The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse.
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? The coming Afghan refugee crisis: “If you attempted to remove every person from Afghanistan who has worked with and for the US government and their families, [former Trump advisor Stephen Miller] said, ‘you’re looking at probably somewhere in the realm of a million people. I don’t know many people who think the United States can accept a million people on airplanes from Afghanistan into our communities, and there won’t be any second- or third-order effects of that,’ Miller said.”
WELCOME BACK, CARTER: Key inflation gauge rises 3.6% from a year ago to tie biggest jump since the early 1990s.
An inflation measure the Federal Reserve uses to set policy rose 3.6% in July from a year ago, meeting Wall Street expectations but also tying the highest level in about 30 years.
The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which the Fed sees as the broadest measure of inflation, was unchanged from June, which was revised up one-tenth of a percentage point, the Commerce Department reported Friday. That 3.6% reading equaled the Dow Jones estimate and appeared to be the highest level since May 1991.
1991, you say? I remember another Democrat who dubbed that era “the worst economy in 50 years.” Presumably Mr. Biden’s competitors to the White House will be using similar language to gauge his own handling of the economy.
Flashback: Milton Friedman’s Revenge.
OUT ON A LIMB: Rasmussen: Majority Of Americans ‘Don’t Trust Biden Administration Reports About Afghanistan.’
Related: It’s Dawning on the Democrats: Biden-Harris Will Drag Them Down. “If you look more closely, however, you’ll sense something else: fear — that, in a desperate attempt to remove President Trump from office, the Democrats tailored themselves a straitjacket from which they will struggle mightily to escape. This fear is well-founded. Joe Biden is an aging, incompetent mediocrity whose main claim to fame, like the Delta Tau Chi fraternity from Animal House, is his long tradition of existence. Kamala Harris, his vice president, is a widely disliked authoritarian whose last run for the White House was stymied by her inability to garner support from more than 3 percent of the Democratic-primary electorate. If, prior to the disaster that was the last fortnight, the Democrats hadn’t sensed that they’d tied their party to a pair of losers, they sure as hell must have now.”
(Bumped.)
Biden’s second hundred days have been an unmitigated disaster.
It was then that inflation soared above 5%. It was on Aug. 9, Biden’s 199th day, that Democrats released their fiscally reckless and culturally destructive $3.5 trillion budget plan, drafted by socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders with the intention of reshaping American life with a big expansion of the ballooning welfare state.
It was in Biden’s second 100 days that illegal immigration turned from a mere fiasco into a national crisis. The number of illegal migrants doubled in January to 78,417 compared to the same month of 2020, as Latin Americans accepted Biden’s invitation to come north, no questions asked. The numbers jumped again each month, and by his 100th day, the March numbers were out at a shocking 173,283, five times what they’d been a year earlier. Yet it was only in his second hundred days that it became clear there’d be more than 2 million illegal border crossings this year, that there’d be no decline in arrivals during the intensely hot summer months as the administration has promised, and that Biden had created the worst immigration crisis in more than 20 years.
Then came the worst disaster so far, America’s collapse in Afghanistan. It was on Aug. 10, Biden’s 200th day in office, that the Taliban overran three provincial capitals and it became obvious that their barbarian blitzkrieg would consume the entire country, ending America’s 20-year efforts against them in a humiliating rout.
Why, it’s as if, “The Joe Biden–Kamala Harris ticket was well-placed to run against Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. History may show that, beyond that, it turned out to be fit for no other purpose.”
August 27, 2021
KURT SCHLICHTER HAS A GENTLE MESSAGE FOR GEN. MARK MILLEY AND THE REST OF OUR TOP BRASS: Resign. “Rip those stars off your pathetic nostalgia costumes and resign. Quit. Tell that crusty Pinocchio in the White House and the faculty lounge Geppettos tugging his strings that you will have no more to do with his human centipede of failure in Kabul.”
Needless to say, read the whole thing.
Related (From Ed): Biden Was the Best Democrats Had to Offer, and Now He Has to Go.
(Bumped).
OPEN THREAD: Beware the tears of the gods.
YOU KNOW IT’S A DEBACLE WHEN THEY’RE GOING AFTER DISSENTERS LIKE THIS: Active Duty, Retired Naval Intelligence Members Told They Cannot ‘Disrespect’ Biden Over Afghanistan Debacle.
This policy was certainly not enforced during the Trump years.
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT: All future Starlink satellites will have laser crosslinks.
PAST PERFORMANCE IS NO GUARANTEE OF FUTURE RESULTS: Afghan Evacuees on U.S. Military Bases Won’t Be Forced to Take the COVID Vaccine—Unlike Our Soldiers.
OUR CURRENT MILITARY LEADERSHIP IS GARBAGE: Marine officer relieved of duty after calling out senior leaders about Afghanistan: “I am willing to throw it all away to say to my senior leaders, ‘I demand accountability,'” Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller said in a video message. “Did any of you throw your rank on the table and say, ‘Hey, it’s a bad idea to evacuate Bagram Airfield, a strategic airbase, before we evacuate everyone’? Did anyone do that? And when you didn’t think to do that, did anyone raise their hand and say, ‘We completely messed this up’?”
Where’s “warrior monk” Jim Mattis in all of this?
More here.
OUT: We must vaccinate everyone to prevent the rise of new variants. IN: “As the Delta variant continues its global surge, experts are questioning whether the long-held goal of achieving herd immunity from COVID-19 through vaccination is still viable.”
SPACE: Astra plans small-rocket launch for Space Force. Nobody compares to what SpaceX is doing, but I’m glad that there are other competitors entering the field.
UPDATE: Launch aborted.
FRUITS OF LOCKDOWNS AND MEDIA HYSTERIA: Fatal overdoses from illicit tranquilizers jumped 6-fold during pandemic.
UPDATE: More details here: Robert F. Kennedy’s assassin Sirhan Sirhan granted parole.
TO BE FAIR, THAT’S BECAUSE THEY’VE BEEN SUBORNED BY CHINA: Our institutions are failing us on China.
SAME GOVERNMENT THAT GAVE BLACKHAWK HELICOPTERS AND MACHINE GUNS TO THE TALIBAN: ATF Targets Stabilizing Braces. “In June, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) published a notice of proposed rulemaking that would make nearly all firearms configured with a pistol stabilizing brace subject to the National Firearms Act, requiring taxation and registration of millions of lawfully acquired firearms. The proposal represents a dramatic shift in ATF treatment of pistol-stabilizing braces.”
JOHN DANIEL DAVIDSON: Joe Biden Has Been Derelict In His Duty. He Is Unfit To Lead. He Should Be Impeached. “Biden’s bizarre behavior at the press conference, although deeply disturbing, does not alone justify impeachment. Rather, it’s his fecklessness and incompetence, his failure to protect Americans in the evacuation of Afghanistan, and his inability to speak clearly and honestly about the situation, that justifies impeachment at this point.”
CHANGE: ULA stops selling its centerpiece Atlas V, setting path for the rocket’s retirement.
That means no more having to buy rocket engines from Russia, but how is Blue Origin doing with getting those BE-4 engines delivered for the Atlas V’s replacement?
BIDEN BUGS OUT: A few of Scott Johnson’s 12 thoughts and observations:
• Biden is spent. His remarks were pathetic and stupid. He gives human form to our humiliation. He embodies it. Anyone can see that.
• Charles Lipson rendered this concise verdict after the attack but before Biden’s remarks: “This deadly fiasco didn’t just happen on his watch. It happened because of his decisions, a series of fundamentally bad ones, taken by the President himself.” Anyone can see that too.
• Our political system does not offer an appropriate remedy for the epic failure of the Biden administration. Has any president ever stood so exposed in the opening months of his administration? Have we ever had a more ridiculous vice president than Kamala Harris standing next in line? Next in line after Kamala Harris is Nancy Pelosi. Next in line after Nancy Pelosi is Patrick Leahy.
• Biden vowed: “To those who carried out this attack, as well as anyone who wishes America harm, know this: We will not forgive. We will not forget.” His vow made me reflect on Biden’s literal memory issues. He can’t even remember the name of his Secretary of Defense — you know, the General.
• It is hard to take Biden’s vow seriously in the context of our retreat and surrender. It has a Monty Python quality to it.
There’s more…and Scott gets bonus points for recognizing a good title when he reads one.
ADD BIDEN’S BAGRAM BLUNDER TO: Little Big Horn and Pickett’s Charge as among the biggest military mistakes in American history.
XI’S GOTTA HAVE IT! NBA To ‘Educate’ Incoming Rookies On How To Promote Woke Social Justice Causes.
Get back to me when the CCP’s Uighur concentration camps are on the list of the NBA’s “social justice” causes.
SO BRENDAN LOY SHARED ME THIS TWEET FROM TODAY, AND SOMETHING HE WROTE, PROPHETICALLY, ON HIS BLOG JUST BEFORE KATRINA:
Are we in for a Katrina rerun? The Biden Administration probably hopes so, since it would be a disaster that’s not their fault, and take the heat off the Afghanistan debacle.
CONSERVATION OF BOOZE CONSUMPTION: Liquor store sales rose during pandemic at rate similar to bar sales drop.
JIM TREACHER: On Second Thought, Keep Biden Away from the Cameras. “Biden blamed Trump for his own failures, and then tried to get a reporter to blame Trump, but the reporter wouldn’t knock over the straw man like he was instructed. So then Biden sank his head in… I dunno, despair? Frustration? The urgent need for a quick nap? Who knows. But it’s not the sort of thing I want to see from the Commander-in-Chief at a time like this. The press isn’t Biden’s enemy. The Taliban is. Just imagine being one of these military commanders trying to tell Biden anything he doesn’t want to hear. It’s impossible. He just shuts down like you saw there.”
BETO O’ROURKE, CALL YOUR OFFICE! A high school in Kentucky is having a “furry” problem and if you don’t know what that means it’s people who identify as animals.
(Classical reference in headline.)
AFGHANISTAN: The Graveyard of Experts.
WINSTON SMITH, CALL YOUR OFFICE! Joe Biden Begins the Bid to Rewrite the History of His Bloody Botched Afghan Exit.
SAYING THE WORST THING IS KIND OF HER SPECIALTY, REALLY: Jen Psaki Says Probably the Worst Thing She Could After Biden’s Afghanistan Presser.
IN A NUTSHELL, WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICAN INSTITUTIONS: It is Not How Well You Do But How Well Important People Think You Are Doing.
MY NEW YORK POST COLUMN: We’re told to ‘follow the science’ — yet some of it is just plain wrong.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Afghanistan is ‘Biden’s Katrina?’ Afghanistan is dramatically worse.
HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? California businesses leaving state accelerates in 2021.
BRYAN PRESTON: Department of the Indefensible: Who Decided to Close Bagram Air Base and Why? “Gen. Austin ‘Scottie’ Miller was the commander at Bagram. Based on Biden’s requirement to pull all U.S. forces out of Afghanistan by date certain, and with just 2,500 troops to work with an no room for any additional deployments, and with the embassy as the priority over Bagram, Gen. Miller faced the task of planning for it. The Biden administration’s priority was the embassy, so Miller drafted a proposal to close Bagram and concentrate defensive forces on the embassy. His boss, CENTCOM Gen. Frank McKenzie, greenlit that plan, then it went to Washington, where Gen. Milley, SecDef Austin, and the Biden White House all were briefed and bought in. Bagram would close. The die was cast.”
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