NO BLINKEN WAY

NO BLINKEN WAY

BY SCOTT JOHNSON IN AFGHANISTAN, BIDEN ADMINISTRATION, BIDEN FOREIGN POLICY, MILITARY

Yesterday organs of the Biden administration at the Pentagon and the State Department held briefings to announce the the departure of American forces from Afghanistan. The Pentagon has posted the transcript of Centcom Commander Kenneth McKenzie’s Pentagon briefing announcing the completion of our evacuation here. The Facebook video of the statement followed by questions and answers is below.

Hours later the State Department released a recorded statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the video and text of which are posted here. I have embedded the video below.

For those who have followed the administration’s public statements over the past two weeks, these briefings could have come as no surprise. For others these statements have to be seen to be believed. They compound the disgrace of our surrender and exit. I would like to offer the following thoughts and observations in the form of bullet points.

• General McKenzie announced “the completion of our withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of the military mission to evacuate American citizens, third-country nationals and vulnerable Afghans.” Yet a shifting number of American citizens were left behind. “The mission” was the departure of the military by August 31. It is that mission which was completed. General McKenzie’s portrayal of successful completion of the military mission was public relations.

• In his statement General McKenzie did not acknowledge the American citizens left behind. In response to a question General McKenzie put the abandonment of these Americans this way: “[N]one of them made it to the airport, and were able to be — and were able to be accommodated.” How many? “[W]e think the citizens that were not brought out number [is] in the low — very low hundreds.”

• If the mission was to depart by the Biden/Taliban deadline of August 31, as I believe it was, they did the best they could.

• General McKenzie offered kind words on the Taliban: “I will tell you, the Taliban had been very — very pragmatic and very business-like as we have approached this withdrawal. We did not turn it over to the Taliban. General Donahue, one of the last things he did before leaving was talk to the Taliban commander that he had been coordinating with, as soon as — at about the time we were going to leave, just to let him know that we were leaving.”

• General McKenzie reported the “demilitarization” of equipment left behind at the Kabul airport. He made no mention of the $85 billion of equipment left behind elsewhere in Afghanistan according to the Times (UK) graphic below.

• As for the Americans left behind: “I believe our Department of State is going to work very hard to allow any American citizens that are left — and we think the citizens that were not brought out number in the low — very low hundreds.” Over to you, Antony Blinken.

• As has become the custom for the briefing by high administration officials, Blinken appeared two hours after the announced time. I imagine he was sitting around the table on the Seventh Floor with his speechwriters asking, “What the hell do we say now?”

• The video of Blinken’s statement is bizarre. Looking slightly to the side of the camera, Blinken read his statement from a teleprompter. As though in response to his thoughts — “somebody get me out of here” — the door behind Blinken opened shortly after he began his remarks. Blinken’s remarks raised a multitude of questions, yet he had nothing to say beyond his prepared statement.

• According to Blinken, ’twas a famous victory: “More than 123,000 people have been safely flown out of Afghanistan. That includes about 6,000 American citizens. This has been a massive military, diplomatic, and humanitarian undertaking – one of the most difficult in our nation’s history – and an extraordinary feat of logistics and coordination under some of the most challenging circumstances imaginable.” He handed out kudos like a starlet at the Academy Awards.

• Blinken magically reduced the number of Americans left behind from General McKenzie’s “low hundreds”: “We believe there are still a small number of Americans – under 200 and likely closer to 100 – who remain in Afghanistan and want to leave.” All they know is that they left an indeterminate number of American citizens.

• We know they left behind one American hostage held by the Taliban. His name is Mark Freichs.

• Blinken recited the obligatory diplospeak: “More than half the world’s countries have joined us in insisting that the Taliban let people travel outside Afghanistan freely. As of today, more than 100 countries have said that they expect the Taliban to honor travel authorizations by our countries. And just a few hours ago, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution that enshrines that responsibility – laying the groundwork to hold the Taliban accountable if they renege. So, the international chorus on this is strong, and it will stay strong. We will hold the Taliban to their commitment on freedom of movement for foreign nationals, visa holders, at-risk Afghans.”

• Translation: We are entirely dependent on the kindness of strangers — terrorist strangers.

• Blinken provided this unreassuring reassurance: “The Taliban has made a commitment to prevent terrorist groups from using Afghanistan as a base for external operations that could threaten the United States or our allies, including al-Qaida and the Taliban’s sworn enemy, ISIS-K.”

• “Going forward,” Blinken stated, “any engagement with a Taliban-led government in Kabul will be driven by one thing only: our vital national interests.” Yet our departure has betrayed our vital national interests.

• Blinken could not be much clearer that he was dishing out a complete and utter crock: “Our message is: any legitimacy and any support will have to be earned. The Taliban can do that by meeting commitments and obligations – on freedom of travel; respecting the basic rights of the Afghan people, including women and minorities; upholding its commitments on counterterrorism; not carrying out reprisal violence against those who choose to stay in Afghanistan; and forming an inclusive government that can meet the needs and reflect the aspirations of the Afghan people.”

• “The main point I want to drive home here today is that America’s work in Afghanistan continues. We have a plan for what’s next. We’re putting it into action.”

• “Work” is a term of art. It requires translation. It seems to mean “humanitarian aid to the Afghan people.”

• Where was Biden? He gave no public remarks on the departure. Rather, the White House released a written statement. He is to “address the American people on [his] decision not to extend our presence in Afghanistan beyond August 31” this afternoon.

• Biden’s statement turns to the military: “For now, I will report that it was the unanimous recommendation of the Joint Chiefs and of all of our commanders on the ground to end our airlift mission as planned. Their view was that ending our military mission was the best way to protect the lives of our troops, and secure the prospects of civilian departures for those who want to leave Afghanistan in the weeks and months ahead.”

• Biden only indirectly acknowledged the Americans he left behind: “I have asked the Secretary of State to lead the continued coordination with our international partners to ensure safe passage for any Americans, Afghan partners, and foreign nationals who want to leave Afghanistan.”

• This episode has comprehensively disgraced our political, military, intelligence, and diplomatic establishments.

• We have stood witness to the epic national humiliation of the United States by Biden and his administration. As of today, the only official or officer to pay any price is Marine Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller, who was relieved of his command for seeking accountability somewhere higher up in the chain of command.

• President Franklin Roosevelt designated December 7, 1941 a “date which will live in infamy.” The infamy attached to Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. By the same token, August 30, 2021 is a date which will live in infamy, though in this case the infamy has been brought to us by the president himself.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/no-blinken-way.php

HOW OTHERS SEE US

HOW OTHERS SEE US

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN BIDEN FOREIGN POLICY

As the Afghanistan debacle has unfolded, I have been following the coverage in various foreign newspapers. The coverage I have seen has been harshly critical of the Biden administration, to a degree that more or less equals what we see in the conservative press here in the U.S.

Take, for example, a news story and two commentary pieces in today’s Telegraph. First, the news story by U.S. correspondent Jamie Johnson. At the top of the page is the now-famous photo of Joe Biden on the verge of bursting into tears during his press appearance last night. The story begins:

US President Joe Biden crumbled under questioning by a Fox News reporter on Thursday night, as Donald Trump said his handling of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan was “embarrassing”.

In what was labelled a moment of “weakness” the president looked resigned as he tried to explain that it was Mr Trump who ordered troops to be withdrawn and that his only alternative was to send more US soldiers to the country.
***
Faced with Fox News reporter Peter Doocy, Mr Biden struggled to accept the blame for the chaotic US withdrawal.

That is brutal, but the opinion pieces, not surprisingly, are worse. The headline on Douglas Murray’s piece is, “Can the world afford another three and a half years of President Biden?” The subhead is “Britain has grown used to a strong America. Now, it must contend with a weak leadership in retreat.” It gets worse from there.

In another opinion piece, Iain Duncan Smith writes, “Biden’s colossal mess is even worse than we thought.”

This tragic mess comes back to President Biden. He owns every decision – and the consequences are also his.
***
In reality, of course, there was nothing inevitable about the violence and chaos of the withdrawal. Meanwhile, officials have been letting it be known that Biden was indeed warned that the Afghan security services were likely to crumble in the face of the Taliban. He was even warned that if he shut Bagram airbase, he would cut off Afghan forces from their vital air support (a significant factor in their collapse) and lose the best place to evacuate from. He seems to have ignored that advice as well.

That’s why, nearly eight hours after yesterday’s attack, when Biden ghosted into the White House East Room he looked shell shocked. After all, in the last eighteen months, there have been no US or allied casualties in Afghanistan, no terrorist attacks from Afghanistan, and the Taliban were being held at bay by the Afghan forces, supported by Nato. In a matter of a few weeks, all of that has been thrown away, leaving the whole of Nato having to rely on the factional Taliban for their security.

Sadly, our allies are asking serious questions about whether the United States can any longer be trusted. A partial answer is, certainly not as long as Joe Biden is president.

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/how-others-see-us.php

A conservative climate expert's answer to global 'lukewarming': Grow the economy

A conservative climate expert's answer to global 'lukewarming': Grow the economy

Since 1980, damage and deaths per capita as a result of weather have dramatically dropped, says Patrick Michaels, former state climatologist of Virginia.

By Natalia Mittelstadt

Updated: August 28, 2021 - 10:58pm

• Article
• Dig In

Climate change is real, acknowledges Patrick Michaels, former state climatologist of Virginia — but it is less extreme, less destructive, and less attributable to human activity than the dire models of climate change alarmists claim.

Rather than try to offer a weakened, watered-down, cheaper version of the Democrats' sweeping Green New Deal proposals to phase out fossil fuels, Michaels suggests two priorities for a conservative alternative: Change the narrative, and grow the economy.

"It became apparent to me that this warming issue was likely to be a real, but also likely to be overblown," Michaels, senior fellow at the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the John Solomon Reports podcast. "In other words, human beings have something to do with the warming that occurred since, say, from the late 1970s roughly to the late 1990s. But they don't have everything to do with it. And it's relatively small.

"So I think we ought to use the term 'lukewarming,' rather than 'global warming,' or 'climate change.' Because that's really what the atmosphere is doing."

Michaels said a paper he recently came across that used data from Munich Re, a large, multinational reinsurance company, showed "that weather-related damages around the planet" have dropped dramatically since 1980 "in damage per capita, or deaths per capita."

"It's not going in the direction that everybody thinks it is," Michaels said. "More important, the more affluent your country is, the less damages you suffer and the fewer deaths that you suffer. So it would seem to me that the best thing to do about lukewarming is to encourage economic growth, because people adapt to that quite well."

In other words, the best response to "lukewarming" is to just "continue doing what we're doing," Michaels suggested. 

"It's very clear that there are fewer weather or climate-related deaths as the planet's surface warms slightly," he noted. "That's because greenhouse warming tends to concentrate itself in the winter and at night, and winter fatality is much greater than summer mortality."

Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, "we're making the earth greener," he said, adding: "The amount of greening caused by simply putting CO2 in the air is pretty spectacular." 

The areas of the world that are greening the most are tropical rainforests in South America, Africa, and East Asia, which are the "places that people were wringing their hands over," Michaels explained. 

Michaels suggested that with fewer people dying, the planet becoming greener, and agricultural productivity increasing exponentially over recent decades, what people are currently doing for the planet by encouraging economic growth seems to be working — and if it ain't broke, why fix it? 

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/environment/climate-expert-says-encourage-economic-growth-midst-lukewarming

Don's Tuesday Column

       THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson   Red Bluff Daily News   8/31/2021

Biden, not Taliban-ISIS, made us lose

Observations on the “Worst Day for America’s Strategic Interests Since Pearl Harbor” (Sebastian Gorka) will follow thoughts on local vaccine mandates.

So, COVID-19 vaccinations may be required for teachers to keep their jobs. If true, that would be, for Tehama County, a betrayal of personal freedom over the heretofore sacred “my body, my choice” value of the left. There’s not even the chimera of liberty if such vaccinations now become a condition of continued employment for our educators.

I’m a fan of teachers, even the mediocre ones (your fellow teachers know who you are); their unions—not so much. However, public employee unions—whose entire existence comes courtesy of the taxpaying private sector citizenry—should step up on behalf of their members’ personal, physical freedom to control their own bodies. News reports point to law enforcement unions, as well as S.E.I.U. groups stepping up for their members’ rights. Mandatory shots are evil.

We’ve been wisely vaccinated for our own protection. This writer strongly encourages readers to consider their risk due to age, health conditions, obesity etc. Evaluate how little you really stand to lose from the marginal adverse reactions—compared to potentially weeks of respiratory hell, even death from the Wuhan Flu. We lost a month of skiing during the H1N1 “swine influenza” of ’09 to ’10; the memory remains of being so bed ridden as to dread walking 20 feet to the bathroom, let alone outside to enjoy springtime.

However, the only ones suffering from not being vaccinated are the unvaccinated themselves; they can’t spread it to the vaccinated. Those who’ve had even asymptomatic COVID (our 40-year-old “big boned” neighbor had it, hardly knew it, but science says he’s now immune) have nearly zero risk from the “un-poked.” Under-17 children without underlying health issues have a vanishingly small risk of serious or deadly infection.

The same quasi-religious fervor, even fanaticism, from the same self-appointed “minders,” lofty politicians, and petty fellow citizens—that we’ve seen over racial, social equity, and environmental/climate issues—now rears its ugly, despotic head over mask and vaccine mandates. Refuse, don’t comply, speak out, resist, but don’t risk your health to make a statement of independence. Reject media hysteria.

Does our titular leader, Joe Biden, have blood on his hands from the suicide bombing outside the Kabul airport, killing 13 of our finest young warriors and 170 Afghans? Those inspired by Islamic fanaticism to slay infidels without regard for fellow Muslims, wearing high-explosive vests and setting them off, bear direct culpability. Biden’s and his generals’ responsibilities are not evaded, however, when every decision, motivation and action created conditions where such murdering scum could accomplish their deeds.

Townhall.com’s Matt Vespa, one day before the attack: “The Biden team knew a collapse was possible. They had multiple memos from the intelligence community and the State Department saying so. They did nothing. They promised our European allies that Kabul would remain secure in June. That was a lie. British Parliament censured Biden which undercuts the president’s lie that our allies are not all that mad at us.

“The man is eons behind what’s happening. Does he know what’s going on? This is a true crisis. We’re primed to have a hostage situation with an enemy that knows we want out and might just pay multiple ransoms should they just pick up stranded Americans left and right. But it’s ok because Joe Biden has a super awesome plan for universal pre-K.”

The headline on Douglas Murray’s piece is, “Can the world afford another three and a half years of President Biden?” The subhead is “Britain has grown used to a strong America. Now, it must contend with a weak leadership in retreat.” It gets worse from there. (Donald Trump’s agreed pullout was “conditions based”—he has no responsibility)

Elsewhere, Iain Duncan Smith writes, “Biden’s colossal mess is even worse than we thought…This tragic mess comes back to President Biden. He owns every decision – and the consequences are also his…In reality, of course, there was nothing inevitable about the violence and chaos of the withdrawal.

“Meanwhile, officials have been letting it be known that Biden was indeed warned that the Afghan security services were likely to crumble in the face of the Taliban. He was even warned that if he shut Bagram airbase, he would cut off Afghan forces from their vital air support (a significant factor in their collapse) and lose the best place to evacuate from. He seems to have ignored that advice as well.

“That’s why, nearly eight hours after yesterday’s attack, when Biden ghosted into the White House East Room, he looked shell shocked. After all, in the last eighteen months, there have been no US or allied casualties in Afghanistan, no terrorist attacks from Afghanistan, and the Taliban were being held at bay by the Afghan forces, supported by NATO. In a matter of a few weeks, all of that has been thrown away, leaving the whole of NATO having to rely on the factional Taliban for their security.”

Also from Vespa: “There’s a reason why Osama bin Laden didn’t want his operatives to target Joe Biden,” which was (according to OBL’s own May 2010 letter) that targeting “Obama or Petraeus…will make Biden take over…Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the US into a crisis.”

Let the record state that Democrats lost Vietnam when they reneged on the binding promise by the U.S. to resupply their well-trained military; Democrats, not President Ford (who begged Dems to support South Vietnam as agreed), cut off America’s lifeline. Democrats betrayed the free people of that nation for cheap ideological, political, anti-war fanaticism—just like they have done to Afghanistan.

Poll: Biden is Losing Support Among Independents

Poll: Biden is Losing Support Among Independents

Rebecca Downs

The past few weeks have been particularly rough for President Joe Biden's approval ratings. Many of these polls have come out as the chaos in Afghanistan gets worse. There is usually at least a question or two asking respondents how they approve of Biden's handling of the withdrawal, which is to say that they don't approve. But, that's not the only story to do with the polls. A write-up for a poll released on Friday by Reuters notes that "Biden shedding support from independent voters as Delta variant spreads."

The write-up, by Chris Kahn and James Oliphant, focuses on Afghanistan and, as the title suggests, the president's approval of his handling on the pandemic.

What's particularly noteworthy about the latter is that the president used to fare quite well in the polls on this issue. He even had support from Republicans once upon a time. And while a majority of respondents still approve of his handling of the pandemic, it's by a much slimmer majority.

From the write-up:

The national opinion poll, conducted Aug. 13-19, found that Biden’s net approval among independents dropped by 14 percentage points overall since June, and by 19 points for his handling of the coronavirus. Still, a slim majority of independents - 53% - said they approve of Biden's pandemic response.

A section aptly titled "BROADER EROSION" warns:

After largely favoring Biden over Republican incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 election, independents are now evenly split in their support for the president: 46% approve of Biden’s performance in office, while 46% disapprove. Two months ago, 52% of independents approved of Biden's overall performance, while 38% disapproved.

The decline is part of a broader erosion in Biden’s popularity among all Americans as the president deals with the pandemic and the fallout from Afghanistan. Last week, Reuters/Ipsos polling showed that for the first time in his presidency more Americans disapproved of Biden than approved of him.

Among all Americans, Biden's net approval for the coronavirus dropped by 21 points from June to August: 55% approved of his handling of the virus, down 10 points from June, while 39% disapproved, which was up by 11 points.

His net approval was relatively stable elsewhere - dropping between 3 and 5 points over the same period on the economy, immigration and the environment.

And when it comes to how Biden is regarded for his handling of the pandemic:

Last year in his campaign against Trump, Biden made bringing the pandemic to an end a centerpiece of his message, pledging a return to a degree of normalcy by this summer.

Instead, a wave of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths, largely among those who have refused to get vaccinated, has bedeviled his administration.

"(Biden) owns the coronavirus issue now," said Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. "A lot of people thought it would be over by now, and instead it’s back."

The write-up refers to the importance of Independents favoring Biden in the 2020 election. There's much more thorough analysis out there too to really drive this point home.

A November exit poll analysis from The Washington Post regarded Biden's win with Independents/Others as one of the "the biggest demographic shifts in the 2020 election."

"While Trump won over independents by four points nationally in 2016 against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, Biden saw one of his largest pickups among that group — winning a 54 percent majority of independents, a 12-point rise from Clinton’s 42 percent showing in 2016," the analysis goes on to note.

Such an analysis from CBS News also made note of how Independents voted. A section titled "Independents: Big shift to Biden," noted that "Independents went narrowly for Mr. Trump in 2016 (by 4 points) but swung to Biden this year. He won with a 14-point lead among them nationally," which was "the largest margin recorded among this group since Bill Clinton won independents in his reelection bid in 1996."

And again, this warning about Biden doing poorly on the issues, including and especially, but not merely Afghanistan and the pandemic, isn't unique to Reuters.

Even CNN had to admit that "It's not just Afghanistan -- Americans are losing faith in Biden on many issues," via analysis from Henry Enten. 

From his analysis:

President Joe Biden's approval rating is at its lowest point in his presidency. In the average of polls, he stands at about 47%. That's a steady decline from the beginning of this month (51%), last month (52%) and beginning of June (54%).

It would be easy to assign Biden's decline to the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan, but, as the data shows, Biden has been trending downward for a while. The truth is that he is losing ground on a number of key issues.

The coronavirus pandemic, for example, had been one of Biden's best issues. He was trusted more than former President Donald Trump to handle it in poll after poll during last year's election. Trump likely would have won in 2020 had people trusted him more.

Biden's approval rating on the coronavirus had consistently been in the 60s for the first six months of his presidency. That declined to the high 50s in July and has been sunk to the 50s in the month of August.

In writing that "Biden's overall approval rating has declined at a similar rate to his coronavirus pandemic approval rating," Enten also further illustrates how crucial it his to examine how the president is regarded on this issue.

But, Enten's concerns are not merely to do with the pandemic, far from it. The economy is a big one too:

Biden's also seen his numbers on the economy drop. During August, Biden's average approval rating on the economy has been just 47%. That's down from the 51% it averaged during the month of July.

Again, this drop can be assigned to a reaction to real world events. Consumer sentiment declined greatly during the first half of August, according to the University of Michigan.

The decline of Biden's economic approval rating should be worrying to him. As I noted previously, Biden's economic approval rating has been closely tied to his overall approval rating. Right now, both of them are at 47% in the average of polls.

Worse for Biden is that the economy is viewed as the second most important problem (behind the coronavirus), according to Gallup. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that a drop in Biden's economic approval rating coincides with a drop in his overall approval rating.

It's natural that Enten would mention Afghanistan, but he seems to truly emphasize how bad the situation is for Biden from a change in support perspective:

In July, before the troop withdrawal, Biden averaged a 58% approval rating when it came to getting the troops out of Afghanistan.

Biden's average approval rating on Afghanistan stands at a mere 34% today. You rarely see anything close to a 24-point drop on a president's handling of an issue in such a short period of time.

Many of us will recall how analyses will point out, some even seemingly bragging, about how Biden has always performed better than Trump. That may not be the case for much longer, as Enten also warned:

Indeed, the entire mood of the country has taken a dive recently. Just 33% of the country say the country is going in the right direction in an average of recent polling.

This 33% is notable because optimism in the country under Biden had been reaching levels it hadn't seen in a long time. At the beginning of last month, 43% of Americans agreed the country was going in the right direction. The last time 43% said the country was going in the right direction was back in 2009.

The current 33% is much more like the readings we saw on this metric during the Trump administration.

Enten closes his piece by saying the such steep shifts "may be an indication that Biden's once stable ratings are more susceptible to shifting around that was previously thought." He may not be speaking on behalf as many people as he and CNN might think he does though with such a line.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/rebeccadowns/2021/08/28/poll-president-biden-is-losing-support-among-independents-n2594930

 

Election cheating surges to top US issue, most want photo ID

by Paul Bedard, Washington Secrets Columnist 

The battles over the 2020 presidential election and subsequent fight between Democrats and Republicans on reforming the system have pushed the issue to the top of those Americans are now worried about.

In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 90% said it is “important” to end cheating, long the bane of elections and made a national issue by former President Donald Trump and his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

Voters polled, however, do not believe it affected the overall 2020 election, though they are concerned about it intensely, said Rasmussen.

The pollster said that many voters believe the answer is a simple one and one that is called for in many states and GOP proposals: photo identification.

In early results shared with Secrets, 74% support the photo ID requirement, a blow to liberals fighting it. They called it a “reasonable measure” to prevent cheating.

And while the poll found doubts about the impact of cheating in 2020, it did suggest that voters believe politicians fighting the use of photo ID just want cheating to continue.

Asked if they agree or disagree that “opponents of requiring a photo ID to vote just want to make it easy to cheat in elections,” 60% agreed versus 29% who disagreed.

Clearly, the issue of cheating is a concern of voters in the upcoming election.

But when asked about the last one and whether it is a “dangerous conspiracy theory” to think cheating undermined the 2020 election, 49% agreed and 36% didn’t.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/election-cheating-surges-to-top-us-issue-most-want-photo-id

What the heck is going on in this country?

What the heck is going on in this country?

By Bob Weir

As the Biden administration continues to peel away the accomplishments of his predecessor, what I hear most from family, friends, and social media posters is a fear that Democrats have become power-mad with their recent ascendancy to a majority position in the House and Senate.  They wonder if the current crop of radical officials is hell-bent on weakening, and ultimately destroying, the country that gave them those positions.  Beginning with reversing President Trump's southern border policies, which has led to an invasion of illegal aliens unprecedented in our history, to the shutdown of the Keystone pipeline, taking away our energy independence, and several other policy changes that adversely affect our safety and our economy, one has to suspect the motives of those in charge.

The wisdom of Occam's Razor seems to apply in this context.  Watching our country being led by folks who appear to be more concerned with getting revenge on Trump than with solving the problems facing this great republic meets the requirement of O.R. — that the simplest explanation is usually the best one.  How can Americans come to any other conclusion when almost daily we hear another swipe at the former chief executive by one of Biden's Cabinet members, or someone on his staff, each time an additional Trump achievement is overturned?  Moreover, as we watch in horror as potentially millions of migrants from all over the world walk casually into our country, Democrats will look us in the face and say things are getting better.

It reminds me of the comment by Seattle mayor Jenny Durkan as sections of her city were being looted and burned.  When asked by a CNN anchor how long she thinks the mayhem will continue, the left-wing troglodyte smirked and said, "I don't know.  We could have a summer of love."  This is an example of the perverted mentality that has no concern for the innocent residents of a city under siege by criminals who have no fear of local authorities.  While people are being beaten and killed on city streets, the people elected to protect them were calling for the defunding of police and the hiring of social workers to enforce the law.

Every time we think the delusional left can't get any crazier, these people come up with more abysmal notions that defy common sense and imperil more lives.  How about telling us how imperative it is for us to get vaccinated, wear masks, and engage in social distancing while they invite hundreds of thousands of untested migrants into our country and transport them to cities from coast to coast?  Does it take a conspiracy theorist to suggest that Democrats are distributing the virus throughout our country in order to keep us infected and locked down?  How else can the Biden administration explain why they are suing Texas to block Governor Abbott's executive order that allows state troopers to stop vehicles suspected of carrying illegal aliens because they may be spreading COVID-19?

Keep in mind that Texas is among the reddest states in the union, and Abbott is one of the most severe critics of Biden's handling of the southern invasion.  Biden wasted no time in stopping the construction of the border wall, another attempt to destroy a Trump campaign pledge.  It's become evident that Democrats have hatched a plot to create a constitutional crisis between the federal and state governments, but only against those states that didn't vote for Biden.  Has vengeance become the driving force behind every tactic employed by Democrats?  Has political rivalry reached a stage in which the winning parties are hell-bent on destroying their opponents?

In the middle of all this political hostility, the American people are captively watching a vindictive ping-pong match among the power elite who seem to have relegated us to insignificant victims of collateral damage.  Congressman Chip Roy (R-Texas, 21st District) said it best on the floor of the House a few days ago: "The speaker says we must wear masks in the people's house, while we've got thousands of people pouring across our border, many of them heavily infected with COVID, and Democrats don't do a damn thing about it!  Mexican cartels are raping, pillaging, and transporting infected migrants into our country, and what does this institution do?  Tell us to wear masks in this chamber."

The congressman is expressing more than outrage.  He, like millions of other Americans, is wondering out loud what the heck is going on in this country.  It's clear that we're not being governed according to constitutional principles; we're being ruled by a despotic gang of venal socialist thugs who plan to hold onto their power in perpetuity, even if it means using the increasingly left-wing-indoctrinated military to accomplish their nefarious goals.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/08/what_the_heck_is_going_on_in_this_country.html

A man wears a mask as he arrives to Penn station in New York on Aug. 2, 2021. A rise in COVID cases has led to the reimposition of lockdowns and other containment measures. (Kena Betancur/AFP via Getty Images)

VIEWPOINTS

A Ministry of Fear Rules America

Michael Walsh

Commentary

In 1943, the British novelist Graham Greene published “The Ministry of Fear,” a thriller set in World War II London involving mercy killings, exploding suitcases, seances, Luftwaffe air raids, outright murder, insane asylums, and undercover Nazi spies. It was successfully made into a movie the following year starring Ray Milland as the troubled protagonist, and directed by Fritz Lang, himself a refugee from Hitler.

Both novel and film capture the paranoid atmosphere during that troubled time, with danger lurking even in something as innocent as a cake. Whom or what can you trust? As the world falls apart, and the future is shrouded in threat and mystery, society devolves into a dog-eat-dog struggle for survival, in which neither the old verities nor the old pieties obtain any longer.

Welcome to America, 2021. In just a few short months since the mysterious elevation of Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., inexplicably elected the 46th president of the United States, our country has undergone a stunning rapid devolution from a confident, economic powerhouse to a shabby debtor nation afraid of its own shadow.

The American Ministry of Fear, however, isn’t located in the Chancellery of the National Socialist German Workers Party in Berlin, but in every petty federal, state, and local bureaucracy, doctor’s office, TV news station, big-city newspaper, college, and university in the country.

From the start of the COVID-19 manufactured panic, these agents of influence have waged a relentless war on the American psyche. And now, despite their minuscule majorities in Congress, they rule with an iron fist that brooks no demurral.

Destroy Trump

Their initial object, of course, was the destruction of the Trump presidency. This Coalition of the Vengeful tried everything, including announcing its intention to impeach Trump even before he had finished his inaugural address.

It manufactured the “Russian collusion” hoax, and implanted anti-Trump operatives within the administration at every level, from the Oval Office on down. It slow-walked, countermanded, and outright ignored presidential orders. And it leaked incessantly to the collaborative media, subverting Trump’s every initiative whenever and wherever it could.

COVID

And then came COVID-19. A product of the CCP virus that first materialized in Wuhan, China, and then was unleashed upon an unsuspecting world, the weaponized product of both Chinese scientists working for the Chinese Communist Party and the amoral Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institutes of Health, COVID proved the perfect social and economic weapon against America. Its effect on overall health was negligible, but that was never its intention. Its purpose was to instill our very own Ministry of Fear.

In that, it succeeded spectacularly. Suddenly, every person in the country could be regarded as an infection point—and thus to be supervised, managed, and quarantined on a whim. Never mind that the danger from the virus was limited to the very elderly and the already seriously ill: a herd-cull disease familiar from thousands of years of human history.

Masks—at first discouraged, then demanded, and finally commanded—became a depressingly familiar sight, a sign of Americans’ incipient enslavement by the diktats of an unaccountable government-by-edict.

There’s an old—and very silly—saying to the effect that if you’ve got your health, you’ve got everything. How obviously untrue this is should be evident to every student of history. Milton was blind. Beethoven was deaf. Chopin was consumptive most of his adult life. Suffering from terminal cancer, Ulysses S. Grant finished his memoirs and died a couple of days later. None of them had his health; all of them gave the world something far more valuable.

But now the neuroticism of Manhattan’s Upper West Side—the quintessential big-government, red-diaper leftist conclave in the nation that wields its influence through The New York Times—has, like COVID, infected every aspect of a once muscular America, debilitating it and sapping it of its vitality. Not just the unwarranted fear of a disease that even at its peak killed almost nobody, but of its media-fueled “variants,” which will continue on into infinity as an excuse for despotism and oppression.

Instilled Fear

Worse is the now-instilled fear of others; the justifiable fear of the anarchy in the streets unleashed by Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the knockout game, the assault on Asian Americans, and other random acts of street violence no longer reined in by now-defunded police forces around the country.

Fear of further arbitrary and unconstitutional lockdowns, mask “mandates” of dubious or non-existent legal authority, and a thousand other trivial miseries that collectively add up to the very definition of tyranny, including “cancel culture,” speech police, and “woke” institutions and corporations that seek to impose crackpot notions of sex and sexuality on a population now too cowed and enfeebled to resist and fight back.

In the name of “health,” we are experiencing a monstrous evil, every bit as pernicious as the twin totalitarian catastrophes of National Socialist Germany and communist Russia during the last century—evils only finally suppressed at great cost in lives and treasure.

With the current unholy alliance between the Democrats and “woke” big businesses, what we are seeing is something akin to Italian fascism under Mussolini, in which the captains of industry (very much including social media, which at this point needs to be destroyed) work hand-in-glove with Washington in order to impose such things as speech codes and overt censorship that government alone cannot do.

How else could someone like Bill de Blasio—aka Warren Wilhelm Jr., the socialist mayor of New York City—get away with his recent decree that patrons of restaurants, gyms, and cultural events must show proof of vaccination in order to gain entry? But rule-by-decree is now the norm in blue states such as New York and California, something unthinkable just two years ago.

Worse, we are finding it almost impossible to effectively combat. When the John Roberts Supreme Court failed the nation by refusing to hear the state of Texas’s lawsuit challenging the 2020 election, it signaled that it didn’t have the belly for a fight, no matter what the stakes, or how clearly the Constitution itself spelled out the court’s jurisdiction under Article 3, which states in Section 2 that “the judicial power shall extend to … to controversies between two or more states; between a state and citizens of another state.”

With its abdication, the Roberts court—surely the worst since the heyday of Earl Warren, if only by its utter passivity in the face of the threat to our republican democracy—indicated that the American people were henceforth on their own, and ushered in the age of our very own Ministry of Fear. Unless it is smashed, its reign is likely to last a long time.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-ministry-of-fear-rules-america_3932197.html?utm_source=partner