RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/what-the-highly-vaccinated-states-are-showing-us/

Massachusetts is one of the most vaccinated states, yet it still saw a 25-fold increase in active COVID-19 cases from July 6 to August 31.

In yesterday’s Morning Jolt, I laid out how between July 6 and August 31, the number of active cases of COVID-19 infection in the state of Vermont increased 23-fold — from 114 to 2,668. But as dire as that sounds, the state is not really in a public-health crisis — hospitalizations and daily new deaths remain low in Vermont, in large part because the state is heavily vaccinated. (It also helps that Vermont is one of the least-populated states in the country.)

It’s a mostly but not entirely similar situation in the higher-populated, more urban state next door. Massachusetts ranks third in the country in percentage of total population that is fully vaccinated, at 66.1 percent — and remember, this figure includes kids 11 and under who can’t get vaccinated. Massachusetts ranks second in the country in percentage of total population that has one dose, at more than 75 percent. By August 31, every county in Massachusetts had at least 68 percent of eligible people — those age 12 and over — vaccinated. And an astounding 99 percent of Massachusetts senior citizens are vaccinated.

Once again, we see that high vaccination rates do not prevent the Delta variant from infecting lots of people in a state. On July 6, Massachusetts had 1,349 active cases of COVID-19 infection; by August 31, the state had 34,671 active cases, a 25-fold increase. It cannot be emphasized enough: Vaccination does not prevent infection and cases, and an increase in cases is not necessarily a reflection of low vaccination rates in an area.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/09/02/the-competence-question/

The lesson we can learn from Afghanistan is not that Joe Biden lost what Donald Trump could have won. Nor is it that Trump, and his deplorable supporters, are to blame. After all, withdrawal was their plan. Nor is it—God forbid—that the United States should stay in Afghanistan forever. 

The lesson is a hard one. The national government of the United States is incompetent. 

The United States has been defeated in Afghanistan. The United States set incompetent, unachievable war aims, spent as much as $2 trillion over 20 years in the attempt, and achieved none of them. None. The Taliban are stronger, better financed, better equipped, more likely to remain in power, more able to harbor terrorists, more sophisticated, and more popular than they were in 2001. Women in Afghanistan will return to their former abject condition. China will be the Taliban’s partner for the extraction of Afghanistan’s natural resources, and for the promotion of the heroin trade.

The United States famously employs 16 intelligence agencies, a massive State Department, and a fabulously equipped Department of Defense. None of these institutions had the foresight to predict their failure. To say they were blind is unfair to the blind. They either willfully did not look or were consciously deceiving their country. Yet, the heads of these institutions have suffered no loss of prestige. There have been no dismissals, no reckonings, no resignations. The brass, the top bananas at the State Department and the intelligence agencies are, in fact, proud of the role they played. They are incompetent even to address their incompetence.

The incompetence in Afghanistan is not a specific, one-off, incompetence. The incompetence of the national government of the United States is general.

The national government of the United States is a gerontocracy. The president is nearly 79, the speaker of the House is 81, the Senate minority leader is 79, and Senate president pro tempore is 81. The Senate majority leader is the youngest of the senior elected officeholders at 70. The chain of succession for the presidency under the Constitution is president, vice president (who is incompetent, despite her youth), speaker, president pro tempore. Interrupted only by a cackle, it is liver spots all the way down. A gerontocracy requires the cooperation of the middle-aged and young, who cannot conceive of themselves wielding power and so defer to the old. Many place their hopes in Donald Trump, who will be 78 in 2024. This is a deep, broad incompetence.

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/09/biden_completely_makes_up_a_visit_to_pittsburgh_synagogue_victimized_by_mass_shooting_in_speech_to_jewish_leaders.html

The President of the United States has completely lost touch with reality. This is Twenty-fifth Amendment territory, my friends. “No joke,” as the addled executive would say. Like some Walter Mitty of compassion, Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. substituted himself for President Donald J Trump, as the person who visited the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh after a deranged gunman attacked the house of worship in 2018. This is not acient history, but a mere three years ago. Here is the fantasy claim:

Steve Nelson of The New York Post fact-checked the claim:

Barb Feige, executive director of the Tree of Life, said that Biden did not visit the synagogue in the nearly three years since the anti-Semitic attack.

In a phone interview, Feige, executive director since July 2019, said firmly that “no” Biden didn’t visit, even before taking office when he had a lower public profile as a former vice president and then-Democratic presidential candidate.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17710/intelligence-report-china-covid

The Intelligence Community’s COVID Summary is dangerous; infinitely more dangerous than it appears.

How can the IC seriously believe that China’s active stonewalling of the international community’s attempts to get to the bottom of what happened and thus learn better how to combat the virus can be reduced to its “uncertainty about where an investigation might lead” or its “frustration” about outside political pressure? If… this wishful thinking really reflects what our IC believes, the world is in deep trouble.

In sum, we can assess with a high degree of confidence that while the origins and initial awareness of the virus by the Chinese government cannot be clearly ascertained, the Chinese government has been intimately involved in most everything since then. It has used the pandemic to further its global economic and political agenda. Its behavior has been ruthless and malicious.

[T]he U.S. intelligence community’s whitewashing of China’s culpability puts us all at risk…. Every word is weighed and considered. The implication that China is essentially innocent of any ill will is in the report only because some senior official wanted to include it.

God help us if this signals the beginning of a Biden administration appeasement strategy. Judging from everything we have experienced over the last ten to twenty years, the attempt to placate China by writing off its malicious behavior as lightly as this report does… shows weakness. It rewards an aggressive China, and only invites more of the same.

The recent release of an unclassified summary by the Intelligence Community (IC) of its investigation into China’s role in the COVID pandemic leaves one feeling that there is nothing there. Like Sergeant Schultz in the old TV series “Hogan’s Heroes,” the IC seems to be protesting “I know nothing! Nothing!” The report provided no real substantive insights into the origins of the pandemic. Yet the Intelligence Community’s COVID Summary is dangerous; infinitely more dangerous than it appears. Without saying so directly, it encourages us to discount China’s significant culpability in this disaster, downplaying its responsibility for the pandemic unleashed on its territory and its role in the deadly spread of COVID around the world.