RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/biden-compounds-disgrace-with-willful-blindness-about-our-jihadist-enemies/

P resident Biden has disgracefully ceded Afghanistan to the Taliban, betraying our government’s first obligation to protect Americans. He left behind hundreds of American citizens, as well as who knows how many thousands of green-card holders and Afghans who assisted our government the past 20 years. Having committed too little of our $710 billion-per-annum military to carry out his evacuation order responsibly, Biden reneged on his vow to get them out.

The president has also abandoned the counterterrorism mission of denying anti-American jihadists sanctuary and operational partnership with the jihadist Taliban regime. Thus, he has imperiled the homeland and virtually guaranteed terrorist attacks against U.S. installations and interests overseas.

Not content with that, the president and his State Department now insist on further humiliating our nation with ignorant, post-surrender claptrap. For example, adumbrating the president’s pathetic speech later in the day, State’s spokesman Ned Price spent Tuesday morning piously spouting that the Taliban need to meet their basic “commitments and obligations in Afghanistan.” These duties, Price says, include “respecting basic rights of the people” and “upholding its commitments on counterterrorism.”

This is sheer idiocy.

Throughout the Obama-Biden administration, I complained incessantly about the government’s refusal to grapple with the ideology of our jihadist enemies. Democrats are aligned with Islamist organizations, many with Muslim Brotherhood ties. Ergo, at the insistence of these Muslim activists, the Obama-Biden administration admonished our law-enforcement, intelligence, and military agencies to avoid focusing on the ideology — sharia supremacism — that catalyzes violent jihad.

Further, the administration adopted a counterterrorism strategy known as “Countering Violent Extremism.” The label “violent extremism” was chosen deliberately.

Since the 1990s and particularly after 9/11, the word terrorism has connoted jihadism. That is not solely due to the spate of mass-murder attacks by Muslim terrorists. Islamic scripture undeniably commands Muslims to use “terror” in fighting their perceived enemies, and sharia supremacists are committed literalists on this point, eschewing interpretations of Islam that “contextualize” these exhortations to brutality as confined to their ancient time and place.

http://www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Wisdom is defined by Random House Webster’s Dictionary: “The quality or state of being wise; sagacity, discernment, or insight.” If that definition leaves you confused as it did me, then read what Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote in Literary Remains, Volume I, published posthumously in 1836: “Common sense, in an uncommon degree, is what the world calls wisdom.” Wisdom involves judgement and the ability to anticipate the consequences of one’s actions. It involves honesty about oneself and the admission of one’s mistakes and limitations. It is empirical not conjectural; it sees a world where reality – not optics – is the driving force.

Wisdom is often associated with age. I recall when I was learning to drive, and that while my father agreed my reactions might be faster than his, he said I lacked judgment. He was right. In The Admirable Crichton, J.M. Barrie wrote: “I’m not young enough to know everything.” But, as can be seen in President Biden’s decision to ignominiously leave Afghanistan, age does not necessarily bring wisdom.

It is, of course, presumptuous to write about wisdom, because the reader must assume the author considers himself wise. That is not my claim. I agree with Shakespeare’s court jester Touchstone who in As You like It says: “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” Wisdom is rare and illusive, especially in our Twitter-filled world.

The ego-driven ex-Presidencies of Clinton, Obama and Trump show none of the wisdom of former retiring Presidents, like Truman and Eisenhower. Is it wise to assume interest rates will always remain low? What will be the costs on thirty and more trillions of dollars of debt when interest rates do rise? Regarding the federal budget, has it been wise to let discretionary spending (about half of which is defense) decline from 67% of the budget in 1962 to 30% in 2019, while mandatory spending (mostly entitlements) increased from 25% in 1962 to 62% in 2019? In 1962, we were faced with a USSR that wanted to “bury” us. Today, we are faced with a combative China, a resurgent Russia and myriad Islamic terrorist groups who chant: “Death to America.” Yet defense spending, as a percent of GDP, has declined from 9.3% to 3.4%. Has that been wise? Was it wise to leave billions of dollars of military equipment in Afghanistan, thereby making the Taliban-led government – harborers of terrorism – one of the better armed nations in the world? Should social justice be the goal of our armed forces, or should they focus on strategy and winning wars?

https://asiatimes.com/2021/09/stagflation-rears-its-ugly-head-in-us-payroll-data/

Inflation in the US is turning into stagflation.US nonfarm payroll growth of 235,000 in August, the lowest in seven months, was constrained by rising wage costs.

Average hourly earnings rose by 0.6%, or 7.5% annualized. The most labor-intensive sectors turned in the worst monthly performance.

Retail employment dropped by 29,000 and leisure and hospitality employment was unchanged for the month.

Leisure and hospitality jobs had risen by more than 800,000 during the preceding two months.

The chart of the day shows a clear inverse relationship between the rate of employment growth and the rate of change of average hourly earnings.

As labor becomes scarcer and more expensive, employers stop hiring, either because they can’t find workers or because they can’t afford them. This is a classic symptom of an inflationary cycle.

The average rent on a newly-signed lease is up 12% year-on-year as of August, according to Apartmentlist.com.

Home prices are up 20% year on year, the biggest jump on record, according to the Case-Shiller Index.

Used car prices are up 25%, and new car prices are probably up 10% after dealer discounts have dwindled.

Manufacturing jobs rose by 37,000, driven mainly by a 24,000 jump in automotive jobs.

But the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ survey of establishments was conducted in the middle of August before major auto companies announced production shutdowns to the global chip shortage.

https://pjmedia.com/columns/stacey-lennox/2021/09/03/joe-bidens-excuse-for-the-horrible-jobs-report-is-ridiculous-and-insulting-n1475789

The wisdom of putting Joe Biden behind a podium more frequently in the wake of the disaster in Afghanistan is questionable. Yet, following the disastrous August jobs report, he ambled out to explain why the projections were off by a factor of three. Today he was mumbling Joe rather than petulant Joe. A slew of recent polling indicates Americans are feeling less safe, less secure, and less prosperous.

Predictably, these sentiments have cause Biden’s approval ratings to crater. While his handling of COVID-19 propped him up above 50% overall approval for most of the summer, polling shows even his marks on the pandemic are sliding. In Rasmussen’s daily Presidential Tracking Poll, his Approval Index dipped to -21 on August 24 and has remained at least -20 heading into the Labor Day holiday. There is speculation that it could be a durable decline rather than a blip.

Incredibly, Biden opened his remarks by saying, “As we head into Labor Day weekend, we have more evidence of the progress of our economy from last year’s economic calamity.” Someone needs to tell him the baseline is February of 2020. No one gets credit for reopening an economy artificially shut down by the government. Employees returning to their jobs and closed businesses reopening is not economic growth. And frankly, even those two things are not happening fast enough.

The only reason the economy did not completely collapse is because the economic fundamentals were strong. By  continuing to blow out spending, the Biden administration is eroding the foundations of the U.S.’s economic strength going into the pandemic. Still, mumbly Joe wants us to celebrate 235,000 new jobs when over 700,000 were forecasted. Employers are not going to create many jobs when there are already more than 10 million open nationwide.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/03/joe-biden-is-lying-to-americans-about-afghanistan/

John Lucas is a practicing attorney in Tennessee who has successfully argued before the U. S. Supreme Court. Before entering law school at the University of Texas, he served in the Army Special Forces as an enlisted man and then graduated from the U. S. Military Academy at West Point in 1969. He is an Army Ranger and fought in Vietnam as an infantry platoon leader.

Earlier this week, this writer addressed the Biden administration’s instinctive lying on matters big and small, concluding: “When the president allows his key advisors lie to us about a dog bite, the only confidence the American people can have is that he will not be honest with us about these and other life-and-death matters if the truth would hurt his poll numbers or endanger Democrats’ reelection chances.”

Regrettably, recent events confirm that the president’s deceptions and misstatements are intentional and driven by political motives. This was confirmed by multiple events, some the very next day after the previous article published.

The first confirming event was in President Biden’s own words. Biden verified that lying about success in Afghanistan is part of his political strategy.

A Foreign Quid Pro Quo Based on Lies

In a bombshell report on Aug. 31, Reuters reported on an audio recording of a July 23 call between Biden and then-Afghan President Ashraf Ghani. It released a transcript. In the call, Biden stated, “I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things aren’t going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban.”

Biden then gave Ghani his marching orders: “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.” His own words condemn the president: “Whether it is true or not…” As the indispensable Mollie Hemingway noted on Fox News on Sept. 2, “What this phone call shows is that the withdrawal was, like so many other parts of the war, communicated to the American public with lies.” Indeed it was.

But this was even worse. Again, Hemingway: “While the previous president was impeached over a phone call and accused of a quid pro quo, here you actually have a president asking someone to lie on his behalf and conditioning military aid on part of those lies.”

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/economy-sputters-in-august-adding-only-235000-jobs/?utm_source=

The U.S. economy added about 235,000 new jobs in August according to U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics released on Friday, falling far short of economists’ expectations of around 728,000 new jobs.

The U.S. unemployment rate fell slightly to 5.2 percent in August from 5.4 percent in July, the Bureau said.

The disappointing August jobs report comes after extensive employment gains in the previous two months. Employers added a million jobs in July and 962,000 in June, according to revised official estimates.

Areas that saw job gains in August include manufacturing, transportation and warehousing, and private education. Leisure and hospitality jobs remained unchanged, the Bureau said, although restaurants lost 42,000 jobs over the past month.

Continued spread of the Delta variant of coronavirus has hindered some economic growth, economists told the Wall Street Journal. Overall, around 5.3 million fewer people were employed as of August than in February 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic caused widespread business shutdowns.

The U.S. economy has seen high levels of inflation, with consumer prices rising 5.4 percent in July 2021 over the same month in 2020. Supply shocks have also disrupted certain sectors, such as a shortage of semiconductor chips that has caused automaker GM to temporarily shut down factories.

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.