RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/569973-kamala-harris-the-absentee-vp-by-design

She was supposed to be a major player in the Biden administration after being lauded as an historic, consequential figure in her role as America’s first female vice president. 

“Harris Has the Potential To Change the Face of U.S. Politics,” read a November 2020 Politico headline that echoed many others at the time. And not long after Joe Biden was sworn in as the nation’s 46th president, the administration insisted she should be known as her boss’s equal. 

“Please be sure to reference the current administration as the ‘Biden-Harris Administration’ in official public communications,” a March directive read, emphasizing Biden-Harris in boldface.

Kamala Harris may have crashed and burned as a 2020 presidential candidate, dropping out well before the first votes were cast in Iowa. But Biden chose her as his running mate anyway. It’s not clear exactly what Harris brought to the ticket outside of checking off a few demographic boxes. 

Foreign policy credentials? Nope. Business experience? None. A track record of working with Republicans to pass important legislation? Not even close. In fact, an analysis by the non-partisan GovTrack showed that she was the most liberal member of the Senate, even further to the left than democratic socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

But she had been California’s attorney general, so perhaps Team Biden felt her record on crime could help her lead the way in reducing the violent crime that has engulfed American cities since the summer of 2020, resulting in mass resignations and retirements among the police.

Not at all. In fact, during the presidential primaries, Harris’s Twitter account publicly promoted a bail fund for rioters in Minneapolis, a city that’s seen violent crime spike under the current administration. 

“If you’re able to, chip in now to the @MNFreedomFund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota,” it tweeted in June 2020 as Minneapolis was under siege to the tune of more than $500 million in damage. 

https://jimtreacher.substack.com/p/whos-telling-biden-not-to-answer

Kanye just dropped an album, war rages in the Middle East, a hurricane is hitting Louisiana, and everybody hates the president.

Welcome to 2005.

Again and again, Joe Biden keeps telling us he’s not supposed to answer questions. “They told me not to answer questions.” “I’m gonna get in trouble if I answer questions.” Over and over, the most powerful man in the free world insists he’s not the one in charge.

He did it again over the weekend:

“I’m not supposed to take any questions, but go ahead… I’m not gonna answer Afghanistan now.”

Why isn’t Joe Biden supposed to take any questions? Who’s telling him not to take questions, and what’s the rationale? (We all know the real reason: He’s an idiot. But his own aides can’t say that.) What happens to him when he disobeys? Is this sort of thing normal for a POTUS to say? Shouldn’t he be the one to decide whether or not he takes questions?

And why don’t any of these reporters want to know? Their whole purpose for being there is to ask the president questions. Shouldn’t they wonder why he’s expressly telling them he’s not “supposed to”?

If my job was to follow the president around and write down what he says, and he told me he’s not supposed to take questions, I would ask why not. Wouldn’t you?

Just kidding. Biden is a Democrat. That sort of self-righteously aggrieved hectoring is reserved for Republicans in power.

In Joe’s defense, he’s a busy guy with a lot going on right now. Just look at how he was able to multitask as he paid his respects to the 13 Marines who died because of his incompetence:

Nicholas Fondacaro @NickFondacaro
It’s true. Joe Biden checked his watch during the dignified transfer of the servicemembers killing in Afghanistan at the airport. You can see him jerk his left hand to pull the watch out from under his sleeve, then look down at it.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/last-flight-from-kabul-afghanistan-joe-biden-antony-blinken-11630361902?mod=opinion_lead_pos3

The last American troops left Kabul on Monday—before the Aug. 31 deadline as the Taliban and President Biden had insisted—ending a 20-year conflict but also diminishing the hope of escape for tens of thousands of Afghan interpreters and others who helped America. The frantic evacuation flights managed to get many out, but this was a shameful day in American history, no matter how much the White House wants to spin it otherwise.

Aug. 31 was the arbitrary deadline Mr. Biden set when he thought he would be able to boast on the 20th anniversary of 9/11 that he had ended a “forever war.” He refused to extend the date despite pleas from NATO allies and knowing the date was too soon to evacuate the deserving. Mr. Biden nonetheless told Americans that he would evacuate all Americans who wanted to leave.

His deadline meant that the evacuation failed as much as his withdrawal strategy did. An unknown number of Americans—perhaps a few hundred—weren’t able to leave on the last flights. Nonprofit groups estimate that as many as 60,000 Afghans who fought or assisted the NATO mission were left behind.

Many are in hiding amid reports that special Taliban squads are searching for the names on lists they may have acquired in the willy-nilly U.S. withdrawal. Many will be tortured and killed, and their families too.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/jim-webb-afghanistan-withdrawal-debacle-american-founding-constitution-accountability-11630357157?st=wcdqzs63qmahfv6&reflink=article_email_share

Former Sen. Jim Webb (D., Va.) writing for the National Interest, Aug. 29:

In a perverse way, perhaps we should look at the calamitous blunderings in Afghanistan as an opportunity to demand a true turning point. Americans know that a great deal of our governmental process is now either institutionally corrupt or calcified. . . .

Even the very best among those who come forward to serve often find that the good they came to do is stultified by distracting debates over the very premise of why the American system of government was created and whether the icons of our past were truly motivated by the words incorporated in our most revered documents. The military itself is increasingly being used by leftist activists as a social laboratory to advance extreme political agendas. Congressional oversight leans heavily toward social issues, with too many members struggling without success to focus on accountability at the very top when, for instance, good people at the bottom have to implement poorly conceived plans that might kill them.

https://www.israelhayom.com/2021/08/29/did-biden-fall-asleep-during-meeting-with-bennett/

Video posted on social media Saturday, which showed United States President Joe Biden seemingly falls asleep during a meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, had users speculate whether that was indeed the case.

Footage was posted on Twitter by Knesset member for Likud Galit Distal Atbaryan. “For some reason, the Israeli media itself fell asleep and did not notice this historical moment,” she wrote. “I thought that you should know about this. The man fell asleep and simply does not care.”

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/29/after-afghanistan-u-s-still-doesnt-know-shiite-from-shinola/

With the American media as master of ceremonies, our pundits and politicians—all partners in the neocon-neoliberal joint venture in Afghanistan—are barking mad over the images coming out of the Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, and the reality these optics portend.

Naturally, media “reporting” from Afghanistan is nothing but an unremitting sentimental gush, aimed at creating a state of heightened emotions. 

The children, the children! The translators, the translators! Americans held hostage behind enemy lines! exclaimed every “macho” personality at Fox News. The same litany runs on a continuous loop. 

Forbes reporters dissolved into puddles of tears at the sight of U.S. Air Force pilots bringing in planeloads of young, strong, military-aged men, unfreighted by women and children. 

On August 20, about 5,700 people had been flown out of Kabul. Only 169 were American. “Make no mistake,” slobbered Forbes, “lifting six times more people than an aircraft is designed to seat is a heroic achievement of logistics, skill, and sheer grit.” 

I see a medal of commendation in the future of the Empire’s pilot, who commandeered a U.S. Air Force C-17 to airlift 800 Afghan passengers from Kabul to Qatar. 

War: The Health of the State—And the Statists 

So, who exactly are those “trapped” Americans living in Afghanistan? 

What are they doing in such inhospitable climes, in a country most of whose inhabitants hated the American presence? And what is their business in Afghanistan? The incurious moron media have never asked. 

My guess is that U.S. citizens in Afghanistan have hitherto lived within Army-erected green zones, paid for by American taxpayers. 

https://amgreatness.com/2021/08/29/our-afghan-nightmare-tanks-for-nothing/

Joe Biden’s scripted or no-questions press conferences, and the clean-up afterward by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Jen Psaki, have been some of the most misleading episodes in modern presidential history—mostly in what was not said rather than was exaggerated, warped, and misrepresented. 

Biden as Commander-in-Chief

The more Joe Biden mutters “The buck stops here” or “I take full responsibility,” the more we know he will not—and not just because of his now reduced mental state, but because 1) he repeats the same opportunist messaging that he has for the last 50 years of his political career, and 2) the only true thing he could say was “I ordered a withdrawal in the most reckless manner in U.S. military history.”

When Biden then blames Donald Trump, it raises the immediate questions: 

1) If the Afghanistan deal was so flawed, why did Biden stick with it, given his other radical departures from what he inherited on the border, on fossil fuels, on the Middle East—on just about everything before January 20, 2021? 

2) So, was it good or bad to withdraw all U.S. troops? Was Trump wrong to have bequeathed him a policy of graduated withdrawal, but Biden was right to have continued it for a while—only to have accelerated it into surrender and flight?

3) Why did the violence erupt on Biden’s rather than on Trump’s watch? And was his order for a hasty flight in the dead of night from Bagram Air Base also the inherited Trump departure plan?

When Joe Biden now threatens al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, and others with revenge, he sounds, unfortunately, more like the ridiculous Joe of “Corn Pop” braggadocio with his weaponized chain, or Joe taking Trump behind the gym to womp on him, or young Joe Biden slamming the mouthy kid’s head on the lunch counter. Speaking softly with a club is preferable to being loud with a twig.

We have all heard, ad nauseam, too many of Biden’s He-Man stories. The latest rhetoric does not hide the fact that Biden had opposed the Osama bin Laden raid, criticized the termination of Qasem Soleimani, left Afghanistan in the most shameful retreat in U.S. history, and is now begging the Saudis to pump more oil after cutting back on our ample supplies and trashing Riyadh as part of his return to the Obama pivot to Iran. 

Biden loves appeasement lists. He provided the Taliban with a list of whom we wished to evacuate. (When the Taliban soon knock on the door of an American in Kabul who thinks their message will be, “We’re here to escort you to your flight”?) In the same manner, Biden provided Putin with a helpful list of institutions he wanted Putin’s satellite cyber-criminals to exempt from hacking. 

https://www.theepochtimes.com/what-we-left-behind-in-afghanistan_3970655.html

Many of the reports coming out of Afghanistan this past week mention something that is simultaneously deplored and swept under the rug.

I mean the fact that when the United States raised the white flag to the Taliban it left behind an enormous amount of American-made military hardware.

Just a couple of weeks ago, all of that war-making matériel had been the property of two entities.

Some belonged to U.S. forces themselves.

A lot of it belonged to the U.S.-supplied Afghan government that was—the mighty 300,000 man-strong force that, on July 8, President Joe Biden said would prevail over the Taliban if push came to shove.

Push did come to shove, as we all know, and now those vast stores of military hardware are under sole control of the Taliban.

There have been several differing inventories of these stockpiles. One just published in the London Times provides perhaps the most authoritative accounting published to date.

Scattered in seven Afghan army garrisons across the country, from Kabul and Kandahar to Herat, Mazar-Sharif, Kunduz, these arms depots include an impressive amount of U.S. military hardware: 22,174 armored Humvees, for example, 42 pickup trucks and SUVS, 64,363 machine guns, 162,043 radios. 16,035 night vision goggles, 358,530 assault rifles (the real ones, not the “assault rifles” that Joe Biden warns about at home), 126,295 pistols, and 176 artillery pieces.

And that’s just for starters. The U.S. also generously left behind more than 100 helicopters, including 33 Blackhawks, 4 C-130 transport planes, and some 60 other fixed-wing aircraft.

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/30/biden-makes-islamic-terrorism-great-again/

For the past several years, global terrorism was in retreat and had dropped off the list of Americans’ fears entirely. Now, after the debacle in Afghanistan, it’s suddenly front-page news again. Will a revival of terrorism be President Joe Biden’s legacy?

Rewind the tape to 2015. ISIS – which emerged as a powerhouse after President Barack Obama’s decision to evacuate Iraq – was claiming huge swaths of land, to the surprise of Obama (who had dismissed ISIS as the “JV team”). And, not coincidentally, the number of terrorist attacks spiked. In 2013, there were four Islamic terrorist attacks worldwide. By 2015, the number had exploded to 106, three of them in the U.S.

In 2015, ISIS struck in Paris in a coordinated assault, killing more than 130 people, and the attack in San Bernardino, California, claimed 14 lives and injured 22. Earlier that same year, terrorists killed five people at a recruiting center in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two in Garland, Texas. In the next year came the ISIS-inspired mass shooting at a Florida nightclub that claimed 49 lives, bombs in New York and New Jersey, an attack in Ohio.

In December 2015, terrorism was at the top of the list of problems facing the United States, according to an ongoing Gallup poll, beating out the economy, government, and guns as chief concerns. Obama, meanwhile, kept telling the nation that defeating ISIS would be a long and arduous process, which was true only because Obama was micromanaging the effort.

Proof of that came when ISIS was routed just seven months after President Donald Trump took office. As we noted at Investor’s Business Daily, “Rather than talk endlessly about how long and hard the fight would be, Trump said during his campaign that, if elected, he would convene his ‘top generals and give them a simple instruction. They will have 30 days to submit to the Oval Office a plan for soundly and quickly defeating ISIS.’” Turns out he meant it.

Since then, the number of Islamic terrorist attacks worldwide has plunged. In the U.S., there have been only two acts of terrorism in the past four-plus years that were fueled by Islamic extremism. And in Gallup’s poll of top problems, terrorism stopped even registering. No one mentioned it in the July 2021 survey.