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August 2021

The Breonna Taylor story the left doesn’t want you to hear By John Mattingly

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

“Whether you’re a United States senator or a cop from Louisville, the Left doesn’t want your story to be told if you stand in their way. They want you to leave them alone as they divide America with their falsehoods.I, for one, won’t sit by idly and let that happen. I plan to tell the truth, no matter the cost.”

Since helping to execute a search warrant for evidence in a drug trafficking ring and being shot by Kenneth Walker — the boyfriend of Breonna Taylor — in the process, my life has never been the same.

Three days after the tragic death of George Floyd — which left the nation in an uproar — the 911 call in which Walker says that someone had broken in and shot his girlfriend was released to the public. Though I wanted to respond and set the record straight about what had transpired that night, I couldn’t say anything about the case, because my fellow Louisville Metro Police Department officers and I were under a gag order. The media and the social justice outrage mob were out to get us, we weren’t allowed to stand up for ourselves, and our mayor and chief refused to set the record straight with the facts leaving us involved to dangle in the wind.

My side of the story is completely different from what you’ve heard from the media. They want you to believe that I and my fellow officers are evil racists who barged into that apartment and killed Breonna while she slept. This couldn’t be further from the truth, and I learned pretty quickly that the media and our local government officials want to make sure you never learn the truth about what happened that night.

Earlier this year, my friends at Post Hill Press courageously agreed to publish my book giving an account of what really happened that night. But before we could even begin, their distributor, Simon & Schuster, publicly declared their refusal to distribute my book — without even reading the manuscript.

After spending the last year-and-a-half watching the media, celebrities, sports figures, attorneys, and politicians spread blatant lies about the situation without any accountability, I know I must do whatever I can to make sure the true story is told. I am grateful to my friends at Post Hill Press for all of their support and guidance, but after much consideration, I have decided it is best that I explore other publishing options for my book.

I cannot continue to sit by and watch the media twist the narrative of what happened that night into a work of fiction that serves to support their anti-police agenda.

The embarrassment that is Joe Biden By Andrea Widburg

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

Although the White House had intended to keep Biden under wraps for as long as possible, the demand that he say something – anything – about the unfolding debacle in Afghanistan forced him to leave Camp David for a 20-minute statement, after which he refused to take any questions. The important part of what he said boils down to one sentence: We had to leave and everything that went wrong was Trump’s or the Afghans’ fault. Biden is a craven coward, a feckless fool, a dismal dummy, and a man who will soon have more blood on his hands than a thousand Lady Macbeths.

Biden began by explaining that, after 20 years in Afghanistan, it was time to leave. Few people would argue with that. Whether they supported the war in the beginning or not, it had become clear to everyone that we had no clear mission there other than making money for the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned us. It was not in America’s interests to remain.

So, we can skip that part of the speech. It was a straw man because Biden was defending a point with which no one disagrees. You’re neither a brave nor principled man when you claim, “I stand with everyone else!”

What people wanted to hear was what Biden had to say about the abrupt American pullout from Afghanistan, one seemingly made without any forethought about the needs of the American civilians there or the Afghan troops who, although they fought bravely, needed to feel Americans were at their back. Instead, we just left. And that’s where Biden showed what a disgusting little weasel he is.

The first person at whom Biden pointed his finger was Trump saying, effectively, he set me up!

When I came into office, I inherited a deal that President Trump negotiated with the Taliban.  Under his agreement, U.S. forces would be out of Afghanistan by May 1, 2021 — just a little over three months after I took office.

Who Else Is Tired Of All This Winning Under Biden?

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/16/whos-tired-of-all-this-winning-under-biden/

n early July, President Joe Biden said the sudden withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan wouldn’t cause a repeat of the Saigon disaster in Vietnam.

“None whatsoever. Zero,” Biden said in response to a reporter’s question about the chances of a repeat. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Five weeks later, that is exactly what happened, as the Taliban took over Kabul and, as the Washington Post reported it, the “U.S. scrambled to evacuate embassy staff and accelerate the rescue and relocation of Afghans who aided the U.S. military. Helicopters began landing at the U.S. Embassy early Sunday and armored diplomatic vehicles were seen leaving the area around the compound. … Smoke rose from the embassy’s roof as diplomats destroyed documents to keep them from falling into the Taliban’s hands.”

The White House was reportedly “stunned” by the Taliban’s rapid victory, and Biden had to interrupt his vacation to send thousands of troops back into Afghanistan to help evacuate U.S. personnel.

It is a colossal blunder, the repercussions of which we will be suffering for years.

But we’ve already grown accustomed to colossal blunders since Biden came into office. On every issue he has touched, Biden’s managed to quickly transform victory into failure.

At the southern border, which President Donald Trump had finally stabilized, Biden immediately started reversing every one of the previous administration’s policies, while announcing to the world that the U.S. would welcome illegal border crossers with open arms.

For all of 2020, the border patrol reported a total of 458,000 “encounters” at the southern border. In just six months since Biden took office, there’ve been more than 1 million, with the number increasing every single month since January.

The Pandemic Gave Americans A Taste Of Government ‘Help’ And They Didn’t Like It

https://issuesinsights.com/2021/08/17/the-pandemic-gave-americans-a-taste-of-government-help-and-they-didnt-like-it/

It’s fair to say Americans, especially the pre-revolution colonists, have always had a healthy skepticism of government. What’s frightening is some days we seem dangerously close to losing the unique quality that separates this country from every other.

The Washington Examiner’s Byron York posted last week in his Daily Memo some interesting data that tells us a lot about Americans’ attitudes about their government. He tracked a long-term Fox News survey in which respondents are asked which message they would send the government if they had the chance: “lend me a hand” or “leave me alone.”

Over the course of the last decade, only in August 2020 did a majority (57%) say it would ask for government help. In that same poll, 36% said “leave me alone.”

This year, however, the numbers were flipped – 47% said “leave me alone” while 44% still wanted aid.

In some years, the results showed a strong distrust of government. For instance, in 2014, 59% wanted to be free of the state while a mere 32% wished for help. In February 2016, the beginning of the last year of the Obama era, the numbers were 54-39 in favor of the “leave me alone” group.

But what is truly striking are the results from the last two surveys. After a large majority of Americans wanted the government to step in last year, no doubt due to the coronavirus pandemic, there was a fairly significant shift back this year to a yearning for independence.

Why? There can be no doubt Americans were lent a hand in 2020 and 2021, and they got it good and hard, to borrow a portion of one of American journalist Henry Louis Mencken’s more famous comments. Politicians panicked, petty tyrants exercised unearned authority, and this country suffered in ways few could have ever imagined.

Meanwhile, government “experts” lied, obfuscated, and contradicted themselves. As early as January of this year, long before the Delta variant set off another round of mask mandates and spiteful threats of more lockdowns, the Edelman Trust Barometer found that 57% of the country believed “government leaders” were “purposely trying to mislead people by saying things they know are false or gross exaggerations.”

Afghanistan: We Never Learn As the Taliban waltzes into Kabul, the look of surprise on the faces of top officials should frighten us most of all Matt Taibbi

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/afghanistan-we-never-learn

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, when asked months ago about the possibility that there might be a “significant deterioration” of the security picture in Afghanistan once the United States withdrew its forces, said, “I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

Alex Salvi @alexsalvinews
Secretary of State Blinken (July 7th): “We are not withdrawing, we are staying, the embassy is staying, our programs are staying … If there is a significant deterioration in security … I don’t think it’s going to be something that happens from a Friday to a Monday.”

Blinken’s Nostradamus moment was somehow one-upped by that of his boss, Joe Biden, who on July 8th had the following exchange with press:

Q: Your own intelligence community has assessed that the Afghan government will likely collapse.

BIDEN: That is not true, they did not reach that conclusion… There is going to be no circumstance where you see people lifted off the roof of an embassy… The likelihood that you’re going to see the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.

Biden’s Chamberlain Moment in Afghanistan The fall of Kabul has been heard around the world, to the dismay of our allies and delight of our enemies. Walter Russell Mead

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-chamberlain-afghanistan-withdrawal-saigon-jihadist-taliban-kabul-pakistan-11629128451?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

‘You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.” Winston Churchill’s words to Neville Chamberlain following the Munich agreement echo grimly across Washington this week as the Biden administration reckons with the consequences of the worst-handled foreign-policy crisis since the Bay of Pigs and the most devastating blow to American prestige since the fall of Saigon.

Joe Biden believed three things about Afghanistan. First, that he could stage a dignified and orderly withdrawal from America’s longest war. Second, that a Taliban win in Afghanistan would not seriously affect U.S. power and prestige world-wide. Third, that Americans were eager enough to put the Afghan war behind them that voters wouldn’t punish him even if the withdrawal went pear-shaped. He was utterly and unspinnably wrong about the first. One fears he was equally wrong about the second. We shall see about the third, and his Monday afternoon speech staunchly defending the pullout indicates that he believes he can carry the country with him.

The bipartisan scuttle caucus of which President Biden is a founding member—and former President Trump an eager recruit—argued that withdrawal would enhance rather than undermine American credibility. Ending a war in a remote country of little intrinsic interest to the U.S. does not, one can argue, make America look weak. If anything, the two-decade U.S. intervention testifies to an American doggedness that should reassure our allies about our will. At the same time, cutting our losses after 20 years of failing to build a solid government and military in Afghanistan demonstrates a realism and wisdom that should reassure allies about Washington’s judgment.

Defenders of the withdrawal argue this is one way that America can reduce its footprint in peripheral theaters to focus on the principal threat in coastal East Asia. Why should the U.S. government pay the heavy price—in military resources and in the political costs at home of defending an endless engagement in a remote part of the world—required to contain the Taliban? Isn’t the jihadist group a more direct threat to both Russia and China than to America? Why are U.S. soldiers fighting and dying so that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have one less headache to worry about?

Biden Photo at Camp David Raises Red Flags as Questions Swirl About President’s Whereabouts by Kyle Becker

https://beckernews.com/33-biden-photo-at-camp-david-raises-red-flags-as-questions-swirl-about-presidents-whereabouts-40867/

As Afghanistan crumbled on Sunday, the American people had one question on their minds: ‘Where is the president?’ Joe Biden had taken off on vacation days ago to his Camp David “retreat” (as CNN called it) and was nowhere to be found.

Kabul fell and the presidential palace was overrun. Afghanis were executed in the streets. Interpreters sought desperately to flee from Kabul International Airport. The Taliban declared the two-decades-long war “over.”

But the word came on Sunday afternoon that Biden would not be giving an address to the American people. A single photo was tweeted from the White House account with a picture of Biden being “briefed.”

“This morning, the President and Vice President met with their national security team and senior officials to hear updates on the draw down of our civilian personnel in Afghanistan, evacuations of SIV applicants and other Afghan allies, and the ongoing security situation in Kabul,” the account said.

One of the first things people noticed was the utter lack of Operational Security: It showed on the television that there were camera feeds from both the CIA and Doha Station.

“Heck of a job, White House communications shop. I figure you would want to crop out the teleconference screens labeled ‘CIA’ and ‘Doha Station’,” NRO’s Jim Geraghty tweeted. “You panicking amateur idiots.”

The image also looked somewhat similar to other recent photos of Biden at Camp David.

This is a White House photo of President Biden speaking with Vice President Kamala Harris and members of his national security team from Camp David in Maryland, on Saturday, Aug. 14, 2021.

Then it gets odd. The new White House photo issued on Sunday shows the clocks with twenty-six minutes advanced. It is depicted as being from Sunday morning at 11:29 EST. Joe Biden is in a different outfit.

There is an issue with the clocks showing London and Moscow are three hours apart. Those two cities are two hours apart, so either the photo is wrong or the clocks at Camp David are wrong.

It should be noted that while Tehran is shown as a half-hour difference from Moscow, it is actually an hour and a half difference. For whatever reason, that’s also wrong.

The time difference raised some major questions. One of the first to notice it was Scuba Mike on Twitter.

“The current time difference is 2 hours so this picture could not have been taken today,” Scuba Mike weighed in. “The whole TV is fake and this was not today.” (It should be noted that this claim has not been confirmed.)

Biden to Afghanistan: Drop Dead Biden is defiant in blaming others for his Afghan debacle.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-to-afghanistan-drop-dead-taliban-11629151994?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

President Biden told the world on Monday that he doesn’t regret his decision to withdraw rapidly from Afghanistan, or even the chaotic, incompetent way the withdrawal has been executed. He is determined in retreat, defiant in surrender, and confident in the rightness of consigning the country to jihadist rule. We doubt the world will see it the same way in the days, months and years ahead.

Mr. Biden refused to accept responsibility for the botched withdrawal while blaming others. He blamed Donald Trump’s peace deal with the Taliban and falsely claimed again that he was trapped. He blamed his three predecessors for not getting out of Afghanistan. He blamed the Afghans for not fighting hard enough, their leaders for fleeing, and even Afghans who helped us for not leaving sooner. The one group he conspicuously did not blame was the Taliban, who once harbored Osama bin Laden and may protect his terrorist successor.

The President made glancing reference to the horrible scenes unfolding in Kabul and especially at the airport, though again without addressing the mistakes that led to them. Had the U.S. not given up the air base at Bagram, now controlled by the Taliban, the U.S. would not now have to fight to control Kabul’s commercial airfield.

The chaotic scenes at the airport, with Afghans hanging from a U.S. military plane and two falling from the sky to their deaths, will be the indelible images of this debacle. They are the echo of 9/11, with people falling from the sky, that Mr. Biden didn’t anticipate when he chose the 20th anniversary of 9/11 as his withdrawal deadline.

Instead of taking responsibility, Mr. Biden played to the sentiment of Americans who are tired of foreign military missions. It’s a powerful point to speak of sending a child to risk his life in a foreign country, and no doubt it will resonate with many Americans. It is a question that every President should ask.