RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/joe-biden-nowhere-man/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=first

Unless Biden can reconcile his party’s competing priorities, his presidency will continue to unravel.

J oe Biden’s beleaguered presidency has fueled criticism of the man himself — his history of policy missteps, mental incapacity, and inept administrative style, as well as his family struggles. Whatever his personal flaws, though, the real cause of Biden’s incoherent and even contradictory policies lies not in his incompetence but in the contradictory nature of his agenda and his party.

Biden, despite decades in politics, remains something of a nowhere man, with no demonstrated, consistent worldview beyond expediency. He was elected because corporate power brokers saw him as the only viable alternative first to Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and then to the widely detested Donald Trump. These forces, joined by some labor unions and the older black establishment, pushed him over the top in a bizarre, heavily scripted campaign funded largely by the ultra-rich. The pandemic proved ideal for muzzling Biden’s gaffe machine.

In this tumultuous period, the Democratic Party could use a Bill Clinton or a Barack Obama, a leader who defines a coherent agenda and inspires voters. Some still believe that Biden’s reputation for compromise and bipartisanship is working, but his poll numbers suggest otherwise. The president’s approval rating, which was dropping before the Afghanistan debacle, is now heading toward the lows plumbed by his predecessor. Unless Biden somehow succeeds in elaborating a clear agenda, his presidency likely will continue to unravel.

Democratic Divisions and Contradictions

Like Caesar’s Gaul, the Democratic Party contains three distinct and often competing factions. The first consists of increasingly “woke” tech oligarchs and their Wall Street funders. They financed “a shadow campaign” for Biden, pouring millions into get-out-the-vote efforts and running media interference (most obviously in the Hunter Biden scandal) for his campaign.

Once elected, Biden duly inserted representatives of this class at the top of his administration. His cabinet is made up overwhelmingly of pedigreed, coastal metropolites (a third of the new cabinet went to Harvard). As the leftist Nation put it in a convincing story, under Biden the Democrats have become, without question, “the party of the rich.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-lawless-vaccine-mandate-constitution-occupational-safety-11632841737?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

President Biden told unvaccinated Americans this month: “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. . . So, please, do the right thing.” He backed up this request with a series of new regulatory mandates, including one from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which directs businesses with 100 or more employees to make vaccination a condition of employment.

The Covid vaccine has been widely hailed as a modern scientific miracle. Yet as a means to increase nationwide vaccination rates, the OSHA mandate far exceeds the authority Congress granted the agency, and if the president can order private companies to dictate such terms of employment, his power to coerce citizens in the name of public health might as well be unlimited. This would both be profoundly unconstitutional and fundamentally transform the relationship between the government and the people.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 authorizes OSHA to enact rules that are “reasonably necessary or appropriate to provide safe or healthful employment and places of employment.” But the Biden mandate is unreasonably and unnecessarily broad. As announced, it applies to all employees, even those who work at home, as millions have done during the pandemic. It’s simultaneously too narrow, failing to require vaccination for contractors, customers and other nonemployees who may be present at the work site.

It’s overbroad in another way: Previous Covid infection doesn’t excuse employees from the vaccine requirement. Natural immunity tends to be more robust and longer-lasting than vaccinated immunity, according to Marty Makary of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Worse, Dr. Makary says, there is evidence that people who already have natural immunity are at heightened risk of vaccine side effects caused by an augmented inflammatory response. For these reasons, lawsuits have already been filed challenging employer vaccine mandates as applied to employees with natural immunity.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-brass-faces-the-afghan-music-joe-biden-general-mike-milley-kenneth-mckenzie-senate-hearing-afghanistan-11632867833?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

They supported leaving 2,500 U.S. troops in the country and have doubts about the ‘over-the-horizon’ counterterror strategy.

President Biden hopes the political fallout from his botched Afghanistan withdrawal will fade quickly, but Tuesday’s Senate hearing with the secretary of Defense and two top generals doesn’t cast his decisions in a better light.

The hearing underscored that the President acted against the advice of the military in yanking the residual U.S. force from the country. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and Gen. Kenneth McKenzie both made clear in their testimony that they recommended that about 2,500 U.S. troops stay in Afghanistan to delay a Taliban takeover.

That’s not what Mr. Biden said he was told. Asked in an ABC News interview days after the August fall of Kabul if his military advisers urged him to maintain America’s small footprint in the country, Mr. Biden said, “No one said that to me that I can recall.”

The scandal isn’t that the President ignored military advice—he’s the decision-maker. It’s his refusal to own his decision. Mr. Biden wants political credit for ending America’s involvement in Afghanistan, but he’s not willing to take the political risk of admitting he overruled the brass in the process.

The generals also undercut Mr. Biden’s spin about their advice as the chaotic withdrawal was underway. He said the generals unanimously supported his Aug. 31 deadline for the departure of U.S. troops. But as Gen. Milley confirmed in questioning by Sen. Tom Cotton, that advice was given on Aug. 25—10 days after the fall of Kabul to the Taliban.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/say-how-is-joe-bidens-memory-these-days/

Back on August 19, President Biden insisted none of his top military advisors warned against withdrawing from Afghanistan on his preferred timeline, and that none of them wanted the president to keep about 2,500 troops in the country.

Today before the Senate Armed Services Committee, U.S. Central Command General Frank McKenzie and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Mark Milley both said they had recommended President Biden maintain 2,500 troops in Afghanistan. McKenzie said he had also warned that a full withdrawal would lead inexorably to the collapse of the Afghan forces and government.

Back in August, Biden told George Stephanopoulos:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But your top military advisors warned against withdrawing on this timeline. They wanted you to keep about 2,500 troops.

BIDEN: No, they didn’t. It was split. Tha– that wasn’t true. That wasn’t true.

STEPHANOPOULOS: They didn’t tell you that they wanted troops to stay?

BIDEN: No. Not at — not in terms of whether we were going to get out in a timeframe all troops. They didn’t argue against that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So no one told — your military advisors did not tell you, “No, we should just keep 2,500 troops. It’s been a stable situation for the last several years. We can do that. We can continue to do that”?

BIDEN: No. No one said that to me that I can recall.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17812/paskudnyak

“Paskudnyak” will surely become familiar to our ears during the remaining years of the Biden Presidency as this ill-starred administration becomes the tool of power players, profiteering lobbyists, and Progressives intent on abducting an enfeebled White House for their own socialist mission.

[T]he Biden administration has revealed itself to be a weekly calamity that must be blamed on either incompetence or worse, a captive of special interests whose agenda has nothing to do with protecting the nation’s future.

The President’s popularity has declined to its lowest level since he was sworn in, with half the nation’s adults disapproving of his performance, according to a report by Reuters. Not surprisingly, the dramatic plummet began following his disastrous retreat from Afghanistan that will see countless Afghans executed for embracing our democratic principles.

From Capitol Hill to the White House, we are witnessing the hinge of history that will determine whether America will continue as a respected world power and it will be decided, in very large measure, by those who may well have chosen power and profits over patriotism.

We might want to make the word “Paskudnyak” a plural.

For the Afghans left behind….

For the French who were double-dealed….

For the Texans confronting an open border that mocks our nation’s sovereignty…

And for the members of the Fed who privately know just how destructive our massive national debt will be to our future…

All of them may want to learn a word not currently in their vocabulary:

“Paskudnyak”

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/vaccine-mandates-the-end-of-covid

This Will Come Back to Haunt Us

By Jay Bhattacharya and Jonathan Ketcham  

Why the push for vaccine passports and mandates? Public health officials have offered one overriding justification: As soon as enough of us are vaccinated, we’ll reach herd immunity and the disease will stop spreading. Vaccine passports and mandates get us there faster.

This is nonsense.

We have good reason to doubt that, if most everyone got vaccinated, we’d achieve herd immunity. That’s because the protection offered by the Covid-19 vaccines against infection is short-lived. A large study of vaccinated patients in Qatar found that, by five months after the second jab, the vaccine’s effectiveness had already started to wane. It continued to protect against severe disease and death, but it did not provide any protection from less severe infection.

In fact, getting Covid and recovering from it is better protection from future reinfection and severe Covid disease than any of the available vaccines. This is clear from an excellent Israeli study. 

That study, conducted at the Maccabi Healthcare Services, in Tel Aviv, makes clear that it is probably safer to be in a room filled with unvaccinated people who have recovered from Covid than it is to be in a room filled with vaccinated people who have never had Covid.

Now, looking beyond the epidemiology, it’s worth considering the psychology that comes into play when we start forcing people to do things: It is practically a mathematical certainty that the mandates will lead many people to distrust the government, leading experts at places like the Centers for Disease Control, and our most prominent research universities even more than they do now. Why, the thinking goes, are you forcing me to do something that, you insist, is obviously good for me? If it were obviously good for me, you wouldn’t have to force me to do it. 

The mandates, far from persuading the unvaccinated to fall into line, will further undermine the authority of those pushing them — and, critically, it will make it that much harder to persuade the public to get vaccinated when an even more dangerous pandemic sweeps the globe.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17802/democrats-bill-endangering-israel

This is not an “occupation.” It is legitimate and entirely lawful self-defense. It would be a lie — a blood libel — for the United States to declare Gaza to be occupied territory.

Under international law, a military occupation may continue as long as there is belligerence, as there certainly continues to be.

Had Israeli troops remained, Israel would be criticized. Now that they have left, there is still criticism. For some, Israel can do no right.

Jerusalem is more complicated… These are not occupied territories. Nor is the rest of East Jerusalem which is part of a united city.

Israel twice offered to end its presence in more than 90% of the West Bank in exchange for peace. The Palestinian leadership refused these offers and are thus responsible for the current situation.

The bill proposed by Levin and his fellow Democrats encourages the refusal of Palestinian leaders to negotiate painful compromises that are essential to achieving peace. It also rewards the pay-to-slay and terrorist policies… It sends a dangerous message to Palestinian naysayers: you do not have to negotiate or compromise; the United States will compel Israel to give in to your demands without requiring the Palestinians to negotiate, compromise or give up terrorism.

A far better bill would be one that conditioned reopening the Palestinian embassy on a willingness of the Palestinian leadership to return to the negotiating table and engage in genuine and honest discussions leading toward a peaceful two-state solution that assured security for Israel and autonomy for the West Bank Palestinians. (There can be no solution for Gaza except a military one as long as Hamas remains in charge, and persists in its terrorism and refuses to recognize Israel.)

Just when Congress overwhelmingly defeated an effort by eight radical Democrats and one Republican to defund Israel’s Iron Dome defense system, several “mainstream” Democrats proposed legislation that is equally dangerous and filled with half-truths, omissions and outright fabrications.

Congressman Andy Levin has introduced a bill that purports to further the “two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Although I favor two states for two peoples, I strongly oppose Levin’s perhaps well-intentioned but ill-conceived bill, because it would destroy any prospect for peace, would reward and encourage terrorism and disincentivize Palestinian leaders from negotiating with Israel.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/09/tragedy-therapy-and-challenge-jihad-bruce-thornton/

After a year of righteous anger and renewed patriotism, post-9/11 America returned to many of the dysfunctional orthodoxies and bad received wisdom that had helped pave the way for al Qaeda’s success. Foreign policy in particular quickly shifted from punitive kinetic realism to enhance our prestige and create deterrence, to nation-building idealism and cringing “diplomatic outreach.” But this “rules-based international order” foreign-policy thinking itself was a consequence of a long shift in Western culture from tragic realism to therapeutic idealism that permeates our culture and accounts for many of its utopian fantasies.

Twenty years later, the debacle in Afghanistan shows that when it comes to Islam, we are still crippled by our therapeutic delusions.

The tragic view of human life derives from both our Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian roots. It can be summed up in a line from Euripides: “To suffer is necessity for mortals.” We are beings driven by destructive passions and impulses, yet possessing as well conscious minds and free will. We live in a hostile natural world indifferent to our pain and suffering. We are bound by time and vulnerable to change and the consequence of choices that we can’t foresee. Our world is defined by those limits, and no human effort, no philosophy, no social or political order we create can transcend them or our destructive passions.

Modernity is defined by its claims to correct this tragic world through human knowledge, technology, and the progressive improvement of humanity by eliminating those tragic constants that create our misery and suffering. Educate people to know their true best interests, remove or reform tyrannical governments, provide adequate nutrition and health-care, and create freedom and prosperity, then people will become peaceful, free, and tolerant. Pain, suffering, the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” injustice, bigotry, cruelty, hunger, and even emotional pain caused by our own bad choices––remove these tragic conditions of human existence and we can create heaven on earth.