Thursday, August 26, 2021
General McKenzie in particular, CENTCOM Commander since 2019, strongly echoed the Trump agreement with the Taliban after Feb 29, 2020, stating explicitly the intention to "go to zero" troops and partner with the Taliban, the terrorists
CENTCOM has no comment today about this revelation that it has given a list to the Taliban of the people the US wants evacauated from Kabul
U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that's prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials.
More.
General Kenneth McKenzie, elevated to CENTCOM Commander by Trump in 2019: "we share a common purpose" with the Taliban and they are "useful to work with"
David French was right about Trump's agreement with the terrorists in his column on March 3, 2020
There is a difference between peace and retreat. The Trump administration’s agreement with the Taliban represents a full retreat. It’s an agreement that most Republicans would deplore if a Democrat president made the deal, and they’d be right to be angry.
More.
The country wasn't paying attention, however. The pandemic was all anyone could talk about.
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
Sean Hannity told a whopper today just after 4pm Eastern: He said Trump's agreement with the Taliban let the US keep Bagram Airfield
This is simply false.
Under the terms of the agreement, the US agreed to withdraw initially from 5 bases, and then from "all remaining bases".
There is no such provision as claimed by Hannity.
Trump would have presided over a complete withdrawal of all US and Coalition forces from Afghanistan had he been re-elected.
Conservative talk radio has been pretending for a week that Donald Trump intended a different outcome than a complete withdrawal.
It's just not true.
Trump not only committed the sin of negotiating with terrorists, he tried to pass them off as new partners in the war on terror, making our continued presence moot, which is utterly absurd.
Ever had Trump Wine? A Trump Steak? A degree from Trump University?
Donald Trump is responsible for the framework leading to the debacle we are witnessing in Afghanistan under Joe Biden.
They are a pair of Pontius Pilates, washing their hands of the country.
Laugh of the Day: Peter Meijer, MI-03, the Republican version of drama queen AOC, pulls stunt and flies into Kabul
Peter Meijer, billionaire scion, West Point drop out, & leader of an aimless, mediocre life, is a drama queen who desperately wants to cover himself with the patina of the brave soldier in extreme circumstances one last time before it's all over. Just like Jan 6.
Mike Pompeo pretends it was smart diplomacy to negotiate with terrorists in the first place, and to withdraw all American forces from Afghanistan
The Taliban’s threat has been a constant for years; it was a very real threat during President Donald Trump’s administration. We met that threat with American strength and smart diplomacy. ... The Trump administration’s Afghanistan strategy utilized a combination of deterrence and negotiated agreements based on conditions in the country to keep the Taliban in check while we withdrew our forces. This kept Americans who were still there safe while reducing our military footprint in the region.
Tuesday, August 24, 2021
Famous Israeli doctor can't explain new outbreak in Israel, fires shotgun blaming India variant's transmissibility, waning Pfizer immunity, lack of mask discipline
Asked what has brought Israel to peak transmission even as the country has already provided third doses of vaccines to 1.5 million citizens, Rahav, who has become one of the best known faces of Israel’s public health messaging, sighed, saying, “I think we’re dealing with a very nasty virus. This is the main problem—and we’re learning it the hard way.”
“It is a combination of waning immunity, so that inoculated people get reinfected, and at the same time the very transmissible Delta variant,” Rahav said, adding that Israelis lacked the discipline to revert to mask usage as the numbers began rising. “But it is not an Israeli problem,” she added. “It is everywhere.”
In other words, they have no idea why.
More.
Monday, August 23, 2021
The Pfizer vaccine is failing pretty spectacularly in Israel, which presently ranks 4th worst in the world for cases per million and 12th worst in the world for deaths per million
63% of the country is fully vaccinated with Pfizer, which has now rushed into a booster shot program giving a third dose to about a million to date.
Daily new cases of COVID-19 have soared in Japan since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics on July 23rd
Local media has reported that bars and restaurants defied restrictions during the event. One Tokyo izakaya owner told the Japan Times that he planned to serve alcohol despite a ban because he was fed up with the public "being sacrificed for the Olympics".
More.
Sunday, August 22, 2021
The woke general on the right was made Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Donald Trump effective Oct 1, 2019
He was US Army Chief of Staff 2015-2019 and Commander of III Corps at Fort Hood 2012-2014.
Saturday, August 21, 2021
Friday, August 20, 2021
Deaths per day in the US from COVID-19 by variant type
News reports say the UK variant became dominant in the US on or about April 1, 2021.
Its reign was brief.
The India variant has dominated since July 1.
It's much too early for definitive statements (50 days) because deaths lag by weeks, but so far the India variant is proving much less deadly but highly contagious.
What's interesting is that the UK variant was less deadly and less transmissible than the strains which preceded it for the 456 days from the onset of infections in the US in 2020 through Mar 31, 2021.
The numbers so far suggest that the virus has mutated to become less deadly over time, and more transmissible. It needs hosts who are alive to thrive, and the UK variant came and went quickly because it wasn't up to this task, whereas the India variant clearly is:
Calendar 2020 - Mar 31, 2021: 66,838 cases per day; 1,210 deaths per day; case fatality rate 1.81%
Apr - Jun 2021 (UK variant): 34,736 cases per day; 580 deaths per day; cfr 1.67%
Jul - 8/19, 2021 (India variant): 76,320 cases per day; 433 deaths per day; cfr 0.57%.
Keep in mind that deaths per day from influenza in the United States average less than 100 over the last ten years.
A fairer full 3-month comparison will require waiting until at least Oct 1.
In the meantime, inhibiting transmission is not a fool's errand. Don't share others' air in enclosed spaces, mask where appropriate, and wash frequently. Increasing numbers of breakthrough cases show that the vaccines are far from foolproof. It is not known whether this is because of the character of the new variant or because the vaccines wear out over time.
Public health authorities in the US have been pretty appalling in their performance. We do not test, trace and quarantine anywhere near the way we should, nor do we collect data the way we should. This is a hidden disgrace but is no smaller than the mega public disgrace going on in Kabul right now.
We are not a serious country.
All data is from The New York Times and subject to revision.
Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths crossed the 620k mark overnight Aug 12-13 and are nearly at 626k today
Thursday, August 19, 2021
LOL, the html doesn't lie: The Guardian didn't know that the year 1336 is in the 14th-century
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2021/aug/19/meat-rich-diet-of-13th-century-monks-caused-digestive-issues-research-finds
You can change the headline, folks, but you'll always be THE GRAUNIAD.
The horror: Share paying no income taxes spikes from 44% in 2019 to 61% in 2020
Stereotypical story here.
No one ever talks about how little Americans make.
In 2019, you'll be happy to know, 61% of individual wage earners in the US made less than $45,000.
44% made less than $30k.
I'd like to see our legislators live on $30k, since so many of the people they claim to represent must. Maybe they'd be less inclined to rob us blind year in and year out with their trillion$ in spending.
Congressional salaries, incidentally, put the 435 members of the US House in the top 3.5% of individual wage earners.
IT'S WHY THEY RUN.
There's something horribly wrong with a Rube Goldberg tax code which allows:
the rich to avoid taking "ordinary income" and pay little or zero tax on their fabulous capital returns;
more than the bottom half also to pay little to nothing (don't forget that they do pay Social Security and Medicare taxes);
and the people in-between to get squeezed to death.
Given that deficits no longer matter, why do taxes continue to matter? Just end them. We borrow the money anyway.
smdh
"Alcohol drinking was at its highest point between 1976 and 1978"
That's because peak Baby Boom from 1957 turned 20 in 1977.
More young thirsty mouths, relatively speaking.
Wednesday, August 18, 2021
Day Eight: 3k still without power in Michigan from the electric utility Consumers Energy
No one apologizes anymore in this country, for anything.
Even Peter Bergen recognizes Biden made a huge mistake abiding by Trump's insane handover of the war on terror in Afghanistan to the Taliban
The whole thing is worth reading, here:
Biden could have easily said the Taliban had reneged on their agreement
with the United States so he could continue to keep a relatively small
US military force in Afghanistan to advise and assist the Afghan Army
and to support the Afghan Air Force to thwart Taliban advances.
... the American presence in Afghanistan had shrunk to only 2,500 troops --
particularly few for a force of 1.3 million active-duty US service
personnel. That small force helped to sustain the Afghan military
physically and psychologically, not least with close air support.
Now,
the Biden administration unilaterally has pulled the plug on the US
troop presence in Afghanistan, which cratered morale among the Afghan
military and population. It also precipitated thousands of
Western-allied soldiers to head for the exits, as well as the many
thousands of contractors in Afghanistan that were, among other things,
keeping the Afghan Air Force aloft.
And now the white flags of the Taliban flutter all over Afghanistan. It did not need to be this way.
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
The Orwellian situation in Kabul right now began Feb 29, 2020 when Trump announced that the Taliban would be taking over the war on terror
You read that right, the Taliban.
How did we not understand this 100% crackpottery for what it was at the time?
Down is up, evil is good, enemy is friend.
Starting at about the 3:15 mark.
The Afghanistan debacle is of Trump's design, but occurred only because Biden decided to implement it and withdrew the air cover necessary to the Afghan army's mission
William Maley, August 15, 2021:
The 2020 US-Taliban deal created deep and widespread apprehension about
what the future might hold. Then, it only took a few localised failures
to sap the confidence of all sorts of actors, both military and
civilian, in the survival of the government. Side-switching became a
rational strategy, then spun out of control.
The US troop withdrawal also seems to have reflected a failure on the part of Biden – although not the US military — to appreciate how destructive the February 2020 agreement had been to the effectiveness of the Afghan military.
In requiring the withdrawal not just of US troops but US maintenance contractors, it compromised the ongoing capabilities of key assets in the inventory of the Afghan National Army, as well as depriving the army of critical air cover.
As an insightful analysis put it,
in the wake of President Biden’s withdrawal decision, the US pulled its air support, intelligence and contractors servicing Afghanistan’s planes and helicopters. That meant the Afghan military simply couldn’t operate anymore.
William Maley, March 3, 2020
The text provides for a reduction of US troop numbers within 135 days to
8,600, to be followed by “withdrawal of all remaining forces from
Afghanistan within the remaining nine and a half (9.5) months.” It also
purports to bind not just the US but also its allies, including
Australia, even though they were not parties to the agreement; and it
includes “all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security
contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel.” ... the agreement is better seen as a “withdrawal agreement” than a “peace
agreement.” It is no wonder that the Taliban are painting it as a
victory.
We were all consumed with COVID-19 in February 2020, and completely ignored this.
People who say now that the rapid fall of Afghanistan would not have happened under a second Trump term don't know what they are talking about.
Trump designed this outcome, and Biden was only too happy to implement it.
Biden gets to say he ended the war, pleases the progressives on his left, and blames Trump for it, all at the same time.
And the GOP alone gets to be The Stupid Party yet once more, unless of course the thousands of Americans trapped in Kabul this morning because Biden failed to get them out ahead of time are not permitted to leave, or are taken hostage.
Their fate, and Biden's reputation, are in the Taliban's hands, and that, when all is said and done, is the Democrats' disgrace.
Monday, August 16, 2021
The rise and fall of America, in two images
 |
| Come and take it, Texas 1835 |
 |
| Come and take my ass, Kabul 2021 |
Sunday, August 15, 2021
Climate Update for KGRR: July 2021 was utterly normal
Climate Update for KGRR: July 2021 was utterly normal, UTTERLY I SAY!
Max T 89, Mean 94
Min T 53, Mean 49
Av T 72.3, Mean 72.3
Rain 4.44, Mean 3.15
Cooling Degree Days 236, Mean 242; CDD to date 505, Mean to date 426.
By average temperature, July 2021 was utterly normal, registering the mean. But to listen to the headlines, July 2021 was the hottest July ever globally. How then did Grand Rapids escape such abnormality by registering such utter normality? Should there not be some sign of temperature pressure in Grand Rapids from this horrible state of affairs all around us, as there was for example in 1936, the hottest July in the United States on record, or in 1901, the second hottest July?
It's all BS. Grand Rapids' hottest days are long behind us, as are the world's, as Tony Heller frequently demonstrates.
Grand Rapids' 11 hottest months of July by average temperature are overwhelmingly a thing of the past. 8 of the 11 instances, 73%, occurred from 1936 and earlier. Just three instances occurred in the post-war. The record breaking heat waves of 1936 and 1901 made themselves clearly felt in Grand Rapids, both years making the top five, while the so-called hottest July ever globally, July 2021, was a giant nothing burger for heat.
1921: 79.7 degrees F
2012: 79.2
1916: 78.7
1901: 78.1
1936: 77.3
2011: 77.0
1955: 76.9
1934: 76.8
1935: 76.5
1897: 76.3
1931: 75.8.
Saturday, August 14, 2021
My incompetent Michigan utility Consumers Energy can't deliver electricity for four days but thinks free ice cream will substitute for doing its job
How about not retiring generating capacity and having to buy power from other states?
How about concentrating on delivering energy from reliable sources instead of risking our future on tenuous green schemes?
How about hiring more workers to keep the gas and power flowing to the people who pay your salaries?
Coronavirus vaccines are just like Keynesianism
54% vaccination isn't enough just like spending 54% more to stimulate the economy isn't enough.
75% won't be enough. 100% won't be enough.
IT'S NEVER ENOUGH.
Both are religions. You can't disprove them because they've never really been tried.
Michigan is increasingly like a third world shit-hole: Day four without electrical power from Consumers Energy, over 81k still affected
My electric power went out Tuesday night at about 11pm.
It is still out.
Over 81,000 customers, just of Consumers Energy, remain without power four days after a line of storms came through.
The utility runs ads on the radio incessantly saying "Count on us"!
It spends more time and money trying to get consumers to curtail electric usage than it does providing it.
It decommissions coal fired generating capacity and then turns around and buys electricity from Indiana. Under Democrat Gretchen Whitmer we are increasingly like California.
The utility is a cruel joke, especially this week as humidity levels soared with the heat. Indoor temperatures at night above 80 degrees F make for miserable sleeping, when sleeping occurs at all.
The air is full of the sound of generators, day and night. Lines are long at gasoline stations where people wait to fill their cans to get them through another night.
Green energy isn't green, and the power company doesn't provide it, green or otherwise.
Tuesday, August 10, 2021
Monday, August 9, 2021
Frank Meyer knew better but had it exactly backwards
Seen here:
The political questions are not unimportant, but they pale in comparison to the importance of the moral and religious aspect of our lives. As Frank Meyer put it in his book In Defense of Freedom, “in the moral realm freedom is only a means whereby men can pursue their proper end, which is virtue.”
This is a defect of that poor thing, the libertarian mind, which compartmentalizes reality into aspects, repudiating, with the rest of modernity, the pre-Englightenment understanding that the moral realm is the only meaningful realm inhabited by humanity.
Perhaps the more important defect of this libertarian mind is viewing freedom as a means or instrumentality, rather than as a result of virtue.
In truth, freedom is a condition, a by-product, a sign. It is subsidiary and not the main show. You can't wrangle enough of it and produce virtue with it. That's putting the cart before the horse, as we used to say. In fact quite the opposite. An excess of freedom makes a monster, because men are first and foremost not angels. The excess of freedom in the United States is the precondition for its licentiousness, making it the world capital for obesity, indolence, drug abuse, empty celebrity, sexual perversion, immorality, violence, entertainment, self-loathing, and a host of other ills. Eventually such a people tyrannized by themselves will require an actual tyrant to rule them.
You will not have a good society without good people, as Meyer did recognize as parents in the 1960s gave up being good and expected "institutions" such as schools and churches to take over their responsibility to be so.
This failure of nerve already had the country firmly in its grip by Meyer's time. Today we see the same shirking phenomenon but now writ even larger, as we expect a Trump, a political party, the Conservative Movement Inc., the Federalist Society, the rule of law, the police, the courts, or constitutional parchment to fix what only the individual can fix.
Only you can fix what is wrong. You must, as Bill Buckley once famously said, "Cancel your own goddam subscription". You can. You must. Or it's over.
If you don't the woke will fix it for you. The current rage for and of "woke" is nothing if not a response of the young "nones" to this libertarian misunderstanding. Their chief enemy is freedom. The woke see all too clearly that American culture is incapable of saying No, which is the only true mark of the free man. Instead we think being free means saying Yes, to everything.
And if history is any guide, we'll say Yes to that, too, to the new tyranny of woke.
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