Honestly I don't understand how General McKenzie can continue to serve under a Commander in Chief Surrender Monkey and do his bidding with a straight face or a clear conscience

 

U.S. Central Command chief Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, who served multiple tours in Afghanistan, as did his son, appeared somewhat stunned when he spoke to the press on Monday, detailing surprisingly civil interactions with Taliban commanders who oversee the network he has fought to defeat for two decades. When asked how he felt about that, he demurred. 

"I was very conflicted," McKenzie said in a candid moment during a televised briefing at the Pentagon from his headquarters in Tampa, Florida. "I am going to be thinking about that in the days ahead." 

He described Taliban cooperation with the U.S. evacuation mission in recent days as "actually very helpful and useful to us as we closed down operations."

McKenzie detailed that despite assertions from Biden and other top leaders, the U.S. did not withdraw all of its own citizens, nor the Afghans it had pledged it would protect in exchange for their cooperation in the war effort. The military presence on the ground at the airport retained the ability to bring them out of the country, but many were not able to get to the airfield amid the chaos in the capital city. 

"The military phase is over, but our desire to bring these people out remains as intense as it was before," McKenzie said. "The Department of State will now take the lead on it." 

The U.S. would not have been able to accomplish that mission if it had stayed for an additional week or so, he added, batting down suggestions from Capitol Hill and elsewhere that Biden should have ordered an extension to his deadline. ...

McKenzie assesses as many as 2,000 "Hardcore ISIS fighters" are operating in Afghanistan now, some of whom were freed in recent days from jails the U.S. originally ran at Bagram and elsewhere. 

"That's going to be a challenge for the Taliban, I believe, in the days ahead," McKenzie said.

More. 

Al Qaeda is now free to move about the country . . . of Afghanistan

 The Foundation for the Defense of Democracies reported Monday that Osama bin Laden's chief of security returned to his hometown in Afghanistan earlier in the day accompanied by a band of heavily armed Taliban fighters in brand new military trucks. 

"The video of al Haq is evidence that Al Qaeda commanders now feel secure enough to appear publicly in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan," the foundation's Bill Roggio wrote in an analysis note.

More.

Meanwhile, the Laugh of the Day is CNBC saying "scores without power" in Louisiana and Mississippi in the wake of Hurricane Ida

Yeah, like 55,000 score.

I guess the kids think that's a fancy word for "a lot". 

Holiday weekend help is already on duty, apparently.

 

Man, that Hurricane Ida is a humdinger, causing power outages even to such flung places as Michigan and California

 

If we followed Typhoid Annie's advice, we would add 175 million dead to the 58 million that normally die

 

"We're all going to get COVID, and the sooner the better".

In the first year of the pandemic, 2.2% of cases globally died. 2.2% of global population would mean almost 175 million deaths. In 2019 just 58 million died globally from all causes, pre-pandemic.

There's no guarantee 2.2% will die of COVID going forward, but Typhoid Annie is still stark, raving mad.

She's just Ann Coulter to you, but to me . . .

 . . . she's Typhoid Annie.

 

Globally speaking, the India variant wave appears already to have peaked both in respect of cases/million and deaths/million

It also looks as if the India variant has been not only less deadly, but less infectious as well, not more as most experts had been saying.

The January outbreak remains the dominant one of all the waves so far as to cases, but as to deaths we are clearly seeing a step down in severity.

I'm sure vaccine advocates will chalk it all up to the success of the vaccines, ignoring that the latest wave began on the first day of summer, fully six months into the mass vaccination effort, which most certainly did not prevent infection and transmission as the US CDC continues to say to this day. Pointing this out on Twitter a few days ago got Alex Berenson finally and permanently banned.

The Vaccine Church wants to credit the dramatic decline in cases since January to the vaccines, but refuses to own the wave of July and August. Instead it blames the unvaccinated at the same time it admits that vaccinated people get infected and spread the disease, as was proven by the dramatic Provincetown, Massachusetts, incident. Conveniently for the investors in big pharma, the CDC doesn't count breakthrough cases unless they end up in hospital or die, excluding from the statistics an entire class of superspreaders. There are literally hundreds of millions of them.

Meanwhile as to deaths few will consider that the easy fruit had already been harvested by the Grim Reaper before the India variant even arrived, that as to cases prior infection immunized millions while millions more who were vaccinated relaxed masking and social distancing, with official encouragement, spreading the virus.

There is also the simple fact of seasonality, which may loom larger than we know.

No one can really say.

There isn't just one variable to blame or credit, but that is what tired, frightened, small, greedy, and often hysterical minds end up doing.

It's human nature.

The virus may or may not peter out, but we'll always have human nature.

 

 

Obviously John Maynard C19 vaccination hasn't really been tried in Oregon

 

LOL Mike "Mish" Shedlock goes full Keynes on C19 vaccines

Israel's high vaccination rate isn't high enough. The country jumped out ahead of all other countries on vaccines, and 78% of eligible Israelis over 12 years old are vaccinated.

More.

Mish is a long time popularizer of the Austrian School of Economics.

Biden kills one in Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan, with drone strike after Kabul airport suicide bombing kills 13 Americans

 Story.

This response epitomizes what has been wrong with US policy in Afghanistan since 9/11, and everywhere, frankly.

America treats this like a matter of law enforcement instead of like what it is, a war.

It cannot bring itself to punish the nation and destroy its ability to make war, pretending justice for an individual is sufficient. 

That's why we've been there for 20 years, hunting down individuals. We make fine but false distinctions between ISIS, al-Qaeda, Taliban, etc., instead of destroying them all.

The Taliban, now America's chosen people in Afghanistan, has simply run out the clock and exhausted us with our own inadequate, enervated Rules of Engagement.

Trump used to understand this but quickly was co-opted by The Blob, because his character was and remains weak, the fundamental reason why his presidency was such a disappointment.

 

 

LOL California's Governor Newsom takes drastic action to make it look like he's not a total raving lunatic as recall vote looms Sep 14

 

And so temporarily, or so they say, the state has been forced to set up five natural gas power plants in order to avoid rolling blackouts. This move is the result of an emergency order signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last month. 

More.

Yesterday Trump would have destroyed all the equipment on the way out of Afghanistan, today on Hannity he would have kept Bagram Airfield

 What will it be tomorrow?

He's an incoherent lunatic.

America thinks it is done with the Forever Wars, but the Forever Wars are not done with America

 

Taliban blunders story by NBC is complete rubbish designed to absolve the Taliban: What the Taliban did was intentional and precisely gives them the cover these naive reporters bought hook, line and sinker

In their push to retake Afghanistan, the Taliban made the security situation much more precarious by breaking prisoners out of prisons — including hardcore fighters housed at Bagram Air Base, Taliban officials acknowledged to NBC News.

Two Taliban leaders said in an interview that their biggest blunder was “releasing thousands of prisoners, among them hardcore Islamic State commanders, master trainers and bomb-makers. They were very trained people, and they are now organizing themselves.”

The Taliban itself was never designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization, but the Haqqani network, which has close ties to Al Qaeda and Pakistani intelligence, has long held that distinction.

More. 

The idea that the Taliban is not a terror organization is a lie, a fiction maintained by our lunatic US State Department and its friends in the press.

White House: Yes, The Taliban Is a Terrorist Organization   

GOP accuse Obama of "negotiating with terrorists," WH says Bergdahl was POW.

By JOHN PARKINSON and LEE FERRAN

June 4, 2014, 6:19 PM

But Tuesday White House National Security Council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden noted that the Taliban was added to the list of Specially Designated Global Terrorists (SDGT) by executive order in July 2002, even if it is not listed as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the State Department. Either designation triggers asset freezes, according to the State Department, though they can differ on other restrictions imposed on the target organization. The Treasury Department told ABC News the Taliban is still on their SDGT list.

Damn fool Trump should just shut up and go away

"Prudence" might as well be an Arabic word to Trump. He knows nothing, and is incapable of knowing. He is a foolish, destructive spendthrift, who would have pulled entirely out of Afghanistan, same as Joe Biden.

There is no final difference between the two men.

 

US Central Command knew better in 2009 that whatever the Taliban put down on paper wasn't worth much

 

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

 

The military say what the commander in chief says, simple as that.

US Central Command has been promulgating the mistaken belief that the Taliban wants peace and forgiveness since at least 2011 when Obama ran the show, but also under Trump

 

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"

 

Did Trump and Pompeo get the gimcrack foreign policy from the military, or was it the other way around?

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.

In April Joe Biden committed to full US withdrawal from Afghanistan beginning May 1 because Trump signed an agreement with the terrorists

 

Here's Trump in Ohio in late June bragging Biden couldn't stop the process of withdrawing all US forces from Afghanistan (because Trump signed a deal with the terrorists)

 

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.

Read it for yourself.

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.

Johns Hopkins: US COVID-19 deaths hit the 630k mark yesterday, 8/24/21

 

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.  

More.

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.

Full FDA approval of Pfizer vaccine today means now you can sue!

 

France wasted no time getting the French the hell out of Dodge on July 17th after the US dark-of-night exit from Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on July 2nd

 

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.

If you think the US FDA hasn't become a tool of the political propagandists, think again

 

Trump's Chairman of the Joint Chiefs since Oct 2019 Mark Milley in April 2019: Women should register for the draft

MARK MILLEY: Senator, I think that all eligible and qualified men and women should register for the draft.

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.

 

Out with the old Taliban, in with the new

 

CNBC: Pentagon orders U.S. airlines to help fly Afghanistan evacuees

 

LOL, someone's having fun with General Mark Milley's Wikipedia page today: "Huge admirer of Karl Marx, Lenin and Mao"

 

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

 

My power was out Aug 10-14, so I missed reporting on this at the time.

America's back

 

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.

Day Nine: Over 1k still without electricity in Michigan from Consumers Energy

 

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.

Gallup.

Day Eight: 3k still without power in Michigan from the electric utility Consumers Energy

 

They've trotted out the CEO of the company in radio ads the last two days to thank everyone for their patience.

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.

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.

This can't be happening

 

Day Seven: 10k in Michigan still without power from Consumers Energy

 

Biden goes back on vacation as up to 86,000 need evacuation from Kabul according to Matt Zeller of EvacuateOurAllies.org, who has been pleading with the administration for months but gets no reply

 

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:

 

How Joe Biden failed the people of Afghanistan — and tarnished US credibility around the world:

 

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

 

A Chance for Peace or a Rush to the Exit?:

 

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.

Day Six: 26k still without power from Consumers Energy in Michigan

 Way to go, Brownie.

The rise and fall of America, in two images

 

Come and take it, Texas 1835

Come and take my ass, Kabul 2021