Israel

Saturday morning when the terrorist attacks on Israel by Hamas began, the world changed.  There is the world before Simchat Torah 5784 and the world after.  And there is the transition zone which, sadly, is where we are now.

We are not only on the brink of World War 3, but we have people cheering for annihilation of not only Israel but of all the Jews.  Pro-Palestinian protestors around the globe, including right here in the USA, shout “Kill the Jews”, “Gas the Jews”, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” (meaning that the entire State of Israel, between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be destroyed). 

The history and facts of Israel from times before Christ to the present, do not support or justify the claims by Palestine against Israel.  An objective recitation of this history is hard, but not impossible, to find these days and I wish that more people would study it.  But, even assuming that the claims against Israel were true, even if one chooses to see Palestinians as some sort of victims of Israel, and even if they choose to mount pro-Palestinian protests, it does not justify supporting the heinous, violent, and inhuman acts committed by the Hamas terrorists.

We have totally lost our moral compass.   The bleeding hearts, who want to excuse every offense and create offenses where none exist, still cannot bring themselves to distinguish a terrorist from someone with an alleged grievance.  To do so would disrupt their utopian false truth; they cannot see that their utopic vision is not and never will be a reality.  And yet their hearts are cold as stone towards the atrocities committed against Jews.  That, in my book, is clear antisemitism.

The Current Dysfunction

How did we come to this point?  The answer to that has many layers.  We can start with the present which includes the current administration’s completely dysfunctional international policies and actions. America has gone from a strong international voice for, and beacon of, democracy to a weak and dysfunctional shadow of its former self.

The dysfunction of this administration includes:

• The Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco that allowed terrorists to supply themselves with American weapons.
• A failure to even attempt to understand the Russian view on Ukraine, while pushing Putin into a position where he was left with little choice but to attack Ukraine.
• Supporting not only the military actions in Ukraine but also the corrupt use of American funds to sustain the entire Ukraine economy.
• Failing to support the Abraham Accords and not only allowing but tacitly encouraging the rise in anti-Semitic behavior here and around the world.  
• Providing $6 billion to Iran, knowing that Iran is a supporter of the terrorist acts against Israel.

The press has not been silent, but it carefully edits its words to downplay the fact that Hamas and Hezbollah (also attacking Israel from Lebanon) are terrorist organizations:

• Rather than use the word terrorist they call them simply militant groups.
• The defensive acts of Israel are equated with the unprovoked terrorism of Hamas.
• Israel is blamed for collateral damage of their defensive strikes, but there is little notice that the terrorists intentionally targeted innocents, children, and babies and further that the death they imposed upon those innocents was prolonged with pain and horrendous suffering.
• The media mostly fails to report that while Israel attempts to avoid civilian and other collateral damage, Hamas actually uses civilians and especially children as shields as they place their military sites directly under or above places such as hospitals and schools.

You cannot equate the aggressive and horrendous actions of Hamas with the self-defensive acts of Israel!  Yet too many, whether with or without knowledge of the actual facts, do.

Beyond the Surface – Humanity, Purpose, and Amalek

The misguided and dysfunctional political and media actions only touch the surface.  We live in a country where the people have a voice.  Yet, that voice remains either silent or simply a thoughtless mouthpiece for the buzz words, phrases, and memes of the Left.  How did the American people lose not only their voices but their minds?

An Israeli soldier currently fighting in Gaza referred to his enemy as Amalek.   In the Hebrew Bible, Amalek is both a nation and a nomadic tribe seen to be the arch-rival of ancient Israel.   While the Amalekite nation no longer exists, Jewish wisdom holds that the memory of the devious enemy Amalek lives on in in all forms of antisemitism carried out against Jewish people.

According to Midrash (Hebrew Biblical interpretation) Amalek represents the belief in chance, of the haphazard dictates of “fate” and “destiny,” which oppose the Jewish belief in Divine providence. Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity or to creation itself, again the antithesis of Jewish philosophy.   Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.

Regardless of whether one believes in or has even read Judeo-Christian scripture and teachings, I think this description of Amalek provides a wonderful way to characterize and personify much of what we see around us and the causes of this void and valueless place in which the world finds itself today.  

Let’s just take the phrase, “Amalek’s philosophy negates the concept that there is a purpose to humanity.”  All around us we see that human life has become or is becoming meaningless, with no value.  It has become disposable.  Why is it so easy to kill another human being over such simple things as who gets a parking spot?  It is easy if one believes that humanity is meaningless.  And if one’s life is meaningless, why would several lives suddenly have meaning?  Mass shootings, if life is meaningless, then are themselves meaningless; they are easy to carry out if one need feel no guilt about killing what one sees as a purposeless nothing nor compassion for meaningless corpses.  It becomes easy to be only concerned with satisfying one’s own urges at any one moment if anyone who might be hurt by that satisfaction is nothing but meaningless and valueless.

That sentence continues “or [no purpose] to creation itself.”  If there is no purpose to creation, no need to find meaning in something greater than oneself, then, again, there is no need to even have a moral compass let alone consider whether performance of some heinous act might violate it.  Indeed, “Amalek’s chief weapon is to foment doubt among the faithful.” 

The influence of Amalek is seen well beyond Israel and the Jewish faith.  All around us we see people leaving their faith, people who have a huge void within themselves because they have nothing greater than themselves to believe in.  This loss in faith, this loss in human purpose is killing us all.

Will the world awake; will we save ourselves?

What has happened to us as a nation and a world?  We have listened to the voice of Amalek who has led us to doubt who and what we are.  But it is not just our belief in something greater than ourselves that is doubted and lost.  With a loss in faith we have lost all the values that come with that faith.  Our whole culture now leads us to doubt and deny everything that has made us the great nation that we are.   We are led to believe that we can and do take the place of God; that we need nothing but ourselves.  And with that seems to come the belief that we are entitled to whatever we desire regardless of whom that may hurt.

Those who see this as the Utopia they dream of do not want it questioned. They take command over what we learn.  Schools no longer teach children to use their minds to think and critically assess an issue.  We erase history, ignoring not only the sage wisdom that “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” but also the fact that “Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” 

We evolve as a society and civilization in part because we learn and grow from the past and in part because we value our purpose as one individual within humanity at large.  And when one has a purpose, one generally sees that purpose as a part of a greater good.  As such, one values human life beyond one’s own selfish being. 

Today’s leaders leave much to be desired.  But we the people also leave much to be desired.  We have stopped thinking.  We have stopped caring.  We have stopped believing.  We are being led by false but devious dreams created by Amalek and many leaders along with their followers whom he represents.  We have lost our purpose and our soul. 

There is time.  The terrorist attacks on Israel have shaken the world as have the reactions to those attacks.  The question is:  Are they enough to shake us all awake from the nihilistic nightmare future that the devious tactics of Amalek have put before us?

Joshua fighting Amalek, A print from the Phillip Medhurst Collection of Bible illustrations in the possession of Revd. Philip De Vere at St. George’s Court, Kidderminster, England.  CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

 

Tails a-Wagging

“Wagging the Dog” is an expression, made popular during the Clinton administration. Generally it is “the act of creating a diversion from a damaging issue.”  In politics it means “to distract attention away from a political scandal, often through military action.”

A 1997 movie “Wag the Dog” involved a fictional political spin doctor (Robert De Niro) who distracted the electorate from a fictional presidential sex scandal by hiring a Hollywood producer (Dustin Hoffman) to create a fake war.  Less than a month after the movie was released, the Clinton-Lewinsky affair became headline news. Clinton, seeming to follow the movie script, then engaged the country in three military actions:  Operation Desert Fox, a three-day bombing campaign in Iraq, which took place at the time when the House of Representatives debated articles of impeachment against Clinton; Operation Infinite Reach, a pair of missile strikes against suspected terrorist targets in Sudan and Afghanistan, just three days after Clinton admitted in a nationally televised address that he had indeed had an inappropriate relationship with Lewinsky; Operation Allied Force, a months-long NATO bombing campaign against Serbia that began just weeks after Clinton was acquitted in his Senate impeachment trial.  These events distracted somewhat from the ongoing and politically damaging Clinton sex scandal.

Fast forward to 2022 and the multi-front incompetency of President Biden. That incompetence itself is a scandal, but from it evolve more problems and scandals in nearly every area.  

So, what do you do when you find the economy in tatters, supply chain disasters, border issues and illegal immigrations at record levels, the Afghanistan debacle still destroying lives, crime at all time highs and murders of police rising, Covid never-ending, record high inflation effectively reducing income and significantly harming low and middle class families, race relations and general animosity getting worse by the day, lack of energy independence, poll numbers plummeting to all-time lows, international presence and respect questionable at best, your party losing important voting groups including Black and Hispanic voters, a general malaise of dissatisfaction throughout the country?  You wag the dog.

When you have ruined everything you can touch and people are beginning to realize that you really are destroying America, what do you do?  Wag the Dog.  Wag and wag and wag and hopefully the people will all be sufficiently distracted to forget about what you are really doing and have done.  Wag, and wag, and wag, and wag.  The good thing is that the mainstream media will follow the lead and divert attention from the damaging stories to the new diversions.

So, wag number 1:  Leak the story that Justice Breyer is retiring, forcing him to announce now rather than at the end of the current term.  Announce that you will have a nomination by the end of February and that all males and all women who are not Black need not apply, for the President will appoint a Black Female.  This should (you think) please the Black voters (perhaps brings them back into the fold),  and the news should focus on the nomination and confirmation process instead of America’s problems.

That backfires.  Most of the country notices that this limitation of consideration to Black Females is racist and sexist and goes against everything this country stands for.  Too many questions.  You need another distraction.

Wag number 2:  Russia and the Ukraine.  Russia is rattling its swords on the Ukrainian border.  Let’s just get all hysterical about that (even though the president of Ukraine suggests that war is not imminent, and that the U.S. hysteria is most likely to cause a war rather than prevent one).  Nonetheless, continue the hysterics, leak negotiations and letters sent to Vladimir Putin in an attempt to show how tough you are, and send troops to the area.

It becomes more and more credible and evident that you want a war – that would certainly fill the news, distracting from failure after failure  Meanwhile you make it clear that Americans cannot count on their country to assist them should conflict develop (shades of Afghanistan!). 

This isn’t working.  Putin is perhaps more patient than you thought and has not invaded.  Send more troops.  Beat your chest a little more and try to raise hysteria about this conflict.  Not working.

Wag number 3:  Kill a Syrian terrorist.  This in itself is not bad, but what hurts is that along with the terrorist you kill at least 13 civilians, many of whom are children.  The description of the event does not show our execution of such assassinations at their skillful best and the death of innocents recalls the botched drone strike during the last days of Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of America-friendly civilians and children. 

News of this morning’s strike  in Syria is still coming out, and as usual Biden makes a statement but refuses to answer questions.  But some early reports from the area include the following:

• “Omar Saleh, a resident of a nearby house, told the Associated Press he was asleep when his doors and windows started to rattle to the sound of low-flying aircraft at 1:10 a.m. local time. He ran to open the windows with the lights off and saw three helicopters. He then heard a man, speaking Arabic with an Iraqi or Saudi accent through a loudspeaker, urging women to surrender or leave the area. This went on for 45 minutes. There was no response. Then the machine gun fire erupted.”
•  “Residents and activists told the AP that there were multiple deaths near the home that was raided, which included civilians. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said nine people were killed, including two children. The White Helmets, a civil defense group in the country, tweeted that 13 people, including six children and four women, were killed. Our teams rushed an injured child to the hospital. The child's entire family was killed in the operation. The teams also rushed another person to the hospital who was injured in the clashes when he approached the scene to witness what was happening."
• “The suicide vest detonation caused some civilian casualties, but the number of civilian deaths reported on the ground do "not correspond with what U.S. officials say occurred on the ground last night," two U.S. officials stated.

This should be a distraction for awhile at least, but probably not long enough.  So, just in case, we have potential Wag number 4:  the cancer cure.  Wednesday Biden announced his renewed launch of the “Cancer Moonshot” which he promises will end cancer (unlike his promises to end Covid and perhaps a distraction from that failed promise).  His plans include “mobilizing the entire government” against cancer and forming a “Cancer Cabinet.”

Just more show to distract us from the real news, the news that, if heard, will make it undeniable that this President is a total failure who is driving this country full speed ahead toward its destruction. 

This can get dangerous.  Let’s not forget that about a year ago Biden broke his foot while playing with his dog. 

If this were the movie sequel to Wag the Dog, we would be rolling in the aisles with laughter wondering how the author came up with such an incompetent president with so many damaging issues needing so many distractions.  We’d think it a great story.  But this is real, and it is not very funny.

Biden Knows What He Is Doing, And He Is Doing It with Glee

Yes, Biden’s behavior clearly exhibits major signs of senility, but until he is removed from office via the 25^th Amendment or otherwise, he is responsible for what he is doing.  And what he is doing is upending the core principles that make America what it is.

Gleefully dismantling the Constitution

Biden and his administration admit that their attempted use of OSHA to enforce a vaccine mandate is a workaround the Constitution, essentially admitting that they know they do not have the Constitutional authority to create such a mandate.  Yet they do it anyway.

But this is not the first or only attempt on Biden’s part to circumvent the Constitution.  Biden admitted that it would be unconstitutional for him to have the CDC mandate an eviction moratorium, yet he did so anyway.  He has claimed total federal authority over states in regard to abortion by having his Attorney General file suit against the state of Texas.  Perhaps most egregious is his support for packing the Supreme Court – turning it into a political body and thus destroying the checks and balances between the three branches of government.  Those checks and balances are a critical piece of our Constitution and its protections of our rights.

Biden attempts to justify his failure to follow and uphold the Constitution by blaming things like the pandemic or Trump or the people who oppose his various policies, but these are all just smoke that cover his unprecedented and unpresidential power grab.

First, let’s remember that our country is based on the idea of limited federal government.  The Tenth Amendment provides that “powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”  The Constitution explicitly grants each branch of the federal government a limited set of carefully defined enumerated powers, while reserving most other powers to the states.  Some clauses such as the Commerce Clause have been interpreted in a way that gives the federal government broader control over some issues, but the basic principle of a limited federal government has not changed.   

The federal government cannot exercise unlimited control over the states.  Not even in an alleged attempt to stop a pandemic. 

As an aside, it is hard to argue that the Biden OSHA mandate is realistically about protecting our health when all non-citizen border crossers (legal and illegal) are exempted, all employees of businesses with less than 100 workers are exempted, all retirees are exempted, all members of Congress and their staffs are exempted, and other exemptions continue to be revealed.  Moreover, Biden asserts that the intent is to protect the already vaccinated from the unvaccinated; one wonders: If such protection is necessary, then what is the purpose of a vaccination anyway?  The pandemic is nothing more than a cover for an unconstitutional power grab.

Biden took an oath to uphold the Constitution, yet he completely ignores and violates it.  He proudly acknowledges that he is doing so.  And while he destroys the very core of our democracy, he angrily attacks those who object as he sows and cultivates dissension and hatred.

Gleefully creating a country whose people are dependent on authoritative government

Along with seizing unconstitutional power, Biden’s authoritative regime seeks to create rules and programs that will establish a dependency of all of us on the federal government.  The problem with these socialist style programs, however, is that they are paid for by the people’s tax dollars which, in large part due to the dependence on the programs they are funding, often run out.

Marc Short, Mike Pence’s former chief of staff, stated, “I think if you look at the number of the amount of spending over the last year between the COVID tax relief, the infrastructure package and now this [3.5 trillion spending bill], you'll be talking about $12 trillion dollars, which in essence would be one hundred thousand dollars given to every family in America if you were to send direct payments.”

Think of that.  Think of the taxes, the debt, the money printing that will need to happen.  These bills and others in the works by the Left would govern your life from pre-birth to death and beyond.  The Left would have guaranteed incomes, guaranteed health, guaranteed childcare, guaranteed transportation, guaranteed housing, guaranteed meals, pretty much everything you might need or want guaranteed by the government. 

Of course, the quality or amount of each thing guaranteed is not guaranteed and will of necessity diminish with greater demand and/or fewer tax dollars.  And when you have given all your money to the government you will be forced to take whatever it is they choose to give you.

Beyond dependence on the government via a variety of “assistance” programs, the government creates more and more rules to govern every aspect of your life.  These rules will make all the decisions for you so that you do not have to.  The rules decide what you can and cannot do/say/eat/believe, etc.  They remove the difficult anxiety of some decision making and cause more than a few to think that they are just one regulation away from total bliss which only a big government, authoritarian “nanny state” can provide.

They will do this in the name of concern for your welfare, but what these “nanny state” rules really do is take away your key freedom of choice. 

In this country we have individual freedoms protected by our Constitution.  The concepts of individual liberty and personal responsibility are key to America’s greatness and her survival and are also the antithesis of big government.  Authoritarian regimes tell their citizens how and what they can think, do, believe.  In America we have the freedom to make those decisions for ourselves.

The pandemic (like any good crisis) has not gone to waste for the Left and the Biden administration.  This administration would have you confuse freedom with safety and happiness and keep you in a state of anxious fear.  Using uncertainty and fear they have been able to create a climate in which many are more willing to relinquish personal freedom for safety and certainty.  Those who do not are characterized and criticized as selfish.

With such fear and then personal shaming the Left believes you will more willingly turn your freedom over to the government for their false promise of happiness in return.  But it doesn’t work that way.  When we relinquish our personal liberty, we relinquish who we are and instead leave it to an authoritarian government to define us.

While of course we need some government rules and regulations, we also need to retain our freedom and our responsibility so that we can continue to have a government of/for/by the people rather than a government of authoritarian control.

Biden clearly does not see it that way.  He gleefully would cow everyone into submission to his vision of whom you should be and how you should behave.  If you do not comply, he calls you selfish and pits the more compliant citizens against you (for example telling the vaccinated that those who have chosen not to be vaccinated, perhaps because of serious health reasons, are threatening the vaccinated even with murder).  Biden often equates his dissenters with terrorists.

Don’t fall for it.  Freedom may not be safe or easy or certain; it by necessity includes uncertainty and the anxiety that comes with being responsible for one’s own life choices, especially when those choices are not clear or easy.  But freedom allows you to be who you are rather than simply an animal confined within the cage of government control.

Gleefully putting American values last

Honor and exceptionalism are words that have often been used in conjunction with America.  “American exceptionalism is the idea that the United States is inherently different from other nations. Its proponents argue that the values, political system, and historical development of the U.S. are unique in human history, often with the implication that the country is both destined and entitled to play a distinct and positive role on the world stage" (Seymour Martin Lipset).

While not perfect, America has generally been seen as the “good guys”, the country that stands for such things as human rights, individual liberties, honesty, and honor.  Biden seems to think all that is a joke. 

Within our country Biden is dismantling not only our Constitution but is also demeaning and destroying concepts such as personal liberty, personal responsibility, individual achievement, and equality (the fact that “equity” is the antithesis of “equality” has been the subject of previous posts).  He has destroyed jobs and is destroying the economy while inflation is out of control.  Despite his claims for unity, he puts divisive identity politics on steroids as he pits every group he can define against one another. 

But he is also destroying this country on the international stage.  He presents an administration of apology, weakness, and concession rather than one of pride and power.  And honor he gleefully trashed as he completely botched the Afghanistan withdrawal, then repeatedly lied about what he had done, and then ignored and left as essentially prisoners of war an undetermined number of civilian American citizens.  Honor be damned, Joe seems proud of what he has done.

Save America from Biden

It sure seems like Biden hates America; he is certainly doing everything he can to destroy it.   His power grabs are clearly authoritarian.  His diminishment of us puts us in danger internationally.  And he seems to immensely enjoy what he is doing.

As a leader he is a terrible example.  He cannot uphold his oath of office.  He lies about everything.  He laughs at America and its people and calls them names.  Yes, he seems to enjoy what he is doing.

It is hard for me to write this, because to cover all Biden’s un or anti-American behavior would take far too many pages for a blog post, and yet I know and fear that most Americans are in large part unaware of his actions and his lies due to the media’s protection and lack of negative coverage of him.  So we just let him go on with his dishonest and destructive behavior while those who are looking see America falling.

The blood of a dying America is on Biden’s hands, but also on all those who fail to see what is happening, who gladly turn over their rights and freedoms to a man who does not respect them but will simply use them for his own delight and power.

Biden knows exactly what he is doing, and he is doing it gleefully.  But do you know what he is doing, and do you care?

Blood On Your Hands

I am not going to pussyfoot around anymore:  Everyone who voted for Biden along with all who made his election possible have blood on their hands. 

Those of you who voted for Biden knowing his policies, inadequacies, and mental condition, I can at least acknowledge that you knew what you were doing and acknowledge if not accept that you hate America that much.

But those of you who voted for Biden without thought or independent inquiry into him, his record, his policies, his mental state, for you there is no excuse.  You failed in your responsibility as an American and as a voter.  You just did what you were told, whether by media or Twitter or friends on Facebook who said that you must (1) hate Trump and (2) vote for Biden.

The deaths of the brave 13 above are the first military deaths in Afghanistan in 18 months.  They died as a result of a fiasco orchestrated by our senile president.

The deaths of these young men and women are on your hands as are the deaths of all the others who died in the Kabul bombing Thursday and who have yet to die, but surely will, as we leave them stranded, leave the Taliban and its allied terrorists with our military equipment and our biometrics and the names of our allied Afghanis who fought for us – now they will die because of us.

“Oh,” you say, “this is all Trump’s fault.”  NO, it is not.  Yes, he negotiated a U.S. pull out with the Taliban, but that pull out came with strict sanctions.  And, at the time of the actual pull out there would have been a plan:  American civilians out first, then our Afghani allies, then refugees, then the military.  Only a complete idiot would do that in reverse, yet that is what Biden has done.  And you will recall that Biden has reversed nearly everything else Trump did while in office, so Biden could have reversed Trump’s Afghanistan policy as well.

This is all on Biden.  And his advisors (who have been more concerned with advancing various socialist agendas than with the safety, security, and international standing of our country).  And on all his supporters and all of those including the media and its misleading half-truths that helped lead to Biden’s election.  It is on his wife and family who had to know his mental condition yet encouraged him to run for President of the United States of America and put the country and the lives of all of us in it at risk.  And it is on everyone who voted for Biden or in any way aided in his election.

I am not feeling able to forgive you.  You owe America an apology.  Think about that as you continue to watch the demise of what was once a great nation.

Biden won’t take responsibility but perhaps you can. 

And, if this nation is fortunate enough to make it to the next election without first becoming a completely authoritarian regime, then please do your job as Americans and research for whom you cast your vote.  For your ignorance and malleability are a huge part of the problem.

Are You OK With Your Vote?

Friends and others who voted for Biden:  is this really what you voted for:

      ·        Abandoning America and American allies in Afghanistan and lying about it and about the numbers we are leaving behind;
·        Showing weakness, lack of credibility, lack of honor, lack of trustworthiness on the world stage;
·        Lots of talk about human rights, but actions that belie any real concern;
·        Huge increases in the national debt, inflation, energy and gas prices;
·        Varieties of shortages;
·        Policies that disfavor small business and individual initiative;
·        Extended, if not permanent, entitlements, often based on race or other identity group characteristics;
·        Open borders;
·        No transparency and divisive polices based on political favoritism and based in socialist philosophies;
·        Promotion of racist programs such as CRT than engender disdain if not hate for American history and ideals;
·        Censorship of independent thought and increasing government control over individual thought and action to the detriment of our First Amendment freedoms;

      ·        Acceptance of an obviously senile president with his hand in control of our nuclear arsenal?

Do you accept or ignore daily headlines such as this morning’s from CNN - headlines that are already out of date as the situation in Afghanistan grows increasingly dire by the minute?

Is all of the above what you voted for?  And if not, where are you?  

You were certainly vocal in your hatred for President Trump.  Your current silence is deafening, but more importantly it is frightening.  It is frightening on many levels, especially as it seems to reflect either your complete disengagement from the world or your total lack of ability to think about what is going on.  Moreover, it leaves America without the concern and defense of its citizens; it leaves those who would see this country completely remade into something else with a green light to do as they please.

It sure looks like your “concern” for America that you constantly proclaimed (often quite offensively) during the Trump presidency was not any sort of actual informed concern at all but rather just what you thought (I believe little thought was involved) saw as the “in-crowd” thing to do.  Perhaps you were simply accepting and parroting what you were told without question or thought.  Perhaps you might ask yourself “why?”

How about actually seeing what is going on and thinking for yourself?  Then tell us, with as loud a voice as you berated Trump and his supporters, if you are OK with the man you placed in the White House.  Tell us if you are OK with the destruction of America and Her ideals that he is fostering. 

Speak up.   Because soon it may be too late.

This is the End

Biden is not a competent president (and maybe not even a legitimate one).  But he is presiding over the end of America as we know Her.

Too many seem to have given up on Her honor and Her soul.
(Do I need to remind you of the details of how Biden and the Left have sullied these?  I have been warning you since this blog began over 4 years ago.  If you remain unaware you are blind, deaf, dumb and fully brainwashed by the soulless Left.)

            “Your eyes are open but you can't see
            Your mouth is moving but you don't speak"
                        -from “This is the End (For You My Friend”), full lyrics below

But what is currently happening in Afghanistan ought to wake you up.  Biden has betrayed our allies and deserted our American citizens; he has put a permanent stain on America’s honor and credibility around the world.  And he has overnight made the world a much more dangerous place.  This is not the behavior of a President (or of anyone) who has any love for or belief in America and Her ideals. It is a complete dereliction of presidential duty and responsibility.

Those of you who are silent, if you have any independent spirit left, at least say farewell to all you know.

It may not happen overnight (though it might), but this is the end, for you my friend and our country.

 

Some of my notes from today:
        Some of today’s Afghanistan headlines:          

      ·        US military starts withdrawing from Afghanistan as Americans remain trapped
·        Americans Abandoned in Afghanistan
·        Biden Decides Against Extending Evacuation Timeline After Taliban Threatens ‘Consequences’
·        Biden Admin Confirms 4,000 Americans And Their Families Have Been Evacuated, Potentially Thousands Still In Afghanistan
·        House Dems: It Is ‘Not Possible’ To Evacuate Americans And Afghan Allies From Afghanistan By August 31st, ‘Deadline Must Be Extended’
·        Afghanistan debacle upends Biden's upcoming summit with Israel's Bennett
·        Pelosi praises spending bill advancing as ‘great day of pride’ for US amid Afghanistan crisis
·        Why President Biden Just Made The Next 9/11 More Likely
·        The Biden Administration's Descent Into Unreality
·        8 Months In, Biden's Cascade of Failure
·        Biden pours salt into wounds of relations with Europe at G7 meeting
·        Can the U.S. Recover From the Afghanistan Debacle?

       ·        Biden reveals admin relying on bloodthirsty Taliban sticking to its word on crucial deadline

       ·         Arizona AG warns of potential border threat from terrorists freed by Taliban in Afghanistan    

       Notes made while listening to Biden speech this afternoon:

      ·        Begins with infrastructure and voting bills, praising those who are furthering the Left's socialist agenda, before turning to Afghanistan.  Praises himself. 
·        “If the Taliban cooperates, we will continue til Aug. 31” (does he really think the Taliban is cooperative when it beats Americans trying to get to the airport, goes house to house to find and “take action” against American collaborators?) 
·        “We are continuing our efforts.” Does he understand that “our efforts” are too little too late? 
·        Then he justifies (again!) his decision to pull out but does not address the disaster his failure to have a plan or to listen to experts has created for Americans, Afghans, and the world. 
·        Leaves without taking any questions.

This Is The End (For You My Friend) Lyrics

from album: For Blood And Empire (2006) by Anti-Flag
Songwriters: Christopher Lee Barker / Patrick C. Bollinger / Justin Cathal Geever / Christopher Mark Head
This Is the End (for You My Friend) lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing
Music video:  LINK 

Seems every station on the tv
Is selling something no one can be
If every page was torn from the magazine
Would cash still drive the media machine?
The products, damage and pursuit are endless
Identity can leave you selfless

We will not witness this anymore
This is the end for you my friend
I can't forgive, I won't forget
On and on, we sing our songs and
On and on, the wars wage on and
On and on, we sing our songs for more
For more

Your eyes are open but you can't see
Your mouth is moving but you don't speak
A blitzkrieg of images to break your will
I hope you choke on every pill

We will not witness this anymore
This is the end for you my friend
I can't forgive, I won't forget
On and on, we sing our songs and
On and on, the wars wage on and
On and on, we sing our songs for more

We will not witness this anymore
This is the end for you my friend
I can't forgive, I won't forget...

This is the end for you my friend
I can't forgive, I won't forget
On and on, we sing our songs and
On and on, the wars wage on and
On and on, we sing our songs and
On and on, the wars wage on and
On and on, we sing our songs and
On and on, your wars wage on and
On and on, we sing our songs for more
We sing our songs for more

“Joe is Joe”

Fox interviewed people in Los Angeles about the crisis in Afghanistan.  One man told Fox News: "Obviously the people in charge should be held responsible."  But he added: "Joe is Joe … You’re not gonna get rid of the Joe just 'cause of a bad decision."

And therein lies the problem.  Joe is Joe.  We just accept him and his “bad decisions.”  We ignore the fact that this is far more than a “bad decision.”

Joe is lying to us.  Just this morning we learned that the White House readout from his phone call with French President Emmanuel Macron omitted an impassioned plea from Macron for the U.S. to share in the moral responsibility to protect Afghan nationals that are in danger.

Who called Biden out on this?  Not the American news media or the American people but rather the British news.

Indeed, who in this country is calling Biden out on any of his “bad decisions”?  Sure, a few Republican leaders whom the media is likely to paint as extremist for doing so.  But where is the press?  Where are the people?  Or has this country simply decided to accept that “Joe is Joe” and let him be while they go about the mundane tasks of their daily lives?  Do they not see that the very essence of those lives are changing dramatically under Joe’s “leadership” of bad decisions?

So, we’re “not gonna get rid of the Joe just 'cause of a bad decision."  OK.  But at least look at the ramifications of some of these bad decisions.  They include: an open border crisis; institutionalization of the hatred of identity politics using indoctrination and flawed theories like CRT; politicization of Covid; encouragement of silencing of opposition voices and hence weakening the First Amendment; energy dependence and higher gas and energy prices; highest inflation perhaps ever; weakened economy; rising crime; and, of course, Afghanistan.

Regarding Afghanistan, the President is for the most part secluded, perhaps in the same basement where he hid during the presidential campaign.  He pops out, perhaps when his handlers demand or drag him to the door, and gives an incoherent speech or interview that has no connection to the reality of what is happening in Afghanistan. 

He made a “bad decision”, one that he believes is the best that anyone could have made.  Rather than getting civilians out first and then military, he without warning pulled the military.  There was chaos.  The Taliban immediately seized the country, reinstituting their Sharia rules and terrorist behavior.  They seized American equipment and weapons. 

Today the Taliban mocked us with this photo of Taliban warriors recreating the iconic Iwo Jima photo – in both pictures the uniforms and arms are American but the flag being raised in the new photo is that of the Taliban.  Terrorism experts are telling us that the dangers of terrorist acts have hugely increased as a result of the Taliban takeover.  This takeover is seen worldwide as a victory for the Taliban, Al Qaeda, and terrorism and as an embarrassing defeat for America.

As Afghanistan fell, Joe started sending troops back in.  But at that point the embassy was closed and personnel were huddled at the airport.  Americans and American allies can’t get through Taliban check points to get to the airplanes waiting to evacuate them.  Today they were told not to come to the airport and also that we could not come to rescue them. 

Joe touts the few Americans who have been airlifted out, ignoring the 15,000 or so who remain (the administration says they have no estimate of how many Americans are in Afghanistan).  

As the Taliban was asserting its power which includes subjugation of women and complete intolerance of alternate lifestyles, Joe was celebrating World Humanitarian Day.  His mental competence apparently does not include an understanding of the word “irony” or “hypocritical.”

So, sure, Joe made a “bad decision,” but it does not, it cannot end there.  Every decision has consequences.  This one is abandoning Americans, turning Afghanistan back to terrorists, embarrassing America on the world stage, and acting with dishonor toward those whom we used to help us while there (e.g. Afghani translators) and toward the Afghani army and people who came to depend upon us.

I suspect most Americans believed we should get out of Afghanistan, but there were better ways to do it.  Trump’s plan included leaving some special forces there to ensure this debacle didn’t happen.  I think nearly anyone could have come up with a better plan than Joe for the actual withdrawal, beginning with removing civilians before the military.  There was no immediate rush – Americans were not being slaughtered.  It could have been planned and executed with more time and thought.  But it wasn’t and, again, Joe believes it is all good.

So, how many “bad decisions” will it take before the people decide that they are “gonna get rid of the Joe”?  I know if this were Trump, we would already have several investigations underway, an impeachment in progress, and serious talks about the 25^th Amendment as well as demands for his resignation.  Note, those Trump impeachments and investigations were all nothing but a waste of taxpayer money, as is the continuing investigations of Jan. 6 even though the FBI has found “scant evidence” of any coordination and “no evidence that Trump or people directly around him were involved in organizing the violence.”

But that was Trump and this is Joe.  "Joe is Joe … You’re not gonna get rid of the Joe just 'cause of a bad decision."  But what you are going to “get rid of” is America as the shining beacon of democracy and freedom.  Complacency can easily become misery and despair.  Let Joe be “Sleepy Joe” if you want, but America and Americans need to wake up and confront what is going on.

Ask yourself if America can survive another 3 ½ years of Joe’s “bad decisions”. Ask yourself if you care.  And if you do, ask yourself what you are going to do about it.

Joe’s World

Welcome to Joe’s World, a place totally disengaged from reality.  Now even acknowledged by CNN, ABC, NBC, and other members of the mainstream media (aka the Democrat propaganda machine).

Anyone who has watched President Biden over the last few days has got to see how disconnected he is from reality, and especially from the reality of what is happening on the ground in Kabul.  Today in his rambling press conference he told us there is no problem getting to the Kabul airport to be airlifted out. 

Meanwhile, the media tells and shows us that the Taliban has set up checkpoints around the airport that may or may not let people, including Americans, through.  They show us the Taliban going house to house searching for American allies whom they beat or worse, they show us indiscriminate whippings taking place outside the Kabul airport.   Military and security officials state that Americans are being beaten, yet Biden tells us that no one is impeded as they make their way to the airport.

ABC’s Afghanistan correspondent Ian Pannell stated that “It just seems the reality and the rhetoric are miles apart. I’m not quite sure what advice the president is receiving. But the truth on the ground is that these people who are in fear of their lives can’t get through.”

The President told us that Al Qaeda is no longer in Afghanistan.  Barely an hour later, a spokesman for the Defense Department stated, "We know that Al Qaeda is a presence as well as ISIS in Afghanistan."

Biden states we will get all the Americans out, but he has no idea how we will do so or how many Americans are in Afghanistan.  He won’t put up a secure perimeter around the airport.  He will not allow our troops to go outside the airport to rescue Americans or the Afghanis who aided our troops as translators and others.  Britain and France are doing this, but not Joe.   

Biden says that “any American who wants to come home we will get home.”  But then he says he “cannot promise what the final outcome will be.”   Perhaps he thinks that just saying everyone will get out will simply make it so.  It will not.

But beyond the lies spouted to create his fictional narrative that all is well in Afghanistan and that he is some sort of a hero for creating this mess (he stated the pull out could not have been done better than this), what was truly frightening when I watched today’s press conference (as well as much of the Stephanopoulos interview with him yesterday along with reading the transcript of the omitted parts of that interview) is the more general rambling dissociation that Biden seems to have.

Biden is truly disengaged from reality.  But I don’t know if it is lies or lack of mental competence.  Either way, it is embarrassing to see this behavior in the President of the United States of America.  And it is frightening.  To me he seems like a senile old man that I wouldn’t let near my kitchen stove for fear of some disaster, yet this is the man who has his finger on the button of our nuclear arsenal.  Think about that for a minute, especially those of you who wrung your hands for four years because Trump had that access, crying that the world would end.

Biden, like a cranky old man, decided to pull out of Afghanistan and so he did.  Period.  His mission was accomplished.  But it was done so without a plan, without thought, without listening or hearing the advice of his own experts, without any concern for the survival of American citizens and their allies.  This is not the behavior of a competent president of the greatest nation in the world.

Like a child, or like an adult with an infantile mind, Biden just did what he felt like - apparently without any thought. This is truly dangerous behavior for an American President.

So where is everyone who was so concerned about every daily word and gesture of President Trump?  Have you lost interest in America?  Are you ashamed that you voted for this sad excuse for a world leader?  Are the voices in your heads telling you “Walk on by, nothing to see here”?

If the past 8 months have not already convinced you that the mind of our current president is not up to the task, then certainly this Afghanistan debacle should persuade you.  Joe may or may not be a nice guy, but he is not competent to hold office. 

This country is in crisis.  Not because it is not woke, but because its President is asleep at the wheel.  His world, and his alleged leadership, is disconnected from reality.  As such, he is destroying America if not the world.  And too many Americans seem to be willing to just close their eyes and let him do it.

Now is not the time to turn your back on America like Joe seems to be doing.

Putting on a Show is Not Leadership

Just an update from this morning’s post regarding Afghanistan and Biden.

So Joe flew in from vacation, gave a speech that did not address the real issue, and flew back out again.  Back to a vacation that seems to be more important to him that his job as leader of this country.  And so we go back to black out silence from the White House.

The speech was off point.  Biden’s assertive claim that “the buck stops here” was meaningless in light of the fact that he took no responsibility whatsoever for the disaster of this pull out. 

Rather, Biden (as predicted) blamed everyone but himself:  Trump, the Afghan military, the Afghan leaders, even the Afghan people themselves.  Perhaps even the people of America as he seemed to think we needed some sort of schooling about the history of American involvement in Afghanistan.

Trying to deflect from the real issue, Biden presented this crisis as if it were about the choice to stay in Afghanistan or pull out.  That is a different question from the issue of the actual circumstances of the pullout itself.  (Or, maybe he doesn’t really understand what today’s issue is)

Since the beginning of our involvement in Afghanistan the American people have been divided on whether or not we should be there and if so, how long we should remain.  Four presidents have presided over that question.   Previous presidents have worked to decrease the size of our military presence there.  Trump had a plan to pull out our troops which he was doing slowly, and with a plan that included severe response if the Taliban acted to take over the country.  Every former president’s plans regarding Afghanistan have been met with criticism, but they have not resulted in the ruinous consequences that we are seeing today.

While Biden can point to other presidents as having some responsibility for what happened throughout America’s time in Afghanistan, he cannot place blame for the actual manner in which the pull out was handled on those prior administrations.

Biden alone made the decision to fully pull out at this moment.  He can do that as president, even against the advice of his own military advisors.  While he focused on the question of whether or not we should remain in Afghanistan and spent most of the time defending his decision to pull out, that is not the issue today.

Biden’s decision to pull out ended the pending question of whether or not we should remain in Afghanistan. 

The current issue is the atrocious lack of planning and foresight of the Biden administration in carrying out that pull out decision. 

Biden’s pull out began in the middle of the night with no warning to our Afghani allies.  The Taliban acted in a way that was apparently predictable to most military and foreign affairs experts.  Those predictions were carried to Biden, but he either did not understand or ignored them and simply pulled out with no plan.

This calamitous pullout is catastrophic for human rights in Afghanistan – for women, children, LGBTQ+, and others.  It is a death sentence for many Afghanis.  It is a gift to terrorists such as Al Qaida. 

Biden in his speech asserted his concern for human rights in Afghanistan – yet at this point and with the Taliban in control, it will be close to impossible for him to do anything for those rights.

Biden also said we would get both our personnel and our allies out, from the airport.  Does he understand that the airport is not yet secured and that there is only one road into the airport which is controlled by a Taliban roadblock?  Does he know that many whom he says we will fly out are not at the airport having been told by his administration to shelter in place?  Does he even know there is no plan?

Biden gave a speech full of tough words and crocodile tears and statements of his concern for human rights and assertions of what a great leader he is.  He put on a show that I think the American people are smart enough not to fall for.

I think that Biden has no real idea at all what is going on and he has no plan (never had a plan) for the actual pull out that he decided to order.  He belatedly floats in from vacation, gives a speech that ignores the real issue and deflects blame on everyone but himself, and floats back off to who knows where.  He claims to be a humanitarian, that humanitarianism is the core of his foreign policy, but ignores that the manner in which this pull out was executed is devastating for any humanitarian cause.

The situation in Afghanistan is frightful, the horribly executed pull out is the cause, and the blame for that falls entirely upon Biden – yes, the buck for that does stop with him, if only he would acknowledge that.

I am left with the same question that I had when I wrote this morning’s post:  Do we even have a President?  At this point my answer is:  Certainly not a competent one.

 

Do We Even Have a President? A Rant.

As I write this our President is still in hiding.  The press secretary has closed her press office for a week.  Democrats continue to simply point a finger at the previous administration for every failure of the current Biden administration.  Indeed, as noted in my previous post, blame seems to be the only thing this administration does well.  This morning, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the failure of the Afghan military is to blame for the Taliban’s swift takeover of Afghanistan.

As America and the world fall apart around us, I wonder what the Biden voters are thinking?  How do they feel when they learn that the people we abandoned in the middle of the night in Afghanistan are clinging to the final aircraft leaving Kabul and then falling to their death from 1000 feet in the sky?  How do they feel when they learn that gunfire at the airport involving our military has now resulted in at least two deaths?  How do they feel when our woke Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley tells us that terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda will now reconstitute themselves far more quickly than expected and in less than 2 years?  What about the Afghani women and children to whom we gave education and hope who now will be faced with the harshness of Sharia law for their progress?

Do you even know that this embarrassment that some experts call the worst blunder in American international history is even going on?  Where is the outrage?  You certainly had plenty over every word out of President Trump’s mouth.  Or are you now just too busy wondering if your neighbor is wearing their mask when they have visitors inside their own house?

Those of you that are old enough must be feeling some of the same as you did in 1975 during the final pullout from Vietnam.  Or doesn’t it matter any more just so long as we don’t have Donald Trump for president?

The terrorist threat is back.   Not from your neighbor who opposes vaccines and mask mandates but from the new power of the Taliban combined with our open borders.  You who voted for Biden were so afraid of Trump – do you feel safer now?

But you have all seemingly gone into hiding with our supposed President.  Do you have any idea how Biden is absolutely destroying this country beyond any hope of repair?  And now he is doing the same to the world.

Good luck when you can’t buy gas or food or other necessary or nearly necessary consumer goods; when inflation is so high that your paycheck becomes close to worthless.  Good luck when the big government entitlement and other help programs run out of money because no one is working or able to pay the taxes they require.  Good luck when your primary value in life becomes hate rather than tolerance for anyone who thinks, looks, or is in a different identity group from you.

And as to the world and America’s place in it:  Biden’s handling (or mishandling) of the Afghanistan withdrawal has put us in peril with both our allies and our enemies.  The allies will never trust us again, and the enemies know that if they just are patient, we don’t have the stamina to finish the fight and they can win whatever battle they have with us in the end.

Perhaps you don’t know what is going on.  Afterall, while the Taliban can still post on Twitter and other social media, Trump along with other conservative voices are banned.  You are fed only what supports the party line; contrary facts and expert voices are excluded.  Pelosi banned questions from Republican Congress people to experts about what is happening in Afghanistan.   Even the facts you are given by the administration and the mainstream media are often distorted.  But perhaps you don’t care.  You got rid of the “evil orange man” and so all is well.

I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you are clueless about what is going on.  So, here are some current news pieces you may not have seen.  I hope that you will read and think about them and perhaps take a moment to speak up.  At least take the time to say a prayer for the American lives that were and are being lost in Afghanistan apparently for nothing and for the Afghanis who stood by us and helped us while we were there and whom we are now abandoning to the Taliban.

From former U.S. Navy SEAL Rob O’Neill, who killed al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in 2011 :

“This is the worst loss in American history. Our most popular president has vanished. Prove me wrong.”

“Everything Democrats touch turns to s**t. Prove me wrong.”

“My friends who died for no reason would be disgusted with this administration.”

“Have any of our generals and admirals resigned out of disgrace yet?”

“We’ve heard more from The Taliban than we have from the most popular president in our history. Anything @PressSec ?”

“People are being killed trying to evacuate Kabul. But don’t worry… Jen Psaki will tell us what’s actually happening once dips**t goes to sleep.”

“Do I have this all right?: Our border is wide open, China’s biological weapon is surging, we closed our pipelines but opened Russia’s, the Taliban is back in charge, we are defunding the police and people with penises are women. What did I miss?”

“Joe Biden opposed the raid to kill bin Laden. At least he lost Afghanistan in 7 months.”

“Remember when people held hands and jump to their deaths out of the twin towers? Neither does @POTUS”

From Kurt Volker, expert in U.S. foreign and national security policy with some 30 years of experience in a variety of government, academic, and private sector capacities.  “Afghanistan’s End Portends a Darker U.S. Future” LINK  

NY Time Guest Opinion “Biden could have stopped the Taliban, He Chose not to” LINK

The New Yorker – “Does the Great Retreat from Afghanistan Mark the End of the American Era?” LINK

From USA Today,  “Biden's Afghanistan horror: A well-intentioned miscalculation with disastrous, predictable results”    LINK 

“Please America, don’t miss this one lesson from Afghanistan” LINK