The Yellow Dog Is Down

I had started a post on another topic yesterday. But that was before I watched the debate. People everywhere are responding and commenting, so anything I add here is unnecessary. And yet, because it was historic, unprecedented, and a lot of other adjectives, I want to do a little collection of responses here for the sake of history.

The Setup

My attitude before the debate was that it was likely to be interesting, and maybe I’d tune in. I’ve speculated (I’m not alone in this) that their plan A was to hope he would do well enough. But their more likely plan B was to have this debate early—it comes before either party’s convention and official nomination—so they could finagle some way to replace him on the convention floor (procedures to make that legal TBD).

The question was how Biden would do. We’ve seen him be feeble and deteriorating since his 2020 campaign, and yet the media hides that and says, “nothing to see here.” And his most recent State of the Union wasn’t as disastrous as might have been expected. There’s speculation that he’s drugged to keep him alert and looking somewhat functional for limited periods of time. And this debate was short, with all kinds of limitations to favor Biden. CNN hosted, so we could all predict the questions. Microphones would be cut off except during each candidate’s one-minute answer or response. Biden took over a week away from either campaigning or running the country, secluded at Camp David to prepare. Meanwhile, Trump was out on the campaign trail, during this space of time he’s not tied up in court (and hasn’t been sentenced to jail yet).

They were to have no audience, no notes (they had a pad of paper and a pen for their own use). No campaign people could talk to them during the advertising breaks. No earpieces. Biden did fuss with his ear, making people think he might be adjusting an against-the-rules earpiece so someone could be feeding him the answers. He likely also wears a hearing aid. It seemed to me they could disguise an earpiece to appear to be just a hearing aid, and they could cheat thereby. I can’t prove that, but they haven’t given us reason to trust them.

With all the advantages for Biden, I was concerned that he might not look all that bad. Maybe anti-Biden media scores the footage for only the stumbles, while the other side tries to eliminate those moments from their reporting. So I wasn’t sure we really knew how far gone he was.

But he was bad. Undeniably bad. His dementia was evident. And, even though we’ve seen him like that for years already, people who only watch certain biased news sources were seeing this version of Biden for the first time. And they were shocked.

So the question today (which has been floated around and being denied for a while) is whether/how to replace Biden, and with whom.

How Bad Was It?

I’m on a group chat with some fellow precinct chairs. The reposted tweets and memes started coming well before the debate was over. Many of the memes I’ve used are from that thread. I can’t attribute where I got them all, although many show names of who the original posters were. And some came from Facebook. I don’t mean to take personal credit for any; I’m just not able to trace them all.

Before we get to that fun, I want to state unequivocally that I am against elder abuse. Jill Biden is guilty of this. And whoever else has been propping him up Weekend-at-Bernie’s style. Joe Biden has been an evil person, and evidence from the laptop shows he has been selling out our country (I call it treason) for a long time. He deserves no respect. But the shell of a person they’re using isn’t capable of taking responsibility for his actions. He’s a prop, a puppet—more literally than any I know of in history or literature. It’s shameful to use a human in this way.

That said, there’s a fair amount of glee in response to last night’s debate. It started even before the debate began. I came across this version of Biden Debate Bingo, originating I think from Dan Scavino:

This was worth a chuckle beforehand. But during the debate I realized it was actually worth playing. (There are plenty of other versions of debate Bingo that I came across trying to re-find this one.) Biden came close to checking off the whole card. That first one, about Scranton, PA, was there, even though he left at age 10, nearly seven decades ago, never actually lived in working-class neighborhoods in Pennsylvania, and did his formative years in a wealthy area of Delaware.

Biden's walk onto the stage was a shuffle. His opening speech was a soft and hoarse mumble. Heavy slurring happened. He blamed Trump for all of the ills his administration has created. He needed his wife to escort him down the stairs and off the stage.

There were the lies—so plentiful that the middle free space on the Bingo card makes sense for that. He got fact-checked in real time, with Snopes, which has been notoriously wrong on this, finally admitting that Trump never said “there were good people on both sides” about actual hatemongers, only on both sides of the confederate symbols issue, which those of us who pay attention have known all along—because we listened to Trump’s actual speech at the time instead of the news spin about it.

And then there was Biden’s claim that the Border Patrol endorses him. There came a swift reply: “To be clear, we never have and never will endorse Biden.”

The brain freeze that happened not that far in was not something they could cover up by claiming those rascally Republicans created what Karine Jean-Pierre calls a Cheap Fake. The brain freeze moment was a historic turning point for our country. I’ve seen speculation that this is when the drugs they juiced him with kicked in. Or maybe they failed to kick in. Or maybe they wore off. Mr. Reagan (Chris Coles) speculated that he had a cold and it prevented him from getting drugged, because those drugs in addition to cold meds might kill a person in Biden’s condition. Before his response livestream was over, they learned that the media had indeed been informed ahead of time that Biden had a cold. That gives the media a way to excuse his less than stellar performance. Except—it was so bad, and so consistent with how he acts regularly (montages abound), that the media doesn’t seem willing to be other than shocked at his abysmal performance.

That first really big stumble is here. Benny Johnson clips it, and he’s pretty gleeful about it, but it’s a convenient clip. By the way, Biden does correct “trillionaires” to “billionaires” eventually, not shown here. Not that it helps. The math, if correct (dubious), of taxing billionaires in a way that would cause them to put money elsewhere—but if you assume they don’t change their behavior, then he says the additional taxes would be $500 million, which he corrects to $500 billion, over ten years. So $50 billion a year he says would wipe out all “his” deficits (does he mean Trump’s?) and do a bunch of other things. But he’s given more than $50 billion a year to Ukraine regularly now. So that would pretty much wipe out any theoretical new tax revenue. Right? It’s hard to tell what he means through the stumbling.

There was a point where he got stuck, backed up, and repeated words, the way you do when you have a memorized statement that you can’t quite remember, so you have to start at an earlier point to get the flow going again. In other words, he wasn’t thinking of answers; he was just trying to regurgitate talking points, and even that is what he was failing at.

There was a question on abortion. Biden thinks killing babies up to and beyond birth is a winning issue. And here’s how he “articulated” that:

Trump passed along this Babylon Bee meme, which is very nearly not satire:

Almost immediately afterward, to talk of replacing Biden began. CNN’s John King was one.

Houston radio guy Michael Berry passed along a tweet from NY Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wishing for Biden to step aside. Kristof is assuming, of course, that Biden is capable of reflecting on his debate performance, which I wouldn’t guarantee.

Charlie Kirk points out a Politico announcement that “Biden is toast.”

And a couple more:

During Robert Gouveia’s response video on Friday, he mentions a New York Times tweet, reported on by Cassandra McDonald with Tim Pool’s team, asking: “I would like to know why Nick Kristoff and the New York Times had this article calling for Biden to drop out due to his debate performance. Why was that already preloaded on their back end on June 25^th, two days before the debate.”

It may be like that old photo showing a headline that “Dewey Defeats Truman” back in1948; they have two versions, and they may print a limited number of both, and then when the news is certain they go ahead with the one that happened.

mistaken news headline, Truman won in 1948
image found here

But the New York Times seems to be pushing this message now. Today, Fox News reported this: “New York Times editorial board calls for Biden to drop out: His candidacy is a ‘reckless gamble’” (by Joseph A. Wulfsohn, Fox News, June 28, 2024). It’s getting weird when news outlets report as news the news and opinions of other news outlets. But I digress.

By the end of Friday I was hearing speculation about invoking the 25th Amendment. The downside of that is Kamala Harris, who is both sides' worst nightmare.

Today a Business Insider headline showed up in my news feed, with some fill-in-the-blank possibilities to replace Biden. I think seven is a stretch; they do not have a deep bench. Or any bench:

Among the nightmare scenarios, the most likely may be Gavin Newsome, who has ruined the formerly beautiful state of California beyond recognition and would like to do similar service to the entire US. And there’s Hillary still waiting around. (This is a meme, not real, I shouldn’t have to say, but…”

 

Was It Planned?

Was this all a setup? Was it planned as a way to take Biden out? It’s possible. Carol Swain is a careful thinker, but she’s looking at what we’re all seeing. And others agree:

It’s Not about Trump

Trump had some good moments in the debate. He was quick and capable, and answered what he wanted, regardless of the questions that were meant to set him up. One of the better moments was, “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either.” Biden had said something about the border being better now than under Trump, but even with the transcript it wasn’t intelligible, or truthful.

Trump was very understated. Almost never has there been a debate or major even like this when the talk wasn’t about Trump. He knows how to make talk happen. But this time—I believe intentionally—he was steady, less bombastic, clear, and clearly capable. He got out of the way and let Biden be the story, because it was not going to be anything but a bad story.

Polling show Trump shooting up about 15 percentage points and Biden dropping by about that many. Such a fall, for such good reason, is not recoverable. It’s probably well beyond the cheating margin.

Robert Gouveia shows a polling result immediately after
the debate, during his livestream and response

Serious Talk

There’s some satisfaction in seeing what we all knew finally being acknowledged by all but the “yellow dog Democrats” [i.e., those who would vote for any Democrat on the ticket, even if it’s a yellow dog], and even some yellow dog voters are bailing.

But the serious situation is, our country is being led by an incompetent man. Dr. Hur had said he wasn’t capable of standing trial because he’s an old man with memory problem. Maybe one ought to extrapolate from that that such a person doesn’t belong in the Oval Office, ostensibly running the free world.

And since we know he’s not capable of running the free world, we are being “ruled” by someone we did not vote for. (Not that We the People ever truly voted Biden in.) We don’t know who that is.

Glenn Beck pointed out the serious danger we’re in with a dementia patient who has access to the nuclear codes. He walked through the seven minutes it would take for a missile from, say, North Korea, to reach us, in which the president must make the decision to use such a weapon in response—before we even know whether what is launched at us is nuclear or not. If we respond a nuclear weapon, we would wipe out several hundred thousand people. And fallout would affect possibly hundreds of thousands of Chinese as well, which would be taken as an act of aggression, of course. And fallout could affect Russia as well, with them taking it as an act of aggression against them. Can this demented old man make such a decision? Clearly he cannot. And our enemies around the globe know this. They have known for a while—hence wars in Ukraine and Israel. But it still wasn’t spoken of openly. Now our weakness is exposed.

We ought to make note of who has tried to foist this incapacitated puppet leader upon us. His wife is one. His close staff and cabinet. His VP. His spokesperson, Karine Jean-Pierre, and her staff. Many upper leaders—possibly of both parties, although you can mainly blame the Democrats for this travesty. Media people. All of these people knew he was incapacitated, and yet they pretended he was fully capable—not just of a campaign but an additional four-year term. They hid him and covered up, and blatantly lied. They put our nation at risk to perpetrate this deceit on us. Their betrayal is not a small thing.

We can hope to get to the election and to the transfer of power. If we can get that far, before our enemies take advantage, then there is some chance for recovery. And then we need accountability—a better word than retribution, and more accurate. We absolutely need the swamp cleaned out.

We need to return strictly to our Constitution.

 

 

The Existential Threat

It was not a unifying speech Biden gave September 1^st. Once again The Babylon Bee gets it right. They satirically quote him as saying, "It's real simple, folks! America can be united if we can just murder everyone who disagrees with me. Peace in our time, Jack!"

Joe Biden give angry anti-Republican speech
amid scary lighting, September 2, 2022.
Image found as a screenshot from here.

Some have speculated that the dark, scary lighting and angry, hate-filled rhetoric was not necessarily intended to get his base to hate Republicans; that would just be a bonus. The speculation is that he intended to upset the people he is accusing—us conservatives—to the point that we will riot or take to the streets, or otherwise do something overt that they can construe as insurrection. And then they can make some arrests and say, “See, we told you so,” thus silencing the rest of us.

Maybe. It’s hard to get into the head of evil unless that’s a place you frequent.

Mocking is probably the best response. And there has been quite a lot. Here are a few, plus some other brief responses.

Responses

Communist version as a meme,
found here

No need for comment. Found as a screenshot here,
where memes were discussed, not created.

Post on a Facebook group, including
the ubiquitous and unhelpful COVID-19 warning.

Ben Shapiro tweet about the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

 

Ted Cruz tweet about the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

Law vlogger Viva Frei points out the detail
about the timing of the speech.
Found as a screenshot here.

 

Video and Written Responses

·        “Biden’s Catastrophic Speech” by Charles C. W. Cooke for National Review, September 2, 2022. 

·        “Biden is Trying to be Trump but Turning into Hitler” Mr. Reagan podcast, September 2, 2022. 

·        “POTUS Speech; More Oh Canada; Viva Frei-Days (& Anniversary Stream)” Viva Frei livestream, September 2, 2022. 

·        “Ep. 127: Trump's EMPTY FOLDERS! Biden Speech; Zuck LOSES; Louden; Danchenko & MORE!” Viva & Barnes Sunday night livestream, September 4, 2022. 

·        “Trump Judge UNSEALS More in Mar-a-Lago; Biden Declares WAR on MAGA; Hungover Joe BACKPEDALS” Robert Gouveia livestream, September 2, 2022. 

A Better Plan for Unity

I have a better plan for being unified: We all unify around the Constitution, the document detailing the limits of government, enumerating the powers granted to this government, and enshrining the natural rights government cannot be allowed to infringe upon—that ideal we have pledged allegiance to, after all. This will lead to peace and prosperity.

Or, in Spherical Model terminology: freedom, prosperity, and civilization.

This speech was just a week or so after Biden referred to his political opponents as “semi-fascists.” When confronted about what he meant by that, he said, “You know what I meant.” Yes, we do. We recognize that he is going to throw a hateful label on anybody who dares to disagree with him and his agenda (and that of his behind-the-scenes controllers).

There isn’t any amount of name calling that will actually confer the status of fascist onto Constitution-abiding citizens. What we’re seeing is more accurately confession by projection; they’re doing what they accuse us of. 

In a recent post we quoted Michael Millerman saying,

If you can legitimate calling all of your enemies fascists, and you can legitimate, you know, fascists are so much the scum of the earth that they should be cancelled—or killed—well, you’re not very far from legitimating the killing of your political enemies.

In other words, The Babylon Bee’s assessment of the speech is on point.

The term fascist has been tossed around as an epithet more than usual lately. But my guess is, if you did one of those man-on-the-street interviews, you would find people who know it’s a bad thing, but they can’t define it or accurately identify fascist behavior.

I think the Spherical Model can help with the needed education. This is an ongoing education project. I’ve done this before. The fact that my blog does not reach millions of people means I need to repeat a lot.

Back in April 2019 I used my dictionary to define fascism. The essential definition is:

A system of government characterized by rigid one-party dictatorship, forcible suppression of opposition, private economic enterprise under centralized governmental control, belligerent nationalism, racism, and militarism, etc.

A couple of months ago, while talking about the EPA ruling, Joshua Philipp on Crossroads casually defined Nazism this way:

Essentially government using corporations and their control over corporations or public private partnerships to do things that they can't legally do.

I think that’s only part of it. But it’s a part we’re increasingly seeing, here in America, where we pledge allegiance to a constitutional republic, not some sort of authoritarian dictatorship. So it’s disturbing. (See Mark Zuckerberg’s interview on Joe Rogan's show.)

Even people on our side seem to be unclear on the definition, especially when comparing it to the fellow Marxist labels of communist and socialist. They’re not different, except possibly in some particular seasoning in the standard recipe. On the Spherical Model all the flavors of totalitarian statist tyranny occupy the same portion of the sphere.

The Spherical Model, showing fascism, socialism,
and communism all occupying the same quadrant, 
because they are all just forms of statist tyranny.

 

What Was in the Speech?

I read, rather than listened to, the speech. I used this transcript. 

Biden used the word “democracy” 31 times. He referred to our “republic” twice, one of those calling the “republic” the guardrails for our “democracy.” So he seems unclear on the concept of our being a constitutional republic.

He refers to Republicans 16 times. Two of those had “mainstream” attached as a modifier; all others were used to reference this threat to democracy, which I’m inferring means “threat to our power.”

He doesn’t define precisely how to identify those threatening, evil MAGA Republicans, who are different somehow from other Republicans that he "can work with." But he does characterize them as extreme—more than once. He says they do not respect our Constitution—and he spent some time, using the historical setting, to set himself up as a Constitution follower and protector, against all obvious reality. He claims these evil extreme Republicans are angry, hateful, and violent. In fact, he used the term "clear and present danger," which is a term used to justify entering into war.

What are the crimes of this existential threat to America?

1.      They refuse to accept the results of a “free and fair” election.

2.      They support pro-life rather than a mother’s “right” to kill her baby in the womb (or possibly shortly thereafter in California).

3.      They support the definition of marriage that has been used by societies for millennia.

4.      They don’t characterize January 6, 2021, as an insurrection.

That first one seems to be the biggest sticking point. “Elections” comes up 11 times. Twice he uses the term “accept the results” of “free and fair elections.” The thing is, we so-called MAGA Republicans, more than any other segment of society, want free and fair elections. That’s why we have been insisting on the rule of law. And each time Biden insists that election fraud is without evidence, we bring out more evidence. (I’ve offered some here, here, and here.) There are boatloads of evidence showing that the results are not what was foisted upon us. Meanwhile, these accusers have spent six years trying to assert that Donald Trump was not a legitimate president.

Yet our reaction has not been to riot in the streets. It has been to amass evidence, bring it before courts when possible, but look mainly toward the future by writing legislation to prevent fraud in the future. And to activate as poll workers and poll watchers. How dangerous!

He claims, “We’ve seen election officials, poll workers—many of them volunteers of both parties—subjected to intimidation and death threats.” I have seen zero evidence of intimidation and death threats toward Democrat poll workers. Zero. Not a case. If there is one somewhere, it is an anomaly. If there are threats against Republicans, that is the Democrat machine doing business as usual.

Neither the second nor third on that list of accusations was a Trump agenda priority. Those were priorities of the people who were looking for someone to represent our viewpoint. He was smart enough to go along with us, particularly in our desire to have Constitution-adhering justices.

That fourth one—we don’t call it an insurrection, because it wasn’t one. Definitions matter. There was violence that day; no one disputes that, and we all decry any violence. However, it is appearing more and more to be instigated as entrapment. Despite their hopes that mass riots would result, only a small fraction participated in violence. The only deaths were caused by police toward non-violent protesters. Most of the rally goers that day remained outside, nonviolent, and uninvolved in anything but a rally. Among the ones they’re accusing are regular Americans, grandparents, patriots, the vast majority of whom at worst walked through the capitol peacefully after being invited in by police. Yet good, nonviolent American citizens have been held, often without charges, unable to talk with counsel, unable to see family, often in solitary confinement, for months going on years so far—just the way authoritarian dictators treat their political opposition.

But we nonviolent law-abiding citizens who voted for Trump are the biggest threat to America?

There’s a segment where he says things I agree with:

This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it.

This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it.

This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it.

And this is a nation that rejects violence as a political tool. We do not encourage violence.

We are still an America that believes in honesty and decency and respect for others, patriotism, liberty, justice for all, hope, possibilities.

It’s just that each of these things means something different in reality than in Biden world. He and his “team” do not honor our Constitution. They repudiate the rule of law (see my last post). They don’t want “free and fair elections”; they want outcomes their way at all costs. They stoked violence all through the summer of 2020, refusing to call it violence when we saw our cities being destroyed. And then they falsely accused hundreds if thousands if peaceful rally goers of trying to overthrow the government on January 6, 2021, describing it as the worst violence since Pearl Harbor. Worse than 9/11.

As Mr. Reagan said on his September 2 podcast linked above, Trump didn’t create a movement; he got in front of it. He said he would represent the people who weren’t getting represented. He would stand up for them, and he would do what he said he would do. His following through on that is what got my vote the second time around.

Trump is a populist, not a constitutional scholar. So, as long as he keeps his promises to uphold our Constitution—to get back to it—he has supporters. These are not blind followers. And these are certainly not a threat to our constitutional republic.

Biden, et al., meanwhile, is the actual threat. The liar. The hater. Perhaps the most stunning line of the evening was, “I give you my word as a Biden.” We know what that is worth, as he sells his country to China and anyone else willing to pay.

He’s right that America faces a dire threat. But it is from him and his authoritarian fascist cronies, not from the MAGA Republicans or any other keepers of the Constitution.

 

 

For Hate of Country

Imagine a fictional scenario:

Caesar's murder enactment
image found here

A person gets into the potentate position in a fictional country that he loathes. He has loathed this country all his life, all while working his way up the power hierarchy, with the sole intention of bringing this country down. So now, with that power in his hands, he has to do all the damage he can before enough people catch on and call him out, leading to his removal—by exile or execution, whichever. That is how these stories go, historically.

There has been some planning along the way up. He has maneuvered to weaken the country’s international power at every opportunity. Remarkably, the country-hating power monger has been able to propagandize his weakening maneuvers as “I have the most experience in international relations.”

Not alone in his hatred of his home country, there’s a wealth of propagandists willing to aid and abet. These people misinform the public about daily events and their meaning. And more of these people misinform students, so they grow up naturally hating their country, feeling ashamed of it.

On the first day in power, this fictional person sets out to open the border, weakening the nation’s sovereignty. He frames it—with help from the propagandists—as compassion.

a similar real-life scenario in Roma, TX
image from Reuters/Go Nakamura, found here

And he hikes up spending—on what, it doesn’t matter. Just spending, spending, spending—money created out of thin air, never expected to be repaid. It would have to be dealt with by some future generation anyway, so not a concern. The purpose is to collapse the money system, to make it so people aren’t willing to trade with this money that isn’t based on work, but is based on an imaginary promissory note. Devaluing the money will significantly weaken the country in international trade.

Meanwhile, he wants to reduce the natural freedoms the people in the nation have heretofore enjoyed. He must stop them from being able to speak freely, or worship freely, or meet together freely. He might have to have an excuse, something he can fearmonger—like maybe a virus. That’s a good one. It will keep them locked up at home, losing jobs, losing income, becoming ever more dependent on government to take care of them. That means he must squelch any possibility of treatments, because that would interfere with the overall plan. So he censors—and uses propaganda to call the censoring “protecting the public from misinformation.” The “misinformation” scam works well on any topic he chooses, actually.

a similar real-life scenario, SARS-COV-2
image from Wikipedia

This medical crisis is a really useful tool. What if they came up with some kind of injection—not something that actually gets rid of the virus, because that isn’t what he wants, but something that would never pass muster in a less fearful environment? Something that maybe helps a little bit, but not enough, so the fearmongering can continue endlessly? (And danger from the injection—yet another thing to censor. That’s a bonus.) But, what about lives lost from his efforts to prevent treatment? No problem. Higher death count means more fear to monger.

Now, he’s got to reduce the power of actual nation-sustaining forces: military and police. Start with the military. He must label and divide. He implements screening to weed out the patriotic and loyal. He praises and trains toward useless things like racial diversity, sexual deviance, and an alternative history that the country has been morally wrong from its inception—while allowing the propagandists to call this “strengthening our military.” And anyone who disagrees with this new dogma is labeled a dissident and loses their rank and standing. He promotes power seekers while demoting or eliminating strategists, clear thinkers, and especially lovers of country.

Then he puts the military in an untenable position. He takes a place where they have been maintaining peace, with a minimal force and no recent loss of life, against a backwater medieval rabble of terrorist guerrilla fighters. A place where women are now free to work, and are kept safe from marauding males, and children are allowed to be educated as others in the world. OK, he gets that pinpointed. So, next step is to propagandize this as an “endless war” with no purpose. And he announces a date to leave, encouraging the rabble forces to gather and threaten, in reaction to which he shrugs and claims he is “keeping his word,” disregarding the enemy’s failure to keep theirs.

similar real-life scenario
image found here

Then he closes down the military base in the middle of the night, without announcement, and without even removing military equipment. This is an excellent way to arm the enemy. When things go catastrophically wrong, he claims it’s all because of the arrangements made by his predecessor, which tied his hands. And he claims he was misinformed by intelligence and military—all of which had warned and forewarned but were ignored, of course.

Having things go wrong is part of the plan. It causes people to get all upset and insist he send in forces to rescue the people, both military and civilians—plus that place’s people who had helped us against the rabble enemy. So much chaos. So much emotion. All useful, whatever the outcome.

Then he suddenly turns and says the guerilla terrorists are our allies—despite the fact that they’ve been killing and beating this nation's countrymen and preventing their evacuation.  Also, behind the scenes, he prevents evacuation by private individuals—by simply telling other countries not to take them in, even to land their planes temporarily (similar nonfiction scenarios here  and here).  Yes, all this is ideal—for weakening the country he hates.

What a delight that, just days before the final deadline for removing citizens, a terrorist bomb kills soldiers and civilians around the airport they’re using!  More emotion is a great tool. And fewer people—did he mention that lowering the population is a personal preference? So, no problem.

similar real-life scenario in Minneapolis
image found here

About the police—he has spent some time lying in wait for an episode that can be exploited. It didn’t have to be actual evidence of police wrongdoing; something that looks bad would do. Once he finds such an incident, he claims that it is a systemic problem; it can’t be solved by a little training or discipline. The whole system must be shut down. He foments anger and protests, claiming it’s righteous indignation when riots erupt and people and property are damaged. All for the ultimate goal of weakening the country.

Weakening all existing institutions is part of the plan. For example, in order to get into the potentate position, he violated the election process so badly that both sides—his supporters and his opponents—lost faith in elections. When his supporters were saying (intending to support him) that all was well, he convinced them that all efforts to shore up election security were meant to limit his supporters’ right to vote.

He corrupts the judicial system. This has been underway for many decades in preparation. He makes it so “the law” becomes simply the political outcome he wants. He manages to release true, dangerous offenders, saying this is necessary because of overincarceration or perhaps racial unfairness, whatever he wants to call it. He incarcerates non-offenders who are political opponents, such as anyone who participates in a patriotic rally, and keeps them imprisoned as terrorists or insurrectionists, without bothering to charge them. Both sides lose faith in the law and in the process, which is the goal there.

Media is so corrupt, he hardly has to do a thing. He puts out the word on a particular topic, and they propagate it. He’ll simply silence any alternative source. Starting with his predecessor.

Family is a challenging institution to destroy, but that work has been going on for decades as well, and progressing nicely. He removes parental authority, empowering “child protective services,” schools, and some corrupt judges to destroy the very concept of marriage as bigoted, and parental authority as a “danger to the child.” The propagandists’ willingness to help in this effort is something he would praise, if he wanted the plan to be known.

Yes, within months of becoming the potentate, he has caused his country to lose the trust of its allies, lose its status on the world stage, suffer military humiliations, and cause ever-increasing division at home. Complete collapse is foreseeable, if not inevitable. Oppressive efforts of surveillance, control, and censorship must continue, but he’s feeling satisfied.

_____

You thought I must be referring to Joe Biden? No, I’m not. Joe Biden is, as a mother of a soldier slain last week put it, a “feckless,dementia-ridden piece of crap.” No, I’m not referring to the guy who can barely read a few sentences on a teleprompter before saying, “I’m not supposed to take questions.”

Joe Biden checks his watch during ceremony to
receive bodies of fallen troops
screenshot from Fox News video, found here

I’m referring to whoever it is—someone behind the scenes—who tells the president of the United States when he can take questions, which reporters he should allow to ask questions, and what his answers should be. I’m referring to the puppetmaster who is actually making the decisions that are doing so much damage.

I’m sure there’s speculation on who this is—Obama, the Clintons, some multi-billionaire, Emperor Palpatine. I don’t know who it is. Biden is clearly one of the most evil, corrupt individuals to ever occupy the office. And he will deserve whatever judgment God gives him for the evil he has wrought. But right now, he’s just a tool, being wielded by someone we absolutely did not elect. And I’d sure like to have the curtain pulled back to reveal who that is.

Whoever this essence of evil is, this power monger hates America, and more—hates freedom, hates prosperity, hates civilization. Whoever it is, they are the enemy.

Until the revelation and extirpation of this power monger, I will keep resisting, working to do good in my small circle, to reinforce our beloved Constitution—to work toward freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Because, if enough of us do that, his eventual demise is inevitable.

History While It’s Happening

There’s a story told, I think, in Lake Wobegon Days, where Garrison Keillor talks about writing a short story that gets lost in transit. And he can’t recover it. And it haunts him as possibly the best story he ever wrote, now lost to the world.

So, I attempted to write this blog last week, not quite a week into the debacle happening in Afghanistan. I couldn’t finish on Thursday, because of overscheduling myself. So I work on Friday night, after all the Friday tasks. I was just finishing and getting ready to copy to post when Word stopped responding. It was molasses slow. So was everything on my computer. I couldn’t even get the screen that tells me program usage to come up. I knew the file had saved—it’s typically on auto-save mode. So I turned off the computer to reboot.

When I tried opening it, the file was corrupted. I went through all the possible ways the various messages told me to try to recover it. Nothing worked. I couldn’t even find previous versions on my online drive. Mr. Spherical Model started some programs to look for malware or problems. That eventually turned up nothing.

Sometimes you just have to cut your losses. Finally, I set about recovering what I could. I’m using a lot of links in this post, so I went through my online history to find all the URLs I’d visited. And I wrote a quick outline of the points I’d made, while I could still remember them.

So I’m trying again today. Did I lose the best post ever? Frankly, I was still in the mode of gathering information and trying to process it. My purpose was to record the history in live time, suspecting it will be important to remember in the future. And, who knows, maybe the things I’ve come across over the weekend are a worthwhile addition.

 

Rep. Dan Crenshaw and Rep. Mike Waltz
image from the podcast

Two Views

There are two views about the past 20 years in Afghanistan. I don’t know which is correct. When I listen to the arguments, I tend to agree—while I’m listening. And then I hear the other side and feel pulled a different direction. Neither of the views ought to have led to what is happening.

The first view is that we are better off fighting the enemy overseas than on our own soil. My US Rep. Dan Crenshaw expresses this very well. In a podcast a week ago, August 15, he spoke with former Army Ranger US Rep. Mike Waltz. Here’s something I learned: The war in Afghanistan has been in a peaceful stasis for some time—18 months without a casualty. Calling what we do there an endless war, or nation building, while ignoring multiple other places where we keep a military presence to maintain peace is more political than strategic. This view is definitely worth listening to:

·         “The “No More Endless Wars” Crowd Got Exactly What They Asked For” Dan Crenshaw podcast with Rep. Mike Waltz, August 15, 2021. 

The other view is that we should avoid all international entanglements, a view led by Sen. Rand Paul. But there are nuanced views of that, including that we needed to take out the Taliban, but then we needed a quick end to that mission. Jason Buttrill, chief researcher for Glenn Beck, was deployed to Afghanistan right after 9/11. He gives this view:

·         “Former Marine: Afghanistan FAIL should result in 'MASSIVE' Biden admin resignations” Jason Buttrill with Glenn Beck, August 17, 2021. 

With some time passing, I’m not always sure where to credit details. But somewhere in what I heard there is polling that shows over 70% of Americans have wanted us out of Afghanistan. Pres. Trump made that promise and set up a timeline, along with agreements the Taliban would have to keep in order to make it happen. Another 70% say Biden botched the exit, which seems obvious to the whole world—except maybe the president, his close staff, and the US State Department.

 

Losing the Peace

Americans know how to win wars. We did it spectacularly in World War II, so well that, as Great Britain saw the end of its global imperial period, it felt content stepping back on the world stage, because the United States was there to step up.

But what we now know is that the US cannot be trusted to “help” any country in its fight against tyranny—because at some point Democrats will get elected and lose the peace. And break our promises.

We won Vietnam. Democrats got us into the fight. Then Republicans struggled through the tough part, and we won. Then Democrats in Congress refused to fund the support we had promised in order to keep the peace. The local people struggled on against communist insurgents for two years before the fall of Saigon.

Joe Biden in the 1970s
image found here

Incidentally, Joe Biden has been around Washington that long. Back in 1975 he was the leading voice insisting that the US should not evacuate a single Vietnamese who had helped the US during the war, feeling no compunction about leaving them to be tortured or killed at the hands of the communists. (See also.) 

In 2010, he told a US diplomat, who had asked him about our duty to avoid a humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, "F--- that, we don't have to worry about that. We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it."  

Who knew he could be so consistent about anything? Well, not totally. In 2015, he was in favor of inviting in Syrian refugees—especially if we didn’t vet them. 

Anyway, Democrats subjected Vietnam to decades of communist tyranny. Those who escaped, the many Vietnamese boat people, are among our neighbors. And they've been good neighbors. But they lost their home country.

In the early 90s, when we won the first Gulf War in Iraq, quickly and decisively, the Democrats gave that victory away by refusing to hold Saddam Hussein accountable to the terms of the cease fire. Bill Clinton kept letting them cross one red line after another, until finally, as a way to distract from the Lewinsky affair, he bombed what turned out to be an aspirin factory, rather than one of several actual arms production facilities we were supposed to be able to freely inspect.

We won again in Iraq starting in 2003, when they were a key state sponsor of terrorism. We took out Saddam Hussein this time, and worked to help the people recover from his tyranny, for which they were grateful. (I heard this from them myself.)  But Obama managed to lose that semi-stable peace, giving rise to the ISIS caliphate. Nothing we could do about that but take in unvetted refugees, he insisted. Until President Trump got elected and then wiped out ISIS swiftly. Done.

So, in Afghanistan, we had won a peace, and kept the Taliban at bay for two decades. No more 9/11-style terrorist attacks on our soil. Their numbers were minimal, and the few remaining were hiding out in caves or hovels just over the border in Pakistan. If you need to review the history, I recommend Lawrence Wright's The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.

I don’t know whether Trump’s intention to pull out of Afghanistan emboldened them. That is possible. But Trump’s plan was to make our leaving contingent on their keeping the terms of peace. If they didn’t, they should expect to feel the full weight of the US military. Some think that means he would have kept a minimal force there indefinitely.

Biden’s interpretation of an exit plan was to bug out of Bagram Air Force base in the middle of the night, not even giving notice to the Afghani commander, who showed up the next morning to that eerie emptiness. 

During our relative peace there, contractors were hired to do work in Afghanistan. The people Biden left there were tens of thousands of Americans—many along with families—doing work the US Government had urged them to do. Plus there were the many tens of thousands of Afghanis who had helped the US, as interpreters or otherwise, in the effort to build their infrastructure, military, and government—making them de facto enemies of the returning Taliban. These are the SIVs, the special immigrant visas.

A month ago the international terrorist threat was quite low, arguably the lowest it had been since 9/11. Now, with the Taliban claiming triumph over the US, recruitment and numbers are surging, and al-Qaeda, maybe even ISIS, are making a reappearance—incidentally while Biden has kept the southern border open to all comers.

By the way, on Friday, August 13, just as the chaos was getting underway, Homeland Security's Alejandro Mayorkas put out a bulletin on the heightened domestic terrorism threat—coinciding incidentally, a week later, with the admission that there was no coordinated attempt at insurrection on January 6th, but claiming that ordinary people are terrorists nevertheless (not the first time).

In July, Biden claimed there was no chance of a repeat of Saigon, with people clinging to helicopters lifting off embassy roofs. I think he failed to say he was fine with people clinging to airplane landing gear taking off from the tarmac of the only airport people can escape from, which is surrounded by Taliban. Biden’s creation makes Saigon look like just an ordinary bad day.

So I think it’s time we conclude that we must look at every possible victory as something Democrats will follow up to un-win.

Five days into the Afghanistan chaos, Biden
does a press conference and takes no questions.
Tweet from Michael P Pregent August 18

It is hard to imagine that things could go as wrong as they have out of simple incompetence. I think it’s only possible if you combine massive incompetence with hatred of America—which I think will be the historical summary of the Biden presidency.

Biden was busy vacationing at Camp David while this chaos was underway in Afghanistan. Finally, five days into the chaos, he showed up, gave a statement, and took no questions. Later on Wednesday he did an interview on ABC (more below), saying he couldn’t imagine why anyone saw anything wrong. Thursday he did a presser, taking four pre-approved questions. VP Harris has been absent from beginning to end. One report said she was heard to be screaming, “They’re not going to pin this on me!” True? I don’t know. But conceivable. Without comment, she’s continuing plans for a trip to Singapore. This administration is feckless at best, more likely evil.

In last Wednesday’s interview with George Stephanopoulos (full transcript here), Biden said there were no mistakes; everything was going as expected, and he didn’t see how things could have gone better.

Joe Biden during the interview with George Stephanopoulos
screenshots from here

Biden said, “No, I—I don’t think it could have been handled in a way that— there’s a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing. I don’t know how that happens.”

Let me help here, with the strategic plan that—absolutely everyone else in the world could come up with:

·         Get the people out first.

·         Then get your equipment out—anything you don’t want getting into the hands of the enemy.

·         Then get the military out.

Here’s some the technology the US Military has left behind to be reverse-engineered by whichever enemies partner with the Taliban.

Julian Ropcke tweet of weapons left behind
image found here

It wasn’t just Americans abandoned in this far-flung land. Our allies had people there as well. Biden lied and said he had contacted them all and they were in agreement with his plan. News is that British PM Boris Johnson was essentially put on hold for 36 hours before his phonecall would be taken by Biden. (Another story said 24 hours for Biden to make the phonecall to PM Johnson.) Our NATO allies are livid. They are considering sanctioning him. And they are scrambling to find ways to rescue people.

On the Mark Levin show, retired British Colonel Richard Kemp, former chairman of the Cobra Intelligence Group, said this: 

The whole world just became vastly more dangerous.  The US Government, President Biden humiliated the United States. He humiliated the United States Army. In my opinion—and I don’t say this lightly, and I’ve never said it about anybody else, any other leader in this position: People have been talking about impeaching President Biden. I don’t believe President Biden should be impeached. He’s the Commander in Chief of the US Armed Forces, who has just, essentially, surrendered to the Taliban. He shouldn’t be impeached; he should be court-martialed for betraying the United States of America and the United States Armed Forces.

I agree that impeachment is too good for him. However, I don’t see a legal path in the Constitution to court-martial our president. But removing him one way or another is looking likely. And sooner rather than later. Shaming him ought to bring about a resignation—except that he has no shame.

 

Turning Tide

The media—and Biden’s subordinates—are turning on him, pointing out the lies. An early indicator was CNN reporter Clarissa Ward, from on the ground at the airport in Kabul, showing the chaos—in stark contrast to everything Biden and his spokespeople say.

Stu Burguiere offers a collection of Clarissa Ward posts, around midpoint in this episode:

·         “The Afghanistan Evacuation Debacle: An American Embarrassment” Stu Burguiere, Ep 331, August 20, 2021. 

Tucker Carlson points out how odd this negative reporting is, along with the contradictions by military and intel sources. He says it has to be coordinated, and this shows they are now turning against him.

·         “Tucker Carlson Tonight 8/22/21” 

Journalist/Commentator Mr. Reagan (Christopher Kohls) offers his analysis of this sudden distancing from Biden, and thinks their timing might be off.

·         “Why Has the Media Turned on Biden?” August 22, 2021. 

And add this one:

·         “Liberal Reporters Turn on Biden, SLAM Him for Handling of Afghanistan” Glenn Beck on Facebook, August 20, 2021. 

 

Rescue

Jason Buttrill, on The Blaze program The News & Why It Matters, was discussing the difficulty of just telling people, “Make your way to the airport in Kabul.” He shared this map, from Michael P. Pregent, showing the difficulty people face.

Michael Pregent graphic of Afghanistan situation
shared on The News & Why It Matters August 17.
screenshot from here

So I looked for Michael Pregent’s twitter feed and found it to be a useful source for updated reporting, including good graphics. Pregent said, on August 18, that this is the worst foreign policy decision in his lifetime, and it may go down as the worst foreign policy decision ever.

Tweet from Michael P Pregent August 23, 2021

Afghanistan is a mountainous desert, riddled with mines and IEDs. And it’s now occupied by the Taliban, making death a likely outcome for cross-country travelers intent on getting to the only airport to exit. I don’t remember who to credit with saying, “Does Biden think you can just call an Uber?” Add to the danger, the Taliban is already threatening to kill all Christians in particular. They’ll kill any American, foreigner, or Afghani who helped the NATO allies, but they have a special hatred for Christians.

One story Glenn Beck passed along was from an American Christian missionary, in her mid-20s, who recognizes her life is threatened and she may not make it home. She contacted her family and let them know she is at peace with her impending death.

Last Wednesday Glenn Beck detailed the difficulty Christians are facing and asked his audience to help fund the rescue being planned by The Nazarene Fund, which has been successful in rescuing many Christians from Syria and other world hot spots. They estimated a cost of about $4,000 per individual, and they had a goal to rescue 3-5,000. $4,000 X 5,000 = $20 million. So that was the goal. In less than two days they reached $22 million. (We felt the call and added our comparative widow’s mite.) This morning, everything was ready, but the US State Department refuses to offer permissions or any other type of support. Department of Defense has been helping as they can, but the State Department seems to think if they help it’s an admission that the reality exists. 

·         “THIS Is The Reality Of Afghanis Today: ’30Minutes That’ll Change Your Life’ Part 1” and “Forget Government. YOU Can Be A LEADER: ’30 Minutes That’ll Change Your Life’ Part 2”  Glenn Beck Radio blog, August 18, 2021.

·         “Taliban reportedly going 'door-to-door' looking for Christians to kill them” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Glenn Beck's audience raises staggering $22 million in 2 days to rescue Christians trapped in Afghanistan” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 20, 2021. 

·         Glenn Beck Radio Program, followup interview with Rudy Attallah, CEO of The Nazarene Fund, August 23, 2021. 

 

Keeping the Historical Record

The reports and commentaries I've collected this past week is mainly to keep the historical record. If we individuals keep the record, maybe we’re less subject to being deceived when we’re inevitably lied to.

I used The Blaze and The Epoch Times quite a lot, but there are certainly other good sources—like I said, even CNN reporting on the ground. So this is just a snapshot, mostly from last week, showing the vast distance between Biden administration claims and reality:

WEAPONS ABANDONED

·         “Shocking videos show just how many US military weapons are now in the hands of Taliban terrorists” Chris Enloe for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “US Black Hawk Helicopters, Airplanes, Rockets Captured by Taliban; Refugees Coming” Facts Matter with Roman Balmakov, August 18, 2021. 

BIDEN VERSION

·         “President Biden indicates there was no way to exit Afghanistan 'without chaos ensuing'” Alex Nitzberg for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “Biden claims military advisers never told him to keep troops in Afghanistan, but multiple reports say otherwise” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Democratic lawmaker says US military isn't responsible for getting Americans to Kabul airport safely” Chris Pandolfo for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Psaki has Total TRAINWRECK When Reporter Asks If Americans Will Make It Out of Afghanistan” press conference clip posted by Glenn Beck on Facebook, August 18, 2021. 

 

This guy giving a State Department update was
so pleasant and calming, I really hoped he would
tell the truth. But he didn't.
Tweet from Michael P Pregent, August 21

REALITY

·         “An internal State Department memo in July reportedly warned of Kabul collapse” Alex Nitzbeg for The Blaze, August 19, 2021.  

·         “Biden reportedly ghosted UK, ignored PM Johnson for 36-plus hours amid Afghanistan fallout” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Taliban militants fire into crowd to disperse protests, reportedly kill at least three people and injure dozens” Chris Pandolfo for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “VIDEO: Desperate Afghani mothers throw their babies over barbed wire to allied troops in order to protect their children from Taliban” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Taliban fighters are 'hunting down' journalists, carrying out revenge executions against Afghans who worked with the West” Phil Shiver for The Blaze, August 20, 2021. https://www.theblaze.com/news/taliban-fighters-hunting-down-journalists-revenge-executions

·         “Two Afghan stowaways who plunged to their deaths after clinging to US plane ID'd as teen brothers who scavenged from trash to care for mother: Report” Sarah Taylor for The Blaze, August 18, 2021. 

·         “What? - Americans Have To Pay For Their Trip Home From Kabul?” Donald Trump, Jr. post on Rumble, August 20, 2021. 

·         “DoD ADMITS Out Of 2,000 Evacuees, Only 300 AreAmericans” Dinesh D’Souza post on Rumble, August 19, 2021. 

·         “Shapiro Breaks Down What's Actually Happening in Afghanistan” Ben Shapiro highlights on Facebook, August 16, 2021. 

 

PERSPECTIVES

·         “Fed-up Sen. Sasse sends clear message to Biden about 'hostage situation' with Americans and allies trapped in Afghanistan: 'Go get them'” Chris Field for The Blaze, August 19, 2021. 

·         “WATCH: Details of Trump’s Afghanistan exit plan suggest it would ‘NOT have been this way’” BlazeTV staff, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Why Biden’s Afghanistan failure wouldn’t have happened under Trump” Glenn Beck Radio, August 17, 2021. 

·         “No, Biden Can’t Blame Trump for The Afghanistan Withdrawal Disaster” Margot Cleveland for The Federalist, August 16, 2021. 

·         “WW2 Heroism Exemplifies OUR DUTY To Help Afghanistan Today” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Glenn: Biden’s IMPEACHABLE response to Afghanistan is NOT Us” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Glenn is FIRED UP about Joe Biden’s SHAMEFUL embarrassment in Afghanistan” Glenn Beck Radio, August 20, 2021. 

·         “Actually, the Taliban are an enemy.” Ted Cruz posts clip of spokesman John Kirby refusing to call Taliban the enemy, on Facebook, August 20, 2021.