Category: Politics and Issues

Alex Berenson is no longer on twitter because he dares to offer alternatives to the groupthink about Covid. While I didn’t always agree with Alex, I did find what he tweeted worth reading simply because he reviewed data and found many flaws in those data.

Like many of us, Berenson question the science behind the lockdowns and the economic restrictions that accompany the lockdowns. Berenson was part of a movement, proving the futility of the lockdown.

In May of 2020, I came out in favor of the living with the virus since I viewed the damage the lockdown would prove worse than the damage from the virus. Here we are year and half later, and we lockdown skeptics have been proven right.

More young people have died from suicide and drug overdoses than the virus. Studies have shown how many are not seeking treatment for diseases, thus adding to death totals. In a recent study, 17% indicated they would avoid to seek treatment because of the fear of Covid. This is one of many studies showing the impact of the lockdown and fear of Covid

Reality one: We are looking at a virus that kills over all 2 to 4 per 1000. Contrast this to average flu season which the IFR was 1 per 1000 and we have had pandemics like in 1957 which killed 2 to 3 per 1000, similar to what we are seeing now. Below survival rate by age

This is a virus that hits the oldest and most vulnerable with underlying condition.

As this chart shows, younger patients are more likely to die from the flu than Corona virus.

The economic damage has been immense. Those states who lockdown or had economic restrictions, ended up with higher unemployment.

As you can see, GOP states and non-lockdown states had lower unemployment overall. This has been consistent from the beginning of the the pandemic. We have failed to see the cost of the lockdowns and unemployment.

There are studies that question the efficacy of the masks and the society cost of the vaccine passport. Europe is reducing or eliminating masks mandates for students whereas we still debating on mask mandates despite the science. Skeptics are right and censoring those who are right is hardly beneficial but feeds in the distrust that is accompanying the present debate.

A few thoughts about the Democratic and Republican Party. For Republicans, it is a question in the foreseeable is whether Trump will run in 2024 or a new generation of Republicans take hold.

The problem with Trump is that while he garner the base, he brings out the opponents as well. Are we ready for yet another 78 year old candidate after the Biden years? And can Trump take the Party forward, learn from his mistakes, or will he be unable to control his worse instincts and unable to broaden the coalition? While we made progress within the minority communities, Cygnal pollster Brent Buchanan noted, “This trendline is much clearer than the previous graph, showing where Democrats are gaining in areas that are growing and where Republicans are picking up support in stagnating or declining counties.” We lost a good portion of suburban voters in 2020 and can GOP recapture many of the suburban voters, the GOP is will have difficulty finding a permanent majority.

Democrats have their own problems since they are the Socialist Party of America and in the first six months, their proposals is failing and could lead to a complete collapse of the economy. While most Democrats would deny they are socialist, their proposals are definitely the most radical.

Among those things include:

1. Elimination of industries, like the fossil fuels and force industries to manufacture what the government wants like electric cars.
2. Open Border, allowing illegal immigration and weakening country identity.
3. Theories like Critical race theories will undermine what America should be and teach a future generation that America is a racist society but yet, force America to live in a separated society by class and race.
4. Taxing the productive part of society, expanding the welfare state and spending trillion of dollars while seeing inflation increasing.
5. Biden is begging OPEC to increase production while he shuts our own energy production.
6. Afghanistan proving to be a big disaster and that has strengthen our enemies while upsetting our allies.

Democrats have shown that their philosophy has been a complete failure, but GOP has to convince America they have a plan to change America for the best.

As I mention before, what we have seen with Biden would have been seen with any other Democrats.

From Nigel Farage,

“But if [terror attacks] start to happen again and we start to think, well, how do we go out again and try and stop these cells that are spreading international terror? How can we do it with the Americans? How can we do it with an ally that is treating us with contempt and betrayed us and into the bargain, many of our own citizens…Certainly, if it’s a Biden or Harris administration, honestly, there is no way, there is no way a British parliament right now would vote for military cooperation with America led by this administration. And that’s a very sad thing to say, because since 1917, the UK and America have been side by side in virtually every major conflict. We’ve been the closest allies in terms of military action, in terms of intelligence sharing, in terms of culture, in terms of business…“You couldn’t have a better ally in the world. Right at the moment, I’m sorry, but there’s no way we could enter into another operation with you.”

Biden has now managed to screw up our closet ally. Good job Joe.

Biden is the symptom. While many in the Democratic Party are shocked by what has happened in Afghanistan and we have seen several attempts by intelligences and military off the record leaks that we told Joe what would happen, and even a few in the media are complaining but the reality is that Biden bungling of Afghanistan was disaster that entire leadership class participated. Biden’s policies are turning into disaster on many fronts but Afghanistan

Biden administration as it is presently constituted is doom to failure for the following reason.

1. The economic plan is based on increase spending, loose monetary policy with increase taxes on productive of society along with the expansion of the welfare state. Where is the economic growth coming from? Inflation is too much money chasing too few goods and Biden’s plan will not produce enough goods to soak up the loose money in the system and thus the inflation will continue.
2. The energy plan is based on illusionary combination that we can produce all of energy with wind and solar while eliminating fossil fuels. This is impossible as any serious economist or energy specialist will tell you. Note the word serious. Reducing our domestic production has increased the cost of energy and going green will add to increases. https://www.americanexperiment.org/reports/doubling-down-on-failure-how-a-50-percent-by-2030-renewable-energy-standard-would-cost-minnesota-80-2-billion and https://www.americanexperiment.org/reports/not-in-our-backyard Biden is now begging OPEC to increase production. OPEC said no. The fact that Biden asked OPEC for increased oil production shows that even Biden team knows eliminating fossil fuels is impossible.
3. Crime has increased in major cities and the defunding and cutting the police has failed.
4. Foreign policy has been a disaster and Afghanistan is proof of that.

Biden’s policy would have been disaster under any of the leading Democratic Presidential contenders in 2020. Their policies would have followed Biden’s. Bernie Sanders wrote the 3.5 trillion dollar stimulus bill and Alexandra Cortez wrote the Biden’s version of Green New Deal. President Sanders or President Harris would not have done anything difference on points 1 through 3 and so far, Harris foreign policy trips have not been a model of success. Her trip to Central America was a failure and her managing of the border issues and illegal immigration has been a disaster, only now to be overshadowed by Afghanistan.

The only issue is that maybe another Democrat would have not botched it as badly but the overall foreign policy would have followed similar path.

Biden is a symptom of the complete failure of our leadership class and should be seen as such. Replacing Biden with Harris won’t matter at this point since the policies will be the same.

We had two choices with Afghanistan.

1. From Austin Bay, “Understand that I think that since 9/11, America’s essential mission in Afghanistan has been what I call Guard Duty Writ Large. I first used that description in 2012. To protect U.S. national security at home and abroad, America had to attack and damage militant Islamic terrorist organizations. That meant denying them bases in anarchic regions, like Yemen, Somalia and Afghanistan. Denying doesn’t mean we have to occupy those places. It definitely doesn’t mean we need to engage in nation building and culture-changing — those are mega-challenge…We can strike Yemen and Somalia from the sea. Landlocked Afghanistan presents a problem. The closest air bases are six to seven hours away. Guard duty in Afghanistan means — or meant — maintaining an on-the-ground presence, primarily to support Afghan forces and refuel allied aircraft, but also to occasionally conduct U.S. air and ground raids on high-value targets throughout the region. The special operations raid that killed Osama Bin Laden in his Pakistan compound was launched from Afghanistan..Many in the defense and intelligence community agree that guard duty was the essential mission. Some argued nation building would ultimately give pro-democracy Afghans the tools to guard themselves. We did try that. Afghan corruption undermined the effort.” Bay’s point is that we should have kept a small group and a base to protect our interest and this doesn’t mean nation building.
2. The second was to defeat the enemy which we did and leave, letting it be known if we will come back if you allow your country to be used as a terrorist base. Jordan Schachtel made this point in a couple of pieces and noted from a UK Guardian report, ” The Taliban, which ruled over Afghanistan under its Islamic Emirate banner, was seeing its territory facing constant bombardment from U.S. fighter jets. American forces made quick work of the most threatening elements of jihadist defences, having successfully decimated virtually every major target assigned to them in a week’s time. In this poverty-stricken land, populated by mud huts, subsistence farms, and mountain ranges, we’re talking about mostly weapons depots and crude militant bases. The Taliban had witnessed the full wrath of the most powerful military in the world, and wanted the devastation to come to an end…In a series of events that seems to have been entirely swept into the banned books section of history, Taliban leadership decided to reach out to the Americans. They offered up the one target U.S. forces seemed to be unable to locate: none other than Osama Bin Laden himself. ” There may have been a time in the beginning a deal with the Taliban could have been had including the capture of Bin Laden. We could have our deal to protect our interest and avoid a 20 year failure. Austin Bay added, “It didn’t have to be this way. A well-executed withdrawal would have saved their lives and perhaps saved the anti-Taliban government. The acronym is NEO — Noncombatant Evacuation Operation — “the departure of civilian noncombatants and nonessential military personnel from danger in an overseas country to a designated safe haven … The U.S. military is highly skilled at NEO. Even a NEO involving an area as large as Afghanistan could have been planned and prepared in 30 to 45 days if the Joint Chiefs of Staff had coordinating power and the State Department arranged for temporary refugee housing in third-country safe havens. The decision to withdraw from the huge air base at Bagram was utterly stupid, at least until threatened Afghans were extracted.”
3. China and Russia now controls Central Asia, and we have no real bases in the region to conduct anti terrorist if needed. As JD Johannes, an associate of mine, noted on my podcast, the Chinese will not make the same mistakes we made and end up bribing the Taliban while gaining control of trillion dollars worth minerals.

We had two choices, one was to leave guard duty which meant continue troops but not enough to nation building or we retreat orderly and get our citizens and those who aided our efforts. Nation building was a failure and our retreat was a disaster and that is on this administration beginning with Joe Biden. We can argue what went wrong with our Middle East policy over the past two decades and need to.

Bob Gates, who served both Democratic and Republicans administration, observed about Joe Biden that he has never been right on a major issue in his career and he did oppose Obama’s effort to eliminate Bin Laden in 2011. This merely reinforces what Gates noted, Joe Biden is not a deep thinker and not often right. Joe Biden has botched this badly.

I am not surprised by Biden’s incompetence, since he has been man of mediocrity all his political career. Nor am I surprised that we have witnessed a lack of empathy by the President about the Afghans allies left behind along with the thousands of Americans still in Kabul. Anyone who has followed his career would have seen this.

One argument I heard from never Trumpers is that we would see a return of normality and standards from Biden and Biden’s loss of his first wife and daughter in a car accident along with his son death in war enhanced his empathy for others. One was forgotten that while it was tragic that he lost his wife and daughter, what he did to the individual, Curtis Dunn, involved in the accident was evil. For years, he insinuate that Dunn, who involved in the crash was “drunk” but this was a lie. As the Curtis Dunn’s daughter observed, ““I don’t think an apology set the story straight but I do feel that (Biden) needs to make some kind of statement that he was very wrong for saying that a trucker drank his lunch instead of eating it.” Biden added another victim to this, Curtis Dunn who forever branded a drunken driver and responsible for Biden’s wife death.

As one new story reported, “Delaware Superior Court Judge Jerome O. Herlihy, who oversaw the police investigation as chief prosecutor, said there was no evidence supporting Biden’s claim and Dunn was cleared of any wrongdoing…“The rumor about alcohol being involved by either party, especially the truck driver (Dunn), is incorrect.” Dunn stayed and attempted to save Biden’s wife and daughter life and may have saved the two boys, Hunter and Beau. Biden never needed to have lied about the incident on the campaign trail.

Throughout his career, he was never above calling voters stupid, out of shape, fat and liars but that was Joe being Joe. (No one ever stated when Trump insulted folks, this was Trump being Trump.)

I won’t comment upon Biden’s mental state only to say that when compared to past performance, there is no doubt the 78 year old Biden has his fast ball when it comes to speaking. His performance over the two weeks has not been reassuring, leaving Allies confused and enemies excited in Biden’s incompetence.

The reality is that Biden’s incompetence will have dangerous consequences for the United States and the West and his inability to think through the steps needed to not make a competed disaster out of this.

As I observed in my upcoming book, Biden major accomplishment was to figure out how enrich his family and himself but being a corrupt politician is hardly a accomplishment to brag about. What he has never been is someone who ever been consider much of thinker on public policies. If anything as I also noticed in my upcoming book, Biden is symptom of the collapse of our political class as he was consider the best the Democrats could muster to defeat Trump.

The Biden withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a disaster and that would be understatement. We have Americans stuck in Kabul, and now discussing possible hostages. https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2021/08/will-there-be-hostages.php

Biden’s team blew this totally and remember these guys were suppose to restore America because we all knew Trump’s foreign policy was so disastrous. Well Biden is repeating all the mistakes of the Obama era and the result are proving even worse.

1. The Middle East has taken a turn for the worse under the brilliance of Team Biden. Biden was left with a weaken Iran, a anti-Iranian alliance with Israel and Sunni states.
2. Biden was left with United States becoming a energy exporters and cheaper energy, thus strengthening our position in the Middle East.

So Biden is left begging Taliban don’t hurt any Americans caught in Kabul and please OPEC, pump out more oil so we can have cheaper oil. Taliban could care less what Biden’s want and let us hope no hostages situation. OPEC is now back in the driver seat for oil production and Russia has increase its position in the world wide energy market due to the brilliance of Biden.

The intelligence on the weakness of the Afghan army is yet another failure, leaving us to wonder how did we train an army that collapsed in days and how did we screw up the intelligence? There are so many questions but Biden was left with a stronger hand from Trump foreign policy than Trump was left from Obama.

Robert Gates, who served in Bush and Obama administration once noted that Biden got most of the major issues wrong over his career. And now we are struck with this guy for another three plus years.

Obama was a mediocre President with very few positive accomplishments, and disaster on foreign policy. Biden is proving that he may yet end up the worst President ever, or at least over the past 100 plus years.

Biden has shown to be representative of the collapsed of the political class, a mediocre mind representative of the mediocrity of our political class and elites. From botching the Corona virus to our energy policy and now Afghanistan withdrawal fiasco. This shows we have a poor elites, the death of expertise.

Biden has declared war on Red States. In Texas, illegal immigrants are crossing the border in record numbers, many of them infected with Covid. So unleashing many of the illegals have become a super spreader event in Texas and adding to increase in cases in Texas

In Florida, these new stories show how Biden has decided to go after DeSantis and Florida and Biden’s allies in the media has cooperated. (One of those stories, CDC gave out false data.) DeSantis showed the alternative to the lockdown advocates and demolished their science.

We are witnessing a war in which an administration is at war with half of its own population.

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/14/a-new-ron-desantis-conspiracy-theory-is-born-n426386

https://redstate.com/nick-arama/2021/08/13/told-ya-so-media-now-issues-correction-about-false-covid-story-they-hit-desantis-with-n426111

https://redstate.com/bonchie/2021/08/10/cdc-reports-false-covid-data-for-florida-and-leaves-major-questions-n423911

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/white-house-says-florida-school-officials-penalized-over-mask-mandate-ban-could-be-federally-reimbursed/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/08/why-the-left-needs-ron-desantis-to-fail/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=third

For those of us who have followed Biden’s political career are not surprised by his ineptitude as the man has been mediocre all his life. He has been good at enriching his family and himself but beyond that, he never had a reputation as a politician with any deep thoughts.

While some has stated that maybe he doesn’t have the mental acuity, it could be even simpler, he is simply not that bright and never was. In the case of Afghanistan, a Trump administration would have eventually left, the only case is how the withdrawal been conducted. There was no real support among Americans to stay in Afghanistan and we were ready to come home. Biden disaster was to manage the withdrawal disaster as Biden was hoping that the Afghan army would be hold off for a few months and whatever collapsed that occurred, it would occurred when Afghanistan would no longer be on the front page. Instead, we are witnessing a complete rout with many of those who aided our efforts will be left at the mercy of the Taliban. China is ready to recognize new Afghanistan and take advantage of minerals available in Afghanistan.

My associates, Jd Johannes observed the Chinese will handle Afghan better, take advantage of the minerals available while essentially funding the Taliban. They won’t put their own troops there. This was a two decades disaster in the making , in which we attempted to remake Afghans in our image. We obtained our original goals, kicked ass of the terrorist but expanded the mission.

Biden is now begging OPEC to increase oil production after knee capping our local production. Russia has benefitted along with OPEC from Biden’s bad energy policies and our consumers plus energy workers have suffered as a result with higher prices and less jobs. Inflation is now upon us as the basic goods of life are increasing.

Inflation, Biden begging OPEC for increased production to lower prices and Afghanistan disaster unfolding.