THAT WAS FAST: Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden Eviction Moratorium.
Archive for 2021
August 26, 2021
BY SHOOTING AN UNARMED WOMAN? Officer who shot Ashli Babbitt speaks after months in hiding: ‘I saved countless lives.’
So why isn’t it?
OPEN THREAD: Free yourself. Free men dance.
LAUNCH COMPANY ROCKET LAB goes public.
Shockingly, he said that members of the Taliban—the same folks beheading people across Afghanistan—”are moving back the perimeter, stopping vehicles, and searching people,” suggesting that that was a good thing.
But don’t worry, because “they’re acting in their interest… no one trusts them. We’re just counting on their self-interest to continue to generate their activities. It’s in their self-interest that we leave when we said and that we get as many people out as we can.”
“It’s not a matter of trust, it’s a matter of mutual self-interest,” he again insisted. “There’s no evidence thus far, that I’ve been given… that there has been collusion between the Taliban and ISIS in carrying out what happened today.”
The president said the evacuation is “expected to continue beyond today.”
Asked how he can justify putting more troops in harm’s way, he gave an incoherent answer. “What America says matters. What we say we’re going to do in the context in which we say we’re going to do it, that we do it, unless something exceptional changes.”
“They’re not good guys, the Taliban,” he reiterated. “I’m not suggesting that at all. But they have a keen interest… they’d very much like to see how they can keep the airport open… and maintain what is a portion of the economy that is not robust but fundamentally different than it had been.”
Asked whether it was a mistake to abandon Bagram Air Base, he said that in the “best military judgment” of his commanders, “they concluded, the military, that Bagram was not much value added, that it was much better to focus on Kabul and so I focused on that recommendation.”
“Imagine where we’d be if I had indicated on May the 1st I was not going to renegotiate an evacuation date. We were gonna stay there. I’d have only one alternative: Pour thousands of more troops back into Afghanistan to fight a war that we had already won relative to why the reason we went in the first place,” he explained.
“I have never been of the view that we should be sacrificing American lives to try to establish a Democratic government in Afghanistan,” Biden continued, “a country that has never once in its entire history been a united country, and is made up, and I don’t mean this in a derogatory, made up of different tribes who have never ever ever gotten along with one another.”
Biden ended the briefing at that point and cited other meetings he needed to attend.
But Biden didn’t have to pick a date adjacent to September 11th: “The punchline to Biden claiming his hands were tied is that he already did flout Trump’s May 1 deadline, pushing it to September 11 because he wanted to be able to give a big speech congratulating himself for having Americans out of Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the attacks. He could have insisted on a New Year’s deadline instead, when the climate would have held off the Taliban. Why didn’t he? At least he mourned the dead. Pelosi spoke earlier today and didn’t bother.”
UPDATE: No, Biden Can’t Blame Trump For The Afghanistan Withdrawal Disaster.
(Updated and bumped.)
IT’S COME TO THIS: Harvard’s new chaplain is an atheist and ‘Good Without God.’
Despite his disbelief in any higher power, Harvard chaplains felt Epstein — author of the book “Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe” — was a good choice for the position due to young people’s increasing lack of religiosity.
“There is a rising group of people who no longer identify with any religious tradition but still experience a real need for conversation and support around what it means to be a good human and live an ethical life,” Epstein, who grew up in a Jewish home, told the New York Times in an interview published Thursday.
“We don’t look to a god for answers,” he added. “We are each other’s answers.”
Which sounds like a paraphrase of Obama’s “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” solipsism.
Nothing personal against atheists and agnostics, but if you’re a chaplain who doesn’t believe in God, as “the Bobs” in Office Space would say, what would you say you do here?
COULD ROBERT F. KENNEDY’S CONVICTED ASSASSIN SOON BE A FREE MAN?
The man who shot and killed Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Sirhan Sirhan, could be a free man as of Friday, with prosecutors reportedly saying they won’t oppose his parole petition.
The 77-year-old spent the past 53 years in prison in California. He is scheduled to face the California parole board on Friday for the 16th time.
Buried lede: Sirhan Sirhan is still alive.
I’D SAY “WHAT COULD GO WRONG?”, BUT WE’RE SEEING THAT TODAY: Our new partners for peace, the Taliban.
BUT FOOTBALL GETS THE BAD PRESS: Bike riding causes 4 in 5 sports-linked spinal injuries in U.S.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: State Dept. Offers ‘Thoughts And Prayers’ After Terrorist Attack. Leftists Have Mocked That Phrase For Years.
WELL, OKAY THEN:
This needs to be played over and over https://t.co/RiN0H3iusF
— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 26, 2021
ANN ALTHOUSE PANS JONATHAN CHAIT’S ABSURD CLAIM THAT THE PRESS IS HARDER ON BIDEN THAN ON TRUMP:
If it were my job to write a column supporting that proposition, I’d take an entirely different tack. I’d say the media always opposed Trump, and he built his political success fighting against his opponents. He was a great counterpuncher, and he got energy from these attacks. Whatever they did to him “proved” they were “fake news,” and he used whatever was thrown his way to his advantage. Thus, the media was never bad for him.
But Biden has been boosted all along by the media, spared criticism, spared even any serious questioning. Coddled for so long, he’s now exposed as utterly vulnerable. The media have been so good to him that when there’s anything bad, it is very bad for him. So, clearly, the media are worse for Biden than for Trump. Key word: for.
If the media had treated Biden and Trump equally badly all along, Biden would never have been the Democratic Party candidate in the first place.
The press knowingly and deliberately kept from voters that Biden was unfit for the job. Now that he’s in the White House, it’s so obvious that he’s unfit for the job that they can’t hide it anymore.
HARD TO DO THAT WHILE RETREATING: Biden Finally Addresses Terror Attacks in Afghanistan: ‘We Will Hunt You Down, We Will Make You Pay.’
SHE’S RIGHT, YOU KNOW:
UPDATE:
ANOTHER UPDATE: From the comments:
BOMB CANADA: THE CASE FOR WAR. Trudeau minister raises eyebrows by calling Taliban ‘our brothers.’
(Classical reference in headline.)
THAT’S OKAY, NOBODY GETS FLU ANYMORE ANYWAY, IT SEEMS: Study: Flu severity risk in U.S. higher among Black people, young children of color.
WATCH LIVE: Biden Responds to Kabul Terror Attack.
ANNALS OF LEFTIST AUTOPHAGY: The Left Accuses the Media of Warmongering After a Barely a Week of Biden Criticism.