DON’T UNDERESTIMATE JOE’S ABILITY TO F**K THINGS UP: We Will All Pay for Joe Biden’s ‘Minor Incursion’ Mistake.

The effect of Biden’s remarks was immediate. European capitals—Kyiv, in particular—erupted with indignation. “They watched those remarks, I think, with horror,” CNN’s Matthew Chance said of the Ukrainian government. One Ukrainian official said Biden had all but given Moscow a “green light” to invade. The White House immediately went to work cleaning up Biden’s comments, but it was wholly insufficient. “He was referring to the difference between military and non-military/para-military/cyber action by the Russians,” National Security Council Spokeswoman Emily Horne said. Some difference. Even if you believe Russia is parsing the fine distinctions between the president’s statements and their post-facto revisions by his more responsible staffers, “para-military” incursions are precisely what Moscow executed both in Crimea and in the Donbas region. There, Russian proxy forces have transformed the area into a warzone and carved out illegitimate “republics,” though the Russian currency and passports held by the residents of these puppet states leave no one confused as to who is in charge.

The president’s words and actions carry more weight than any half-hearted statement walking them back. Courtesy of his performance in Afghanistan, Putin has all the evidence he needs to conclude that Joe Biden will blink in defending American interests against an aggressor if he thinks the costs of such an effort are too high to bear. Biden has exposed the very real and now fully confirmed tensions within the Atlantic Alliance over how to respond to Russian aggression, if there is any response at all. All the tough talk in the world cannot undo that. Joe Biden has sown the wind. Now, we await the whirlwind.

Earlier, from Steve: Is Biden Inviting the Very War in Ukraine We Don’t Want to Fight?

IS THAT A GUITAR IN YOUR POCKET, OR ARE YOU JUST HAPPY TO SEE ME? Police seek man who stole $8,000 Les Paul by stuffing it into his pants (video).

VDH: Is America Heading for a Systems Collapse?

In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once-prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it.

Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Every day things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile.

Consider contemporary Venezuela. By 2010, the once well-off oil-exporting country was mired in a self-created mess. Food became scarce, crime ubiquitous.

Radical socialism, nationalization, corruption, jailing opponents, and the destruction of constitutional norms were the culprits.

Between 2009 and 2016, a once relatively stable Greece nearly became a Third World country. So did Great Britain in its socialist days of the 1970s.

Joe Biden’s young presidency may already be leading the United States into a similar meltdown.

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

REOPEN SOCIETY AND SHUT DOWN MORAL NARCISSISM: Fauci’s home office features photos of himself, his own bobblehead.

(Classical reference in headline.)

NEW CIVILITY WATCH: Ex-Labor Secretary Robert Reich says Democrats should assault Sinema over filibuster stance in deleted tweet. “National Review’s Charles Cooke said Reich’s remark was tantamount to saying Sinema ‘must be slapped around by her party if she fails to follow the demands of a white man.’ ‘No big deal,’ tweeted radio host Larry O’Connor. ‘Just Democrat/Socialist icon [Robert Reich] encouraging violence against a female senator who didn’t vote the way he wanted.’”

Related: What happens when a congressman threatens a colleague with violence?

In March 2010, 10 months before the shooting, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin had posted a map of 20 congressional districts she and John McCain won in 2008 but whose representatives in Congress had voted in favor of the Affordable Care Act. The map marked each district with a set of crosshairs. Palin promoted the map by tweeting “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD.” One of those crosshairs targeted Gabby.

Although no direct connection was ever established between Palin’s map and Gabby’s shooting, surely Palin’s violent rhetoric contributed to a climate of political violence in America in which a delusional man would mark Gabby for assassination. Gabby herself had expressed concern about Palin’s map.

Just as surely, Palin’s inflammatory post was a step toward increasingly violent political rhetoric on the way to Donald Trump and the insurrection of 6 January.

—Robert Reich, The Grauniad, November 16, 2021.

K-12 IMPLOSION UPDATE: From Mask Mandates to Omicron, Ed Secretary Cardona Finishes a ‘Very, Very Difficult’ First Year.

Control-F “Terrorist” brings up zero results, curiously: Senators Demand Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona Explain Role in Letter That Called Parents Domestic Terrorists.

JOE BIDEN WILL NEVER CHANGE:

He and his administration were elected to “shut down” a virus that he has for the most part ignored since July, when he declared “masked or vaxxed” and then stuck his foot in a hole in Afghanistan. His administration handlers ensured that the defining image from the Kabul catastrophe was footage of him turning his back to the American people, as he refused to answer questions about the manner of the troops’ withdrawal. We were told that Joe Biden was elected because of his empathy and competence. The commentators who told us that have since learned that he has neither quality.

Joe Biden is not suddenly going to become coherent when he speaks to the press. He can’t make Vladimir Putin back down by whipping out his aviators and heading to the nearest ice cream parlor. The pundits who bought the gingerly grandpa act may be praying that he can capture any fleeting fairy dust bestowed upon him by Barack Obama’s pop-culture prowess. But that won’t transform Biden into someone able to “shut down the virus.”

David Brooks thinks Biden needs to “begin revamping his presidency.” “Jennifer Rubin claims that “Biden needs a reset.” Frankly, any paid pundit begging for Biden to become the fantastical wise elder statesman they fantasized about should keep their thoughts to themselves. The rest of us should ignore their “expertise” when making any serious assessment of this defeated old man’s tenure.

Related: The ‘cabal’ that bragged of foisting Joe Biden on us must answer for his failed presidency.

BIDEN VOTERS POSTING THEIR L’S ONLINE: “Biden leaves Democrats hanging as midterms burst into full swing” — and CNN is sounding the alarm:

Biden advisers say that the President talks politics with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, but people familiar with both leaders say any campaign talk has been brief, and Democratic leaders have significant concerns with the White House’s approach to getting the President to break through. It’s not just that Biden’s approval ratings have tumbled. Those in charge of keeping Democrats in power doubt that Biden’s team understands how to improve his political fate — and with it, theirs.

“It’s hard for me to believe that the President knows how little his political shop is doing to support Democratic majorities in the Senate and the House. All of us believe that the President would be shocked to learn how little the White House political team is doing,” said one senior Democratic elected official in Washington, voicing widespread worries about the midterms. “We just know Joe Biden, and we know how much he cares about this stuff.”

Senior Democrats, including some White House aides, describe a West Wing lacking both a political strategy and the discipline to execute one. Focus groups are giving party operatives nightmares. Biden is coming across as old and absent, they say. Real and perceived fumbles play into deep fears that he’s not up to the job and that Democrats are incompetent. Few Americans can say what was in the massive bills he’s signed, though many have heard about Democratic infighting and failure in what he hasn’t signed.

“What is the plan to fix that?” asked one operative in touch with the White House. “They can’t tell us what they’re talking about next week.”

Though most Democrats in power believe there’s still ample time for a turnaround, several top operatives are already talking triage. They’re fearful of discussing all of this publicly because they don’t want to create more problems. But privately, they are petrified that a Republican majority would end Biden’s agenda and swamp them with endless investigations and subpoenas, promise impeachment and potentially endanger fair certification of the next presidential election.

Why, it’s as if: The Democrats damned Biden by impeaching Trump.

MATT WALSH EXPLAINS HUMAN BIOLOGY TO CONFUSED TRANS ACTIVISTS (Video): “Walsh clashed with trans activists on a recent episode of the Dr. Phil show in a heated debate over gender identity that climaxed at the fundamentals of gender identity and what it means to be a woman.”

CHILD GROOMING: Law and Order: SVU Has 8-Year-Old Come Out as ‘Bi.’

Why, it’s as if Hollywood is a sex-grooming gang or something.

HOW THE TOFU GETS MADE: “An explosive story from [NPR and Nina Totenberg] about supposed high drama around masking at the Supreme Court imploded [yesterday].  I want to take you through how misinformation like this gets mainstreamed by the corporate press and others.”

A Twitter thread (on the Thread Reader App) by Drew Holden.

QUESTION ASKED: Why is the FBI at the home of Rep. Cuellar? “Rep. Henry Cuellar is a moderate Texas Democrat who is sometimes at odds with his own party on issues like border control. Today, a reporter named Valerie Gonzalez is reporting that the FBI has shown up at Rep. Cuellar’s home and is currently investigating something.“

UPDATE (FROM GLENN): From the comments: “It is sad that the default assumption is that the FBI is targeting Cuellar at the request of their Democrat party masters, and no one doubts it.”

And as someone else notes, that’s the pattern.

STRAIGHT FIRE: “This is gonna be the end of your cushy government bureaucratic careers”: Bethany Mandel went full Tombstone on her county council over proposed vax passports.

[Warning: Looking directly at these words for too long may cause blindness because they’re more nuclear than the core of the sun]

So everyone here is going to tell you why this is bad for businesses and for residents. I’m here to tell you why this is bad for you as politicians. This is gonna be the end of your cushy government bureaucratic careers.

Here’s the thing. The seats for this council are up for a primary vote in June. That’s the deciding election in this county. An election the only truly motivated people bother to vote in during off-election years. Unfortunately for you, you’ve made us care. And we’ve filled these speaking slots within three minutes of them opening.

For those of you who are facing term limits, we’re coming for your seats. For those of you who plan to run again, we’re coming for yours. This resolution is the final straw for a number of businesses, groups and individuals in this county who have seen you come close to destroying everything they’ve built.

Read the whole thing; as Greg Gutfeld said last month:

GUTFELD: So it’s up to the people to tell them that it’s over. Right now, if you’re at home, you’re not in office like this, you have no idea what it’s like in this building. You have no idea. I just sent home what, four — four employees? Stress is peaking. It’s a combination of holiday stress, a combination of hassles that you have to deal with when you’re traveling. And they are adding this on top.

So there is an environment of panic gushing through the city, going through our offices that is 100 times worse than omicron. Its nuts. And it’s creating psychosomatic symptoms. I’m very suggestible. One minute I feel great. The next, I think I’m dying. This is insane.

This is — the point I’m making is, this is a panic from the top down. It’s not from above. It’s not a typical hysteria that you would get about some kind of strange phenomenon. This is a reverse hysteria. It’s coming from government bureaucracy, right? So the problem here is that you have a mild but highly contagious strain that almost everybody is getting. You get tested, it’s going to come positive. That’s what is happening with everyone I know.

But the only tool that we have is a sledgehammer. So we have the testing and then what we do is we send everybody home.

PERINO: Right.

GUTFELD: It is a shutdown in reverse. Originally we were saying okay, we’re going to shut down everything and maybe it will stop. But now we’re doing it in reverse. We’re testing. Now we’re doing it. And it turns out if you get this thing, it’s as tolerable as a cold. Most of the people that I know that have it had sniffles and that’s it. But we have a government bureaucracy that is terrified of losing an election and terrified of litigation.

So what now is not a death panic, it’s a hassle panic because we all want to go home and be with our families and they’re screwing us over. But, what this intense panic tells you, the government is not an appropriate vehicle anymore for telling us what to do. They are done because the vehicle only has one speed and its panic.

It’s driven by one incentive, re-election. It’s not driven, it’s not skewered towards risk management. Adults understand risk management. You saw that with Biden. He doesn’t understand it. He believes that there should be zero risk. That is a child mentality. So it is up to us to pick the date. I’ve been having a conversation with Scott Adams. We decided that the date for this is February 1st.

We are the hostage negotiators on behalf of America to discuss with the government about what to do since no one else has volunteered. We have to talk to the government about a return to normalcy because they are not going to do it. They are too cowardly. So it’s up to us to actually say this is what we want. February 1st, we are done.

Related:

That’s what happens when your Website is an offshoot of America’s Newspaper of Record.

PUTIN’S PUPPET: Biden admits Russia ‘will be able to prevail over time’ if it invades Ukraine.

WE’VE DESCENDED INTO SOME SORT OF BIZARRE HELL-WORLD IN WHICH PIERS MORGAN IS A VOICE OF SANITY: Piers Morgan Obliterates Joe Biden’s First Year In Office: ‘You’ve Been A Disaster.’

NEO: Kamala’s Nightmare.

Thomas Lifson, the author of the article I linked, thinks Harris is stupid. I disagree, although I acknowledge that she’s not the brightest bulb. What I think she is, is scared. Really really scared.

Based on watching her facial expressions, speech patterns, and body language, my gut feeling is that Harris is under so much pressure that she’s cracking somewhat. I don’t mean it’s nervous breakdown time; I just mean major jitters. I think Kamala senses how badly things are going. She knows she has to defend the indefensible and lacks the nimble snarkiness of Jen Psaki, the ability to lie without showing a “tell.”

I believe that Harris suspects – or fears – that, having fulfilled her ambitions and become VP, it’s an example of the Peter Principle and she’s unqualified or at least unready. Her day-to-day existence has become a bit like the actor’s dream or the student anxiety dream come to life, in which everyone is watching you and you’ve forgotten your lines or forgotten to study the subject.

For Harris, it may be some of both. I think it generally takes an extraordinary person to prepare for the job of president or vice-president. Some people are quick studies and have nerves of steel, or they’ve been major politicos for so long that they’re functioning more or less on automatic. I don’t see that with Harris, who looks and sounds frightened to me.

She remains personally ambitious, power-hungry, dedicated to whatever leftist beliefs animate her. But she’s winging it and she knows it. And it’s not turning out anything like she expected.

Earlier: Another Kamala Harris aide quits as claims of turmoil, ‘bullying’ mount.

JOE BIDEN ‘MAKES NO APOLOGIES FOR’ BOTCHED AFGHANISTAN WITHDRAWAL:

Joe Biden’s approval ratings have been underwater since his botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, which resulted in millions of dollars of military equipment being left behind, a frantic effort to evacuate Afghan refugees and American citizens from the country, and a bombing that took the lives of 13 U.S. service members.

Yet when Afghanistan came up during his press conference on Wednesday, he doubled down on his actions.

“There was no way to get out of Afghanistan after twenty years easily. Not possible,” Biden insisted. “And I make no apologies for what I did.”

He continued, “I have a great concern for the women and men who were blown up on the line at the airport by [the] terrorist attack against them.”

That’s cold comfort to the Americans still trapped there: Wall Street Journal editorial calls for more attention to Americans still stranded in Afghanistan.

According to a source cited by the board, the State Department is currently tracking 126 Americans still in Afghanistan with only five ready to depart with the necessary travel documents. The information provided by the source followed the State Department claiming earlier in December that it “is currently in touch with fewer than a dozen U.S. citizens who want to leave Afghanistan, are prepared to depart, and have the necessary travel documents.”

Earlier: Joe Biden Comes Full Circle:

During a 2012 eulogy for George McGovern, Joe Biden recalled a confrontation he had with President Gerald Ford over pulling troops out of Vietnam. Ford had agreed to meet with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which included then-freshman Joe Biden, to discuss the administration’s military funding requests during the fall of South Vietnam on April 14, 1975.

According to Biden’s account: “I said, ‘Begging the president’s pardon, but I’m sure if the president were in my position, the president would ask the president the following question.’ I swear to God, it’s in the transcript. And Ford looked at me very graciously, and he said, ‘Yeah?’ I said, ‘With all due respect, Mr. President, you haven’t told us anything.’ They were talking about Sector 1, Sector 2, Sector 3, and with that the president turned and said, ‘Henry, tell them.’ And that was the first time it was decided that we were not going to try to sustain our presence [in Vietnam],” said Biden.

But Biden’s alleged statement, and the response from Ford, do not appear in the classified minutes of the meeting, which have been released by the Ford Library Museum. According to the transcript, Biden did speak up at the meeting to oppose military aid to help evacuate South Vietnamese allies alongside the U.S. troops. “I am not sure I can vote for an amount to put American troops in for one to six months to get the Vietnamese out. I will vote for any amount for getting the Americans out. I don’t want it mixed with getting the Vietnamese out,” said Biden, according to the transcript.

Found via Fred Bauer, who notes, “Biden has never made any secret of his tremendous admiration for McGovern, whom he views as a transformational and inspirational figure.”

I WATCHED THE FBI BECOME SO WOKE IT CAN’T CALL OUT TERRORISM.

CHANGE: Plan B Covid restrictions to end in England, Boris Johnson announces.

“Having looked at the data carefully, the Cabinet concluded that once regulations lapse the Government will no longer mandate the wearing of face masks anywhere,” the prime minister told MPs on Wednesday.

“From tomorrow, we will no longer require face masks in classrooms and the Department for Education will shortly remove national guidance on their use in communal areas.

“In the country at large we will continue to suggest the use of face coverings in enclosed or crowded spaces, particularly when you come into contact with people you don’t normally meet – but we will trust the judgment of the British people and no longer criminalise anyone who chooses not to wear one.”

Amazing how facing an existential threat to one’s career focuses the mind: Is it over for Boris Johnson? “His excuse for attending a drinks party in the garden of No. 10 Downing Street after passing such restrictive lockdown laws is that he ‘believed implicitly that this was a work event’ — even though his private secretary had convened the event via a mass email asking staff to ‘bring your own booze.’ The No. 10 garden, Johnson said, is an extension of the office, so it was all work. As he spoke at Prime Minister’s Questions, Tory Members of Parliament sat silently behind him — glad for once to be wearing their masks.”

HOW’S THAT WELCOME WAGON PROGRAM COMING ALONG? Only Four States Have Regained All the Jobs Lost Since the Pandemic. They’re All Run By Republicans.

NYC MAYOR ERIC ADAMS JOINS HUNDREDS IN TIMES SQUARE FOR SUBWAY SHOVE VICTIM’S VIGIL AFTER ADMITTING HE IS SCARED OF RIDING THE TRAINS DESPITE PREVIOUSLY CLAIMING THEY WERE SAFE BUT PUBLIC HAD ‘PERCEPTION’ OF FEAR.

OUT ON A LIMB: Cary Grant’s North By Northwest Suit Is the Greatest in Film History.

MASKS ARE THE NEW PRONOUNS: Media Meltdown Over Justice Sotomayor’s Failure to Cope with the Risk of Living. “The Libertarian Party of New Hampshire makes a good point. ‘Gorsuch’s refusal to wear a mask didn’t ‘force’ Sotomayor to work remotely. Sotomayor can also: 1. Quit or 2. Have remotely sane risk tolerance practices.’ Hear, hear.” 

UPDATE: Shannon Bream Busts Fake News From NPR: Gorsuch Spiteful on Masking.

But, as it turns out, what she was claiming about the supposed masking feud wasn’t true according to Bream’s inside source. “I am told that is not accurate,” she pointedly shot down [Nina Totenberg of NPR’s] claims after giving a fair summary of the report.

According to Bream’s source, “there has been no blanket admonition or request from Chief Justice Roberts that the other Justices begin wearing masks to arguments. The source further stated Justice Sotomayor did not make any such request to Justice Gorsuch.”

Thus, “given that fact, there was also no refusal by Justice Gorsuch.”

Exit quote: “Bream concluded by pointing out that every justice is vaccinated, boosted, and that they get tested before gathering for arguments.”

UPDATE (1/19/22): Sotomayor, Gorsuch dispute NPR report about masking feud in joint statement: ‘It is false.’

(Updated and bumped.)

AMERICA’S NEWSPAPER OF RECORD: In Major Deal, The Babylon Bee Purchases Competing Satire Site CNN.

OUT ON A LIMB: