Daily Broadside | “You’re Going to be Happy” With Who’s Running in 2024

Daily Verse | Daniel 2:43
“And just as you saw the iron mixed with the baked clay, so the people will be a mixture and will not remain united, any more than iron mixes with clay.”

Happy Monday, Broadsiders! Sawgrass is not a musical genre for southern carpenters.

As I’ve written before, I voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020, although I opposed him in 2016. Since then, I’ve had mixed feelings about him, although mostly positive because of his America First policies. Like many people, I think he could use more verbal discipline but, at the same time, I admire him for his willingness to fight back against the anti-Americans spread throughout our nation — including the Deep State, the not-so-deep state like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Bernie Sanders, Adam Schiff and the current occupant of the White House, and the national media.

Given the choice, I’d rather have Trump in office right now. Give me gas at a $1.87 and I’ll tolerate the mean tweets, rather than watching Biden shred what’s left of the constitutional order as he restores our “norms.”

Everybody is liking the return to our norms, right?

As I watch Trump in exile, it seems to me that he’s engaging in a parallel presidency. Traditionally, once a president exits office, they keep a very low profile, refrain from criticizing their successors, write their memoires and maybe engage in some kind of volunteer public service. Jimmy Carter is best known for his work with Habitat for Humanity after his one term. George W. Bush is known for his work with U.S. military veterans since leaving the White House.

Trump, as is typical with him, has defied the traditions associated with former presidents. He and his organization have released powerful videos defining how awful Joe Biden is, Trump has given interviews in which he comments on current affairs, he still holds rallies with thousands in attendance, endorses political candidates, marked 9/11 by visiting first responders and published his own videotaped remarks; offers remarks during events like Sean Feucht’s “Let Us Worship” on the National Mall yesterday; and commentated on the Evander Holyfield-Vitor Belfort novelty boxing match. Plus, Trump merchandise is still selling like crazy.

Of course, he doesn’t have the executive powers of the presidency he once held, so his role is necessarily constrained. But he’s the de facto head of the Republican Party with millions of people still supporting him and wanting to see him run again.

I don’t think it’s a secret that millions of us believe that the 2020 presidential election was illegally tampered with and that Biden was wrongfully installed in the White House. (Even if you don’t believe that, you can’t deny that Biden is the absolute worst person to occupy the Oval Office in the history of the United States. Well, you can deny it, but no reasonable person does.) It’s also no secret that Trump has been teasing his plans to run in 2024, and during his visit to the police precinct in New York City on Saturday, he probably provided the clearest hint yet that he plans to run (my emphasis):

Asked by a police officer if he plans to launch a comeback in 2024, or perhaps run for New York City mayor, Trump responded “that’s a tough question.”

But then he said “actually, for me, it’s an easy question. I mean, I know what I’m going to do, but I’m not supposed to be talking about it yet from the standpoint of campaign finance laws, which, frankly, are ridiculous.”

And the former president, as he’s said numerous times already this year of his potential campaign decision, added that “I think you’re going to be happy.”

Put that together with the ads he’s running, the appearances he’s making and the way he’s staying connected to his supporters — and I think without a doubt he’s going to run in 2024.

Is that a good thing?

On balance, I think Trump is good for our politics. He represents an old-school barroom brawler that has been lost in the political machine of today that pumps out soft men and women who sit on the collective butts and collect paychecks from taxpayers but don’t deliver more freedom and more prosperity for the nation. They, in fact, do all they can to gum up our freedoms, pay political favors to keep themselves in power, and take more of our money through taxes to enrich themselves and other nations.

I don’t relish the prospect of the Deep State going after Trump again and Nancy Pelosi siccing her rabid party on him through impeachment charades.

But one has to wonder: if it wasn’t Trump and instead was, say, Ron DeSantis — what’s to prevent the Deep State from doing the same to him? Now that the Deep State understands its power and knows it can harass and hobble a president for the entire length of his term, why wouldn’t it mess with any Republican’s presidency?

On the other hand, “F Biden” is trending on Twitter, whole stadiums of students are chanting “F*** Joe Biden,” his poll numbers are disastrous, and Democrat strategist Douglas Schoen is sounding the alarm about the 2022 midterm elections.

It doesn’t mean Trump is a shoe-in. But at this point, I’d vote for Trump if he is the candidate.

Trump needs to make better choices regarding whom he surrounds himself with if he wins the White House again, but we need someone who can fight the enemy within. Trump has proven he can and will do that.

To quote Lincoln about Grant, “I can’t spare this man. He fights!”

Daily Broadside | Joe Biden and the Demise of the Presidency

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 36:26
I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.

Happy Wednesday, my friends! As Ross Perot would say, “I’m all ears.”

That tweet from David Burge is a nearly perfect summation of what happens when the Left infiltrates any number of respected institutions. Colleges, sports, jurisprudence, the military, religion, medicine and, of course, our government. Whatever the institution is, it goes woke and the traditional, historical import is overrun.

I say “nearly perfect” because there’s another factor at work in the process of killing an institution that isn’t listed but is a significant part of the degradation: coasting on the fumes of the institution’s previously earned reputation.

Maybe it’s an extension of number four. Once you’ve cloaked yourself in the “skin suit” of the target institution, it’s the institution’s reputation upon which you base your demand for respect, not your reputation. The killer rides the earned reputation for as long as he can while consolidating power.

For example, do you go to Harvard? That’s top shelf; only the best students get an Ivy League education.

Founded on basic Christian ethics, the United States of America prospered as a nation that recognized God as the ultimate Arbiter before whom even kings and nobles must bow. Those traditional ethics have been replaced by secular ethics and a cult of victimization which, when defined, is angry self-righteous envy. Lefties are coasting on the fumes of what’s left of the grand American experiment — and there’s not a gas station in sight. Once they’ve stomped out all vestiges of historic, traditional American exceptionalism, the super structure may stand for a moment, but it will inevitably come crashing down.

I’ve spent a lot of time criticizing Joseph Robinette Biden since he was installed back in January, and it got me thinking about the office of the President of the United States of America. I think the same thing has happened to that office.

Think of men like George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, James Madison, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln. These were giants on the national stage. They were knowledgeable, diplomatic, wise and principled, true statesmen. When we think of the president of the United States, these were the men who imbued that office with its eminence and reputation.

Over the 245 years that we’ve been a nation, that office has commanded respect from the people, and the men who occupy it are often referred to in modern times as “the most powerful man in the world.” But in the last few decades, we’ve come to see that the office has been hollowed out by some of the men who have occupied it, the latest examples being Donald Trump and Joseph Biden. Neither of them are particularly dignified, as befitting of that office. Donald Trump was brash and egotistical, but very effective in driving U.S. policy. Joe Biden is a disgraceful and inept man who is merely occupying the office because he’s not Donald Trump.

If I had to put a time stamp on when the office began to lose its luster, it would be with Lyndon Johnson, followed closely by Richard Nixon and eroded further by William Jefferson Clinton and his wife.

I remember when then-president Bill Clinton visited the Leadership Summit at Willow Creek Community Church outside of Chicago. At one point before Clinton arrived, Pastor Bill Hybels requested that attendees at least respect the office of the president, even if they couldn’t respect the man.

I think most people here and around the world have viewed the office of the president of the United States as being in the mold of the first presidents we had. But that’s no longer the case; it’s an institution that has been killed, gutted and is now being worn as a skin suit by a man who isn’t worthy of it. Joe Biden—and others before him—were merely coasting on the previously earned reputation of the office and demanding respect that they didn’t command.

That creates a tension in us. We instinctively want to respect the office but its reputation is not what it was. I don’t know about you, but I hope that some of that distinction can be recovered some day, but it all depends on the character of the man or woman who holds the office.

Our recent crop of candidates doesn’t hold out much hope for that to happen.

This doesn’t bode well for us as a country. Where do you go to get a reputation back? And if the office is no longer respected, to whom does the country look for leadership?

Daily Broadside | Labor Day Break Didn’t End the National Nightmare That is Afghanistan

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 30:10-11
“This is what the Sovereign Lord says:
“‘I will put an end to the hordes of Egypt
by the hands of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon.
He and his army—the most ruthless of nations—
will be brought in to destroy the land.'”

Happy Tuesday my friends. I may already have asked this, but it bears repeating: why are packages of bacon not resealable?

The day after a holiday feels like picking up a novel that I had put down and asking, “Where was I?”

Oh right. The demented, sour old man in the White House and his junta who are ruining this country. Joey “The Befuddled” Biden, Resident until January 2025 or until the Adderall has lost its effectiveness and his handlers can no longer hide the extent of his dementia. Check that; we can see how bad it is already and have known since his campaign that he had no legs for this role.

The appalling fallout of the Kabuki in Kabul continues, now in the form of Americans effectively being held hostage by either the Taliban or our own government — or both — as they sit on six different planes at the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport.

“We have six airplanes at Mazar-i-Sharif airport, six airplanes, with American citizens on them as I speak, also with these interpreters, and the Taliban is holding them hostage for demands right now,” he said on Fox News Sunday morning. “State has cleared these flights, and the Taliban will not let them leave the airport.”

McCaul added that the Taliban “are not clearing the airplanes to depart” and that the people trying to flee have “sat at the airport for the last couple of days,” in part because “the Taliban want something in exchange.”

Apparently the State Dept. caused the initial delays that kept the flights from immediately leaving Afghanistan.

The White House and U.S. State Department are holding up charter planes at an airport in Afghanistan’s Mazar-i-Sharif that would transport 19 Americans and 40 SIV holders to Albania, David Rohde, the executive editor at NewYorker.com said in an interview Monday.

“I want to repeat that,” he said. “It is the State Department and the White House” holding up the planes. He said the civilian effort has been “far more ambitious, far more dynamic and far more successful than what the administration has been doing.”

On Sunday, Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, told Fox News that the Taliban has blocked Americans aboard six planes at Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport. Three Americans involved in the private evacuation of those still in the country also blasted the State Department for preventing the evacuation flights from leaving the country.

Three different operators of private groups trying to evacuate Americans have said the same thing: it was the State Dept. that was making it difficult to get out.

Rick Clay, who operates the private rescue group “PlanB,” told Fox News that the State Department is preventing the flights from leaving Afghanistan. Clay has roughly 4,500 names on his manifest, 800 of which have been turned over to the U.S. State Department for vetting.

Two other American individuals separately involved in evacuation efforts made similar claims that the State Department is the sole entity preventing their charter flights from leaving Afghanistan. Fox News declined to name the two other people to avoid jeopardizing ongoing rescue efforts.

“This is zero place to be negotiating with American lives. Those are our people standing on the tarmac and all it takes is a f****ing phone call,” one of those individuals told Fox News.

What could possibly be the State Department’s reason for delaying the flights and for not allowing them to land in neighboring countries that have agreed to take in the refugees? Maybe this: “Biden doesn’t want Americans at home to know how many people he abandoned and is now directing the State Department to force countries to block private rescue flights from landing.”

If true, it’s callous and traitorous, a putrid mix of pride and power that puts his own reputation over that of the lives of fellow Americans. But as I’ve said before, this is an anti-American junta.

Even though the State Dept. eventually cleared the flights, it’s now reportedly the Taliban who are refusing to allow the flights to leave.

According to video released by CBS the Taliban will not clear the airplanes for takeoff full of American citizens and green card holders. There are a total of eleven planes being held captive and eight of them were chartered by conservative radio host Glenn Beck.

The State Department told CBS News the flights will be allowed to land in Qatar “if and when the Taliban agrees to takeoff.” A senior congressional source told CBS News that the Taliban is “basically holding them hostage to get more out of the Americans.”

This is one of the most jacked-up political failures in modern memory. Joey “The Buffoon” Biden already has blood on his hands and we all know if this had been Trump who spectacularly failed like this, Pelosi, Schumer and Schiff would be calling for impeachment (or worse).

Their silence is deafening, which just proves how relentlessly partisan they are.

Daily Broadside | Quick Hits on the Debacle in Afghanistan

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 14:12-14
Son of man, if a country sins against me by being unfaithful and I stretch out my hand against it to cut off its food supply and send famine upon it and kill its men and their animals, even if these three men—Noah, Daniel and Job—were in it, they could save only themselves by their righteousness, declares the Sovereign Lord.

Happy Thursday, my friends. The llamas in my dreams are all wearing scarves and hats made out of alpaca fleece.

The disaster in Afghanistan is by far the most humiliating military debacle in the history of the United States, greater even than our ignominious defeat in Vietnam. And the man bearing the utmost responsibility for it is Resident Joe Biden, perhaps the most incompetent man to ever occupy the White House.

Here’s some of what we’ve recently learned:

President Biden pressured Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani to create the “perception” that the Taliban weren’t winning, “whether it’s true or not,” in a phone call just three weeks before the insurgents seized control of the country, a bombshell leaked transcript shows.

Not exactly brimming with confidence.

“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said.

“And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”

Biden also offered aid if Ghani could publicly project he had a plan to control the situation in Afghanistan, saying: “We will continue to provide close air support, if we know what the plan is.”

Some GOP lawmakers expressed outrage over details of the call, even calling for Biden’s resignation.

His press secretary Jen Psaki refused to talk about the leaked call.

“I’m not going to get into private, diplomatic conversations or leaked transcripts of phone calls,” Psaki said at a White House briefing.

Funny, I seem to remember when leaked transcripts of phone calls led to impeachment proceedings.

Is that still the rule or nah?

So Joe Biden was asking the Afghan president to lie on his (Joe’s) behalf, to create the illusion that everything was fine.

On top of that, we also learned that the military had a lock on the Kabul airport suicide bomber from a Predator drone prior to him getting to the airport. When asked for permission to take the shot, they were denied by this administration. The bomber, as you know, went on to kill 13 servicemen and women.

They knew who it was, when it was to happen, and where it was to happen. They found the guy, locked on him and were then denied the chance to take him out before he blew himself up. But go ahead and impeach a guy for talking to another government leader about the crap Joe Biden was himself pulling in Ukraine all those many years ago.

Then, to add insult to injury, Nancy Pelosi refused to allow the names of the dead to be read aloud from the floor.

Rep Carlos Gimenez tweeted on Tuesday: “How badly do Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats want to cover up this Afghanistan debacle?

“They just blocked Members of Congress from reading the names of the service members who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan last week.

“Don’t you think our military deserves better?”

Yes, I do. In fact, America deserves better than Joe Biden.

I hope people are waking up to that fact.

Daily Broadside | Biden Declares He’s Awesome for Massive Evacuation

Daily Verse | Ezekiel 11:19
“I will give them an undivided heart and put a new spirit in them;
I will remove from them their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh.”

September 1 and the work roller coaster has hit the apex of mid-week and is ready to race down through Thursday and Friday to the weekend. Thanks for joining me again this morning.

We’re out. The last American flight left Afghanistan 24 hours before Joey B’s self-imposed deadline of August 31, as though he was over-delivering for the American people. Too bad he didn’t take those additional 24 hours to get the rest of our citizens out as he promised.

Nearly 500 or 600 Americans (not 100-200) are stranded abandoned in that hellacious country, although we’re assured that “the military phase is over, but our desire to bring these people out remains as intense as it was before. The weapons have just shifted, if you will, from the military realm to the diplomatic realm.” I don’t know about you, but the orderly and disciplined withdrawal that we’ve witnessed over the last couple of weeks has my confidence in this administration’s capability at an all-time high.

Yeah no.

Some associated news accompanying the end of our mission there:

An Afghan interpreter who helped save then-Senator Joe Biden’s life in 2008 after the helicopter that he, Senator John Kerry and Senator Chuck Hagel were riding in was forced to land in a snowstorm in a remote part of the country. Now the interpreter, known only as Mohammed, is pleading with Biden to get him and his family out of Afghanistan.

Mohammed’s attempt to get into the U.S. has been held up for months by red tape. Veterans, who served with the interpreter on the more than “100 firefights,” made appeal after appeal to to get him out. He got to the Kabul airport, but when he was told his wife and children would not be able to come with him, he left and went into hiding.

Now Mohammed is begging Biden to get them all out: “Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family. Don’t forget me here.”

Good luck, Mohammed. Sugar Cone Joey didn’t even care enough to get all American citizens out.

Did you know that this administration is importing Afghans to America by the hundreds of thousands?

And now, just like thirteen years ago, our rulers want to use a crisis they created as justification to ram through what they always wanted to do anyway. Which, in this case, is to resettle a hundred or two hundred thousand (the number varies depending on who’s speaking) foreigners with no tradition of liberty—who are indeed from a culture deeply alien, even hostile to, Western civilizational norms—in your communities.

The justification for this is already being trumpeted: we must save our “allies,” translators and such, who helped us throughout our twenty-year failed experiment. This argument, though offered in bad faith, is effective because the vast majority of American consider abandoning an ally to a deadly enemy dishonorable.

But does anyone really believe that America has, or ever had—even over the duration of two decades—200,000 “allies” in Afghanistan? That we ever employed even a fraction of that number as translators? The claim is risible on its face.

The regime has in any case already admitted that, of the roughly 111,600 Afghans (as compared to 5,400 American citizens) already evacuated, it has no idea who the vast majority of them are. Our masters tell us that we must save “allies” and “translators”—and then in the next breath admit that they’re indiscriminately taking anyone. People who act and speak this brazenly do so out of a deep reservoir of contempt and hatred. The message is “We can do and say whatever we want; we can lie and contradict ourselves within the same sentence, and there’s nothing you can do about it. In fact, if you object, or even notice, we will use our power to crush you.”

As a believer, I welcome the opportunity to share the love of Christ with an Afghani. As an American citizen, however, I don’t trust the government rulers who are obviously seeking to overthrow the American experiment in freedom by dividing and conquering. Bringing Afghans here where it is unlikely the majority will assimilate but isolate themselves in communities closed to outsiders will continue to fracture our society. American culture is going the way of the dodo.

So now that our 20-year “war” in Afghanistan is over, what happens now? Nearly 90 retired generals and admirals signed a letter urging Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley should resign. Their reasoning is that the catastrophic failure in Afghanistan has enormous consequences “‘and will reverberate for decades beginning with the safety of Americans and Afghans’ left behind under Taliban rule.”

They argued that upon learning about President Joe Biden’s plan to close the Bagram Air Base, both Milley and Austin should have “recommended against this dangerous withdrawal in the strongest possible terms.” If the president went forward with it against their advice, they should have “resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.”

[…]

When Biden decided to hold firm with the Aug. 31 withdrawal date, the senior military leaders “had a choice” to make, Arbuckle added.

“They could either salute and go try to execute the orders as best as they can,” or they could’ve resigned and told Biden, “I cannot in all good conscience follow that order because I understand the serious implications coming from it.”

“We need to make it clear that the ultimate decision making in anything that has to do with conflicts of warfare is the president of the United States,” he continued. “He decides … all matters regarding warfare. So it all comes back to the political side.”

You know that your tax dollars and mine funded the 20-year war. Did you know the government gave billions to contractors?

Over the last 20 years of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. spent $89 billion in taxpayer dollars to fund the building and training of the Afghan National Army with an estimated $2.26 trillion in total operating costs funded by U.S. taxpayers.

Reminder: government doesn’t produce anything to collect its receipts, which it calls “revenue” — as though it were a business conducting transactions with the public. It simply decrees that it is allowed to take obscene amounts of money from you and me and then does it. I believe we fought a war of independence over excessive taxation.

Seven buses of “orphans, Christians and 25 American citizens” were turned away at the Kabul airport after former Recon Marine Chad Robichaux coordinated the rescue efforts. Here’s what he wrote to a friend:

“Our two guys on the ground spent all night rescuing 7 buses loads of people: 300 orphans, 100 Christians, 25 Americans,” the message read. “The families of the pilots that have been shuttling our flights.”

“After getting them on the airport and into a holding area, the Colonel over the 82nd had the whole group kicked off the airport and into the hands of the Taliban because he didn’t like the fact that we were out there rescuing people,” Robichaux claimed. “Essentially murdered them.”

An “update” from Robichaux said, “We have unofficial intel that they ended up in the hands of the Taliban.”

Finally, while some military working dogs have been evacuated from Afghanistan, a few dozen service dogs have been abandoned to the Taliban.

“As the country’s first national humane organization and largest certifier of animal welfare in the world, it sickens us to sit idly by and watch these brave dogs who valiantly served our country be put to death or worse,” Ganzert said.

Another group, Veteran Sheepdogs of America, said on Monday it was attempting to get 51 working dogs out of Kabul. On Tuesday, the group said it was able to raise $1.67 million to charter a 737 plane to evacuate the animals, but needed another $500,000 to replace an animal rescue operation that “fell through.”

It’s all so pathetic and humiliating. But leave it to president 45 to bring a sane American message to America.

https://youtu.be/gtuxITTXzT0

Daily Broadside | We Left More Than People and Weapons Behind

Daily Verse | Lamentations 3:22-23
Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.

Good morning my friends. A new week and as the verse above says, the Lord’s compassions are new every morning and his faithfulness is great. That’s good news for those of us who watch in dismay the foolishness on display across the world.

The names of our dead in Afghanistan were published over the weekend. They are:

Rylee McCollum, 20
David L. Espinoza, 20
Dylan R. Merola, 20
Jared M. Schmitz, 20
Kareem M. Nikoui, 20
Maxton Soviak, 22
Hunter Lopez, 22
Humberto A. Sanchez, 22
Daegan Page, 23
Nicole L. Gee, 23
Ryan Knauss, 23
Johanny Rosario Pichardo, 25
Darin T. Hoover, 31

The Epoch Times carried a short profile of each person, which you can read here.

Kathy McCollum, the mother of Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum vented her grief at Joe Biden, who is absolutely responsible for the wreck occurring in Afghanistan (and don’t let him or his enablers tell you otherwise). Listen if you can bear it.

Sgt. Nicole Gee had posted a photo of her cradling an infant on Instagram a week prior to her death. Accompanying the picture, she wrote, “I love my job.”

This, to me, exemplifies the American military. We are strong, but we are also compassionate. We fight when we have to, but we aren’t unnecessarily cruel or heartless. Of course, there are exceptions like the boneheads at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but our shock at their behavior proves the rule.

The tragedy here is that these 13 deaths didn’t have to happen. They could have, they might have, but with another president in office, the chances that they would have were exceptionally small. The original plan (Trump’s) that the Biden administration abandoned had civilians out first rather than last. There wouldn’t have been the tightly packed crowds offering themselves as targets like the current situation with flights scarce.

It is so hard for me to understand the thinking behind the decisions that led to this outcome. I don’t know who’s doing the ‘thinking’ but I conclude that this is the preferred result for whoever is pulling Joey Ice Cream’s puppet strings. We aren’t this incompetent nor destructive.

Another thing that just short-circuits my brain is the massive amount of armament that Joey Sprinkles basically gifted to our enemies. The mind-numbing scale and sheer numbers are becoming increasingly clear. A graphic going around shows the enormity of the ‘error.’

I assume that these weapons were meant for the Afghan army which, as you can see, totaled some 300,000 troops. But that army disintegrated at the first sign of having to stand on their own two feet. 22,000 Humvees? 358,530 assault rifles? Helicopters? Airplanes?

It’s not just weapons that we used to arm Afghan forces and then fell into Taliban hands. It’s vehicles and equipment that, like Bagram air base, Biden simply ordered be abandoned. Left behind, like American citizens in the streets of Kabul.

The Biden retreat will have worldwide consequences for decades.

I’m not the only one who thinks this whole thing stinks to high heaven, and not just because of what looks like raging incompetence. Roger Kimball suspects it’s more than that.

The question that has not really been pressed about this rather awe-inspiring armory is, why?

Why did we leave it behind to be used by the Taliban?

I don’t believe that question has been addressed with anything like the determination it deserves.

Some people have suggested that it was just a matter of simple incompetence on the part of the Biden administration, particularly the State Department, which is overseeing the evacuation, and the president himself, who apparently chose to ignore advice from some of his advisors about the time table for the evacuation.

But I suspect there is something more insidious than simple incompetence.

What we’re dealing with here is politicized, and therefore, malevolent incompetence.

The U.S. has left American citizens, Afghan interpreters, allies and millions of people at the mercy of the Taliban. But we’ve also left something else behind that is ultimately more damaging:

Daily Broadside | Just As Promised, It’s Not Saigon. It’s Worse.

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 46:28c
“I will discipline you but only with justice;
I will not let you go entirely unpunished.”

Friday and the end of the week. When I put on the moves, I’m talking about chess.

You’ve undoubtedly heard that the exit from Afghanistan just keeps getting worse and worse. Yesterday saw the worst day for U.S. troops in ten years.

A suicide bomb attack Thursday outside the Abbey Gate at Kabul’s airport in Afghanistan killed 13 U.S. service members and injured at least 18 more, U.S. officials said – making it the deadliest day for U.S. troops in 10 years.

Officials told Fox News late Thursday that those killed included 10 Marines, two Army soldiers and a Navy corpsman, correcting earlier reports that 12 Marines were killed.

In a press conference, Resident Biden said that he bears “responsibility for fundamentally all that’s happened of late.” Good on him for saying so. But that lasted little more than 30 seconds before he pivoted and pointed fingers at president Trump for setting a deadline by May 1, 2021, implying that the former president was to blame for the violence.

“You know as well as I do that a former president made a deal with the Taliban that he would get all American forced out of Afghanistan by May 1,” Biden said.

In addition to the human slaughter, and perhaps invoking more of it, we learned yesterday that the Biden administration gave the Taliban the names of American citizens and our Afghan allies. The Taliban!

U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders and Afghan allies to grant entry into the militant-controlled outer perimeter of the city’s airport, a choice that’s prompted outrage behind the scenes from lawmakers and military officials …

But the decision to provide specific names to the Taliban, which has a history of brutally murdering Afghans who collaborated with the U.S. and other coalition forces during the conflict, has angered lawmakers and military officials …

“Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” said one defense official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic. “It’s just appalling and shocking and makes you feel unclean.”

Great imagery, that. Those of us who still have a moral center are outraged over this cataclysmic clown show being run by very stupid people.

Asked about POLITICO’s reporting during a Thursday news conference, President Joe Biden said he wasn’t sure there were such lists, but also didn’t deny that sometimes the U.S. hands over names to the Taliban.

Scum alert: the “Tally-ban,” as Biden calls them, are known for executing Afghans who worked with Americans.

Biden promised us this would not be a Saigon moment and, by golly, it isn’t. It’s a hundred times worse.

He doesn’t have a clue what’s going on. In fact, he admitted that he’s told who to call on when conducting a presser.

While it has become normalized for the president to rely on a list of pre-selected reporters, he made a rather stunning admission in the process.

“Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on was Kelly O’Donnell from NBC,” Biden kicked off the press conference.

Who’s in charge here? Who’s “instructing” the Resident? Is Joe Biden really that incapable? (I know, rhetorical question.)

Josh Hawley called for Biden’s resignation.

The man that the U.S. media and “81 million voters” put in office. God help us all.

I’m not kidding at all when I say if you haven’t bought ammo, you really need to do it. Thanks to Weasel over at Ace of Spades for the following sources:

AmmoSeek – online ammo search tool
GunBot – online ammo search tool
SG Ammo
Palmetto State Armory
Georgia Arms
AmmoMan
Target Sports USA
Bud’s Gun Shop

Have a good weekend.

Daily Broadside | A Word That Fits Biden Better Than Empathy

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 29:13
“You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. I will be found by you,” declares the Lord, “and will bring you back from captivity.”

Happy Monday, my friends. In my opinion, sushi is best served in a vat of bacon.

I was hoping that the weekend would prove that last week was just a bad dream and there would be daisies and unicorns waiting for us this week.

Nah, not really. I knew that our most recent national nightmare was only getting started.

Joe Biden is a Failed Commander in Chief!

Turns out that the wretched fiasco in Afghanistan just keeps getting worse as the nation formerly known as the United States of America continues to suck at its basic responsibilities. Or, rather, the idiots running the place suck at theirs.

Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Fox News the U.S. has no intelligence in Kabul outside the airport, marking a victory for the Taliban, Russia, China and Iran.

[…]

“We have no intelligence on the ground now,” he continued. “We are completely dark. With the exception of the airport we will be dark.”

[…]

“That is a victory, not only for the Taliban but for Russia, China and Iran because we can’t see their activities in the region anymore.”

Gee, who screwed up our intelligence, leaving our troops at the mercy of our enemies?

Numerous reports have indicated that the Taliban are tracking or killing anyone found to have connections to the U.S., despite promising to pardon them.

What?! I’m shocked, shocked I tell you, that the Taliban would lie to us! SoME0nE sHUd riTe tHaT dOUn. Might come in handy later.

McCaul told Fox News that he pleaded with the Biden administration for months to evacuate interpreters and Afghan partners.

“They completely failed to do so,” McCaul said. “The intelligence community was very clear and had gave a very grim assessment about the conditions on the ground. The Biden administration chose to ignore that intelligence.”

This is what you get for being suckered into voting for empathy. We’re a nation of emotionally-shriveled lightweights who think they are literally being killed when their feelings get hurt. Empathy is great for a pastor or a counselor, but it’s not the trait you need when dealing with evil malignancies like the Taliban. And Biden, unlike president Trump, does not have a killer instinct — unless it’s chasing down white Americans. Then he’s all business.

“Listen, fat …”

“Empathy” comes from the ancient Greek ἐμπάθεια (empatheia), meaning “physical affection or passion or state of emotion.” Derived from ἐν (en, “in, at”) and πάθος (pathos, “passion” or “suffering”). It literally means, “in passion,” which might be expressed as Bill Clinton did: “I feel your pain.”

In other words, you can identify with someone else’s pain or feelings. I suppose if I were trapped in Afghanistan, I’d be thrilled that Joe could identify with my fear, anxiety and sadness.

Meanwhile, “Robert Charles, a former assistant secretary of state under President George W. Bush, told Fox News there could be as many as 40,000 Americans in the country.” Not just 10,000 or 15,000, which is alarming enough, but nearly three or four times that amount.

40,000 Americans in a country overrun by murderous Islamic jihadists. I wonder how Joe’s empathy is working out for them?

There’s another word that is derived from πάθος (pathos) and fits Biden and his administration better than “empathy.”

That word is pathetic and means miserably or contemptibly inadequate.

But his tweets are nice.

Daily Broadside | It Takes a Village Idiot

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 17:9-10
The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.
Who can understand it?
“I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind,
to reward a man according to his conduct,
according to what his deeds deserve.”

Friday and the end of another week — and what a week it has been.

When the 12-story Champlain Towers South condominium building collapsed in Florida back in June, initial reports found that, while the cause of the collapse isn’t known, “the structural slab was deteriorating because it was flat instead of sloped. That meant the water didn’t drain off the concrete’s waterproofing quickly” and that “failure to complete the ‘extremely expensive’ repairs … would ’cause the extent of the concrete deterioration to expand exponentially.'”

It feels like the United States has finally slid off its “structural slab” after decades of neglect and abuse, and is collapsing in a heap on the world stage. Perhaps the anti-American wokesters and progressive Marxists who pollute our country are learning that facts don’t care about your feelings.

But probably not.

It’s a pleasant LARP, with self-reinforcing loops of hashtags, New York Times puff pieces and Psaki ‘circling back’, until one day the Taliban roll in and everyone is running for the helicopters. It’s like US elites finally had the VR headset knocked from their faces and actually had a look around. And what they saw was a roomful of men with faces out of an illustrated bible looking like they’d just pillaged a Cabela’s—that’s how much top-shelf, modded-out AR hardware they captured—sitting down for a super-awkward Zoom meeting announcing a sudden change of plans for American foreign policy.

While there is plenty of blame to lay at the feet of George W. Bush, Barack Hussein Obama, and Donald J. Trump for the situation in Afghanistan, the one who matters is Joseph Robinette Biden. The most far-left executive ever to hold office (and that includes Obama), Biden has proven to be a one-man wrecking crew. It’s not that he’s doing it all himself; he has plenty of help from the junta installed after the hijinked election in 2020.

But he’s the acting head of our government.

More like acting the village idiot:

10,000-15,000 (!) American citizens are trapped in Taliban-held Afghanistan.

The U.S. government cannot go out and give them safe passage to the airport.

The U.S. government cannot guarantee the safety of American citizens in Afghanistan.

The Biden administration is making Americans pay $2,000 for a flight out of Afghanistan. (Hunter needs new shoes, baby!)

Afghan parents so desperate they’re passing their babies and kids over the crowd at the airport!

US soldiers stuck at Kabul airport while UK and French soldiers are getting their citizens out.

The Taliban are using our abandoned equipment. Say, where do you suppose the surplus will end up?

State Department won’t say why it killed Pompeo’s crisis evacuation unit. (One hint: #OrangeManBad!)

Joe Biden reacts to George Stephanopolous bringing up Afghans falling off our planes as if he’d “brought up irrelevant ancient history.” (Listen, fat.)

Joe Biden calls it a day for the weekend while Afghanistan burns. (He’s tired, doncha’ know.)

Our closest allies for more than a century, the UK, just held Biden in contempt for the disaster in Afghanistan.

Can one man literally be this incompetent? Or is there something more sinister at work here? I mentioned in yesterday’s post that Biden has been compromised by China, so one can legitimately wonder if there’s more than just poor management at work here.

Lara Logan thinks that the United States “chose this outcome” and it’s tough to deny her logic.

https://youtu.be/156RHClV84I

“Whoever is in power right now, whoever is really pulling the strings — and I don’t know [who is pulling the strings] — they could do anything they want to change this. And they’re not.” — Lara Logan

Are Biden and his cabal so utterly ruthless that they would proactively destroy all the work we did in Afghanistan just so that the U.S. would be humiliated before a watching world? So that our reputation as a so-called superpower would take such a massive hit as to be mocked by China and censured by the UK? To degrade the intimidation factor that Trump had recently brought back? To wreck a country with no regard for how many people die?

Honest answer? Yes, I believe they would. They are in a “no holds barred” situation because 2022 is coming and they know they have the potential to be slaughtered (figuratively speaking!) in that election. That is, unless they depend on late-arriving ballots to swing the elections to themselves.

It’s no secret that the far-left has taken over the Democrat party, and they HATE America. They hate our founding, they hate our constitution, they hate our rights, they hate whites’ skin color, they hate men, they hate normal marriage, they hate normal sex, they hate normal gender, they hate God, they hate Christianity, they hate Christians, they hate churches, they hate law and order, they hate our traditions, they hate our history and they hate our norms. These people are filled with a seething rage and indignation over the Western tradition and wisdom that gave us the most powerful and wealthy nation in all of human history.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see a logical connection between the unmitigated disaster that is Afghanistan, the Left’s control of our government, and the beating that our country’s standing in the world is taking right now. What other country in its right mind would trust the United States to be a strong and stable partner with financial and military might when they need it?

More to the point, what confidence do regular Americans have in our government and the vast military that it wields? I speak for myself when I say that when I see the fustercluck in Afghanistan and contrast that with “pregnancy flight suits” and pride flags and transgenders in the armed forces, I no longer feel confident in my country’s ability to protect me from our enemies or, for that matter, to protect me from my own government’s overreach.

Maybe they should start focusing on winning wars instead of helping men walk in stilettoes.

In fact, I’m starting to suspect that the military is being prepared to lock down and harass and possibly arrest all those “potential terrorists” who oppose Covid lockdowns, question the 2020 election or support Trump.

I’ve never felt so unsettled about our country as I have this week.

Have a good weekend.

Daily Broadside | Planning to Fail: No Good Way to Get All U.S. Citizens Out of Afghanistan

Daily Verse | Jeremiah 15:1
Then the Lord said to me, “Even if Moses and Samuel were to stand before me, my heart would not go out to this people.”

It’s Thursday, my friends. Styrofoam cups do not a good flotation device make.

I wish there were other things to write about this week, but the catastrophe in Afghanistan remains the top story as even more bad news continues to surface in the wake of our incompetent Washington fool’s monumental failure in that stone age disaster of a country.

When Joe Biden was running for president, he hid in his basement for the majority of his campaign. We all knew that if he couldn’t handle the rigors of the campaign trail, he couldn’t handle the rigors of the office. Now that he’s been installed as Resident, he’s proved the assumption. After being summoned from his vacation to address the American people, he fled back to Camp David after making a threadbare speech that blamed everyone but himself for the disaster in Kabul.

Now we’re told that he cut his vacation short, returning Tuesday rather than on Wednesday as originally planned. Gosh, that had to be tough! All those pesky politicians disturbing his rest over a little intelligence failure and some lost armaments.

*shrugs* Big F***ing Deal, amirite?

But the lie that anybody but Joe Biden is responsible for the calamity in Kabul ain’t gonna hold. The National Pulse dropped a rather interesting story yesterday claiming that the Biden administration killed funding for a Trump-era “critical State Department program aimed at providing swift and safe evacuations of Americans out of crisis zones just months prior to the fall of Kabul.”

It wasn’t about Afghanistan per se, but it was about situations just like the one we’re facing in Afghanistan. A couple of key graphs:

In a lengthy article in Vanity Fair from May 2021, the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR) – also referred to in overlap with a predecessor/partner bureau called “OpMed” is described as a “little-known team of medics and miracle workers—hidden deep within the U.S. Department of State.”

“Even before COVID reared its head, OpMed was finding ways to do all sorts of things, serving as the hidden hand behind daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad,” the article states, before going on to quote Secretary of State Tony Blinken on the importance of the program’s goals.

“The Bureau of Medical Services’ Directorate of Operation—or ‘OpMed,’ as we call it—is a lifeline for the Department of State and the American people… Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis. During the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, OpMed was integral to our evacuation and repatriation of 100,000 Americans to the United States as countries began locking down their borders.”

But The National Pulse understands that career officials inside the State Department objected to the Trump-era aim of creating a Contingency and Crisis Response bureau with the express purpose of avoiding a future Benghazi-style situation for Americans overseas.

Instead, Biden’s team revoked the funding and the approval for the plan, even as the COVID-19 crisis reasserted itself, and and Afghanistan withdrawal loomed.
(Emphasis mine.)

“Career officials.” And now we’re hearing that the State Department has no plan—at least one based in reality—for evacuating American nationals or Afghans who want out.

President Joe Biden’s pledge to evacuate thousands more at-risk Afghans who worked for the U.S. government will run into the cold reality of a fast-closing window of time, insecurity all over Afghanistan and major logistical hurdles.

As one U.S. official told Reuters “too many things have to go 100 percent correctly” to execute the plan to move out those going through the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) process. The Pentagon is aiming to evacuate up to 22,000 SIV applicants, their families and other at-risk people.

But officials and refugee resettlement groups said that number, while admirable, will be much more difficult to reach now that the Taliban have seized the capital Kabul and most of the country.

Biden’s Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, who’s chasing “white supremacists” (read: wrong-think conservatives) out of the armed forces, seems to confirm that, really, if you’re in Afghanistan and want out, you’re on your own.

In another report, Secretary Austin admits, “We don’t have the capability to go out and collect up large numbers of people.”

Biden the foreign policy expert! Wisdom gained after more than 50 years in Washington, right fellas? So wise! So stunning! Why, it’s almost as if the American draw down was planned this way!

Wait—maybe it was! Remember the little dust-up over the Hunter Biden laptop left at a Delaware computer repair shop? Remember his emails outlining his deal with a Chinese-funded company that included “10 held by H for the big guy,” the “big guy” being then-vice president Joe Biden?

The Biden criminal family is owned by the Chinese. And guess who benefits from the collapse of American support in Afghanistan?

Gropey Joe pulled out of Afghanistan after 20 years, zillions of dollars, and thousands of lives were lost. China stands to gain a great deal from this evacuation. The same China that has funneled tens of millions of dollars to Hunter Biden since 2009, and really kicked things into high gear in 2015 when Gropey Joe was vice president. Coincidence? You decide! You’ll have to do so without asking any questions because Biden, VP Harris, and Jen Psaki are all mysteriously AWOL.

The reason the Chinese are first in line as America exits is that they are pursuing world domination through their “Belt and Road” initiative, a program that has to run straight through Afghanistan, where there lies “an estimated trillion dollars worth of rare-earth minerals under its soil.

Either China has Biden by the short-hairs, or he’s a incompetent moron. Or both.

But at least the tweets are nice, right? We all good with that?

Give me so-called mean tweets, gas for $1.96, and a strong military over this milquetoast pretender any day. I truly wonder if we’ll survive until mid-terms in 2022.