Monthly Archives: August 2021
August 31, 2021 — Steven Hayward
With the California recall two weeks away, it is an interesting coincidence that both polls trends for Biden and Newsom are tracking in a similar direction. Let the charting begin! Lots of other interesting stuff happening out in identity land: And what Geek in Pictures without some energy charts, all showing the same thing: fossil fuels? Yeah, they still rule. Junk bonds: what could go wrong? So why do we
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August 31, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Tanner Cross teaches physical education at an elementary school in Loudoun County. He is a devout Christian. Loudoun County has enacted a wide-ranging policy in favor of students who claim to be of a gender other than their biological sex. The policy permits students to use restrooms and locker rooms, as well as to compete in sports, on the basis of the gender with which they identify, rather than their
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August 31, 2021 — Scott Johnson
It has been a nearly impossible task to report on the inquiry conducted by Judge Patrick Schiltz in In Re Blue Grand Jury Investigation. Judge Schiltz was assigned to the grand jury that handed up federal indictments of Derek Chauvin et al. When he had reason to believe that leaks of grand jury information resulted in a February New York Times story and a late April Star Tribune story, Judge
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August 31, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Realizing that there will be less bad news from Afghanistan in the coming days, the New York Times seems more inclined now to cover for Joe Biden. At least that’s the sense I get from this report by my friend who is following the Times’ coverage of the debacle: Even as NYT catalogues important aspects of the Afghanistan disaster, it covers for Biden’s worst failures. The Americans left behind are
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August 31, 2021 — John Hinderaker
As Scott has noted, the Biden administration now claims that having extracted around 6,000 Americans from Afghanistan, only a very few remain–a few hundred, or maybe just one hundred. But these numbers are radically different from what the administration was telling us only days ago. The first estimate I saw from an administration spokesman was that there were between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans in Afghanistan. Just two weeks ago, Jen
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August 31, 2021 — Scott Johnson
Yesterday organs of the Biden administration at the Pentagon and the State Department held briefings to announce the the departure of American forces from Afghanistan. The Pentagon has posted the transcript of Centcom Commander Kenneth McKenzie’s Pentagon briefing announcing the completion of our evacuation here. The Facebook video of the statement followed by questions and answers is below. Hours later the State Department released a recorded statement by Secretary of
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August 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
In an interview with George Stephanopoulos on August 19, Joe Biden said the U.S. would stay in Afghanistan until every American who wants to get out is out. As of now, the U.S. is out of Afghanistan, but our government concedes that some Americans are still trapped in that chaotic Taliban-ruled country. Moreover, our government does not intend to use the military to get these Americans out. Let’s break this
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August 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
The New York Times isn’t as hard on Joe Biden as it should be, but it isn’t giving him the kind of cover Biden’s backers would like to see (and probably expect). My friend who is following the Times’ coverage of the Afghanistan fiasco filed this report on today’s edition: NYT’s core news coverage does relatively little to protect Biden. The drone attack gets a headline, but the article quickly
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August 30, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
I agree with Steve’s post about the California parole board’s grant of parole to Sirhan Sirhan, who assassinated Robert Kennedy. I do wonder whether Steve is being too optimistic in suggesting that Governor Newsom will overturn the parole board’s decision so as to improve his prospects of avoiding recall. But Steve is an informed observer of California politics, so I’m heartened by his optimism. Perhaps Newsom will take into account
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August 30, 2021 — Steven Hayward
• Don’t look now, but many institutions are collapsing under the unsustainable weight of smug leftism. First item: late night television. Fifty million Americans tuned in to Johnny Carson’s last appearance on The Tonight Show. Today, his Tonight Show successor, along with the egregious Stephen Colbert on The Late Show on CBS, barely have 2 million viewers on a good night, and are now being beaten in the late night
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August 30, 2021 — Scott Johnson
President Biden is responsible for the epic disaster that is still unfolding in Afghanistan — “the consequences of which will travel far with us along our road,” to borrow Churchill’s formulation. President Biden, his administration, and our military leadership should be held to account. None of them has yet responded substantively to inquiries about what we have left behind in the way of equipment. “We don’t have a complete picture,
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August 30, 2021 — Scott Johnson
President Biden appeared in public at FEMA headquarters yesterday afternoon with the press in attendance. At the conclusion of his remarks Biden stated he “wasn’t supposed to take any questions,” but he took a question from Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs (video below). When Jacobs posed a question about Afghanistan, Biden demurred and skedaddled, both in the manner to which we have become accustomed. As I hear him, Biden responded to Jacobs’s
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August 30, 2021 — Scott Johnson
The Telegraph’s Nick Allen reports that President Biden vows to remember what they’re saying about him over in the scepter’d isle. This is how it goes: Joe Biden “will remember” comments about his mental acuity emanating from senior figures in the UK, and will “bear a grudge” against Britain, sources told the Telegraph. It came after Cabinet insiders were quoted as suggesting the US president “looked gaga” and described him
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August 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
Jonathan Turley, a liberal law professor and criminal defense lawyer, became a hero to some conservatives by virtue of his well-argued articles opposing both impeachments of Donald Trump. In Turley’s latest piece, he comes down hard on Michael Byrd, the police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on January 6. I don’t think Turley makes much of a case that Byrd’s actions were unjustified. He starts off on the
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August 29, 2021 — Paul Mirengoff
John has spotted one noteworthy Afghanistan-related piece in today’s Sunday New York Times, a column by Kori Schake that tries to blame the fiasco on Donald Trump. Trump’s deal was garbage, but the Taliban didn’t live up to its conditions, so Joe Biden wasn’t obligated to follow it. Indeed, there’s little reason to assume that Trump himself would have adhered to the deal, and less to believe that, if he
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August 29, 2021 — Steven Hayward
A little more than a year ago I wrote at length here about the mandatory freshman course on racism adopted at the University of Pittsburgh that, judging from the detailed syllabus posted online, was being taught from a very narrow, far-leftist perspective. (No readings, for example, from Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King Jr, James Baldwin, Richard Wright—not even Malcolm X, and not even Ta Nehesi Coates! Forget the
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August 29, 2021 — John Hinderaker
As Paul and Steve have noted, the ultra-left New York Times has struggled to defend Joe Biden’s Afghan catastrophe. What to do when your man can’t be defended? Change the subject. To what? Donald Trump, of course. Thus, we find one columnist in today’s Times trying to blame the Afghan debacle on Trump. Good luck with that: More notably, the Times Editorial Board–perhaps the most far-left assemblage outside the Politburo–but
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