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For all those who voted for Biden because they could not stand Trump, I disagreed with your choice but understood your emotional inability to make a rational/objective decision.
You were blinded by distaste/emotion. We all are at times.
Perhaps, were you now in Afghanistan abandoned by the candidate who became president and you voted for, and possibly a hostage waiting for your fate, you might re-think as you look in the mirror.
I certainly did after voting for Carter the first time.
And:
Could not say it any better:
Could not say it any better:
Biden’s Rush to the Afghan Exits
The Taliban says get out by Aug. 31. The U.S. President agrees.
By The Editorial Board
Some readers were upset by our editorial last week: “Biden to Afghanistan: Drop Dead.” But that headline looks more sadly accurate than ever after President Biden’s decision Tuesday to stick to his arbitrary Aug. 31 deadline for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan.
Unless you’re Nancy Pelosi or a media partisan, there’s no sugarcoating what this means. Mr. Biden is bowing to Taliban demands, reiterated on Tuesday, not to extend the deadline. He is rejecting the advice of such G-7 leaders as Britain’s Boris Johnson and Emmanuel Macron of France to stay longer to get more people out of the country safely. And he is abandoning thousands of Afghans who fought with the U.S. and NATO to the Taliban’s brand of retribution.
There was an alternative. Mr. Biden could have sent in enough military force to provide safe zones and retrieve stranded Americans and Afghan allies. He could have done so with a NATO coalition of the willing. The U.S. Army has 31 active duty combat brigades of several thousand soldiers each.
He could have told the Taliban that the U.S. is not negotiating over the deadline and that U.S. forces will remain for as long as it takes to complete the mission of rescuing our people. This would have salvaged some honor and credibility from the botched withdrawal.
Instead Mr. Biden has negotiated with the Taliban from a position of weakness. He has sent too few troops to protect the Kabul airport and retrieve our allies. He sent his CIA director to negotiate with the Taliban, who adopted Mr. Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline as their own and rejected William Burns’s entreaties.
On Tuesday the Taliban escalated by barring Afghans from even going to the airport. “We are not in favor of allowing Afghans to leave,” said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid. Yet in his remarks Tuesday at the White House, Mr. Biden raised no objection to this command that could strand thousands of Afghan allies.
The White House and Pentagon say they don’t even know how many Americans are still in Afghanistan. As for the Afghans, James Miervaldis of the nonprofit No One Left Behind tells us via email that “we’ve got a list of 1,200 families (approx 6,000 people) who have their visas in hand. Really curious how the President is going to get them inside the airport and fly out before 8/31.”
Mr. Biden said he has asked the Pentagon and State Department to come up with “contingency plans” in case the Aug. 31 deadline can’t be met. But that sounds like political cover to make it seem that he isn’t dancing to the Taliban deadline. Media reports say some U.S. troops have already begun to depart the airport, and they will soon have to begin leaving by the hundreds to meet next Tuesday’s deadline—even as they try to provide security and assist with evacuations.
It’s hard not to conclude that Mr. Biden’s decisions here are driven by domestic politics and the need to vindicate his initial decision to withdraw so recklessly. He wants out of Afghanistan fast, and sending more troops or ignoring the deadline would raise the risk of a confrontation with the Taliban and perhaps casualties. As long as most U.S. citizens get out, and there are no American hostages, he figures most Americans will quickly forget about the chaos at the airport and the Afghans left behind.
The White House is already spinning the evacuation as a triumph of planning and brilliant execution. They say they always knew withdrawal would be messy. They claim to have had a contingency plan, and as of Tuesday no one had died in the evacuation. That ignores the seven Afghans at the airport this week and the two who leapt to their deaths from a C-17 last week.
But never mind. As the political spin picks up speed, Mr. Biden’s panicked evacuation from Kabul will soon be compared on MSNBC to the Berlin Airlift.
We certainly hope the evacuation continues without incident. But if that happens it will be owing to good luck or because God looks kindly on fools, drunkards and the United States of America, as Bismarck famously put it.
The Afghan withdrawal is one of the sorriest American failures in decades. Its consequences will play out for years, if not decades, as friends and foes recalibrate their views of U.S. political will in general, and Mr. Biden’s in particular. The President may want Americans to forget the last two weeks, but the world will remember. The Taliban and al Qaeda will use it as a recruiting ad for young jihadists. China, Russia and Iran are already considering how they can exploit a weak America.
Mr. Biden’s bloody-minded refusal to adapt to the collapse of the Afghan government and military is another reminder that electing a U.S. President is a fateful choice. Character matters, but character has many parts. One is judgment, and another is the courage to admit a mistake and regroup. Mr. Biden is failing on both counts. With three-and-a-half years to go in his Presidency, the world is going to become much more dangerous.
And:
This Op Ed reminded me I forgot to include the increased dependence on drugs as another reason why our nation has dumbed itself down. and we are where we are today.
This Op Ed reminded me I forgot to include the increased dependence on drugs as another reason why our nation has dumbed itself down. and we are where we are today.
Our acceptance of pill popping and the increase in dispensing them by the medical profession is partly to blame for our predilection for drugs in general.
We have forgotten how to draw from within our souls and to use judgement to overcome disturbing issues that confront and challenge us.
A nation's citizens that increases reliance on drugs will surely increase their inability to reason and think and that is destructive.
For God's sake, one would think, even our dumb ass president would understand the ravages of drugs by simply looking at Hunter who he said was one of the smartest people he knows.
The High Price of Federal Marijuana Legalization
A better way would be decriminalization with heavy regulation and no role for Big Tobacco.
By Kevin Sabet
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer recently released a much-anticipated discussion draft of a bill to legalize marijuana. Mr. Schumer has stated his goals are to “ensure restorative justice, public health, and implement responsible taxes and regulations.” While many legalization advocates and pot-industry lobbyists are praising the bill, scientists and top researchers are urging senators to proceed carefully, and they’re right to counsel caution.
It’s valid to be concerned about the harms of drug policies. The war on drugs has disproportionately affected low-income communities and people of color. It would be productive to decriminalize low-level marijuana possession and allow arrest records to be expunged. President Biden supports such decriminalization. But this is very different from commercialization—a policy that would legalize the use, possession, production and sale of marijuana and allow major corporations to advertise and promote their products. Commercialization would allow big companies to profit from addiction.
On the same day the Senate draft bill was released, a panel of 13 world-renowned marijuana researchers, including Hoover Adger of Johns Hopkins, sent a letter to Mr. Schumer that outlined three worrying trends in states that have legalized marijuana.
First, states that allow the marijuana industry to produce and market products are seeing a rise in candies, vaping oils, concentrates and other forms of extremely high-potency products. It’s common to see products with levels of THC—the main psychoactive component of marijuana—upward of 90%. The market share of such concentrated marijuana products is rapidly growing. Since 2015, among Colorado high school students who used marijuana in the past 30 days, the proportion of those who smoked it declined 15%, while the number who reported using concentrated marijuana rose 138.5%.
These products are increasingly popular among youths. In Colorado the use of marijuana dabs among youth has risen fivefold since 2017, while the use of marijuana vapes has doubled. Use of high-potency cannabis in adolescents and young adults is associated with increased risk of addiction and the development of psychosis and schizophrenia. Colorado lawmakers unanimously passed an overhaul of marijuana regulations in June to mitigate the harm of high-potency marijuana.
Second, states that commercialized the drug have seen rising rates of youth use, poison-center calls and issues with drugged driving. In Colorado and Massachusetts, calls to the poison-control center for marijuana exposures—mostly related to ingestion of marijuana edibles by children—rose 112% and 140%, respectively, after legalization. And according to data from the American Automobile Association and the Colorado Department of Transportation, traffic fatalities in which the driver tested positive for marijuana doubled following legalization in Washington state and Colorado. No, the sky hasn’t fallen, but more people have been hurt than predicted.
In Colorado, past-month marijuana use among children under 15 increased 15% over the past two years. California, Nevada and Oregon saw 20% and higher increases in use by the young in the past two years, according to federal data. Keeping the drug away from youth is key to any successful legislation, given the harm marijuana use poses to developing brains, from in utero exposure to adolescence.
Third, as commercialization has taken hold in several states, tobacco companies are aiming to pivot into marijuana industries. Altria, the owner of Philip Morris, has invested more than $2 billion in the marijuana industry, not to mention its 35% stake in Juul Labs, the e-cigarette company that is extremely popular among adolescents and young adults. Altria is lobbying for marijuana legalization at the state and federal levels. Imperial Brands, the world’s fifth-largest tobacco company, and British American Tobacco are also angling to get into the business.
We’ve been fooled before by Big Tobacco. These companies 100 years ago turned a relatively benign substance into the deadly cigarette, which still kills more people than opioids. Tobacco companies spent decades lying about the dangers of smoking, and now they are seizing on the cultural shift toward marijuana.
Decriminalization of minor possession and expungements should be the way forward, not Colorado-style commercialization. But if marijuana is legalized entirely, the bill should at least include a 10% to 15% cap on marijuana potency, severe limits on advertising, a ban on any form of flavored or child-friendly products such as vapes and candies, and a ban on tobacco-industry participation.
These regulations would put public health and safety at the forefront of federal marijuana policy. Any bill without such provisions would be a giveaway to the marijuana industry and its investors. We should learn from our current drug epidemics—tobacco and opioids. Both have been disastrous, and both stem from legal industries whose business model is to profit from addiction.
Mr. Sabet is president of Smart Approaches to Marijuana, a former senior policy adviser for the Obama administration and author of “Smokescreen: What the Marijuana Industry Doesn’t Want You to Know.”
Finally:
I warned, in a previous memo, the final death knell for America would be more political incursion by our federal government and corrupt power driven politicians to control/manipulate our sacred right to vote under the specious Trojan Horse cover/claims of increased demands for VOTER I D.. Rabid Democrats are seeking just that and if they accomplish this seminal and seamy goal Biden's Afghanistan debacle will look like a kindergarten playbook.
| Dems to Control State Elections with John Lewis Bill | |
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From a very dear friend and fellow memo reader.
As I have previously written, Biden is a schmuck who never learned premature withdrawal is neither sexually or militarily satisfying and wise.
By far, the biggest risk we face is the closing hours of extrication, where the military, already hamstrung by feckless, woke-distracted commanders, will be doubly hobbled by the most incompetent civilian leadership in the history of micromanaging. That process may be one of the most delicate in the history of warfare. They must think they can finesse it without any shooting. I wonder if the shooting will, in the end, be way, way worse for the efforts towards that fantasy. I wonder if some military leader has the balls to be telling them that right now. If so, it wouldn't be surprising if that's a female commander. All the males are geldings.
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