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The Taliban announce new nation-wide measures such as a ban on music and requiring women to travel with a male chaperone, after previously promising to be more liberal |
Kim rips Pelosi's mask off.
Pelosi’s Cannon Fodder
Moderate Democrats again are forced to sacrifice to pass her legislative agenda.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
Nancy Pelosi jammed a $3.5 trillion budget outline through her party’s holdouts this week, earning more plaudits for her steely rule. Tell that to the political ghosts of Walt Minnick and Bobby Bright.
Mrs. Pelosi, now in her 18th term in Congress and second stint as House speaker, has cemented her reputation among an adoring press and liberal cognoscenti. She is an “iron fist in a Gucci glove,” a “master of the inside game,” a “warrior,” the most powerful woman in politics. “Never bet against Nancy,” goes the Beltway phrase. These days few are willing to try.
More’s the pity for the Democratic Party—and the country. What the worship misses is the flipside of Mrs. Pelosi’s autocratic rule: the fallout. Yes, the speaker has threatened and dragged her party over numerous policy finish lines. In the process she has sacrificed dozens of her members to her ideological ambitions—wiping out the party bench, smothering policy debate, and shrinking her caucus to coastal refuges. Her true legacy is to have reduced the Democratic Party to its most hollowed-out form in history.
Mrs. Pelosi’s real gift is the ruthlessness with which she uses her members as cannon fodder—and her ability to keep getting away with it. In each election, she recruits candidates who are moderate or credentialed enough to win swing districts—veterans, fiscal hawks, supporters of gun rights. When enough wins put her in power, she demands these centrists vote for progressive policies that are toxic in their districts. The iron fist makes clear that those who refuse will face primaries or the loss of party re-election support. Mrs. Pelosi gets her wins; her recruits get crushed by Republicans. Wash, rinse, repeat.
If you don’t remember Mr. Minnick or Mr. Bright, don’t feel too bad. They were in Washington for a single term, victims of Mrs. Pelosi’s debut of her now-signature strategy. In 2006 she recruited moderate and conservative Democrats to run on a deliberately tame agenda. They delivered Democrats control of the House for the first time in 12 years, making her speaker. She made further gains in 2008 with candidates like Mr. Minnick (who won an Idaho district that had gone 67% for George W. Bush ) and Mr. Bright (winner of an Alabama seat that had been in GOP hands since 1965). By 2009 Speaker Pelosi presided over a big-tent party, with 51 Blue Dogs representing districts all over America. Democrats also held a majority of governorships and state legislative seats.
Mrs. Pelosi then promptly force-marched her coalition into passing her priorities—Barack’s Obama’s stimulus blowout, the new entitlement of ObamaCare, and a climate-change bill. Many conservative members voted against these bills, but it didn’t save them. In 2010 Republicans won their biggest House victory since the 1930s. Democrats lost 52 House incumbents, more than half their Blue Dog coalition, even three committee chairmen. The GOP also netted six gubernatorial seats and flipped control of 20 state legislative chambers.
Yet Mrs. Pelosi got right back at it, recruiting more centrists to get her top job back. With Donald Trump’s help she finally managed it in 2018, picking off suburban districts that had soured on the president. She then promptly demanded her party pass radical bills—including the pro-union PRO Act, a federal election takeover, gun control and climate legislation—even as she subjected them to an impeachment circus. She held on in the 2020 election, but only by her teeth, as Republicans methodically picked off her recruits. She currently presides over one of the slimmest House majorities in a century.
What centrists remain this week were threatened again, this time into enacting Mrs. Pelosi’s $3.5 trillion budget outline, going back on their promise that they’d first demand passage of a bipartisan infrastructure bill. This beatdown was particularly cynical, given the party’s already glum forecast for the 2022 elections. But with retirement in sight, Mrs. Pelosi’s only interest is bolstering her legacy as the lady who jammed through the progressive agenda. So what if 40 or 50 of her members go up in flames? The wonder is that a new batch sign up for “expendable” duty every two years.
Yet the House isn’t the only cost of Mrs. Pelosi’s “iron” will. Democrats since 2010 have never recovered down the ballot. The GOP controls 60 state legislative chambers; Democrats, 38. Republicans will control redistricting in 20 state governments, totaling 188 House districts; Democrats, 73. Since 2010 the party has never again held a majority of gubernatorial seats. There’s a reason last year’s Democratic primaries were full of old white guys and senators. The states are where parties develop a bench.
The House Democratic caucus is the least geographically diverse in history, increasingly the party of wealthier urban districts, alienated from much of the country. Chuck Schumer presides over a bare 50-50 Senate, and that’s only because Mr. Trump botched the Georgia runoffs. Internal party debate is nil, leading to radical policy positions that threaten the economy and social fabric of the country.
Progressives will argue the policy victories are worth the price. Maybe. What is certain is that the Democratic Party will be digging out from under Mrs. Pelosi’s “masterful” leadership for many years to come.
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Is the Durham Faucet starting to finally leak and will Hillary be caught assisting in the framing of her opponent through her favorite law firm and supported in her nefarious guile by the mass media? Stay tuned, the best is yet to come if the current AG will allow it, which could be questionable. If he seeks to block Durham could it lead to another Saturday Night Massacre ? In this corrupt administration anything is possible.
John Durham Is Now Investigating If FBI Was Purposely Misled With Fabricated Evidence
(JustPatriots.com)- We haven’t heard much from John Durham after he was appointed as the Special Counsel to investigate the origins of the hoax Russia investigation, which ultimately proved that former President Donald Trump did not collude with Russia during the 2016 election, but we’re finally beginning to discover possible reasons why it is taking so long.
According to a report by The Washington Post, Durham is currently investigating the possibility that somebody lied to the FBI and gave them false evidence. He is presenting evidence to a grand jury regarding the investigation into the origins of the original Trump-Russia investigation, and it could be about to blow the lid off what Hillary Clinton and her campaign may have done during their attempt to get her elected.
The investigation may uncover that somebody in Hillary Clinton’s team was involved in the obtaining of an unverified dossier, from a former British spy, that contained fabricated evidence that justified an FBI investigation into former President Donald Trump. If that occurred, it would be a crime.
The former British spy, Christopher Steele, is believed to have been hired by the Democrats to produce a dossier that contained “evidence” that would get Trump landed with a years-long investigation, presumably to tar his name. It is one of the worst crimes committed in American political history, and yet, Hillary Clinton is still not widely recognized by the political establishment and the media as the mastermind behind this fraud.
Hopefully, this investigation will soon prove it.
The Post said that Durham’s most recent inquiries, according to sources familiar with the investigation, are focused on the authenticity of data that was given to the FVI about alleged cyber links between Alfa Bank in Russia and former President Trump’s campaign. It was a theory long pushed by journalists and some politically motivated computer scientists to claim that Trump was working with Russia.
Researchers believe that the evidence may have been fabricated, and if the investigation ultimately shows it, a lot of journalists are going to have a lot of apologizing to do.
But…will they?
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I have caught a few of Biden's Mia Culpa's and they truly make me sick. A lot of meaningless words, strung together to create the impression he is tough, when in fact, if you truly bisect, what he is saying and connect the words to reality they are all garbage. His speech writers are geniuses at knocking the cover off the ball with a lot of platitudes, which the mass media then pick up, repeat enough to make it believable. It s all sound and fury that mean nothing.
An example: Since we no longer will have personnel in Afghanistan, nor bases, nor airfields our intelligence capability is blind. Yet, Biden leaves the impression we are going to continue to get thousands of Americans out of the country. Second, we are wholly dependent on our victors who have been killing us for 20 years and would have you believe they are going to honor any agreement. Furthermore, he uses Trump's agreement with The Taliban as his excuse why he was bound by what Trump negotiated,. Finally, The Taliban had already broken the four conditions Trump had negotiated and I seriously doubt Trump would have caved as Biden did,. Meanwhile, Biden leaves the impression his hands were tied. Biden sought to get rid of everything Trump did, including energy pipelines and drilling on government lands.
C'mom man, give me a break. I am not totally stupid. So don't project your own stupidity on me.
And:
The End of Joe Biden’s Empathy Act
By Christine Rosen
In his remarks to the American people Thursday night about events in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden invoked the memory of his son, Beau, who died of cancer in 2015. He made note of Beau’s military service and tried to draw a connection from his own feelings of grief over his son’s death to the experience of the families of the 13 U.S. Marines who were killed in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.
Whatever Biden’s personal feelings, as political performance, his statements were both weak and unequal to the moment. To equate someone’s death from cancer to the slaughter of soldiers by terrorists is already poor judgment. Biden was supposed to be speaking as president and commander-in-chief to a nation reeling from a deadly terror attack on American soldiers in Afghanistan, not as the nation’s erstwhile therapist. The president’s late arrival to his own press conference already demonstrated a lack of respect for the soldiers’ families (U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke about the deaths of American soldiers before Biden could be bothered to shuffle out to the podium) and his overall mien—distracted, tired, harassed—projected weakness, not resolve.
Perhaps the delay was necessary to hone Biden’s messaging strategy, which evidently is to double down on portraying Biden as empathizer-in-chief. But fewer and fewer Americans are buying what the administration is selling these days, and with good reason: Biden is using empathy instrumentally as a dodge for taking responsibility. Just one day earlier, he thought it appropriate to joke to a reporter who asked him about the many Americans left behind in Afghanistan that if he was one of them, “You’ll be the first person I call,” before leaving without answering any press questions.
Despite early, fawning tributes to Biden’s supposed empathy by people eager to score jobs in his administration, Biden’s claim to it has always been more about convenience than conviction. Despite the enthusiasm of those who saw in Biden’s demeanor a stark and welcome contrast to that of former President Donald Trump, Biden’s claim to personal warmth with those he knows should never have been mistaken for genuine empathy as a leader. In practice, Biden’s much-vaunted empathy has proven to be more about political posturing than character, the logical conclusion of Barack Obama’s coopting of empathy as a political buzzword during his own presidency. (Remember Obama saying, “The biggest deficit we have in our society and in our world is an empathy deficit?”)
It is also a pitch-perfect example of what philosopher Paul Bloom described in Against Empathy: the tendency to see empathy as the “magic bullet of morality” when it is far more complicated and double-edged. “Empathy-based concerns clash with other sorts of moral concerns,” Bloom noted, something Biden’s performance during the last few weeks clearly demonstrates.
Even the usually sympathetic New York Times, which reminded Americans that Biden ran on “competence and empathy,” is finding it difficult to locate in the president’s actions now: “At points, the president has evinced little sense of the human toll as the Taliban swept back to power. Asked about pictures of fleeing Afghans packed into planes and some even falling to their death after trying to sneak aboard, Mr. Biden interrupted. ‘That was four days ago, five days ago,’ he said, when in fact it was two days earlier and hardly made less horrific by the passage of a couple of sunsets.”
What Americans want to see from their president during a time of crisis isn’t just resolve and clear communication, particularly when American service members sacrifice their lives for our country. We want to see our president honor their sacrifice, not use it as an example of why their clearly disastrous policy-making was the only way forward.
The man responsible for our dishonorable withdrawal from Afghanistan has no right to tell the American people what we should be feeling right now or to defend himself by pointing to the equally dishonorable policies of his predecessor. His empathy has proven to be little more than hollow words. He’s demonstrated no humility about the errors in judgment he’s clearly made, errors that have cost Americans and countless Afghans their lives.
Biden might still be counting on Americans to lose interest in Afghanistan. He shouldn’t. It’s bad enough that the Biden administration condescendingly assumes that Americans cannot recognize a foreign policy disaster when they see one. But to insist that Americans, our allies, and the media overlook this disaster because Joe Biden has feelings just like us? That’s not incompetent messaging. It’s incompetence.
And the price you pay if you have integrity: Marine Officer Who Questioned Generals over Afghanistan Is Relieved of Duty
https://www.breitbart.com/poli
https://www.breitbart.com/poli
Finally
So let's hear from two Congressmen who were there:
Afghanistan Trip Unauthorized but Valuable
(RightWing.org) – On August 24, US Representatives Seth Moulton (D-MA) and Peter Meijer (R-MI) made an unannounced trip to Afghanistan’s capital city of Kabul. They went to see for themselves what was happening on the ground during the final days of the withdrawal effort.
After they returned home, the congressmen posted a joint statement explaining the reason for their visit. As combat veterans and members of Congress, they have a duty to provide oversight to ensure America fulfills its “moral obligation” to ensure the safety of American citizens and “loyal allies” in Afghanistan.
However, Moulton’s Twitter thread provided the greatest proof of the importance of their trip. His thread began with a heart-wrenching image of Afghan civilians crowded at Kabul’s international airport. Razor wire is evident in the foreground.
Continuing, he spoke of seasoned Marines and State Department officials shedding tears as they talked about their ongoing efforts to complete their mission to extract Americans and eligible Afghans before it’s too late. “It’s a reminder of why America’s values… matter,” he wrote.
Sadly, Moulton concluded that he and Meijer had hoped to return to Washington and push President Biden to extend the August 31 deadline. However, after speaking with military commanders and seeing the situation for themselves, it was painfully obvious it would be impossible to get everyone out of Afghanistan on time, even by September 11, Biden’s original deadline.
Moulton promised to provide more information to his colleagues in Washington and the American people in the coming days. We will keep you posted as more information becomes available.
Copyright 2021, RightWing.org
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