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On of my daughters analogized Biden's successful evacuation to the Titanic Captain praising the orchestra for their music.
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Little Miss Intrusive Asks Mom Too Many Questions
A mother was driving a little girl to her friend's house for a play date.
"Mommy?" the little girl asked. "How old are you?"
"Honey, you are not supposed to ask a lady her age," the mother replied. "It's not polite.."
"Okay", the little girl said. "How much do you weigh?"
"Now really!" the mother said. "Those are personal questions and are none of your business."
Undaunted, the little girl asked, "Why did you and daddy get a divorce?"
"That's enough questions, young lady. Honestly!" The exasperated mother walked away as the two friends began to play.
"My mom won't tell me anything about herself," the little girl said to her friend.
"Well," said the friend, "all you need to do is look at her driver's license. It's like a report card, it has everything on it."
Later that night the little girl said to her mother,
"I know how old you are. You're 32."
The mother was surprised and asked, "How did you find that out?"
"I also know that you weigh 140 pounds." The mother was past surprised. She was shocked.
"How in heaven's name did you find that out?"
"And," the little girl said triumphantly,
"I know why you and daddy got a divorce!"
"Really?" the mother asked. "Why?"
"Because you got an F in sex."
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Why I believe The Taliban may fail:
They are killers not administrators, tribal hatred will keep them in a semi-civil war, they have no money unless Biden is stupid enough to bail them out and pay for hostage releases and they have experienced a serious brain drain of the best in their country.
Other than that, Afghanistan is in fine shape and Biden should be very proud of his accomplishments.
A very grim outlook. You've got to feel so sorry for those poor people who are now subjects of the Taliban.Subject: Under the Taliban, Afghanistan’s Economic Outlook Goes From Bad to Worse
The Taliban will struggle to provide core government services, maintain infrastructure and generate public investment to support growth in Afghanistan’s largely aid-dependent economy, which will create room for internal dissent and unrest by leaving subsistence agriculture and illegal activities as the main sources of revenue in the war-torn country. The Taliban takeover will exacerbate Afghanistan’s pre-existing economic challenges, while the combined effects of COVID-19 and a severe drought will create new ones.
According to a February 2021 report released by the U.S. government’s Afghan Study Group, the poverty rate in Afghanistan is now estimated to be as high as 72%, up from 55% in 2017 — driven largely by the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.
In 2020, the U.N. Development Program ranked Afghanistan 170 out of 189 countries and territories in terms of human development and also estimated that more than one million Afghans were internally displaced.
According to a recent appeal from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), some 7 million Afghan farmers and herders are currently at risk due to increased drought conditions, and the current harvest is expected to be 20% lower than in 2020.
The Taliban’s most immediate goal will be to secure the provision of basic services, as well as the availability of food and medicine for the Afghan population. In doing so, Taliban leaders will seek to stabilize the country internally and provide a relatively safe environment for foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Afghanistan has changed since the Taliban’s previous rule between 1996-2001, as more urban Afghans have higher expectations of basic services including electricity, water and sewers. This will require trained labor who receive regular salaries and supplies to keep basic services operational. Without these services, basic city functions would break down, creating greater discontent against the Taliban that could increase resistance to their control of urban areas. But isolation from international finance and the freezing of Afghanistan’s international assets after the Taliban takeover have left the country’s import-dependent formal economy on the brink of collapse with few sources of foreign exchange as it struggles to resume output and pay for imports.
Nearly all of Afghanistan’s foreign exchange resources are frozen, including up to $9.5 billion in central bank reserves held almost entirely in U.S. banks.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also suspended lending to Afghanistan, which included $200 million already disbursed of $600 million in commitments. Afghanistan has been barred from accessing an additional $440 million under the IMF’s recent allocation of Special Drawing Rights as well due to a lack of international recognition of the Taliban.
Assistance from multilateral development banks and bilateral donors that exceeded $550 million in 2020 has also been suspended.
The Afghan economy is mostly cash-dependent, with domestic credit in 2020 equivalent to only 3% of GDP and only 10% of the population holding bank accounts.
Dependency on economic support from Western countries will likely force the Taliban to constrain or even attack other groups inside Afghanistan to show their commitment to keeping the country from becoming a transnational terror hub. The Taliban will be reliant on foreign governments and NGOs for both aid, as well as help to distribute that aid. This will require the Taliban to ensure some degree of security for foreign workers and demonstrate at least some effective logistics capability for distribution (corruption is already endemic). The Taliban will also have to demonstrate more “moderate” social control to avoid a politically instigated shutdown of aid flows. As a result, the Taliban will face both the need to counter the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan (NRF) and other opposition forces (including ISIS-K), and may at the same time lose the support of its erstwhile allies. The Taliban’s desire to show a more moderate face may drive splits within their ranks and create new internal challenges for the government.
According to the World Bank, only 22% of Afghanistan’s $11 billion in annual expenditures were provided domestically, which shows the country’s dependence on foreign financing and assistance.
Prices of food were reported to be up by as much as 35% in the week after the Taliban takeover, according to Kabul residents cited by Bloomberg. People on the ground quoted in other reports have also said prices of cooking oil and gas up have risen as much as 50%.
Banks in Afghanistan were shut down and ATMs quickly ran out of cash in the wake of the Taliban’s capture of Kabul on Aug. 15. On Aug. 21, Western Union and MoneyGram also halted cash transfers — preventing the Afghan diaspora from sending money back home, which accounted for 4% of Afghanistan’s GDP in 2020.
The Taliban have promised banks would reopen “in the near future” and government employees would be paid. But without access to foreign currency, the Afghan currency is virtually worthless and there are anecdotal reports of shortages developing as people hoard non-perishable commodities.
Even if the security situation improves in the coming months, it is unlikely to substantially help the formal economy and reduce the role of illegal activities. Millions of Afghans will continue to depend on subsistence agriculture and will see a further deterioration of their living standards. The IMF estimates that security expenditures accounted for only one-third of government spending in 2020, which means that a more stable security situation would only have a modest impact on government spending. In the meantime, the United Nations estimates that the Taliban annually generates between $300 million and $1.6 billion in criminal activities, including opium production, drug trafficking, extortion, kidnapping for ransom, and illegal mineral exploitation. Considering the dire state of the Afghan economy, these illegal activities are likely to continue. The current situation in the country will also severely reduce the Taliban’s ability to take advantage of Afghanistan’s rich, untapped mineral resources, which includes major copper deposits, along with lithium, iron ore and some rare earth mineral reserves. As a result, Afghanistan will be dependent upon a small number of potential investing countries (such as China), which will constrain its own political options.
In June, the International Rescue Committee estimated that 80% of Afghans relied upon rain-fed agriculture and cattle grazing for income. In some provinces, more than 80% of community members were also leaving to find access to food and water.
Afghanistan’s ability to pay for imports, including food, is compromised in the absence of export earnings and access to international reserves, unless sympathetic countries donate food.
Before the latest Taliban takeover, Afghanistan already had an external financing requirement of $5 billion for 2021 and was projected to import $7.4 billion this year, financed almost entirely by official external grants. The IMF projected 2021 exports at less than $1.6 billion, with imports nearly 4.5 times that amount. Foreign direct investment in Afghanistan was also virtually non-existent, even under the previous government.
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Melanie is one of my favorites:
Biden's contemptible speech
The Taliban didn't defeat the United States. The United States defeated itself
By Melanie Phillips
Taliban flying a US helicopter over Kabul
Incredibly, US President Joe Biden has doubled down even more strongly on the disaster he has inflicted upon both Afghanistan and the west.
His speech yesterday was beyond jaw-dropping. Here was an American Commander-in-Chief responsible for a catastrophe which has not only brought a deadly enemy of the free world to power, but also left it in control of unknown amounts of American military ordnance which will vastly increase its capabilities.
A catastrophe in which the US abandoned its Bagram airbase, which could have provided much more capability and security for a mass evacuation than Kabul airport but which the Americans incomprehensibly fled overnight on July 1 without even informing their Afghan allies — and thus demoralised and panicked the Afghan army.
A catastrophe in which Biden’s inflexible deadline created a lethal stampede of Afghans desperate for a flight out of the country, which overwhelmed the American and British troops at Kabul airport and left countless numbers of Afghans dead or beaten by the Taliban.
In which Biden thus created the incentive for a terrorist atrocity which duly occurred and killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 American service personnel, one of the largest losses of American life in a single attack there.
In which the US left behind untold numbers of American hostages and Afghan allies to whom it owes a duty of responsibility, all of whom are now trapped and vulnerable to one of the most ruthless and barbaric regimes on earth.
In which the US has facilitated the creation of “jihad central” in Afghanistan which will act as a physical magnet for jihadis, galvanise untold additional numbers elsewhere and vastly increase the terrorist threat to the west.
And in which, by advertising American lack of resolve to do what it takes to defend the free world, the Biden administration has now incentivised and energised those in China, Russia, and Iran as well as jihadis everywhere intent on bringing the free world down.
Given the enormity of the harm he has done, the only honourable thing for Biden to have said was “I resign”.
Instead, he insisted that the operation at Kabul airport was an “extraordinary success”. He implied that everything apart from the Afghan army’s collapse and the flight of the Afghan president had gone according to plan. He accepted no responsibility for any failings in the operation, which were all apparently the fault of others.
Suggesting falsely that all those left behind had chosen to stay, he said:
we will make arrangements to get them out if they so choose… We will continue to work to help more people leave the country who are at risk.
How? How will he ensure that they escape the Taliban to whom he has now abandoned them?
America, he claimed, would now strike terrorists and targets in Afghanistan without American boots on the ground. But how will it obtain the information to do so, since he has now removed the intelligence gathering infrastructure from that ground along with those boots?
He said:
We’ve shown that capacity just in the last week. We struck ISIS-K remotely, days after they murdered 13 of our service members and dozens [of] innocent Afghans.
But what he failed to mention was that a second such US attack by a drone-launched missile, ostensibly directed at another bombing cell, killed instead a family which reportedly had no terrorist links. In this second strike, ten people were blown to pieces including seven children and a former army officer and contractor with the US military who had come from western Afghanistan in the hope of being evacuated from Kabul.
The most stupid thing Biden said — amid many stupid things — was this:
Remember why we went to Afghanistan in the first place? Because we were attacked by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda on September 11, 2001. And they were based in Afghanistan. We delivered justice to bin Laden on May 2, 2011, over a decade ago. Al Qaeda was decimated. I respectfully suggest you ask yourself this question: “If we’d been attacked on September 11, 2001 from Yemen instead of Afghanistan, would we have ever gone to war in Afghanistan even though the Taliban controlled Afghanistan in the year 2001?” I believe the honest answer is no. That’s because we have no vital interest in Afghanistan other than to prevent an attack on America’s homeland and our friends. And that’s true today.
But all of that is exactly why it was imperative that American forces remained in Afghanistan. Because withdrawing those forces has made a resurgence of al Qaeda all too likely once again, as well as the empowerment of Islamic State and other terrorist groups.
The claim that the killing of bin Laden neutralized Afghanistan as a potential danger to the west is beyond ridiculous. What Biden has done is negate the gains made through investing blood and treasure in Afghanistan for two decades in order to protect the west — however muddled the implementation of that goal may have been — and he has thus dishonoured the sacrifice of all those who gave their lives in that process.
Whether this speech consisted of Biden’s own words, or whether someone else wrote them and he merely read them out, they are shocking. For the damage his administration has done is unforgivable and incalculable.
Consider how the Taliban have been galvanized by what’s happened. Anthony Lloyd of The Times reports from the Bagram airbase:
Maulawi Hafiz Mohibullah Muktaz, a religious leader and fighter from Kandahar aged 35, leaned back in his seat laughing, twiddled some dials on a control console, stared out across the multibillion-dollar base the size of a small city and picked up a phone to summon an imaginary jet.
“Never in our wildest dreams could we have believed we could beat a superpower like America with just our Kalashnikovs,” he beamed, staring across the two runways beneath him.
…“When you do jihad all doors open,” he added, unable to stop smiling. “Our lesson is that we defeated America with our faith and our guns and we hope now that Bagram can be a base for jihad for all Muslims.”
But the Taliban didn’t overwhelm a superpower. The reason it is now in control in Kabul is that the US cut and ran. The Afghan army was only able to function effectively with the assurance of American back-up. As soon as former president Donald Trump decided that this back-up would go, the Afghan army started to crumble; and when Biden set the inflexible August 31 pull-out deadline, the Afghan army collapsed and chaos ensued.
The Taliban did not defeat the United States. The United States defeated itself. That’s why the Afghan debacle is so shattering for the whole of the free world; and why Biden’s arrogant and obstinate remarks, showing that he has learned no lessons whatsoever from a calamity he caused but for which he takes no responsibility, are as ominous as they are contemptible.
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From a dear friend, former client, head of the research department of one of the best in the South East and a fellow memo reader:
Now we find out another reason why the commies paid the Chinese to cook up the Wuhan bug. It is part of their Grand Plan.
Old people are problematic for Obama & Puppet Co. for several reasons. First, they tend to be conservative politically, and thus not vote for the lefties. Second, they are so troublesome b/c they are living longer.......thus, Obama suggested there should be committees to decide which of the old coots would get healthcare and which would be left outside the tent to die.
But then they came up with an even better idea: Design a killer virus which mostly whacked out old people, and bring it into the country. That way, we can do away with these pesky elderly folks who are always complaining, and importantly, cost us a lot of money! Thanks to Dr. Fauci, aka' Dr. Fuckyou, for dreaming up this brilliant scheme and providing funding to the Chinese to do the dirty work of harvesting bats. [ Note: the authorities recently conducted an "investigation" into the source of the virus, but surprise! concluded they could not pinpoint the cause.]
The plan was starting to work really well, until Trump surprised them and coordinated with Pfizer, et al to produce vaccines on a timeline which astonished the commies. They were hoping for a typical Government timeline, which would have been more like 12 years. By that time, all the old geezers would be gone, dispatched by the handy virus, and the SS trust fund would be saved!
Today, we have this news: The SS trust fund is going to be in trouble sooner than thought. This is bad. Expect the commies to delay any action until the last minute..........and then decide to cut benefits, and raise taxes. All predictable responses by an authoritarian state ruled by despots, who do not rely on popular votes any longer since they control the ballot boxes. - B--
I close with these words from this classic song:
Paranoia strikes deep
Into your life it will creep
It starts when you're always afraid
Step out of line, the men come and take you away
We better stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look, what's going down?
- Buffalo Springfield
Insolvency worries
Social Security benefits are likely to run out earlier than expected, according to newly released estimates that take into account the effects of COVID-19. The annual Social Security trustees report now forecasts retirees and the disabled will only be able to receive full benefits on a timely basis until 2034, one year earlier than predicted last year. After that, the program would have enough income to pay only about 78% of scheduled benefits unless Congress steps in to shore up the program.
Quote: "The pandemic and its economic impact have had an effect on Social Security's Trust Funds, and the future course of the pandemic is still uncertain," said the Social Security Administration's acting commissioner, Kilolo Kijakazi. "Yet, Social Security will continue to play a critical role in the lives of 65M beneficiaries and 176M workers and their families during 2021."
The bumped-up timeline was triggered by the U.S. economic recession caused by COVID-19, which led to a drop in employment and a decrease in payroll tax revenue. Those developments accelerated the depletion of Social Security's reserves and trustees even expect the pandemic to have lowered worker productivity and economic output permanently. A silver lining may be higher inflation that could significantly boost benefits in 2021, with Social Security beneficiaries expected to see a 6% cost-of-living increase.
Outlook: While the new report points to the need to fix the program, it is unlikely to spur lawmakers in Washington to act immediately. Many are opposed to increased taxes, reduced benefits or a combination of both, while Congress could step in when the threat becomes more immediate. Over the long term, it's also possible that COVID mortality rates could limit the number of benefits being paid out via Social Security, or alternatively boost costs of potential beneficiaries that live longer or those who survived with long-term health effects.
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Gruesome but at least we got most of our people back and we can always pay ransom to get the others. What a glorious evacuation Biden pulled off and right on time to meet the deadline that was set for him by The Taliban.
I have only one question and believe I can answer it myself:
How does Biden sleep at night? Because he has no conscience.
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