What if a Biden goes to prison instead of Trump? https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/4073814-what-if-a-biden-goes-to-prison-instead-of-trump/
What if? Why would that matter any more? Used to be that cheating on multiple wives was enough to disqualify. Used to be that constantly telling easily provable lies over and over and over and over would be disqualifying. Used to be cozying up to and trying to be friends with multiple dictators would be disqualifying. Etc., etc., etc. Why would having a son go to prison...one that doesn't work for the administration or the campaign...matter now?
quite a guy Joe is uses his drug addict son as the family bag man to take bribes, for plausible deniability. Doesn't acknowledge his granddaughter.
Bill Gates is one creepy mother****er. Every time I see him in person, I can just sense that he is NOT one of the good ones.
Is there anything that you post that's legitimate anymore ? The WH never backed anything. They simply said they're open to a study to look into it. They never backed anything. They just want to study the proposal. https://www.politico.com/news/2023/...-suns-rays-to-slow-global-warming-ee-00104513 It's crazy how rampant disinformation is in the era of internet. People lie with no shame and spread disinformation. Always the right wingers
He may think the same of you...maybe both you fight to the death in a cage match and everyone's happy.
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2023/07/after-action-review-bidens-response.php After action review: Biden’s response by Scott Johnson JULY 5, 2023 Last week the State Department released a heavily redacted public version of its After Action Review on Afghanistan. I noted the report here. It was released on the Friday afternoon preceding the long holiday weekend — it can’t have been good news for our senescent president. A reporter asked Biden about the report as he exited from his remarks condemning the Supreme Court for its decision holding him to have acted in excess of his authority forgiving some $430 billion in student debt (White House transcript here). The reporter framed the question this way: “Mr. President, do you admit failure in Afghanistan? Mistakes? There was a — there was a report on Afghanistan withdrawal, saying there was failure, mistakes. Do you admit there was mistakes during the withdrawal and before? Biden responded: “No, no. All the evidence is coming back. Do you remember what I said about Afghanistan? I said al Qaeda would not be there. I said it wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right.” David Loyn is a visiting senior fellow in the War Studies Department at King’s College, London and author of The Long War: The Inside Story of America and Afghanistan Since 9/11. He has cruelly taken up Biden’s response in the Spectator column “Biden is in fantasy land over the Taliban’s terrorist links,” which the Spectator’s Matt McDonald has made accessible at our request. Loyn finds Biden’s response ill-informed or willfully deceptive: The president was not right. In fact, he was wrong. What he was referring to was a commitment by the Taliban to support operations against international terrorists operating in Afghanistan. Not only has that commitment been broken, but links between the Taliban and al-Qaeda are said to be “strong and symbiotic,” with al-Qaeda now “rebuilding operational capability” from its base in Afghanistan. So close are the ties that the Afghan ministry of defense now uses al-Qaeda training manuals. This has all been outlined in a UN report published last month which could not have been clearer: Promises made by the Taliban in August 2021 to be more inclusive, break with terrorist groups, respect universal human rights, grant a general amnesty and not pose a security threat to other countries seem increasingly hollow, if not plain false, in 2023. Biden appealed to people to “Read your press”; that UN report was indeed reported in the press, including the (US-government funded) Voice of America news network only four days before he spoke. It was published under the headline: “Taliban flouts terrorism commitments by appointing al-Qaeda-affiliated governors.” It is hard to know how this was missed by his staff. The disconnect between the president’s wishful thinking and reality is caused by his continuing need to justify the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan and its consequences. They have not only been terrible for the people of the country, ending all opportunities for women and girls, but turned Afghanistan once again into a crucible for international terrorists. The UN report says that more than twenty groups now operate under Taliban protection, with secure training camps and passports for fighters. This is all in plain sight. Some of the training camps full of foreign fighters can be seen in former international bases close to the center of Kabul on the Jalalabad road. Many of the groups are opposed to governments in neighboring countries, including China, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, developing into what the UN calls a “serious threat to Central Asia in the longer term.” Loyn cites the UN report posted here (it takes some digging to find it) as well as the June 26 VOA story “Taliban Flouts Terrorism Commitments by Appointing al-Qaida-Affiliated Governors.” They seem to be dispositive of the question raised by Biden’s comments. VOA also covered the UN report on the Taliban’s links to terrorist groups in the June 14 story “UN Report Warns Al-Qaida, Islamic State Growing in Afghanistan.” The VOA quotes unnamed US intelligence officials disagreeing with the UN report. However: The U.S. officials who spoke to VOA were unable to explain the divergence between the assessments of al-Qaida and IS-Khorasan as presented in the U.N. report and those of the U.S. intelligence community, noting previous reports by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team have tracked much more closely with Washington’s own findings. But a source familiar with the production of the report, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told VOA that U.S. officials were aware of the conclusions before it was published and did not raise objections. The source also said that there appeared to be some disagreement among U.S. agencies, with some falling in line with some of the U.N.’s findings. As I say, the Spectator has at present made Loyn’s column accessible. Please check out the whole thing here.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/missou...g-tech-free-speech-9a98f268?mod=hp_opin_pos_1 The Biden-Big Tech Collusion Case A judge rules that illegal White House pressure led to social-media censorship, especially on Covid-19. By The Editorial Board July 5, 2023 at 6:43 pm ET Big news on big tech and free speech. A federal judge ruled Tuesday that government officials can’t coerce social-media platforms to do what the Constitution forbids the government from doing. Missouri and Louisiana, joined by scientists and conservatives whose posts were censored, sued to protect their First Amendment rights. The issue in Missouri v. Biden isn’t whether social-media platforms are government actors, but whether government officials can be held responsible for their censorship. Judge Terry Doughty ruled they can and his 155-page opinion describes disturbing coordination between the government and tech firms to suppress unpopular views, especially on Covid-19. *** White House officials and public-health agency leaders held biweekly meetings with tech companies over how to curb the spread of misinformation during the pandemic. Former White House director of digital strategy Rob Flaherty and Covid-19 adviser Andy Slavitt were in constant contact with social-media executives, as former press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged. “We are in regular touch with these social-media platforms” and are “flagging problematic posts for Facebook that spread disinformation,” Ms. Psaki said on July 15, 2021. But officials weren’t merely flagging false statements. They were bullying companies to censor anything contradicting government guidance. On March 15, 2021, Mr. Flaherty accused Facebook of “hiding the ball” on the company’s efforts to combat vaccine “borderline content.” He repeatedly lambasted Facebook as a “top driver of vaccine hesitancy.” In one email he wrote that “I care mostly about what actions and changes you are making to ensure you’re not making our country’s vaccine hesitancy problem worse.” Facebook employees typically responded with solicitude, insisting they were doing their best to reduce the spread of content the government found problematic. But White House officials weren’t satisfied because the companies hadn’t booted the supposed offenders from their platforms. Ms. Psaki said Facebook’s censorship actions were “clearly not sufficient.” On July 16, 2021, the President accused social-media companies of “killing people,” though the White House later claimed he was referring to individuals spreading vaccine misinformation. Two days later a Facebook executive reached out to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy: “I imagine you and your team are feeling a little aggrieved—as is the [Facebook] team, it’s not great to be accused of killing people—but as I said by email, I’m keen to find a way to deescalate and work together collaboratively. I am available to meet/speak whenever suits.” Judge Doughty concludes from all this that “the public and private pressure from the White House apparently had its intended effect.” All 12 people dubbed the “Disinformation Dozen” by the Center for Countering Digital Hate were censored, and pages, groups and accounts linked to them were removed. On July 16, Twitter also booted Covid vaccine skeptic Alex Berenson, whom Mr. Slavitt had labelled the “epicenter of disinfo.” Some Covid claims flagged by the White House were clearly erroneous, such as that vaccine ingredients can cause people to become magnetic. But many are scientifically debatable—for instance, that vaccines can cause Bell’s palsy and multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, and that Covid had a 99.96% survival rate. The private intimidation was amplified by public threats to use antitrust action and regulation if tech companies didn’t follow orders. Ms. Psaki warned on May 5, 2021, that platforms could face “legal consequences” if they didn’t do more. White House communications director Kate Bedingfield warned on July 21 that the White House was weighing whether social-media companies should be legally liable for misinformation on their platforms and whether to amend Section 230 to ensure platforms “be held accountable.” The Biden Administration claims government officials were merely making “recommendations,” not demands. But the threats were explicit, and the companies knew they could face government investigations and punishment if they disobeyed. The government also claims officials’ statements are protected speech. But as the judge notes, “It was not the public statements that were the problem. It was the alleged use of government agencies and employees to coerce and/or significantly encourage social-media platforms to suppress free speech on those platforms.” The link between government and private censorship at its behest isn’t well developed under law, so this could be a major test case. The plaintiffs are doing a public service by teeing up whether government can use the cover of private business to censor views it dislikes. Appeared in the July 6, 2023, print edition as 'The Biden-Big Tech Collusion Case'.
This is a real problem with our politics that the Administration cannot admit to any mistakes when it’s obvious that they made some bad decisions on the withdrawal.
Fair comments concerning Biden's remark, and it's an unfortunate part of our politics, including how the media reports in an age of rapid and fast disinformation. While the withdrawal involved more than the Dept of State, the report was only about the Dept of State involment. Note the methodology and scope of the report: At the request of Secretary of State Blinken, the After Action Review (AAR) team conducted a focused study of the Department’s decisions and actions directly related to the process of ending the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan from January 2020 to August 2021. The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to withdraw U.S. military forces from Afghanistan during this period provide the overall context for the review, but it has not been the mandate of the AAR team to examine these decisions or to consider policy alternatives. Rather, the goal has been to understand how the Department prepared for and executed its duties and responsibilities in light of the decisions of both Presidents to end the U.S. military mission after nearly 20 years in Afghanistan. Part of the executive summary: Most of the AAR’s findings address specific Department of State activities during the period under review and are accompanied by recommendations for how the Department can be better prepared for future situations that involve complex crises in unstable operating environments with the possibility of a large-scale evacuation. In particular, the AAR’s recommendations identify the need to plan better for worst-case scenarios, to rebuild and strengthen the Department’s core crisis management capabilities, and to ensure that senior officials hear the broadest possible range of views including those that challenge operating assumptions or question the wisdom of key policy decisions. Many Department bureaus and offices are conducting their own lessons learned, and some have already begun implementing changes. We hope that this review will further inform and advance those efforts. Findings ('bad decisions' and mistakes included - see pdf for full list): 1. The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission in Afghanistan had serious consequences for the viability of the Afghan government and its security. Those decisions are beyond the scope of this review, but the AAR team found that during both administrations there was insufficient senior-level consideration of worst-case scenarios and how quickly those might follow. 2. For the Department, the end to the U.S. military mission presented an enormous challenge as it sought to mitigate the loss of “key enablers” that the military had provided and maintain a diplomatic and assistance presence in Afghanistan in accordance with the stated intent of both administrations. Some officials questioned how and whether the Department could sufficiently mitigate the loss of military support, and the Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS) warned of the level of risk that the Department would be accepting. 3. Even prior to the signing of the February 2020 U.S.-Taliban Agreement, President Trump had signaled his desire to end the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and he steadily withdrew U.S. forces following that agreement. When the Trump administration left office, key questions remained unanswered about how the United States would meet the May 2021 deadline for a full military withdrawal, how the United States could maintain a diplomatic presence in Kabul after that withdrawal, and what might happen to those eligible for the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program as well as other at-risk Afghans. 4. Following President Biden’s decision in April 2021 to proceed with the withdrawal of U.S. forces under a new deadline of September 11, the U.S. military moved swiftly with the retrograde to protect U.S. forces, but the speed of that retrograde compounded the difficulties the Department faced in mitigating the loss of the military’s key enablers. Critically, the decision to hand over Bagram Air Base to the Afghan government meant that Hamid Karzai International Airport (HKIA) would be the only avenue for a possible noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO). ... 11. Crisis preparation and planning were inhibited to a degree by concerns about the signals that might be sent, especially anything that might suggest the United States had lost confidence in the Afghan government and thus contribute to its collapse. However, the AAR notes that once it got underway, the plan for closing the embassy compound and evacuating U.S. government personnel and U.S. citizen and third-country contractors proceeded well, considering the speed at which it was implemented. ....
This a reminder that Bagram airbase is located in a valley that folks use to call, "snipers valley." There is no efficient way to transport folks from Kabul to Bagram without endangering people. Flying by helicopter from Kabul would've let to a helicopter being shot down or something else. It's just funny how neocons and military establishment continue to blame everyone but themselves for their corruption. We spent 300 million a day training a fake army that ran away when the taliban farted. Afghanistan withdrawal will go down in history as bidens greatest accomplishments.
