Immigration hawks say Biden’s CBP pick has ‘downright dangerous’ record opposing enforcement moves

US Commission on Civil Rights members blast AG Garland for memo on parents protesting school boards

‘Let’s Go Brandon!’ goes from social media meme to the top of the iTunes charts

“We’re done”: Immigration advocates stage walk-out on Biden administration (Politico)

Texas Farmer Says Biden Ignores Worsening Toll of Migrant Surge

Sorry Dr. Fauci! Fears of Super-Spreader College Football Games Are Dashed

Judge Temporarily Blocks Vaccine Mandate Requirement For California Prison Workers

Fauci Warns Unvaccinated Might Bring a Fifth COVID Wave  PUSH THAT PANIC! PUSH THAT PANIC!

Allison Williams Leaving ESPN After Her Vaccine Exemption Denied

Fauci Tees Up Unvaccinated Blame Campaign Over Potential ‘Fifth Wave’

Large Football Crowds Have Not Resulted In COVID-19 Spikes; Doomsayers Proven Wrong

Pentagon Faces Class-Action Lawsuit Over Vaccine Mandates On Military, Federal Employees And Contractors

#EmptyShelvesJoe Trends On Twitter Amid Supply Chain Snarls 

Here’s The Truth Behind Biden’s 24/7 Port Operations Pledge

Aluminum Shortages Next As “Magnesium Supply Dries Up”

Blame Government, Not COVID-19, for Supply Chain Collapse

Cities, Police Unions Clash as Vaccine Mandates Take Effect

4 In 10 TSA Employees Remain Unvaccinated As Deadline Looms

Baltimore Police Union Head: ‘Don’t Give City Your Vaccine Status’

Huge Dock Worker Protests In Italy, Fears Of Disruption, As Covid ‘Green Pass’ Takes Effect

German State Allows Food Stores To Ban The Unvaccinated

Joel Kotkin.

For a generation, the Long Beach and Los Angeles harbors in California handled more than 40 percent of all container cargo headed into the US and epitomized the power of a globalizing economy. Today, the ships—mostly from Asia—still dock, but they must wait in a seemingly endless conga line of as many as 60 vessels, sometimes for as long as three weeks. These are the worst delays in modern history, and the price per container has risen to as much as 10 times its cost before the pandemic. The shipping crisis is now projected to last through 2023.

A pandemic-driven shortage of parts and labor has combined with a congested transport system to create an inflationary spike, with shipping rates doubling on some routes. Prices for everything from soybeans to natural gas have soared as supplies take longer to produce and arrive, and this high inflation is wiping out wage gains in the US, the UK, and Germany. The chaos on the ground may not disturb the lifestyles of the tech and financial elites, but it is hurting the middle and working classes, the groups most threatened by surging inflation.

Biden continues newfound presidential tradition, turns back on reporters and exits without taking questions

US Rejoins UN Rights Council Days After Council Endorsed Anti-Semitic Hate Fest

As Border Crisis Mounts, First Lady Boosts Group That Helps Illegals Avoid Arrest  After all, she’s a doctor.

Biden Admin Blocks Bipartisan Lawmakers From Accessing Afghan Evacuee Holding Site

Read it.

A single exchange may decide the Virginia governor’s race. At one point during a September 28 debate, Republican Glenn Youngkin slammed his opponent, former Democratic governor Terry McAuliffe, for vetoing a 2017 bill that would have allowed parents to remove their children from courses studying sexually explicit material. McAuliffe shrugged off the criticism. “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” he said.

Vaccine hesitant New Yorkers consider leaving the city as mandates take effect (The Guadian) Don’t you just love that term ‘vaccine hesitant’?

TX Bans Local Nurses from Quitting to Work FEMA Crisis Contracts in State

Chaos In Texas As Employees Fired For Refusing To Get Vaxxed Demand Their Jobs Back

For poor countries, lockdowns cost more lives than they save

Paradigm Shift? Aussie Cop Quits, Refuses To Enforce COVID Tyranny, Says “Majority” Of Cops Feel The Same

Dem Lawmakers Demand Moderna Share Vaccine Recipe To “Expand Global Access”

YouTube censors David Davis MP’s speech against vaccine passports

Chicago Police Union Head Urges Members To Defy Vaccine Mandate, Warns Force To Shrink 50% This Weekend

Harnessing the benefits of UVA light treatment in Covid-19 patients

Rep. Hartzler to Newsmax: ‘Tragic’ for Military Members to Quit Over Vaccines

Watch: Fauci Claims No “True Basis” In Concerns Over Long-Term COVID Vax Side Effects

Front Runners in COVID-19 Antibody Drug Race

A Question for Mandated-Vaccination Advocates

Joe Rogan Presses Sanjay Gupta on CNN Lying About Him Taking ‘Horse Dewormer’

911 System In Jeopardy Amid “Crippling Labor Shortages”: Association President  You will have noticed that none of these labor problems occurred before politicians went Full Fascist with vaccine mandates.

Pandemic Wiped Out Entire Savings Of 20% Of US Households  No, the panic wiped them out.

Italy’s Mandatory Health Pass Not Boosting Jabs as Hoped, Data Show

FDA Endorses Lower-Dose Moderna COVID Booster

Navy Sets Dates to Discharge Sailors Who Refuse Vaccine

New antibodies may lead to a norovirus vaccine

Read it.

Because why not?

1 sentence that sums up Joe Biden’s mounting political problems (CNN) “Let’s go, Brandon!”

Not Going Away: NY Post’s Nelson Irks Psaki by Daring to Ask About Corrupt Hunter Biden

White House Says Biden ‘Proud of His Son’ for Art Sales  I have no doubt.

Watch: $100 Million Border Wall Discarded In Field While Biden Still Pays Contractors To Not Build It  Want to know where your tax money goes? Voila!

Get curious with the Shamala video

The case of Hunter Biden

Emails Reveal Hunter Biden’s Relationship With Shadowy Chinese Tycoon

Docs Show Biden Admin Opening Border, Handing Out Work Permits

Joe And Hunter Biden Shared Bank Accounts, Paid Each Other’s Bills

Now A US Govt Official Is Telling Us That Supply Chain Nightmares Could Potentially Last For “Years”  Duh – when you shut down the supply chain with lockdown mandates, this is what happens.

Vaccine Mandates Aren’t Biden’s Only Job-Killing Scheme

COVID-Ravaged Mom of Newborn Denied Lung Transplant: ‘How Cruel Is That?’ (Daily Beast)

Australia Building Quarantine Camps For “Ongoing Operations”

Military Archbishop: OK for Catholic Troops to Refuse COVID Vaccines

Federal Judge Blocks United From Putting Vaccine-Exempt Workers on Unpaid Leave

Kyrie Irving Takes A Stand Against Vax Mandates, Gets Suspended Indefinitely

‘I hope you die’: how the Covid pandemic unleashed attacks on scientists

Judge Orders United Airlines Not To Put Workers Seeking Vaccine Mandate Exception On Leave

FDA Hints J&J Booster Jab May Be Beneficial, But Remains Mum On Approval Odds

Go Fund Me Takes Down Fundraising Campaign For Litigation Over Vaccine Mandate

Federal Judge Rules New York Must Provide Religious Exemptions to Vaccine Mandate

Texas Anti-Vaxxer Charged With Threatening Prominent Doctor

Over Half-Million Healthcare Works Quit Jobs in August  Your tax dollars at work.

“Which Hospital do you Want to Shut?”: Climate Policy Debate Rages in Australia’s Ruling Coalition

Read it.

The United States needs to invest more heavily in Central America if it hopes to slow record levels of northbound migration, Mexico’s Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Wednesday.

Record numbers of migrants have passed through Mexico this year toward the United States, driven by economic downturns stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and drawn by the hope of more welcoming immigration policies under U.S. President Joe Biden.

There ought to be serious economic sanctions on Mexico for facilitating this invasion. They need us more than we need them.

FDA Responds To Nordic Countries Suspending Moderna COVID Vaccine Usage

Allen West Taking Ivermectin for COVID-19 Treatment

The COVID Mask Slips

Media Now Claims That “Double Jabbed” Brits Who Have Bad Colds Are Actually Suffering From COVID

Brooklyn Nets Ban Kyrie Irving From Playing Until He Gets Covid-19 Vaccine

NY Judge Grants Injunction Against COVID Vaccine Mandate for Healthcare Workers

911 System In Jeopardy As First Responders Reject Jab

South Carolina Sports Radio Host Fired After Refusing COVID Vaccine

Covid scam arbitrage

FDA Staff: Moderna Did Not Meet All Criteria for COVID-19 Boosters

Florida County Fined $3.5M for Vaccine Mandate  Which will not be paid by the elected officials but rather by the taxpayers.

Large Canadian Town Bars Unvaccinated Couples From Getting Married  Time to leave.

Judge Overrules NY Governor – Says Employers Must Grant Religious Exemptions To Healthcare Workers

NYC’s Unvaccinated Teachers Must Waive Right To Sue If They Want To Keep Health Benefits

Scientists discover a highly potent antibody against SARS-CoV-2

Oregon Senators Call For Investigation Into Alleged COVID-19 Statistical Manipulation

World Health Organization Forming New COVID Origin Study Group

Hunter Biden Activities Spark Questions About White House Anti-Corruption Push

It’s All Fake: Kamala Harris Used Child Actors Who Had To Audition For Weird NASA Promo

Mayorkas Declares War on Immigration Enforcement

Lawsuit Alleges Cronyism at Biden EPA to ‘Rubber-Stamp’ Green Agenda

Kids, Here Are 10 Signs Your Parents Might Be Domestic Terrorists

NFL Coach Jon Gruden Calls Biden an Expletive in Emails

Read it.

The father of a student at Stone Bridge High School in Loudoun County, Virginia, told The Daily Wire the local school system attempted to cover up his daughter’s assault by another student in the school.

She was allegedly assaulted in the girls’ bathroom by a boy wearing a skirt.

Scott Smith told the Daily Wire his daughter was assaulted by another student in the school bathroom last May, by a boy wearing a skirt. But when he was told by the school at the time they would handle the incident in-house, school administrators eventually called the local sheriff’s office after Smith, in his own words, “went nuts” and insulted the principal.

“Six cop cars showed up like a f***ing SWAT team” to respond to the school’s complaint about an assertive parent, he said.

“Thank God that I drew enough attention to it, without getting arrested, that we got an escort to the hospital and they administered a rape kit that night,” Smith said.

The Daily Wire notes the kit results were favorable to the prosecution’s case.

Scott Johnson at Power Line.

I took a look at the Biden fakery, most recently, here over the weekend. Vice President Kamala Harris takes fakery to a new level. She is such a synthetic character she might have been created in a laboratory as a joke, perhaps by Dr. Frankenstein high on drugs. You can make this stuff up, but it defies credulity.

It turns out that the entire cast of Harris’s weird space video was made up of actors pretending to be students interested in Harris’s meditations. The Examiner has a good story on the video production, noting that “[t]he actors flew to Washington during the second week of August, filming Wednesday through Friday. At the time, the U.S.-backed government in Afghanistan was in collapse, with Washington’s withdrawal from the two-decade conflict…”

UPDATE: Shamala: The real thing

Read it.

The news site Axios in July hosted an event with Rep. Kurt Schrader (D., Ore.), a member of a House subcommittee on health and the sponsor of legislation that would provide federal funding that allows companies to sell knockoff drugs virtually identical to those that originated with their competitors.

The event was sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Viatris, which spent $3.6 million lobbying in favor of the drugs, known as biosimilars, and has contributed to Schrader’s campaigns.

The Axios event—”A Conversation on biosimilars and drug development”—featured the organization’s reporters, who touted biosimilars as an innovative approach to “lowering the cost of treatment in the U.S.,” alongside Schrader, who lauded pharmaceutical companies for their willingness to “be part of the solution.” The event was followed by a tweet from Axios‘s account, which boasts nearly 600,000 followers, that broadcast Schrader’s support for biosimilars and noted the Viatris sponsorship.

The best Congressmen that money can buy.

“It’s A Big Day For Our State” – Sydney Lockdown Finally Ends After 106 Days

ESPN: Vaccinations ‘Social Justice’ Issue – Like Fighting Police Brutality

Federal Judge Denies Request to Block Vaccine Mandate on Natural Immunity Basis

Why high dose vitamin D supplements could cause side effects (Insider)

COVID-Infected Allen West Goes on Unhinged Anti-Vax Rant—From Hospital (Daily Beast) Unhinged!

NYT Forced to Fix Claim 900,000 Kids Have Been Hospitalized with COVID

Compulsory Vax in France?

Doctor Says Physicians Are Being “Hunted” For Speaking Out By Press & Medical Boards

Merck Asks FDA For Emergency Approval Of New COVID Drug Despite Safety Concerns

Sen. Cruz Blames Canceled Southwest Flights on Biden Vaccine Mandate

Federal Judge Rules Against Natural Immunity Claim Challenging COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

How the Regime Wrecked the Vaccine Rollout

Terrifying New Halloween Mask Depicts A Human Face Not Wearing A Mask  Babylon Bee.

Read it.

A new congressional report on the U.S. Navy “found that a staggering 94% of sailors interviewed believe that the surface Navy suffers from a crisis of leadership and culture.”

Increased administrative burdens (750 annual reports per ship, most of them useless) and training not related to combat have eaten into the time American sailors are able to devote to honing mission-critical skills.

“The noncombat curricula consume Navy resources, clog inboxes, create administrative quagmires, and monopolize precious training time,” the report warns. The report highlights America’s glaring unpreparedness at a time when America’s primary strategic competitor, China, is beefing up its navy, threatening U.S. allies and interests around the world.

Merrick Garland’s Problems With His Son-In Law Just Got Worse

DHS Cancels More Border Wall Contracts as Crossings Surge

Unvaxxed Allen West Has COVID, Pneumonia, and Low Oxygen (Daily Beast) And they’re happy about that.

Johnson: Hospitals overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients ‘doesn’t mean there’s some massive crisis’ (NPR) Overwhelmed!

Brits May Be Forced To Take COVID Tests On Camera To Prove To “Health Advisers” They’re Not Lying

Small Businesses Navigate Ever-Changing COVID-19 Reality

871 Firefighters File Intent To Sue Over LA’s COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate

CDC Head Says She “Can’t Predict” When COVID Will End; Blames Unvaccinated

Sickout? Southwest Airlines Cancels 1,000 More Flights As Disruptions Increase

Military Struggles With Varying Vaccination Rates as Deadlines Loom

COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Plummet In Southern US, Rise In Northern States

Bill Maher: ’10 Years Ago … the Left Did Not Have a Crazy Section’  Now it’s nothing but.

Watch: Aussie Police Interrogate Citizen On His Doorstep Over 6-Month Old Anti-Lockdown Facebook Posts

Staggering Number Of US Troops Remain Unvaccinated As Deadlines Approach

Read it.

“Distrust of government isn’t baseless cynicism. It’s realism.” – Ben Shapiro

We have seen the truth of this aphorism made clear many times over the past year. Lawlessness on the part of the national government is virtually institutionalized. The latest example occurred earlier this week as the Justice Department declared parents protesting the institution of Critical Racism Race Theory being taught to their children as “domestic terrorists.” It is a clear attempt to criminalize political dissent, a process that began with the treatment of the January 6 protestors.

But in the larger sense, it does not matter whether those in government are Republicans or Democrats, your friends or your foes, or whether we are talking about government on the federal, state, or local level. You should never trust your government. Even (or perhaps especially) when you agree with their actions, never blindly accept them. Always check what they are doing and verify that they are doing what they said they would do – and that it is actually what should be done. Certainly that is what I do on the local level, where I am politically active and several local politicians are friends. They may be friends, but because they are politicians, I still don’t trust them.

Biden Exempts Some Crimes by Illegal Immigrants as Basis for Deportation

Anger in U.S. Customs and Border Protection as Biden administration’s vaccine mandate looms

Taliban Say They Won’t Work with US to Contain Islamic State  My, what a surprise.

Iceland stops using Moderna Covid-19 vaccine

Florida State Board Sanctions Eight School Districts For Defying Ban On Mask Mandates

One US State Already Has A De Facto ‘Vaccine Passport’ Requirement Just To Enter

Aussie Freedom Blogger Arrested At Home For Alleged ‘Breach Of Public Health Act’

Real-world data show that filters clean Covid-causing virus from air

“So Deeply, Deeply Wrong” – Lithuanian Without Vaccine Pass Describes Life Under Medical Tyranny

Survey Finds COVID Mandates Hurting Small Businesses

Southwest Pilots Union Sues To Block Airline’s Vaccination Mandate

Steven Hayward at Power Line.

Which brings us to the present moment, and the crusade being waged against my old graduate school classmate John Eastman. In giving legal advice to President Trump and Vice President Pence in the aftermath of the election, he can’t be charged with any plausible crime, so the mob is attempting an implausible one: that he was conspiring to overthrow our Constitution—essentially a coup. “A Trump lawyer wrote an instruction manual for a coup,” reads the breathless Washington Post headline, to give just one of the many many hyperbolic headlines. Beyond this, there is a crusade to have Eastman “investigated” by the California State Bar, which is clever lawyering, since the lawyers making the charge know there is no chance the California Bar would move to suspend or disbar Eastman (unless they completely cave to the mob, which I suppose is not impossible), but the general public doesn’t know this, so it is effective innuendo.

White House Fakery Defended by Fact Checkers

LA Times Absurdly Skips Reporting on Hunter Biden’s Hollywood Art Show

Let’s Go, Brandon!

Hunter Biden Sells 5 Art Reproductions for $75K Each  The phrase ‘thinly disguised money laundering’ leaps immediately to mind.

Biden Posts Worst Jobs Report Since 2020  Well, when you fire people because they won’t get vaccinated, this ought to come as no surprise.

Biden’s Taxes Hit Americans at the Top and Bottom

Biden Hits Record Low Approval Rating On Economy, Foreign Policy, Pronouncing Words, Standing Upright, Continence, Inflation, Math, The Alphabet, Remembering All The Animal Sounds, Respecting Personal Space (Ran Out Of Room, See Article For More)  Babylon Bee.

Cartel Violence Spills Into US as Border Patrol Treats Gunshot Victims

White House Fakery Defended By ‘Fact-Checkers’

Biden Refuses to Take Reporters’ Questions After Jobs Briefing  Apparently he has no answers.

Read it.

Immigrants who, like me, came here from totalitarian nations are warning us: we must open our eyes and realize we no longer live in a free country.

We slid down this slope so swiftly because what happened to us is unprecedented. Although the Biden administration is adding the state’s fat thumb to the Woke side of the scale, much of the Woke Regime’s crackdown to date was engineered by private entities: elite private universities and private corporations in media and in tech. This is a key point of differentiation between the Woke Regime and all the repressive kingdoms and empires in human history. Those imposed their restrictions from above, using the coercive authority of the state itself. We have gotten to the point, however, where large corporations and the groups whose preferences they channel and amplify intrude into every aspect of our lives to enforce the regime’s wishes—a degree of control the envy of any totalitarian tyrant of centuries past.

John Stossel.

Jim Caruso, CEO of Flying Dog Brewery, calls his business a “First Amendment brewery.” That’s because he keeps going to court to defend beer labels.

…

After six more years in court, he won again. The court said, “Banning a label for vulgarity violates the First Amendment.”

You’d think the bureaucrats would have known that, since the federal government already approved Caruso’s beers. In fact, every brewer in America must first submit every label to a federal bureaucracy called the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau.

Which makes me wonder: Why does every state need separate regulation?

I suspect the answer is: Bureaucrats want jobs, and politicians are eager to waste our money.

Biden Sows Confusion By Claiming He Spoke To President Xi About The “Taiwan Agreement”

Aides Quickly Drag President Away As He Tries To Join In ‘F*** Joe Biden’ Chant Babylon Bee.

Ex-Biden Border Chief Warned Policies Would Send Border Out of ‘Control’

‘I’m A Little Worried About What My Son Is Learning In School,’ Says Dangerous Domestic Terrorist  Babylon Bee.

Afghan Gun Shops Sell US Weapons Seized by Taliban

NY Times Slimes Mexican Preacher Who Took in Migrants as ‘Good Samaritan’ Gone Bad  No good deed goes unpunished.

Memo: Biden Admin Weighing Plans To Send Migrants to Vermont  Vermont is far too white as it is.

Brilliant: Biden Solves Debt Crisis By Writing ‘One Trillion’ On Dollar Bill With Permanent Marker

Terrorists Released From Guantanamo Bay To Make Room For Parents Who Protested At School Board Meetings  Babylon Bee.

Read it.

There must a Robert Ludlum series lurking in the saga of OCC Comptroller nominee Saule Omarova. One installment of the series would be The Omarova Thesis — the thesis she wrote at Moscow State University on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship: “Karl Marx’s Economic Analysis and the Theory of Revolution in The Capital.” It must have been a good one — so good that she has scrubbed it from her current résumé.

Senators alarmed after Afghan refugees walk off military bases by the hundreds

Texas Gearing Up for Possible Surge of 60,000 Haitian Migrants

Read it.

A Virginia prosecutor backed by progressive billionaire George Soros tried to use his status as an elected official to avoid a courthouse security checkpoint, leading to a vulgar confrontation between Descano and the security guards stationed on site.

Read it.

A service that post offices in Europe and Asia have offered for decades.

USPS: Always on the bleeding edge of yesteryear.

Read it.

One-third of inmates freed by Democratic Kentucky governor Andy Beshear during the pandemic were later charged with a felony, according to a state report.

Joe Biden Accused of Tax Policy for ‘Pink-haired Wokers’ With ‘Ziploc Bags of Kale’

NBC Reporter Goes Into Damage Control After NASCAR Fans Chant “F**K Joe Biden”

Delta Tearing Through Some States Despite High Vaccine Rates

Twitter Labels Obituary ‘Misleading’ Because of COVID Claims  The Narrative, the Whole Narrative, and nothing but the Narrative.

CDC Director Says Vaccines ‘Can’t Prevent Transmission’; Fauci Says ‘Too Early To Tell’ On Holiday Gatherings  My, what a effective vaccine. Gotta run right out and get it….

Read it.

“Under the proposal, starting in 2023, employers with five or more employees would have to offer a retirement plan and automatically enroll employees, diverting 6% of their pay to a retirement account. An automatic escalation clause would increase the automatic contribution to 10% of pay by year five. The default plan would be a Roth IRA invested in a target-date fund, a mix of investments based on your expected retirement year.

“For employers, it’s a mandate. They would have to offer the plans. Employees would be able to opt out.”

…

In the first place, under the new federal mandate, employers would be obliged to select a specific IRA in which to enroll their employees, rather than merely forwarding payroll deductions to the state. It appears that they would choose from a list of approved providers. Second, the various state programs have had extended phase-ins; the federal mandate applies to all employers with 5 or more employees from day one, and there appears to be no analysis of how it would be for these small employers to do so. Third, the program requires employers must choose, not just any IRA, but only those in which there is an option to convert the account balance into an annuity at retirement.

It also continues to be the case that workers are being “nudged” into 10%-of-pay contributions without any useful guidance as to what the right saving level is for their personal circumstances; given the progressive level of Social Security benefits, which replace a far greater percentage of pay for lower-earners than middle- or upper-earners, there is no one-size-fits-all answer here, and, indeed, some lower-earners may be better off with no savings at all.

After a family member died of Covid-19, a man took aim at Florida’s top health official in sarcastic letter (CNN) Wow, a sarcastic letter! That’ll teach ’em!

Fauci pressed if he should ‘step aside’ as an ‘impediment to public health’: ‘People won’t listen to you’

Alabama Lawmakers OK Plan to Build Prisons With COVID Relief Funds

Stanford students are more likely to wear masks on bicycles than helmets  Helmets don’t Signal Virtue, but masks do.

“We’ve Been Locked Up For Almost 50 Days” – 1000s Rally Against Auckland Lockdown As Public Opposition Grows

Time for Fauci To Go

Check it out.

Sometimes it is good to be the queen.

Harris’ office does damage control over student’s Israel ‘ethnic genocide’ comment (Politico)

Iran state media promotes video of Kamala Harris not pushing back on Israel ‘ethnic genocide’ claim Way to go, Jambalaya.

Why Rachael Rollins’ Nomination to Be Rogue US Attorney Should Terrify Us All

Thief Assures Victim Robbery Will Cost $0 Since Victim Is Paying For It  Babylon Bee.

Read it.

Millions of Americans became alarmed when they saw a viral video that compared a U.S. Army recruiting advertisement to those made for the Russian and Chinese militaries.

The Russian ad featured tough-looking men doing situps, jumping out of airplanes, and cocking rifles on a snow-covered battlefield. The Chinese ad showed infantrymen firing rounds as they ran next to advancing tanks.

The U.S. Army video was a cartoon about a woman with two moms who marched for equality and joined the Army so she could “shatter some stereotypes.”

One stereotype that has certainly been shattered is that the U.S. has the best military force in the world.

Read it.

Something unexpected is happening at U.S. military bases hosting Afghan evacuees: Many hundreds of them are simply leaving before receiving U.S. resettlement services, two sources familiar with the data told Reuters.

The number of “independent departures,” which top 700 and could be higher, has not been previously reported. But the phenomenon is raising alarms among immigration advocates concerned about the risks to Afghans who give up on what is now an open-ended, complex, and completely voluntary resettlement process.

John Hinderaker at Power Line.

Joe Biden has nominated Saule Omarova to be Comptroller of the Currency. It is an important position. According to the Comptroller’s web site:

The OCC charters, regulates, and supervises all national banks and federal savings associations as well as federal branches and agencies of foreign banks. The OCC is an independent bureau of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

So who is Ms. Omarova, whom Joe Biden wants to “charter, regulate and supervise all national banks”? She is not a banker, but a professor at Cornell Law School. Sadly, these days being a law school professor is rarely a positive recommendation. (Sorry, Glenn and Bill.) The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote about the Omarova nomination today:

She graduated from Moscow State University in 1989 on the Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

You can’t make this stuff up. And she still yearns for the USSR, which you can get away with as a law professor–although, to be fair, she also has a PhD from the University of Wisconsin, which might be a worse black mark.

Read it.

Walking through an airport these days is like digging through sedimentary layers of useless government regulation. The TSA security line is where every hare-braned bureaucratic policy goes to die. Except they don’t die: they sit, fossilized in horrible suspended animation, crust upon crust of outdated protection against misunderstood crises.

Read it.

Or maybe not.

In August 2021 the U.S. Navy finally had USS Lyndon B. Johnson, its third, and last Zumwalt-class destroyer ready for sea trials. These trials will take an unusually long time because the navy does not expect the Johnson to join the fleet until 2023. The main reason for the unusually long trials period is that the navy considers the Zumwalts as valuable testbeds for new technologies, especially ones that made the Zumwalts useful. They lost their gun turrets because the ammunition was too expensive. That was because the ammo purchase was based on 32 Zumwalts being built. With only three ships the cost per shell was prohibitive. Meanwhile the marines found a cheaper and more useful substitute for the 155mmm guided shell, whose main purpose was providing artillery support for marines and other troops on hostile shores.

The alternative weapon for the Zumwalt gun turrets was the new railgun, which was also dropped because of cost and reliability issues. Because of the Zumwalt the navy has already cancelled two expensive new weapons technologies; 155mm guns using GPS guided shells and the electric rail gun, that were planned for future use on many other ships.

Paul Mirengoff at Power Line.

It looks like the Democrats can only pass a reconciliation bill if they are willing to get behind a trimmed-down package. The $3.5 trillion version doesn’t command the support of 50 Senators. A $2 trillion package might.

But to get from $3.5 trillion to around $2 trillion, the Democrats must agree on what to cut. That seems like a tall order because the current package contains big gifts for everyone under the Democratic umbrella. Which constituencies will be deprived of Christmas?

Read it.

National Review Online reports (from behind a pay wall, unfortunately) on the problems that 116 U.S. citizens, legal permanent residents and SIV holders, including 59 children, have encountered in escaping from Afghanistan – problems not with the Taliban but with their own government.

Jen Psaki Suffers a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day at the Podium

‘No-Win’ Kamala Still Has Fans in the Press

US Bars Flight From Landing With Americans From Kabul: Activists

Did he lie or did it slip his mind?

YouTube is banning anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content

United Airlines Set To Terminate 593 Workers For Refusing COVID-19 Vaccine

Kamala Harris applauds student, who accused Israel of ‘ethnic genocide,’ for speaking ‘your truth’  My truth is that this student is a potential terrorist and ought to be sentenced to Reading The Classics, like maybe the Bible. Also that Jambalaya Harris has the brain of a carrot.

Read it.

Everyone who has ever taken an introductory course in economics learned that “cost” is a short, punchy synonym for “forgone opportunities”. When you spend a dollar – or a minute – you choose one possible use for that money or time, and you give up a vast array of alternative uses. Your choice shows what you then judged to be the most desirable of the available opportunities. Whether your choice was wise depends on the value of what you got, as compared to the value of what you could have had. You may realize later that you misjudged; in that case, you paid “too much”. Or you may be satisfied, so that the price was “just right”. In neither case, though, is the cost “nothing”.

Whether Joe Biden ever took Econ 101, I don’t know. If he did, he has forgotten the meaning of “cost”. To be fair, he was a college freshman about sixty years ago. It’s natural that a few bits of book learning would slip from his mind over the decades. (After all, he apparently doesn’t remember what advice his military advisors gave him a few months ago about Afghanistan.) Forgetfulness explains the President’s defense of his multi-trillion dollar spending proposals: “My Build Back Better Agenda costs zero dollars”, because “it adds zero dollars to the national debt”.

Let’s make the implausible assumption that the second statement is accurate, that the trillions spent will be matched by trillions in tax revenue gained through shutting down “tax breaks, loopholes, and tax evasion for big corporations and the wealthy”. What that means is that the trillions whose disposal that Biden Administration proposes to take out of the hands of “corporations and the wealthy” – a cohort of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of decision makers with a wide range of values – won’t be available for the goods and services that they would have purchased and the investments that they would have made.

Stop focusing on the negative. Biden and Harris have gotten things done. (Washington Post) Yes, but are they useful things?

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