With thanks to Bluebird Of Bitterness, who consistently has interesting stuff on her blog.

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Democrat state Reps. Garnet Coleman, Ana Hernandez and Armando Walle returned Thursday, hailing their efforts to block the quorum.

“We took the fight for voting rights to Washington, D.C., and brought national attention to the partisan push in our state to weaken ballot access,” the trio wrote in a joint statement, according to the Post. “Our efforts were successful and served as the primary catalyst to push Congress to take action on federal voter protection legislation. Now, we continue the fight on the House Floor.”

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A new surge of migrants is attempting to break through the border between Serbia and Hungary, and has ratcheted up aggression towards the border guards. Mimicking their fellow culture-enrichers in Greece, they have begun to set fires in the very dry underbrush, perhaps hoping to start major conflagrations like the ones in Greece.

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First we cover up your hair. Then we hide your shoulders, your neck, and your cleavage. Then we put the long veil over you. There! Don’t you look beautiful?

Now you’re ready to be presented to your future husband, who is also your first cousin. After that you will bear him eight or ten wee Islamic bairns, as will his three other wives.

And don’t forget: you may no longer venture outside your home unless you are accompanied by a male relative.

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They say that like it was a bad thing.

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French troops have evacuated nearly 400 people, including French civilians and Afghans who helped the country’s military, from the capital city of Kabul, which the Taliban captured on Sunday. The French special forces have rescued civilians outside of Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, which has been the site of the United States’ chaotic evacuation efforts, according to Military Times.

San Francisco DA faces second recall effort as residents ‘fed up’ with progressive ‘zero consequence’ policies

Apple’s Lisa Jackson talks environmental justice with US EPA Administrator Michael Regan

President Xi Calls For “Redistribution Of Wealth” To Help “Expand The Middle Class”  A Communist remembers that he’s a Communist.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Again Calls For State Of Emergency To Address Homelessness

Law Used to Prosecute Migrants in US Struck Down as Racist

CNN Analyst Argues AGAINST Rescuing Americans Outside Kabul Airport

CAIR Lectures Media About Accurately Quoting Jihadists

Beijing’s Bomb Buildup-Continues as Third New ICBM Field Uncovered

The purge of Asian American students at Thomas Jefferson High School has begun

American Bar Association Poised To Mandate Diversity Training, Affirmative Action at Law Schools

Critics Balk at CRT Training Video at Air Force Academy

U.S. forces can’t help Americans flee to Kabul airport, Pentagon chief says (CNBC)

Biden snaps at George Stephanopoulos for mentioning Afghans falling from planes in Kabul chaos

No official US evacuation plan for Americans outside Kabul, report says

Are the wheels coming off the Biden administration?

Biden Wishing There Was Something The President Could Have Done To Prevent This Tragedy  Babylon Bee.

“Undocumented Citizens:” the Biden Administration Is Pushing the Euphemism Envelope

The Rapid Decline of Slow Joe

Diplomat: “Not Even Tanks” Can Stop Large Wave Of Afghan Refugees Heading To Europe

More Protesters Killed By Taliban During Wave Of “Independence Day” Violence As Demonstrations Spread To Kabul

Liberal Atlantic Magazine Turns on Biden With BRUTAL Takedown of Joe’s Chaos

CNN’s Lament: Biden ‘No Longer Gets Credit Simply for Not Being Trump’

Stephanopoulos Hounds Biden on Afghanistan, But Won’t Fact-Check Falsehoods

UK Parliament Holds Biden in Contempt for Afghanistan Withdrawal  As if anyone listened to them any more….

Judge SLAMS Biden’s Open Border: Trump’s ‘Remain in Mexico’ Policy Must Stay

Biden Administration Proposes Dramatic Change To Asylum System Amid Border Crisis

Poll: More Than Half of Voters Say VP Harris Not Qualified for Presidency

CNN on Biden’s Afghanistan Nightmare: ‘If This Isn’t Failure, What Does Failure Look Like?’

GOP Lawmakers Call on Biden To Resign in Wake of Afghan Debacle  As if that would ever happen.

Larry David ‘screamed’ at Alan Dershowitz at grocery store over Trump ties

Top Google Engineer Abandons Company, Reveals Big Tech Rewrote Algos To Target Trump

Taliban Banned on Facebook, Allowed on Twitter — Trump Still Banned on Both

Facebook for Terrorists But Not Trump? CNN Op-Ed Defends Taliban

Media Equate GOP With Taliban

Massive Thwaites Glacier Threat: Significant Geothermal Heat Beneath the Ice Stream

Why Indigenous Wisdom Is an Antidote to the Climate Crisis

The IPCC’s attribution methodology is fundamentally flawed

Globalists Queuing to Smack Australia for Unambitious Climate Targets

Washington Post: Battle ‘Existential Climate Change Dread’ With ‘Self-Care’

AP Promotes Young Liberals Claiming We’d Have No ‘Climate Crisis’ If Carter Won in 1980

New York shop owner who called cops on BLM protesters ordered to pay $4.5K

English Professor Claims Right To Use Racial Slurs In The Name Of Racial Justice

Crown Heights Killer Lemrick Nelson Remains a Free Man

Video Flashback: Watch the Crown Heights Riots Unfold Through Contemporary Media Coverage

From Anti-Semitic Agitator to Democratic Power Broker: The Preposterous Resurrection of Al Sharpton

Live Long and Promote Bigotry: Star Trek Actor Says Religious Americans ‘as Fanatical’ as the Taliban

Texas school district requires masks after finding dress code loophole to bypass ban (The Guardian)

A Texas School Made Masks Part Of Its Dress Code To Get Around Gov. Abbott’s Ban (NPR)

She flew to Tonga for a weekend. 18 months later she’s still stuck there

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott Mugs With Unmasked Music Star—Then Tests Positive for COVID (Daily Beast)

The lesson Greg Abbott should learn from having Covid-19 — but won’t (CNN)

Anti-Vaxxers Go Off the Rails at San Diego County Meeting: ‘Heil Fauci’ (Daily Beast)

New Zealand’s Tyrannical PM Tells Kiwis To ‘Blame Australia’ For COVID Lockdowns

Study: COVID Vaccines Are Less Effective Against Delta

Florida’s Largest School Districts Vote to Defy Gov. DeSantis’ Mask Mandate Ban  Which they would not do unless they were getting support from outside the state.

Landmark Study Proves COVID Vaccines Much Less Effective Than Advertised

University In Connecticut To Fine, Block Internet Access To Unvaxx’d Students

People Who Get 2 COVID-19 Shots Are Fully Vaccinated Without Booster: Surgeon General  And if you believe that one, he’ll tell you another one. After all, he’s been right so many times before….

NYC Businesses Sue De Blasio for Requiring Vaccination Proof

Michigan Lawmakers Seek to Prevent Employers From Requiring Vaccines

“We Do Not Consent!”: San Diego Resident Goes Viral After Sharp Tongued Speech At Board Of Supervisors Meeting

‘Obama Variant’ Strikes Martha’s Vineyard: Super-Spreader Birthday Bash Overwhelms Island’s Only Emergency Room

Three Senators Infected With COVID-19  All three were ‘fully vaccinated’. Yeah, I’m gonna run right out and get that vaccine.

Red States Banning School Mask Mandates Face Battle With Biden

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A group of senators led by Republican Marco Rubio of Florida is demanding answers to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, writing in a letter: “As we watched the images coming out of Afghanistan as the Taliban retook the country, we were horrified to see U.S. equipment – including UH-60 Black Hawks – in the hands of the Taliban.”

It’s being widely estimated that the Taliban now has “billions of dollars in US weaponry” under their control amid that lighting fast collapse of the US-backed national government on Sunday into Monday. The Pentagon is still assessing, but what is known is that Black Hawk helicopters as well as A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft.

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Almost 15 million mail-in ballots were unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, and more than a million more ballots were undeliverable, according to a new study.

The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative watchdog group on election integrity, released a research brief Wednesday assessing the effect of mass mail-in balloting in an election with a close presidential race in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin.

“These figures detail how the 2020 push to mail voting needs to be a one-year experiment,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a public statement.

The report found that 1.1 million mail-in ballots were undeliverable for various reasons. Election officials rejected another 560,814 mail-in ballots.

Another 14.7 million mailed ballots met an “unknown” fate, the report says.

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Despite an overrun southern border, President Joe Biden is requesting U.S. Border Patrol agents to volunteer to go overseas to handle the processing of thousands of refugees from the Afghanistan withdrawal, the Washington Examiner reported.

Three Border Patrol agents acknowledged to the Examiner their supervisors’ request for volunteers to go to Afghanistan or nearby countries for 30 to 90 days to help process immigrants.

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Anwari reportedly clung to the landing gear of the plane and was crushed when the wheels retracted. His remains were found in the plane’s wheel well after it landed in Qatar.

“Thank you, Joe Biden.”

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There is no democracy in Islam. I know of no “Muslim state” that makes any pretense of democracy. (Turkey used to, but not any more.)

Just another reminder that Islam is an oppressive totalitarian ideology, masquerading as a religion, with which no co-existence is possible.

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My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.

I wish I had a nickel for every time I’ve found a Wikipedia article that got something wrong — and not just wrong, but obviously wrong to anybody who had even a casual interest in a subject. Wikipedia is the poster child for Gell-Mann Amnesia.

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I feel much the same way about the Biden Presidency.

Severian teaches us a little history.

Back in my teaching days, I had this whole bit on why we should study history. I’d ask the class “why do we study history?” and the inevitable response came: “To avoid making the mistakes of the past.” But we never really do that, do we? I’d ask them. For instance, think about the last time you tied one on. The next morning you wake up, head pounding, stomach churning, and you vow “I’ll never drink again!” That lasts until the next weekend, tops, doesn’t it?

And so on. Then I’d tell them the real reason we study history is to better understand (for lack of a better term) human systems. The Marxists had a point: Class conflict (again for lack of a better term) really does drive quite a bit of human affairs. That the Marxists quickly went off the rails with it isn’t surprising — you’ll find no one on earth more reality-averse than a Marxist, except a feminist — but they had a point for all that. Breaking any given historical situation down into self conscious groups of people pursuing their class objectives will very often get you at least in the ballpark.

Zman is not happy.

In The Inequality of Man, the great evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane noted that fanaticism was one of the great inventions of the pre-modern world. Obsessive enthusiasm, especially for an unattainable thing like paradise, makes the fanatic a violent force of nature. We see that with the current Afghan debacle. The open borders fanatics have immediately seized on the crisis to justify importing millions of Afghans into your neighborhood. They never miss a beat.

Similarly, the same people responsible for losing yet another war for the empire are now using the Afghan mess to demand money for their China project. The logic here is that the willingness to abandon Afghanistan, as if it was the crown jewel of the empire, means China will think the US will abandon Taiwan. They may make a play for reclaiming the island nation as a result. The remedy is to give the brain trust of the military industrial complex more money for more new stuff.

The “heads we win, tails you lose” psychology of the military industrial complex is one of those signs of rot that does not get enough attention. The truth is, Afghanistan fell victim to the same disease that afflicts everything else. It quickly became a racket for rich people to skim money from Americans. Billions went to NGO’s and civilian contractors, who then used some portion of it to reward their favorite politicians back in Washington for their support of Afghanistan.

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oe Biden’s record on major foreign policy defies the law of averages. It seems almost impossible to have been wrong time after time on the big questions.

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Beyond Afghanistan, a major Chinese propaganda organ already has used the U.S. defeat there to warn Taiwan (which the communist regime claims as part of China) and potentially other countries.

China’s diplomats met late last month with Taliban leaders before the U.S. exit. Although Beijing is about 3,400 miles from Kabul, the two countries share a 50-mile border and China is expected to give early diplomatic recognition to a Taliban government in Afghanistan.

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Multiple watchdog groups said Rep. Ilhan Omar may have violated federal law for failing to mention any income received from her critically-acclaimed 2020 memoir in her latest financial disclosure report filed on Friday.

Omar, D-Minn., reportedly signed a deal worth up to $250,000 for her memoir “This Is What America Looks Like” in January 2019, around the same time she was sworn into Congress.

Omar’s communications director said the House Ethics Committee approved the book deal, but the Democratic lawmaker’s financial disclosures covering the calendar years 2018 and 2019 contain no mention of the book or any advance income received upon signing a deal.

Reminder: Not every beast that barks is a watchdog.

Afghanistan: reports emerge of Taliban beating Afghans seeking to flee Kabul (The Guardian)

Taliban rule: Burqas, other scenes from the past return to Afghanistan (USA Today)

Biden To Increase Food Stamp Benefits By 25%, The Largest Hike In The Program’s History  Vote Democrat! Get Free Stuff!

Biden Administration “Can’t Guarantee Safety” Of 10,000 Americans Still In Afghanistan As Taliban Violence Escalates

Biden Takes More Vacation As A Reward For Doing Such A Good Job This Week  Babylon Bee.

WATCH as Even Gayle King Mocks Biden Happy Talk: Trust the Taliban?

Biden’s Food Stamp Increase Means Higher Food Prices For All

Shootings From Mexico on Border Patrol Agents Increase

DOJ: Missouri State Gun Law Is Unconstitutional

Biden Assures Everyone That While The Taliban Now Has American Tanks, Rocket Launchers, And Machine Guns, They Haven’t Gotten Any AR-15s  Babylon Bee.

How Will Biden Handle His Next Three Afghan Crises?  Badly, I suspect.

Biden’s Afghanistan Exit Ignores Lessons From Iraq And from the rest of modern history, at least.

Earmarks, a Favorite Tool of Central Planners, Are Making a Comeback Under Biden

Biden Escalates School Mask Conflict, Using Civil Rights Office Against Anti-Mask Mandates  If you stand up for your civil rights, the government’s Civil Rights Office will be on your case. Calling Orwell….

This town is the first in America to ban new gas stations – is the tide turning? (The Guardian)  The tide of Wokeness? Doesn’t look like it.

Climate Deniers and the Phantom Arsonists They Can’t Get Enough Of (Gizmodo)

New Confirmation that Climate Models Overstate Atmospheric Warming

New Mexico Academic Compares the Climate Crisis to Gun Violence

Wildfires Used to Be Helpful. How Did They Get So Hellish?

Cuba Makes It Illegal to Criticize Government on Social Media

CBS Skips Own Reporter Getting WH to Be Noncommittal on Saving Americans

Chief Editor of Independent Belarus News Agency Missing After Raid: Association

American Historical Association Doubles Down on Support for Critical Race Theory

A Trip Through Hyper(Sensitive)Space: Disney Renames Boba Fett’s Ship To Something Woke

Stacey Abrams Staffer Shares Tweet Comparing United States to Taliban 

US Households Paying No Income Tax Hit 61% of Total Last Year

Inside Raceball: Washington Post Wants MLB Blacker

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Maria Andrejczyk, who won the silver medal for javelin throwing at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, auctioned her medal off for $125,000 to pay for an eight-month-old boy’s heart surgery.

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I had the honor of taking courses from Kagan in the mid-70s and the pleasure of knowing a number of his graduate students, including Paul Rahe (now at Hillsdale College), Ken Harl (now at Tulane), and Barry Strauss (now at Cornell). My favorite memory is his turn as Big Julie From Chicago in a student production of Guys & Dolls in Timothy Dwight College. “Let’s shoot craps!”

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U.S. Customs and Border Protections recently seized multiple shipments arriving in Chicago from China that contained counterfeit Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation badges, the agency announced in a press release.

Officials seized eight DEA badges and one FBI badge last week, between Aug. 13 and 15, and CBP notes that they’ve seized counterfeit law enforcement badges before, and that these knockoffs were headed towards various locations across the country.

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Taliban fighters seized U.S. military equipment as they conquered Afghanistan, including millions of dollars’ worth of drones, according to photos released by the militant group.

Images taken by the Taliban’s media studio last week show abandoned U.S. military vehicles captured by the Taliban, such as Humvees and armored MRAP personnel carriers. The fighters also secured several Boeing ScanEagle drones, unmanned aerial vehicles used for reconnaissance.

“Thank you, Joe Biden.”

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To date, the Taliban have profited from the opium and heroin trade. Now the militant group effectively rules a country with valuable resources that China needs to grow its economy.

What’s ‘Thank you, Joe Biden’ in Mandarin?

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At least three people were killed and more than a dozen injured after Taliban militants opened fire during protests against the group in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Wednesday, two witnesses told Reuters.

The witnesses said the deaths followed an attempt by local residents to install Afghanistan‘s national flag at a square in the city, some 150 km (90 miles) to the east of Kabul.

Welcome to the Biden Future.

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A New York robbery crew that targeted drug runners hit the jackpot late last year, netting $500,000 in cash after tracking a targeted criminal’s car — with a hidden Apple Watch, new court documents show.

We have the technology.

ZMan reads the tea leaves.

Way back when the Democratic Party stepped into to halt their voters from picking the wrong option, the immediate response from most observers was that Biden would be a caretaker president if he won. Most people, of course, assumed a man with serious cognitive decline was never going to win election, but 2020 was a good reminder that authoritarian regimes have no respect for the general will. Biden was installed as the short-term answer to their Trump problem.

How long he lasted was assumed to be a function of his ability to stand up and read the lines provided by the script writers. The “long Biden” camp said he would serve out his term, but not run for re-election. Harris or maybe someone else would be the nominee for 2024 with his blessing. The “short-Biden” camp said he would be lucky to make it to the midterm. His cognitive decline would become so obvious that he would be forced out one way or another and Harris would take over.

There was always another element to the politics that was pushed to the background in the excitement to depose Trump. The left-liberals have not been unified in a long time and the Biden-Harris ticket was a compromise between the two main factions. The one faction is the Obama side. If you look at the people around Biden in his campaign and his White House, they are mostly Obama loyalists. On the other hand, Harris was surrounded by Clinton people and remains so as VP.

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One of the many worrying developments in the tragedy unfolding in Afghanistan is that US face recognition and fingerprint devices and databases have been seized by the Taliban. They were apparently left behind during the hurried withdrawal of US forces, leaving coalition collaborators at risk from reprisals.

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Four summers ago, the network evening news shows obsessed over Donald Trump Jr. attending a brief and ineffective meeting with Russians in Trump Tower in 2016. He hoped to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, but nothing came of it. ABC, CBS, and NBC offered viewers more than 62 minutes of coverage energetically speculating over collusion with the Russians in just four nights in July.

On August 11, the Daily Mail of London reported “Hunter Biden claimed Russians stole another one of his laptops for blackmail while he was close to overdosing in a Las Vegas hotel room.” Coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC? Nothing. Zero. The story underlined this alleged theft “would mean Hunter lost a total of three computers — the first abandoned at a Delaware computer store and the second seized by federal agents.”

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And it doesn’t matter a damn. 44% is about the percentage of the vote that Clinton got when he won the Presidency.

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There is no border crisis. Inflation is not happening and if it is it must be Trump’s fault. We must suppress energy development to prevent climate change then lobby OPEC to pump more oil. There is no such thing as critical race theory but also it is racist to oppose mandating it. Ignore whatever we said a few days or weeks before about COVID, and instead, believe whatever we think we just said. Are things getting out completely of hand? Time for another ice cream photo-op and a nap!

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Okay, 99% of Muslims in Afghanistan want sharia to be the official law of the land, and 99.7% of Afghans are Muslims, so I’d say that in Afghanistan: Sharia = Democracy and Democracy = Sharia.

Further, Afghans don’t want some watered-down namby-pamby modern version of sharia fit for extolling in TED Talks and at Davos. The huge majority of Afghans want the Iron Age straight stuff complete with hand-chopping of thieves and stoning of adulterers.

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What could possibly go wrong?

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I’ll just bet they are. Hope they can afford to spay California taxes.

The Guardian.

Some people just don’t enjoy nature.

On Afghanistan Fiasco, Biden Says ‘Buck Stops With Me’ While Blaming Everyone Else

Fall of Afghanistan Seen as Historic Failure for Biden

‘Died for Nothing?’ CBS Speaks to Vets, Families About Disastrous Afghan Withdrawal

Taliban “Collect” Weapons From Civilians In Kabul As They “No Longer Need Personal Protection”

Pentagon Evades Question on Preventing Taliban From Obtaining US Weapons

Homeland Security Ignoring Congressional Requests For Info On Where Illegal Immigrants Are Being Sent

Afghans are racing to erase their online lives  Welcome to our world.

CIA analyst bashes MSNBC for supporting Biden’s Afghanistan speech: ‘I was appalled’  But not surprised.

The Fall of Saigon Didn’t End Gerald Ford’s Presidency (New York Magazine) That’s because he didn’t abandon South Viet Nam, a Democrat-dominated Congress cancelled funding. Those of us who were around then know that.

Taliban Fighters Tell CNN Reporter to ‘Stand to the Side’ Because She’s a Woman (Daily Beast) Guess he didn’t get the memo from the UN and the State Dept.

White House defends helicopter evacuation from US Embassy after Biden said it wouldn’t happen

Jake Sullivan Presides Over Yet Another Foreign Policy Disaster

New York Times Blisters Biden on Afghanistan Collapse: ‘Words Come Back to Bite’

Hey, Biden Media Shills, Gas Prices Have Risen Every Month Under His Administration

“Panic” As Afghani Crashes After Central Bank Chief Flees, Says No More Dollars Left

Pentagon Says Goal To Evacuate 5,000 To 9,000 People Per Day From Kabul Airfield  How long until only the Taliban are left?

NBC’s Angry Engel Blasts Biden: 100 Times Worse Than Saigon

Female Afghanistan Mayor Says Taliban Will Kill Her

Hamas Congratulates Taliban for US ‘Defeat’ in Afghanistan

???????Biden Admin To Extend Travel Mask Mandate To Jan 2022; Flight Attendants “Weary, Exhausted, & Forgotten”

Taliban Frees Thousands of Prisoners, Including al Qaeda and ISIS Fighters

Pentagon Admits Taliban Has Billions In US Weapons; Biden Has Yet To Speak To Any World Leaders Since Fall Of Kabul

Ayanna Pressley, ‘cancel rent’ advocate, discloses thousands of dollars in rental income

Exclusive: Title, cover and details of new Trump book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa revealed (CNN) Quick, let’s make some more money off of Trump while we still can!

Brian Williams Slapped with Unwelcome Afghanistan Truth Bomb by Guest

Elizabeth Warren Effect? Census Reveals Surge in People Identifying as White Native Americans

This Is CNN: Militants Chant ‘Death to America,’ But ‘Seem Friendly at the Same Time’

CNN Reporter Says German Army ‘Seems Friendly’ Despite Chants Of ‘Heil Hitler!’  Babylon Bee.

Science journals have been corrupted by China

Unhinged Atlantic Leftist Blames American People for Biden’s Failure

The Save Joe Biden Project: CBS Helps ‘Defiant’ President ‘Explain,’ Afghan Debacle

Federal Lawsuit Calls California Recall Election Unconstitutional

Hope Solo: Megan Rapinoe Bullied Teammates To Protest Anthem

Take Our Quiz To Find Out What Job You’ll Have In The Upcoming Communist Utopia!  Babylon Bee.

Kyle Bass: China To ‘Move In Under Security And Diplomatic Guise’ To Pilfer Afghanistan’s Trillions In Minerals

McMaster Blows Up CBS’s ‘False Narrative’ About Afghanistan

Rent Cancellation Advocate Rashida Tlaib Cleaned Up as Landlord During Pandemic

VIDEO: Biden Flacks Try, Fail To Spin Afghanistan Debacle

Free Society Dwindles As Permission Requirements Grow

Challenging UN, Study Finds Sun—not CO2—May Be Behind Global Warming

Victor Davis Hanson.

Have we ever had a president who made no pretense about destroying federal immigration law and asking of Americans what he does not ask of those entering the country illegally?

Joe Biden has also conceded that his moratorium on housing evictions defied a Supreme Court ruling. He added that he probably didn’t have the legal authority to ignore the court but didn’t really care

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We have noted that U.S. officials estimate there are somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 Americans still in Afghanistan, and they do not know where those individuals are. Steve has pointed out the obvious potential for a mass hostage situation if the Taliban simply refuses to permit Americans and other Westerners to get to the Kabul airport.

Amplifying that story, earlier today both Jake Sullivan and Jen Psaki declined to offer any assurance that all Americans will be successfully extracted from Afghanistan. The fact is that the fate of Americans stranded in that country is out of our control. For now, the Taliban is taking the position that as long as foreigners are leaving, they will not interfere with them.