Politics

Absent from most headlines on Wednesday was the egging of California recall candidate Larry Elder during a trip to the cockroach-infested district of Venice Beach in LA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PakVQjHPOyg Less than a week before Californians decide whether or not to sack Gov. Gavin Newsom, Elder's campaign thought it would be a great PR opportunity for the candidate to tour the homeless cesspool of Venice on Wednesday. The visit started with a warm boomer welcome from supporters outside a Gold's Gym as Elder stepped off his black-and-red campaign bus. Things took an unexpected turn when a large group of wet-brained granola munchers and resident crackheads confronted Elder and his convoy as they made their way through Sunset Avenue's dilapidated neighborhood.

For a people supposedly united by their great and abiding love of freedom, the pandemic year has been an interesting test of Americans' commitment to their country's founding principles. Sure, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are great — but have you tried surveilling, spying and snitching on your neighbors amid an endless state of emergency? Turns out, many folks in the US are quite willing to sacrifice various freedoms if it means they get to scold and punish others, particularly their ideological opponents, for breaking the rules. The past two years have seen many Americans embrace their inner authoritarians, treating shamings like a spectator sport and excoriating the noncompliant with evangelical zeal.

If you read one book this fall, make it The Handmaid’s Tale TV show. And then don’t read another book, ever again, if you want to remain au courant on Twitter. Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel, and the more recent Hulu series, which depict a futuristic America called Gilead where women are treated as breeding chattel, have become a political obsession. They're used as a kind of shorthand by the trendy left for the medieval theocracy my fellow pro-lifers and I are supposedly hammering together in our spare time. This totalitarian state is evidently being built over the scaffolding of the lawless Randian anarcho-syndicate we were accused of building just a few years ago. But then those kindly old ladies praying rosaries outside abortion clinics are nothing if not adaptive.

The battle to overturn Roe v. Wade is nearly over. The battle to end abortion is about to begin. When the Supreme Court declined to block a Texas law banning abortion after six weeks, the pro-life movement won its first significant victory in decades. Next year, SCOTUS will rule on a Mississippi law that directly challenges Roe v. Wade. If Roe survives, the fight to overturn it is over, at least for our lifetimes. Abortion as a constitutional right will become truly settled law. If Roe falls, or is narrowed, the fight will turn to the states. Either way, the war is about to enter a new phase, and to that end pro-lifers should keep three things in mind. 1.

Joe Biden is officially a victim of the new rules that every Democratic president is going to face from here on out. That's thanks to his party’s overzealously tying an impeachment around Donald Trump’s neck before the 2020 election. Both Biden and the Democrats are not going to like where those new rules lead when the Republican party, in all likelihood, takes back the House of Representatives in early 2023. Traveling back in time for a moment, remember that Donald Trump’s first impeachment was based on a third-party whistleblower who notified Rep. Adam Schiff of a phone call between Trump and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky.

Former deputy secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said Thursday that the United States has flown in thousands of Afghan nationals that have not been properly vetted in the aftermath of the military withdrawal of Afghanistan. According to data published by the Washington Post, 23,876 'at risk' Afghans have already arrived in the US out of the more than 120,000 individuals that were evacuated from the Kabul airport. Cuccinelli explained during an interview on WMAL's O'Connor & Company that these individuals are being 'paroled in' to the US because there has not been enough time to conduct a thorough security screening and confer them legal status. 'They're not being vetted. They're being what's called "paroled" in,' Cuccinelli said.

President Biden walked to the White House podium on Tuesday and proclaimed the US withdrawal from Afghanistan an ‘extraordinary success’. He relied on the unanimous advice of military leaders and strategic advisers for these wise decisions. If there were any failures, they were due to Donald Trump. Never in history, he said, had there been such a successful airlift. Of the Americans who wanted to leave, we got out an amazing 90 percent. Surely that’s a success all around, despite the collapse of the Afghan army, which nobody expected. Of course, as a far-sighted leader, Biden said he had ordered plans for that, too.

The terrorist attack at Kabul airport on Thursday was so horrific as to summon the word ‘unprecedented’. But it was nothing of the sort. In fact, it was hard not to be struck by a numbing sense of déjà vu. There was the nature of the attack: a suicide bombing, pioneered as a terrorist technique by the Tamil Tiger rebels in Sri Lanka but introduced to Americans by our Islamist foes. I remember reading for the first time about a suicide bomb back in 2001 and trying to comprehend the sheer fanaticism that could lead anyone to push that button. Fast-forward 20 years to the supposedly more enlightened Afghanistan we created, and that same evil is still ripping apart the innocent. There was the ghoulish disregard for human life, a trademark of Islamic extremists.

The rapid takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban has potentially dire consequences for Afghan women and children. The Islamist group was able to commandeer sophisticated US weaponry and other military equipment during our poorly-planned troop withdrawal. And so Americans have been primed to cheer the arrival of planes carrying thousands of Afghan refugees, who we are told would otherwise be executed by the Taliban, into the United States. But what are the long-term consequences of rapid refugee resettlement? Could this present a risk to national security? How will this effect Americans economically or culturally?

I’m not going to lie, the past few weeks seeing the spectacular fall of former disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo after being the toast of the town last year has been somewhat satisfying. This time last year, he was writing his acceptance speech to receive his Emmy Award for his amazing performance playing a leader in the middle of a once in a lifetime pandemic. Celebrities like Billy Crystal, Robert De Niro, Whoopi Goldberg and Rosie Perez fawned over their MVP: ‘Most Valuable Politician’. It is quite something to revisit some of their revolting speeches.

It was supposed to be a welcome break from serving as the Biden administration’s stooge. Instead of being the mascot for the Biden administration’s busted border policy, Kamala Harris would get a pleasant little trip to Singapore and Vietnam, to shore up her foreign policy experience just in case, God forbid, the Democratic party has to actually rally behind her as president. But instead of gaining experience, Harris has to worry about US diplomats being shot with a laser beam, or something. Yes, that’s right, the latest incident of Kamala’s ill-starred vice presidency is an outbreak of Havana syndrome. US State Department officials announced that it was investigating a 'possible anomalous health incident’ in Hanoi, the preferred euphemism for the mysterious disease.

In the weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Americans came together in a spirit of grief, resolve and shared national pride. It didn’t last long, but this potent energy animated the US military’s mission and a new generation of recruits who signed up to ‘do their part’ in the wake of the tragedy. Twenty years later, it is not the same military. As an institution, its impunity, hubris and access to unprecedented financial spoils have led to corruption and mediocrity at the top. The exploitation of all-volunteer forces to fight protracted wars of choice without proper care and attention to their consequences has left veterans jaded and skeptical of the value of their service in a system that continues to fail them.