Joe biden

Monday

Daniel DePetris

One year later, Biden is right to have left Afghanistan

A year ago today, the Taliban captured the northern Afghan city of Kunduz, dealing the US-supported Afghan government an embarrassing blow and setting in motion a blitz across the country that would eventually send Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and his closest aides into exile. A week later, Taliban fighters entered Kabul virtually unopposed. American forces would leave the country two weeks later, cutting the cord on a two-decade war that cost the US over $2 trillion and tens of thousands of casualties. "We succeeded in what we set out to do in Afghanistan over a decade ago,” President Biden said from the White House last August 31. "Then we stayed for another decade. It was time to end this war.” Much has changed since the troops left.

Sunday

Michael Auslin

What has Pelosi’s Taiwan trip wrought?

In becoming the highest-ranking American politician to visit Taiwan in a quarter-century, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has become the dominant foreign affairs news story of the month, eclipsing, if briefly, Russia’s war in Ukraine. Yet beyond all the sound and fury, Pelosi’s trip changed nothing in the cross-Strait balance of power. What it did was to legitimize the “mission creep” bringing Taiwan and America closer together. Both supporters and critics of the trip were quick to invest Pelosi’s visit with major symbolic significance.

Thursday

Cockburn

Is Jon Stewart trying to be the head of the Democratic Party?

Jon Stewart has been a pretty busy guy lately. Not only is he hosting a new show-cum-podcast, The Problem with Jon Stewart, but he’s also been spending a good chunk of time in Cockburn’s hometown, Washington DC. Stewart has been making the waves while campaigning for HR. 3967, otherwise known as the Honoring our PACT Act of 2022, as he bashed Ted Cruz for initially not supporting it. His on-the-ground activism in DC garnered media attention this week after he held a press conference with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Jon Tester. Stewart made a passionate plea that would make Matthew McConaughey proud. The TV host also found himself embroiled in a spat with conservative firebrands Jack Posobiec and Raheem Kassam.

jon stewart

Tuesday

Jacob Heilbrunn

Pelosi is right to put China on notice

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has always had a flair for the dramatic. During the Trump presidency, for example, she ostentatiously tore up his State of the Union speech. But for sheer spectacle, it will be hard for Pelosi to top her “will she, won’t she” visit to Taiwan this week. In spite of the suspense, there was never really any doubt about it. For weeks China has issued dire warnings about the perils of her visit. So, as it happens, have several commentators, including The Spectator’s Freddy Gray, whom I debated on the Americano podcast, and who seems to have a bad case of the collywobbles about the Pelosi trip.

Monday

Madeleine Kearns

The ‘conversion therapy’ canard

In 2016, the Obama-Biden administration concluded that “the quality and strength of evidence” for medicalized gender transition was “low” and insufficient “to determine whether gender reassignment surgery improves health outcomes for Medicare beneficiaries with gender dysphoria.” Six years on, such skepticism has evaporated. In June, the Biden-Harris administration issued an executive order directing the departments of health and education to “promote expanded access to gender-affirming care.” What changed? Not the evidence, only the politics. At a special Pride Month ceremony for LGBT activists at the White House, the president promised to use the “full force of the federal government” in implementing their policy agenda, from education to healthcare.

conversion

Thursday

Adam Lammon

Learning to live with a nuclear Iran

A mere four years after President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the international agreement that had constrained Iran’s nuclear program, Iran is closer to building a nuclear weapon than ever before. Both the Trump administration’s pressure and the Biden administration’s diplomatic campaigns have failed to yield Iran’s capitulation, yet still the United States has not changed tack. Instead, it has only raised fears of a cataclysmic clash in the Middle East. To be sure, while the Trump team’s maximum pressure strategy had great success in “crushing” Iran’s economy, it was far less effective in achieving any of its stated objectives.

Jonathan Bydlak

Are we in a recession? Does it matter?

Since the latest growth numbers have come out, much ink has been spilled over the question of whether the economy is in a recession. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Biden administration tried to get out ahead of Thursday’s release with a press statement noting that back-to-back quarters of negative growth doesn't necessarily mean a recession. Also predictably, Republicans strongly rebuked the idea, saying, “You can’t change reality by arguing over definitions.” Both sides of the debate will continue to play out, and both sides will continue to miss the point. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter very much whether growth goes up or down by 0.2 percent. What matters is the general trajectory of the economy. And on that front, the Biden track record is mixed at best.

democrats abortion
Peter Van Buren

Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan is about politics not diplomacy

The Biden administration is increasingly concerned about a trip to Taiwan next month by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And they should be. The visit is pointlessly provocative for little gain. Pelosi would do well to remember the Chinese proverb: "Always know if the juice is worth the squeeze." The domestic political juice is charm points for Pelosi from her large, pro-Taiwan constituency back home as she runs for reelection. A third of Pelosi’s congressional district is Asian-American and taking on Big China has long been a major part of her political identity. She, for example, made a public show out of meeting with pro-democracy protesters from Hong Kong and urging a boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Matt Purple

Joe Manchin’s thirty pieces of (inflated) silver

I, for one, never thought he would do it. I never thought Joe Manchin, who was elected in West Virginia after running an ad in which he literally shot the 2009 cap-and-trade bill, would sign on to Joe Biden's Build Back Better climate agenda. Yet sign on he has. Last night, Manchin announced that after over a year of logjamming Biden's spending plans, he'd struck a deal. The legislation he agreed to weighs in at a ballpark of $700 billion, a sharp climbdown from the $6 trillion Democrats had initially asked for. But it's still a lot of money, and even more importantly, it's a major psychological boost for the left. Now, barring some let-the-world-burn chaos from goth kid Kyrsten Sinema or revolt from House Dems, Build Back Better will be signed into law.

Monday

Cockburn

Why wasn’t Hunter Biden prosecuted for illegally buying a gun?

This morning, Cockburn's eagle eye was drawn to an exclusive in the Washington Examiner, which reports that the Delaware police considered Hunter Biden a victim in the infamous gun-in-the-trash incident from 2018. That episode involved Hunter's sister-in-law Hallie, with whom he had a romantic relationship after his brother Beau died, throwing out a gun in a public trash can near a grocery store. Hunter then asked Hallie to go retrieve the gun. A source in the Delaware Police Department said, “He was technically a victim of a theft of a firearm. But in Delaware, we don't prosecute unless a victim is willing to pursue prosecution, so that incident was cleared out with no victim cooperation...which means the victim does not want prosecution.

hunter biden

Saturday

William Murchison

Biden’s problem isn’t his age, it’s his eyesight

My brothers, my sisters, hold it right there. Thank you. We’re missing a major point, howsoever understandably. All this media chitchat coupling Joe Biden’s political incapacities to his undoubtedly advanced age and slowing gait requires, in my estimation, some context. Nor do I suggest the president’s recently acquired case of Covid — from which we all pray he recovers speedily and fully — lends point and pith to the discussion. I suggest that the problem with Joe Biden isn’t age as such, nor the infirmities that go with having lived back when Cokes cost a nickel and Ed Sullivan was king of TV.

Thursday

Cockburn

Does Biden have Covid, cancer and dementia?

Joe Biden has had a lot to worry about lately. First, according to his own account, he has cancer thanks to emissions from oil refineries near his childhood home in Delaware: "That’s why I and so damn many other people I grew up with have cancer and why for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the nation." A White House spokesman later clarified that Biden had had "non-melanoma skin cancers" removed before he took office, though that doesn't explain why he claimed he has cancer now. Apparently he's contracted Covid too. The president tested positive today and will be isolating at the White House.

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failson hunter biden
Cockburn

Hunter Biden may be indicted, reports…CNN?

Trouble may be ahead for America's least favorite fortunate son. Department of Justice (DOJ) officials are reportedly discussing whether to indict Hunter Biden on charges relating to tax and foreign lobbying violations. This comes as an investigation into his finances is reaching a “critical stage.” While this might seem like yet another story the mainstream media would sweep under the rug, Cockburn is pleased to see that even CNN covered it. Clearly something is up here. Back in March, one of Cockburn’s pals, Charles Lipson, covered the media’s purposeful blindness into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal after the New York Times casually verified that the computer was real (a year and a half after the New York Post had verified it and been banned from Twitter for its efforts).

Thursday

Peter Van Buren

Democrats are stuck with Biden

The New York Times and the Washington Post sent up flares last weekend: one way or another, they said, Joe Biden is on borrowed time. The last man standing who ended up the answer to Anyone But Trump turned out so inadequate for the job that Deep State media gave him a vote of no confidence and said he should go. The Times wrote a scathing summary of What Everyone Knows: that Biden at 79 is a wreck. In their words, the man "is testing the boundaries of age and the presidency." He can barely walk unassisted. He has zombie moments on stage. He is fully dependent on wife Jill to nudge him onward, redirect him, get him back on the TelePrompTer — and even then he will read anything there, including stage directions, Ron Burgundy-like. Not a pretty picture.

voters

Wednesday

Gilbert T. Sewall

It’s time for Donald Trump to go

As the war on normal escalates, and a silent majority nationwide grows weary of blue-state chaos, GOP opportunities in the midterm elections and 2024 are vast. But Donald J. Trump and his client army stand in the way of broad Republican victories, impeding the revival of values — freedom, faith, and family — they brandish exclusively as their own. Trump empowers the progressive left. Red-Meat Republicans and Devil-Trump Democrats are locked in a never-ending scorpion dance. For many voters, especially women, Trump’s astonishing boorishness preempts policy evaluation. The nation is the loser. Nonetheless, Donald J. Trump has millions of devotees who — fed up with gilded deceit and leftist disdain — like his crazy.

Tuesday

Cockburn

Five tacos Jill Biden thinks are Hispanics

Jill Biden apparently thinks Hispanics are tacos and vice versa. At a conference in San Antonio on Monday, Dr. Biden said Latinos were "as unique as the breakfast tacos here in San Antonio." And just as there's a plethora of Hispanic Americans, so too is there an incredible variety of tacos. Here now are five tacos that may remind Jill Biden of various Latinos she knows. The Crunch Wrap Supreme from Taco Bell This is the most un-Mexican of the bunch (i.e. not Mexican at all, nor is it even a taco). Taco Bell’s Crunch Wrap Supreme is full of things that will upset your stomach but will satisfy your hunger. Unfortunately Jill Biden won't be able to try one given that it would come too close to eating an actual Hispanic.

Monday

Grayson Quay

Bad-faith readings are damaging our discourse

The Eragon fantasy series I enjoyed as a child isn’t very good, but one aspect of its magic system is pretty interesting. Wizards use magic by speaking in an enchanted language, but the literal meaning of the words trumps the magician’s intent. A single word mispronounced during the blessing of an infant turns the child into a “shield against misfortune” rather than one “shielded against misfortune.” The child grows up to lead a hellish life, haunted by an irresistible compulsion to take the suffering of others upon herself. This is the stuff of fantasy precisely because it’s not how language actually works. People get tongue-tied. They use terms that have different meanings in different contexts. They open their word-hoards and pull out the wrong ones. It happens.

Daniel DePetris

Don’t expect much from Biden’s Middle East trip

It took Barack Obama less than three months to fly to the Middle East for a visit, landing in Iraq to visit the tens of thousands of US troops stationed there at the time. Donald Trump’s first overseas trip as president was to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (also three months into his tenure), where he basked in the limelight, watched in awe as his face was plastered on buildings in Riyadh, and hovered over a glowing orb with King Salman. Now, eighteen months into his presidency, Joe Biden will be spending a few days this week in the region, making stops in Israel, the West Bank, and Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, for a summit of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

Thursday

Roger Kimball

Taking a page from Lenin’s playbook

I have often been struck by the number of pithy observations — revelatory, pointed or simply true — that were not said by the person to whom they are attributed. Vladimir Lenin apparently never said (in Russian or in English) that “the way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation.” Mark Twain, to whom many amusing remarks have been falsely attributed, apparently did not contend that reports of his death had been greatly exaggerated. Edmund Burke neither said nor wrote that evil would triumph if good men did nothing.

inflation

Wednesday

Cockburn

The Biden hire who defended an underage prostitution site

In 2015, the Department of Homeland Security raided the headquarters of the self-proclaimed “original and world’s largest male escort site,” Rentboy.com. The cause was a complaint of conspiracy to violate the Travel Act and on charges of promoting prostitution. The CEO of Rentboy, Jeffrey Hurant, pleaded guilty to these prostitution charges and was sentenced to six months in prison. Why is this background important? Cockburn notes that Sam Brinton is one of the Biden administration’s newest diversity hires at the Department of Energy and wrote an op-ed defending Rentboy.com when it was raided.