What I don't Understand About Alex Berenson Is His Business Model

Alex Berenson, who apparently prefers to be called a "former New York Times reporter", but whom I would probably call a sometime COVID skeptic, was permanently banned from Twitter this past weekend for the post at right. As I've been pointing out here, his wording is actually a fair summary of recent public remarks from figures like Drs Fauci and Walensky: in fact, they've made statements themselves that the vaccine stops neither infection nor transmission. News reports routinely cite individuals who've been hospitalized after the two jabs, and regional masking rules have been reimposed on the clear principle that vaccinated people can transmit the virus.

Various figures have urged Berenson to sue Twitter, but I think this is incredibly bad advice. If he were to do this, he'd be sinking millions of dollars into a doubtful, years-long process of negotiations, injunctions, verdicts, and appeals that would divert his energy from any other projects. Even if some lawyer would take the case pro bono, just being the plaintiff is effectively a full-time, highly stressful job. For what?

Twitter isn't a serious platform, but Berenson does represent himself as a serious guy. Twitter is for posting zingers, and serious people like the late Rush Limbaugh have called it a "behavioral sewer". Jack Dorsey is doing Berenson a big favor, whether either recognizes it or not. But Berenson isn't taking the lesson -- he's simply moving from Twitter to an equivalent forum, Substack, and continuing just to post zingers.

Other than Twitter and now Substack, plus media appearances, his other COVID related effort has been just a four-part, self-published pamphlet, Unreported Truths about COVID-19 and Lockdowns. You buy these online through sources like Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Frankly, I can't imagine that he makes more than latte money by selling these. You can subsidize his Substack tweets if you join his channel, but again, I can't imagine he can even fill up his car's gas tank with that money.

Why is he doing things this way? The words I would use for his project might be "desultory" or "inchoate". This allows legacy media to discredit him, when as far as I can see, events are continuing to prove him right. Last spring, The Atlantic published at hit piece, The Pandemic’s Wrongest Man, that claimed

Berenson has a big megaphone. He has more than 200,000 followers on Twitter and millions of viewers for his frequent appearances on Fox News’ most-watched shows. On Laura Ingraham’s show, he downplayed the vaccines, suggesting that Israel’s experience proved they were considerably less effective than initially claimed. On Tucker Carlson Tonight, he predicted that the vaccines would cause an uptick in cases of COVID-related illness and death in the U.S.

Except that, well, since then, his statements on Fox have been borne out. Israel's experience post vaccines has in fact resulted in a case rate that suggests vaccines had no effect:

The US also experienced an uptick, as Berenson predicted:

The CDC's response has been effectively to acknowledge that vaccines have proven far less effective than originally proclaimed, now recommending an indefinite regimen of boosters.

Berenson's problem is that he's using a gadfly strategy with people who won't hesitate just to swat the gadfly. Berenson has no platform -- even just a blog -- where he can articulate his arguments in a consistent, accessible location where people can find links to his data and see his predictions without having them mischaracterized by his opponents.

And as far as I can see, even if he ran an unmonetized blog on a platform like Blogger, he wouldn't be out all that much money, though he has options for monetizing even there. Maybe the problem is he went to Yale. It's a shame to see real ability going to waste.

No, It's Not Cognitive Decline

The most recent controversy (or by now, the second-most recent, which I'll get to) over Biden is the allegation that he fell asleep in a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. Mainstream media fact-checking has countered, correctly I think in this case, that photos and video clips have been edited to focus on several seconds where Biden's head is lowered. Conservative YouTuber Brandon Tatum, also of the not-asleep school, makes the point that, although Biden's eyes are slits in the sequence, close examination suggests that they aren't actually closed.

However, I also agree with the UK Express that calls the sequence "bizarre", asleep or not. Biden's body language often demonstrates incongruous affect, like the even more recent photo of him checking his watch during the transfer of the Kabul service members' remains in Delaware yesterday.

I think the bottom line is that he either doesn't give a flip how it looks -- after all, he's king -- or it's even more or less deliberate. Consider that Prime Minister Bennett is a supplicant in this situation. Israeli media made the point that the visit was to cement relations with the US, and Bennett's remarks emphasized the historic ties blah blah blah. Biden's reaction was to pull the slit-eyed lizard move, just days after shafting another US ally.

The same applies to checking his watch -- searching the web for commentary, I found that this seems to be a fairly common Biden tic in inappropriate situations, including debates. Given how we're getting to know the guy, I think it's a fairly honest indicator of what he's thinking. He's king, and he doesn't give a flip. Deal with it. It's a natural reaction, if we see something like this, to look for the most charitable explanation, so we're inclined to wonder if he's a little off. Afraid not.

Another recent story gives a better idea of how his mind works.

Boris Johnson has been warned that Joe Biden “holds grudges” after members of the British government questioned his mental fitness following “completely mad” press briefings on Afghanistan.

The warning follows a report in The Sunday Times that a British government minister said President Biden “looked gaga” while speaking to the press, with a government aide describing the American as “doolally” and the newspaper noting that “Such thoughts are normally never whispered in Whitehall, let alone briefed.”

“Doolally” is an insult with a strong pedigree in Britain, stemming from the name of a town in India where a sanatorium for soldiers rendered temporarily deranged by fever were sent in the 1800s.

U.S. sources have indicated that the 78-year-old Democrat is unlikely to appreciate the rich history of this description of his mental state, however, telling The Telegraph — which is close to the British government — that he is emphatically “not ‘gaga’” and in fact has “actually picked up his game quite a bit since the [election] campaign.”

“The Brits have their view. But they should be careful. What’s been said is offensive and he will remember it. He actually has a long memory,” the source warned the right-leaning newspaper.

I don't buy the bumbling grandpa bit. I lean much more to the slit-eyed lizard.

"Devout Catholic"? Forget his policies on abortion. How can a guy who goes to mass each week act this way at all?

While We've Been Distracted By Kabul,

They've been moving the goalposts yet again. The CDC website still carries the categorical statement,

COVID 19-vaccines are effective. They can keep you from getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19.

But for months now, we've been hearing the opposite from the same public health authorities. Elsewhere on the same CDC site, we read:

On July 27, 2021, CDC released updated guidance on the need for urgently increasing COVID-19 vaccination coverage and a recommendation for everyone in areas of substantial or high transmission to wear a mask in public indoor places, even if they are fully vaccinated. CDC issued this new guidance due to several concerning developments and newly emerging data signals.

. . . [N]ew data began to emerge that the Delta variant was more infectious and was leading to increased transmissibility when compared with other variants, even in some vaccinated individuals.

So the vaccines will keep you from getting and spreading COVID, except when they won't, so we have to go back to masks.

But now, er, maybe the vaccines don't last very long anyhow. Dr Fauci has been easing into this for some weeks. On August 12, he told NBC:

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious diseases expert, said Thursday that “inevitably” everyone will need booster shots for the COVID-19 vaccine eventually because like any vaccine, its protection won’t be “indefinite.”

. . . “Inevitably, there will be a time when we'll have to give boosts. What we're doing, literally, on a weekly and monthly basis is following cohorts of patients to determine if, when and whom should get it.

“But right now at this moment, other than the immunocompromised — we're not going to be giving boosters to people," he continued. "But we will be following them very carefully and if they do need it, we'll be ready to give it to them."

But that was August 12, two whole weeks ago. We've been following other fiascos since then -- silly us. Just this past Friday, "not indefinite" has turned into "five months", and "just the immunocompromised" has turned imnto "everyone".

"We're going to start mid-September," Biden continued, noting America's scheduled booster program launch date of Sept. 20, previously set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. "But we're considering the advice [Israel gave us] that you should start earlier. This is promising."

"Pending the FDA and CDC, the question raised is, 'Should it be shorter? Should it be as little as five months now?'" the president added. "That's being discussed. I spoke with Dr. Fauci this morning about that."

So I got my shots last spring, but it looks like I'll need to get at least one more jab this fall, and as far as I can see, I'll have to keep getting jabs at cattle-pen "vaccination sites" every five months for the rest of my life. And oh, by the way, wear a mask. And whatever else.

One problem with this is the message it sends that the vaccines simply aren't very effective. It actually vindicates the holdouts and the hesitant -- they can say I never thought this was a good idea, and now just one or two shots isn't enough? Every five months i've gotta spend weeks trying to get another appointment? Get real.

But we've had months of prevarication from Biden on Afghanistan. Now it looks like we'll be getting more "15 days to flatten the curve" on vaccines and boosters. People will put up with this only so long.

Newsom Recall Update

The puzzling thing about the California recall election, scheduled for September 14, is how few polls have been made public. According to Five Thirty Eight, there have been only three since July, none well publicized, and they're all over the landscape. Yet establishment media seems to be prepping its audience for Newsom's removal. The Atlantic ran a story yesterday in which the reporter met with Newsom for breakfast in a San Francisco cafe:

At the café, he quickly ate a banana and slurped the top of his coffee. He’d dropped his breakfast on the floor before I arrived. More bad luck, he said.

“I was always that lucky one, too,” he said, shaking his head. “Just the whole damn thing flipped on me.”

How did things go sideways for a governor who three years ago won his first term by the biggest margin in California history?

Yahoo News reported Thursday:

Every California governor since Ronald Reagan in the 1960s has inspired quixotic recall petitions. Prior to February 2020, Newsom’s opponents introduced five recall petitions against him. None got off the ground. It was only when COVID-19 started to spike over the holidays — and when Newsom seemed to be caught off guard by contradictory public opinion over restrictions and reopenings — that the recallers were able to amass the signatures they needed to get on the ballot. Not helping matters was Newsom’s deeply hypocritical decision to attend a lobbyist’s maskless birthday dinner at the French Laundry, a fancy Napa Valley restaurant.

There's increasing concern that as California goes, so goes Biden, especially in the wake of the Afghanistan catastrophe. According to CNN,

The White House announced this week that President Biden will fly to California to campaign for Gov. Gavin Newsom ahead of the September 14 recall election.

Which raises a basic question: Why?

. . . there's really only one answer to that question above as to why Biden is making the trip for Newsom: The President -- and Democratic strategists more generally -- are worried about the governor losing the recall vote.

Vice President Harris, a product of the California Democrat machine, was scheduled to campaign for Newsom in the San Francisco area yesterday, but she canceled. According to Politico,

Harris, returning from a weeklong trip in Southeast Asia, will head back to Washington D.C., her spokesperson tweeted Thursday afternoon. A campaign spokesperson for Newsom confirmed that Harris will not join Newsom for the Friday car rally, which is now canceled.

While no reason was provided for Harris skipping the event, the cancellation follows deadly attacks at the Kabul airport which have killed a dozen U.S. troops and left many more injured.

Not mentioned in any mainstream media coverage I've seen so far is the fact that Harris is deeply unpopular and a divisive figure, and her presence in California could do more to stoke Republican enthusiasm for the recall than it would rally Democrats. Especially in the wake of Biden's disastrous week, should he do as he's promised and campaign for Newsom, the backlash effect would probably be even greater, especially since Newsom and the Democrats' campaign theme to date has been that retaining Newsom means retaining the Biden-Pelosi agenda.

As I've noted before, Larry Elder's entry into the race transformed it. Before then, the Republican challengers were a bunch of also-rans, with a supporting cast of 40-odd crazies. But Elder represents much more closely the other side of the emerging political divide, the representative of the working and middle classes against the alliance between the wealthy elites and the Lumpenproletariat. That Elder is a racial minority further underscores the class, not the racial, basis of the divide.

Opinion among Hispanics, who are largely working and middle class, reflects this development:

Today, Hispanics in the Emerson poll support recalling the governor by 54 percent to 41 percent. In the SurveyUSA poll, the recall wins among Hispanics by six points. Among blacks and Asians in both polls, Newsom, leads but he’s down significantly from his 2018 showing.

I can't call the election at this point, but it's a portent that the establishment media seems so resigned to the potential outcome.

"I've Got This!"

If nothing else, I'm finding it therapeutic at least to try to analyze what's happening with President Biden. As I've said, I'm less and less convinced thst loss of cognitive function is at the root of the problem, but I don't think simple incompetence is a good answer, either. There are probably several factors involved, but observable behavior is at least one pathway to parsing out what's going on.

The big thing I noticed when he began speaking at yesterday's press conference was how much slower he spoke than usual, and as he did, how much less he slurred or stumbled over his words. The first thing that came to mind was the common standup routine about being pulled over for DUI: the experienced drunk knows that to avoid slurred speech, you talk slowly: "Goood . . . ev-en-ing. . . of-fi-cer!" I couldn't shake this impression.

The next thing that struck me was the awfulness of the speech he gave. He had to have drafted it himself, in front of a computer, cutting and pasting one cliche from column A, another from column B, and so forth. From the transcript, first, the obligatory weepy reference to his son Beau:

Being the father of an Army major who served for a year in Iraq and, before that, was in Kosovo as a U.S. attorney for the better part of six months in the middle of a war — when he came home after a year in Iraq, he was diagnosed, like many, many coming home, with an aggressive and lethal cancer of the brain — who we lost.

Next, the obligatory brave words:

We will not be deterred by terrorists. We will not let them stop our mission. We will continue the evacuation.

I’ve also ordered my commanders to develop operational plans to strike ISIS-K assets, leadership, and facilities. We will respond with force and precision at our time, at the place we choose, and the moment of our choosing.

And next, the lugubrious reference to scripture:

Those who have served through the ages have drawn inspiration from the Book of Isaiah, when the Lord says, “Whom shall I send. . . who shall go for us?” And the American military has been answering for a long time: “Here am I, Lord. Send me.” “Here I am. Send me.”

Finally, the moment of silence:

And I ask that you join me now in a moment of silence for all those in uniform and out uniform — military and civilian, who have given the last full measure of devotion.

(A moment of silence is taken.)

I've got to think that even a sophomore communications major, even one from the Ivy League, could have done better than this. Either that, or his handlers are completely incompetent.

Well, in any case, the third thing I noticed was that yet again, they let him go out with a suit that didn't fit. He must have a closet almost full of them; over the past week, I've seen only one, a blue one, that fits. Is he too cheap to update his wardrobe?

The YouTube psychologist Dr Todd Grande is sometimes insightful, sometimes not. He generally accused Trump of narcissism, delusion, and whatever else. I was hesitant to watch his take on Biden in recent days, but I went ahead and tried it out:

At about 2:45, he says, "He believes nobody has the right to question his superior leadership qualities." This is exactly what I've been saying. At about 3:05, he says, "It appears that he tragically overestimated his own abilities. . . . He's like the Bond movie villain who puts a complex contraption into operation and doesn't check to see if James Bond was actually killed." Again, this is exactly what I've been saying.

Even the uber-establishment Atlantic is echoing this theme:

“Biden is a stubborn guy,” one former Obama-administration foreign-policy official told me, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk more freely. “Sometimes he does not want to hear what he knows he doesn’t like … If the problem here was mostly not hearing what he didn’t want to hear and telling everyone to shut up and go away when they told him things he didn’t want to hear, that’s not the intelligence community’s fault.”

But this doesn't explain the observed behavior, especially the slurring, stumbling, and slow speech to avoid the first two. Here's a post on drunken speech at the Dialect Blog:

the researchers found that the most striking impact of alchohol on speech was an increase in ‘nonfluencies.’ That is, people stammer, stutter, and trip on their words a whole heck of a lot more when they’ve had a few too many. Just how much does this intensify? The researchers found that in the severely intoxicated, the rate of these ‘speech errors’ nearly triples.

. . . Something that isn’t mentioned in the study is what I find to be the most salient feature of ‘drunken speech:’ hypercorrection. Drunk people, aware of their intoxicated state, often overcompensate by overenunciating evvvveerrry ccconnnsonnantttt and vowel. Perhaps this relates to the higher rate of stuttering and stammering: when you put such pressure on yourself to pronounce everything perfectly, you’re bound to trip up!

I saw this throughout Biden's press conference. Maybe it was just me. But I also think certain remarks, like "Ladies and gentlemen, they gave me a list here. The first person I was instructed to call on . . " weren't serious, they were drunken sarcasm that fell completely flat. Indeed, I can't be completely sure that the pose at the top of this post isn't in fact a form of drunken histrionics.

It's dangerous enough when someone like that is just driving a car.

Biden's Smile

The remark I quoted from a commentator yesterday, that it was difficult to see the whites of Biden's eyes, set me to thinking. I started to review his photos in general, and his eyes are frequently just slits, especially when he's "smiling". The combination of slit eyes and perfect white teeth is chilling; those teeth are clearly manufactured, and they look sharp. None of this speaks to cognitive decline.

But this raises another question. Does this guy actually know what he's doing? And although I've mentioned that I'm studying Spanish so I can talk with the lizards in the back yard, I'm not the only person starting to think this way.

It’s one thing for us to believe that a single addled, stupid, narcissistic old man might plan something this bad. But why would so many people go along with it? Are they all merely dumb? I doubt it. Frightened of Joe? I doubt it. The proper remedy, if they couldn’t change his mind or stop him, would have been to resign en masse – or begin to invoke the 25th Amendment. Or was this level of destructive stupidity intentional, in order to harm this country and keep it from ever being a world leader again?

I debated just replacing the last bit about never being a world leader with an ellipsis, because I don't think it's necessary to conclude the object of this faction is to prevent this. I don't think they've even thought that part through. But I do think what they're doing is deliberate.

It's revealed in yesterday's astonishing smirk in reply to a reporter's question:

On Wednesday, August 25, 2021, just as Biden was wrapping up the public portion of a cybersecurity event, NBC News correspondent Peter Alexander asked him, "Mr. President, if Americans are still in Afghanistan after the [Aug. 31 withdrawal] deadline, what will you do?" In response, Biden smirked.

. . . His response: 'You’ll be the first person I call.'

(Note yet again, by the way, the ill-fitting suit in yesterday's photo, vis-a-vis the suit in the photo at the top, which was taken in 2020.)

The implication of the reply is that such an outcome -- any Americans left in Afghanistan -- is so remote that one can only joke about the possibility. Yet as of yesterday, as Biden spoke, Reuters published an estimate of 1500 Americans remainiing which came from Secretary Blinken. As of that time, Blinken said they were being given instructions on how to get to the airport, but since then, US authorities have backtracked and told them again not to do so. (As I write this, multiple explosions have been reported at the airport.)

Biden must certainly have been briefed on this as of his remarks yesterday. It's hard to avoid thinking he believes whatever takes place will last for just a news cycle or two, and his people will be able to spin it. Next year's election is 15 months away. Anyone who questions anything now is simply naive. As I've said, Biden sees himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations -- even those of a silly legacy media reporter.

What's the aim here? I'm actually beginning to think that the Democrat faction aligned with Biden, in the ascendant at least for now, actually believes the voters in the working and middle classes who elected Trump in 2016 need to be punished. I'll have more to say about this.

Nothing's Changing

I didn't get a chance to watch Biden's speech yesterday; I was expecting to, but it was delayed, and I had another commitment. I looked at the post-event accounts and got things like this:

As I said, his eyes were bloodshot and glazed over. It was difficult to even see the whites of his eyes at times. His presentation was cold, with no empathy to be found. Upon finishing his teleprompter reading, he simply stumbled out, taking no questions, clearly unable to physically and mentally do so. It was obvious why he was five hours late for this presser. Something is bad wrong with the president, and there’s no way it can be ignored anymore.

What strikes me about the photo above, including the difficulty in seeing the whites of his eyes, is that although this is a different suit, it fits no better than the one I noted on Sunday. The collar still stands away from his neck. But also, compare Biden's sleeves above to Bill Clinton's in a similar pose at right. Biden's suit rumples up and pulls away, while Clinton's is smooth even when he lifts his arms.

Biden has been losing weight, and he probably needs a whole new wardrobe, but nobody seems to notice. Again, US presidents can afford whatever wardrobe they need. His handlers are incompetent. Do they themselves expect him not to last very long? This may be another ramification of the Götterdämmerung strategy: things will turn to poop, but Biden won't be around to account for it.

The substance of Biden's speech was also bizarre. Accounts generally noted that he conducted a long tour d'horizon of the Götterdämmerung agenda, showing great deference to Speaker Pelosi, before eventually getting to the August 31 deadline. This, it's noted, has been his strategy in all his recent addresses, treat Afgthanistan as just a single blip in the wide range of his accomplishments.

An intriguing data item from yesterday is a couple of House back benchers, Rep Seth Moulton (D-MA) znd Peter Meijer (R-MI), flew to Kabul to "conduct oversight on the mission to evacuate Americans and our allies". Moulton appears to be a maverick Democrat who in the past opposed Pelosi's candidacy for the speakership. He appears to be ambitious and wants to raise his profile. Meijer, a first-termer who was among the Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump, is a jerk; this is a vanity project, probably for both.

Acco,rding to the link,

According to John Hudson of The Washington Post, Pentagon officials are reportedly furious with Moulton and Meijer for making the surprise trip to Afghanistan, denouncing it as performative at best and reckless at worst.

“It CANNOT be overstated how angry Pentagon & State Dept officials are at Rep. Moulton & Rep. Peter Meijer for flying to Afghanistan in the middle of an evacuation,” announced Hudson on Twitter. “‘It’s as moronic as it is selfish. They’re taking seats away from Americans,’ official says.”

That may well be, but this is the environment Biden is creating for opportunists.

Ia Biden ill? That may be, but I would guess stress accounts for the bloodshot eyes, the weight loss, and the lack of energy and engagement. Is he senile? Again, no. Even if his policy choices are disastrous, he's completely aware of outcomes; he's fully aware of how much he's alienated NATO, for instance, and this is shown by how clearly he lies about it. His responses differ little from Bill Clinton's in the Lewinsky scandal.

The difference is that Clinton got himself into a personal mess of little overall consequence. Biden has got the US into a national humiliation and policy dilemma of enormous consequence that will continue to play out in very bad news over coming weeks.

Clinton was Br'er Rabbit. Biden is more like Captain Queeg frozen at the controls.

The End Of The World May Not Take Place As Scheduled

The situation, as our generals like to say, is fluid. But I'm getting more and more of a sense that the Democrat post-2020 Götterdämmerung strategy, whereby they would steamroller a series of "transformative" Great Reset measures through Congess with tiny majorities while Biden would pull out of Afghanistan and open the southern border, with repercussions delayed until after the 2022 midterms and Speaker Pelosi's expected retirement, is starting to collapse.

The weakest point looks to be the Afghanistan debacle, with Press Secretary Psaki's disastrous misstep yesterday, when she allowed Fox's Peter Doocy to maneuver her into all but stating the administration's position was that nobody was "stranded" in Afghanistan. The administration's position does continue to be a vague hope that all US citizens and Afghan associates can be flown out by August 31, but this is now contradicted even by loyal Democrat Adam Schiff:

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill following a classified intel briefing, Schiff said that it’s “very unlikely” evacuations in Afghanistan will be over by August 31 due to the overwhelming number of Americans, Afghan allies, and potential refugees currently stranded in the region amid an increasingly hostile security threat.

. . . Biden’s credibility was further damaged when a classified State Department cable from July suggested that Secretary of State Antony Blinken was warned Kabul would fall into Taliban hands by the August 31 troop withdrawal deadline.

. . . According to CNN congressional correspondent Ryan Nobles, Schiff was echoing Intel Committee Member Jason Crow, who said, “I do not believe at this point, sitting here today, that I have any evidence of an intelligence failure.”

It looks as though the intelligence community won't just sit quietly if Biden continues to blame it for the debacle.

However, although Biden sent CIA Director William Burns to try to negotiate with the Taliban over an extension of the August 31 deadline in Kabul yesterday, the Taliban continues to be adamant. In concert with the vaugeness of administration policy, the Pentagon is unwilling to specify either how many Americans remain in Kabul or how many have been evacuated so far.

Meanwhile, Biden's clear decline in prestige seems to have emboldened a slowly growing number of moderate Democrats to oppose the Great Reset legislative package.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent House members home after midnight Tuesday following a stalemate over Democrats' $3.5 trillion budget framework that fell short of an agreement after hours of negotiations with Rep. Josh Gottheimer and other centrist holdouts.

Pelosi and Gottheimer (D-N.J.), the de facto leader of the moderate opposition to Pelosi's strategy, had been edging toward a deal that would commit to House passage of a bipartisan Senate-passed infrastructure bill by Oct. 1. But at least five centrists in Gottheimer's group still resisted the plan by early Tuesday morning, leaving Pelosi to gauge her team's appetite for a potential floor fight on President Joe Biden's domestic agenda.

Pelosi can afford to lose only three votes, but so far, ten Democrat House members seem to be wobbly, while Kyrsten Sinema is opposing the plan in the Senate, where Democrats can't lose even one vote:

As House Democratic leaders hold back Sinema’s own Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill in order to push the Arizona Democrat and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support a multitrillion-dollar spending bill, Sinema is making it crystal clear that her mind can’t be changed. And that applies even as her own legislation becomes a bargaining chip in House Democrats’ internal discussions.

Biden was supposed to call the racalcitrant House members yesterday to try to change their minds, but I question if he actually did this. And I have a sense that if Biden's prestige were greater, no Democrat would be breaking ranks, since Pelosi in particullar has been able to maintain discipline effectively for several years up to now. I think it's unavoidable that she's a lame duck, while the moderates still want careers.

And finally, Dr Fauci has flip-flopped yet again.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted making his latest mistake in coronavirus guidance, this time over when he thinks the pandemic will come “under control” — apologizing by saying, “My bad.”

The White House coronavirus czar had told NPR on Monday that if enough people get vaccinated, the US could “really get some good control over this” by the fall or winter of next year.

ut quizzed on it by CNN’s Anderson Cooper later the same day, Fauci — who has been under fire repeatedly for flip-flopping on his public advice from the early days of the pandemic — said he actually thinks that control will come even sooner.

“Anderson, I have to apologize. When I listened to the tape, I meant to say the spring of 2022, so I did misspeak,” he said.

The problem is that every time he flip-flops, he loses more credibility, while at the same time, his credibility as the White House COVID spokesman has upheld Biden's credibility. This suggests to me that pretty much the entire Democrat post-2020 strategy is falling apart.

Here's What Hit Me About Biden's Speech

There were a lot of odd things about Biden's speech yesterday -- it got remarkably little coverage yesterday evening -- but I watched it. The one thing that bothered me all night was that his suit didn't fit. I don't mean it hung loosely (though to some extent it did) or the sleeves were too short; that would have been obvious. But the subtler sign of a cheap suit is that the collar stands away from the neck, as it does in the photo above. Presidential suits normally fit extremely well. Check Dubya, for instance, in the photo at right, for how a presidential suit should actually fit.

Both Obama's and Trump's suits always hugged their necks. This is to be expected. A president can afford suits that fit. Reagan's tailor even watched his public appearances for signs that lapels weren't sitting exactly flat or whatever and made ongoing alterations.

It's plain that Biden's handlers, having prevailed on him to remain in the White House over the weekend, set up the Sunday speech on short notice in an effort to stop his decline in credibility, The ultra-serious dark suit was part of the package. But normally his suits fit better. Was the good dark suit still back in Wilmington? They clearly coached him this time to appear more engaged, sharper, less woozy, but somehow the loose collar kept everything from quite coming together.

His prepared remarks were a little less otherworldly than they were on Friday, though I think his writers are as bad as his tailors -- why should writers actually compose word salad for the teleprompter, which they clearly do? But he continues to slur and stumble in his presentation. This may give the impression of mental decline, but I think it's more habit borne of laziness. He just never felt the need to speak effectively, he was in a safe seat and did what he was told anyhow. The picture for me isn't cognitive decline, it's laziness and flawed character that do contribute to the other impression.

Commentators noted chiefly that his remarks were designed not to make statements that could be contradicted on the evening news, as they clearly were on Friday, but they continued to be largely happy talk leavened by warnings that nothing is perfect, and no matter how well planned things might be, there could be unspecified horrible things, which would be unavoidable but not his fault. We'll have to see how that plays out.

But generally, commentary on the speech itself has been sparse. This may be because it was announced at short notice on an August Sunday, when nobody was paying attention, and it dwelt primarily on appearances. But one passage has gone unremarked. In the transcript, it goes,

One, planes taking off from Kabul are not flying directly to the United States. They’re landing at U.S. military bases and transit centers around the world.

Number two, at these sites where they’re landing, we are conducting thorough scrutiny — security screenings for everyone who is not a U.S. citizen or a lawful permanent resident. Anyone arriving in the United States will have undergone a background check.

Why are they taking such different measures with arrivals from Afghanistan vis-a-vis arrivals at the southern border? As far as I can see, the people at the southern border are waved through and quickly flown to the US interior without security screenings or background checks. But of course, we're talking about tens of thousands in any case, with no real resources available to do screenings and checks based on non-existent or inaccessible records back in Afghanistan. It doesn't matter if these promises are impractical or inconsistent with existing policy, it's all happy talk anyhow.

Yesterday and last week, Biden and his spokespeople have hedged and danced around whether they'll need to stay beyond the August 31 deadline. The consensus seems to be they'll almost certainly need to do that, but now the Taliban has threatened "conequences" if Western forces remain beyond that date. It's plain that the Biden administration in particular is treating the Taliban very gingerly; after all, they have thousands of hostages.

By the way, somebody should be talking to John Kirby about his cheap suits as well. The guy's a retired admiral, now double-dipping as civilian Pentagon flack. He can and should afford better. Not a good look at all.

Tucker Asks Glenn Greenwald, "What Do YouThink Is Happening?"

In the clip above, Tucker Carlson, puzzled at why legacy media and some senior Democrats have effectively abandoned President Biden, reaches out almost in desperation to Glenn Greenwald, not your ordinary Fox talking head, to ask him what's going on. Greemwald puts it to a combination of Biden's cognitive decline and the permanent war faction of the deep state. I disagree on both counts.

First, if the deep state wants to get you, they don't need to rely on the Taliban. They'll just make up Russian hookers peeing on the bed. They didn't get Trump that way, and so far, they won't get Biden with the Taliban.

Second, even up to the clip of Biden wandering through the White House shrubbery, I would have signed on to the cognitive decline story, but I no longer do. Part of it is the folk wisdom that dementia isn't when you forget your keys; dementia is when you forget what your keys are for. As I said yesterday, senile people are disorganized. Lying, evading, and manipulating are organized behaviors, even if poorly done.

As a true crime fan, I think it's related to the legal issue of insanity. No matter how "crazy" a killer may seem, legally, if he does anything to cover up his crime, escape from the scene, dispose of the weapon, or anything like that, he's aware of the potential consequences of his act and thus legally sane. He's engaging in organized behavior. He's neither crazy nor senile. Biden has the same issue.

Biden's problems aren't medical, or if they're medical, they aren't a major issue. Biden's problems are with character. I don't think it's too far off to suggest he's shallow, obtuse, stubborn, and dishonest, and those who know him are fully aware of this. It's now well known that Obama is reported to have said, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f--k things up.”

I think it's significant that Maryland Democrat Senator Ben Cardin, an establishment member of the Senate club like Biden himself, is making criticisms of the Afghanistan mess that come close to Biden:

On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “OutFront,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said the chaotic situation in Afghanistan was predictable because “We had information about how the Taliban could likely control the country.” And that many of the questions that were asked at a Friday briefing with lawmakers and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley “went unanswered.”

Cardin said, “[W]e should have been able to predict the chaos that is occurring today. We had information about how the Taliban could likely control the country. We should have been prepared to take necessary steps faster.”

The Friday cabinet-level briefing with lawmakers didn't go well. Secretary Blinken made highly damaging admissions, Regarding the State Department internal dissent memo predicting the fast collapse of the Afghan government,

Blinken admitted reading the internal cable cautioning Kabul could fall when he and Gen. Mike Milley, the nation’s highest-ranking military officer, were briefing lawmakers Friday about the post-Taliban takeover chaos engulfing the country.

In response to Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) asking, “when he read the dissent cable that said the Taliban would take over Afghanistan quicker, Blinken said he read it in mid-July,” Punch Bowl News Founder Jake Sherman wrote on Twitter.

It sounds as though enough other questions went unanswered in the session that firings and resignations would normally be in order. Democrat Rep Adam Smith, chair of the House Armed Services Committee, issued a statement Friday that said in part,

The mistakes made in the execution of the withdrawal are also clear to me: The plan to evacuate civilians was wholly inadequate. In the coming months, we need to examine why it has happened this way and make sure it never happens again. We must also scrutinize the intelligence behind this operation to understand whether it provided any clarity regarding how swiftly the Taliban would move in and what our response should have looked like.

. . . Finally, and most importantly, our immediate focus must be the safe evacuation of all U.S. personnel from Afghanistan, and as many Afghan nationals as possible.

The problem seems to be that, even if Democrats and legacy media see only a political threat in 2022, they're beginning to focus on its seriousness. There are few good solutions, either for them or the country. If Biden is removed or prevailed upon to resign, this would simply be yet another evidence of elite failure, and in fact it could lead to more, not fewer, disasters down the road in a Harris administration.

An interesting vignette is the wavering that took place all last week over when, or whether, Biden would return to the bunker in Wilmington. As late as Friday or even Saturday morning, the plan was that he would. Ultimately, he stayed in the White House. Now he's scheduled to address the country again this afternoon. It sounds like he's being persuaded by his own party, possibly even his inner circle, at least to give the appearance of trying to control the situation in Kabul. The problem is, again, that he's shallow, obtuse, stubborn, and dishonest, and that's what they have to work with.

Let's Revisit The Götterdämmerung Strategy

A week ago, I posted on what in early 2021 seemed to be a consensus "Götterdämmerung strategy" among the elites, whereby Speaker Pelosi, possibly expected to retire after the 2022 election, would use slim congressional majorities, plus control of the White House, to enact a massive Great Reset agenda and ignore the post-2022 consequences because, well, she'd be retired by then. I likened this to someone who, assuming the world would end on December 21, decided to run up a huge credit card bill that would never need to be repaid.

The dificulty arises with scheduling. If for any reason the world doesn't end exactly when you expect it to, or even if you run your card up to its limit too soon, you'll be forced to make those extravagant payments after all. President Biden summed up the scheduling problem with his remark, “The truth is, this did unfold more quickly than we had anticipated.” In other words, the collapse of Afghanistan had been programmed into the agenda, they were just figuring it would take place around the time the world would end and they didn't need to worry about it.

But this and the subsequent events of the past week gave me more insight into Biden's character. Look at his now well-quoted remarks on July 8:

Q Is a Taliban takeover of Afghanistan now inevitable?

THE PRESIDENT: No, it is not.

Q Why?

THE PRESIDENT: Because you — the Afghan troops have 300,000 well-equipped — as well-equipped as any army in the world — and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable.

. . . The Taliban is not the south — the North Vietnamese army. They’re not — they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability. There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the — of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.

There's really no difference between his glibness on July 8 and his happy talk in his presentation at the White House yesterday:

We’re going to do everything — everything that we can to provide safe evacuation for our Afghan allies, partners, and Afghans who might be targeted if — because of their association with the United States.

But let me be clear, any American who wants to come home, we will get you home.

But make no mistake: This evacuation mission is dangerous. It involves risks to our armed forces, and it is being conducted under difficult circumstances.

I cannot promise what the final outcome will be or what it will be — that it will be without risk of loss. But as Commander-in-Chief, I can assure you that I will mobilize every resource necessary.

What he's doing at this point isn't just hedging his bets, he's anticipating that things are definitely going to turn to poop, and he's programming in the excuse he'll use after August 31: hey, I never promised you it would work out, I just said we'd do all we could. And we flew out blah blah blah in an unprecedented blah blah blah. My heart goes out to the blah blah blah.

The problem now is that his strategies have become predictable and pro forma. His situation reminds me of an insightful remark Jordan Peterson made some years ago that's stayed with me: he disagreed with the opinion we've often seen that corporate executives are narcissists and sociopaths. "They can't be," he more or less said. "Narcissists and sociopaths wear out their welcome."

I think this goes to what I;m beginning to recognize about Biden's character. He isn't senile. A senile person is disorganized. Biden is all too organized. His lies are deliberate, and his evasions are planned. However, he's wearing out his welcome. The dilemma is they actually can't use the 25th Amendment or force his resignation. Biden isn't senile, to start with, and he's stubborn, but notwithstanding Harris's utter unsuitability for the office, if she leaves the vice presidency, she also ceases to be the tiebreaking vote in the Senate, with the confirmation of a new vice president a fraught issue. This would completely unravel any remaining hopes for the 2021 agenda.

His current strategy appears to be to hunker down, kick the can down the road for a few more weeks with some happy talk, and hope something intervenes -- but that's effectively to hope the world ends in time for him to get out of making payments. I don't think this will work, but I don't see the end game yet.

I Lived Through The Nixon Resignation

I keep trying to find a parallel set of circumstances to what we're seeing now -- there's a general acknowledgement that there's some similarity to the withdrawal from Viet Nam, and we're just beginning to see calls for Biden's resignation a la Nixon, but it was fairly plain to observers in 1973, a year after the Watergate burglary, that a coherent plan was afoot. In October of that year, the deep state quickly ushered Spiro Agnew out of the vice presidncy in what one commentator at the time called "the first shoe of a two-shoe drop." Gerald Ford replaced Agnew as vice president in December 1973. Nixon resigned on August 8, 1974, with Ford succeeding him in what turned out to be a caretaker role. Nelson Rockefeller, with lizard ancestry clearly in his DNA, waited in the wings.

What strikes me in retrospect is how orderly this process was in contrast to what we're seeing now, which in many ways is looking like a very fast-action version of Nixon's collapse. Biden has retreated to a Wilmington bunker, and I'm not sure how long his position can remain tenable as deep-state sources leak documents daily that contradict Biden's own self-contradictory public statements. Jen Psaki, the press secretary, returned from vacation but seems disinclined now even to spin at press briefings. I strongly suspect that, even as establishment media begins to ask why Biden won't answer questions, he'll continue to have nothing concrete to say.

The whole Watergate episode lasted a little over two years, where the country had leisure to savor the circus and the people in charge had plenty of time to game things through. This will be nothing like Watergate.

UPDATE: As of now, Biden has changed his mind yet again over going back to Wilmington -- hard to tell if he will or won't.

The Elites Lose More Credibility

The two chief issues right now are Afghanistan and COVID, and what seems to bring them together is a growing sense that the elite people who were supposed to be managing the situation are incompetent. In both cases, there are wild reversals in policy direction with little apparent planning and analysis, leading to a steady decline in credibility. On the COVID front, for instance,

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has demonstrated what anonymous administration officials described to Politico as a “worrying drop” in coronavirus vaccine efficacy over time, leading to the Biden administration’s conclusion to push vaccine booster shots.

. . . The data, which the White House Covid-19 task force reviewed Sunday, is expected to become public this week. As a result, the Biden administration is expected to roll out its plan to push booster shots for fully vaccinated Americans, but details are still being worked out, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) needs authorize the booster shots. Notably, the FDA has not formally authorized any of the vaccines. Rather, they are all operating under emergency use authorization. . .

But the CDC website still says categorically:

• COVID 19-vaccines are effective. They can keep you from getting and spreading the virus that causes COVID-19. Learn more about the different COVID-19 vaccines.
• COVID-19 vaccines also help keep you from getting seriously ill even if you do get COVID-19.

Except now, maybe not. But if the theory is now that the shots maybe only work for six months, why is the data so different across, and even within, regions? For instance, Oregon has a vaccination rate of 56.8%, Here is its current graph of COVID cases:

Their cases are through the roof, worse even than during the late 2020 surge. But look at the same graph for neighboring California, with a vaccination rate of 54.5%, lower than Oregon:

LA County, whose data drives the state's overall performance, has announced that its current surge has peaked, and daily reports reflect this. I think the comparison should at least raise questions about whether either vaccines or mask mandates are as effective as the authorities claim. The late 2020 surge was severe in LA County, but masks, social distance, and renewed business closures were completely ineffective in controlling it. But it peaked and declined rapidly as of mid-January, before anyone had been "fully vaccinated", which takes eight weeks.

Meanwhile, Oregon, with a higher vaccination rate and a renewed indoor mask mandate like that in LA County, is experiencing a bigger surge than it had in late 2020. LA County, with the same indoor mask mandate, is showing a completely different record, much milder than in late 2020.

I've heard the opinion that the severe late 2020 surge in LA County left many more people with natural immunity, resulting from those who recovered from mild (or even severe) cases or the estimated 40% who never had symptoms. This may or may not be the eventual explanation, but I think it suits the data I see better than the current sorta-kinda official version that now we need boosters.

Who benefits from a new round of shots, anyhow? Big Pharma. Heck, maybe we should ask who benefitted from 20 years in Afghanistan. Big something, you can be sure.

“We Did It In Vietnam. Nixon And Kissinger Got Away With It.”

A story that emerged overnight offers some insight into President Biden's actual strategy for the Afghanistan pullout:

Joe Biden once snarled “F–k that” when asked if the US had an obligation to protect Afghans from the Taliban, according to newly resurfaced reports.

, , , At the time [2010], Biden reportedly was arguing that the US should leave Afghanistan despite the humanitarian costs, including the potential erosion of women’s rights.

“F–k that. We don’t have to worry about that,” he allegedly told [diplomat Richard] Holbrooke. “We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it.”

Two things jump out at me. The first is that Nixon and Kissinger weren't the ones who pulled out of Vietnam; that was Gerald Ford, and the images from Saigon were definitely a factor in Ford's 1976 loss. And Nixon nevertheless never got away with anything. That Biden misremembered history to suit his own views is revealing. But it also fits what I'm coming to see from this sort of offhand remark is Biden's view of himself as a skilled Machiavellian manipulator, operating in a behind-the-scenes dimension of Realpolitik beyond conventional expectations.

Thus we now see the administration's new backup Afghanistan defense line: asked about the US citizens, Western co-workers, women, and children to be left behind, the answer from Jen Psaki in the clip above is a wave of the hand and "we're working on it". Right. Pentagon flack John Kirby gave precisely the same story in his briefing yeaterday:

Mr. Kirby: (10:35)

Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah. Right now, as the general made clear, the mission runs through August 31st. The commander-in-chief made it very clear that we were to complete this drawdown by August 31st, which now includes the pulling out of American citizens and drawdown of our embassy personnel. So that’s what we’re focused on. That’s the timeline we’re on. And as the secretary made clear to leaders, even as recently as this morning, time is of the essence and we all share a sense of urgency here. But right now, the mission runs to the 31st of August. And I won’t begin to speculate what happens after that?

Courtney: (12:03)

And then one for General Taylor. Can you just on the numbers, so this is now 700 to 800 that have gotten out. So is that now a total of somewhere in the neighborhood of 1400 to 1500 total people have been taken out since August 14th when this began?

General Taylor: (12:15)

Yes, rough numbers, yeah, to the SIVs.

We're working n it. We'll work on it until August 31. We aren't thinking past that date, which is our mission.

But this isn't the response of college-educated adults. Look at the numbers. August 31 is less than two weeks away. The current estimate of US citizens trapped in Afghanistan is 40,000; special visa applicants and others is 80,000, but almost none in either category is identifiable; many don't have papers due to the lack of serious planning for the pullout, and under current conditons, few can make it to the airport. But at this point, almost anyone who makes it to the airport will probably be put on a plane, papers or no.

Until, that is, August 31, quitting time. We'll be done. But consider this. Even if it's just a total of 120,000 refugees (which doesn't count Afghans who worked for other Western countries there), we've now got 13 days to fly out that number of people, which conmes to 9,230 per day. The last C-17 to leave Kabul Sunday, the one with people clinging to the wheel wells, carried something like 640 people who made it inside. To get this number of people out will require more than 14 C-17s carrying 640 people to fly out of Kabul every day. Nobody will allow that to happen.

Even so, US public statements acknowledge the need for this many evacuess to be flown out:

[Pentagon spokesman John Kirby] said that once full operations at the airport are up and running, there would be the potential to remove between 5,000 and 9,000 people per day.

But in any case, current reports are that planes are leaving Kabul half empty.

For Psaki and Kirby to say we're focused on the mission, when the mission as outlined is completely out of the realm of possibility, is cynical, callous, and utterly dishonest. I've heard mention of a "Dunkirk moment", but Dunkirk involved ordiniary citizens bringing troops back to the UK in yachts and fishing boats. A Dunkirk moment might happen in Kabul if the people who flew their private jets to Obama's birthday party volunteered them for extracting the Afghans, but that's, shall we say, unlikely.

The actual strategy is what it was for Biden in 2010: F--k that. We did it in Vietnam. Nixon and Kissinger got away with it. Things'll be fine!

Has He Lost Jake Tapper?

Lyndon Johnson is reputed to have said as the Viet Nam war went south, "If I've lost Walter Cronkite, I've lost the country." Given the statements in the clip from Tapper above, I'm wondering if this isn't now the case with Tapper and Biden.

Tapper is a smooth-running product of the Ivy League assembly line, something I've seen at first hand. He does what he's told; if anything, just a teeny bit extra, but not too much, nothing that would get out of line.

So in going aggressively after Biden (though only in apostrophe, as Biden took no questions) he's doing precisely what his editors have told him to do, or just maybe a teeny bit more to show he's 101% with the program.

This could change at any time. But at the moment, the legacy media is definitely not in Biden's corner.

The internet headlines have had almost no change in the past 24 hours. The most important development is that the Kabul airport has resumed operation.

At least 12 military flights had taken off, a diplomat at the airport said. Planes were due to arrive from countries including Australia and Poland to pick up their nationals and Afghan colleagues.

. . . NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called on the Taliban to allow all those who wanted to leave the country to leave.

Nevertheless, we're talking about at least 80,000 Afghans who will need to be evacuated, and this number is probably wildy optimistic. There's an unknown number of US citizens who've been told to "shelter in place" once it became plain that they wouldn't be able to reach the airport. After three days in hiding, I assume food will quickly become a problem. But that's OK, Jen Psaki has cut short her vacation, and spinning will resume as usual.

One of the more realistic prognostications I saw this morning was from Congresswoman Jackie Speier, a Democrat from Silicon Valley, who said on MSNBC

that relying on negotiations with the Taliban to get people out of the country safely “is the best we can do right now. And you know, we negotiate with our adversaries all the time, and whether we’re willing to define them as adversaries, as certainly, I would, or the new leaders of Afghanistan, our obligation right now is very clear. We need to make sure those people who helped us have a way out. I have constituents that are held up in homes right now, who are American citizens, who were previously interpreters, who have no way to get to the airport right now.”

The problem is that "negotiate" is pretty clearly a nice way of saying "pay the Taliban ransom", which I'm sure they'd agree too, except that getting a firm final price will be a major task, and the result will be further humiliation. According to Josh Rogin in the Washington Post,

“An administration official who was not authorized to speak on the record told me that there are an estimated 10,000 U.S. citizens in the country, with the vast majority in or near Kabul,” Rogin wrote. “Some are residents, journalists, or aid workers who may not want to leave. Most are scrambling to escape. Some are dual nationals or children of Americans who may not have the proper passport or visas, but the State Department has not told them how to fix their paperwork.”

‘The State Department is also dealing with more than 80,000 visa applications for Afghans who worked with the U.S. government or find themselves at risk,” the official told Rogin.

. . . “American citizens’ houses have been ransacked, and they are in hiding because the Taliban are terrorizing and tormenting neighborhoods. That’s happening all over Kabul,” a “senior GOP congressional staffer” told Rogin, noting that their office had been “fielding calls” from desperate Americans left on the ground. “There are a lot of people who are falling through the cracks. [The administration] didn’t have a plan to handle this on a mass scale…For the people in Kabul, they’ve basically said it’s up to them to get to the airport.”

The concern is now that these thousands of Americans could become Taliban hostages.

UPDATE: The UK Daily Mail puts the estimate at 40,000 US citizens in Kabul. In addition,

“We could have done a lot more to help. The administration waited too long,” a military official told Reuters. “Every decision has come too late and in reaction to events that make the subsequent decision obsolete.”

“The source and another U.S. official told Reuters that the administration so badly misjudged the situation that the State Department flew a regular rotation of diplomats into Kabul last Tuesday even as the Taliban advanced toward the capital,” Reuters continued.

As Pentagon spokesman John Kirby put it, the situation is fluid.

If Nothing Happens, Something Will Inevitably Happen

As far as I can tell, the only White House response to the terrible debacle in Kabul over the weekend was to issue an updated verson of the Camp David photo I posted yesterday, showing Biden in a different outfit in the empty room, looking bemused instead of defeated. From various reports, he will address the nation "soon", "at the right time", or "in a few days", but there hasn't even been a peep on Twitter since Saturday. It's perhaps even more intriguing that his chief flack, Ms Psaki, is nowhere to be found:

Fox News reported late Sunday night that Psaki “is taking a break from her duties” while pretty much everyone questions “the silence of President Joe Biden.”

When Fox’s Micheal Lee attempted to make contact with Psaki multiple times via email on Sunday, he was sent an autoreply “out of office” message. Psaki apparently won’t be returning calls until August 23rd, or approximately three days after our last local friend or military contractor has been tortured and murdered.

Biden's public daily schedule for today carries just one entry, "The President receives the President’s Daily Brief [Note: Time not specified]", at Camp David. According to this report, the White House has called a lid for the day.

Meanwhile, Republican Sen Cotton appears to be the entity who's coordinating communication for US citizens caught behind Taliban checkpoints.

Cotton’s office opened its phone lines to citizens in Kabul who need help, according to a tweet the Senator sent out earlier Sunday, asking anyone in need to make contact. [New York Times reporter Maggie] Haberman tweeted Sunday night that Cotton’s office received calls from “multiple U.S. citizens” requiring help.

“If you’re an American stranded in Afghanistan, or know one who is, please contact my office immediately: (501) 223-9081 or evac@cotton.senate.gov The situation is dire, but we’ll do everything in our power to help keep you informed and to help get you out,” Cotton’s office said Sunday.

It is not immediately clear what the Biden administration is doing to rescue perhaps thousands of Americans trapped in Kabul, though it was reported Sunday afternoon that the U.S. military is now handling air traffic control on several runways at Kabul airport, and the Biden administration is “prioritizing” the evacuation of American personnel.

However, a more recent report indicates

“The US military has suspended air operations at the Kabul airport while troops try to clear the airfield of Afghans who flooded the tarmac, per [CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr]. Biden’s national security advisers have made clear this a.m. they don’t consider the airport secure right now,” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins tweeted on Monday morning.

z The inaction from Biden and his handlers is disturbing to say the least and raises legitimate concerns, bolstered by the clip of Biden wandering through the shrubbery at the White House last week despite efforts by the Secret Service to shepherd him to the door, that he's not in a condition to handle the situation, and it's likely beyond the abilitiies of his handlers as well.

I suspect developments at some point will be rapid.

UPDATE: Biden will now address the country this afternoon.

The Götterdämmerung Strategy: What Were They Thinking?

If I try to get an idea of how the lizard people meant to game out a post-2020 strategy, I can come up with only an inchoate notion that there would be some type of master reset sustained by media consensus and having both legislative houses and the executive in the hands of the Democrats. Then there would be a series of woke reforms, including defunding police, forgiving student debt, bullet trains, largesse for the Lumpenproletariat, and whatever else.

A glimmer of difficulty arose fairly early in this phase when it began to be recognized that the 2022 election would still be held, and the Great Realignment would be enacted only through the slimmest congressional majorities, which would be threatened in the off-year election. Among other things, the initial post-2020 fantasy envisioned eliminating the Senate filibuster, which proved not to be attainable, and that forced a dial-back of other priorities.

Thus at this point, much more aware that the 2022 election would likely close their window of opportunity, the lizard people have focused on getting everything done before then. This probably matched Speaker Pelosi's rumored intent to step down as speaker after that election. In fact, rumors surfaced from time to time over the past several years that, in exchange for being restored as Speaker in 2019 after her normally expected retirement when the Democrats lost the House in 2016, she had promised to retire in 2022.

Thus she expected to enact the Great Reset agenda via a pair of infrastructure bills in 2021, getting it all done before the start of the 2022 election cycle, when by this point conventional wisdom expects Republican control of congress to return. The problem with this strategy is that it simply doesn't think past 2021 -- who cares if everything falls apart after this year? Speasker Pelosi will retire! The Götterdämmerung won't be her problem! The COVID strategy fails? The border collapses? The Taliban humiliates us? Inflation? None of those bills will come due until next year, when the Speaker will retire!

(In fact, this reminds me of the last time everyone thought the world was going to end -- was it December 2012 according to the Mayan calendar? A few people said that if they really believed that, the thing to do would be to run up a huge credit card debt just before the big thing happened. Another Götterdämmerung strategy.)

The immediate problem for Speaker Pelosi is that vulnerable House Democrats are worried that the world in fact won't end when the Speaker retires, and they'd like to have careers after 2022. Pelosi's bundled infrastructure bill strategy involves the bipartisan Senate compromise version, which, however, she won't bring to a vote in the House unless the Senate bypasses the filibuster and passes her second, much larger, Great Reset bill via reconciliation. Then the House will vote on both together.

The moderate Democrats' concern is that if this strategy wins now, they lose in 2022. Thus they've started to push back.

A group of moderate House Democrats is threatening to torpedo their party's $3.5 trillion spending plan unless House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brings the bipartisan infrastructure bill for a vote first – an act of direct defiance to the speaker and a bold exertion of power with Democrats holding just a slim majority in the chamber.

"Some have suggested that we hold off on considering the Senate infrastructure bill for months – until the reconciliation process is completed. We disagree," the group of nine Democrats said in the letter. "With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this once-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package."

The group added: "We will not consider voting for a budget resolution until the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act passes the House and is signed into law."

. . . Even if the moderate Democrats eventually cave to Pelosi and vote for the budget resolution, it's no guarantee that the reconciliation bill will make it out of the Senate. Sens. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., have said that they aren't willing to vote for $3.5 trillion in spending. And if Democrats pare down the package to please those two, there is a chance they could lose some more progressive votes.

Given the events just of the past week, the idea that we can run up a big credit card debt because the world is going to end isn't working well. Even if the world will end in 2022, there are problems we need to solve now, and the man in the photo at the top of this post seems less and less capable of addressing them. He looks hunched, defeated, struggling to concentrate, in an empty room. What we have in 2021 and upcoming months looks to be a serious dilemma. Let's not even think about 2022.