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.