Monday is the first anniversary of the fall of Kabul, the second-most ignominious event America endured in my lifetime, only the fall of Saigon was worse.
A month prior the more recent debacle, Joe Biden had this to say, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you’re going to see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.” That did happen–and of course the two black eyes for America are quite comparable.
Biden did what he, well, sort of, does best. He blamed Donald Trump for the Taliban victory. True, Biden inherited the agreement engineered by Trump–not a treaty, but an agreement–for the United States military to depart Afghanistan last year. And Biden didn’t even hold to Trump’s agreement, he postponed the withdrawal of US troops from May 1 to the ominous date of September 11. Because of the rout of the Afghan government forces by the Taliban, we were gone in late August–but after the tragic murder by terrorists of 13 members our military.
What a mess.
Who was fired after Afghanistan fell? Not the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley (a Trump appointee), not secretary of State Anthony Blinken, not secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin.
As the Taliban mopped up in Afghanistan, Biden assured Americans that al Qaeda was gone from there. But a few weeks ago the leader of the terror group, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was living in Kabul. That is, until an American drone strike killed him.
Last year there was a supply-chain crisis. What member of the Biden cabinet should have been answerable for that? Pete Buttigieg, the secretary of Transportation, who we learned–only after the media came looking for him–was on paternity leave as the supply-chain crisis unfolded.
To be fair, Biden’s Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, recently admitted she was wrong when she said last year that inflation was “transitory.” But like Buttigieg, she’s still on the job.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the Homeland Secretary, claims our southern border is secure. (Insert the Kevin Bacon Animal House“all is well” meme here.) Mayorkas is a DC swamp critter that Biden seemingly found by looking for him under rocks. Yeah, I know, Mayorkas is simply following Biden’s far-left policy of open borders. And Jennifer Granholm, leading the Department of Energy, is kowtowing to the anti-energy zealotry of the extreme left. They are still on the job too.
Trump was a great steward of the American economy and he didn’t involve America in any new wars. And as a businessman he knew sometimes people have fired, his most prominent dismissals were his secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, and James Comey, the director of the FBI. Sadly, Trump botched the appointment of Comey’s replacement by naming Christopher Wray to that post.
Last month in this space I wrote that Biden’s attorney, general, Merrick Garland, was America’s worst AG since Harry M. Daugherty, a prominent member of Warren G. Harding’s corrupt “Ohio Gang.” I was wrong. After last week’s unprecedented raid on the home of a former president, Garland, the progenitor of our politicized two-tiered justice system, is worse.
Then again, “Moderate Merrick,” like Mayorkas and Granholm, is another clerk just taking orders.
Biden, a failed president who is clearly suffering from cognitive decline, can turn things around, a little bit, with one big firing.
Himself.
His vice president, Kamala Harris, could be a slightly better president. Biden dramatically lowered the standard.
With Christmas past us it’s time to look back at the current year, 2021. And with a less than a week left we can say that 2021 was America’s worst year since 1864.
Why was 1864 so bad? While there were significant military successes for the Northern armies fighting to keep the United States together–Atlanta and Savannah were captured and General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia was locked into siege warfare in Virginia–and a potential political victory of the Confederacy was averted by Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, Americans were still killing each other by the thousands. The following year was an improvement, despite Lincoln’s assassination. The Civil War ended in the spring of 1865 and the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery, was ratified.
As for 2021, it got off to a wretched start when hostiles, American ones, stormed the US Capitol in a riot. We have to go back to another horrible year for America, 1814, when the British Army seized the Capitol, for the only other time that happened. The hooligans who entered the Senate and House chambers on January 6 were not participating in an insurrection, despite claims made to this day by CNN and MSNBC. Sure, the rioters wanted to keep Donald J. Trump in power, but they had no plans for a coup, such as imprisoning Joe Biden, taking control of the military, and dissolving Congress.
And what about the people who were supposed to protect the Capitol, such as the Capitol Hill Police and the who they report to? You know, Congress, which is run by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They failed America.
In the fraught election of 2020, a feeble old man, Joe Biden, was elected president. “Lunch Bucket Joe from Scranton” was chosen as the Democratic nominee because he was viewed by many as the “safe” alternative to Trump, and not a radical like Bernie Sanders. Biden’s “good years,” assuming he ever had them, are well in the past. Biden, and the people who control him, such as Ron Klain or Susan Rice, went full-blown leftist on Inauguration Day. Economically, the result is the highest level of inflation in decades. These price increases, once dismissed by the Biden White House as “transitory,” will likely continue indefinitely, serving as a hidden tax for all Americans.
While not quite energy independent as Trump claimed, our nation was headed into that direction under his leadership. Shortly after his inauguration Biden suspended new drilling and fracking on federal lands. It has since been reversed in court, but the White House maintains a malevolent attitude towards the world’s most reliable form of energy, fossil fuels. Gasoline costs over $1 more per gallon since Biden became president. Biden also cancelled the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, essentially firing thousands of union workers.
An effective commander-in-chief, such as Dwight D. Eisenhower, does his job so well it appears that he is doing nothing at all. While Trump certainly doesn’t have Ike’s soft touch, I’m of the belief that Trump would have seen the possibility of a supply chain crisis coming and would have taken steps to ensure we would not have seen the bottleneck of cargo ships outside America’s largest harbors.
Meanwhile in the Biden administration the cabinet officer in charge of our supply chain, Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, went on an unannounced two-month paternity leave just as the shipping crisis began. Rather than resigning for failure or dereliction of duty, Buttigieg’s is being hawked by some Democrats as a possible 2024 Democratic presidential candidate should Biden choose not to run for reelection. While family is of course important, liberals often claim that public service is the highest calling. Buttigieg could have simply quit as Transporation secretary. Or not taken the job at all.
While not something that the federal government is directly in charge of, violent crime plagued America’s largest cities this year–and all of those cities are run by Democrats. A dozen cities endured record murder totals. Some jurisdictions, such as San Francisco, Philadelphia, Los Angeles County, Milwaukee County, and Cook County (Chicago), are burdened with woke prosecutors engaging in catch-and-release policies regarding criminals.
Biden was elected last November because more voters saw him as more capable to fight the COVID-19 epidemic than Trump. But wait, what’s this? There were more COVID deaths in the United States in 2021 than in 2020, despite the availability of vaccines. And lockdown and mask mandates are ramping up again with the new omicron variant, which so far has killed one American. That number will surely climb but I have a strong suspicion that omicron will not be killing 15,000 Americans a week as soon as next month, which is what the politicized CDC is predicting.
In order to prove Trump wrong, Biden has proved him right in regard to enforcing the law at our southern border. In late October the Washington Post reported that a record 1.7 million people arrested while trying to cross that border. In addition to illegal aliens, it’s believed that large amounts of fentanyl have been smuggled across the border in 2021.
As Biden as Biden is, his vice president is even worse, the inept cackler, Kamala Harris.
I’ve saved the worst for last. America suffered a humiliating military defeat in Afghanistan. Biden vowed that our departure from Afghanistan would look nothing like our bugging-out from South Vietnam in 1975. He was right, it was worse. As with the border crisis, the Biden White House blamed Trump for the debacle. While Trump did enter an agreement to pull our troops out of Afghanistan this year, it was not a treaty. We could have back out. Trump says, and I believe him, that he never would have made our country look so feeble, yes, feeble like Biden physically and mentally is, if we had departed Afghanistan under his watch.
When the next international crisis comes, our allies will have understandable doubts about American resolve.
It took four years for Jimmy Carter, America’s 39th president, to amass a reputation for abject failure. Joe Biden only needed nine months, the time it takes for a baby to go from conception to birth.
Here’s a list–and I am sure that I’m leaving out a few–of his failures.
Gasoline prices. Liberals hate relatively cheap gas prices. On his first day in office Biden cancelled construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. In doing so, to borrow the words used in the Biden-Harris sign pictured here, he killed thousands of “good union jobs.” Gas prices immediately jumped. Also that day Biden signed an executive order blocking oil and natural gas drilling at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The next day Biden imposed a suspension of new natural gas and oil drilling leases on federal lands–which fortunately was overruled by a judge in June.
It’s all part of the plan is what I believe. Leftists–excluding themselves of course–want as many people as possible to ditch their cars and trucks and take buses and trains everywhere. In 2012 Steven Chu, the Obama-Biden administration’s secretary of Energy, was asked by a Republican member of Congress if it was the goal of the White House to have lower gasoline prices. He replied to the contrary, adding “somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.” Gasoline prices in 2012 were about $4-a-gallon–in Europe at that time they were $8 to $9-per gallon. Yeah I know, Chu, under pressure no doubt, walked back those comments the next day, as Barack Obama and Joe Biden were up for reelection that year.
Gas prices are at a seven-year high. Donald Trump was not president seven years ago.
As I’ve observed many times before, leftists particularly love trains–because they only travel where there are tracks.
On the other hand if you are a liberal you may consider higher gasoline prices as a Joe Biden success. But more expensive fuel hurts the poor the most. And liberal politicians always say it is they, not the evil Republicans, who are protecting poor people.
Afghanistan. I’ll be brief on this one. Yes, Donald Trump made a pledge to pull our troops out by May 1. But Biden extended that deadline to September 11 then he moved it back to August 31. Biden blamed Trump for setting a withdrawal date–after the Afghan government collapsed in the middle of August. Biden promised an orderly withdrawal from Afghanistan–and said it would not be like our dramatic and tragic departure from South Vietnam. But that government stayed in power two years after American combat troops were flown home.
Biden either lied–or forgot–about being advised to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan to at least slow the government’s collapse. During the hasty evacuation from Kabul thirteen members of our military were killed by a terrorist bombing. And despite another Biden promise, Americans were left behind enemy lines in the Taliban-ruled nation. At least 200 remain.
The southern border. While Biden all but said his hands were tied by Trump’s agreement to take our troops out of Afghanistan, he felt no such need to continue the stay-in-Mexico policy for refugees that Trump successfully negotiated with the Mexican president. The result is the ongoing crisis at the southern border. Illegal crossings at that border have soared since January. A record number–1.7 million–have illegally entered the nation at that border so far in 2021. They are unmasked and not checked to see if they are infected by the COVID-19 virus.
COVID-19. Biden promised to get the virus under control. Meanwhile, despite a vaccine developed under the push initiated by Trump, COVID, by way of the Delta Variant, has roared back. Biden is pushing mask mandates–but what about people crossing the southern border? What’s that about “health care” on that sign?
Critical race theory: A little more than a year ago President Trump issued an executive order banning divisive CRT training in federal agencies. Biden reversed that order. Biden’s attorney general, faux moderate Merrick Garland, announced that the FBI would investigate parents who protest the teaching of CRT at school board meetings, citing unnamed threats.
Supply chain crisis. About the time Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg went on paternity leave–without publicly disclosing it–the supply chain crisis began. Container ships are backed up in the Pacific off of Long Beach harbor. There is also a shortage of truck drivers. As Santa said in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, “We’ll have to cancel Christmas.” Okay, not really, but there will likely be fewer gifts under Christmas trees this year.
Jobs: Job growth has been anemic since Biden was sworn in.
Inflation. Higher gasoline prices are always a driver of inflation. And I already mentioned the shortage of truck drivers. Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan pumped cash into the economy. While that seems like a good thing at the base level inflation is caused when there is too much money chasing too few goods. And there is a shortage of semiconductor chips, new automobiles, used cars, plastics, palm oil, magnesium, and more. Oh, besides truck drivers there are not enough workers overall. Biden and the Democrats want to double down on stupid with a so-called infrastructure bill, Build Back Better, priced at over $3 trillion. That bill is drenched with social-engineering and Green New Deal nonsense. Inflation is not going away.
Kamala Harris: Biden’s vice president, the Queen of Cackles, was put in charge of the southern border. How is that working out? Biden turns 79 next month and Harris is a heartbeat away from succeeding him. He could have of course done worse with a running mate choice, but Biden also could have done so much better.
Cognitive decline. The spin has been off of Joe Biden’s fastball–and that pitch was never a commanding one–for a few years now. On a mental level things will only get worse for him. Is Biden running the White House? If not then who is?
Allies losing faith in us. People are attracted to strong leaders and repelled by weak ones. Unless, in regards to the latter, bad people want to take something that doesn’t belong to them. Like for instance, Taiwan. I already mentioned the Afghanistan debacle. But Biden screwed over the French by stealing a nuclear submarine deal they had with Australia. Or maybe I’m being too harsh. John Kerry said the Biden didn’t even know about the France deal.
Can America be trusted? Can America be relied upon? Our allies are surely asking those questions. And our enemies, China, Russia, and North Korea, certainly sense opportunity.
And of course we are just nine months into this Rosemary’s Baby of an administration.
And if you really like what you read please consider kicking into DaTipJar so I can afford to keep paying John and the rest of my Magnificent Seven writers every month.
Which brings us to Joe Biden. He comes into office with one advantage that Trump had namely the lowest expectations of any incoming president for years.
He has one disadvantage that Trump never had but Obama did, a press that will by so fawning (till Jan 21st 2023) that he will never be challenged (till Jan 21st 2023) which will make his mistakes more glaring and likely more destructive as they’ll not be challenged.
The media is still spinning these failures as success at least as much as they can.
After a summer of failures, including the resurgence of COVID-19, horrid job numbers, the crisis at the southern border, rampant urban crime, and our humiliating exit from Afghanistan, there was hope within the Biden White House, cheered on by the compliant media, that a reset was due with the new season.
But over this weekend, which isn’t over yet as of this writing, things got worse. In a flashback to the Obama years, the Pentagon chose Friday afternoon–a Friday news dump–to reveal not only that the August drone strike in Afghanistan didn’t slay any ISIS-K terrorists, but the bombing killed an aid worker and nine members of his family, including seven children. Also that afternoon France recalled its ambassador to the USA after the Biden administration, behind France’s back, announced a deal with Great Britain to sell nuclear submarines to Australia. But France already had a deal, now cancelled, with the Aussies. If you ever worked as a salesperson and saw a sleazy co-worker swipe a lucrative sale from you, then you know that feeling of betrayal.
Also on Friday, in a story that is largely being ignored by the national media except for Fox News, a Third World-style shanty town, with thousands of illegal immigrant inhabitants, was discovered on the Rio Grande in Del Rio, Texas.
NEW: As of 7:15pm Del Rio time, here is what the situation under the international bridge looks like, where close to 15,000 migrants have camped out after crossing illegally. Many of the migrants have constructed makeshift shelters from sticks and plants. @FoxNewspic.twitter.com/i6tyPxSw25
There will be no reset for Joe Biden and his administration. That’s because, as I’ve written at DTG over these last few weeks, it is very likely that the president is suffering from cognitive decline. There are people in their seventies and eighties who still have nimble minds. Biden, who turns 79 later this year, is not one of them. Age-related cognitive decline is not reversible. And with crisis after crisis emerging, it’s becoming clear that no one is in charge at the White House, even though, as John Kass remarked, Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, is openly referred to as “President Klain.”
I get it. Sometimes calamity after calamity happens. Lyndon B. Johnson suffered an entire year, 1968, like that. And LBJ of course decided not to run for a second full-term as president that year.
But some of Biden’s debacles were preventable, such as his abandoning Donald J. Trump’s remain-in-Mexico policy regarding migrants, which led to the crisis at the southern border. No one, outside of military contractors, wanted our military involvement in Afghanistan to indefinitely continue. But Biden promised our withdrawal from Afghanistan wouldn’t look like our departure from South Vietnam. Well, Biden was right on that vow–our exit from Afghanistan was worse than that.
The administration’s response to COVID-19, once seen as a strong point for Biden, is also a problem for him. Last week a poll revealed that for the first time a majority of Americans don’t approve of the way Biden is handling fighting the virus.
So far Biden has gotten a pass for gasoline prices being 40-percent more than they were one year ago when that mean Tweeter with the orange hair was president. Escaping blame for Americans paying more at the pump can’t last forever. for Biden. As temperatures cool urban crime will decline but it will bounce back, as it always does, in the spring. That will give Biden and the Democrats another headache in 2022. Look for Republicans running for House and Senate seats to use crime fears as a central theme in their television commercials, as they did with great success last year. Despite denials the Democrats are the party of “Defund the Police.” Biden has gotten a pass for inflation for now. But his reckless policy of printing money will likely create even more inflation.
What else?
I’ve mentioned this quote before but it needs to be repeated.
I don’t like quoting myself, but I really think my Tweet of mine from last month hit the nail on Biden’s head.
“If I just awakened from a 10-year long coma and I saw what a mess America finds itself in now I would come to one quick conclusion. Somehow Joe Biden became president.”
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