Colonial-Era Royal Carriage Stirs Up Modern Backlash in Netherlands

So lame. *Eye-roll.*

At the New York Times, "The “Golden Coach,” built for Queen Wilhelmina of Holland in 1896, is emerging as a new focus of debate over slavery, colonialist oppression and history":

AMSTERDAM — In 1896, the city of Amsterdam decided to build Queen Wilhelmina a very special gift: a carriage covered in gold. The “Golden Coach” was designed to represent the entire kingdom and its resources, with leather from Brabant, cushions filled with flax from Zeeland and teak from the Dutch colony of Java.

A prominent Dutch artist of the era, Nicolaas van der Waay, was commissioned to make panel paintings on all four sides. One of them, “Tribute from the Colonies,” depicts a virgin on a throne. On the left, Africans in loin cloths bow down before her. On the right, Southeast Asians in colorful batiks present her with gifts, as representations of the Dutch East Indies colony.

All of these component parts glorifying the empire would have been appreciated by most Dutch people in that era. But it is precisely these elements — reminders of slavery and colonial oppression — that make the carriage a source of pain in the Netherlands, particularly for descendants of formerly colonized people.

In the context of the worldwide Black Lives Matter protests, the coach has become a focus of anti-colonialist and antifascist protest. The controversy is an echo of similar debates in the United States over Confederate statues and other monuments, and in Europe over monuments honoring colonialists and slave traders.

An online petition to retire the Golden Coach has received more than 9,000 signatures.

The coach was first used in 1898 to carry Queen Wilhelmina to what the Dutch call her “inauguration,” eight years after she became queen at age 10. In recent years, the Golden Coach has been used primarily for the ceremonial opening of the Dutch Parliament in The Hague, and occasionally for weddings and coronations. Since the 1960s, royal trips in the carriage have often been met with street protests.

It was last used in 2015, without incident, after which it underwent a five-year, $1.4 million renovation before it was put on display at the Amsterdam Museum, where it will remain through Feb. 27, 2022.

“We must finally end this practice of parading colonial images as displays of power,” Sylvana Simons, a member of Parliament and the founder and leader of an anti-racist political party, BIJ1, said in June.

Gideon van Meijeren, a lawmaker with the Forum for Democracy, a right-wing populist party, had no patience with that. “We must not allow ourselves to be emotionally blackmailed by a small group of pushy extremists who see racism under every stone,” he said.

His comment echoed the 2020 Twitter sentiments of a populist Dutch politician, Geert Wilders, who characterized efforts to decommission the coach, known in Dutch as the Gouden Koets, as “left-wing, antiracism terror.” He continued, using a slang term for drop dead: “I say: Don’t bow, don’t kneel, let them all get the rambam!”

Last month, Emile Schrijver, director of the Jewish Cultural Quarter, wrote an opinion piece in the Amsterdam daily Het Parool, calling the coach “an outdated and unacceptable glorification of a colonial sense of superiority,” which should be decommissioned and permanently housed in a museum.

On July 16, King Willem-Alexander addressed the subject at a news conference, saying he was “listening” to public forums on the matter organized by the museum. “The discussion is ongoing,” he added. The carriage is scheduled to return to The Hague after the exhibition. “You will hear from us then,” he said.

The Golden Coach was hoisted over the top of the museum by crane in June for the grand opening of the exhibition, attended by the king, and is now displayed in a large glass box in the inner courtyard. The exhibition exploring its history from its 19th-century conception fills six rooms within the museum, with another room devoted to visual responses to the coach by 15 contemporary artists.

What will happen to it thereafter — whether to put it back in service to the king and queen; or keep it in the museum with lots of explanatory content; or store it somewhere out of sight; or destroy it — has become a matter of intense public debate. Ultimately, the decision will be made by the royal family...

Nine-thousand signatures, c'mon!

"Rambam" is right, sheesh.

 

Nearly Half of Californians Report Lasting Effect of 9/11

Actually, the number should be higher. 

What is wrong with these people.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Poll: Nearly half of Californians say 9/11 had lasting impact on their lives":

Two decades after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a majority of Californians believe the surveillance laws passed in its aftermath were justified, while the state’s most conservative and most liberal voters are more skeptical, according to a new poll.

The survey from the Berkeley Institute for Governmental Studies, in partnership with the Los Angeles Times, found that the events of that day remain a vivid memory for three-quarters of the state’s voters, and nearly half say 9/11 has had a lasting effect on themselves or their families.

“It was a demarcation point in American life,” said Mark DiCamillo, the poll’s director. “Here we are 20 years later ... going through long lines at the airport, increased security. It all stems back from that day.”

A sizable number of California voters say they have been improperly treated because of increased safety measures. One in four voters report being harassed during security screenings at airports, for example. There is little difference between how Democrats and Republicans say they have experienced mistreatment, but substantial difference among racial and ethnic backgrounds. Roughly 25% of white, Latino and Asian voters in California say they have been harassed, compared with 39% of Black voters and 51% of American Indian/Native American respondents.

Still, the findings show that the immediacy of 9/11 is beginning to fade from Californians’ collective memory. Although roughly 90% of Californians over 50 say they have a clear recollection of that day — when terrorists hijacked four airplanes to attack targets in the U.S. — the number dwindles to less than 20% among those under 30, who were children or not yet born when the assaults occurred.

Young Californians are far less likely to say the events of Sept. 11 had a lasting effect on themselves or their families. Overall, voters in the state were nearly evenly split; 47% said they or their families experienced an enduring effect from the attacks, and 52% did not.

Voters under 40 are also more wary of the federal laws adopted after the attacks, which gave law enforcement more authority to conduct surveillance of the public. Less than half of those younger Californians say the policies are justified, compared with majorities of voters age 40 and older, with support climbing to 75% among people over 75.

Overall, 56% of the state’s voters back such laws, and 22% say the measures are unjustified with another 22% holding no opinion.

Attitudes do not neatly conform to partisan leanings. Republicans and Democrats support the laws in equal measure (roughly 60%), and half of voters with no party preference say the same.

Voters on the extremes of the ideological spectrum — strong conservatives and strong liberals — are less likely than moderate voters to see the policies as justified. And the share of voters who had no opinion on the laws climbed as their level of education increased; 29% of those with postgraduate degrees said they had no opinion, compared with 9% who did not have a high school degree.

Such a pattern is unusual among the most highly educated respondents, who are more likely to hold defined views, DiCamillo said.

In this case, the merit of surveillance laws “is a more complicated issue,” he said. “It’s not a straightforward yes or no.”

The findings also underscore how some views about the lasting impact of 9/11 defy the trend of hyper-polarization that has crept into nearly every corner of American life. Although party affiliation has some influence on Californians’ perspectives, DiCamillo said it has “kind of a modest influence.”

“It’s there, but lurking in the background,” he said, a vast difference from most topics he polls on, where there’s “just unbelievable partisan differences on viewing the realities of American life.”

Similarly, Democrats and Republicans report comparable attitudes about how fears of a terrorist attack influence their behavior. Twenty-one percent of Democrats and 17% of Republicans say they have skipped going to a theme park, sports stadium or large entertainment venue because of such safety concerns; 1 in 5 voters with no party preference report the same...

Still more.

 

9/11, Twenty Years Later

From Brian Stewart, at Commentary, "A new book highlights the enduring failure of liberalism’s approach to terrorism."

Stewart reviews Spencer Ackerman's, Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump.

In doing so, he focuses a scorching microscope on the evil (but not new) anti-Americanism that has poisoned American politics in the wake of the September 11 attacks. 

Remembering 9/11 With Taliban Victory

From American Military News, at Pamela Geller's:

What we remember and forget on 9/11. The boy clings to the undercarriage of an evacuation plane leaving Kabul.

Remember Todd Beamer of United 93. His heroism on 9/11 drew from a lifetime of faith and character.

The Bush White House reveals its unfiltered 9/11 story in new documentary. The documentary “9/11: Inside the President’s War Room” looks at how the Bush White House responded to the events of Sept. 11, 2001, by interviewing officials about how they reacted in real time to events throughout the day.

Between then and now, they did not die in vain. I was among the first to parachute into Afghanistan in 2001. This is how I will remember the war.

The tragic price of forgetting 9/11. We will never forget. That was the solemn promise we heard again and again from our nation’s leaders after the devastation of 9/11.

Biden’s Afghan Disaster

SECDEF: al-Qaida may seek comeback in Afghanistan. The Taliban had provided al-Qaida with sanctuary while it ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001.

Biden is embracing a redefinition of war — but not an alternative to war. For those of us present at the beginning of the war on terrorism, the effective surrender of Afghanistan to the Taliban just in time for the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks has been a very jagged pill.

US Afghanistan withdrawal becomes ammo for disinformation attacks. The U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has given NATO’s adversaries ammunition for disinformation attacks intended to sow doubt about America’s reliability as a security partner, officials here say.

Army chief calls for Afghanistan review: ‘Let the cards fall where they fall.’ The Army’s chief of staff wants a review of the decisions that led to the fall of Kabul and the U.S. military’s withdrawal.

Countries are establishing relations with the Taliban even though none has offered formal recognition of the militant government. Nearly a month after its takeover, there has been no formal recognition of the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan. But that step appears increasingly irrelevant, at least for the short and medium term, as countries around the world have established varying degrees of relations with the militant regime.

AFGHAN EVACUATION

White House approves ‘partnership’ with vets evacuating U.S. citizens, Afghan allies. The White House has approved a recommendation by the nation’s top military officer that the administration create a “public/private partnership” with the ad hoc groups that have been working to evacuate American citizens and at-risk Afghans from the country, two State Department officials told POLITICO.

Dozens of Americans, other Westerners, to fly from Kabul on commercial flight. The large group of foreigners would depart Thursday on a Qatar Airways flight. Americans refuse to leave Afghanistan without their families as evacuation flights resume. In the days and weeks before the U.S. military’s hectic departure from Afghanistan, two former interpreters for the American military already resettled in the United States — one a naturalized U.S. citizen, the other a holder of a green card — journeyed back into the war zone to rescue stranded female relatives.

National Security

A ‘persistent, proximate threat’: Why the Navy is preparing for a fight under the sea. As Russia and China bolster their own submarine fleets and capabilities, the U.S. Navy has renewed its focus on undersea threats and has labeled anti-submarine warfare a priority for all sailors — and perhaps some Marines, too.

China, Russia loom over routine air operations across the globe. “What happens when our diplomats no longer have the might of the U.S. military or our economy as their backstop?” said Chief of Staff Gen. Charles “CQ” Brown.

The world 9/11 created: The waning of the American superpower. The aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks marked the height of a particular American moment on the world stage.

China Threat

Taiwan commissions homemade ‘carrier killer’ warship. Taiwan’s president oversaw the commissioning of a new domestically made warship Thursday as part of the island’s plan to boost indigenous defense capacity amid heightened tensions with China.

Another Japan-based F-35 squadron is ready for operations. A second U.S. Marine Corps squadron in Japan has declared its F-35B fighters are ready for operations, less than a year after officially kicking off the process of transitioning to the stealthy fifth-generation aircraft.

Military

Less door-kicking, more resistance: Inside Army SOF’s return to unconventional warfare. For much of the past two decades, the American public has associated the Army’s special operations forces with counterterrorism, often conjuring images of night-time direct action raids.

Pentagon Watch

YES. THEY ARE – Army chief: We’re not pushing critical race theory. Just one day after the removal of Richmond’s Robert E. Lee statue, Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville pushed back on claims that the military is attempting to “indoctrinate” troops into critical race theory.

Who Is Responsible for the Darkness That Has Descended on Us?

From David Horowitz, at FrontPage Magazine, "The Treason Party":

The late author Susan Sontag once famously said, “Communism is fascism with a human face.” A more perfect description of what the Democrat Party has become would be hard to come by. For five years the Democrats have focused their energies on laying the foundations of a communist economy and a one-party state. In pursuit of the latter, they have tried to abolish the electoral college, change the election laws to undermine the integrity of the voting system, give non-citizens the right to vote, eliminate voter I.D.’s which connect legitimate voters to their ballots, pack the Supreme Court, end the filibuster, pass legislation that would put control of presidential elections in the hands of the Democrat-favoring Washington bureaucracy and remove that control from the fifty states, as the Constitution now requires.

These efforts led to massive irregularities in the presidential election results that put the brain-damaged, pathological liar in the White House and led directly to the crises on the southern border, in America’s streets, and in Afghanistan. They were accompanied by a campaign to demonize former President Trump and the 74 million Americans who voted for him as “white supremacists” and “cultists.” This was itself a dagger aimed directly at the heart of the democratic process which depends on respect for the political opposition and compromise on legislation. If an opposing political party is placed beyond the pale, the inevitable result is a one-party state.

Character assassination has become the Democrats’ first weapon of choice, with Trump’s multiple bogus impeachments providing examples of how far Democrats are prepared to go to tear up the Constitution and two-hundred and forty years of American political tradition. Trump is no longer president but as a private citizen he is still the target of a Pelosi “commission” or “committee,” stacked completely with members who voted to impeach him, whose sole purpose is to convict Trump of inciting a fake “insurrection” in an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. This is one more despicable effort to demonize Trump and his 74 million voters as “domestic terrorists” and therefore enemies of America to be dealt with as such.

The same result is the purpose of Critical Race Theory, the 1619 Project and the Black Lives Matter racist narratives, developed by American Marxists, currently being inflicted on all the men and women who have volunteered to defend their country in America’s armed services. This travesty comes courtesy of a General Staff deliberately politicized by the Obama administration. The consequence of training enlisted personnel to view America as a racist slave state founded in 1619, which has racism in its DNA (as Obama proclaimed) and is “systemically racist” (as Biden maintains) is to undermine military morale and program soldiers to regard “white America” as the enemy rather than the Islamic terrorists who seek to murder and destroy us.

Yet this demonizing creed was the preoccupation of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs’ Chairman General Mark Milley in the months they should have been focused on the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the potential massacre of Americans and their Afghan allies if the withdrawal wasn’t properly planned.

Inevitably that withdrawal was not properly planned. If the Chinese Communists had used their hammer over Joe Biden to dictate his decisions, the suicidal choices for which Biden is responsible wouldn’t be one iota different from the ones he actually made. No one in his or her right mind would have withdrawn American troops and abandoned American bases (and their weaponry) first, and then depended on the good will of Taliban terrorists not to behead the thousands of Afghans who had helped us during the twenty years we occupied their country.

“Partnering” with the Taliban, legitimizing them as a responsible government are the latest capitulations committed by Biden’s fascist-with-a-human face regime. Their cover for this betrayal is that the Taliban has changed and will be a responsible partner.

But here is what the religious zealots of the Taliban actually say: “We are the Taliban and this is our way and this will be our way till Judgement Day.” To encourage Biden’s treachery the Taliban’s spokesman put forward the reasonable-sounding offer to respect our culture if we will respect theirs. But what is their culture? Their culture is to throw acid in the face of any woman whose required Burka shows too much flesh, and to murder them if they are guilty of “fornication” - after a trial in which the jury is all male. Their culture is to behead an entire family in front of its father and then to behead him for working for the Americans. This atrocity occurred during the Kabul airlift after Joe Biden had made these barbaric killers the security for America’s withdrawal.

And it’s worse. Fearing America’s military might, which Joe Biden was busily crippling, the Taliban had actually offered America the privilege of providing the security for its withdrawal, which would have saved countless lives. Joe Biden rejected the offer.

In normal times, the remedy for Biden’s treason would be a firing squad or a life-term in a military prison. Today, who knows? Not a single general has been court-martialed for this disgraceful and dangerous surrender of American power, pride and national security. It is a surrender that will cost the lives of countless innocents not only in Afghanistan but around the world and in America itself. Biden’s response to this debacle? Full steam ahead and pretend defeat is - in Joe’s words - “an amazing success.” This is exactly the kind of response one would expect from a one-party regime.

After the Taliban took Kabul, and the country fell into the grips of Islamic barbarians, the Democrats in Congress were sitting up late into the night in the Capitol working on another emergency. They were putting together a $3.5 to $5 trillion bill to socialize the economy, and make every man, woman, and child in America dependent on the state. Their leader in this communist enterprise was Senator Bernie Sanders a lifelong half-wit supporter of Communist dictatorships and their failed economies, who is now the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

The Democrats proposed and inflicted all this damage with a one-vote majority in the Congress, which is the ultimate expression of their contempt for democratic order and their determination to establish a one-party state.

Unfortunately for them, but a light at the end of the tunnel for all Americans who love their country, the Democrat atrocities, aggressions, and failures have produced a reaction – a pro-American, pro-democracy counter-revolution that began with a parental revolt against indoctrination in the schools. This counter-revolution will sweep the Democrats from power in the coming mid-term elections, a transformation that cannot happen too quickly or too completely. The hour is very late and the condition of our country and our way of life is critical.

Brigitte Gabriel: United We Stood on September 11th

She's a good lady.

Thomas Ricks, Making the Corps

At Amazon, Thomas Ricks, Making the Corps (10th Anniversary Edition with a New Afterword by the Author). 

In Return to Classroom, Universities and Professors Struggle with Covid

My division dean just sent out an announcement on this yesterday. How to handle? 

1. Notify sick student to stay the hell off campus. 

2. Reassure the lamebrains that you're not going to drop them from class.  

3. Make sure students are screened and cleared for classes at the check-in tables on-site.

4. Contact college administration to inform them of a cases. 

5. Maintain strict confidentiality. (Or else?) 

At the New York Times, "The Masked Professor vs. the Unmasked Student":

Matthew Boedy, an associate professor of rhetoric and composition, sent out a raw emotional appeal to his students at the University of North Georgia just before classes began: The Covid-19 Delta variant was rampaging through the state, filling up hospital beds. He would teach class in the equivalent of full body armor — vaccinated and masked.

So he was stunned in late August when more than two-thirds of the first-year students in his writing class did not take the hint and showed up unmasked.

It was impossible to tell who was vaccinated and who was not. “It isn’t a visual hellscape, like hospitals, it’s more of an emotional hellscape,” Dr. Boedy said.

North Georgia is not requiring its students to be vaccinated or masked this fall. And as in-person classes return at almost every university in the country, after almost a year and a half of emergency pivoting to online learning, many professors are finding teaching a nerve-racking experience.

The American College Health Association recommends vaccination requirements for all on-campus higher education students for the fall semester. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends face coverings, regardless of vaccine status, for indoor public spaces in areas where the rate of infection is high.

But this is not how it has worked out on more than a few campuses.

More than 1,000 colleges and universities have adopted vaccination requirements for at least some students and staff, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. In an indication of how political vaccination has become, the schools tend to be clustered in states that voted for President Biden in the last election.

But at some campuses, particularly in Republican-led states with high rates of contagion — like the state systems in Georgia, Texas and Florida — vaccination is optional and mask wearing, while recommended, cannot be enforced. Professors are told they can tell students that they are “strongly encouraged” or “expected” to put on masks, but cannot force students to do so. And teachers cannot ask students who have Covid-like symptoms to leave the classroom.

At least nine states — Arizona, Arkansas, Iowa, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, Utah and Tennessee — have banned or restricted school mask mandates. It is unclear, education officials say, whether all of these prohibitions apply to universities, but public universities depend on state funding.

Certainly, some professors are happy to go maskless. A smattering have resigned in protest over optional mask policies. Most, like Dr. Boedy, are soldiering on. But the level of fear is so high that even at universities that do require vaccination and masks, like Cornell and the University of Michigan, professors have signed petitions asking for the choice to return to online teaching.

“Morale is at an all-time low,” warns a petition at the University of Iowa.

Universities are caught between the demands of their faculty for greater safety precautions, and the fear of losing students, and the revenue they bring, if schools return to another year of online education.

“I think everybody agrees that the idea is to have people physically back in the classroom,” said Peter McDonough, general counsel for the American Council on Education, an organization of colleges and universities. “The turning on a dime to provide online education last year and the previous spring semester was only seen as temporary.”

For some faculty, the new year brings not a return to normal but a strong sense that things could go off the rails. In the first weeks of class, case counts have risen at schools including Duke, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Arizona State, Liberty University, the University of Arkansas, the University of North Florida and the University of Texas at San Antonio.

“It seems like a repeat,” said Michael Atzmon, an engineering professor at the University of Michigan. “On the one hand, we have the vaccine. On the other hand, we have Delta.”

Dr. Atzmon helped organize a petition asking the university to be more open to online teaching. It was signed by more than 700 faculty members and instructors.

In a response to the petition, Michigan’s president, Mark Schlissel, said on Thursday that, given the “stellar” rate of vaccination at the Ann Arbor campus (92 percent for students, 90 percent for faculty), the classroom was “perhaps the safest place to be” on campus.

Dr. Schlissel suggested that faculty would just have to get used to the idea that there would be Covid cases on campus. “A pandemic is unsettling, it’s unpredictable, and yes, it involves an unavoidable level of risk,” he said.

There are signs of defiance against state policies. The three big public universities in Arizona — University of Arizona, Arizona State and Northern Arizona University — are tiptoeing around the ban on masks and requiring them in class. If all students have to wear masks, university officials believe that they are obeying Gov. Doug Ducey’s order not to discriminate against students who choose not to be vaccinated.

“It’s kind of a cat-and-mouse game,” said Peter Lake, an education law professor at Stetson University...

For real, man.

Keep reading. 

 

Paige Loves College Football

This woman is always worth a post. 

.@PaigeSpiranac previews the ACC🏈

Click to bet👇https://t.co/DaI9OyxF8W pic.twitter.com/cHqwycThBF

— PointsBet Sportsbook (@PointsBetUSA) August 23, 2021

Interview with Maj. Dick Winters (VIDEO)

I'm a major fan of "Band of Brothers," and especially Episode 2, and Easy Company's destruction of the German 88 artillery emplacement at Brecourt Manner. 

If you've seen the series, then you know the story-line of Lieutenant Colonel Ronald Speirs and the legend of him gunning down more than a dozen Nazi captives.

Watch and be amazed:

Within the Margin of Error: More Americans Than Ever Before Disapprove of Joe Biden's Performance as President

And this is after a big PBS News poll earlier this week, "More than half of Americans disapprove of Biden right now."

At YouGov:

President Joe Biden is confronting the worst public ratings of his eight-month-old presidency. His approval ratings in the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, overall and on his handling of major issues, have all fallen, dramatically in some cases. That includes the evaluation of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, one area where public support had remained high.

For the first time, more American adults disapprove of how Biden is handling his job. Nearly half the public (49%) disapproves of Biden’s job performance in the poll conducted September 4-7, while only 39% approve—a drop of six points in the last week. Twice before, during the pullout from Afghanistan, as many people disapproved as approved, but this is the first time in his first-year presidency that Biden’s ratings are negative.

The drop in Biden’s approval rating is most severe among Democrats. Around nine in ten of them had approved of Biden’s performance for nearly all of his first year in office. This week, Biden’s approval rating among Democrats dropped nine points to 77% from 86% last week...

I can't wait for next year's midterms.

 

Toddler in Diapers Discovered and Rescued by Food Delivery Driver in Burbank (VIDEO)

At CBS 2 Los Angeles, "Caught on Camera Exclusive: Food Delivery Driver Rescues 2-Year-Old in Diapers Wandering Into Burbank Boulevard at Night."

The man's a guardian angel:

Americans Stretch Across Political Divides to Welcome Afghan Refugees

This is fine with me, though, of course, not for most Trump supporters. 

As always, my concern is that jihadi terrorists will be admitted to the country along with Afghans who helped the U.S., and along with the tens of thousands of regular Afghans fleeing totalitarian terrorism. 

At NYT, "'Even the most right-leaning isolationists' are coming forward to help those fleeing Afghanistan, a pastor said. A mass mobilization is underway":

Wow.

Just one poll, but “Welcoming Afghan translators to the US” looks like the most popular and bipartisan policy idea I’ve seen in a long, long time pic.twitter.com/o09sWjrnXE

— Derek Thompson (@DKThomp) August 22, 2021

PHOENIX — The hundreds of parishioners at Desert Springs Bible Church, a sprawling megachurch in the northern suburbs of Phoenix, are divided over mask mandates, the presidential election and what to do about migrants on the border. But they are unified on one issue: the need for the United States to take in thousands of Afghan evacuees, and they are passing the plate to make it happen.

“Even the most right-leaning isolationists within our sphere recognize the level of responsibility that America has to people who sacrificed for the nation’s interest,” said Caleb Campbell, the evangelical church’s lead pastor.

Last weekend, the church inaugurated a campaign to raise money for the dozens of Afghan families who are expected to start streaming into greater Phoenix in the next several weeks. Already, thousands of dollars have flowed into the church’s “benevolence fund.”

“This is a galvanizing moment,” said Mr. Campbell, 39.

Throughout the United States, Americans across the political spectrum are stepping forward to welcome Afghans who aided the U.S. war effort in one of the largest mass mobilizations of volunteers since the end of the Vietnam War.

In rural Minnesota, an agricultural specialist has been working on visa applications and providing temporary housing for the newcomers, and she has set up an area for halal meat processing on her farm. In California, a group of veterans has sent a welcoming committee to the Sacramento airport to greet every arriving family. In Arkansas, volunteers are signing up to buy groceries, do airport pickups and host families in their homes.

“Thousands of people just fled their homeland with maybe one set of spare clothes,” said Jessica Ginger, 39, of Bentonville, Ark. “They need housing and support, and I can offer both.”

Donations are pouring into nonprofits that assist refugees, even though in most places few Afghans have arrived yet. At Mission Community Church in the conservative bedroom community of Gilbert outside Phoenix, parishioners have been collecting socks, underwear, shoes and laundry supplies.

Mars Adema, 40, said she had tried over the past year to convince the church’s ministries to care for immigrants, only to hear that “this is just not our focus.”

“With Afghanistan, something completely shifted,” Ms. Adema said.

In a nation that is polarized on issues from abortion to the coronavirus pandemic, Afghan refugees have cleaved a special place for many Americans, especially those who worked for U.S. forces and NGOs, or who otherwise aided the U.S. effort to free Afghanistan from the Taliban.

The moment stands in contrast to the last four years when the country, led by a president who restricted immigration and enacted a ban on travel from several majority-Muslim countries, was split over whether to welcome or shun people seeking safe haven. And with much of the electorate still deeply divided over immigration, the durability of the present welcome mat remains unknown.

Polls show Republicans are still more hesitant than Democrats to receive Afghans, and some conservative politicians have warned that the rush to resettle so many risks allowing extremists to slip through the screening process. Influential commentators, like Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, have said the refugees would dilute American culture and harm the Republican Party. Last week, he warned that the Biden administration was “flooding swing districts with refugees that they know will become loyal Democratic voters.”

But a broad array of veterans and lawmakers have long regarded Afghans who helped the United States as military partners, and have long pushed to remove the red tape that has kept them in the country under constant threat from the Taliban. Images of babies being lifted over barbed-wire fences to American soldiers, people clinging to departing planes and a deadly terrorist attack against thousands massed at the airport, desperate to leave, have moved thousands of Americans to join their effort.

“For a nation that has been so divided, it feels good for people to align on a good cause,” said Mike Sullivan, director of the Welcome to America Project in Phoenix. “This country probably hasn’t seen anything like this since Vietnam.”

Federal officials said this week that at least 50,000 Afghans who assisted the United States government or who might be targeted by the Taliban are expected to be admitted into the United States in the coming month, though the full number and the time frame of their arrival remains a work in progress. More than 31,000 Afghans have arrived already, though about half were still being processed on military bases, according to internal government documents...

 

Politico: Biden's Aides Can't Bear to Watch Him Bumble Through Reporters' Questions

Heh.

At AoSHQ, "Oh they noticed, did they?"

Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers

At Amazon, Craig Whitlock, The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War.

A Generation of American Men Give Up on College: ‘I Just Feel Lost’

This isn't new, though indeed folks don't talk about it on campus, at all (at least at my college, and I surmise others, most others, in fact). 

Props to WSJ for the excellent reporting here. 

ICYMI, Christina Hoff Sommers has written on this stuff, here: The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies are Harming Our Young Men.

And from the article:

The number of men enrolled in college this year trails women by record highs, part of a nationwide education gap. Nobody wants to talk about it. https://t.co/RzPzSDIDPd

— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) September 8, 2021

Men are abandoning higher education in such numbers that they now trail female college students by record levels.

At the close of the 2020-21 academic year, women made up 59.5% of college students, an all-time high, and men 40.5%, according to enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse, a nonprofit research group. U.S. colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago, and men accounted for 71% of the decline.

This education gap, which holds at both two- and four-year colleges, has been slowly widening for 40 years. The divergence increases at graduation: After six years of college, 65% of women in the U.S. who started a four-year university in 2012 received diplomas by 2018 compared with 59% of men during the same period, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

In the next few years, two women will earn a college degree for every man, if the trend continues, said Douglas Shapiro, executive director of the research center at the National Student Clearinghouse.

No reversal is in sight. Women increased their lead over men in college applications for the 2021-22 school year—3,805,978 to 2,815,810—by nearly a percentage point compared with the previous academic year, according to Common Application, a nonprofit that transmits applications to more than 900 schools. Women make up 49% of the college-age population in the U.S., according to the Census Bureau.

“Men are falling behind remarkably fast,” said Thomas Mortenson, a senior scholar at the Pell Institute for the Study of Opportunity in Higher Education, which aims to improve educational opportunities for low-income, first-generation and disabled college students.

American colleges, which are embroiled in debates over racial and gender equality, and working on ways to reduce sexual assault and harassment of women on campus, have yet to reach a consensus on what might slow the retreat of men from higher education. Some schools are quietly trying programs to enroll more men, but there is scant campus support for spending resources to boost male attendance and retention.

The gender enrollment disparity among nonprofit colleges is widest at private four-year schools, where the proportion of women during the 2020-21 school year grew to an average of 61%, a record high, Clearinghouse data show. Some of the schools extend offers to a higher percentage of male applicants, trying to get a closer balance of men and women.

“Is there a thumb on the scale for boys? Absolutely,” said Jennifer Delahunty, a college enrollment consultant who previously led the admissions offices at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore. “The question is, is that right or wrong?”

Ms. Delahunty said this kind of tacit affirmative action for boys has become “higher education’s dirty little secret,” practiced but not publicly acknowledged by many private universities where the gender balance has gone off-kilter.

“It’s unfortunate that we’re not giving this issue air and sun so that we can start to address it,” she said.

At Baylor University, where the undergraduate student body is 60% female, the admission rate for men last year was 7 percentage points higher than for women. Every student has to meet Baylor’s admission standards to earn admission, said Jessica King Gereghty, the school’s assistant vice president of enrollment strategy and innovation. Classes, however, are shaped to balance several variables, including gender, she said.

Ms. Gereghty said she found that girls more closely attended to their college applications than boys, for instance making sure transcripts are delivered. Baylor created a “males and moms communication campaign” a few years ago to keep high-school boys on track, she said.

Among the messages to mothers in the campaign, Ms. Gereghty said: “ ‘At the dinner table tonight, mom, we need you to talk about getting your high school transcripts in.’ ”

Race and gender can’t be considered in admission decisions at California’s public universities. The proportion of male undergraduates at UCLA fell to 41% in the fall semester of 2020 from 45% in fall 2013. Over the same period, undergraduate enrollment expanded by nearly 3,000 students. Of those spots, nine out of 10 went to women.

“We do not see male applicants being less competitive than female applicants,” UCLA Vice Provost Youlonda Copeland-Morgan said, but fewer men apply.

The college gender gap cuts across race, geography and economic background. For the most part, white men—once the predominant group on American campuses—no longer hold a statistical edge in enrollment rates, said Mr. Mortenson, of the Pell Institute. Enrollment rates for poor and working-class white men are lower than those of young Black, Latino and Asian men from the same economic backgrounds, according to an analysis of census data by the Pell Institute for the Journal.

No college wants to tackle the issue under the glare of gender politics, said Ms. Delahunty, the enrollment consultant. The conventional view on campuses, she said, is that “men make more money, men hold higher positions, why should we give them a little shove from high school to college?”

Yet the stakes are too high to ignore, she said. “If you care about our society, one, and, two, if you care about women, you have to care about the boys, too. If you have equally educated numbers of men and women that just makes a better society, and it makes it better for women.”

The pandemic accelerated the trend. Nearly 700,000 fewer students were enrolled in colleges in spring 2021 compared with spring 2019, a Journal analysis found, with 78% fewer men.

The decline in male enrollment during the 2020-21 academic year was highest at two-year community colleges. Family finances are believed to be one cause. Millions of women left jobs to stay home with children when schools closed in the pandemic. Many turned to their sons for help, and some young men quit school to work, said Colleen Coffey, executive director of the College Planning Collaborative at Framingham State University in Massachusetts, a program to keep students in school.

“The guys felt they needed to step in quickly,” Ms. Coffey said.

It isn’t clear how many will return to school after the pandemic...

I don't trust this Framingham study. 

I'm at community college. I've been teaching online since March 17th last year. I suspect just as many women have been working outside the home to support their families as have men.

Who know, though? I'd have to see the data.

Either way, boys and young men are indeed getting screwed. Gender identity theory, and whatever other brain dead ideological abominations, have left men high and dry. 

Still more.

Actor Michael K. Williams Found Dead in His New York City Apartment

As they say, life imitates art sometimes, and in this case, it's particularly sad. 

At the New York Post, "‘The Wire’ actor Michael K. Williams found dead in NYC apartment."

It's weird, but I just watched "The Wire" a few weeks back for my first time. Williams plays "Omar," a gangland stickup man, who by far is the most lovable character on the show, if that's the best way to describe him.

He won't soon be forgotten, as apparently he was universally beloved among television fans. 

May he rest in peace. 

Amazing Surf Photography

Amazing.

Click on the photo and notice that dude giving the hang loose sign. 

So wicked.

Your Shot photographer Philip Thurston captured these two perfectly timed waves pic.twitter.com/L27VLNuAAn

— National Geographic (@NatGeo) August 5, 2021

Happy Labor Day!

Here's to all those hard-working Americans (that is, all of us who actually work, rather than suck at the teat of the sow of the American social welfare state).

On Twitter:

Also, lusty blonde.

And tremendous Tessa.

American Honor

Bernard-Henri Lévy, at the Tablet, "Even in the midst of deep humiliation, there are still signs of the exceptional nation I’ve loved since childhood."

Indian vs. Black: Vigilante Killings Upend South African Town

Ugly down there. 

Just nasty.

At the New York Times, "As rioting and looting swept the country this summer, Indians in the suburb of Phoenix set up roadblocks to police their streets. Dozens of Black people passing through wound up dead":

PHOENIX, South Africa — The blows thundered down — bats, a hammer, a field hockey stick — as Njabulo Dlamini lay curled on the pavement, trying to summon the strength to move.

He and five friends, all of them Black, had been driving in a minibus taxi through the streets of Phoenix, a predominantly Indian suburb created from the forced racial segregation of apartheid South Africa.

A mob surrounded them, dragged them from the taxi, made them lie on the pavement and beat them furiously, according to witnesses and video footage obtained by The New York Times. Some of Mr. Dlamini’s friends managed to escape. Others were chased and beaten again by the crowd, which had been whipped up in recent days by WhatsApp warnings and reports of violence by Black people streaming into their community to loot shopping centers. Mr. Dlamini barely made it across the street. He later died of his injuries at the hospital, his family said.

South Africa was convulsed this summer by some of its worst civil unrest since the end of apartheid. The imprisonment of former President Jacob Zuma for refusing to appear before a corruption inquiry set off violent protests by his supporters. Soon, riots and looting erupted in parts of the country, fed by broad disgust at poverty, inequality and the government’s failure to provide even the most basic services, like water or electricity. Officials have called the violence an insurrection — an attempt to sabotage Mr. Zuma’s rival and successor, President Cyril Ramaphosa, in part by stoking some of the nation’s oldest racial tensions.

Nationwide, more than 340 people died in the mayhem, many in stampedes or circumstances that remain unclear. But government officials have been alarmed by a dynamic that, they say, dangerously undermines the social order: dozens of vigilante killings by ordinary citizens.

The vigilantism was especially pronounced in Phoenix, a working-class community of about 180,000 near the country’s east coast. The country’s police minister said that 36 people there — 33 of them Black — were killed in what some officials are calling a massacre. Fifty-six people have now been arrested in connection with the violence in Phoenix.

“Most of the people who died were innocent people who were traveling,” said Sihle Zikalala, the premier of KwaZulu-Natal province, where Phoenix is.

Mobs of mostly Indian residents, worried that their community was under siege, erected roadblocks on street corners. They indiscriminately stopped Black people, and sometimes beat or killed them, the police said, inflaming the long-fragile relationship between Black and Indian South Africans — two marginalized groups under white apartheid rule.

“We need to confront racism in our society,” Mr. Ramaphosa wrote in a letter to the nation, specifically addressing the Phoenix unrest. “We need to have honest conversations not only about our attitudes to one another, but also about the material conditions that divide us.”

The authorities have been far less open about their roles in the upheaval. Interviews with dozens of Black and Indian residents in the Phoenix area, as well as a review of previously unreported video footage, show that at least some of the violence and deaths could have been prevented if the police had provided basic security...

Five Sailors Dead in Navy Helicopter Crash off San Diego Coast (VIDEO)

Tragic.

At the Sand Diego Union-Tribune, "Navy identifies 5 San Diego sailors killed in helicopter crash off coast":

SAN DIEGO — Five sailors killed when their helicopter crashed on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln and fell into the sea were identified by the Navy on Sunday.

The six-person crew of the MH-60S Seahawk helicopter were conducting routine operations on the flight deck of the carrier Tuesday afternoon when the helicopter crashed.

One of the helicopter’s crew was rescued from the water following the crash and is in stable condition ashore. Five Abraham Lincoln sailors were injured in the crash; two were also taken ashore for treatment.

A three-day search for survivors was called off Saturday morning and the Navy switched to an effort to recover their bodies. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

The sailors killed include two pilots, an aircrewman and two corpsmen, the Navy said. All were attached to Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron 8, which is based at Naval Air Station North Island.

The Abraham Lincoln also is based at the air station.

The MH-60S helicopter typically carries a crew of about four and is used in missions including combat support, humanitarian disaster relief and search and rescue.

The Seahawk was conducting routine flight operations from the ship when it crashed about 4:30 p.m. on Tuesday. The ship has been conducting exercises off the San Diego coast in preparation for a deployment next year, the Navy has said.

Lt. Sam Boyle, a spokesperson for the San Diego-based 3rd Fleet, said the Navy is making every effort to recover the helicopter and the remains of the sailors.

They are:

Marc Marano, Green Fraud

At Amazon, Marc Marano, Green Fraud: Why the Green New Deal Is Even Worse than You Think.

About the Climate Change 'Consensus'...

Following-up, "Climate Change Debate."

Climate Change Debate

Longtime readers know I'm a hardcore "climate change" skeptic. (See my earlier post, "The Climate Emergency.")

That said, to me, this current concatenation of violent weather events, from East to West (here in the U.S., not to mention worldwide), reveals something very significant happening with weather patterns and events. 

In my international relations class one year, I showed the Patrick Moore video, which resulted in literally a revolt in the classroom, with students enraged at someone, something, anything that challenged their pre-fed beliefs that the Earth is burning up. 

It was an unpleasant experience. Honestly, it was so bad I hesitate to show that video in class these days, though Moore is exactly right: In science, the key is always skepticism --- and, most importantly, scientists can really never know all the potential causal factors that may result in any particular event, in political science, or climate science, or any field of inquiry. 

Of course, this is the age of "cancel culture," and especially the dominance of leftist indoctrination in the schools, extreme political polarization, and a general postmodern trend toward the rejection of authority, especially among the young. 

In any case, check out this scientific debate today, up at RealClearPolitics:

From Christopher Lingle, at the American Institute for Economic Research, "Climate Science: Seeking Truth or Defending Consensus?"

And from Adam Sobel, at CNN, "This Is a Dystopian Climate Change Moment."

Try to stay safe, dear readers.

Angelique Kerber

At the U.S. Open:

Scott Galloway, Post Corona

At Amazon, Scott Galloway, Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity. 

Thirty-Seven Percent Containment at Lake Tahoe's Caldor Fire (VIDEO)

Extreme weather. All over the country. 

It's really biblical, and, frankly, all you can do sometimes is pray. It's all in His hands.

At the San Jose Mercury News, "Caldor Fire containment jumps to 37% as weather calms":

Friday a ‘monumental day’ for more than 4,500 crews battling blaze.

One week after the Caldor Fire made a terrifying push into the Lake Tahoe basin, a promising shift in weather conditions allowed crews to start gaining sizable containment of the Northern California wildfire that has threatened thousands of homes and forced mass evacuations in two states.

Thanks to cooler, more humid weather conditions, an influx of 1,000 more firefighters and the strengthening of lines on both western and eastern flanks of the fire, crews had contained about 37% of the blaze as of Saturday, more than doubling progress in the past week and evoking a cautious sense of optimism for the first time since the fire broke out in mid-August.

“It’s starting to come together,” said Cal Fire spokesman Capt. Keith Wade. “It seems like big containment jumps, but it’s days and days of work.”

Terror surrounding the blaze’s spread skyrocketed on the evening of Aug. 29, when it roared across the face of Echo Summit, flung embers that set spot fires across Highway 89 and crept down toward the beloved Tahoe Basin, home to more than 40,000 people and the iconic lake. Some 22,000 residents of South Lake Tahoe were ordered to evacuate, creating a massive traffic jam that lasted for hours.

But just two days later — as crews staved off flames from the communities of Christmas Valley and Meyers — a favorable shift in winds arrived before the fire could explode farther northeast, giving more than 4,500 firefighters the chance to clear new firebreaks with dozens of bulldozers, strike down dry trees, lay hoses near homes and drop 500-gallon buckets of water on hotspots.

By Saturday, with 13 large wildfires burning across California, nearly a third of personnel, engines, helicopters and even bulldozers battling the blazes were committed to the Caldor Fire — a massive effort that fire officials say is beginning to pay off. Overnight Friday, the wildfire grew just a few thousand acres to reach 214,017 acres total. High winds that gripped the region last weekend receded Wednesday and remained calmer through the rest of the week, according to the National Weather Service, bringing relief to hand crews charged with stopping spot fires that soared out a mile ahead of the fire and letting helicopters make more water drops. Temperatures meanwhile cooled slightly and humidity rose.

A thick layer of smoke bearing down over the fire also helped to block out the sun and quiet its spread, though it brought air quality to hazardous levels around South Lake Tahoe and blew smoke toward the Bay Area, where the Bay Area Air Quality Management District issued a Spare the Air alert for Sunday...

Still more.

 

Residents in New Jersey and New York Still Recovering Following Hurricane Ida (VIDEO)

Following-up, "New Jersey. God Have Mercy."

New Jersey. God Have Mercy

No matter your politics, this story is heart-wrenching.

At NYT, "New Jersey’s Stunning Storm Toll Includes Many Who Drowned in Cars":

Malathi Kanche was heading home after dropping her son off at college Wednesday evening when the small S.U.V. she was driving was overwhelmed by floodwaters set off by the remnants of Hurricane Ida.

With the vehicle stalled in waist-deep water on Route 22 in Bridgewater, N.J., she and her 15-year-old daughter climbed out. They clung to a tree as the torrent rushed past, according to a close family friend and neighbor, Mansi Mago.

Then the tree gave way, and “the water took her,” said Ms. Mago, recounting what another stranded motorist told her hours later.

A 46-year-old software designer who emigrated from India, Ms. Kanche was one of six people who were still missing two days after Ida caused the deaths of at least 25 people in New Jersey — more fatalities than in any other state — as the monster storm whipped its way onto the Gulf Coast and tore north to New England.

At least a third of the fatalities in New Jersey were people who drowned after being trapped in vehicles in a densely packed state known for its car culture, its tangle of highways, suburban commuter towns and limited public transportation.

Screeching alerts had sounded repeatedly on cellphones late Wednesday, warning people to stay inside, but no travel bans were put in place in New Jersey or New York, where 16 deaths — including 13 in New York City — have been linked to the storm. On Friday, in an acknowledgment of the growing risk of flash flooding as climate change unleashes increasingly intense storms, New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, announced that the city would increase its use of evacuation orders and travel bans.

In New Jersey, officials have not said whether they would apply new measures to protect the state given the likelihood of severe storms happening more frequently.

As the region faced the daunting task of cleaning and clearing debris, Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey and Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York both said that they were expecting large infusions of recovery aid from the federal government. President Biden was expected to soon declare the states a federal disaster area.

Mr. Murphy, speaking from Millburn, whose downtown commercial corridor had been ravaged by the rain, said the state would make $10 million in aid available to small businesses. “If you’ve been crushed and you can prove it, you’re eligible,” Mr. Murphy said.

Early Friday, Mr. Murphy was still warning people to remain off the roads, especially near waterways that had not yet crested.

“Many motorists have been caught by surprise that the depth of the water on a road that they thought they knew — not to mention the swiftness of the current,” Mr. Murphy said.

“You can easily be swept away or trapped,” he said. “And sadly, we have many examples of just that.”

The stories of devastation and death were tempered by the many tales of rescue in New Jersey, where the National Weather Service said three tornadoes also touched down during the storm, leveling homes in South Jersey but killing no one.

In South Plainfield, N.J., a 31-year-old man, Danush Reddy, lost his footing as he was walking alongside a flooded roadway and was swept into a 36-inch-wide sewer pipe, borough officials said. His body was found miles away...

Police found Ms. Kanche's body on Friday.  

Keep reading.

 

Biden’s Shameless Exploitation of His Dead Son

At Frontpage Magazine, "As bad as you think Joe Biden may be, he’s even worse":

After getting 13 American military personnel killed in Kabul, Biden met with family members and, instead of listening to their pain and apologizing for his actions, lectured them about his son.

Former Delaware Attorney General Beau Biden, the scion of the family who took up the family business, figured large in his father’s speeches defending his disastrous retreat in Afghanistan. It was the same stump speech that Biden had been giving about his dead son for six years which he dusted off to explain why he was abandoning Americans in the hands of terrorists.

It was the same speech to which he subjected the family members of the men he killed.

“When he just kept talking about his son so much it was just — my interest was lost in that. I was more focused on my own son than what happened with him and his son,” Mark Schmitz, the father of Lance Cpl Jared Smitz, said. “I’m not trying to insult the president, but it just didn’t seem that appropriate to spend that much time on his own son.”

The loss of a son is unimaginably painful, but Biden has spent the remainder of his political career exploiting Beau Biden, the way that he spent his early career exploiting his dead first wife and daughter by accusing the truck driver of being drunk or having broadsided her. In reality, his first wife drove into the path of the truck. What should have been a private tragedy was weaponized into a public spectacle with Biden taking his Senate oath at his son’s bedside.

The infamously theatrical scene of Beau as a little boy lying in a hospital bed in a room filled with reporters and photographers was not an act of devotion, but disturbing exploitation. Two young boys, Beau and Hunter, who had lost their mother could have used some privacy while they recovered. Instead, Biden dragged them into the spotlight in a public relations bid.

In death, Biden exploited Beau even harder than he had in life. After his son’s death, Biden contemplated building an entire political campaign around his dead son...

Still more.

 

This is What Victory Looks Like?

*Shrug*

At the Other McCain, "Biden Speech Signals Beginning of Media Effort to ‘Pivot’ Away Afghanistan."

Mollie Hemingway: 'We Can Never Fight Another War Like Afghanistan Ever Again' (VIDEO)

At RCP, "FNC's 'Special Report' Panel: Hemingway: 'We Can Never Fight Another War Like Afghanistan Ever Again'":

BRET BAIER: They have hosted radical Islamic terrorists and others, they say they are fighting ISIS-K. It's really a witch's brew there, Mollie. How about who knew what went and this leaked Reuters report the transcript from this call between President Biden and the Afghan President Ghani?

MOLLIE HEMINGWAY: Yeah, we impeached a president for a phone call and now we have this leak of phone call that President Biden had where he asked someone to lie, in exchange for military support. It sounds like something that last year would have caused major problems for the previous president.

I think we cannot lose sight of how we can never fight a war like this ever again.

There was a Pew poll last week that showed that Americans are broadly supportive of the departure from Afghanistan. That's the Trump policy that Biden supported.

They have even more agreement that the manner in which we fought this war was a failure. You don't see people talking about World War II the way we talk about this war. This war has been prosecuted poorly, according to the American people for decades.

And then there is even more agreement that the manner in which Biden departed was a complete debacle. That's not really up for debate. It was a debacle. It was a national humiliation and disgrace.

The proper response to that is to clean out our military like we did after the Bay of Pigs and make sure that people are replaced with people who know how to do their jobs. Unfortunately, the current president who was involved in this phone call is incompetent and unable to replace the military leadership who failed. So it remains to the American people in their elections to replace him and the woke generals who cannot do basic jobs like winning wars or exiting a country...

Video at the link.

Steve Coll, Directorate S

At Amazon, Steve Coll, Directorate S: The C.I.A. and America's Secret Wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Republicans Blame Pentagon Planner Colin Kahl for Bungled Afghanistan Strategy

At Free Beacon, "'Sen. Hagerty: 'We have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of Biden's incompetently planned withdrawal'."

Read the whole thing.

Professor Kahl is on leave from Stanford. I know some of his research, some of which is quite good, actually.

But he's stupid. He's been attacking Republicans on Twitter for years, and his partisanship irks critics --- and they want him gone. 

The Democratic Norm Breakers

This is really something, even for the disgusting Democrats!

At WSJ, "The Jan. 6 committee wants to subpoena GOP phone records":

Critics feared that Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s probe of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot would be partisan, and the latest proof are subpoenas for the private phone records of House Republicans. This is a violation of political norms that Democrats will come to regret.

Bennie Thompson (D., Miss.), chair of the House special committee, sent letters Monday to 35 companies, from AT&T to Facebook to Parler, asking them to preserve information about account holders charged with crimes related to, or “potentially involved with discussions” in planning, the Jan. 6 riot. The companies are requested to preserve emails, and voice, text and direct messages in preparation for subpoenas to come.

he letters contained a list of individuals whose names haven’t leaked. But CNN reports that nearly a dozen House Republicans are on the committee’s “evolving” radar, including Jim Jordan, ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee.

Republicans are furious, and rightly so. Indiana Rep. Jim Banks noted in a letter to Mr. Thompson that this “authoritarian undertaking” would depart “from more than 230 years of Congressional oversight.” The move recalls California Democrat Adam Schiff’s public release of the call logs of Republican Rep. Devin Nunes in 2019.

At least Democrats claimed the collection of Mr. Nunes’s information was incidental to other records it targeted. The special committee is using its oversight power to snoop on political opponents. They’d gain access to information far beyond the events of Jan. 6.

Democrats say they need the call lists to see if Members of Congress fomented the assault on the Capitol. They hope to confirm their narrative that the riot was a planned “insurrection,” though Reuters reports that the FBI has found no such evidence in six months of looking. Conspiracy is a crime and matter for the Justice Department, not Congress.

The subpoenas are also legally dubious, coming after recent judicial warnings about the limits of Congressional fishing. The Supreme Court last year in Trump v. Mazars reminded Congress that subpoenas must have a “valid legislative purpose.” The Jan. 6 committee has offered no such rationale. Our legal sources say the subpoenas may violate the Constitution’s Speech and Debate Clause because Congress can’t pass a law that would limit Members’ speech.

The private companies may want to think twice about complying. In the Schiff affair, the telcos handed over call logs without even notifying the targets. Mr. Thompson’s letter is demanding the same, telling companies that if they “are not able or willing to respond to this request without alerting the subscribers or the accounts” to “please contact the Select Committee prior to proceeding.” The “please” part is an admission that the committee knows it lacks authority to make such a demand.

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr says “federal law requires telecommunications carriers to protect the privacy and confidentiality of Americans’ call records.” He says his agency “has brought enforcement actions against carriers to ensure their compliance,” and Congress isn’t automatically entitled to anyone’s private records.

Even if the companies don’t want to fight the subpoenas in court, they have an obligation to alert targets so they can contest the subpoenas. Mr. Banks’s Friday letter reminded corporate general counsels of their “legal obligation not to hand over individuals’ private records unless the subject of the subpoena consents to the information being shared or the company has a court order to turn over the records.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also warned companies against rolling over to Democratic pressure, noting they could forfeit their “ability to operate in the United States.” Democrats and the media spun this as pressuring companies to ignore “duly” issued subpoenas. But Mr. McCarthy was pointing out that federal privacy law protects information, and that Democrats haven’t proved in court that their committee is entitled to these records.

If Democrats follow through and use their power to investigate GOP opponents, there will be no end to it. Republicans are likely to take the majority as early as 2022, and two can play at Adam Schiff’s nasty game.

 

.

Joby Warrick, Black Flags

Joby Warrick, Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS.

Massive Financial Aid Scam Hits California Community Colleges

This is nasty scam.

My division dean mentioned it last week and she sent out a long email notice to all department faculty members today.

Nasty --- and a bit unreal, to think about it.

At LAT, "More than 65,000 fake students applied for financial aid in wide community college scam":

California student aid official Patrick Perry was beginning a routine check of federal financial aid records a few weeks ago when he came across a mystifying number: 60,000 more aid applications from a particular group of students this year than last.

They were first-time applicants to California community colleges who were older than 30, earned less than $40,000 annually and were seeking a two-year degree rather than a vocational certificate. They were spread out across the state, applying to 105 of the 116 campuses in the California Community Colleges system — with the top number at Cerritos, Pasadena, Chaffey, Merced and Antelope Valley. And their applications began surging in May through mid-August.

“We were kind of scratching our heads going, ‘Did or didn’t 60,000 extra older adult students really attempt to apply to community colleges here in the last few months?’” Perry, director of policy, research and data for the California Student Aid Commission, said Tuesday.

He alerted California community college officials Thursday. Around the same time, chatter emerged about abnormal enrollment patterns on a research listserv for community colleges, on which faculty were beginning to question whether some of their “students” were actually fake bot accounts.

The colleges and student aid officials put their heads together and uncovered what is believed to be one of the state’s biggest financial aid scam attempts in recent history.

California Community Colleges officials declined to say whether any financial aid was disbursed to fake students and said they did not know of any confirmed Cal Grant fraud, but the investigation is continuing.

Perry said he thinks the attempted fraud was stymied before much, if any, aid was distributed because community college classes are just starting and campuses are now on high alert. “I can’t tell you whether any money has gone out or not, but my guess is probably not,” he said. “I think we’ve caught it.”

It was unclear what financial aid may be involved in the fraud — state-funded Cal Grants, for instance, federal Pell Grants or COVID-19 emergency relief grants. California community colleges have received more than $1.6 billion in emergency COVID-19 relief for low-income students.

In addition, the fake applications are roiling the ability of college officials to determine true student enrollment numbers at a time of declining community college attendance and major efforts to recruit students and offer them financial and emergency pandemic aid to help them continue with higher education goals. Many professors are crestfallen trying to assess whether they have a class of students or bots.

Since last week, Perry said, the number of suspected fake financial aid applications has surpassed 65,000, and the problem appears confined to state community colleges. No irregular patterns were detected with the University of California or California State University.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General confirmed it was investigating but declined to comment further because the inquiry is ongoing.

But the financial aid commission and community colleges have found similar red flags for both admission and financial aid. Applications were missing a phone contact or had the same phone number on multiple applications. Numerous applications used an Outlook.com email address, listed student ages as old as 90 and repeated addresses — most to a vacant house.

“We were looking at the financial aid and they were looking at applications for enrollment and we finally put the two together,” Perry said. “The two just matched up and at that point we went, ‘Yeah, this is fraudulent.’”

The community college system is beefing up internal reporting and security measures after finding that 20% of recent traffic on its main portal for online applications was “malicious and bot-related,” according to a memo issued Monday by Valerie Lundy-Wagner, interim vice chancellor of digital innovation and infrastructure.

Nearly three-quarters of that traffic was caught by new software called Imperva Advanced Bot Detection, which was installed in July, and the matter remained of “grave concern,” Lundy-Wagner said.

“I’m certainly alarmed,” said California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley, who is on temporary leave working for the Biden administration. “There’s lots of unscrupulous players right now trying to access and exploit benefits, not unlike what’s happened with unemployment insurance and any number of other benefits that have been made available recently because of the pandemic.

“But I’m confident that the colleges have been able to identify the activity and are working to mitigate the risk to campuses,” he said.

Keep reading.

 

Majority of Interpreters, Other U.S. Visa Applicants Were Left Behind in Afghanistan

Y'all know how pissed I am over all of this.

I need to keep my anger in check, actually. I'm not an angry person (which gives you an idea how infuriating all this is). 

In any, at WSJ, "U.S. still doesn’t have reliable data on who was evacuated from Afghanistan, a senior State Department official says":

WASHINGTON—The U.S. left behind the majority of Afghan interpreters and others who applied for visas to flee Afghanistan, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday, despite frantic efforts to evacuate those at risk of Taliban retribution in the final weeks of the airlift.

In the early days of the evacuation effort, thousands of Afghans crowded Kabul’s airport seeking a way to flee the country. Some made it through without paperwork, while American citizens and visa applicants were unable to enter and board flights out.

The U.S. still doesn’t have reliable data on who was evacuated, nor for what type of visas they may qualify, the official said, but initial assessments suggested most visa applicants didn’t make it through the crush at the airport.

“I would say it’s the majority of them,” the official estimated. “Just based on anecdotal information about the populations we were able to support.”

The Special Immigrant Visa program set up in 2009 aimed to help those at risk of Taliban reprisal for helping the U.S., including interpreters for the U.S. military and diplomatic and foreign aid workers.

The Biden administration has been under intense pressure by lawmakers, veterans and other advocates to do more to help the more than 20,000 Afghans who had already applied for visas when the U.S. decided to withdraw. Including their family members, as many as 100,000 Afghans may be eligible for relocation.

The U.S. had only just begun airlifting those in the final stages of the process when Kabul fell.

The U.S. and its allies evacuated more than 123,000 people out of Afghanistan on a combination of military, commercial and charter flights in the final weeks of the mission.

The State Department says it doesn’t have reliable data on the composition, but it says about 6,000 were U.S. citizens. It says fewer than 200 Americans that wanted to leave have been left behind.

The majority of those evacuated were Afghans, including those that worked for foreign embassies, aid programs, media and some that had simply made it through the crowd but had no paperwork.

“Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help,” the official added.

On Friday, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the U.S. had evacuated 7,000 Special Immigrant Visa applicants to the U.S. It wasn’t clear whether the figure included family members.

The State Department has repeatedly said it lacks complete data on the composition of the evacuation population.

“Much of that information is going to be forthcoming once these individuals have cycled through transit points in the Middle East, in Europe, and for those who are being relocated to the United States, relocated here,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday.

Among the visa applicants left behind was an Afghan interpreter who was part of a 2008 mission to rescue then- Sen. Joe Biden and two other senators when their helicopter made an emergency landing in blinding snow in a valley 20 miles southeast of Bagram Air Field.

His application had been snagged in the bureaucracy when the Taliban took over, and now he is in hiding.

On Tuesday, the interpreter, identified only as Mohammed to protect his identity, made an appeal for help to Mr. Biden in The Wall Street Journal.

“Don’t forget me,” he said. In response to the story, Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said the U.S. wouldn’t forget him.

“We’re going to cut through the red tape,” he told MSNBC. “We’re going to get him and other SIVs out.”

In the final days of the evacuation leading to the withdrawal of all U.S. troops on Monday, the U.S. focused its efforts on U.S. citizens and permanent residents...

 

A Dishonest Afghanistan Accounting

Must read, at WSJ, "Biden spins a tragedy for U.S. interests into an antiwar victory":

American Presidents must make hard decisions, and we’re inclined to support them when they do so overseas in the national interest. But President Biden’s defiant, accusatory defense on Tuesday of his Afghanistan withdrawal and its execution was so dishonest, and so lacking in self-reflection or accountability, that it was unworthy of the sacrifices Americans have made in that conflict.

The charitable interpretation is that this is what Mr. Biden really believes about Afghanistan in particular, war in general, and how to defend the U.S. The uncharitable view is that he and his advisers have decided that the only way out of this debacle is to lie about it, blame everyone else, and claim that defeat is really a victory. Neither one is reassuring about Mr. Biden’s character, his judgment, or—most ominously—the long three-and-a-half years left in his Presidency.

***

Start with the dishonesty, although we only have space to cover some of the falsehoods. Mr. Biden again claimed he was hamstrung by Donald Trump’s bad deal with the Taliban.

Mr. Trump’s deal was rotten, but as a new President he could have altered it as he has so much else that Mr. Trump did. The Trump deal was based on the Taliban fulfilling conditions—such as negotiating a deal with the Afghan government—that they had already broken when Mr. Biden became President. Yet Mr. Biden claims he was both a prisoner of that deal and courageous for fulfilling it.

He also repeated that his only choices were total withdrawal or “escalation” with thousands of troops. His own advisers offered him alternatives in between, as did the Afghanistan Study Group. He was so bent on withdrawal, and so quickly, that he refused to adjust the military plan even as the Taliban made gains and the CIA warned that the Afghan government was likely to fall.

Mr. Biden described the evacuation as if it were a triumph, and that his Administration had planned for such a contingency in case the Afghan military collapsed. This is, literally, unbelievable. Multiple media reports have revealed that the White House was caught by surprise and preparing for vacation en masse when Kabul fell. The military had to scramble and stage a heroic effort to evacuate those who were able to get to the airport. Mr. Biden wants to take credit for putting out the fire he started.

The President even had the ill grace to blame Americans for not leaving Afghanistan sooner, and Afghans for not fighting. But his own government clearly felt no urgency, as the U.S. Embassy had to frantically destroy documents in the final hours. As for the Afghans, he demeans the sacrifice of the 66,000 who died fighting the Taliban, often next to Americans. They collapsed when they lost air support as the U.S. contractors left and after the military abandoned Bagram Air Base in the dead of night.

Most dishonest—and dangerous—was the President’s assertion that “the war in Afghanistan is now over.” No one in the jihadist movement believes that. The Taliban have won a major victory in the long war that Islamic radicals are waging against the U.S. They have secured Afghanistan for what is likely again to become a refuge for recruits for al Qaeda, ISIS-K and the Haqqani network.

Mr. Biden wants Americans to believe that the U.S. can counter this from “over the horizon,” by which he means drones and satellites. But now the U.S. has no military in the country, and no CIA listening post in Khost. It has no friendly government or allies to locate and gather intelligence on terror camps. The U.S. has all of those assets to counter terrorists in Yemen, Somalia, Iraq and Syria. Every expert we know says Mr. Biden’s claims of easy over-the-horizon capability are a fantasy.

***

The President finished his remarks with a discourse on the horrors of war, which no one denies. But in laying out the costs, and the human tragedies, he also sends a signal to the world about his own resolve. He is telling rogues and autocrats that he lacks the will to send American soldiers into harm’s way. He will conduct his counterterror war only from a distance, with unmanned drones.

Those are useful and can save American lives. But they are no substitute for soldiers on the ground who can capture or kill the likes of bin Laden, or rescue Americans held hostage. The hard men in Beijing, Moscow, Tehran and the terror dens of Helmand will test Mr. Biden’s war-weariness.

Mr. Biden’s unapologetic speech also signals that the White House intends to close the books on Afghanistan and pivot to domestic affairs. No one will lose their jobs. They’ll all talk from the same script. Mr. Biden may never speak of it again. All the more reason for Congress and the press to explore the many bad decisions that led to this American security debacle...