Month: August 2021

Op-Ed authored by former Trump admin official Emily Miller via Emily Posts,

I’ve been tweeting updates from my sources on the situation. But since many people don’t have Twitter, I’m switching over to have a hard link where people can get real-time update on what is happening on the ground. To get caught up, read from the bottom. I’ll keep posting on this link with updates that will start after the photo below.

Pres. Joe Biden lost the final battle in the Afghanistan war. Americans and Afghan allies were abandoned by the U.S. government in the days before the August 31 departure.

However, brave and patriotic retired military special operators have taken over the mission to leave no man behind. They are giving me information to expose the crisis so that the politicians in DC will stop working against them. Also, rescue operations are being done by international organizations and other former U.S. military.

All these sources are giving me details from Afghanistan so that people there can get direction in this chaos and the American public knows the reality.

SOURCES GUIDE:

MARK — RETIRED SPECIAL OPERATOR IN THE U.S.

JOHN – RETIRED SPECIAL OPS IN KABUL

MATT- RETIRED U.S. ARMY COLONEL ASSISTING SPECIAL OPS, CALLING HIM

JIM– INTERNATIONAL SAFETY AND SECURITY OFFICER FOR ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST RELIEF ORGANIZATIONS

JOE – GOVERNMENT CONTRACTOR “JOE” HELPING RESCUE AFGHAN ALLIES

CHRIS– FORMER EMPLOYER OF THE RET. SPECIAL OPS IN AFGHANISTAN

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Monday afternoon:

The retired special ops teams in Afghanistan have millions in private funding and “assets.” But the U.S. government will not work with them. I just spoke to my contact Mark on the phone. This is the latest:

MARK

Current situation (4:30pm ET)

“TB are dismantling 5 AWCC cell towers in and around Kabul (confirmed by one of my sources as well)”

“GRU (Russian intelligence) are helping TB identify AMCITS and GC (Green Card) holders.”

On Kabul airport:

“The Kabul airport is closed except flights for American citizens.”

“The best option the government can do would be to deploy a Ranger Battalion to extract these people. The Ranger Regiment trains for this exact type of operation.  Rangers could be there in less than 24 hours from go,”

“The best option the government can do would be to deploy a Ranger Battalion or some special operations unit to extract these people. Special ops train for this exact type of operation.  They could be there in less than 24 hours from go.”

“But we have the assets to do it. If the government would even assist us, we could do the mission. But we are still encountering obstacles.”

“We were getting planes in and getting people out as of 3-4 days ago. Since then we haven’t been able to get anything into Kabul.”

Next options after Kabul airport

“The Taliban has lists of these peoples names. I think the main people they are looking for now are big generals or big Afghan politicians who didn’t get out because they weren’t high enough. My guys are not directly being hunted yet.”

“I have all my guys bedded now because it’s too dangerous.”

Why are retired military in Afghanistan?

I asked why these retired operators were putting their own lives on the line by going back to Afghanistan.

“We love those people. I have built a bond with these people and really want to get them to safety.  This is the most important mission that I have ever done in my entire life.”

“This one Afghan guy trusted me with his life. And even now, he’s still saying, ‘We love America, I’ll risk my life for America.’ I have him still doing work for American citizens and Afghan partners—  even while he’s trying to survive himself.”

“I have another guy, married to an American citizen, but he’s not a citizen. His English isn’t good so we’re going through his wife. And after talking to his wife for countless hours through text and over calls it breaks our hearts to see them have to go through this catastrophe that could have easily been avoided — and even reversed — if the call had been made even a few days ago.”

I asked him to find out what happened to the report that there were 7 buses of American women. He said he’s going to reach back out to the various sources on the ground who reported it back to him.

JIM

“This was just sent to me – sounds like victory fire come from the airport.” pic.twitter.com/ahuX4HiJWX

— Emily Miller (@emilymiller) August 30, 2021

“FYI some of the plane nerds are saying 3 C-17s are inbound. Appears to be the case on flight radar, but they look to be maybe 30 away… no-one knows how long they will be on the ground. My advice remains they should go nowhere near the airport now. It will be festooned with TB once the US leaves.”

Also – for the fucknuckles trolling you with flight radar screenshots. My western guys on the ground are telling me Badri313 are now in full control of the airport. That video seems to support it and a NOTAM for HKIA went out 6 hours ago saying the airport is now uncontrolled and there is no ATC service (NOTAMs are publicly available). If they prefer to trust an app over official notifications and eyewitnesses then that’s on them.

JOE

Source at Fort McCoy in Wisconsin on the Afghan refugees today pic.twitter.com/WLr7r0CJ6l

— Emily Miller (@emilymiller) August 30, 2021

Click here to read the rest of the report.

With the Supreme Court officially striking down Biden’s eviction moratorium and with most state-level restrictions set to expire over the next month, Goldman has calculated how sharply evictions could rise under current policy in order to estimate the potential impact on the economy.

First some big picture details:

• Despite the severe recession, evictions actually declined during the coronacrisis due to the national eviction moratorium, with eviction filings declining 65% in Blue states and 61% nationwide.

• Using rent delinquency data from real estate companies, the National Multifamily Housing Council, and the Census Pulse survey, the bank estimates that  2½-3½ million households are behind on rent, with $12-17bn owed to landlords.

• Despite the $25bn dispersed from the Treasury to state and local governments, the process of providing these funds to households and landlords has been slow. Only 350k households received assistance in July, and at this pace, 1-2 million households will remain without aid and at risk of eviction when the last 2021 eviction bans expire on September 30.

Next, we jump right to Goldman’s findings before digging deeper into the analysis. According to the bank: 

• The strength of the housing and rental market suggests landlords will try to evict tenants who are delinquent on rent unless they obtain federal assistance. And evictions could be particularly pronounced in cities hardest hit by the coronacrisis, since apartment markets are actually tighter in those cities.

• Taken together, Goldman believes roughly 750k households will ultimately be evicted later this year under current policy.

• Goldman expects that a small drag on consumption and job growth will result from an eviction episode of this magnitude, but the implications for covid infections and public health are probably more severe.

• The end of the moratoriums would also exert downward pressure on shelter inflation as vacancy rates rise. Under our baseline estimates, post-moratorium evictions will raise the vacancy rate by about 1pp, which on its own would lower shelter inflation by 0.3pp in 2022, partially offsetting the intense upward pressure from the housing shortage.

With that in mind, we next look closer at the underlying causes behind the coming “Rental Policy Shock”, as well as what comes next.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court overturned the federal eviction moratorium that had constrained the ability of landlords to evict tenants adversely affected by the pandemic recession. As shown in the chart below, because most states do not currently have eviction bans in place and because those that do are also set to expire by September, roughly 90% of the country will lose access to these emergency protections by the start of the fourth quarter.

The coming end of the eviction moratorium will result in a sharp and rapid increase in eviction rates in coming months unless Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) funding is distributed at a much faster pace or Congress addresses the issue, for example in the upcoming reconciliation package. These key deadlines are summarized in the table below.

The tenant protection policies listed above significantly reduced evictions during the first 18 months of the pandemic, with eviction rates actually falling instead of rising as typically happens during a recession. Because of the legal gray area and income-eligibility requirements of the federal eviction bans, state and local moratoriums have often been more effective in preventing evictions. As shown in the left panel of the next chart, eviction rates plummeted to near-zero while the strictest eviction bans of spring 2020 were in effect, and on average, eviction filing rates remain less than half their pre-crisis pace.

The right panel above shows that eviction filings have generally fallen more dramatically in liberal states and cities adopting more stringent protections like California and New York (-65% across Blue States). These states are also more likely to interpret the federal moratoriums more generously than Red States.

Economic Impact of the Moratoriums

The eviction moratoriums primarily affected the real economy through their impact on tenant-occupied housing consumption and consumer cash flows, both of which were highly positive: the housing consumption category continued to rise during the crisis in spite of the surge in unemployment (+0.9% in 2020 and +0.8% in 1H21, real basis). However, the category represents only 2.5% of GDP, so the direct impact on GDP levels through this channel was probably small (0.1-0.2% of GDP).

Eviction Backlog

Obviously, the eviction moratorium had extremely favorable consequences for the economy – after all it delayed the realization of true supply and demand at the expense of taxpayers and massive debt monetization. However, this period of involuntary taxpayer generosity is coming to an end and as of this moment, estimates of rental delinquencies run the gamut from under 1mn units to upwards of 15mn, with the wide range reflecting the rapid changes in the labor and rental markets over the last year, as well as the lack of timely and representative data on the subject. Goldman’s estimates, shown below, indicate 1-2mn households at risk of eviction even after next month’s federal aid distributions, of which roughly 750k households would be evicted under the status quo.

As shown in the exhibit above, Goldman estimates that the number of housing units at risk of eviction, based on uncollected tenant revenues in 2021Q2 for large property managers, representing 20mn tenant-occupied housing units, and based on survey data reporting the share of consumers who owe back rent and also “lost employment income” during the pandemic, representing the remaining 25mn units. Because the moratoriums also deferred hundreds of thousands of evictions unrelated to the pandemic, one should also add an additional backlog to reflect these missing filings.

Together, the bank estimates that 2½-3½ million households are significantly behind on rent and at risk of eviction without policy support. Since roughly half of eviction filings historically result in eviction (47% over 2006-2016), Goldman assumes that barring a new eviction ban from Congress or a much faster pace of ERA distribution, 750k households will face eviction in the fall and winter months. With 8-9 million Americans currently unemployed and emergency unemployment programs winding down, the sudden loss of tenant protections could plausibly generate an eviction episode of this magnitude.

Translating these figures to a dollar amount of back rent based on the stock and flow of bad tenant debt among residential REITs, implies 4.4 months of rent payments outstanding on average across tenants who are behind on rent. This is consistent with research from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimating average tenant debt at 3 months’ rent. Taken together, some $12-17 billion of bad tenant debt accumulated during the crisis.

 Yet Another Bottleneck

With $25bn already dispersed from the Treasury to state and local governments and another $20bn available, the size of the Congressional allocation would appear more than sufficient to prevent an eviction crisis. But so far, the process of recovering back rents has been disappointingly slow, in part because doing so requires a significant amount of matching of information from the renter and the landlord. After doubling month-over-month in June to $1.5bn, the pace of distributions plateaued at $1.7bn in July (and $4.5bn cumulatively). Because of this and because utilities and electric bills are absorbing a significant minority of these funds, under current policy, a significant share of the 2½-3½ million households behind on rent could ultimately face eviction later this year.

As shown in Exhibit 6, at the current monthly processing pace of 350k households, 1-2 million delinquent households would remain without ERA aid at the start of Q4 when the last 2021 eviction bans are set to expire (NY, WA).

At the same time, the strength of the housing and rental market suggests landlords will try to evict delinquent units unless they can obtain federal funding. In fact, as shown in the next chart, apartment markets are actually tighter in cities hardest hit by the coronacrisis. This reduces the incentive for landlords to negotiate with delinquent tenants or wait for federal aid.

Economic Consequences

The final question is what would the coming surge in evictions mean for employment, consumption, and inflation?

Here Goldman’s economists write that eviction increases the likelihood of a subsequent unemployment spell by around 2%. Based on 750k units and 1.17 payroll jobs per household, Goldman estimates 20k incremental job losses over the next year as a result of the end of the moratoriums (naturally, that number is far too low).

While the consumption effects of such job losses would be small for economy as a whole, the end of the moratoriums also means that households who skipped rent payments would need to cut back in other areas. Based on a marginal propensity to consume of 0.7 for delinquent units during Q2, Goldman estimates a ¼% drag on Q4 consumption growth from this channel.

We conclude by analyzing the inflation implications of these developments. While small in GDP terms, housing rental prices provide the source data for 17% of the core PCE inflation basket and 40% of the core CPI basket. Here Goldman writes that in its view, eviction moratoriums reduced shelter inflation early in the crisis by increasing the prevalence of rent forgiveness: the CPI statisticians impute a 95% price reduction for such housing units. Updating its previous proxy based on city-level rent declines, Goldman estimates rent forgiveness lowered PCE shelter prices by 0.32% during 2020 and by another 0.1% in 2021.

There is a silver lining: a surge in evictions should create new inventory of available rental housing, partially offsetting rapidly rising housing costs,.

So looking ahead, the end of the moratoriums will likely boost the market supply of rental units, because evicted tenants often move in with family members or leave the urban rental market entirely. Based on the historical relationship between vacancies and shelter inflation (holding unemployment constant), a 500k rise in vacancies would boost the rental vacancy rate by 1pp and exert 0.3pp of downward pressure on shelter inflation in 2022.

Despite this “benefit”, based on the continued improvement in the labor market, robust housing market fundamentals, and the sharp pickup in mid-year rental prices, Goldman still forecast PCE housing inflation to pick up from 2.2% currently to 3.5% at year-end and 4.6% in 2022. That means that housing is about to become completely unaffordably to virtually anyone outside of the top 1%. As for the original American Dream (i.e. owning a house), of all those who are about to get evicted, our advice: aim lower…

Submitted by Job Search Intelligence

In 2013, Educate To Career invented a completely new methodology for ranking colleges. Our system was based on the economic value that colleges created for students. It was not another rehashed list of colleges, sorted by SAT score. This new system was based solely on the colleges ability to provide future earnings value to their students. We statistically valued graduation rates, occupational outcomes (including salaries), student loan repayment rates, labor market attachment, and other factors to score colleges. The ETC College Rankings Index quickly changed the discussion regarding how people valued colleges. Aura or cache became less important and career outcomes rose to the forefront. And college costs became a top consideration. Students, parents, college planners and the like coalesced around the understanding that colleges were fairly assessed by their ability to prepare students for the job market, at a reasonable cost.

This new ideology immediately began taking hold and was instrumental in improving the college enrollment decisions people made. Since launching our original College Rankings Index, there has been an incremental trend where enrollments are rising at affordable, value oriented colleges. Families became aware of the fact that their local state college provides a good education at a great price, largely because they’ve already paid for that college with your tax dollars. Again, our rankings was not a list of colleges sorted by SAT score, high to low. It was a re-ordering of higher education institutions, based on how well they served their mission of preparing young people for the workforce, and at a reasonable cost.

The Covid Effect on College Planning

Prior to Covid, families were making incremental adjustments to their college planning decisions. They were trending away from expensive private schools, while enrollments in public state colleges were ticking up by 1% to 2% annually. At the same time, students were selecting more practical majors, such as: business, engineering, and health. The word was clearly out that STEM studies lead to real jobs. Studying these majors at lower cost state colleges is just good, practical college planning. Families were saving many $thousands on tuitions each year, while their kids were enrolling in career tracking degrees that will lead to jobs that pay double what ‘soft’ degrees pay.

Then Covid hit. And it hit colleges hard. Covid compressed 5 years of this gradual shift in enrollment trends into 1 year of stark and abrupt change where families became dramatically more cost conscious in terms of the colleges they chose, and the majors in which their kids enrolled. Prior to Covid, the enrollment trend was biasing towards more affordable colleges, and practical majors. The word was clearly out that STEM studies lead to real jobs. Covid radically accelerated the trend that was already underway.  

With all of this in mind, a conventional college rankings system is less relevant than ever. People will always be curious to know which of Harvard, Princeton or Yale is 1st in a given year; but they realistically concluded years ago that it had no bearing on their own college plans.

Negotiating Tuitions is Now Easier and More Common than Ever

College tuitions have been negotiable for over 20 years, though the folks in the admissions offices won’t admit that the practice was becoming more widespread, as they are revenue driven salespeople. The bottom line is this – at almost every college in the U. S., over half of the students are given at least some ‘institutional aid’, which is a fancy name for a discount. The amount of institutional aid being doled out is increasing every year and the number of students receiving institutional aid is increasing as well.

A key function of our new College Rankings Index is to provide you with data points that highlight the colleges where you have the greatest opportunity to negotiate, and arrive at the lowest possible net tuition.

A College Rankings System that Reflects the Needs of Students Today

More recently, shifts in the labor market were necessitating that students become serious about choosing majors that lead to real careers. The evidence is clear that labor markets are evolving rapidly and that technical skills are the future. This is especially true for young people. Employers are seeking people with specific skill sets, and less focused on brand name diplomas.

Our newest generation College Rankings Index incorporates the aforementioned realities of college, as well as the dynamics of the labor market. This new system represents the academic interests of each individual student, and allows them to create a list of colleges that will enable them to plan their own path through higher education, and to successfully enter the workforce. Key features of the new ETC College Rankings Index includes:

• Personalization of list – the system will generate a list of colleges that matches academic competencies and interests.

• Focus on academic major – will help select a major that will lead to a real career with strong earnings.

• Reduce your tuition – see the tuition discounts given in recent years to help negotiate the lowest tuition possible.

We proudly release our new ETC College Rankings Index, enabling students to make the most prudent college to career planning decisions.

A few parting notes regarding the legacy systems for ranking colleges, and the 20+ years of disservice they did to students and families:

• Harvard, Princeton, Yale, et al, they don’t create winners, they pick them. Drop outs from those colleges are some of the wealthiest people in the world.

• If you only allow people with an SAT score of 1450 or higher in your doors, you’re starting line up is the top 1%. Congratulations to those colleges for picking ‘all star teams’.

• If you have an SAT score that is 1450 to 1500, you’ve got about a 5% chance of being accepted by any one of the Ivy League colleges.

• For the past 20 years, starting salaries for STEM graduates have risen by 3% to 5% annually. During that same timeframe, salaries for graduates with soft degrees have seen 0% to 2% wage gains. By every metric: unemployment rate, labor market attachment, student loan repayment rates, homeownership rates, the list goes on…. graduates with STEM degrees have faired substantially better in the labor market than have their counterparts with soft degrees. The key takeaway here is that the entire college rankings industry has fixated families on expensive (and often unattainable colleges) while neglecting what really matters – the academic major.

Despite all of the aforementioned facts and data points, various producers of college rankings have continued to peddle systems which are regurgitated lists of the same elite colleges dominating the top spots. Since 2013, our College Rankings Index has provided a tremendous value to students and their families. Our newest system, reflects what students need to know in todays’ labor market to develop their college plans. Given the challenges that students face, our new ETC College Rankings Index is The Only College Rankings That Matter.

North American fertilizer prices are nearing a decade high this week as soaring commodity prices allow farmers to expand crop production, boosting demand for nutrients essential to producing food. 

The fertilizer industry is experiencing supply-side constraints while demand is rising. 

Rabobank’s latest commodity note explained that farmers are expanding plantings and dispensing more fertilizer on fields to increase crop yields since ag prices have jumped due to money printing by the central bank, weather-related issues worldwide, and supply chain issues. The Dutch bank warns, higher prices will curb purchases of fertilizers. 

“Matched against the furor of trade and geopolitics, fertilizer prices will near the equilibrium under which relative value creates demand destruction,” analyst Matheus Almeida said. 

Bloomberg lists several factors driving up the costs of fertilizer, include “elevated freight rates, increased tariffs, higher energy costs and supply constraints for nitrogen, potash, and phosphate.” 

It’s unclear how long fertilizer prices will remain at 9-year highs, but increased farming costs will put upward pressure on food prices. So much for the “transitory” narrative the Federal Reserve and mainstream media continue to pedal. 

In early March, we quoted Citi’s commodity desk who expressed optimism in the agri space. At the time, they pointed out: “We remain positive on all Ag names, and our rank order is MOS, NTR, CF, CTVA, and FMC.”

Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via AmGreatness.com,

Afghanistan has been reinvented as the best-equipped terrorist nation in the world, basking in the prestige of humiliating the world’s superpower…

Joe Biden’s scripted or no-questions press conferences, and the clean-up afterward by Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and Jen Psaki, have been some of the most misleading episodes in modern presidential history—mostly in what was not said rather than was exaggerated, warped, and misrepresented. 

Biden as Commander-in-Chief

The more Joe Biden mutters “The buck stops here” or “I take full responsibility,” the more we know he will not – and not just because of his now reduced mental state, but because 1) he repeats the same opportunist messaging that he has for the last 50 years of his political career, and 2) the only true thing he could say was “I ordered a withdrawal in the most reckless manner in U.S. military history.”

When Biden then blames Donald Trump, it raises the immediate questions: 

1) If the Afghanistan deal was so flawed, why did Biden stick with it, given his other radical departures from what he inherited on the border, on fossil fuels, on the Middle East—on just about everything before January 20, 2021? 

2) So, was it good or bad to withdraw all U.S. troops? Was Trump wrong to have bequeathed him a policy of graduated withdrawal, but Biden was right to have continued it for a while—only to have accelerated it into surrender and flight?

3) Why did the violence erupt on Biden’s rather than on Trump’s watch? And was his order for a hasty flight in the dead of night from Bagram Air Base also the inherited Trump departure plan?

When Joe Biden now threatens al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, and others with revenge, he sounds, unfortunately, more like the ridiculous Joe of “Corn Pop” braggadocio with his weaponized chain, or Joe taking Trump behind the gym to womp on him, or young Joe Biden slamming the mouthy kid’s head on the lunch counter. Speaking softly with a club is preferable to being loud with a twig.

We have all heard, ad nauseam, too many of Biden’s He-Man stories. The latest rhetoric does not hide the fact that Biden had opposed the Osama bin Laden raid, criticized the termination of Qasem Soleimani, left Afghanistan in the most shameful retreat in U.S. history, and is now begging the Saudis to pump more oil after cutting back on our ample supplies and trashing Riyadh as part of his return to the Obama pivot to Iran. 

Biden loves appeasement lists. He provided the Taliban with a list of whom we wished to evacuate. (When the Taliban soon knock on the door of an American in Kabul who thinks their message will be, “We’re here to escort you to your flight”?) In the same manner, Biden provided Putin with a helpful list of institutions he wanted Putin’s satellite cyber-criminals to exempt from hacking. 

The blame for this sordid mess is threefold: 

1) The media that knew Biden was debilitated and so covered up that fact to carry the candidate across the finish line in November. 

2) The Democratic apparat that envisioned Biden lasting just long enough (the country be damned) to provide the needed cover of a sharply left-wing agenda. 

3) The Pentagon’s top brass, active and retired, who for years leaked about and obstructed Trump, sought to toady up to the press in its “wokeness,” and posed as speaking truth to power, but have now gone strangely silent when we need public voices to oppose the present Afghanistan nihilism of the administration.

Partnering With the Taliban

The Taliban are to al-Qaeda and ISIS as the Nazis in World War II were to fellow fascists of the Spanish Blue Division, the Hungarian Arrow Cross, and the Romanian Iron Guard—ethnic and ideological variants of the same radical nihilist cause. No act of terror goes on in Afghanistan without someone in the Taliban ordering or allowing it. Their “ring” around the airport is only an obstruction for whom they choose: Americans and their allies. 

The Taliban may for a moment seek plausible deniability of suicide bombings to hasten the U.S. departure in shame, temporarily disavowing credit for slaughtering Americans as they leave. But as soon as U.S. soldiers are gone, the Taliban will give free rein to its hounds al-Qaeda and ISIS, brag that they drove out the United States, and then resume their accustomed murdering and raping of civilians. We should expect lots of silent, under-the-table Bowe Bergdahl-type swaps, trades, and humiliations for the next year or so. We will likely sell out our former friends in the Northern Alliance, pay cash under the table per hostage head, and lie about a “new” Taliban. 

So, should we laugh or cry when General Kenneth McKenzie assures us that the Taliban and the U.S. military have the same agenda: Americans exiting Afghanistan as soon as possible? 

Yes, their agenda is the Pentagon exiting Afghanistan as soon as possible—but with the greatest global humiliation, loss of life, and general sense of defeat. In contrast, our agenda is to leave Afghanistan soberly and methodically, even if that means regaining Bagram for as long as necessary to achieve our own strategic goals.

The Abandoned Arsenal

The administration never mentions the vast horde of U.S. weaponry that was simply abandoned to the Taliban. Why? Is it to be “$80 billion here, thousands of machine guns there—no big deal”?

Estimates of the trove’s value range from $70 billion to $90 billion. The stockpile likely includes 80,000 vehicles, including 4,700 late-model Humvees, 600,000 weapons of various sorts, 162,643 pieces of communications equipment, more than 200 aircraft, and 16,000 pieces of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance equipment, including late-model drones. Especially worrisome are the loss of night-vision equipment, 20,000-plus grenades, and 1,400 grenade launchers, as well as more than 7,000 machine guns—the perfect equipment for jihadist terror operations and asymmetrical street fighting. 

We can look at this disaster in a number of depressing ways. One would be to compare this giveaway to military aid given to Israel over the last 70 years, which more or less has amounted to about an aggregate $100 billion. In other words, in one fell swoop, the Pentagon deposited into Taliban hands about 80 percent of all the military aid that we’ve ever given to Israel since the founding of the Jewish state. In terms of tactical and operational capability, the Taliban may now be the best-equipped terrorist force in Asia and the Middle East.

Assume that for the next quarter-century, Afghanistan will become not just the world’s training haven for Islamic terrorists, but an international, no-questions-asked, cash-on-the-barrel arms market for anti-Western terrorist cliques. 

Or we can assess the damage psychologically. For the immediate future (possibly over the next few days or weeks), American soldiers could face the prospect of being attacked or killed by those who are outfitted in their own mirror image, and they might be blown up by their own former weapons. 

Yet the media never asked for, nor did the Pentagon volunteer, any explanation of why such stocks were simply abandoned, or at least not destroyed before fleeing, or not later bombed. Since nothing makes sense, we must strain the imagination: was the $80 billion in arms given as de facto bribe money to get our own out? 

In addition, the beefed-up U.S. embassy in Kabul reportedly cost nearly $1 billion, comparable to America’s most expensive embassy in London. It will now become a Taliban stronghold. Bagram Air Base—originally built with U.S. help and money during the Eisenhower Administration—has been updated with hundreds of millions of dollars of American investment in the last 20 years, in buildings, a new runway, personnel accommodations, detention facilities, and infrastructure. 

Although it had been the target of several Taliban attacks, Bagram was largely considered defensible. It allowed coalition and Afghan forces to enjoy 100 percent air superiority over the entire country. Biden talks endlessly of the “over the horizon” capability of distant bases and ships, while omitting that he destroyed “right over the target” current capability. Why these vital American investments were simply surrendered in the dead of night to looters first, and Taliban second, will be an object of controversy and investigation for decades to come. To think of anything similar, imagine the British surrender of Singapore in 1942 or a combination of Fort Sumter, the burning of Washington in 1814, and Wake Island, December 1941.

The End of American Stature

Regional countries will no longer wish to join the United States in any war on terror because they know they are always just one election from a radical flip-flop in American foreign policy. There is no such thing anymore as bipartisan foreign affairs, since policy is seen as an extension of the revolutionary agendas here at home. Our allies are concluding that the United States is not a bastion of sobriety and careful deliberation that takes its leadership of the free world seriously, but a mercurial, radical leftist country that in a second may self-immolate, as we did in the woke summer of 2020. 

Donald Trump reportedly offended NATO members and weakened the alliance by his bombast. Perhaps, but the record shows a funny type of allied enervation, because his jawboning resulted in a much larger NATO budget, marked gains in military expenditures on the part of NATO members, and a dramatic increase in those nations finally meeting or nearly meeting their two percent of GDP military investment promises. 

And during the Trump Administration, NATO nations could claim that they destroyed ISIS in Syria under U.S. leadership, kept Afghanistan safe while reducing troops, frightened Iran, and taught Russians in Syria not to assault U.S. garrisons. For all the graduated withdrawals of the United States from Afghanistan in 2010-2020, not a single U.S. soldier had died in the 12 months prior to the inauguration of Joe Biden.  

But now? Most of the major NATO nations have condemned the U.S. skedaddle from Afghanistan. They are angry that they were not consulted, and not synchronized in the complex airlift and withdrawal. And they resent the “every man for himself” unilateralism on the part of the United States.  

We cannot expect the European NATO members to stand with the United States in trying to check Chinese aggression. The alliance will no longer badger Germany to cease its new de facto economic alliance with Russia or to stand firm against Russian bullying of frontline NATO states, or to present a unified skeptical front about reentering the flawed Iran deal. Differing views about assistance to Israel will only acerbate. NATO members, rightly or wrongly, feel they were bullied into Afghanistan by the United States, and 20 years later outnumbered the U.S. contingent by nearly fourfold—only to be left stunned as their supposed spiritual and military leader fled first for the exits, after itself surrendering the country to NATO enemies. 

The Future

In an ideal world, Biden would order a nocturnal retaking of Bagram, shift all U.S. evacuation efforts there, and provide air cover for incoming and outcoming flights as well as retaliatory strikes on terrorist enclaves as necessary. He would tell the Taliban that $80 billion of free military stuff was enough of bribes and that any more obstructive efforts will be met with bombs, not more cash and weapons.  

Joe Biden thinks August 31, 2021, is the “end” of Afghanistan. In fact, it is a new beginning of yet another chapter in the much despised “war on terror.” But this time around, the Taliban are victorious. They have been reinvented as the best-equipped jihadist nation in the world, basking in the prestige of humiliating the world’s superpower, and will take ownership of hundreds of billions of dollars of Western investment in infrastructure in Afghanistan’s major cities. 

This disaster can be attributed to Biden’s apparent desire for a 9/11 “no more Afghanistan” anniversary parade—itself to be staged to hide his multifaceted border, economy, energy, and foreign policy failures.

The Chinese are debating now whether to ramp up the assault rhetoric against Taiwan, as more Chinese voices conclude that Biden would support the Taiwanese in meager fashion, as he did U.S. contractors and Afghan interpreters. The Russians are pondering which exposed NATO country or which former Soviet republic might be probed and dissected—in expectation of a tough-guy Biden Corn-Pop lecture but not much else. Kim Jong-un is considering replaying his old role of rocket man, as he calibrates the Biden responses to more missiles launched in Japanese air or water space.  

Watch Iran especially. The theocracy believes this is the most opportune time in 20 years to announce that it is or will soon be nuclear, to unleash Hezbollah, and to step up global terrorist operations on the assumption that Biden will bow his head and declare “We do not forgive; we do not forget” and then retire for an early nap.

While Beijing is busy dismantling its crony capitalism socialism with Chinese characteristics socio-economic system, as it unveils new crackdowns, rules and quasi nationalizations against its most successful private (but not for long) industries every day, China is also putting the communist propaganda into overdrive and is set to educate its youth on the version of “Marxist belief” espoused by its president by infusing “Xi Jinping Thought” into the national curriculum, its ministry of education announced last week.

Already enshrined in China’s Constitution in 2018, “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era” will be taught to thousands of students starting from primary school level up into university, the Independent reports.

Aimed at indoctrinating Marxist beliefs at a young age as well as loyalty to the ruling Chinese Communist Party, the introduction of “Xi Jinping Thought” in textbooks – similar to what the USSR did – will help strengthen the “resolve to listen to and follow the party”, the state-run Global Times reported, citing an official statement.

It will also help teenagers gain confidence in the “path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics”, it said. And with China announcing overnight it would limit children to playing online games for just 3 hours a week, think of just how much more effective China’s communist propaganda will be now in brainwashing its youth.

The national curriculum will be revised to accommodate the 14-point ideological text and will span basic, vocational and higher education in school. It will also be integrated into various subjects, the report said, quoting a member of the National Textbook Committee.

At the earliest stage, primary schools will be tasked with helping children cultivate a love for their country, the Communist Party and socialism, the report said. In middle schools, the focus will be on a combination of perceptual experience and knowledge study which will help students shape basic political judgments and opinions, all wrapped by the overarching intellectual prerogatives of communism, or at least “communism” where a handful of party oligarchs are worth billions and everyone else is an aspiring debt slave. Then at the college level, students will learn about theoretical thinking – by this we can only assume students will “learn” how to reverse engineer western scientific achievements.

The 14-point “Xi Jinping Thought” says that the Chinese Communist Party leadership should be ensured over “all forms of work in China”, the party should take a people-centric approach for the public interest, it should govern China with the rule of law and practise socialist core values like Marxism and communism among others.

It also says that the Xi Jinping-led party should have “absolute leadership” over the armed forces, and espouses an unerring belief in the One China principle what it comes to the country’s borders.

The above represents the latest move to cement the Communist Party’s position generally and Xi’s in particular. Which is fitting for a country which three years quietly became a dictatorship: The 68-year-old Xi abolished presidential term limits in 2018, extending his rule indefinitely.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Here is my column in The Hill on the recent interview of Lt. Michael Byrd who was the hitherto unnamed Capitol Hill officer who shot Ashli Babbitt on January 6th. 

The interview was notable in an admission that Byrd made about what he actually saw… and what he did not see.

Here is the column:

“That’s my job.” Those three words summed up a controversial interview this week with the long-unnamed officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt on Jan. 6. Shortly after being cleared by the Capitol Police in the shooting, Lt. Michael Byrd went public in an NBC interview, insisting that he “saved countless lives” by shooting the unarmed protester. 

I have long expressed doubt over the Babbitt shooting, which directly contradicted standards on the use of lethal force by law enforcement. But what was breathtaking about Byrd’s interview was that he confirmed the worst suspicions about the shooting and raised serious questions over the incident reviews by the Department of Justice (DOJ) and, most recently, the Capitol Police.

Babbitt, 35, was an Air Force veteran and ardent supporter of former President Trump. She came to Washington to protest the certification of the presidential Electoral College results and stormed into the Capitol when security lines collapsed. She had no criminal record but clearly engaged in criminal conduct that day by entering Capitol and disobeying police commands. The question, however, has been why this unarmed trespasser deserved to die.

When protesters rushed to the House chamber, police barricaded the chamber’s doors; Capitol Police were on both sides, with officers standing directly behind Babbitt. Babbitt and others began to force their way through, and Babbitt started to climb through a broken window. That is when Byrd killed her.

At the time, some of us familiar with the rules governing police use of force raised concerns over the shooting. Those concerns were heightened by the DOJ’s bizarre review and report, which stated the governing standards but then seemed to brush them aside to clear Byrd.

The DOJ report did not read like any post-shooting review I have read as a criminal defense attorney or law professor. The DOJ statement notably does not say that the shooting was clearly justified. Instead, it stressed that “prosecutors would have to prove not only that the officer used force that was constitutionally unreasonable, but that the officer did so ‘willfully.’” It seemed simply to shrug and say that the DOJ did not believe it could prove “a bad purpose to disregard the law” and that “evidence that an officer acted out of fear, mistake, panic, misperception, negligence, or even poor judgment cannot establish the high level of intent.”

While the Supreme Court, in cases such as Graham v. Connor, has said that courts must consider “the facts and circumstances of each particular case,” it has emphasized that lethal force must be used only against someone who is “an immediate threat to the safety of the officers or others, and … is actively resisting arrest or attempting to evade arrest by flight.” Particularly with armed assailants, the standard governing “imminent harm” recognizes that these decisions must often be made in the most chaotic and brief encounters.

Under these standards, police officers should not shoot unarmed suspects or rioters without a clear threat to themselves or fellow officers. That even applies to armed suspects who fail to obey orders. Indeed, Huntsville police officer William “Ben” Darby recently was convicted for killing a suicidal man holding a gun to his own head. Despite being cleared by a police review board, Darby was prosecuted, found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison, even though Darby said he feared for the safety of himself and fellow officers. Yet law professors and experts who have praised such prosecutions in the past have been conspicuously silent over the shooting of an unarmed woman who had officers in front of and behind her on Jan. 6.

Byrd went public soon after the Capitol Police declared “no further action will be taken” in the case. He proceeded to demolish the two official reviews that cleared him.

Byrd described how he was “trapped” with other officers as “the chants got louder” with what “sounded like hundreds of people outside of that door.” He said he yelled for all of the protesters to stop: “I tried to wait as long as I could. I hoped and prayed no one tried to enter through those doors. But their failure to comply required me to take the appropriate action to save the lives of members of Congress and myself and my fellow officers.”

Byrd could just as well have hit the officers behind Babbitt, who was shot while struggling to squeeze through the window.

Of all of the lines from Byrd, this one stands out:

“I could not fully see her hands or what was in the backpack or what the intentions are.”

So, Byrd admitted he did not see a weapon or an immediate threat from Babbitt beyond her trying to enter through the window. 

Nevertheless, Byrd boasted, “I know that day I saved countless lives.”

He ignored that Babbitt was the one person killed during the riot. (Two protesters died of natural causes and a third from an amphetamine overdose; one police officer died the next day from natural causes, and four officers have committed suicide since then.)

No other officers facing similar threats shot anyone in any other part of the Capitol, even those who were attacked by rioters armed with clubs or other objects.

Legal experts and the media have avoided the obvious implications of the two reviews in the Babbitt shooting.

Under this standard, hundreds of rioters could have been gunned down on Jan. 6 — and officers in cities such as Seattle or Portland, Ore., could have killed hundreds of violent protesters who tried to burn courthouses, took over city halls or occupied police stations during last summer’s widespread rioting. In all of those protests, a small number of activists from both political extremes showed up prepared for violence and pushed others to riot. According to the DOJ’s Byrd review, officers in those cities would not have been required to see a weapon in order to use lethal force in defending buildings.

Politico reported that Byrd previously was subjected to a disciplinary review when he left his Glock 22 service weapon in a bathroom in the Capitol Visitor Center complex. He reportedly told other officers that his rank as a lieutenant and his role as commander of the House chambers section would protect him and that he expected to “be treated differently.”

• The political tides are turning against the Biden presidency

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In the Babbitt shooting, the different treatment seems driven more by the identity of the person shot than the shooter. Babbitt is considered by many to be fair game because she was labeled an “insurrectionist.” To describe her shooting as unjustified would be to invite accusations of supporting sedition or insurrection. Thus, it is not enough to condemn her actions (as most of us have done); you must not question her killing.

Like many, I condemned the Jan. 6 riot (along with those who fueled the unhinged anger that led to the violence) as the desecration of our Capitol and our constitutional process. But that doesn’t mean rioting should be treated as a license for the use of lethal force, particularly against unarmed suspects. The “job” of officers, to which Byrd referred, often demands a courage and restraint that few of us could muster. As shown by every other officer that day, it is a job that is often defined by abstinence from rather than application of lethal force. It was the rest of the force who refrained from using lethal force, despite being attacked, that were the extraordinary embodiments of the principles governing their profession.

Just when market watchers think they’ve seen the last headline about China’s ongoing Big Tech crackdown, Beijing finds some new industry to harass. On Monday, it was the video game industry, as Chinese regulators limited online gaming to just 3 hours per week for minors, while requiring companies to use facial recognition technology and verified accounts to ensure nobody skirts the new rules.

The results have been pretty stark: more than $1 trillion has been wiped off the aggregate market capitalization of Chinese domestic markets, along with China-based companies traded in Hong Kong and the US.

But it’s not just the public markets that are feeling the impact. Foreign investors have backed away from financing Chinese startups, as the number and value of private equity deals involving foreign investors has fallen in August to its lowest monthly level since the start of the pandemic.

According to Nikkei, which cited the latest figures from data firm PitchBook, deal flow was set to surpass levels from 2020 – until funding suddenly dried up in August.

Chinese startups have raised $32.6 billion from 634 deals that included foreign VCs this year as of Aug. 25, compared with $18.9 billion from 453 in the first eight months of 2020. So far in August, however, just $800 million has been raised from 67 deals with foreign participation, down from $4.7 billion in July.

What else happened around then? The answer should be obvious to most China watchers: Didi’s ill-fated IPO took place at the end of June. With several days remaining in August, $800 million would be a new low, beating the previous low for the pandemic period – $900 million from January 2020 – by $100 million. But even before the Didi IPO, China’s crackdown on its biggest tech firms was already becoming an issue.

Chinese VCs have also scaled back their deal flow in August, though not as dramatically. The value of all deals signed in the country so far this month is $6.6 billion, down from around $9 billion in each of June and July.

The sudden evaporation of deal flow has certainly gotten the investing community’s attention, but at the end of the day, China is simply too large of a market for PE firms to ignore. So few expect it to last long.

Jeffrey Lee, a partner at China-focused venture capital firm NLVC headquartered in Beijing, said robotics and manufacturing automation has been an increasingly hot sector. While more caution and strategy shifts are warranted, exiting China entirely would be out of the question, he said.

“The hard reality is that you can’t find a replacement for the sheer size of the economy, the next phase of its growth and — despite all of the criticism toward the government — the level of institutional development, whether it’s in roads or bridges, or whether it’s in the banking system,” Lee said. “It just doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

VC interest in consumer-focused businesses that are bearing the brunt of Beijing’s crackdown now is also unlikely to shrivel entirely.

“Ultimately there are a lot of consumers in China, and a lot of rising middle-class consumers who are willing to spend,” said Joshua Chao, senior analyst at PitchBook. “There’s a strong reason to say that consumer businesses are still gonna do pretty well in China.”

But the lessons investors have learned about the unique political risks that arise from investing in China will likely linger on. And from here on out, while most expect Chinese firms will continue to go public abroad, Hong Kong will likely replace New York as the preferred venue. That means lower valuations, especially for giant loss-making tech firms with stellar top-line growth.

That could pull down equivalent private valuations, and there could be a further impact if companies are ultimately steered away from going public via New York’s deep capital markets, toward Shanghai, Shenzhen or Hong Kong.

“I think there will still be a resumption of overseas IPOs, but that will probably mean, most likely Hong Kong, and not New York,” said Lee.

Hong Kong’s institutional and retail investors are less keen to back loss-making consumer companies with big long-term ambitions, he said.

“The best thing about the New York markets was that you could take a company that is generating loss but with great top-line growth and build a narrative that created a very successful public company. That is, with few exceptions, not the case in Hong Kong.”

This means valuations might take time to recover.

Op-Ed authored by former Assistant FDA Commissioner Emily Miller via Emily Posts (emphasis ours),

I asked here in “Emily’s Post” and on social media this week if anyone’s mind had changed about getting vaccinated after the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine. Not one person replied “yes.”

A year ago, I would have tried to convince people that the FDA was the gold standard for COVID pharmaceuticals.

Now, I see that the agency needs to fail in order for it to be forced to make radical changes so that the public can trust that the label “approved by the FDA” means its safe.

Compounding the problem is that the FDA’s credibility gap has created a vacuum in which conspiracy theories and misinformation grow quickly. The result is many people don’t believe that the vaccine was actually approved. They don’t trust that it is safe to be vaccinated. They don’t even know who runs the FDA.

Had the FDA made the vaccines authorization and later approval process easy to understand by the public, this mess of vaccine distrust would not have happened. But the FDA refuses to work in public, deliver information in terms we all understand or even show their faces.

And all this could have been avoided if the FDA press office didn’t operate like the Cold War Kremlin. I tried to turn that ship around last year and was thrown overboard for the effort.

My FDA Assignment

I was hired at the FDA during the pandemic because the Commissioner, Dr. Stephen Hahn, needed someone skilled at handling the press in a crisis at the highest levels of government.

I was a spokesman for Capitol Hill leadership during 9/11 and a press secretary at the State Department during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The strategic communications needed for COVID was no different than the wars. The FDA needed to get as much information as allowed out to the public as quickly as possible and be accessible to reporters 24/7.

Hahn asked the White House to change the Assistant Commissioner for Media Affairs position from a civil servant slot into a presidential appointment so that he could hire outside the government. This is a very rare and difficult move to make, so the White House going to all that effort demonstrated how important communications from the FDA was to Operation Warp Speed. 

The commissioner told me when we first talked in early June 2020 that he needed to get the public to trust in the COVID vaccines so they would take them after the emergency use authorizations, which were expected in the fall.

Hahn said that the staff of career civil servants had no experience with the kind of media relations and strategic communications that was necessary for the COVID pandemic.

I’d worked at the State Department and had high level classified security clearance. So I knew how to share with reporters the information that was for the public and hold back what I knew was classified for security.

The State press office talked to reporters on the phone all day, every day. There were daily briefings. It was our job to give the media all the information that the public needed.

In contrast, my “media relations” department at the FDA was staffed with government employees who refused to have much of any relationships with the media.

The FDA and the media

Even though he and the chief of staff (Keagan Lenihan) warned me, I was surprised how the FDA was institutionalized not to share information with the public.

My staff would never talk to reporters on the phone. They emailed back and forth and then would only write a sentence or two of information that had been cleaned by every department in the agency, including the lawyers. I told my staff to stop copying me on emails with reporters and just pick up the phone or tell the reporter to call me. They wouldn’t do it.

As my former colleague David Gortler wrote in “Forbes” in an opinion piece called “How the FDA’s Lack of Transparency Undermines Public Trust”:

A huge part of the lack of transparency at the FDA is its press office, (including the fact that it feels like it needs one) and specifically, the press officers the FDA employs, and the sterilized, canned responses it gives to legitimate scientific inquests. 

Dr. Hahn told me one of his top priorities was to get press releases to stop being pages of tedious scientific terms and make them easy to understand. Even the “beat reporters” at the FDA told me that they didn’t understand some of the press releases As a former reporter myself, I knew that the press skimmed through email story pitches to decide what made the news.

I implemented a new system in which anything that was going to be seen by the public (including the media) had to be written in layman’s terms and easy to understand. I banned acronyms. I got a couple good press releases through the massive system before I was kicked to the curb.

If I asked you to tell me what FDA Acting Commissioner Janet Woodcock looks like, you’d likely draw a blank. That’s because she is never on TV.

This was a huge frustration of mine when I was at the FDA because, as I told the staff repeatedly, news is visual. We needed press conference- on camera- to get broad TV coverage to reach most Americans. They told me that the FDA just doesn’t do on-camera press conferences. They do conference calls with reporters by phone.

The FDA stuck to their faceless communications tactic and hid Woodstock behind a phone (see her below.) They even put this phone call on Youtube. It has gotten 18,000 views. I’m sure that is reporters forced to listen to it for answers, but not a single unvaccinated person weighing a decision.

LIVE NOW: The media call on the first COVID-19 vaccine approval is starting! Stream it here: https://t.co/ZsUebdzRUD

— U.S. FDA (@US_FDA) August 23, 2021

I haven’t seen any TV networks use the phone call video of the vaccine approval. More people on YouTube watched a grown man put together a Transformer toy than the FDA commissioner explaining the vaccine.

All the media coverage visuals of the FDA approval came from Pres. Biden’s press conference. The nation was shown a stuttering, blank eyed president reading a teleprompter that said that the FDA was the “gold standard.” I can’t imagine anyone found him reassuring enough to get a vaccine.

The FDA is also still phoning it in from home. When I started at the FDA in August 2020, I was shocked that none of my 20 plus person staff came to the office. The coronavirus treatments, tests and vaccines were the biggest things to ever go through the FDA, but there was no standard “war room” to strategize and determine tactics.

I told my “advisor” Michael that I wanted the staff to come back to work. He said there was no chance. Even worse, Michael – who was “acting” in my role when I was hired and took it back when I left – said he had not left his own apartment in six months. All the White House appointees worked in the office, so this wasn’t a health issue.

The FDA staff worked 8 hours a day from home and got overtime or paid leave for anything more. In any other job, I would say this is normal, but this is the FDA in a pandemic. I expected more.

The FDA campus in Silver Spring, MD looks to me like a college. But it was eerily empty whenever I went there. The FDA has to show up and work together to be a functional agency in a crisis. They can’t keep hiding behind their advanced degrees and big titles.

The Gold Standard Vaccine Strategy

Hahn and his senior advisors planned that the public would agree to get vaccinated as long as there was no evidence of political interference from the White House. Their belief is that people will get vaccinated after the authorization solely based on the credibility of the FDA.

The problem with the Hahn/FDA “Deep State” plan to get people vaccinated based on their own credibility is they had no self awareness. They lived in a bubble of their own egos. Over and over, Hahn and the top officials said that the FDA label was a “gold standard.”

Biden is still using this useless “gold standard” line now.

Click here to read the rest of the report.

In a Joint Statement published by the U.S. Department of State, almost one hundred governments pledged their support in facilitating the free travel of Afghans that have worked with them or that are considered to be at risk.

According to the statement, the nations “have received assurances from the Taliban that all foreign nationals and any Afghan citizen with travel authorization from our countries will be allowed to proceed in a safe and orderly manner to points of departure and travel outside the country.”

As Statista’s Martin Armstrong details, notably absent from the list are China and Russia who have said they will work together in assisting the Taliban with the rebuilding of the country.

You will find more infographics at Statista

Whether in practice these people will actually be able to leave Afghanistan is still in doubt.

As reported by the New York Times, Michael P. Mulroy, the former United States Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East said:

“Most of the guys that we’re tracking now are terrified to even try to go through Taliban checkpoints” adding:

“So when we’re not there, when the entire focus of the world isn’t on the Taliban, I have zero inclination that they will do anything but probably prosecute, and in many cases execute, people who worked really closely with the U.S.”