Cut to the News
Cut through the clutter to today's top news
August 25, 2021
Good morning
Welcome to today's top news.
Leading the News . . .
Inside Big Tech’s War on Conservatives — and America . . . Anyone who doubts Big Tech is waging a campaign to silence conservatives should examine what’s happening in Afghanistan.
There the Taliban murdered a woman on Tuesday for not wearing a burqa, which covers the entire body from head to toe except a mesh screen for the eyes. The Taliban is also beating innocents in the streets and forcing young girls to marry older fighters. Yet Twitter is allowing Taliban-affiliated accounts to continue using its platform. In fact, the Taliban’s spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, has an account with well over 300,000 followers and can continue posting videos viewed by
millions.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump was banned from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Apparently, the Taliban doesn’t threaten violence nearly as much as Trump. The inconsistency with which Twitter applies its standards is remarkable. Gingrich360
Soviet Playbook.
Ashli Babbitt’s family releases statement: A ‘secret’ internal investigation ‘proves nothing’ . . . An attorney representing the family of slain unarmed Jan. 6 protester Ashli Babbitt lashed out at the Capitol Police on Monday after officially clearing the officer who shot her of any wrongdoing. The officer has never been officially identified by the department. In a post on the social media platform GETTR, conservative commentator and author
Dinesh D’Souza explored the following scenario. “Imagine a left-wing Capitol protest with an unarmed black woman named #AshliBabbitt shot to death by a white police officer who was not threatened with any imminent harm. Now ask yourself what the reaction would be. Then ask if the real Ashli received equal justice under the law,” he wrote. Capitol Police officials said the officer’s name is not being released out of concern for his safety. Terry Roberts, who is representing
Babbitt’s family, responded with a statement, lashing out at the Capitol Police for the department’s conclusions and demanding that officials release all of their findings along with the name of the officer — said to be a lieutenant — who shot and killed Babbitt. Business & Politics Review
Soviet Playbook, again.
Jill Biden Could’ve Kept Us From This . . . There was Joe Biden in mid-June, the Leader of the Free World, shuffling around in tennis shoes on an outdoor patio at the G7 Summit. He looked lost, bewildered, and in need of a friendly face. He looked confused. Then he turned to see his wife, Jill, hustling toward him and waving her hand frantically. She reached for him, grabbed him, and pulled him away hurriedly. What must Jill Biden been
thinking in the years leading up to this moment, knowing full well her husband’s declining cognitive ability and yet still allowing him to run for the most difficult job in the world?
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, herself a mother of nine and the wife of a former congressman, asks this: "When you look at what’s hurting America, when you look at this lack of leadership, and you wonder, who are the people responsible for putting someone this incompetent and frankly this … mentally frail in this position? As a political spouse, I can’t help but look at Jill Biden. … No one knew better his state of mind than Dr. Jill Biden.” Patriot Post
Soviet Playbook: Brezhnev Edition.
Biden suggests US troops may stay in Afghanistan after Aug. 31 . . . President Biden was five hours late for his speech of Afghanistan. This administration is in a state of disarray over Afghanistan — though Biden was several times more than an hour late for appearances before the crisis began. The average daycare center has less chaos than the West Wing. Biden needs to make sure we get every American out of there. President Biden on
Tuesday reaffirmed his intent to complete the U.S. evacuation mission in Afghanistan by Aug. 31, but he also ordered contingency plans if that cannot be accomplished — a position that stoked a new round of outrage and confusion about the United States’ exit from a two-decade war. White House Dossier
55 percent now disapprove of Biden job performance: poll . . . President Biden's approval rating has dropped to 41 percent in light of the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan, a USA Today-Suffolk University poll found. According to the survey results, 55 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Biden's job in office.
Sixty-two percent said they disapproved of Biden's handling of the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan, while 26 percent said they approved and 12 percent said they were undecided. Roughly 82 percent of participants said the issue of Afghanistan was either "very" or "somewhat" important to them. Biden's approval rating fell below 50 percent in several polls over the past week for the first time since he took office. The Hill
Republicans Call for Formal Pentagon Investigation Into Bungled Afghanistan Withdrawal . . . Republicans are calling on the Pentagon's inspector general to launch a formal investigation into the Biden administration's bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, including its decision to abandon scores of American-made weapons that are now in the Taliban's possession. Rep. Carlos Giménez (R., Fla.), a member of the House Homeland Security
Committee, is spearheading legislation that would direct the Defense Department's inspector general to determine how the Biden administration's pullout from Afghanistan endangered scores of American citizens who are trapped in Taliban-controlled Kabul and begging for rescue by U.S. forces. Giménez's bill is the first in what is likely to be a series of Republican efforts to investigate the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Washington Free Beacon
Supreme Court forces Biden to reinstate Trump ‘Remain in Mexico’ policy . . . Evidence that there is in fact now a conservative majority at the Supreme Court that respects the rule of law. The Supreme Court on Tuesday reinstated a Trump-era policy that requires asylum applicants to wait in Mexico while their claims are evaluated by U.S. authorities. The three liberal justices dissented. President Biden canceled the Trump
administration Migrant Protection Protocols, commonly called the Remain in Mexico policy, responding to criticism that it forced vulnerable migrants to wait out their cases in violent border cities. Lower courts found the administration failed to follow proper procedures in ending the policy and that the alternative of paroling into the U.S. asylum applicants en masse may violate federal law. White House Dossier
Voter fraud concerns mounting in tight California recall election . . . Facing the political fight of his life and sinking polls indicating he could lose in the Sept. 14 recall election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom is now plagued by rising concerns over alleged voter fraud after the Secretary of State's Office sent out mail ballots to 20 million voters.Earlier in the year, the state legislature passed a measure to send out mail ballots to
every registered voter whether they asked for one or not. Newsom's opponents argue this was done as a way to protect him from losing, suggesting the only way he could win was through fraud.
Two legislators sued Newsom last year over an executive order he issued changing election procedure. The lawsuit is on appeal and expected to go to the U.S. Supreme Court. One of the plaintiffs, State Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-Rocklin), is running to replace Newsom. Just the News
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CIA Chief William Burns Met With Senior Taliban Figure in Kabul . . . CIA Director William Burns met secretly with the Taliban’s top figure in Kabul on Monday amid a chaotic U.S. effort to evacuate American citizens and Afghans allied with the U.S. in advance of an Aug. 31 deadline, U.S. officials said. Details of the meeting weren’t immediately available, but the CIA chief’s crisis diplomacy comes as the Biden
administration is considering whether to extend the evacuation of tens of thousands of people from Kabul airport beyond the deadline for a U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban on Monday rejected any extension. The Central Intelligence Agency declined to comment on Mr. Burns’s meeting with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar. Wall Street Journal
World Bank suspends aid to Taliban-ruled Afghanistan . . . The World Bank has halted financial aid to Afghanistan amid concerns about "the country's development prospects, especially for women," under the Taliban, a spokesperson told multiple media outlets Wednesday. "We have paused disbursements in our operations in Afghanistan" the spokesperson told the BBC. The move, announced less than a week after the International Monetary Fund
froze funds allocated for Afghanistan amid pressure from the U.S., is another hit to the country's economic prospects under Taliban rule. Politico
Woman pleads for help from Biden, says she is stranded in Afghanistan; Psaki says she is not . . . A mother from the United States who is trapped in Afghanistan amid the U.S. troop withdrawal made an emotional plea for President Joe Biden to help her return to her children as the situation around Kabul becomes increasingly violent. The woman, who has two children in the U.S. and went by the pseudonym of “Fatima” for her safety, thanked
Republican Rep. Carol Miller and her team for being “my only strength” and communicating with her to find a solution to return her to the U.S. White House Dossier
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In Kabul, Private Rescue Efforts Grow Desperate as Time to Evacuate Afghans Runs Out . . . A disparate group of American veterans, military contractors, aid workers and former spies is scrambling to get as many people out of Afghanistan as they can before President Biden shuts down the window for rescues in coming days. Even as tens of thousands of Afghans who helped the U.S. and a large number of American and other foreign citizens
remain stranded, Mr. Biden is sticking by his plan to withdraw the remaining military forces from Kabul’s U.S.-controlled airport by Aug. 31. Erik Prince, the American defense contractor, said he is offering people seats on a chartered plane out of Kabul for $6,500 per person. U.S. and NATO forces are sending special rescue teams into Taliban-controlled areas of the city to spirit their citizens into the airport. And countless Afghans who thought the U.S. would protect them after having
assisted the U.S.-led coalition forces in the past two decades are now realizing that they will most likely be left behind, to face Taliban wrath alone. Private rescue efforts are facing growing obstacles this week, just as the urgency grows. Wall Street Journal
Former British Marine trying to evacuate over 100 Afghan pets at Kabul shelter . . . A former British Royal Marine and founder of a sanctuary for stray animals in Afghanistan is desperately trying to fly out over 100 animals and dozens of workers before next week’s evacuation deadline, a report said.
Paul “Pen” Farthing, 57, said supporters of his organization, Nowzad, have raised enough money to pay for a cargo plane out of Kabul — but British officials said there are “thousands and thousands” of people who need to be prioritized first.
All of the animals — 94 dogs and 79 cats — have been moved the charity’s three locations in the war-torn country to its headquarters in Kabul, The Sun reported. Farthing, who is also still in Afghanistan, fears he will have to euthanize the animals if he can’t get them out by Aug. 31 — the current deadline for foreign forces to leave the Taliban-controlled country. New York Post
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Senator Johnson warns of FDA’s shortcuts to full approval of COVID vaccine . . . Sen. Ron Johnson called out the Biden administration’s health agencies Sunday for shortcutting the usual safety reviews in a rush to give final approval to COVID-19 vaccines, including failing to account for thousands of deaths and adverse reactions among people worldwide who got the shots. In a letter to the administration’s top
health officials, the Wisconsin Republican warned against the Food and Drug Administration’s pending approval of Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, which is expected Monday. He said the fast-track decision appeared more political than scientific since it skipped the usual formal advisory committee meeting and did not fully account for the reports of deaths and disabilities suffered by people after being vaccinated. “Expediting the process appears to only serve the political purpose of
imposing and enforcing vaccine mandates,” Mr. Johnson wrote. The Biden administration appeared eager to use the approval to pursue mandates. Washington Times
New U.S. Intel Report Doesn’t Provide Definitive Conclusion on Covid Origins . . . A new assessment by U.S. spy agencies of the origins of Covid-19 that was delivered to the White House Tuesday didn’t yield a definitive conclusion on whether the new coronavirus jumped to humans naturally, or via a lab leak, in part because of the lack of detailed information from China, two senior U.S. officials said. “It was a deep dive, but
you can only go so deep as the situation allows,” one U.S. official said. “If China’s not going to give access to certain data sets, you’re never really going to know.” Wall Street Journal
This is absurd. First, we would NOT an intelligence service, if China, Russia, and others gave us access to authentic data sets. Do your jobs, apparatchiks! Learn the language and go do some HUMINT collection. Do some comms intercepts like you did on General Flynn, Carter Page, and Tucker Carson.
Second, it is almost never possible to have a definite intel assessment because of the adversary's D&D ops (denial and deception). This is why it is the intelligence analysts' job to "make a call," and assign confidence levels to your assessment and provide alternative analysis, whenever possible. I am certain that Biden's IC did not "make a call" on COVID's origins because the upper echelons of the IC have become super politicized.
Obama got his party; Martha’s Vineyard got its COVID-19 spike . . . OPINION. In early August, former President Barack Obama held a birthday party for himself that included a guest list of hundreds — hundreds of non-face-mask-wearing, non-social distance doing, drinking and dancing celebrities and elites. By the end of August, Martha’s Vineyard emergency rooms were filled with COVID-19 clients. Coincidence? Throughout
August, Martha’s Vineyard saw a rise in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. But since Obama’s birthday party — since his merry birthday party guests began to take up temporary spot on Martha’s Vineyard — hospitalizations and test positives in the county that includes the island jumped 179 percent. Washington
Times
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House Republicans Demand Investigation Into $169 Million In US Funds Allegedly Stolen By Afghan President . . . House Republicans demanded that the Afghan president should be investigated on allegations of stealing $169 million worth of U.S. funds. Attorney General Merrick Garland received a letter from Republican Kentucky Representative James Comer and Republican Wisconsin Representative Glenn Grothman requesting that
the Justice Department investigate Afghan president Ashraf Ghani. Daily Caller
Microsoft, Amazon meet with White House as 500,000 cybersecurity jobs unfilled . . . President Biden on Wednesday afternoon will host a White House meeting focusing on cybersecurity with the leaders of several industries. Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Amazon CEO Andy Jassy will be among the executives representing the tech sector. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, will
represent he financial community. Other industries represented will be insurance, energy and education. "The President recognizes that the escalating cyber threats we face require a whole nation effort, and this meeting will highlight the scope of the challenge we face, but also the opportunities so it's really a call to action," according to a senior administrative official.
Among the topics to be discussed will be ransomware and the ability to purchase secure technology. In the fight against hackers and cyber attacks, there are 500,000 cybersecurity jobs which remain unfilled. Fox Business
This is all for show (показуха, as we used to say in the USSR). You don't need the meetings. The government has been having meetings for 20 years on cyber. Secure the networks, consider pre-emptive defense (i.e. offensive cyber ops) where warranted. we've done this before and the adversaries know the devastating power of our cyber weapons.
Walmart joins Afghanistan refugee rescue efforts, commits $1M . . . Walmart has stepped in to help with refugee resettlement efforts and to support veterans amid the chaotic U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, committing $1 million to non-profits dedicated to assisting those impacted. "We’re looking to the cross-cultural experience of our veteran and Afghan associates to support refugees, service members and one another, as veteran leaders at
Walmart explore ways to support these efforts," Dan Bartlett, Walmart's executive vice president of corporate affairs, said in a statement explaining the move. "We’re offering options for customers to get involved. And the Walmart Foundation is committing $1 million to three nonprofits supporting Afghan refugees entering the U.S., as well as veterans and their families." Fox Business
When the government apparatchiks fail, ordinary Americans and businesses step up to the rescue. Remember, on September 11th 2001, it's our fellow citizens, who took matter in their hands and diverted the United flight 93 that was under the terrorists' control, steering the airplane away from Washington. These heroes sacrificed themselves, crashing the plane in an open field in Pennsylvania, to save countless American lives.
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Knight Sets Women’s World Hockey Scoring Record in US Win . . . Hilary Knight became the all-time scoring leader in women’s hockey world championship history with her 45th goal during the United States’ 6–0 victory over Russia on Tuesday. Knight snapped a tie with former U.S. star Cammi Granato at 3:17 of the second period. The 32-year-old split two defenders with a cutback to find an open shooting lane for a 2–0 lead. “It’s really a
magical moment, and a dream come true,” Knight said. “I hope the next girl looking up is going to shatter that record, because that’s what it’s all about.” The goal also moved Knight into a tie with Granato for the U.S. record of 78 points at worlds, and Brianna Decker became the U.S. assists leader (39) with the pass to Knight. “It’s always incredible to watch players make history,” U.S. coach Joel Johnson said. Epoch Times
CVS workshop tells employees to hold each other 'accountable' for 'non-inclusive' acts . . . CVS Health is holding a "conscious inclusion workshop" that aims to teach employees how to hold each other "accountable" for non-inclusive behaviors. An internal email obtained by FOX Business showed David Casey, SVP of Workforce Strategies and Chief Diversity Officer, discussing the four-week program. The first three weeks included 20-30 minutes
of self-study per week, leading up to a two-hour virtual workshop in the fourth. In the email, Casey continues by outlining different "skills" employees will build during the workshop's fourth week. Those included: "Identify unconscious bias in your day-to-day interactions and experiences," "[d]emonstrate bravery by speaking up and having difficult conversations when observing non-inclusive behaviors," and "[c]ommit to holding yourself and your colleagues accountable to consistently embrace
diversity of all kinds, and take swift action against non-inclusive behaviors." Fox Business
Soviet Playbook.
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9 Black People Who Are Really White Supremacists . . . You'd think that it would be impossible for a black person to be a white supremacist, or at least very difficult. But you're not woke enough if you haven't yet realized that black people can be some of the most anti-black people around. Just trust us, this makes sense. 1. Larry Elder - This is an obvious one. But this man
is trying to defeat California's pasty-white Governor Newsom, so he's clearly a secret member of the KKK. 2. Candace Owens - Candace says some stuff that's so far-right even my uncle on Facebook says it's too far. Raaaaaaycist! See the rest of the bunch in Babylon Bee
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Rebekah Koffler
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