Author Archives: theartfuldilettante

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About theartfuldilettante

The Artful Dilettante is a native of Pittsburgh, PA, and a graduate of Penn State University. He is a lover of liberty and a lifelong and passionate student of the same. He is voracious reader of books on the Enlightenment and the American colonial and revolutionary periods. He is a student of libertarian and Objectivist philosophies. He collects revolutionary war and period currency, books, and newspapers. He is married and the father of one teenage son. He is kind, witty, generous to a fault, and unjustifiably proud of himself. He is the life of the party and an unparalleled raconteur.

How Communist is China ?

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We don’t want even one politically unqualified person sneaking into the Party, fishing for personal gain. Xi Jinping.

A billion Chinese have applied for membership in the Communist Party of China since 2001. 907 million of them were rejected, mostly on moral grounds. It seems that most Chinese adults would take the Party oath, to endure the people’s ordeals first and enjoy their fruits last[1], subject themselves to constant scrutiny, and be held to higher ethical and legal standards than non-members. Adultery is cause for dismissal. Rape is cause for execution. Nonetheless, ninety-four million members are honoring their oath pretty well.

Party People

Founded in 1921, the CPC became the ruling party in 1949 after 300,000 members gave their lives in the war. Membership rose from 4.5 million to 94 million today, or ten percent of the adult population. Membership is prestigious, as I saw while wandering Shenzhen with a French Communist. He had only to produce his Party card to draw an admiring throng, yet members see little financial benefit:

We estimate the returns to membership of the Communist Party of China using unique twin data we collected from China. Our OLS estimate shows a Party premium of 10%, but the within-twin-pair estimate becomes zero. One interpretation is that the OLS premium is due to omitted ability and family background. This interpretation suggests that Party members fare well not because of their political status but because of the superior ability that made them Party members. The estimates are also consistent with another interpretation that Party membership not only has its own effect but also has an external effect on siblings.

Twenty-eight percent of members are farmers, herders, and fishermen, and ethnic minorities are overrepresented but, because membership involves much volunteer work, only twenty-five percent are women. Their average age is thirty years.

The Party’s organizational skills are legendary. When Covid-19 broke out in Wuhan, a million local members were called to duty and forty-eight thousand more–mostly medical specialists–were flown in to contain the virus.

After a Shanghai high-rise fire killed fifty-eight people in 2010, Party volunteers coordinated twenty-five fire stations, a hundred fire trucks, and a thousand firefighters along with police, hospitals, finance, insurance, housing, donations, counseling, criminal investigators, and schools. Forty-eight hours later, insurers compensated families for property losses and wrote $250,000 checks for each death. Ten days later, Shanghai mayor Han Zheng confessed, “Our poor supervision of the construction industry caused the fire”. He fired or demoted thirty officials, and indicted twenty-two, most of whom went to prison–two for sixteen years–and implemented new building codes. The contrast with Grenfell Tower–still under litigation–is stark.⁠

Structurally Communist?

I have appended my comments to Marx and Engels’ ten-point test, from their Communist Manifesto:

  1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. Land reform was completed in 1953. All land is owned in common. 98% of people own their homes.
  2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. Individual Income Tax runs from 3% – 45%, rates that will likely remain unchanged until a proposed property tax (currently meeting stiff resistance) becomes law.
  3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. There is no inheritance tax but, once a property tax is legislated, an inheritance tax might follow. Thanks to universal home ownership, the nation’s wealth Gini coefficient is low.
  4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. This was accomplished by 1960. Beijing is now the preferred domicile for most billionaires and most foreign investors.
  5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. Mao founded the world’s richest central bank, the People’s Bank of China. China’s Big Four retail banks are the world’s largest and most valuable.
  6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. China’s government-owned media are the most trusted on earth.
  7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. Soil improvement has been ongoing for seventy years and crop yields continue climbing steadily.
  8. Equal liability of all to labour. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. Used effectively in the early years, this has been phased out in favor of mechanised agriculture.
  9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of the population over the country. The combination of agriculture and manufacturing was successfully implemented during the Cultural Revolution and the dispersion of manufacturing is still prioritized. Urban hukou are issued to those who want them to redistribute the population.
  10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c. The OECD says, “China’s PISA test results showed the resilience of pupils to succeed despite tough backgrounds – and the high levels of equity between rich and poor pupils”.

Control of the Means of Production

Control of the means of production is through collective ownership of all banks, insurance companies, media, health providers, and defense industries, ensuring that they act in concert, for the general good. There are now more hungry children, drug addicts, suicides and executions, more homeless, poor, and imprisoned people in America than in China

America’s Privileged Policy Elites and Their Lack of Accountability

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It is increasingly apparent that America’s political and military elites are almost never held to account for their blunders or even outright crimes. The latest episode is the Pentagon’s multi-year campaign to conceal information about a March 2019 airstrike in Syria that killed as many as 64 civilians, including women and children. Despite the New York Times’ expose, there is no indication that the individuals responsible for that atrocity or the subsequent cover up will face any serious consequences.

The military’s behavior in that case is essentially the same as its obfuscation and reluctant backpedaling about the August 2021 drone strike in Kabul that killed an innocent aid worker and his family. At the time the attack took place, the Pentagon insisted that the targeted individual was a terrorist affiliated with ISIS-K, and that “secondary explosions” after the drone missile hit the van he and the other passengers were riding in proved that the vehicle was carrying bombs and bomb-making components. Gen. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joints Chiefs of Staff, went out of his way to describe the drone response not just as a necessary military action, but as a “righteous strike.”

Washington’s official version of events soon unraveled. Yet even when the military belatedly recanted the initial cover story and admitted that numerous children had been killed, Pentagon leaders simply shrugged off the incident as a regrettable “error.” Typically, not only were the personnel who negligently authorized the attack shielded from punishment, so were the official propagandists who had lavishly circulated the original misinformation.

None of this should come as a surprise. The latest episodes are reminiscent of the Navy’s behavior when one of its warships in the Persian Gulf, the USS Vincennes, shot down an Iranian airliner with 290 people aboard in July 1988. Navy spokesmen initially insisted to a credulous news media that the Iranians were entirely responsible – that the flight took place outside the boundaries of the civilian air corridor, that the plane was not sending signals on a proper civilian transponder, and that the plane was descending in a potentially threatening manner toward the Navy vessel. All of those statements were false. Even when the truth finally began to emerge months later, though, no disciplinary actions were taken against the individuals responsible for the tragedy or their colleagues who tried to cover it up. Indeed, some of them were awarded medals.

Given that the institutions guilty of such misconduct are not held to account, it is hardly surprising that the leaders of those power centers enjoy similar immunity. Indeed, even when it is indisputable that they have committed outright crimes, they escape punishment entirely or receive nothing more than the proverbial slap on the wrist. Several cases in recent years confirm that corrupt reality, especially the sweetheart deals given to Bill Clinton’s former national security adviser, Samuel R “Sandy” Berger, former CIA director David Petraeus, and FBI assistant general counsel Kevin Clinesmith. .

After leaving the Clinton administration, Berger served as a top foreign policy adviser to Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) during Kerry’s 2004 run for president. But evidence emerged during the campaign that in 2000 Berger had illegally removed classified documents on two separate occasions from the National Archives – reportedly by stuffing them down his pants before exiting a secure reading room. The following year, after months of negotiations with federal prosecutors, he entered a guilty plea to a single misdemeanor charge of mishandling classified material.

It was, to put it mildly, an extremely generous offer by the government. Berger had to pay a $50,000 fine and relinquish his security clearance for three years. The court also sentenced him to 100 hours of community service. Someone with Berger’s economic status likely could pay $50,000 out of the family’s petty cash account, and losing access to classified material for only three years instead of permanently was stunningly mild.

The Petraeus case appeared to be an even clearer example of the Washington establishment protecting one of its own. His criminal conduct occurred when he served as the commander of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, although it did not come to light until later when he was head of the CIA during Barack Obama’s administration. After a lengthy FBI investigation, Petraeus admitted that he gave highly-classified journals to his lover, Paula Broadwell, who was writing his biography. He also admitted that he had lied to FBI and CIA investigators about his conduct when first questioned.

Despite such misconduct, he only had to plead guilty to a single misdemeanor charge of unauthorized removal and retention of classified information. As part of the plea bargain, the general did not have to serve a single day behind bars. His sentence consisted of two years’ probation and a $100,000 fine. Although the latter might seem to be a significant financial penalty, it is reportedly less than Petraeus still charges for a single speaking engagement on his very active lecture circuit.

A similar sweetheart deal occurred in January 2021, when federal judge James Boasberg sentenced Kevin Clinesmith, who admitted falsifying evidence submitted to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court for a warrant to spy on onetime Trump foreign-policy adviser Carter Page. Clinesmith’s principal offense was altering an email (which confirmed that Page had been a CIA source) to create one that said the exact opposite. One might think that committing forgery to mislead the FISA court so that the bogus Russia collusion investigation could continue would be considered a serious, criminal offense, but apparently it was not deemed so. Boasberg sentenced Clinesmith to 12 months’ probation and 400 hours of community service.

One need only compare such treatment of elite political insiders with the penalties meted out to whistleblowers who dare expose the crimes of US military, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies to see a flagrant double standard in operation. CIA agent John Kiriakou was given 30 months in federal prison for leaking documents confirming the Agency’s misdeeds. Daniel Hale, an analyst with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, who disclosed classified information in the course of highlighting US government lies and abuses, also discovered the perverse double standard. Hale leaked documents from the US military conceding that up to 90 percent of people in drone strikes were not the intended targets, but were in many cases innocent civilians. Hale received 45 months for his temerity. Army Private Chelsea Manning’s penalty was the most shocking and draconian of all. For exposing the military’s war crimes in Iraq to WikiLeaks, including a fatal attack on Reuters correspondents, she was sentenced to 35 years, although President Obama commuted her sentence once she had served seven years. One can only imagine what Edward Snowden or Julian Assange will face if US authorities ever get their hands on either man.

The current political and legal system crucifies whistleblowers and other critics who expose the misdeeds of – or even just embarrass – the mandarins in charge of national security policy. Conversely, high-level officials and the institutions they serve are rarely, if ever, held accountable, even when there is evidence of criminal misconduct. It is then unsurprising that there is even less likelihood that they will face any meaningful consequences merely for malfeasance or incompetence. It is notable, for example, that no civilian or military official – none – has been fired for the spectacularly mismanaged withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan. America’s inept, corrupt, and pampered elites just sail on unimpeded, leaving the mounting wreckage of a country in their wake.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on defense, foreign policy, and civil liberties issues

Inflation is NOT Good for Us

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In the 1970s, Jimmy Carter and the other fools running things at least acted like they believed inflation was a BAD thing. They falsely claimed they could fix it. Today they tell you inflation’s good for you, and to stop expecting so much. The arrogance of today’s tyrants may surpass Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and so many others combined. The people running things today are just mind-blowingly rotten, with no redeeming virtues whatsoever.

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Three European Billionaires are Financing the Democrats’ Dark Money Machine

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 The Swiss human experimenter, a Hungarian Nazi collaborator, and an Iranian tech tycoon walk into Washington D.C. What do you call them? The absentee owners of the Democrat Party.

It’s not a joke. Unfortunately it’s grimly serious.

Politico recently reported that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the leading dark money machine of the Left, had pumped $410 million into Dem 2020 efforts to defeat Trump and Republicans.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund had raised a record $390 million that year and half the money came from just 4 donors. While the names of the donors are secret, the article did note the names of three major known STF backers: Pierre Omidyar, Hansjörg Wyss, and George Soros.

Aside from their support for leftist causes, the three billionaires have another thing in common.

Hansjörg Wyss, the richest man in Switzerland, may not even be a United States citizen. The article notes that his $135 million in STF dark money donations were “earmarked for non-electoral purposes”.

George Soros illegally immigrated to the United States in the 1950s. Aside from his history of Nazi collaboration which should have barred his entry and made him deportable, an account states that his visa was based on a false affidavit filed on his behalf.

His Open Society Foundations have invested an estimated $17 million into STF in 2020.

Pierre Omidyar, an Iranian immigrant, currently the richest man in Hawaii, is a Big Tech billionaire born to wealthy foreign students in Paris, who brought him here as a child. His mother, a Berkeley academic, heads a pro-Iran group financed by her son’s fortune.

Omidyar injected an estimated $45 million into an STF fund.

There is something remarkably striking about three foreign billionaires, two of whom have been accused of immoral atrocities, funding the dark money machine behind leftist politics.

Together the three men account for nearly $200 million in outlay just to STF.

The three men, two of them European and one Middle Eastern, are a study in contrasts and similarities. Wyss was born Christian, Soros was born Jewish, and Omidyar was born Muslim, only for them to have shed their past histories and adopted the generic identities of globalist megalomaniacs convinced that the fate of the planet and of humanity is in their hands.

The three immigrant billionaires inhabit estates in the ultra-luxurious Kahala neighborhood of Honolulu, in Wilson, Wyoming, and Bedford, New York and employ former Secret Service agents to guard them.

The three leftist billionaires made their money in transnational industries, finance, the internet, and medical technology that welcomed talented immigrants. Their allegiance to the country whose territories host their wealth and mansions varies from non-existent to outright antipathy.

Their true allegiance is to overriding social and technological philosophies, partly of their own devising, and they use their massive wealth to impose them on Americans. While their open advocacy has a fairly poor track record (how many people actually read Soros’ books, Omidyar’s thoughts on capitalism, or Wyss’ thoughts on environmentalism), they have learned that they can covertly buy influence by building their own manipulative political networks.

Dark money machines are unsurprising investments for men who avoid basic transparency and treat the American political system like a game of shadows that they can rig with their money.

Omidyar finances both Black Lives Matter and Never Trumpers. The eBay billionaire is the hidden hand behind the fake “Facebook whistleblower” advocating censoring conservatives. He has a project to “reimagine capitalism” while funding The Intercept which openly touts Marxism.

Soros is equally devious, having secretly funded J Street so that the anti-Israel group could pretend to be moderate opponents without being associated with a noted enemy of the Jewish State. Publicly, he bashes Xi and China, while his Quincy Institute defends the People’s Republic of China and advocates alongside the “Squad” against any anti-China measures.

Wyss has plowed a fortune into American politics without ever even going on the record as to whether he holds American citizenship. Meanwhile Wyss’ Hub Project, operating out of STF, set up fronts like Floridians for a Fair Shake, Keep Iowa Healthy, and North Carolinians for a Fair Economy that went after Republicans. This isn’t politics: it’s a hostile foreign takeover.

Soros and Omidyar both benefited from economic disruption, technological and financial, that enabled them to get rich while inflicting heavy costs on existing industries and businesses. Like much of the Big Tech sector, they’re convinced that they’re geniuses and that their Nietzschean superiority gives them the right to destroy what exists in favor of their egotistical ideologies.

The two old men of the group, Soros and Wyss, have been accused of paving their path to wealth through horrifying crimes, whether it was Soros’ participation in the seizure of Jewish properties in Hungary, or the illegal medical experimentation on patients that sent multiple executives of the company that serves as the source of Wyss’ wealth to prison.

Wyss was reportedly “deliriously happy” when he learned that he would not be indicted over the experiments that had been tested on pigs, before killing the pigs,

only to then be injected into human beings. “They do not have enough on me. They don’t have enough emails on me,” he reportedly boasted.

Their vast wealth and megalomania cannot be separated from the images of elderly patients dying on operating tables while representatives of Wyss’ company looked on and watched them suffer, or Tivadar Soros, the billionaire’s father, writing that he sent George off to participate in antisemitic war crimes with a Nazi collaborator “to cheer the unhappy lad up” where “surrounded by good company, he quickly regained his spirits.”

“It is a sort of disease when you consider yourself some kind of god, the creator of everything, but I feel comfortable about it now since I began to live it out,” George Soros once quipped.

Omidyar and Wyss seem to know better than to announce their megalomania quite as nakedly, and even Soros scaled back his more outrageous boasts after increasing public scrutiny.

The three foreign billionaires named in the Politico article shared a common megalomania, filtered through the lenses of their own ideologies, and little attachment to the United States. American industries and companies made them fabulously rich, but their horizons have always been international, and they view America as little more than just another tool for their visions.

When Americans, the ordinary sort of people, don’t go all along, they manipulate them. Despite their official fealty to democracy, to open societies, and public discourse, their dark money investments reflect their determination to sideline the public and impose their will on America.

Democrats often complain about money in politics, but they are the worst offenders. Some of the richest men and the wealthiest zip codes buy up elections for them across the country. And they seem uninterested whether the billionaires buying them even have American citizenship.

Three foreign billionaires are engaged in a hostile foreign takeover of the Republic. The Democrats call this democracy. The rest of us call it ideological imperialism and colonial tyranny.

Front Page Magazine

The Nature of Anxiety

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Anxiety isn’t just an unpleasant psychological state. You’re revved up, and you’re burning resources like mad.

“I don’t know where I am” means everything around you is relevant, and you have to ramp up your capacity for action to deal with that. People do not like that.

We structure almost all of our environments constantly so that never happens. We’re all dressed the same, with tiny variations, and we all follow the same traffic laws, for example. We do everything we can to make sure that we know exactly where we are and what we’re doing all the time.

That’s because when we’re in that state, we can advance cautiously using positive things and maintain a modicum of positive emotion. That’s what we’re trying to do.

Dr. Jordan Peterson

How to Handle Your Leftist Associates

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Don’t indulge friends, neighbors, or co-workers who have bought into fake news. If they’re on board with the fiction, don’t argue or try to defend the truth. Simply explain that you don’t deal in fantasy and change the subject. If they won’t let it go, turn away. You’ll never change their perception, but you can save your own sense of reality and salvage your personal peace of mind by opting out. (from AmericanThinker.com)

Hanging out with delusional, hateful people probably isn’t the best idea anyway. Develop solitary habits, enjoy pets and nature and ultimately quality people will find their way into your life. It really works.

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GoFundMe reverses ban on Kyle Rittenhouse fundraisers, says a headline.

Well, Facebook? Where’s the apology? The compensation? For punishing people over the last year who defended Kyle Rittenhouse by accusing them of “advocating violent, illegal behavior”? Or, like other tyrants, fascists and totalitarians — do you never admit you’re wrong?

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AYN RAND quote: “Do not consider collectivists as sincere but deluded idealists. The proposal to enslave some men for the sake of others is not an ideal; brutality is not idealistic, no matter what its purpose. Do not ever say that the desire to do good by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”

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Breitbart headline: “Report: Hunter Biden profited from Joe Biden Losing Energy Race With Communist China.” In other words: Biden’s deliberate (and successful) efforts on day one of his regime to reverse America’s energy independence achieved under President Trump’s term is no accident. The Biden family personally profits from that appalling policy.

Loathsome. Beyond words. The father should be impeached, and the father and son should be arrested, convicted and imprisoned. It won’t happen, because our media and government are dominated by equally loathsome frauds and criminals.

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Here we go:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has cautioned that health officials may change the definition of “fully vaccinated” to include COVID-19 booster shots – if the data suggests it.

So booster shots into oblivion–otherwise no travel, no restaurants, no job, no medical care, no income … nothing. Unless you’re an illegal migrant. If you don’t call this totalitarian, then what do you call it?

And, once again: If you can still get the virus, and you need booster shots indefinitely into the future, THEN IT’S NOT A VACCINE.

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Science isn’t meant to be trusted. It’s meant to be tested. (Author unknown, posted @minds on Twitter)

Michael J. Hurd, Daily Dose of Reason

Turkey of the Year: Joe Biden

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Ever since the Ringside Politics program started 22 years ago, we have enjoyed an annual tradition. Every year, during Thanksgiving week, we announce our Turkey of the Year winner. Our previous award recipients have included both celebrities and politicians, as well as Republicans and Democrats.

Our 2020 winner was former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. He was chosen for combining sanctimonious media performances with shady ethical conduct and potentially criminal behavior involving numerous female victims. Eventually, his unacceptable activity involving these women contributed to his forced resignation.

Like Andrew Cuomo our 2021 award winner is a real turkey in every respect. As usual, this year, we allowed our fantastic audience members to offer their nominations. While many people were nominated, there was one overwhelming favorite for 2021 Ringside Politics Turkey of the Year, resident Joe Biden.

In the 2020 campaign, candidate Joe Biden pledged to govern as a moderate President who would end extremist policies. He also promised to “heal” America and bring people together. In fact, the exact opposite has occurred. As resident, Biden has pursued an extreme left-wing agenda that has divided the country.

Biden has performed so miserably as President that his latest approval rating is only 36%. It has been steadily dropping for the last several months as problems have been mounting and Biden has been preoccupied with his extreme agenda. Clearly, the American people are suffering from the impact of his policies.

Of course, Biden has no mandate for his progressive policies. He barely edged President Donald Trump in a disputed election. Biden’s Democratic Party has an extremely thin majority in Congress, while Republicans control more governorships and state legislative bodies.

In the 2020 election, Joe Biden and the Democrat Party did not win an overwhelming victory. It was nothing like the triumphs of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) in the election of 1932 or President Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) in the 1964 election.

Those Presidents won landslides and had popular support for massive expansions of government. Thus, FDR launched the “New Deal” programs and LBJ fulfilled his vision of a “Great Society.” At those times in American history, voters supported a much larger role for government.

Today, despite Biden’s embrace of socialism, America is a center-right nation ideologically. If the midterm elections were held now, the Republicans would sweep to power in Congress because of the failure of the Democrats and resident Biden.

For example, Biden inherited a stable southern border with a low rate of illegal immigration. By ending construction of the border wall, reinstituting the “catch and release” policy and terminating President Trump’s “remain in Mexico” program, the situation has deteriorated significantly.

In 2021, over two million individuals from every continent of the world will illegally enter the country at our southern border. These individuals are not being evaluated for COVID-19 or vaccinated, even though Americans are facing such mandates. The Biden administration is also sending these people to areas all over the country, without the support or knowledge of local communities.

Sadly, our cities are under siege. The Biden administration has shown extraordinarily little assistance for local police officers. With vaccine mandates now leading to more officers leaving departments across the country, it is no surprise that crime is escalating in American cities. With the addition of several million new residents from foreign countries, crime will surely increase even more in 2022.

Adding to this problem are over 100,000 immigrants from Afghanistan. Many of these individuals have not been properly vetted and have few, if any, applicable job skills to contribute to our economy. It is another reminder of the President’s embarrassing withdrawal of American military forces from Afghanistan.

This debacle resulted in the needless death of thirteen brave American military service members and the gift of $85 billion in military hardware to the Taliban, the terrorist organization that now controls Afghanistan. Despite promising never to leave Americans behind in Afghanistan, Biden abandoned possibly thousands of our citizens to the mercy of barbaric terrorists. Their eventual fate is unknown and seems to be of little concern to Biden and his pathetic administration.

Biden’s biggest political headache is the poor economy. Upon taking office, he shut down the Keystone XL pipeline and placed a moratorium on new oil and gas drilling in federal territory. He also suspended all drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, ended fossil fuel subsidies and announced the entire federal government vehicle fleet will be converted to electric.

In effect, he declared war on the fossil fuel industry. The result is that gasoline prices have skyrocketed over $1.00 per gallon in the last year. In response, the President focuses on “green energy.” In the recently passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Democrats inserted a multitude of “green energy” initiatives.

Jeff Crouere, Townhall.com