Tuesday, August 31, 2021

What Biden Left Behind

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Some $85 billion worth of America’s most advanced military technology was left behind in Afghanistan, a shocking revelation that by itself would justify President Biden’s removal from office, along with his entire national security team. Biden has given new meaning to the term “cut and run” by abandoning American citizens while permitting an immense cache of advanced weapons to be used against them.

We are not just talking about a few guns or hand grenades. The abandoned American equipment includes more than 109 helicopters, 22,170 Humvees, 8,000 trucks, 64,300 machine guns, and 358,530 assault rifles, according to the non-partisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Jim Banks (R-IN), who is in the House Republican leadership after serving with our troops in Afghanistan, observed last week that the Taliban has “more Black Hawk helicopters than 85 percent of the countries in the world.” At least 33 Black Hawk helicopters are in the Taliban’s hands now.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan previously admitted that the Biden Administration lacks a “complete picture“ of all of the military equipment it left behind. In addition, databases of Americans and our allies are probably with the Taliban, too.

Since 2007, our troops have collected biometric data about residents of Afghanistan by using mobile technology including the Biometric Automated Toolset (BAT) and Handheld Interagency Identity Detection Equipment (HIIDE). These tools include a fingerprint reader, iris scanner, and camera, in order to build facial and fingerprint watchlists.

Placement on a watchlist in the United States can result in being kept off an airplane, which is inconvenient. But inclusion in these watchlists in Afghanistan can result in death.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki gave an unpersuasive denial of a report, by the left-leaning news website Politico, that the Biden Administration had given the names of attempted evacuees to the Taliban. The reality is that Biden has no idea whether such a list has been given to the enemy.

“First let me say there have been reports that we provided lists of people who want to leave Afghanistan to the Taliban. That’s inaccurate. That’s misreported and misconstrued,” Psaki insisted.

But last Thursday Biden himself admitted that he did know enough about such a list to respond to questions about it. He declared that he could not state “with any certitude that there’s actually been a list of names.”

The biometric database, now presumably in the hands of the Taliban, is a deadly “kill list.” It potentially provides the Taliban with photos and fingerprints of Afghans who supported or assisted American soldiers, and those Afghans now face deadly reprisal. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was reportedly vacationing at his family’s luxurious home in exclusive East Hampton, Long Island, as the Taliban was overthrowing the Afghan government. Blinken has so misjudged the rapid takeover of Afghanistan that he should resign immediately.

Incredibly, the Western-installed president of Afghanistan, Ashraf Ghani, is a former Berkeley anthropology professor entirely unsuited for the challenge of his job, just as Biden is. As reported by the Washington Post, Ghani was more interested in early August in digitizing the Afghan economy than in defending against the invasion of his own capital.

“We never thought we would take Kabul so quickly,” a Taliban commander marveled. With Biden officials departed for an early weekend and the Afghan president having abruptly fled the country, there was no leadership for any earnest defense.

Military equipment can be replaced, but our trapped Americans cannot. Our equipment can now be used by terrorists against our own citizens there and elsewhere.

“If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out,” Biden declared on August 18. But Biden then broke his promise by pulling out of Afghanistan before evacuating all of our citizens who want to leave.

“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie, Jr., admitted Monday evening as the final American troops were withdrawn from the country, even earlier than the deadline demanded by the Taliban. The remaining Americans are targets for terrorists as bargaining chips, or worse.

Under President Trump’s leadership, only 3 American soldiers died in the second half of last year in Afghanistan. Biden’s failure to secure Kabul airport and Bagram Air Base for the evacuation resulted in the horrible massacre of 13 American troops last week, nearly all in their early 20s and whose heartbreaking photos are being shared in eulogy across the internet.

While American citizens were left behind to face the Taliban alone, tens of thousands of Afghan men, women, and children are being airlifted and resettled inside our country, and there is no way to adequately vet them. Far from eradicating terrorism in Afghanistan, Biden has equipped and facilitated it.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, August 24, 2021

Wanton War on Early Covid Treatment

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

By blocking early treatment for Covid, liberals have pushed our society into unprecedented government controls. These include mandatory masking of children as young as 5, vaccine passport requirements for entering restaurants, and even a long-running moratorium on eviction of delinquent tenants.

In the mindset of politicized health authorities, medications approved as safe for many decades are suddenly more dangerous than a hunting rifle. Bureaucrats are interfering with access to early treatment by safe medication, and Republican governors have not stood up for early access.

Early treatment is the path to overcoming the coronavirus pandemic. Medications such as hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and ivermectin are available over-the-counter in poorer countries such as Vietnam and many Central American nations, while wrongly blocked here. Last year the Leftist war on early treatment focused against HCQ, preventing most Americans from using it upon the onset of Covid symptoms. Many Americans then checked into hospitals thinking they would get lifesaving care there, and instead never left alive after being denied medications.

Three times this year attorney Ralph C. Lorigo has won court decisions forcing New York hospitals to allow dying Covid patients to receive ivermectin, and all these patients then made miraculous recoveries. “The moral of this story is you have to be proactive with your health,” attorney Lorigo said.

Other families have learned the hard way that hospitals block care recommended by their trusted family physician. Vaccinated people are being hospitalized so the importance of early treatment applies to all Americans, vaccinated or not.

On Saturday, the FDA tweeted out a bizarre statement telling Americans that they are not horses or cows, in order to discourage Americans from an early treatment that coincidentally is also used for animals in higher doses. “You are not a horse. You are not a cow,” the FDA exclaimed in its fake wisdom.

The FDA’s twisted logic is to disparage early treatment any way it can. Meanwhile, it insists on approaches that increase government control through vaccine passports and masks.

Yale Professor Harvey Risch, M.D., observed last week that “we’ve lost at least 500,000 Americans needlessly who could have been early treated with medicines that we know work [with] at least 85 percent” effectiveness. Two months earlier, ICU and lung specialist Dr. Pierre Kory expressed his hope “that every household has ivermectin in their cupboard. And you take it upon development of [the] first symptom of anything approximating a viral symptom.”

Yet HHS continues to hoard more than 60 million doses of HCQ in its Strategic National Stockpile that were donated by pharmaceutical companies last year for use as early treatment for Covid. Medication loses its efficacy over time, and all those doses could be thrown out.

The proper response to the FDA’s sarcastic tweet about cows is that it approved ivermectin (and HCQ) long ago as a safe medication, and cannot properly interfere with its use now. The FDA has no authority to practice medicine, and physicians have always been authorized to prescribe approved medications for “off-label” uses, such as treating Covid.

If early treatment for Covid were not blocked, then vaccine passports and the masking of schoolchildren could become unnecessary. Covid could then be treated just as other viruses are, without panic or fear.

The Federation of State Medical Boards, a private liberal group that directs state medical boards which regulate physicians, issued a press release that frightened physicians against speaking out. Just as free speech is disappearing from social media, it is being censored in doctor’s offices too.

Pharmacy chains are refusing to fill prescriptions for early treatment of Covid, while physicians face retaliation by medical boards.

Implicit in the FDA’s tweet comparing Americans to horses and cows is that D.C. bureaucrats think Americans are as dumb as horses and cows. C.S. Lewis once wrote that tyrants view their victims as “infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

Americans are smarter than the FDA, and would take HCQ, ivermectin, and other early treatments in safe doses. It is only because hospitals now control most physicians that patients are left to fend for themselves, resorting to buying ivermectin prepared for animals.

On Monday, the FDA released a confusing 13-page letter that talks about continuing the Emergency Use Authorization for the Pfizer Covid vaccine while omitting traditional analysis for an approval decision. The FDA’s partial, unclear approval is being misused nationwide to justify imposing more vaccine mandates.

More than a year into the Covid pandemic, public health authorities should be promoting early treatment to keep people out of hospital ICUs. The symptoms of the virus are familiar now, and everyone – vaccinated or not – should have access to immediate, effective treatment to overcome it.

Americans have been placed in a socialist trap. Self-defense is the conservative solution, which requires access to early treatment of Covid.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Progressives’ Last Stand in Afghanistan

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

While President Biden tries to blame Donald Trump or even Afghans themselves for the collapse of Afghanistan to the Taliban, the real lesson is the failure of progressive policies there. The unmitigated disaster for America’s armchair nation-builders is reminiscent of Custer’s Last Stand in 1876, when the inept U.S. colonel’s entire force was slaughtered by enemy Indian tribes.

Missing in action for days, Biden finally emerged to pretend that the problem is Afghans supposedly not having the will to fight. This was after the Afghan president handpicked by liberals, an American-educated academic with progressive political beliefs, had fled the country in a helicopter reportedly stuffed with cash.

Just a few weeks ago, the progressive (and very well-fed) chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, had defended indoctrinating U.S. soldiers in the tenets of Critical Race Theory. He pompously declared to Congress, “I want to understand white rage and I’m white.”

Trump was blistering in his criticism of Milley back then, declaring that “General Milley ought to resign, and be replaced with someone who is actually willing to defend our Military from the Leftist Radicals who hate our Country and Flag.”

General George Patton, our finest and toughest field commander of the 20th century, believed in reincarnation. One thing we know for certain: Patton did not return as General Milley.

No doubt disliked by Afghan soldiers as much as he is here, in July Milley misled the public by declaring to reporters that “the Afghan Security Forces have the capacity to sufficiently fight and defend their country.” But defend their country for whom: Biden and his ideological twin who quickly abandoned his post and fled with a pile of cash?

Like Biden, the departed Afghan president Ashraf Ghani was installed as president by liberals after a disputed election that took months to resolve. Like Biden, President Ghani is an elderly, low-energy man who promoted progressive policies having little connection with reality or what the Afghan people want and believe in.

Like Biden, President Ghani failed to attract genuine support among ordinary Afghans as Trump does so well with many Americans. The equivalent of “woke” ideologies and policies were being pushed on that rugged country, and of course no Afghans would risk their lives to defend what they do not believe in.

Feminist policies were being imposed on Afghans who have a deep-rooted patriarchal culture that is the opposite of what liberals demand. The vast majority of adult Afghan men cannot read or write, yet liberals insisted on building schools to indoctrinate Afghan girls and young women with secular progressive beliefs.

For those old enough to remember the fall of Saigon, as the last U.S. helicopter lifted off the roof of the U.S. embassy, that horror was repeated as Afghans clung to U.S. transport planes while they taxied down the runway. Deaths by people dropping off the departing airplanes trigger painful reminders of victims falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11.

Biden seems to have timed his pullout from Afghanistan, not to minimize deaths and destruction, but to facilitate photo-ops for him on the upcoming 20-year anniversary of 9/11. Instead, on September 11 Americans will need to be on high alert for a potential copycat attack, either here or in European countries that foolishly admitted too many Muslim immigrants from hostile countries.

Trump responded by properly calling for Biden’s resignation, before China and other rogue nations exploit his weakness as the Taliban just did. The same European leaders who enjoyed treating Trump with disdain probably now wish he never left the White House, as Europe prepares to be overrun by Afghan refugees.

“Do you miss me yet?” Trump asked last week, and with each passing day we miss him more. In four entire years of Trump’s leadership nothing like this catastrophe occurred, and barely six months into the presidency of the mentally declining Biden the wheels are already coming off.

The coming flood of refugees from Afghanistan may be what liberals really want, just as they have tolerated over a million impoverished migrants crossing our southern border. This was another monthly surge in July of illegal aliens pouring in, with record-high levels of Covid among them.

To be clear, Afghanistan is not a defeat for America’s brave soldiers and Marines, who served so courageously in Afghanistan under terrible and frightening conditions. In late 2001, merely 3,000 American troops swiftly accomplished what seemed impossible, by seizing control of the country from Al Qaeda for harboring 9/11 terrorists.

But progressives and an effete occupant of the White House have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. This failure was not on the battlefield, but in the misguided ideology of those who attempted to impose political correctness on a country that is the antithesis of it.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, August 10, 2021

Vaccine Mandates Increase Unfilled Jobs

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

A record-breaking 10.1 million unfilled jobs were reported last Friday as though this were a positive measure of economic growth. Supposedly ordinary Americans are doing so well that employers cannot even fill basic jobs.

But many of those unfilled jobs are due to the growing employer mandates for the Covid vaccine, mandates that Anthony Fauci announced will sharply increase as soon as the FDA grants its full approval in a month or so. Fauci praised the unaccountable FDA on Sunday, and said he hopes more employers will impose vaccine mandates.

"For those who do not want, I believe mandates at the local level need to be done," Fauci said. This unelected bureaucrat seeks more vaccine mandates against employees, while the Biden Administration abuses its power by requiring the vaccine in the military.

More than 90 million Americans have declined the Covid vaccine. Cash offers, lottery prizes, and even threats of being fired have not moved this large sector of our country to comply with Fauci’s pipe dream of a fully vaccinated America.

The early recipients of the Covid vaccine are already being told that it is wearing off, and they may need to receive another vaccine soon. Many of them had an unexpected adverse reaction the first time, and polling shows that more workers would quit their job over a vaccination requirement than a pay cut.

Far from uniting the country, Biden is dividing it by allowing Fauci and other entrenched public health officials to run roughshod over cherished American freedoms. An enormous crowd of 3,000 people gathered at the Michigan state capitol on Friday to protest vaccine mandates in that state.

Referring to Vice President Kamala Harris, State Rep. Matt Maddock (R-MI) told the activists, “Kamala said she didn’t trust the Trump vaccine. Are we supposed to trust theirs?”

Millions who oppose the push for mandatory vaccination are actually rank-and-file Democrats, as the New York Times admitted in dismay in its own analysis of who is declining the jab. Minorities and many young liberals are eschewing the Covid vaccine, not just rural white evangelicals whom liberals have tried to scapegoat for the disease resurgence.

Americans rejecting the Covid vaccine constitute a population larger than all of Germany, unlikely to switch just because socialists at the FDA mysteriously label the Covid vaccine as no longer experimental. VAERS, the vaccine injury reporting database, tells a story different from Fauci’s by listing more than 12,000 incidents of people dying after receiving the Covid vaccine, leaving behind countless loved ones.

Many of the employer mandates, such as that by Microsoft, seem senseless. Microsoft produces software with little necessary face-to-face interaction by its workers with the public, or even with each other, yet requires Covid vaccination to the glee of its founder, longtime vaccine pusher Bill Gates.

Liberals always knew that a significant percentage of Americans would decline the Covid vaccine no matter what the D.C. bureaucrats say or do. Distrust of government is healthy and particularly high among many Democrat voters, such as minorities. Videos released and then taken down of Obama’s birthday party over the weekend did not increase trust in public officials. Obama and others were filmed partying away without masks, while leading Democrat politicians insist that even schoolchildren be required to constantly wear masks.

NFL football players are not required to take the Covid vaccine and several have spoken out against attempts to ostracize them. Notable Olympic athletes declined the Covid vaccine, too.

Meanwhile, a silver lining is a government backlog in processing green card applications for foreigners to fill 100,000 jobs, typically better paying, which should be going to Americans. Green cards not issued by the end of September will expire.

It is not merely “conspiracy theories” which result in a significant unvaccinated population. For years the vaccine police were already complaining about people who decline ordinary vaccines, and wrongly blamed them for outbreaks when the real source was untested immigrants.

Millions of illegal aliens swarming over our border untested for Covid-19 are contributing to the resurgence in the disease, especially in Texas. Yet liberals try to blame unvaccinated Trump supporters rather than close our border to the influx of the disease.

In Texas, a federal judge recently blocked enforcement of Executive Order GA-37, which would have stopped taxpayer-funded groups from transporting potentially millions of Covid-infected illegal aliens into and through Texas. Biden should return all those illegal migrants to their countries of origin. The Biden Administration insists that the Texas Executive Order would interfere with federal jurisdiction over immigration, and impede alleviation of overcrowding in border facilities. Yet it is Biden’s open-border stance which attracts the illegal aliens into our country, while he could easily block their entry and spreading of Covid here.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Mask Mandates Meet Resistance

The Phyllis Schlafly Report
By John and Andy Schlafly

Thunderous applause greeted a gubernatorial candidate who stole the show during the warm-up at the recent Trump rally in Phoenix. Kari Lake, a 51-year-old former television newscaster, addressed how she would handle the mask mandates if elected governor.

“As Governor, I will pardon every person and business owner who is charged for violating a mask mandate or refusing to shut down their business – because we know that breathing and earning a living are not a crime!” Lake exclaimed.

She represents a new breed of charismatic pro-Trump candidates, one of whom could become his running mate in 2024. This growing list includes Larry Elder in California, Allen West in Texas, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene in Georgia, who shocked the Establishment by raising more from small donors earlier this year than anyone else in Congress.

Kari Lake may ride her criticism of face masks all the way to the Arizona governor’s mansion, and she leads her rival Republicans in favorability ratings. She is far from alone in opposing the tyranny of mandatory face coverings, particularly as imposed against schoolchildren.

In liberal California, a group named “Let Them Breathe” is proceeding with its lawsuit against the State after school districts there were authorized to require schoolchildren to cover their faces again. At first California Democrats imposed face coverings on schoolchildren statewide, but the blowback was so intense that the decision is now left to local school boards.

The Republican black conservative Larry Elder leads a crowded field running to replace Governor Gavin Newsom. If Newsom loses the recall vote, his successor could be a Republican elected with far less than 50%.

Elder mocks Newsom’s duplicity, emphasizing that it was publicity about a lavish dinner attended by Newsom at California’s most expensive restaurant which sparked his recall election. “He was sitting with the very same lobbyists and medical professionals who drafted the mandates they were violating by not wearing masks and by not socially distancing,” Elder observed.

He added that Newsom “incurred a $12,000 wine tab,” which Elder points out was “just for the wine” at one dinner party. That can hardly sit well with millions of struggling Americans who are about to be evicted or lose their unemployment benefits amid the lockdowns and mask mandates.

Congress allowed expiration last Saturday of the moratorium on evictions which had forced landlords to continue to pay property taxes and other expenses without collecting revenue from their tenants. There was no moratorium on real estate taxes which fund costly government pensions.

In a month, unemployment benefits are scheduled to expire for an additional 20 million workers. They need private sector jobs, not more handouts, and the mask mandates interfere with a proper resumption of our economy.

There is no evidence that requiring people to cover their faces has had any overall benefit against the spread of Covid-19, which is surging again despite a year of ordering people to wear masks. Countries that eschewed mask mandates, such as Denmark, Finland, Holland, and Sweden, have done better than the United States in overcoming the coronavirus.

It appears that the mask mandates may be a faceless attempt to embarrass Donald Trump, as in March the oldest newspaper in Denmark criticized its no-mask policy for being “to the right of Trump.” Seeking compulsory masks there could be viewed as punishment of Trump for offering to buy Greenland from Denmark.

Democrat Trump-haters voted against the Trump-endorsed candidate in the recent special election in Texas, probably changing the outcome. Democrats failed to qualify for the runoff election, forcing them to choose between the Trump-endorsed Susan Wright and her Republican opponent Jake Ellzey.

Typically Democrats who feel compelled to vote without a candidate would cast a blank ballot, but very few of them did that. Instead, Ellzey overtook Wright’s lead due to vindictive support by Democratic Trump-haters.

The same twisted anti-Trump mindset may be driving the mask mandates. Where are the Leftist “I can’t breathe” activists when we really need them?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), the Trump-hater who ripped up his 2020 State of the Union speech on live television, recently imposed mask wearing on House members. “This is INSANE,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted in response.

“Might as well come into my office and arrest my entire staff. We are not wearing masks,” he added. Yet Nancy Pelosi herself has violated her own mask mandate, and the House physician was photographed with his mask off during a briefing at which Republicans were told they must wear masks. Yet there is little media outrage about that, while conservatives who defy Pelosi’s mask order are fined.

Pelosi has tried to enforce unilateral fines against Republicans who transgressed her prior dictatorial orders. But there is no sign of Pelosi paying fines herself or disciplining her own allies for not wearing a mask in Congress.

John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.

These columns are also posted on pseagles.com.