A French soldier's view of US soldiers in Afghanistan

Thomas Lifson

U.S. Soldiers depart Forward Operating Base Baylough, Afghanistan.

"A reader who, in this day of blacklists, must remain anonymous, sends this observation about our soldiers in Afghanistan:

It's not unusual for the French to comment on anything American and normally in the negative.  What is rare is a Frenchman saying something positive about Americans; in this case heaping praise on our soldiers in Afghanistan.

Blogger and veteran Wes O'Donnell has translated an editorial in a French newspaper from a French soldier serving with a prestigious U.S. infantry battalion.  I recommend reading the whole thing.  Here are some excerpts:

US soldiers are in top physical shape compared to the French, and it appears much better in infantry tactics.  The soldier notes:

Heavily built, fed at the earliest age with Gatorade, proteins, and creatine — they are all heads and shoulders taller than us and their muscles remind us of Rambo.  Our frames are amusingly skinny to them — we are wimps, even the strongest of us — and because of that they often mistake us [the French] for Afghans. [snip] Even if some of them are a bit on the heavy side, all of them provide us everyday with lessons in infantry know-how.  Beyond the wearing of a combat kit that never seems to discomfort them (helmet strap, helmet, combat goggles, rifles etc.) the long hours of watch at the outpost never seem to annoy them in the slightest.

" In combat, US soldiers go on the offense in every encounter with the enemy in contrast to soldiers of other nations who have been taught to first defend and await orders:" . . .

Biden or Bust? "Best of a Bad Lot", "Gaffes Are Better Than Suicidal Socialism" . . ."Democrats seem to prefer random senselessness to pre-mediated lunacy."

Victor Davis Hanson

"For better or worse, the Democratic establishment apparently has decided it has no choice but to embrace the former vice president. Can he be propped up and pampered for the next 14 months?"

Tony Branco toon added

"Pundits and politicos play the current parlor game of counting Joe Biden’s daily bloopers, signs of debility, or embarrassments.

"Unlike former “Apprentice” host Donald Trump’s exaggerations and narcissisms, Biden’s fantasies are not baked into an outsider candidacy that by intent offers as a radical change of policy, a tough presidential tone, and unconventional political tactics. Trump is a renegade. "Biden remains what he always was—a deep state fixture. And his brand is mainstream Democrat left-liberal orthodoxy, which supposedly does not include weird and wild La La Land pronouncements.

"Also, Trump is hated by a media that is 90 percent negative in its coverage of his every word, deed, and sneeze. In contrast, the media is in the Biden tank.

"So the reaction to the respective boilerplate gaffes and untruths of each is quite different: when Trump is caught mythologizing, his supporters blame the “fake news” media for taking things out of context—confusing his jest with seriousness, or conflating normal exaggeration and bombast with mortal-sin lying.

"Their dismissal of Trump’s imperfections is perhaps justified when contrasted to the media reaction when one of their own, like Biden, proves a walking, talking prevaricator. The subsequent shock arises despite, not because of the media. Trump when caught can always blame a biased media. Biden can only shrug his gaffe was so egregious that even his media conspirators could not contain its toxicity.

"Trump’s gaffes are usually ones of exaggeration—inflating crowd size or pumping up good economic news. Or they are the overload use of terms like “tremendous,” “fantastic,” “incredible,” and “awesome.” Or they consist of perceived crudity: the supposedly unpresidential promiscuous use of invectives like “liar,” “crook,” and “cheat. Yet in terms of his 2016 campaign promises, he has either met them or tried to meet them.

. . . 

"After all, we remember a much younger Biden’s lies about his college résumé, his plagiarism in law school, his decades of creepy hugs and breathing into the ears and curls of prepubescent girls, his intellectual theft of British Labourite Neil Kinnock’s stump speech and padding it with family distortions, his trademark appropriation of the ideas and buzzwords of others, his racialist commentary (e.g., Barack Obama is our first “clean” and “articulate” major black presidential candidate, Delaware donut shops are all stuffed with Indian immigrants, Mitt Romney would put blacks “back in chains”) and on and on." . . .  Then VDH sizes up each of the other candidates in his own insightful way.

Ben Garrison

Trump and Pompeo do what Democrats like Kerry, Obama, and...well, about any Democrat would fear to do with the Taliban

Several days before Trump canceled the Taliban meeting:  

 Why Is Trump Surrendering To The Taliban?  . . . "The administration has enlisted the diplomatic prowess of an admittedly impressive personage in Afghan-American former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (and, before that, to Afghanistan and to Iraq) Zalmay Khalizad, who held numerous foreign policy posts under Reagan and both Bushes.

"But has there ever been a more impressive diplomat than Henry Kissinger? Yet the deal he negotiated with North Vietnam in 1973, for which he shared the Nobel Peace Prize, was followed two years later by the Communist North’s conquest of South Vietnam. As the disaster materialized, South Vietnam President Nguyen Van Thieu justifiably declared: “The United States did not keep its word … The United States did not keep its promise to help us fight for freedom.”

"The Vietnam Syndrome must stop. There is simply no way to negotiate successfully with an anti-democratic aggressor without military force hanging close over that aggressor’s head. And yet Trump has already announced that U.S. troops in Afghanistan, where the Taliban has been making territorial gains for years, will soon be reduced by more than a third, from 14,000 to 8,600. A deal would reportedly mean the withdrawal of most U.S. forces by November 2020." . . .

A deal at any price is good for Obama-Kerry but not for Trump.


Trump Cancels Secret Meeting at Camp David With Taliban After Attack

. . . "The attack on Thursday, so close to the U.S. embassy, was a clear message from the Taliban: after nearly two decades of fighting, the Americans are impotent and can't defeat us.

"Pompeo said that the talks will resume -- eventually." . . .

For the US to withdraw while the Taliban attacks tells their world that we are being driven out by them.

Trump drops Saturday bombshell: calling-off planned secret Camp David negotiations with Taliban and Afghan president  . . . "In my opinion, it was always fruitless to negotiate with the Taliban. They would violate any agreement whenever they saw advantage in doing so. Their goal is to drive out the Americans the same way they drove out the Soviets, and before them, the British and the Persians. Their time horizon is unlimited, while ours is tied to the four-year presidential election cycle. Any agreement with the Taliban would be worthless.

"My guess is that President Trump knows this. And as his critics now point out, he criticized President Obama in 2012 for negotiating with the Taliban … after “slashing the military." . . .

Liberal Author: ‘Normal’ People Must Stop Wearing Any Kind of Red Hat Because Red Hats Are Scary

Katherine Timpf

Rebecca Makkai, a former finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, apparently believes red hats make ‘disenfranchised people feel unsafe.’

"A prominent liberal author has compared the red “Make America Great Again” hats to Nazi swastikas, and told “normal people” — that is, people who don’t support Trump — to stop wearing any kind of red hat, lest they start “making people scared.”

"Rebecca Makkai, who has been a finalist for both a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, made the controversial comments on Twitter, according to Fox News.

"To be clear, Makkai really was talking about all red hats. In fact, she even specifically asked fans of sports teams that wear red hats — such as the Cincinnati Reds and Washington Nationals — to not wear those hats out in public to avoid making other people afraid.

“Not worth making disenfranchised people feel unsafe,” she wrote.

Makkai also had a problem with MAGA parody hats:

“Also, for the love of God: The clever folks wearing “Make America Read Again” or whatever caps — NO,” she said. “You’re making everyone scared. Don’t do it.”

"Honestly, there are so many things wrong with this that I hardly even know where to start." . . .

Tony Branco

'Modern day Pharisee': Pete Buttigieg gets some comeuppance

". . . And pity for him, he's now getting chased in the press by a small-town preacher in Michigan who knows all too much about his game, while the pope position's already filled."

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Monica Showalter  "Pious Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has a brother-in-law who seems to have had it up to here with his wearing his religion on his sleeve and scolding others. 

"According to an exclusive interview in the Washington Examiner, which found the man out in the wilds of a small town in probably rural Michigan:

"What we see is a modern-day Pharisee," said [Pastro Rhyan] Glezman, referencing the 1st-century Jewish sect that was notorious for demanding its followers adhere to an exhaustive list of trivial laws to earn God's favor. "Buttigieg is a person who's making up their own rules and regulations and, basically, if we don't celebrate and endorse their interpretation of Scripture, our religion is fallible. And that's just not true."

"He expressed considerable frustration with Buttigieg's holier-than-thou stance on abortion, claiming that Christians should only consider a baby human after it draws its first breath, justified by what he claimed to be Bible references. Mighty convenient, of course, as a means of contradicting most Christian teachings since abortion became legal." . . .

Progressive 'Christian' Pete Buttigieg Doesn't Seem to Understand His Own 'Faith'

"During an appearance on MSNBC's Morning Joe, after Joe Scarborough talked about how President Obama claims to have accepted Jesus Christ as his personal savior, the host turned it into a question and asked Buttigieg if he identified with that. Buttigieg responded with an answer that has "dodge" written all over it, saying:

Yes, but maybe that means different things to different people. Because a lot of people feel like they had a Road to Damascus personal encounter with God. For me, just personally, I actually came to the faith more through an appreciation of mystery and a personal humility about the limits to which this part of me [his brain] could get, than believing I had found the answer. I struggle with a lot of doubt and a lot of ambiguity, but that is there in scripture just as that is there in life.

"Anyone who has read the Bible, especially the four Gospels, knows that nothing in Buttigieg's answer is, in fact, an answer to the question. Yes, there is some ambiguity in the Bible, but not about salvation." . . .

The Democrats take a pause from persecuting Christians to try to co-opt them.  . . . "Buttigieg worries about factory pollution and feeding the poor, but he apparently is unable to do the elementary mental work of connecting the two: Rather than starving to death or dying of exposure, the poor in the developed world enjoy a relatively comfortable and secure standard of material life because of those factories and the pollution they produce. " . . .

Beto Undermines Democracy: Falsely Claims Stacey Abrams Was Robbed in GA Governor’s Race

Legal Insurrection

While Beto is not the only Democratic candidate who has kissed the Abrams ring, he has perhaps embraced the stolen election myth more than the rest.

"When failed Senate candidate Robert “Beto” O’Rourke first jumped into the Democratic presidential race back in mid-March, the sky was the limit.

"His fundraising haul in the first 24 hours was massive, major Obama fundraisers and former aides were lining up behind him, and he was receiving glowing press coverage.

"But a funny thing happened not long after he announced. Interest from the press and liberal political analysts shifted to shiny new candidate and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is gay, and the four female candidates. Speculation about whether or not Joe Biden would enter the presidential race was at a fever pitch.

"As all of this was happening, enthusiasm from Democratic voters for O’Rourke was also waning. After polling at 12% just a few days after he declared his candidacy, his numbers dropped to the single digits, and they haven’t recovered.

"Beto’s response to losing the spotlight to minority candidates like Buttigieg and the ladies is to do what comes naturally to Democratic hopefuls in the primary season: Shamelessly pander to Democratic minority voters.

"There are three main ways he’s tried to do this. One is to accuse President Trump of being a borderline Nazi who is “responsible” for the deaths of illegal immigrants at the border and the horrific mass shooting that took place in O’Rourke’s hometown of El Paso, TX.

"The second is to embrace an anti-America platform by way of asserting that our country was “founded on white supremacy.”

"The third way is one he invokes often: the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen from Democrat Stacey Abrams." . . .

O’Rourke: El Paso Shooting Came ‘At the Invitation of Our President’

BREAKING: What Is The Point of CNN?

Free Beacon

"CNN is a mid-tier cable news network that provides non-stop breaking news to bored airport travelers and internet journalists. The network has breathlessly covered President Donald Trump's every fart and utterance since 2015 and has contributed to the "national dialogue" through countless interviews with serious public intellectuals. Michael Avenatti, for example.

"One of CNN's most recent hires, former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, was found to have lied to federal investigators under oath prior to his firing in March 2018. In addition to his role as CNN contributor, McCabe has a new side hustle: Keynote speaker at Democratic Party fundraisers.

"And speaking of the network's keen eye for talent, CNN invited celebrity white nationalist Richard Spencer on in June to discuss Donald Trump's "racist tweets." Brian Stelter, who hosts a show called Reliable Sources, recently nodded along as his guest, former Duke University chair of psychiatry Allen Francis, argued that Trump "may be responsible for many more million deaths" than genocidal dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

"It wasn't the first time Trump has been compared to Hitler on the network. CNN host Don Lemon did it in July, which could explain why the New York Times has reportedly banned reporters from appearing on Lemon's show. In addition to interviewing Michael Avenatti dozens of times on his show, Lemon hosted the disgraced lawyer at a party in the Hamptons." . . .

The troubled face of the host MUST be in view constantly

How mainstream reporters disgraced themselves during Hurricane Dorian

. . . I was wrong that Dorian did little damage to the U.S.  The media somehow managed to lower its already debased reputation during the storm, much like Wilde's titular character.  Too bad there's no insurance company or federal agency to clean up the press's self-destructive behavior.  . . . TL

Taylor Lewis  . . . "Every time someone posts a video of a natural disaster wreaking havoc around him, reporters hound his replies, requesting permission to use the footage.

The common exchange goes something like this:

" 'Wow, take a look at this tornado tearing the roofs off of trailer homes in Kansas City. This happened 30 seconds ago in front of me."

"Reply: "Hi, I'm from the Washington Post.  May I use this footage in my report?  Thank you!"

"Second reply: "Oh, and please stay safe!  Did you see my original comment?  I'd like to file the report ASAP.  You own the video, right?"

"So it goes, with numerous reporters from a sundry of publications all asking for the same video to take advantage of the algorithm-driven news cycle.  We're to expect real human feeling out of these sensationalism-chasers?

"One more instance of media malpractice to emphasize my point.  Vox reporter Aaron Rupar thought he had sniffed out not so subtle racism displayed by President Trump regarding the then approaching storm.  As Dorian approached, Trump pointed out that Puerto Rico received $92 billion in aid after Hurricane Maria ravaged the island two years ago.  He then issued a warning to Floridians, urging them to heed "State and Federal instructions."  All-around innocuous, no?

"Not so, apparently.  "[W]hen the hurricane is headed toward brown people vs. when it's headed toward white people," Rupar snarked, thinking he had made a clever and incisive point about the two tweets.  The implication is that Trump warned white people of the hurricane and dickered about the cost of cleaning up the last one in a territory inhabited by non-whites.  In Rupar's reductive formulation, Florida might as well look like Denmark demographically, while Puerto Rico is the Inca Empire." . . .

Thomas Lifson: Media bias called out -- and not by a conservative  "We welcome to the club of media skeptics a former MSNBC host and Dem congressional nominee.  Conservatives can take a small degree of satisfaction that not all Democrats are oblivious to the toxic level of media bias. An article in The Hill by a progressive commentator named Krystal Ball, who ran for Congress unsuccessfully as the Democrat-endorsed candidate in 2010, and who has been a media figure for many years, including as an MSNBC host, calls out some striking examples of misreporting… the sort of thing that President Trump would call “fake news,” though Ball scrupulously avoids using that term." . . .

Ball correctly diagnoses the reason that the media obey the Democrats’ power elite. It is not a conspiracy, per se, but rather a system of incentives that operate on prominent journalists:

Death by Ecology: Killing California … God’s Best Green Deal

[An excerpt from a forthcoming book]  "So you think the Green New Deal isn’t going to happen? Well, California is leading the way — good[?] intentions on the road to hell? Here’s an autopsy of the Green policies killing California and identifying the killers. For 15,000 years, millions of human beings migrated to California. It was the American Dream.
"Millions of Californians go elsewhere to pursue life, liberty, property and happiness. From 1992-2018, California lost a net 4.2 million people to other American states. From 1990 to 2012, California lost nearly a million manufacturing jobs. That’s nearly half, 40%, of all manufacturing jobs. Similarly, industrial employment plunged 60% from 2005-2015. Two-thirds of the aerospace industry that sent America to the moon and won the Cold War has gone since 1990.
"In short, costly environmental drove them out of jobs and out of state.
"The New Left leader Jerry Brown, 1.0 and 2.0, and compliant Republicans Pete Wilson and Arnold Schwarzenegger decided they could do better than God and a free people. These eco-gods demanded air, water and land made cleaner than God Himself made them. Human habitat, private property, had to give way to the needs of fish and wildlife.
"In pursuing eco-utopia, deep state environmentalists often appear rather silly, even stupid. Yet they are deadly serious. They destroyed what was once the world’s happiest place.

"Consider the California Crow. The California Air Resources Board is at war with milk and meat. They say cow farts, gases, are appalling dangers to the atmosphere of planet earth. The Water Resources Control Board is taking action against the dreaded enemy — cattle manure. 
"Eco-warriors have convicted grazing cattle of a genocidal holocaust. They blame cows for killing all manner of species and destroying their habitat: fairy shrimp, Desert Tortoise, salmon etc. One cow on one acre at a time, are blamed for destroying all manner of wildlife.

"Of Straws and Smelt. California’s war on all things plastic — bottles, bags and straws — shows its Lilliputian desperation to save the planet. California environmentalists are desperate to save the “fragile” 187 quintillion gallon Pacific Ocean from overflowing plastic. "And the 100 million-acre California must not run out of spaces to put trash in landfills.

California sends half of its abundant fresh water to the Pacific Ocean. Water police order city folk to drink recycled toilet water and to live on 55 gallons a day. Ten percent of all water is too much for the serfs who may bathe every other Saturday whether they need it or not. "Desalinated seawater at ten times the cost of reservoir water is also recommended. California demands its residents take a water conservation pledge … and to the utopia for which it stands." . . . Entire article.

Tony Branco

The author, Roger Canfield, Ph.D. americong.com: . . . "For failing to care for levees because DWR protected elderberry beetle habitat on levees, DWR was successfully sued for the deaths and destruction following a flood in Linda California.
"Working for the County of Placer where environmentalists, e.g. Tahoe Regional Planning Agency and the Tree foundation, opposed cutting trees or clearing brush and pine needles to prevent wildfires. Therafter, the Agora fire destroyed 242 homes and 67 businesses in South Lake Tahoe.
"Working for the City of Colfax, he observed a locust of lawyers suing city for petty paperwork violations of clean air law costing the tiny thousands to fix and millions to build a new water treatment plant producing cleaner water than pristine Sierra runoff. "    

James Mattis Gives the Country a Warning

National Review

"Making the click-through worthwhile: A warning from former secretary of defense James Mattis about what really threatens our country; House Democrats conclude that what the country really needs right now is high-profile hearings about the payments to Stormy Daniels; and Bill de Blasio loses interest in his day job.

" ‘Tribalism Must Not be Allowed to Destroy Our Experiment.’

In his new autobiography, former secretary of defense James Mattis writes:

What concerns me most as a military man is not our external adversaries; it is our internal divisiveness… We are dividing into hostile tribes cheering against each other, fueled by emotion and a mutual disdain that jeopardizes our future, instead of rediscovering our common ground and finding solutions. All Americans need to recognize that our democracy is an experiment and one that can be reversed. Tribalism must not be allowed to destroy our experiment.

. . .

"There is no shortage of malevolent people who would be comfortable with our society backsliding towards the historical norm, just for the opportunity to express that endless rage within them.

"In another passage on leadership, Mattis writes, “institutions get the behavior they reward.” What behavior does our media reward? What behavior does our electorate reward? What behavior does our government reward?" . . .

A Shameless Lying MSNBC Hack is the Face of the Media ...

Daniel Greenfield

"At the end of July, MSNBC’s biggest and dullest conspiracy theorist got some very bad news.
"After over a year of booming ratings, The Rachel Maddow Show’s viewership had crashed. It had been a long road for Maddow, the former blonde Catholic high school girl who had decided she wanted to be a media personality and ended up with an MSNBC show through the efforts of Keith Olbermann.
"And after Keith was gone, MSNBC had to settle for a slightly less effeminate version of Olbermann.
"Maddow had retained the key elements of Olbermann’s personality, the unhinged conspiracy theories, histrionic delivery, the dark hair and even the fashionably ugly boxy black glasses. The former blonde not only looked and sounded like Olbermann, but she had learned to hit the same buttons in her audience.
"One man had made her MSNBC career possible and another moved her show into the top cable spot.
"That man was Robert Mueller. There was no Russian conspiracy theory too bizarre or insane to earn a rant from Rachel. Going where few dared go, Maddow began insisting that Russia was conducting a “continuing operation” and might even be in control of the White House and the entire country now.
"And then the Mueller Report and later, Mueller’s testimony, destroyed all of Maddow’s conspiracies.
"At the height of her Russian conspiracy theories in which she connected everyone and their uncle to Moscow, Maddow had could boast 4 million viewers while claiming to be the top cable news show. In July, she had fallen to fifth place without even 2.5 million viewers to scrape together for her rants." . . .

Looking back:  MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Reveals Democrats’ Targeted Plan to Block Kavanaugh’s Confirmation: ‘There Is a Method to What They Are Doing’

Rachel Maddow, done in by her own 'fake news' mouth  . . . "Here’s how it all went down, beginning at 7:36 p.m. Eastern Time: Maddow tweeted “BREAKING: We’ve got Trump tax returns. Tonight, 9pm ET. MSNBC. (Seriously).”
"The “seriously” gave it extra oomph — not to mention extra mystery. It wasn’t long before social media got buzzing, wondering the likes of how many tax returns Maddow had, whether she had the paperwork goods that would lead her not only to become the One Who "Got Donald Trump, but the One Who Got Donald Trump Impeached.
"Well, 8:21 came and went, and nothing. Then 8:22 came and went — and again, nothing. "Yes, it was all the way to 8:24 when the next Maddow tweet came out, this one specifying that it was Trump’s IRS Form 1040 from 2005.
"We’ve got the goods. Let the Trump tears begin.
"And now the show starts, and Maddow starts to talk and as the seconds wear into minutes, and the minutes into many minutes, viewers begin to realize: This lady ain’t gonna get to the point any time soon.
“ 'In just a second, we’re going to show you exactly what it is we’ve got,” Maddow said, at the opening of the broadcast hour.
"But second must have a different meaning in Maddow world, because it was actually 23 minutes or so into the show — a long 23 minutes, marked by twists and turns into conspiratorial territory about Russia, real estate and the Deutsche Bank — before she hit remotely on the topic of viewer anticipation. Even that was after commercial break.
"And by then, wouldn’t you know it, the White House had released its own tax information, saying Trump had paid millions of dollars on $150 million worth of income in 2005.

CNN to Host a Presidential Town Hall on LGBTQ Issues

Eric Lendrum  "CNN, in conjunction with the Human Rights Campaign Foundation, has announced that it will be hosting a town hall focusing exclusively on the LGBTQ community and its issues.
"The event will be held on October 10th, and candidates who wish to participate must meet the same criteria as the official primary debates, meaning that they must register at least two percent in four or more national polls recognized by the DNC, as well as having over 130,000 individual campaign donors.
"Currently, only six candidates have accepted CNN’s invitation to appear at the debate: Former Vice President Joe Biden, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-Ind.), former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro (D-Texas), and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.).
"In announcing the town hall, the HRC Foundation’s president Alphonso David claimed, without evidence, that “in 30 states, LGBTQ people remain at risk of being fired, evicted, or denied services because of” their sexuality. He also falsely claimed that the “Trump-Pence Administration is directly attacking our community…and seeking to erase LGBTQ people from protections under law.”

"This announcement comes the day after CNN hosted a 7-hour town hall focusing solely on “global warming,” featuring 10 candidates. This will mark the second presidential town hall hosted by the network focusing exclusively on a single issue." . . .

CNN To Host Town Hall On LGBT Issues In October  "The announcement came at the end of the network’s seven-hour environmental town hall, where Democratic presidential candidates fielded questions about their various proposals to combat climate change."