Tag: joe biden

Al Qaeda Leader Ayman al-Zawahiri Is Dead…for at Least the 4th Time

Notorious Al Qaeda terror group leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was reported to have died in a drone strike over the weekend in Kabul, Afghanistan. President Biden announced the news from the balcony of the White House. But you’ll forgive some people if they fall into the “trust but verify camp” on al-Zawahiri-is-dead news.

You see, the world was also told that al-Zawahiri died before. Task and Purpose inserted natural skepticism about Monday’s news in a story headlined, “Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda deputy is totally dead for real this time.” The military website acknowledged that “after mistakenly being declared dead several times in the past, Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri’s death has been officially announced – presumably for the final time – by President Joe Biden on Monday.”

Zawahiri was also thought to be dead in 2020. Democrat think tank The Brookings Institution said, “al-Zawahri may be dead or at least appears to be ‘completely off the grid,’ according to journalist and veteran jihadi-watcher Hassan Hassan. These reports come at the same time as the killing of another very senior al-Qaida leader, Abu Muhammad al-Masri, in Tehran, reportedly by Israeli agents at the behest of the United States.”

It wasn’t until the following year that the world learned that reports of his demise were premature. Zawahiri appeared in a video to commemorate the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks that killed 2,977 Americans in three airplane attacks.

In 2008, Zawahiri was reported dead by Pakistani intelligence — making the story immediately suspect to western sources. Longwar Journal’s Bill Roggio reported at the time that “rumors of Zawahiri’s death or wounding began four days after what appears to be a US Predator unmanned aerial vehicle strike on a madrassa in the village of Zeralita in the Azam Warsak region of South Waziristan.” Roggio recounted that “six people, including three Arabs, were reported killed in the attack. The madrassa was said to be a safe house and meeting place for senior al Qaeda commanders.” CBS later reported that Zawahiri was gravely wounded in the attack. Yet, Zawahiri miraculously rose from the dead or hospital bed.

Keep reading

It’s Worse Than Anyone Wants to Admit

The news on July 28 was entirely consumed in the throes of another definition change. What everyone understood is that what it means to be in a recession has been suddenly changed by government edict. It’s not a recession, they say.

Everything is going just great, they say, unless you are among the troglodytes who desire plentiful and low-priced energy, food, housing, and overall human thriving. Once you understand the beautiful world on the other side of the “transition”—to use the favorite word of the White House—you would see this suffering as actually beneficial in the long run.

These broken eggs are making omelets.

We can argue all day about the definition of recession, but it doesn’t take us to the intellectual place we need to be. The bottom line is that what we are experiencing now includes anomalies from previous downturns precisely because it is much worse. Only a few months ago, many worried that we were going back to the 1970s. That box has been checked. Then, we worried we were going back to the 1930s. My fear is that we might wish that were true.

The White House talks about the low technical rate of unemployment without referencing the falling labor participation rates that never recovered from lockdowns because so many people just left the workforce. Millions of previously employed Americans are living off legacy largesse from families or tapping plentiful unemployment benefits just to get by month to month. Real wages and salaries have been slammed, savings rates are sinking, and credit card debt is exploding.

It’s all hard to put in a picture but we can try, nowhere more saliently expressed than the change in real wages and savings, versus savings as a percent of personal income. The stable public data here go back to 1960 and here we see just how shocking these times truly are. Personal savings is half what it typically was from the 1960s through the 1990s, and even as recently as 2012. Real disposable personal income is falling dramatically.

You get a picture of a once-thriving nation being pummeled by pillaging public managers.

Keep reading

Former security chief ‘skeptical’ on timing of al Qaeda leader’s death: ‘Let me throw some cold water on this’

Fred Fleitz, who is the former chief of staff of Trump’s National Security Council and a 19-year veteran of the CIA, is not convinced that President Biden actually succeeded in killing al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a drone strike in Afghanistan.

Fleitz claims he is “skeptical” that a CIA drone strike took out the terrorist a year after the botched Afghanistan withdrawal. There has been no proof of death yet. Only the bragging over the dispatching of the monster by an administration that has reportedly had to walk back a number of similar claims.

In a strike that appeared to Fleitz to be far too convenient, Zawahiri was said to have been taken out on a balcony outside of Taliban-controlled Kabul by the CIA using a drone, according to multiple reports. Although the Taliban confirmed there was a drone strike, they notably did not confirm that Zawahiri was killed.

When interviewing Fleitz on “Special Report,” Fox News host Bret Baier commented that U.S. intelligence officials have been hunting for Zawahiri for years and have never been able to pin him down. He asked Fleitz what he thought of the claim that Zawahiri was no more.

Keep reading

Zelensky Thanks Biden For Fresh $550M In Military Aid, Claiming Ukraine “Closer To Victory”

Another Monday, and another massive military aid package for Ukraine approved by the Biden administration – this time with a price tag just over half-a-billion dollars.

“The United States is greenlighting another military assistance package to Ukraine, sending $550 million in ammunition for advanced rocket systems and other equipment to the country to fight the Russian invasion,” The Hill reports of the approved transfer. Ukraine’s President Zelensky was quick to thank the White House, curiously adding this brings the Ukrainian forces “closer to victory”.

Thank you @POTUS for your leadership, robust support of 🇺🇦 and understanding that 🇷🇺 is a threat to entire civilized world. Together we are defending values of freedom common to both 🇺🇦 & 🇺🇸. New defense assistance package is bringing us closer to victory

— Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) August 1, 2022

The package is expected to include more ammunition for High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, or HIMARS, as well as mortar resupplies, including an estimated 75,000 rounds for 155 mm artillery.

For those keeping count, that’s north of $8 billion in total US assistance to Ukraine spread over the course of 17 packages so far since the February 24 Russian invasion.

Zelensky and his top officials have continued to press for more, and longer-range systems, even as Russia has claimed to have taken out multiple HIMARS systems and rockets in strikes on depots. Kiev has disputes this, and currently it’s believed at least a dozen to 16 HIMARS are active near the front lines based on the latest known Pentagon transfers.

Keep reading

Joe Biden set to double the size of the IRS

At a time of soaring inflation, falling earnings, and shriveling 401(k)s, what should Joe Biden and his Senate Democrats come up with for the beleaguered public in their “Inflation Reduction Act” besides this:

Start with the spending explosion for the Internal Revenue Service that Biden demanded from the start. That is $80 billion to deploy 87,000 new IRS agents. Enough to fill every seat in Nationals Park twice. Enough to fill the Roman Colosseum 1.7 times.

That’s more new IRS agents than the entire combined personnel of all U.S. aircraft carriers.

The bill also gives taxpayer money to the IRS to buy new cars, and more money for IRS “office rent.”

The official IRS watchdog — the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration — reports that the IRS already has more cars than it needs. And that the IRS cannot show that its employees are limiting their use of those cars to official business.

That’s from a Daily Caller op-ed written by tax maven Grover Norquist, and the details of it are appalling — an incompetent agency that cannot manage its affairs, has a history of political activity and union cash thrown at Democrats, and now gets more, way more, billions, in a shrinking economy with fewer than 1,000 billionaires for those 87,000 agents to supposedly target as tax cheats.

Anyone believe them when they say they just want billionaires to pay their “fair share”?  We all know what they really have in mind: going after small business, the actual engine of economic growth, to ensure that everyone has nothing, and everyone will enjoy it.

Keep reading

Reuters Runs Cover for Dementia Joe and ‘Fact-Checks’ Funny Meme Showing Biden Being Distracted by Ice Cream Truck Music

Reuters actually ‘fact-checked’ a funny meme of Joe Biden getting distracted by ice cream truck music.

Last September Joe and Jill Biden pushed Covid vaccines at Brookland Middle School in Washington DC.

At one point Dementia Joe got distracted by a shiny button and wandered off as Jill Biden was speaking.

Biden shuffled away then made his way back as Jill Biden addressed the school officials.

Twitter users made fun of Joe Biden by adding ice cream truck music to the video of dummy Joe wandering around.

Keep reading

COVID reinfection rate with treatment Biden is taking is more than 40% – and not 2% as marketed: Paxlovid is thought to suppress immune response meaning body can’t fight off new infection

Joe Biden has been re-infected with COVID after taking an anti-viral drug that leaves patients running a 40 per cent risk of flare-up of the virus shortly afterwards.

Taking Paxlovid leaves COVID sufferers in danger of testing positive for the virus again very quickly after clearing their initial infection. 

When Paxlovid came to market in December 2021, studies from Pfizer indicated that only 1-2 percent of patients who took the drug tested positive for Covid again shortly after finishing their dosage. 

But other experts say the rapid reinfection rate is closer to 40 per cent, and that Paxlovid can cause this issue by suppressing patients’ immune systems too early, meaning their own bodies are unable to get a handle on COVID.  

Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a prominent cardiologist and professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University Hospital tweeted: ‘I think this was predictable.’

He continued: ‘The prior data suggesting ‘rebound’ Paxlovid positivity in the low single digits is outdates and with BA.5 is likely 20-40% or even higher.’

In a memo released by the White House, Dr. Kevin O’Connor said that the president will continue to isolate, just like he did when he first tested positive on July 21. 

Dr. O’Connor also said that the president would not be prescribed Paxlovid again. The president’s doctor earlier noted that it was likely that the president was infected with the BA.5 variant. 

Keep reading

22 States Sue Over ‘Gender Identity’ Rule Controlling $29 Billion For Poor Kids’ Meals

Twenty-two states are suing President Joe Biden’s administration for threatening to zap school-meal program funding unless the states comply with new rules surrounding gender identity and sexual orientation in schools.

The lawsuit represents the latest volley fired in the ongoing battles between state officials and Biden, who they accuse of usurping their authority through his executive orders.

The states complain that a federal nondiscrimination rule, set to take effect Aug. 15, seeks to impose “obligations that apparently stretch as far as ending sex-separated living facilities and athletics and mandating the use of biologically inaccurate preferred pronouns,” said the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, Tennessee, on July 26.

“The Biden administration’s sweeping rhetoric treats normal practices, such as sex-separated bathrooms and athletics, as ‘discriminatory’ even though DOJ and the Department of Education treated those as legal, nondiscriminatory practices as recently as last year,” the suit says.

A fact sheet about the proposed policy cited examples of discriminatory acts, as interpreted by bureaucrats, under the new rule: “Preventing a transgender high school girl [a biological male] from using the girls’ restroom” and “preventing a transgender high school girl [a biological male] from “try[ing] out for the girls’ cheerleading team,” the lawsuit says.

Keep reading

Joe Biden: Americans Complaining About Inflation Forgot We Sent Them a Check for $8,000

President Joe Biden on Thursday reminded Americans suffering from inflation and high gas prices that he sent them a check for $8,000 in 2021.

“There’s reason to be down but I started thinking about it … the first year, we were able with the rescue plan, we were able to send them a check for eight grand,” he said. “I mean a check. Beyond that by the way, there was more than that.”

The president spoke about the trillions he spent in the Democrat-passed American Rescue Plan during a conversation he had with his economic advisers on the state of the economy. His mention of the “$8,000 check” was likely a reference to the temporary expansion of the tax credit provided to families in 2021 until it expired this year.

Biden complained that Americans forgot what he did for them in 2021, even as he admitted it was “totally understandable.”

He pointed out that even for Americans making $120,00 a year, $8,000 dollars should have meant a lot to them.

“That’s a lot of money, and so it helped save a lot of people in terms of getting thrown out of their home and rental housing and a whole range of things,” he said.

Keep reading