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Executive editor, a Green Waldheim hygiene Senora steam rose high Christine I got em for musical number by the way, but I haven't gotten clearance on fuel a able Corey. graphic em. An associate I don't know Rossman. I know I just know, of course, a star, as as I was of high school musical, so you know who knows we could only Abe, Abe, Noah and I could all do feel for ten horns from guys and dolls, while Christine does Adelaide lament don't know, what's gonna happen, the commentary roast. I know that had been made of all things can be broadly grows out, come if you want some sense of what goes on the commentary roast go to Youtube: Google, Dick Cheney behind the music

That's all. I'm gonna tell you Dick Cheney behind the music and you'll, get some sense of some kind of things that happen at the commentary roast guys, we a pull out from Quinnapin back Bout, America, the Biden Administration and Joe Biden than the Democrats and Republicans Republicans, and to call this catastrophic catastrophic for Joe Biden would be to do him a it. It shows him with a thirty eight percent approval rating verses, a fifty three percent disapproval rating in his that as a decline. That has an eight point shift against him in as regards the previous quinnapin, pull through ago go and it's really bad independence now disapprove of binding sixty the thirty two was of courses

Performance with independence that that won him, the presidency, that those numbers are catastrophic and their catastrophic as we go down systematically down the range of issues on whether on watch on which we will approve disapprove of him the economy. Thirty, nine, fifty five commander. In chief excuse me, commander and chief three thousand seven hundred and fifty eight taxes, three thousand seven hundred and fifty four foreign policy, three thousand four hundred and fifty eight immigration, two thousand five hundred and sixty seven and the situation of the mexican border parallelly closely with immigration, two thousand three hundred and sixty seven. Only forty four percent of Americans say he's honest. Fifty percent say he's not that compares to fifty one percent saying that he was honest in April: good leadership, skills, four thousand one hundred and fifty six compared to five thousand two hundred and forty four in April and more than half of

Harkins. Fifty five to forty two percent say that the Bible Ministration is not competent in running the government. All this comes up against the backdrop of the of the mass of the last week weak and a half in which the Democrats were unable to settle how to handle infrastructure and the big budget build that they want and the coming the that could come crisis in relation to the? U S dead and the debt ceiling, which now has apparently been

resolved in a way that will discuss who benefits and who doesn't okay. So that is that's the backdrop now. This Paul had to really surprising funding in so far as they all everything you just listed wasn't rising. It is surprising, but had to really surprising findings from my perspective. First, on those set of issues on immigration and the border crisis respectively, as if our colleague, let correctly by Anne, had received his lowest mark.

fewer than thirty percent of Americans approved of his performance. They are closer to twenty percent on those issues and you don't get that low without losing a whole lot of Democrats in the European Polis, not Rasmussen, as the hazard slightly democratic House affect us, which makes us all the worse for for Joe Biden, but you go down to the cross tabs and you see that on these two respective issues, roughly half of Democrats fifty and fifty one percent, I think, approved of Joe Buttons performance on both the border and immigration respectively.

A thing that left fully half of self identified. Democrats do not approve of Joe Biden for one reason or another, and you can say: well: maybe they like they don't like the humanitarian concerns separating families, which has a legal requirement that this presidency has pursued just as the last one dead. Maybe, but you can also see some likely some immigration restriction is in there on the Democratic party side. That is just not reflected at all in any of the venues that report to serve this demographic centre left mediate, does not advance that particular viewpoint at all, but you can see the perfect storm that immigration and border represent four Biden precisely in in in the past, the possibility that everything that he is doing or hasn't been doing offends Republicans in the

Dependence and what he has been doing may offend some Democrats as well as what he hasn't been doing. So the one less bolster, he has an all this polling, as is support from his own party. If he's fifty. Fifty on his part, That means some of them are restriction. Restrictions than some of them think that he's being a monster in that it's just Hitler to all her again, and you can see here making moves in any direction on the basis of his own party support. could be injurious to him. That's one of the region, that they might be this paralyzed, but there's two and there to other things, to keep in mind here too. With regard particularly how Democrats view his look at the border. One is that he initially punted the issue to his vice president. You give commonly Harris. This is part of her portfolio, though she very quickly, and probably it was savvy.

To be like one, not actually gonna go to the border. There's a crisis: I'm gonna, look at root causes and go to the countries where these people are coming from, and that was an unsatisfactory response to the crisis because it was a crisis. This wasn't just oh, what are we going to do in the future about the bore? It was current crisis and she kind of he punted it to her and she avoided. It is well so there's that which I think did to disappoint alot of Democrats on the competence issue, but to the lying point I think they're plenty of Democrats who didn't appreciate the present, the United States lying about his own border patrol officers and having the media pick up that store and run with it and having him claim he's: gonna, punish people who were doing their jobs amidst a crisis that he has so far issued no solutions for so that I think I think he probably lost a lot of support among his own party. For that too, he was supposed to be kinder and gentler than tromp. Yes, we know but competence, the competence and the lying

Parts of this pulling were really interesting to me to see how far he's fallen in terms of the american public view of those two things, and as it is another aspect, religion is too, which is his did the general pr approach he takes to it or the you know, no cameras Over the bridge where there are where all the Haitians were, the whole message of don't cover the story, cervix explicitly articulate, Buddy Ministration, don't cover the border right now we're going to fix it and then we'll. Let you cover it which which no one that's not even a part of something that that's lutely. No one wants to hear that from the president. The danger of immigration becoming a populist issue is a danger that is posed almost exclusively to democratic and liberal Democrats, because then I speak here as an immigration of myself.

Their view, the view of the of the totally dovers totally out defined ice, cancel ice don't let everybody and don't stop. Everybody is incoherent at best. And violet of U S law at worst an and it's not really defensible. Unless you are an activist who accepts all kinds of proceeding theories about the United States borders about sovereignty, about all kinds of things, that our view, very much a matter of x, We believe elite opinion or extreme activist opinion and are really not shared by hardly anybody what people are like, as far as I can tell and where the right is always wrong on this is that people are sympathetic both to Emma

prince and to the idea that people who want to come to the United States for a better life for themselves will not make the country better and not worse. That polling has suggested consistently threw out. the rise of the anti immigration right over the last twenty five years. Those numbers have not changed. In fact, they may have gotten a little better. People are sympathetic to immigration. They are not sympathetic, and this is Democrats as well Publicans. It was independence to two lawbreaking and the end ignoring avoiding or outright supporting the breaking of the law in a way by the way that that that harms legal immigration, legal immigrants and caused that that a lesion between legal and illegal immigration caused great harm to the cause of immigration over the last three or four years, because it gave Trump the excuse to live

legal immigration in astonishing numbers and where is the democratic position eroding fastest? It's not in the upper Midwest among working class whites, it's in border counties, it's in tech along in Texas, along the Rio Grande among hispanic hispanic voters, it's just that their democratic support is collapsing at a rate that is surprising, even pull lodgers people like they Waterman, I dont, remember he's. I think his NBC News now are forecasting and utter implosion of the democratic opposition in otherwise solidly blue counties with the odd exceptional domestic, but solidly blue counties along the border. There's also weirdly contradictory messaging about crisis going on within the administration here, because if we still are in the midst of a pandemic crisis, a covert crisis that requires you know, mandates for vaccination and continued mask wearing, which is what the administration is, is claiming their not speaking to the

a covert crisis at the border at all. In fact, they try to avoid those questions. They did have to acknowledge that they weren't actually testing a lot of the people who were coming into the country, and so there again like. I think that the american people look at this and say this doesn't make sense to me is that if these are twin crises and we're in the middle of a pandemic- and they tell us not to worry about all these people come across the border and they're, not even testing them. There are even enforcing making sure they're coming to their appointments before judges to to apply for the legal status than how are we to believe they messaging on. Why it wire he being punished without these mandates when they can't even enforced the basic law at the border. So ably talk about lawn order, you know is blown order. Republican issue always was it was for fifty years and then Democrats always say things like that was as the code for racism but there's a common central aspect here. That is, I think, a huge problem for liberals and Democrats and always has been, which is most people.

Obey the law. Almost everybody obeys the law. When they don't they do it, they do it in kind of very vague ways. You know they speed, or they have one too many drinks and drive. If they do something like that or they smoke pod or say whatever they date, they they break the law, but they do so in a way that they know probably not all that injurious to other people, and that is something the lot of other people are doing, and it is it's not the same thing, but when you get to something like our people, a lap cry, sing the border and then they come into the country and they don't have a right to be here and they are therefore gonna do whatever is it they're gonna do, and I just I follow the rules. Ninety five per in my own life- and there is this- we are category of people, though of for whom we are supposed to accept that the rules are

suspended and they're, not taxpayers, and they weren't born here and there not our people, and this is why it's not fair. It's a little like the thing that source the tea party in two thousand and nine, which was that eight percent of Americans were not paying their mortgages because the financial crisis has hit them so hard and liberal started, stifling the idea that people's mortgage payment should be suspended and weeks until he went on CNBC and said ninety two percent everybody was mortgage in this country paying their mortgage and we are going to up and eight centuries of common law contract thinking in order to serve this them, rather than be we're in a rap the lives of the ninety two percent of people who follow through on their obligations. This is not right and I think Democrats constantly miss a bat When they embraced the idea that

things in this country? Are unjust or not fair or something like that and that the way to handle that is too privilege those who are violating the social compact rather then do what they can to extend the social compact, everyone in some fashion will. This is why a Christine's point about covers is so on target, because so then the sense of permissiveness are the sort of the the lax approach to migrants. border for from Democrats is coming at it at a time not only when every one in the country is is being told to take on all sorts of new onerous responsibilities having to do with covert and being you know the having to do with mandates and and and behaviour of in turn.

the pandemic, but this also comes amid larger liberal campaign. To police everyone for everything right for your behavior. For your speech for what you do where you go, what you buy, who you are and then at the same time, just like just let just drop down will end on enforcement at the at the borders borders to it's. Just you know let people, people command and and and and by God, don't let police police at all either at the borders are in cities are doing you know, so the the paradox is is absolutely to huge to ignore. Even if you don't see it on a conscious level, you feel it because all you get from the same sources are. I can't do anything and they want

People coming into a debate with their country legally to be able to do it to do anything so that the larger liberal leftist idea is that the is that the disaster the moral disaster facing the country is inequity. However, you want to slice it find it. income and equity. We know why laws being improperly in our, but people being punished in an in an inequitable fashion. Everyone a slice of that that's in equity and people who sort of

take a stand against inequity or oppose it, or our representatives of it are people for whom we are supposed to have sympathy, and that's an interesting, let's say, how'd, you abstracting of the fact that most people don't experience life like this. It's not like how come I pay. My taxes and Rockefeller doesn't pay his taxes more. Like I pay my taxes, my nephew paces taxes, my neighbour pays, its taxes zones will pay the taxes, and so it's this guy over here you know somehow getting off Scot free for Islam in Iraq. Valid does pay taxes and they serve under,

and that they may think maybe Rockefeller should pay more in his taxes, but that their very great at abstracting injustice, but an injustice is when laws or import when the laws that are on the books are are enforced in equitably right. It's not Trump got away with the sand, with saying in the course of his presidency in his presidential campaign that he was smart to use the existing tax laws, not to pay taxes or to do with what you never admitted, what it was that he did everything to do with the taxes but that smart, because that's the law and he obeyed the law. He obeyed the law and he hired people who figure How to obey the law while paying the least in taxes that's fair? What's not right is that people.

Violate the law and break the law and get away with it? And that, I think, is what people cannot abide and what Democrats have lost the string on or lost the thread on About ordinary people, hearing the news and seeing things on the news they people under a bridge, and there too, I was a war shock. Testy, look at that and say: oh those poor people left the men or do you say what did they do when in Texas, under a bridge they're not supposed to be here. They didn't get here in a legal way, but that? But the argument

they make now, which is about the reason. The equity argument is the one you hear more often than not from Democrats is because the real answer to that question is neither can be both. That can be. What are they doing here? I feel really bad for them, but the only solution is to, if you don't like, the existing law is to change it and they have not been able. I dont is there an immigration bill before Congress right now that the democratic pushing to abolish ice? No, it's easier to say: ices cruel their mean to people. We should just be nice to people. There's no such thing as an illegal human. You ve seen other Times on people's Europe frontlines, so it's easier to make the emotional appeal while doing nothing as policymakers and right- More and more Americans are looking at that going well yeah. We feel that what are you gonna do about it and their answer is we're just gonna keep telling you that you should feel bad for these people and that anyone who wants to enforce the law is evil in others. This big report out some

International Consortium of investigative journalists release this the Pandora project. by which is a discovery of all kinds of financial information involving the super wealthy in countries around the world, one of the deed. Else in this not observe continue harping on this point, but involves How many. Foundations, trusts and things exist in South Dakota, because that's Dakota chain a lot of its laws and the early eighties in order to attract credit card companies. When the reasons that you know, whenever you send a check to your credit card company, this is less the case, and it was then, but for decades when you set your beer monthly payments, your credit card company went to an address in South Dakota like why. That's all you're right. Why is that? While South Dakota changed its oz, in order to attract a certain type of company,

and as a result, the brilliant tax professionals who study study that discrepancies in state law on all that? figured out that there was a certain kind of shelter you could create, and South Dakota you couldn't create anywhere else and new goods. Trusting this them- and this is why I, who even understands it and story publishes their sins let it be known that this is going on that this is a way that people are avoiding pangs. Stay taxes are paying certain kinds of taxes, and then you know seven paragraphs down in the story. It says well, this is of course legal. It's totally legal what's going on here, but this just means that rich people aren't paying. The same kind of tat is on their inheritances or whether they might pay. Otherwise, if the South Dakota didn't have these rules but south to come,

does have these rules, and it has these rules precisely to encourage and engender the kind of business that these banks belied unjust, Delaware has all kinds of weird rules that mean that ships are all registered in Delaware ORB. You know with other kinds of credit card companies, and banks are registered Delaware Data; rather they have a lot of transfer. I drew near that's how the federal system works. Different states engage in different policies in order to attract different kinds of business, and it looks illegal to people who believe that the tax rate should be a hundred percent. But if you don't believe the tax rate should be a hundred per cent, it's all, but you know this is something that the nation and the New Republic and other publications like that and and and and and pick it. He and dad Paul Krugman will yell about for the next forty or fifty years, but

That is not what illegality means to most people. It is not what crime amen, illegality and the things that we need to be protected against, if we are to have a functioning civil society in which we all feel safe and which we all feel that basically, things are being applied? You now impersonally across the board that just isn't That's just isn't what they mean by it and and and they keep making this mistake. over and over again I mean they're they're they're, walking on a road in which, as I keep saying, they are handing Republicans The very issue that Republicans used to change the higher political dynamic in the United States, away from it being an effectively democratic country into it becoming a conservative country which is both in foreign policy and domestic policy, the idea of

we are bad governance system is bad. The problem with crime is, it is the mindset of the people who commit the crimes and not the crimes that are being committed and the them sore created from it and in the world. We need to coddle the people who are creating disorder and and be nice to them and hope the daily us alone rather than confronting and contain them- and that is how the Republican Party grew from being a party where there were two twice as many Democrats and Republicans too pretty much parity today, and it is going that way. Right again, as this pole, there's gonna be, a pulse would seem to demonstrate their early should get. We should get to the foreign policy elements of it

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See: oh, ok, that we weigh our e dotcom slashed commentary and use promo code commentary for fifteen percent off your first order maiden cook, where Dotcom Slash commentary use promo code commentary Noah. Let's talk foreign policy, yes at the other shocking finding to mean that shocking, but surprising and a good way of finding from this quantity at Paul was on Afghanistan and asked asked respondents about quote forever

is whether they support ending those forever wars and would, however, their described and found that dumb. Twenty eight percent thought that Joe Biden handled Afghanistan correctly, that he did the court the right thing. Sixty five percent also said that some or all of the U S military footprint in Afghanistan should have remained behind. Now, that's gonna be a shocking finding only for people. In my view, who haven't been following the issue closely, to think that american public opinion is frozen, an amber from twenty fourteen, but events changed dramatically over the course of the second half of the last decade in Afghanistan to achieve a flash with disgust numerous times in the past, a sustainable unhappy, but nevertheless acceptable status quo. That was something of a stalemate, and

results in the part of the american public was not support for the conflict per se, but apathy. In late may I wrote a post for the blog for commentaries. Blog side entitled are Americans in the mood for humiliating defeat. Now the intuitive answer to that is now an that's the answer that I leaned into, but along the way encountered this analysis by Brookings institution researchers, Medea saw an is received, who did a commendable analysis of the, albeit scarce polling, around the issue and the fact that there was scarce pulling around the issue of also suggests that Japan and sense of apathy and acceptance of the conflict had settled in over the american public, but they found that in October twenty nineteen one Paul you gotta pull found than a fifth of respondents.

Twenty percent just didn't even answer questions about troop levels, they just didn't respond another one in twenty nineteen, another observer found that Americans backed a quote rapid, an orderly withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan to the tune of just thirty or per cent there's a lot of non response in these poles and a general lack of enthusiasm for the kind of policy that Joe Biden pursue That was available to anybody willing to see the evidence well before anyone engaged in the kind of withdrawal that both Donald Trump and Joe Biden pursued in Afghanistan, with imprudent alacrity towards the end of twenty twenty and into twenty twenty one, and all you have to do- is to have a sort of basic understanding of the american political dynamic to know that the public doesn't really care about farming.

see up until one of two things happens: american start dying abroad or the nation has dealt a humiliating disgraceful defeat. Public does like that sort of thing and Democrats somehow convince themselves that the public was so hostile to this conflict that they wouldn't care how it ended, even if it was really messy, even if it was injurious to the national soul, something that Joe Biden Ways to talk a lot about and they pursued. This will really imprudent policy and now they're gonna be surprised to find that the public doesn't like it. When all of this, in my view, was pretty predictable to that point, I think o is least significant. Part of the the large number in the recent poll who say they would support. Some true presents some continued you

true presence in Afghanistan, who, I think has to do with the fact that it has happened and has gone so poorly boom people are somewhat shameless about. You know: stadium answered, putting their opinions on the record as if it was the one they always had in light of changing events, you know had had heads by some miracle the withdrawal gone smoothly and perfectly. I think the number would look different light of possibly in you're, probably right, but it dovetails with what we are talking about in the first segment. In so far as Democrats are making the conservative case for them to sort of always the case. what happens when you have United government and they sort of stumble on their critics are retroactively justified. But in this case I mean literally justifying in the minds of men voters a permanent presence in Central Asia,

was so anathema to just about everybody who wrecked rights and talks about politics for a living that it has to come as something of a shock shockwave internalize this idea that nobody likes America's presence abroad, even though they define that so narrowly as to exclude just about everywhere that Americans actually are, but they ve. I'm really only talking that central asian rack, but this is making the case for America Colin Powell forevermore as permanent presences abroad, that are a vice or commitments to friendly governments in support of. U S interests there so that we don't they dont become larger problems that we have to deal with here. That's the argument- and it is being validated in real time by its opponents. Yo, I think a has the point right, which is that Biden had had an argument that this is it. This is a two part argument he was making, one of which is that we, who are our presence there, is not sustainable over time because to contain

new being there- we would have had to ratchet up troop levels because a deal had been made and we weren't getting attacked our member. Whatever the nonsense was, the Biden was peddling about how we would have had to commit tens of thousands of more troops there to do something We urge is simply to maintain look, I did and then we should be accurate about best, because several organisations groups there was a trunk congressional committee to this effect. The members leave Ministration all recommended something to the tune of forty five hundred troops augmenting from our presence of twenty five hundred beginning of the year Ryan, Jo Leinen, said, and I can do that- I want to get down to seven thousand. Ultimately, he had to an increased her presence to six thousand when I found that he couldn't pulled the airport, so even he backed off his I'm ok by me case. So so that was that was there was one part and the sea can part, was you know we're gonna get out so well

gonna get out and and everybody's gonna like that, we got out well. People would have liked that we got out. If we got out there were no consequences. So would we I mean. So you know, unless you, unless you're so eager to win the argument that your excellency things being equal- maybe we shouldn't, have troops in Afghanistan. So if we pull out- and you know the government that doesn't fall and they make some kind of a deal with the Taliban, were they while settling in everything suddenly becomes a kind of fun, peaceable Concord, their yeah, then he would have reaped all the benefits of having done something. You know visionary that his own people advised against than the people who talk about for twenty years, but he did he that didn't happen. What happened was that people who said

Don't do this because you're gonna pull your pulling out the the cork- and you know brackish- am poisonous liquids are gonna poor in that are going to create a horrible situation, so it out he would have benefited from the upside. If there had been an upside that that the weird none of this was the white houses and the Democrats Blind insistence that he would benefit. Even if there were a downside, I mean that's, or were you as the day, inside was going on. They were saying nobody is gonna care about this, but you know the funny part is unless the story changes. The overhang is the Last thing, then everybody thought about Afghanistan was: oh, my god that was terrible. It's not like there get the thing that they're gonna remember a flashback too, if they don't think about it for six or eight months, and somebody starts talking about in twenty twenty two is: why guess that went fine, because all

I'll remember is the chaos that what, though, also remember- and I think this this applies to a lotta messaging- that the administration is bizarrely listen to embrace, which is this. It we're doing this all for your own good, there's a kind of a weird technocratic, soothsaying tone they take when they, when they make these decisions- and it's you know we were relieving Afghanistan, a member. How defensive and kind of shots Biden seem. The people were unhappy that the very fact that he had to come and speak to the public about this seem to surprise him, and it was like this. This is what we need to do. I've been saying this is what we need to do. It's all for your own good. The same way, he you kind of his rolled out various covert mandates and end claims, and I think up to a point when things go well, Americans don't mind being told what's best for them at a certain level, but when public officials who ve botched

we have several different major aspects of public policy and foreign policy come before the american people say we ve got more that we're gonna do for your own good. That mistrust is what I think we're seeing in this recent Poland will continue to see. Now. I totally believed that Republicans can snatched two feet from the jaws of this pr Victor a hip it, but that they have in front of them right now, an unlikely well and certainly of Trump Renters presidential contender race, that'll be destroyed, but there's the condescension that I think a lot of Americans are getting from over and over again on various policy choices and messaging from the bottom station shouldn't be discounted here, because people don't like to be talk down to and Mr Lunch pill Joe his weirdly adopted some of that too, in a lot of his larger public policy. Undertakings remains in the question, is it? Is it Mr Lunch Bill, Jos and really large scale? Job is actually in the latest, or am I really wanted to say this in the initial fly.

Way cause. I'm gonna use an extremely judgmental an ugly word, but I want to say in the flat way to have a serious debate or as I've Add three or four times, or is he an idiot What I mean by that is, he has now been president for you now almost nine months and his judgment is very bad about what things are going to happen. There are going to be good for him or bad for him or good for the country or bad for the country. Some point we accept the contention that people who win the presidency or people politicians who have a greater understanding of what the Bulgaria is what the public wants in very broad brush terms and and

we're just sitting here on the sidelines. Canvassing he's the man in the arena he's the one who has to Vienna the buck stops with him every presidential cliche. You can come up with So we should give him the benefit of the doubt that his feel or his people's fear before where the country is in a given moment is probably

better than ours, and I think we can now pretty conclusively say that that is not true, but is at them to go into the baby. You opened the door, is he an idiot or a fool? There is a difference in that we think of it. You know I was there, the the old term, for you know as a certain degree of cognitive deficiency. You know it was, it was actually right did described bad. You know at a certain iq level, young, I don't, I don't think he's necessarily and eighty it it in those terms he's quite foolish and in the sense that he's, despite whatever his you know, his cognitive capabilities and I met him at his age despite the batteries.

you may be sufficiently intelligent had probably is he still can't stop getting in his own way and making a poor decisions, but I also think it is something that is affected him you nice has before it is he's he's proved himself to be very unlike able fool and and and and quite designed, just one, and there are likeable idiots, or at least once a year that feel are being straight with you and I think it's his lack of being straight with us as well as talking down wasn't it is just too. I just want to bring up one example, because in order to because we were on Afghanistan, I should but let them. But a piece of news came up yesterday from CNN, where a bunch of yours to fetch officials have said that the the suicide bomber who killed thirteen? U S, servicemen at the Pilgrim Airport, along with dozens of Afghans,

where there was a member of ice is, as I say now, ISIS K, who was released from the prison at at bottom Airport, the prison that the that? U S head, the? U S had been in charge of, but one whit when, when the airport security was handed over to the Taliban, the Taliban released this ISIS member who then perpetrated the suicide attack on the airport. This brings up several things among them, of course, just as the general incompetence with which we went about drawing down there, but also- and this is in regard to this- this gets the point of how the burden administration tossed the american people this whole ridiculous

notion that the Taliban and ISIS K are these mortal enemies so with at, and that we should be happy about that in some sense, because in some way this puts the Taliban on our side. You see because we, because we have this common enemy in Kay the Taliban released this. This ISIS member from the prison I want to say that even worse than that in part, because the administration strategy tacitly concedes that our project in Afghanistan is to engineer a civil war is to incentivize domestic warfare and sacrifice all the afghan citizens we're gonna be caught in the crossfire so that the Taliban is standard. I'll cut allies are so tied up with with ISIS that they did. They don't have the capacity and the wherewithal to threaten Europe or the United States, which is as morally bankrupt of up

policy, as you can get, and it's only cold comfort that it's not succeeding. Briefly, that I really love your fool analogy, cause he's he's Joe Biden has a full in the classic russian literary sense in it. He's he's that he is he's a fool who ushers in world historic events presages the plot line, advancing in a way thing away that he's a sort of stumbles into what end up becoming these central pivot points. In whatever the story, the narrative is like a turgenev. Sort of Zambia, as I'm sort of literary idea of the russian full. I love that I imagine where ask is idiot there. no I'll just have to use an area that a holy man. I know different ring at that. That's the holy Fool, We now believe that right, right, target, undergrad here as well, yeah, but that doesn't have six area is. Is it is a great old person so I am not going down that road, but I do think that its important the rest

I said idiot and not full, though I think fool is a perfectly acceptable, and maybe maybe these are. This is a semantic difference is he's, not very smart. That's what I'm saying- and I want a sort of think about this, because course. It has been a line of democratic thinking about republican presidents, that there dumb right, Ford, tripped and Reagan was a movie star, stupid and Bush couldn't put assented together and all of this, and you should be as dumb as Reagan and Bush. You know you should in your entire life, The whole line about Bush was so astonishingly factitious in any case as as David from once said, the thing that pushes that he stumbled over his all over his word, sometimes because brain was moving too fast moving faster than his tongue. That was his experience. A Bush does

after this was a this is a line, a self justifying line and went back to Eisenhower. The idea was Eisenhower. The man who had run world WAR two was dumber than outlay Stevenson. Who is a buffoon in fact was. Eight was a pretentious but born and Eisenhower was a man who would not only run world war two but had been the President of Colombia University, but because he ran a republican and not a democratic which it could easily have done. This line develop that he was stupid. I mean just think about that for a minute as knowledge to, by the way, a man who translated things into Latin, to relax, Coolidge translated English poetry into Latin, so that he could relax, or this is a century old trope about Republicans and and and and being dumb and Democrats it out,

covering themselves. At the idea that you know their leaders are are all robotic geniuses. You know John F Kennedy when a Pulitzer for a book he didn't write. That had Sorenson Road, so that was good. You know, because you want a Pulitzer before he became president and, of course, Brok Obama. You know the robot nausea. It's all this democratic grand I'm sorry, but Joe Biden is an idiot. He doesn't understand the car. the quotas of his actions. He has said dramatically over the course of his political career advocated for policies, we have seen time and again not that mother. You can't advocate for bad policies and be an intelligent, brilliant person you can, but he advocates or policies that are on on the face of I'm off often really stupid and won the ones that aren't stupid. Like allowed. The measure that he assembled for the crime bill. He then disavowed later on when it's convenient for him to do so, and I genuinely think that it did not occur.

that. What happened in Afghanistan was gonna happen that it did not occur to him that when he said I you know there was a lot of the policies that were enacted as part of the covered relief bill and various other things, but they I'd- have unanticipated consequences that something a person of elementary intelligence who is like in his 70s, who was seen a lot going on in the world could say you know, maybe if we paid people too much unemployment insurance or not going to go back to work that didn't occur the eviction moratoriums problems didn't occurred to him and Afghanistan and the and the fact that I I was gonna turn you know into go rodeo didn't occurred to him, and I just think that we need to take account of the fact that we have a pie as an end, who really isn't very smart and there are going to become Quences from this throughout this presidency, you know,

I I don't really know what they are, and you know maybe again the holy. It is better than a then we have brilliant evil person or so But you know that this is just not. He is not showing an impressive set of skills as president, Let's just put it that way. The policies and acting and then the things that he tries to an act that don't go right, including like I, have an idea. Let's Karla Harris who has never done anything, doesn't know anything and was the worst presidential candidate of the last three years. A let's make our vice president be. Let's are in charge of stuff like put her in charge of what she hasn't done. Anything about anything, ever accept a kind of his huge opening that she made herself as approach the candidate and then close it up.

multinationals. Ukraine, just crisis, meant she has hired crisis management now so she's she's, really you know she's out there doing stuff, so that might prove to be smarter in the long run as insurance look who's coming up. Well, you know you united you and I have a difference of opinion on that question anyway, but anyway, just think that it's that we, we were Well, we will underestimate the degree to which a lot of this presidency is going to be managing the fact that we have a president who is who is? collect, surely not up to the job and may be the first president who is in fact, intellectually not up to the job that we ve seen. Certainly in my in my sixty year, so what I had to just dog vice president of one, what caused the I was just talking to someone who's outside about way about this part of those who voted for Biden and Harris had loved the idea of a co presidency type thing when the vice president, who has been deployed to handle multiple crises herself has

higher a crisis intervention we hired her. We ve frequent the country hired, heard, annul crises and now we're paying for her to have our amendment. That was what the friend said to me, and that was a real ship is a very liberal friend. I was like didn't think of it that when you go so it's enough to make your back egg. So if you have a back, or even if you don't have the backing, but you want to have a comfortable back. Let's talk about the exchequer, look for the sitting in my office chair until I got my exchequer and you know why that alum acts to map massage in temperature regulation. Because can your current officer a massage while you're working- I bet a camp of my exchequer camp in your current office. Your he'd upper cool down my next year can yours scant and once you feel the customer support of exteriors patented diner Variable lumbar devalue back will never be happy in any other chair again, I'm talking high performance, I'm talkin

quality engineering, I'm talking extreme comfort. These are all the reasons to Levin Ex chair. You can't wait to be at work when you're in your ex chair take my advice. Try ex share for yourself risk free for thirty days once you realize how better your chair can be. You'll, never go back, go to extra commentary that come now that the letter acts the word chair, commentary, dot com or call one eight for four four x chair for one hundred hours off you order Exchequer as a third, they guarantee of complete comfort, and you can finance your purchase for as little as thirty dollars a month Ex chair commentary, dot com. I want to go back to something we talked about. what days ago, which is this question of when what when crime comes, you know close to you. There is a remarkable story this morning in the New York Post. I just need to pull up here. Sorry, just give me a second,

about. I mention that sitting in my office, right literally above literally below me, my building sits atop. Our office building sits atop the times where subway station and atop the platform for the uptown number one train and on that platform, woman pushed another woman into an oncoming express train and in a mad, astonishingly happenstance. Why did not kill her? She broke her jaw and had some facial injuries, but but survived that the art posts as a follow up story. This morning by Rebecca Rosenberg, Gabrielle, far ruse Tina more and Bruce Golden And I just want to read some of it to I'm mentally ill woman busted in an unprovoked attempted murder. At the Times Square Subway station was locked up on one hundred thousand dollars bail Wednesday, as a group of politicians demanded the prosecutors completely stopped seeking bail

these conditions are Rikers Island, which is the New York City, jail, accuse subway shop and Sonya ago Barbara was reading Ledge we terrorize morning. Rush hour, strap hangers on Monday, after getting released without bail in July fifth assault in Harlem. That left the victim with injuries that included a black eye broken knows and knocked out tooth exit Barra. Twenty nine is charged in that case with thirty resolve. Them demeanor, that's among the many crimes or which judges can no longer imposed bail under a controversial twenty twenty reform lobby handful politicians would like to see broadened again. Borrow who's been diagnosed with schizophrenia. Has a history this all the rest and complaints about being an emotionally sturbed woman, a date to twenty ten one of those calls. Just two days after the heart, assault when she began arguing with staffers at a homeless, shelter and Far Rockaway Queens. That incident led to a psychiatric evaluation

as did another in July. Twenty twenty one cops found her throwing items out of an apartment window in the Bronx and screaming passers by she is charged with attempted, gray, murder for allegedly pushing Lenny Java eight twenty forty two against the side of a number three train bar has been out in in and out of an institution for most of her life for older sister, deadlier Gregg told the post. The city has failed, her Gregg said they took her off the medication because she says that she doesn't have mental issues. It is clearly not the truth. They always let her go and she always attacks. Somebody. Meanwhile, City Council, with Brad Lander, the democratic nominee for controller for city controller and thirteen states just letters were among those who called on all five of the seas. Disrepute Ernie's quote to immediately stop requesting bail. In all cases, they said the move would quote, ensure that not

no additional person is held in the inhumane conditions at Rikers, which has been marked by Cason violence. Recently, amid what the correction officers Union has described as a dangerous staffing Bridge quote every time your assistant, dysentery, request baby said, particularly when they know that builds on affordable. They demonstrate a callous disregard for human life and make clear that you are willing to subject presumptive Lee innocent people, people to torture. So Brad Landers is a city wide one, the citywide race for controller, that as a stepping stone to hire office. He is representing people who are insisting that people sent to jail for violent crimes.

not be sent to jail for violent crimes or be released because jail is worse than them committing violent crimes against others. There is. There is a fifty year novel in this horrible, sir, worry about the institutionalization about the role of our mental health system, dealing with adults gets a francs and about New York, city crime and liberal attitudes toward crime, and he thought this is this came up. I don't remember how many months at this point, probably six months ago, or so when an asian woman was attacked on the streets in midtown by, I was caught on surveillance, video with so many tax or now, and it turned out that guy was led out after killing his mother

though the that the state of things now and I live, and in midtown Andy Office, the counter offices in midtown so good deal, my life is spent walking up and down and across those it is that yeah sure you know it's New York in there's, always people talking to themselves- and you know always in that part of the charm of the city, but no its, not especially because these days you dont know if that is just a nice guy with some problems or someone who was just let out for killing someone who's going to push you into a train or stabbed you or attack you, and that is that is the reality right now in this. By the way, this gets back to our point about how did this,

idea among liberals and left that we should all be policing each other and obeying all sorts of restrictions and and curbs on our behavior, but those who pose the greatest threat to us should be eased up on, but that of bats gets very complicated. Of course, more talk about mental illness, and I- and you know, I'm I'm with you on that- the failings of that that the system into in terms of how it has treated those who actually need help. I keep mentioning the nineteen seventy years and Democrats and Republicans on crime and all of that, and having grown up in New York City in the nineteen seventies and living very close to where I lived when I was a kid nineteen seventies, I was asked recently by a by a younger, a relative by marriage. Who was it

the same neighborhood and has kids and the same neighborhood now, whether it what it's like now compared to what it was like them, and it's an interesting comparison, because New York City was unambiguously far less safe in that in the nineteenth century, is that it is now even after the crime surges of the last year and a half Fact of living in a city like that was that you lived in a constant state of menace so that even though, like I, you weren't likely to have someone push you into a subway train. you, were none the less. What you were afraid of was being mugged. You were afraid of being robbed. You were afraid of a kind of a racially tinge confrontation with with a criminal if you were white, particularly but also fewer hispanic and the criminal world black or if were black and the criminal or hispanic, so didn't didn't really matter.

menace was the overwhelming feeling- You were never really safe anywhere that you went and its different. Now and I suppose it's better, but it's different. Because this is more like jump skin our horror movie stuff in which walking along feeling perfectly safe, and then you here, oh someone just posts, but he onto a subway platform or in the path of a subway train right where you were standing fifteen minutes earlier. The effect is not to make you think. I can't walk down the street safely because anybody might have a gun or my push me against the wall. To rob for me, it is that a demonic some things sort of demonic might have and at any time, you're walking down a block, a person that we now describe, His home was going off their homeless, as we just mean that their crazy walks next to you and pushes you into a building or work,

or punches you from behind your head, or something like that There are dozens of these incidents, every day and granted. There are millions of people on the street, so the possibility that you will be one of these victims is much lower than it was in. nineteen seventys when there was a lot of and on hand, street crime and muggings, and things like that, but it doesn't feel, better to live in a place where you don't know. If it any moment, somebody is going to come up from behind you and push you into a subway train. These are two different feelings. And arguably the latter is worse than the former because of the unpredictability aspect, because it comes out of nowhere because and because it comes out of nowhere, unlike what people learned on the streets of dangerous cities in the seventies and eighties. You don't have much in the way of mitigation strategies,

when it was really unsafe at night you felt unsafe at night. For example, you would walk in the middle of the street not on the sidewalk That was what you did. You avoided blocks that had lots of little doorways where there were no doorman or, if you do, that walked in the middle of the street, and you let the dinner you stood aside when the cars passing you kept walking like that. There were thing. There were mitigation strategies you can't The mitigation strategy against surprise attack. That is the feeling now up agent, was it does it there's still a little bit of racially tinged menace out there to I've. I've been I've been harassed a few times as as a white guy about over the past two years. on the street, not not seriously, but you know that I'm not a matter. I'm saying that that that was a kind of it was it was. It was an everyday element of light

It was a constant feeling of a lack of safety which I still say is worse than now, but but you that there's been an act of one of the reasons why the messaging up there,

officials on the left about crime is so bizarre and and unhelpful is that people actually have thankfully been able to enjoy an expectation of safety. Are you I mean those of us who raised our kids and safer cities? It's hard to explain now. Two kids will actually hear some here are the mitigation strategies. Now the crime is going up that I want you to follow. They think it's an overreaction, but the experience which we ve actually had this period of time, where, where the crime rates were lower and there's again there so lower now with, despite than they were before, but its, but the fact that the messaging of of public officials is to say well that concern that feeling of safety being taken away from law. Abiding citizens isn't what we should be worried about. We should be worried about whether or not we are treating the criminals in a good way like whether they're getting all the support they need. What about your citizens? Your citizens have had something.

That is your job to maintain taken away from them little by little. What are you doing about it? And we have seen in the first real electoral challenge of this new era, which is the New York City, the primary for the New York City, mares race? The I, who sounded the toughest on crime, was the one who won the race going away against progressive prosecutor types people who supported the idea that the problem was policing and not an not One idea was: was dealing law enforcement as bad guys and not good guys. Now, I'm not saying that Eric Atoms, means it or that it's a very complicated issue, but in in in law, large bore he read as a public safety person. and one in the democratic primary. These people are challenging and aware these people are going to. gender and awakening within their own coalition.

Whether or not it is safe to be part of that coalition and in our justice, seeing certain types of radiological civil wars breaking out on Capitol Hill over things like spending and all of that our plan, the system is responsive. It's not that you know it's not that Democrat Republicans are going to rise up in these places and take out Democrat that's unlikely, to happen in these ultra blue places, but the idea that there is a kind of there's gonna be a pc rule about how to deal with crime when of course, as is always the case, the greatest danger to people from crime is the poor, the poor, the ones who are disproportionately affect by crime, not the wealthy and well to do who have who do have medication strategies like him, hey you avoid getting attacked on the subway. You never go on this

Why have you never go on the subway you take taxis and over is how do you do that? You have enough money to take taxes, an overall, a lotta people. Don't have enough money in can't do that. So they are. You know they they. They have gone into this in a kind of again much used. The word foolish or fools paradise of we ve lived with low key I am for so long. Obviously, the problem is the cops and now we're going to see what happens when people start feeling unsafe again, because that is the thing That is the number one thing that people care about, and it is the number one thing that destroy the Democratic Party as a nation. A force for twenty years at that destroy them. It wasn't destroyed as national. That's an overstatement, but but we gave rise to the parity? national, which is where we started,

this conversation, and so I will end here I will, back tomorrow for a pristine and now I'm job out hordes keep the candle burning.