Consider where we were with the pandemic. America had developed powerful vaccines to thwart the coronavirus and in the spring, President Biden was on track to reach his goal of at least one dose into the arms of 70% of the adult population by the 4th of July.

Then he hit a wall, coming up against the solid core of those fighting for the freedom to do as they pleased. No government could tell them what to do. No vaccine and no masks either, because no virus could violate their constitutional right to endanger all around them.

So, hope of herd immunity forsaken, along came the Delta mutation to gain a foothold in what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) head Rachel Walensky accurately called the "pandemic of the unvaccinated". Cases zoomed, currently at 150,000 a day. The U.S. is gaining on its January peak of 140,000 sick abed in hospitals with over 100,000 going into September, leading to over 1,500 deaths per day for
the first time since March. City after city, state after state, are sounding the alarm of no remaining beds; one in five ICUs report occupancy at 95% of capacity. The United States passed the 40 million mark in total Covid cases over the Labor Day weekend. Deaths now exceed 650,000.

Hospitals across the nation report that as high as 97% of the sick are unvaccinated. Southern states are the most affected, tracking nicely with the lowest vaccination rates. The overflow sees patients on gurneys lining hospital hallways. At the University of Mississippi, two of its hospital's parking garages were converted to Covid wards. That state’s hospital system is on the verge of collapse, says its hospital association. States are looking for refrigerated trailers to store the… Read More »

The Senate has produced a 2,700 page bill to provide roughly $1 trillion for infrastructure improvement across the next 10 years but with only the vaguest notions of how to pay for it, not least because Republicans disallowed inclusion of $80 billion across those years to beef up tax collection by the Internal Revenue Service. That is in keeping with budget cuts across the years despite the IRS being the one government agency that more than pays for itself. Sure enough, the Congressional Budget Office has since estimated that the repayment plan falls short by $250 billion.

After

an 11% hike in funding by the Obama administration, money dried up when Republicans won the House in 2010 and the IRS budget has been driven downward in real terms by nearly 15% over the last decade.

The consequences have been dramatic. Since peak in 2010, the agency has had to let 19,000 full-time employees go, with the number of auditors at a low not seen since the 1950s when the country's… Read More »

As in Vietnam, as in Iraq, as in Syria, the United States has left behind the thousands who helped our military in Afghanistan. In his headlong rush to pull out the troops, pressing for mid-July rather  August 31: Just as forecast, as a result of Joe Biden's haphazard, unplanned evacuation, America has betrayed thousands of Afghans who helped our country and who now face a Taliban now seeking them out for torture and murder.
    
than his original September 11 deadline, President Biden seems only at this last minute to have discovered that we are entirely unprepared to rescue the interpreters, drivers, cultural advisers, security guards, many of whom have been embedded with our troops, living with them at remote firebases, risking their lives on combat patrols, and now face inhuman retribution by the Taliban for their having rendered essential service to the U.S.

He pledges that thousands of Afghan interpreters for the US military will be evacuated as American forces leave. He has no idea how and… Read More »