Author: J.P. Knowles

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is demanding an investigation into the way President Biden is handling the crisis in Afghanistan after the Taliban took control of the government following the U.S. military withdrawal from the war-torn nation.

Sunday evening Mcarthy told Punchbowl News that Biden’s decision earlier this year to pull thousands of U.S. troops from Afghanistan was a”mistake that will haunt us for decades” and referenced the president’s target date to have troops out by Sep 11.

Mcarthy voiced, it was a mistake to pull U.S troops out of Afghanistan “during the summer when the Taliban is at their height.”

Mcarthy specified he wants an investigation digging into what the American and allied intelligence community were aware of in the weeks and months preceding the Taliban’s attack on the Afghan government.

Several other leading Republicans including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky). and former President Trump, have publicly criticized Biden’s policy decisions.

Over the weekend as the situation in Afghanistan grew more volatile by the hour, the President announced that the U.S. would send 1,000 more troops to Afghanistan to assist with evacuating U.S. personnel.

“Over our country’s 20 years at war in Afghanistan, America has sent it’s finest young men and women, invested nearly $1 trillion dollars, trained over 300,000 Afghan soldiers and police, equipped them with state-of-the-art equipment, and maintained their air force as part of the longest war in U.S. history,” Biden said Saturday in a statement announcing the move. “One more year, or five more years, of U.S. military presence would not have made a difference if the Afghan military cannot or will not hold its own country. And an endless American presence in the middle of another country’s civil conflict was not acceptable to me.”

The White House has deflected blame for the fall of the Afghan government to Trump, with Biden claiming the previous administration left the Taliban “in the strongest position militarily since 2001.”

“How does the rest of the world look at us?” minority leader Mcarthy said, “They like that the president doesn’t tweet, but they don’t think America is very tough.”

During a national interview, U.S. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, the democratic representative of California, stated that due to the recent COVID-19 spikes that the nation could be faced with a new mandatory vaccination policy that could “save lives.”

Waters stated in an interview with FOX 11 News anchor Elex Michaelson on Thursday, that additional immunizations are needed to stop it.

During a fundraiser that Michaelson was hosting and at which Waters was a featured speaker, the congresswoman struck into a conversation with Michaelson. He took part in the discussion on social media and posted it there.

“I think we’re moving toward a mandate. This is very dangerous,” said Waters. “And I think we’re finding that people are dying, and younger people are being attacked by this virus. And so I think we’re going to have to be very careful. We’re going to have to be dedicated to the proposition that we’re going to get everybody vaccinated, and that we’re going to stop what I think could be a lot of deaths that would take place without doing it.”

https://twitter.com/Elex_Michaelson/status/1423857612500525058

A partial transcript of the conversation is as follows:

MICHEALSON: What does a mandate look like? The governor [California Governor Gavin Newsom] just today talking about that all health care workers are going to have to get vaccinated to work in this state. Should that be extended to other industries?

WATERS: Well, certainly health care workers should be vaccinated. It is unbelievable that we had health care workers that were not vaccinated, and so that is a must. And the Congress of the United States, I think we should also have the mandate that you must be vaccinated, that you must wear the masks, we must social distance, because again, the Delta variant is a [killer].

The state’s public health officer issued an executive order on Thursday ordering most health-care employees to be completely vaccinated or to obtain their second shot by the end of September, according to the Associated Press.

Workers who perform services in a variety of health-care settings, including hospitals, doctor’s offices, skilled nursing facilities, and adult daycare centers, are included under this provision.

Kim Jong Un has made an appearance in headlines after a long departure from them since the end of last year. The reclusive leader’s recent appearance with a weird bandage on his neck has put him back in the news with many concerns for his health.

“Kim Jong Un has appeared in public with a dark spot, at times covered by a small bandage, on the back of his head – stoking more speculation about the slimmed-down North Korean despot’s health,” the New York Post reported. “The mystery spot was visible during a military event as well as in footage from a war veterans conference Kim attended late last month, according to NK News, which provides news and analysis about the rogue regime.”

“The cause or nature of the large, dark green spot or bruise on the rear right side of his head, which was covered with a bandage in some footage, is still unknown and is difficult to diagnose using only images,” NK News reported.

The once-chubby leader looks to have shed the majority of his weight from recent appearances.

🇰🇵 North Korea – Kim Jong-stud looks skinnier than EVER after the dictator dropped more than 40 pounds amid a flurry of speculation about possible gastric band surgery. Waitll' they get a load o' me. pic.twitter.com/zWaVD2kQDj

— To Free or not to Free (@2Freeornot2Free) August 2, 2021

The dictator made headlines in 2020 when a Japanese media outlet reported that he was in a vegetative state after falling ill.

According to Shukan Gendai, Kim visited a rural area earlier this month and collapsed, clutching his chest. Kim reportedly required a stent procedure, which inserts a tube into the heart to keep blood flowing freely, following the incident.

Shukan Gendai also said the surgeon in charge of Kim’s operation was “too nervous during the operation, leading to delays that left Kim in a ‘vegetative state.’”

On Friday, Reuters reported that China has sent a team to North Korea — including medical experts — to advise on Kim, according to three people familiar with the situation.

The trip by the Chinese doctors and officials comes amid conflicting reports about the health of the North Korean leader. Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signaled in terms of Kim’s health. A delegation led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department left Beijing for North Korea on Thursday, two of the people said. The department is the main Chinese body dealing with neighboring North Korea.

CNN also reported that sources had indicated that they believed that Kim was in some sort of serious condition following a medical procedure:

The US is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to a US official with direct knowledge. A second source familiar with the intelligence told CNN that the US has been closely monitoring reports on Kim’s health.

In a two-pronged attack on Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki and President Joe Biden took shots at DeSantis while at the same time praising Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for his ability to manage state affairs despite earlier in the day when Cuomo announced that he was resigning following a crisis.

Reached by a reporter for an independent outlet, Psaki responded to the question of how DeSantis’s office intends to enforce the state’s mask mandate ban by suggesting that the state would levy monetary penalties on top school officials.

“If you’re not interested in following the public health guidelines to protect the lives of people in your state, to give parents some comfort as they’re sending their kids to school, schools are opening in Florida this week I know, in many parts of Florida, then get out of the way and let public officials let local officials do their job to keep students safe,” Psaki said. “This is serious, and we’re talking about people’s lives, and we know based on public health guidelines that even though kids under a certain age are not yet eligible, masks can have a huge impact.”

WH Press Sec. Jen Psaki hints at using federal funds in response to Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) financial penalties for school officials who defy ban on mask mandates:

"Certainly paying for salaries could be a part of that … we're looking at a range of options …" pic.twitter.com/4MWsQgU1M2

— The Recount (@therecount) August 10, 2021

President Biden later that day jumped on the bandwagon by saying that he thought that it was “a little disingenuous when I suggest that people in zones where there is a high risk, where the masks like you all are doing,” Biden told reporters. “[And] I’m told that government should get out of the way and not do that, they don’t have authority to do that. And I find it interesting that some of the very people saying that, who hold government positions, are people who are threatening that if a school teacher asks a student if they’ve been vaccinated, or if a principal says that everyone in my school should wear a mask, or the school board votes for it, that governor will nullify that. That governor has the authority to say you can’t do that. I find that totally counterintuitive, and quite frankly, disingenuous.”

“Do you have presidential powers to intervene in states like Texas and Florida where they are banning mask mandates?” a reporter asked.

“I don’t believe that I do thus far, we’re checking that, we, but there are on federal workforce I can,” Biden responded. “And I think that people should understand, seeing little kids, I mean, four, five, six years old, in hospitals on ventilators. And some of them passing, not many, but some of them passing, it’s almost I mean, it’s it’s just, well, I should not characterize beyond that.”

Biden made the remarks during a press conference where he praised Cuomo for doing “a hell of a job” as the governor of the state. Biden later snapped at a female reporter who asked him about how he could praise the governor “if he’s accused of sexually harassing women on the job?”

Biden accuses Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott of sickening children with possibly deadly cases of Covid because they won't implement mask mandates and other restrictions from last year, calling their behavior "counterintuitive and quite frankly disingenuous" pic.twitter.com/C4PGAfAkc5

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) August 10, 2021

Earlier this week the Senate Democrats’ revealed a budget proposal with a hefty price tag of a $3.5 trillion budget.

According to the article from The Daily Wire, multiple lawmakers in the Senate are trying to implement the primary elements of President Biden’s spending agenda — which include the American Families Plan and the American Jobs Plan — without the cooperation of the Republicans. According to some estimates, the law would cost between $5.5 trillion and $7 trillion.

Schumer informed other members of his party that he believes “every Senator will have opportunities to shape and influence the final reconciliation bill after adoption of the Budget Resolution,” according to CBS News.

“At its core, this legislation is about restoring the middle class in the 21st Century and giving more Americans the opportunity to get there,” he wrote. “This legislation will provide the largest tax cut for American families in a generation, while making the wealthy pay their fair share. In all phases, we will concentrate on communities that have too often been neglected, including communities of color and Native Americans.”

This list of the proposed topline budget proposals includes a number of new initiatives in the areas of education, healthcare, the environment, and infrastructure.

Some examples of notable proposals are:

• Establishes Universal Pre-K for 3 and 4-year-olds and a new child care benefit for working families
• Makes Community College tuition-free for 2 years
• Creates the first-ever federal Paid Family and Medical Leave benefit
• Provides Environmental justice and climate resilience
• Electrifies the federal vehicle fleet and buildings
• The historic level of investments in public housing, green and sustainable housing, housing production, and affordability
• Establishes the first-ever Civilian Climate Corps
• Provides green cards to millions of immigrant workers and families
• Adds a new Dental, Vision, and Hearing Benefit to the Medicare program
• Creates a new federal health program for Americans in the “Medicaid gap”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) suggested the “Civilian Climate Corps” (D-MA). To give a “diverse and equitable” group of 1.5 million young Americans the chance to be hired for a one-year term on “federally funded projects that help communities respond to climate change and transition to a clean economy,” the legislation would employ “a diverse and equitable group of 1.5 million youth.

When the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is adopted, the Democrats plan to hold a discussion on the budget resolution, which seeks to utilize a special mechanism called reconciliation to get a simple majority in the Senate. Many different provisions were given to the funding.

A migrant processing center in Tacoma, Washington, has had an outbreak of COVID-19 with reports of many people having been infected by the virus. Since the first beginning of June, the COVID outbreak at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center, at least 150 have been infected, including seven guards and a federal health care worker.

Aaron Korthuis, the lawyer for Northwest Immigration Rights Project, also claimed that the agency has released nearly 600 migrants that were determined to be at high risk for carrying COVID-19 out of the facility.

In efforts to deal with the overcrowding at migrant facilities caused by the pandemic, ICE has been diffusing migrants throughout the agency’s processing infrastructure. A document submitted in federal court by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Western Washington claimed the agency has decided to transfer nearly 1,000 migrants to the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma.

Almost all of the individuals who contracted the virus tested positive soon after arriving at the Northwest ICE Processing Center. When this development came to light, immigrant rights groups, such as the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, began making allegations that the government is not taking enough precautions in preventing the virus.

In a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of the migrant detainees, the American Civil Liberties Union has now sued the Biden administration over ICE’s policies in regard to COVID-19 policies. The group is arguing that the Northwest ICE Processing Center is not in compliance with CDC guidelines.

Government legal documents claim that while protocols, “may not follow the ideal scenario,” it is trying to meet federal public health guidance, which would mean “testing and a 14-day quarantine would occur at the originating facility before transfer and again at the destination facility at intake; at a minimum, it should occur at one facility or the other.”

The documents also state that ICE does not routinely test migrants for the COVID-19 virus if they are not displaying symptoms but administer a verbal screening. Only if the individual reports having come into contact with someone who tested positive for the virus will a physical test be performed.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that President Biden will not be releasing the visitor logs from his residences in his home state of Delaware, despite making 17 trips there in less than six months.

The administration decided to keep the logs secret despite its claim to “restore transparency and trust in government” — starting with the reversal of limiting the release of White House visitor logs.

“I can confirm we are not going to be providing information about the comings and goings of the president’s grandchildren or people visiting him in Delaware,” Psaki said at her daily press briefing in response to a question from The Post about whether Biden would release visitor logs, including of relatives with potential conflicts of interest.

Transparency advocates say that the same logic that applies to White House visitor logs applies to records of who’s visiting Biden at his homes.

Tom Fitton, president of the conservative group Judicial Watch argued that the policy “makes a mockery” of White House vows of making visitor logs fully transparent.

“It’s an easy way to bypass the alleged transparency they’re promising,” Fitton said.

“If they’re going to take the position that this information should be public, what are they hiding when it comes to visiting his home? The presidency doesn’t stop when he’s visiting Delaware,” Fitton added.

“He is presumably doing work. So the public has an interest in knowing who is visiting him there. Is Hunter [Biden] visiting him? … [Joe Biden] is the one who had Hunter at the vice president’s office meeting with his business partners.”

President Biden is expected to make two more presidential visits to Delaware next week. He normally stays at his home in Wilmington but also is also known to visit his vacation home in Rehoboth Beach.

Three volcanoes located in remote parts of Alaska are all currently in different states of eruption.

The volcanoes Semispopchnoi, Great Sitkin, and Pavlov are located in the Aleutian Islands. The Great Sitkin volcano has been producing lava. The Semisopochnoi and Pavlov volcanoes have been producing ash clouds.

Located nearly 600 miles southwest of Anchorage, Pavlov is a stratovolcano, covered in snow and ice. According to the Aleutian Island arc of active and dormant volcanoes, Pavlov is one of the state’s most active.
Approximately 1,500 miles southwest of Anchorage, sits the Great Sitkin stratovolcano adorned with a caldera and dome. There have been reports of witnesses seeing a lava fountain at the volcano.

“The fact that they just happen to walk outside and see it was really great, Chris Waythomas, a geologist with the Alaska Volcano Observatory, stated. “This lava fountain is kind of unusual for Great Sitkin, but it’s been fairly passive at this point.”

Semisopochnoi Volcano is found on an uninhabited island on the western end of the Aleutian Islands. Semisopochnoi produced an impressive ash cloud that reached about 10,000 feet high, Waythomas said. The volcano has been erupting intermittently before.

The three volcano eruptions happened about a week after an 8.2 magnitude earthquake in Alaska. It was the strongest earthquake to hit Alaska in decades.

This week the disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his plan for resignation. But in an unprecedented move, he gave a two weeks’ notice to tie up some loose ends before he has to hit the bricks.

Stalling the inevitable only irritated some of his former colleagues who questioned the motives behind Cuomo’s decision.

“I was a little taken aback that he said his resignation is effective in 14 days, and it may be overly cynical but I believe that Andrew Cuomo was a person of mischief,” former Southern District of New York U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said on his podcast.

Bharara said he trusts that Cuomo will leave office, but said that two weeks “is a long time” and that Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul has been getting ready to take over.

“And I hope there’s nothing nefarious about the 14 days,” he continued, “but it strikes me as too long a period. You don’t have to give two weeks notice to resign as governor.”

New York State Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay commented on the long delay during an interview on FOX Business’ “Mornings with Maria.”

“I have a little bit of a problem with it, whether we can do anything about it I think that’s tough,” Barclay said. He claimed that it is “a real concern” that Cuomo could try to tamper with evidence, and posited that Cuomo may be staying for two more weeks so that he could continue to receive defense counsel that is paid for by taxpayers instead of out of his own pocket.

According to Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi, the governor is staying on to help with a transition to Hochul during a difficult time.

“It’s to ensure an orderly transition at this critical time where the key decisions still remain on COVID, the Delta variant and other significant challenges facing the state,” Azzopardi said.

Another, more simple reason why Cuomo won’t pack up his stuff and get out is that he may not have anywhere else to go. Reports from the New York Post say Cuomo does not possess any property and his last home was sold by his ex-wife.

A youtube video of Dr. Dan Stock in Indiana has had thousands of views on social media, and many Twitter users are thanking him. Since the massive surge of views social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter have continued to take down the video once it garners steam.

Covid-19 has apparently been widely misunderstood in the video, with significant results. Dr. Stock delivers a lengthy monologue regarding Covid-19 shortcomings during a school board meeting in the video. This has grown immensely popular in a short amount of time, and it even generated a social media discussion.

“Mt. Vernon School Board Meeting – Dr. Dan Stock MD” was a popular video on YouTube until it was pulled from off the site. The video made it rounds throughout over social media sites before it was taken down as well. Dr. Stock explains the Covid errors that individuals are making throughout the six minutes and 42 seconds-long video. It has captions, “Dr. Dan Stock talks about how existing Covid fighting methods are failing. At the Mount Vernon school board meeting, Dr. Stock spoke.”

The Twitter video has garnered 2.6 million views; however, on YouTube, the video has been seen over 2.6 million times.

Doctor Dan describes himself as a “functional family medicine physician,” which per him “means [he] is specially trained in immunology and inflammation regulation.”

Dr Dan Stock pointing out the glaring holes in the completely illogical ways we are handling a “pandemic” pic.twitter.com/MLxWcHAm0T

— Phil™️ (@philthese) August 9, 2021

While the video has no comments, it is a hit on Twitter. “Dr Dan Stock pointing out the glaring holes in the completely illogical ways we are handling a “pandemic”” one user wrote, applauding him. Another user wrote, “MIC DROP alert! WOW. Dr. Dan Stock, MD speaks at a school board meeting…and straight up tells them to go against all CDC recommendations and that he will give a pro bono testimony to any court in their defense!!!! We could defeat this if more docs speak out like this!! “