The Veil is Lifted (Again)
Democrats showed us who they were last week. And its not pretty. Do they realize how bad their week was?
Some may have the impression of arranged marriages, of a groom who doesn’t see his bride until he stands at the altar and someone removes the veil.
That’s probably not true anymore. But it reminds me of events last week in and around Capitol Hill. But frankly, the “unveilings” of last week were more confirmation than surprise.
Still, last week’s political unveilings were an eyebrow-raiser, even for this grizzled 40-year political and media veteran like me. Let’s quickly summarize the Democrats’ very bad week:
Tucker Carlson of Fox News fame began airing selected raw footage provided by the House GOP leadership that contradicted much of the January 6, 2021 narrative pushed by the previous House Democratic leadership through their discredited Select Committee. That they continue to call this an “insurrection” is beyond laughable. That it has been grotesquely politicized - including, alarmingly, by the Department of Justice - is no longer in doubt.
The President’s dead-on-arrival budget for Fiscal Year 2024 and overdue budget submission balloons public debt to nearly $51 trillion over the next decade by raising taxes by $4.7 trillion and throwing billions more at the Internal Revenue Service. But don’t worry, it’s already in the the congressional circular file.
The largest bank failure since 2008 by the very woke Silicon Valley Bank, which catered to the heavily Democratic tech industry in California and embraced the ESG (environmental, social, and governance scorecard, or “extra slow growth”) corporate “stakeholder” agenda being pushed by Biden’s Security and Exchange Commission chairman.
At least three committee hearings in the House of Representatives, including embarrassing, even alarming performances by House Democrats before subcommittees of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Reform Committees.
But the most significant news event of the week was an emotional Foreign Affairs Committee hearing featuring explosive (no pun intended) testimony by a wounded warrior and Marine Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews. Vargas-Andrews, missing his right arm, left leg, and several organs resulting from a suicide bomber blast at Kabul’s airport that killed 13 other Marines and soldiers during Biden’s shameful Afghanistan surrender. Read on for evidence of how the explosion could have been prevented but for the apparent abdication of responsibility by a Marine Battalion Commander, Lt. Col. Brad Whited, and/or, more likely, his chain of command up to and including the White House.
Somehow, most major news broadcasters - ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN - all ignored the story. And no one has ever been held accountable for the travesty.
We could add the surprising treaty between Saudi Arabia and Iran, brokered by communist China, but there is much we don’t know. The new mutual recognition treaty looks related to the weakness exhibited by Biden's Afghanistan fiasco, but we’ll see. I wonder how Israel feels about this and how it may impact Trump’s historic Abraham Accords.
There was ample media coverage of Carlson’s airing of J6 video, less of the Biden Budget. But as a voracious news junkie, I learned more of the House hearings from Hugh Hewitt’s radio show than from perusing traditional media. The congressional press corps, even Fox News’s estimable Chad Pergram or Politico’s Olivia Beavers largely ignored them. The White House’s inept and laughable press secretary continues to belch the ludicrous trope that J6 was the largest attack on our democracy since the Civil War. I guess Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were just walks in the park by comparison, along with a US Capitol bombing by left-wing extremists in November 1983.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) brazen efforts to silence Carlson only helped fuel higher ratings for Carlson’s already top-rated cable show.
Beavers, Pergram, and their colleagues seem more focused elsewhere, especially the ongoing travails of US Rep. and fabulist George Santos (R-NY) and Tucker Carlson’s airing of J6 video previously unseen and perhaps unconstitutionally not shared with certain J6 convicts during their prosecutions. Pergram focused on Daylight Savings Time and DC’s controversial crime bill that lowered penalties for carjackings rocketing across your nation’s capital. Maybe they had more to cover than they could handle last week. But George Santos? Really?
Let’s address the rest of last week’s largely ignored stories in reverse order of importance, starting with the colossal joke the White House transmitted to Congress last week, President Biden’s proposed budget for the fiscal year 2024 (begins October 1). As with most presidential budget requests required under the 1974 Budget Act, it was dead on arrival, reeking of an unrefrigerated five-day-old fish wrapped in newspaper.
The Biden budget is, as extolled by Issues and Insights, “tax and spend on steroids.” The legacy media reflexively reported Biden's propaganda that the budget would reduce the deficit over the next decade by $2.9 trillion. But that’s highly misleading, to put it mildly. It increases public debt to over $50 trillion while only reducing annual deficits, compared to a mythical and guestimated “baseline” over that same period.
Worse, they “reduce” these annual deficits by raising taxes a whopping $4.7 trillion, including hiking several they claim will only hit people making over $400,000. Every time you hear that, cover your wallets. The top one percent of Americans with the highest incomes (earning $548,000 per year or more) already pay 42 percent of all federal income taxes while earning 22 percent of income.
I expect Republicans to offer up the Biden budget for an up-or-down vote later this Spring. Most every Democrat, House or Senate, will vote no.
We’ll leave the Silicon Valley Bank failure alone since that is still playing out. It’s interesting to watch people call for a bailout, which would likely require congressional approval. Meanwhile, regulators are taking SVB to auction in hopes of finding another big bank, or perhaps a consortium, to absorb the now-failed enterprise. The tech industry has powerful friends in the Biden Administration and Congress. Cover your wallet.
As for Carlson and the J6 tapes he selectively aired, it likely changed no minds. It certainly didn’t change mine but it revealed possible legal malfeasance by the Department of Justice in some of their prosecutions by failing to provide some footage to defendants. In addition, it made a mockery of the discredited Nancy Pelosi J6 Special Committee. You’ll remember her unprecedented action to keep US Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jim Banks (R-IN) off the committee in fear that they might mock her committee. Oops.
Next, we take you to what HotAir.Com described as “the dumbest five minutes of Congress, ever.” That’s a high bar, given US Rep. Hank Johnson’s (D-GA) stated fear of Guam tipping over, but it appears to have been met and hurdled.
“I don’t quite understand what Substack is,” mutters Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) at one point, which underscores the idiocy you are about to watch. The House Weaponization Subcommittee decided to call Matt Taibbi and Michael Shellenberger to discuss their publication of the Twitter Files, which apparently was so great a threat to democracy (according to Garcia and her fellow Democrats) that, er … none of them bothered to find out what Substack was, nor glean what and when both Taibbi and Shellenberger published and in what sequence.
Get ready for seven minutes of brain-warping idiocy on those points, on top of which Democrats apparently now think journalists have a duty to reveal sources to government. And if you think Garcia’s lack of research into Substack is the stupidest moment in this utter fiasco, just wait until she asks about Bari Weiss:
US Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz follows up with the second-dumbest thing said by Democrats. She accused the two journalists of trying to earn a living by writing stories people found interesting. That’s some scandal.
However, I would argue that the prize goes to ranking Democrat Stacey Plaskett (D-VI), who accused independent journalists Michael Shellenbeger (a formerly avowed progressive) and Matt Taibbi of posing “a direct threat to those who oppose them.” Who might that be? That’s interesting.
Chairman Jordan aptly noted the irony (hypocrisy?) in the pressure applied by Democrats to force the disclosure of journalistic sources, which used to be a political no-no.
I am puzzled why the legacy media continues to cover and carry water for Democrats.
The House Oversight and Reform Committee also held a hearing on the origins of the Covid_19 virus, which led to over one million American deaths. Under oath, former Centers for Disease Control director Dr. Robert Redfield implicated his former colleague Dr. Anthony Fauci for covering up gain-of-function research at the infamous Wuhan lab where the virus appears to have escaped after being manipulated. Here’s a short video of the hearing - I’ve queued up at the 1:22:40 mark to listen to the powerful five-minute exchange between US Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY) and Redfield.
House Democrats didn’t hold a single hearing on the origins of Covid_19 when they controlled the 117th Congress. All they did during this hearing was 1) blame Trump, 2) call for the matter not to be politicized, and 3) attempt to smear Nicholas Wade, a former writer for the New York Times and Nature Magazine, for writing a book that notorious racist David Duke once said nice things about. That’s unserious.
Last and most important was the House Foreign Affairs hearing over the Afghanistan debacle and haphazard withdrawal in August 2021. Read or watch the gripping testimony of Sgt. Tyler Vargas-Andrews.
On August 22nd, an improvised explosive device, IED, probe took place down the canal running along the perimeter of HKIA (Hamid Karzai International Airport). This was ISIS or the Taliban performing an IED test run. We reported this to our chain of command.
Days later we received word to be on the lookout for two vehicle borne IEDs. Described as a gold or white Corolla and a green Mazda convertible.
Around 2 am on August 26th, intel guys confirmed the suicide bomber in the vicinity and nearing Abbey gate. Described as clean-shaven, brown dress wear, black vest, and traveling with a companion. I asked the intel guys why he wasn’t apprehended sooner since we had a full description. I was told the asset could not be compromised.
Throughout the entirety of the day on August 26th, 2021 we disseminated the suicide bomber information to ground forces at Abbey gate.
He was spotted, somewhere from noon to 1 pm, by myself, then Sergeant Charles Schilling (Chas), and another. The anomaly in the crowd, who was clean-shaven, and fit the description exactly traveling with someone. This individual was consistently and nervously looking up at our position through the crowd. The older of the two wore a black silky hijab that was covering his face most of the time.
They both had obvious mannerisms that go along with who we believed him to be. They handed out small cards to the crowd periodically. The older man sat calmly and seemingly coached the bomber.
Over the communication network, we passed that there was a potential threat, and IED attack imminent. This was as serious as it can get.
I requested engagement authority while my team leader was ready on the M110 Semi-Automatic Sniper System. The response, “leadership did not have the engagement authority for us. Do not engage.”
I requested for the battalion commander LT. Col. Brad Whited to come to the tower to see what we did. While we waited for him, Psychological Operations Individuals came to our tower immediately and confirmed the suspect met the suicide bomber description.
He eventually arrived and we showed him our evidence, the photos we had of the two men. We reassured him of the ease of fire on the suicide bomber. Pointedly, we asked him for engagement authority and permission. We asked if we could shoot. Our battalion commander said, “I don’t know.”
Myself and my team leader asked very harshly, “well, who does?” Because this is your responsibility, Sir.” He again replied, “he did not know but would find out.” We received no update and never got our answer. Eventually the individual disappeared. To this day, we believe he was the suicide bomber.
If this doesn’t enrage you, nothing will—deaths of Marines and soldiers that could have been avoided.
Sometimes, it is better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission. Especially when lives are at stake.
But in fairness, after reading Vargas-Andrews’ testimony, the problem may be up the chain of command, including the State Department and especially the President, who ordered this debacle and holds ultimate responsibility for it. Whited needs to testify under oath about his actions, or lack thereof if only to clear his name. We must never forget.
Joe Biden has blood on his hands.
The veil’s been lifted. Several veils, actually. Take a good look at what you saw last week (no thanks to most of the media). Remember this when you next cast your ballots.
Good stuff, Kelly. The screaming will only get louder and less coherent as more is revealed.