[guest post by JVW]

We discussed this a bit last week, that the feckless and inept Biden Administration who has embarrassed itself and our nation by its ignoble retreat from Afghanistan would likely end up pushing the idea that those American citizens who were unable to get out have themselves to blame, since apparently they didn’t work hard enough to pre-book their itinerary. Considering that reports came this past weekend — from the office of a loyal left-wing and utterly shameless Democrat Senator, no less — that the Taliban is actively preventing planes bearing U.S. citizens from taking off from Kabul, perhaps with the quiet acquiescence of our own State Department, one would think the Democrats might want to tread very lightly on this obnoxious version of what in other circumstances we like to call victim-blaming.

But nobody gave Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D – New York) the memo, I guess. As the holiday weekend dawned, in an interview with a local upstate ABC affiliate he took up the Biden Administration’s dumb refrain:

Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) claimed that all Americans who wanted to leave Afghanistan had left the country in a Friday interview with an ABC News affiliate in Syracuse, N.Y.

Schumer, who was visiting the New York State Fair in Syracuse, was asked by NewsChannel 9 reporter Andrew Donovan how the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan would affect Democrats in the 2022 midterms.

“I can’t predict that,” Schumer responded. “There’ll be a job for congressional oversight, there always is, but at the moment actual I’m still focused on trying to get some of those brave Afghans out. The Americans, all of whom wanted to come out have come out, praise God.”

When members of the Senator’s staff and the Senator’s colleagues caught wind of what Mr. Schumer was claiming, there no doubt was some frenzied and panicked damage control planned out and put into place. Yesterday, the Senator “clarified” his initial comments:

Unfortunately for the Senator, the two words “praise God” at the end of the original statement show pretty conclusively that Mr. Schumer sees the evacuation of Americans as having been fully completed and, indeed, fait accompli. Had he truly misspoke and meant to convey the idea that we were still working to make good on that obligation, don’t you think he might have ended with “God willing” instead? Also, why would the Senator have preceded his claim that all Americans had been evacuated (praise God) with a lamentation that we hadn’t been as successful in evacuating our Afghan allies? It just doesn’t make sense: “We haven’t been as successful in evacuating Afghans, but all Americans who wanted to leave are out (praise God). [Two day pause] Oh, I didn’t mean to imply that all Americans who want to leave have been evacuated.”

Chuck Schumer is craven, dishonest, demagogic, and unprincipled, but I have never seen him as being stupid (his admirers are, of course, quite fond of reminding all of us that he got a perfect SAT score over a half-century ago) and I find it hard to believe that he would have said what he said had he not meant to convey the notion that the only Americans who were still stranded in some backwater hellhole we just sunk a whole lot of money into are our compatriots who refuse to leave, and thus any who are rescued from here on in are done so by the merciful beneficence of the Biden Administration.

In any case, Dems might need to rethink the whole “it’s their own damn fault if they’re not home by now” narrative in light of what has been going on the past week. I continue to hope that we get all U.S. citizens out of the country, but I no longer have any faith that our Afghan allies will have a fate other than being horribly betrayed and left to the murderous hands of the Taliban.

– JVW

[guest post by Dana]

On Friday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida actually made the absurd claim about COVID-19 vaccines when pushing back on the idea of vaccine passports:

It’s about your health and whether you want that protection or not. It really doesn’t impact me or anyone else.

This is the exact kind of untrue statement that plays well with the DeSantis crowd. But bcause people want it to be true, doesn’t make it so:

Getting the vaccine certainly helps the person who gets the shot — the governor’s not wrong about that. It vastly reduces the chances of being hospitalized or dying of the disease. But it also reduces the spread of the virus to others. That’s the critical point that DeSantis is disregarding in his zeal to appeal to the freedom-at-all-costs far-right of his party as he heads into reelection and eyes the White House.

Yes, there are breakthrough cases, when vaccinated people still become infected. And, yes, there are some legitimate medical and religious reasons for not getting vaccinated. But by all others getting the vaccine, you cut down on the chances that you’ll get COVID and then pass it on to others.

That means you, as a vaccinated person, are helping to safeguard people who can’t get the shot, like children under 12 and the immunocompromised, such as those with transplanted organs. You’re also helping to protect seniors whose immunity often isn’t robust enough even they are vaccinated. You might even be saving the life of someone who simply refuses to get the vaccine.

https://t.co/9pqHNfy0Xb

— The Recount (@therecount) September 7, 2021

Anyway, it appears that DeSantis took a hit in a recent poll for his handling of the pandemic. Time will tell whether this is an outlier or not:

On DeSantis’ plans to issue $5,000 fines to businesses with “vaccine passports,” 60% of voters similarly oppose that approach compared to 40% who support it.

There’s even more vocal exasperation at DeSantis’ attempt to withhold salaries for school officials enacting mask mandates, with near 70% opposed to such an approach. Even 60% of Republicans oppose that plan.

Overall, fewer than 41% give a favorable grade to DeSantis for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, and just over 42% give him a passing favorability rate at all. His favorability rating in the poll sank 11 points from late August.

But if there’s a job voters want DeSantis to hold less than Governor, it’s President. About 59% of Florida voters said they would vote for someone else if he were to run for Commander-in-Chief in 2024, compared to just 41% who would welcome such a run.

Meanwhile, fully-vaccinated Americans frustrated that so many continue to *refuse a vaccine and that we’re still in midst of the damn pandemic are being told that we’re just not living in real America:

Real America is done with #COVID19. God bless! https://t.co/7YVb2LVb5T

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 7, 2021

According to Johns Hopkins University, the U.S. has seen had more than 40 million cases of COVID-19 reported, and more than 649,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S.

[Ed. *for reasons other than underlying medical conditions.]

–Dana