By Stephen Macaulay

Let’s say for the sake of argument that planet Earth is invaded by an alien species that replicates inside human hosts. You and me. The downside for the human hosts is that the replication has deleterious consequences, in many cases leading to death of the hosts.

The aliens are, well, alien to the extent that they aren’t “living creatures” in the way that is ordinarily thought to be the case, in that they don’t have the wherewithal to make proteins by themselves but must invade another organism for purposes of replication. But invade and replicate they do. Over and over and over again.

But be that as it may, (1) the human hosts become ill and (2) the human hosts can die.

The aliens really don’t care whether the host is young or old, a man or a woman, a Republican or a Democrat.

People get sick. People die.

Jobs are lost. The economy suffers.

People get sick. People die.

Hospital systems are overwhelmed.

People get sick. People die.

The aliens don’t care.

People get sick. People die.

At the end of H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds, where Earth is invaded by Martians, which lay waste to the planet, it turns out the aliens were “slain by the putrefactive and disease bacteria against which their systems were unprepared.”

Biological luck.

At present, we are being attacked by an alien species, the COVID-19 virus. Scientists are split on whether a virus is a “living” being. As David Bhella, researcher at the University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research has written, “Life is the manifestation of a coherent collection of genes that are competent to replicate within the niche in which they evolve(d). Viruses fulfil this definition.”

So if we accept that, then COVID-19 is an alien species that is attacking the Earth.

This is not a fanciful notion. 

As I am writing this, the alien has killed 4.55-million people on Earth. Some 662,000 of those were U.S. citizens.

As I am writing this, the alien has infected 219-million people on Earth. Some 41.3-million are U.S. citizens.

People get sick. People die.

We have a defense against the aliens. Something against which “their systems [are] unprepared.”

Vaccines. Pfizer. Moderna. J&J.

“My job as President is to protect all Americans.” That was Joe Biden on September 9.

“I’m announcing that the Department of Labor is developing an emergency rule to require all employers with 100 or more employees, that together employ over 80 million workers, to ensure their workforces are fully vaccinated or show a negative test at least once a week.”

Overreach?

Get a couple of pokes in the arm? Or get a nasal swab?

Oh, a violation of your liberties?

In June 1919 the Harvard Law Review published an article by legal philosopher Zechariah Chafee, Jr.,“Freedom of Speech in War Time,” that includes the observation: 

“Your right to swing your arms ends just where the other man’s nose begins.”

And as the virus is primarily invasive in the respiratory system — including the nose — your right to carry a deadly virus that could kill people is really not a right.

We are being attacked by an alien species.

Oh, an exaggeration, you might think. Then I refer you back to the 4.55-million Earthlings that have been killed, the 662,000 Americans.

And so what should a man whose job it is to protect Americans do if not take action when it is necessary?

You’ve undoubtedly heard the phrase “Desperate times call for desperate measures.”

In his Aphorisms Hippocrates wrote, “For extreme diseases, extreme methods of cure, as to restriction, are most suitable.”

If we are not in extremis now, who knows when we will be?

“We have the tools to combat COVID-19, and a distinct minority of Americans –supported by a distinct minority of elected officials — are keeping us from turning the corner,” Biden said.  “These pandemic politics, as I refer to, are making people sick, causing unvaccinated people to die.”

People get sick. People die.

The alien species is here.

Do we hope for “putrefactive and disease bacteria”?

Or does Joe Biden do his job and protect the American people with the tools at our disposal?

And if this is overreach, then maybe we can deal with it when doctors and nurses aren’t at the point of exhaustion, when teachers wonder each and every day whether they’ll be infected when they try to teach our kids, when the elderly don’t have to be concerned to visit with their grandkids, when we get back to what we’ve long known as the “American way of life.”

Because right now we aren’t living it.

And people are getting sick. And people are dying.

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By Todd Lassa

Non-smokers in the U.S. have been able to enjoy fresh air in offices, office lobbies, restaurants, hotels, retail stores … bars, even, for decades now. Laws barring cigarette and cigar smoke from public spaces began in cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco and reached most every corner of the U.S., even tobacco-growing states like Virginia and Maryland, after Brown & Williamson executive Jeffrey Wiegand blew the whistle on how his industry squelched research on the dangers of secondary smoke, as Vanity Fair revealed in its 1996 investigative article, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” 

Today, you only have to watch for those smoke-stations, usually just outside the lobby of a hotel or office building, if you’re a non-smoker. If you are a smoker, you may be fuming about how hard it is to consume a legal product in public, especially in the rain or the middle of winter.

That’s the kind of struggle many Americans face today. The on-and-off virtual shutdown of the national and global economy has put many hard-working business owners and entrepreneurs, and their employees, out of work. 

After a few weeks last summer in which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared “masks off!” in a confusing policy on social distancing, the Delta variant of COVID-19 began filling hospitals again, particularly in states where governors resisted or opposed reverting to life before March 2020.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, R, has gone so far as to threaten localities in his state with $5,000 fines for imposing COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

It should be noted that many on the left who were anti-vaxxers before March 2020 remain resistant as well. For both ends of the political “horseshoe,” it comes down to personal liberty.

But Joe Biden was elected president in part because of his promise to make eradication of the coronavirus his top priority. Last week, Biden announced a vaccine mandate for private employers with more than 100 employees to be enforced by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration.

Key provisions:

•Requires all employees with 100 or more employees to ensure workers are vaccinated or tested weekly, requires vaccination for all federal workers and for millions of contractors that do business with the federal government, and requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million health care workers at Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and health care “settings.”

•Also “calls on” entertainment venues to require either proof of vaccination or testing for entry.

•Requires employers to provide paid time off to get vaccinated.

•Provides easy access to booster shots for all eligible Americans, and ensures Americans know where to get such shots.

•Sweeping school mandates call on all states to adopt vaccination requirements for all school employees, provide federal funding to school districts for safe re-opening, require students and staff to get tested regularly, and provide “every resource” to the Food & Drug Administration to “support timely review of vaccines” for children under 12 years old.

•Increases testing and masking, and adds new support for small businesses affected by shutdowns, while also streamlining the paycheck protection program loan guarantees.

The Republican National Committee said it would sue the Biden administration over “un-Constitutional mandates.” Republican governors Greg Abbott of Texas, Mark Gordon of Wyoming, Kristi L. Noem of South Dakota, and Brian Kemp of Georgia, also announced they would sue the White House.

To which Biden responded: “Bring it.” 

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By David Iwinski

As the COVID situation continues to spin off in ever new, unplanned directions, we see the inevitable rise of the far left standing up and clapping in support of Joe Biden's naïve and unfounded belief that he has somehow ascended from possible presidency to confirmed emperor.

Let me assure you, he has not.

Virtually every story in mainstream media that talks about COVID-19 finds it necessary to insult, denigrate, and show contempt for anyone who doesn't drink the Kool-Aid, with nary a thought or sentence devoted to to how we arrived here.

This information about COVID has been flowing hard and fast since the first reports from Wuhan started to leak. So how is it, exactly, that tens of millions of people have simply lost all confidence in not only what they read in popular media but also in organizations that claim to stand for Science (and I did mean that with a capital S).

Let's start with the fact that when President Trump announced he was putting the combined forces of government research and funding together with private industry to try to come up with a vaccine at Warp Speed, faster than ever been done in history, who were the ones leading the charge to say they would never take the vaccine? Why none other than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

They both said in nationally televised interviews that they would never take this vaccination. Now perhaps Joe’s befuddled mind has convinced himself that he alone conducted the research for the vaccines, but that work was long in play back when mentioning the possibility of him getting more votes than Obama would have provoked little more than a hearty laugh.

Then we have to look at the Department of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and, of course, our kindly surrogate for Marcus Welby, M.D., (yes, I am that old) Dr. Anthony Fauci. Rather than stick strictly to hard science and analysis, these organizations and people have become hopelessly politicized with opinions changing on masks, therapies and effectiveness of vaccines depending on which way the wind is blowing. You can watch on social media hours of video showing the same people saying essentially the opposite thing depending on how it serves the political interest of the moment.

Then, just as it did in the election, the leftward leading social media organs have taken it upon themselves to ban virtually any news that doesn’t run in complete parallel with the orthodoxy proposed by the Biden administration. We are not simply talking about strangers ranting on Tik-Tok (of which there are many) but some who are experienced, well-educated and capable researchers pointing out weaknesses in the various vaccine regimen to the point where now even posting ideas contrary to what is being pushed by the left might get you to have your accounts frozen or even cancelled.

Last, but most importantly, no true American smiles as the harness is buckled on and freedoms are ripped away, never to return. A virtual certainty in political history is that freedoms won by strife, battle and historical commitment once lost, are gone forever. Joe Biden now thinks he can control the lives, decisions and the virtual financial survival of every man, woman and child as he is petulantly pouting that they will be ruined unless they submit to his regiment. And he is losing his patience! Of course, the far left eagerly embraces this because their game isn’t medicine, but sheer power and they know that you should never miss a chance to use a crisis.

It isn’t that the folks on the right weren’t paying attention because they weren’t smart enough, but because we did pay attention, we discovered that the reliability and credibility that many of these institutions and organizations have built over decades and centuries of reliable stability has been thoroughly co-opted. Why then would we ever we trust our life, our health and that of our children to an administration with a solid record of disaster and non-performance?

More simply put, does anyone really think it’s prudent to trust your life and health to the engineers of the catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan?

This is America and if you trust those folks, then take the shots, take the boosters, wear the masks and social distance for the rest of your life. Of course, it might be a little hard for us, through all of your masks, to hear you singing, 

O say, does that star-spangled banner yet wave
o're the land of the free and the home of the brave?

Still, I have a feeling the rest of us will adapt.

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Coming up soon in the left column: Pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay comments on President Biden's vaccine mandate.

Scroll down using the vertical bar on the far right of the page to read “Twenty Years After the 9/11 attacks,” a collection of reflections by our editors and contributing pundits.

In the left column, scroll down further for contributing pundit Jim McCraw’s comments on Texas’ new abortion law.

Comment on these columns and on today’s News & Notes by emailing us at editors@thehustings.news or click on the “comment” tab. Subscribe to our daily newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.

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WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

North Korea fired two ballistic missiles off its east coast Wednesday, toward the Korean peninsula’s east coast, South Korea said, and landed in waters outside the Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone (Politico).

The House of Representatives’ Ways & Means Committee holds its fourth and final day of markup for the $3.5 trillion social spending budget reconciliation package today (The Hill).

Book: Austin, Blinken Called for Slower Afghanistan Withdrawal – Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken pushed for a slower withdrawal from Afghanistan, but President Biden ignored them, says The Hill Wednesday via a CNN book report on Peril, by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post.

Blinken in March changed his recommendation about removing all U.S. troops at once after a meeting with NATO ministers, according to the report. Austin proposed a “gated” withdrawal in three or four stages that would have allowed for more negotiations, the book indicates. Biden initially proposed full withdrawal by September 11 but moved the deadline up to August 31 and actually announced completion a day earlier. Former President Trump had proposed a March 1 deadline before he thought he would be named winner of last November’s elections.

CNN is among the news media outlets that have an advanced copy of Peril, which goes on sale next Tuesday. …

Democrats Are as Critical as Republicans of Afghanistan Withdrawal Explanations: Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-CT, told NPR’s All Things Considered he was very troubled by Gen. Austin “Scott” Miller’s testimony in a classified, closed-door hearing. He is not satisfied with the White House’s responses – and lack thereof – to questions and concerns about the poorly handled withdrawal.

Trump Brought Democracy Closer to Destruction than We Knew, Book Says: Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley twice took measures to block Trump from the possibility of launching nuclear weapons against a perceived enemy. 

Per CNN’s advanced copy of Peril, Chris Cuomo said:

•Milley contacted his Chinese counterpart to warn him not to react to Trump’s bellicosity. 

•Milley instructed his top military officers to make sure he was consulted before responding to any orders by President Trump to launch missiles. Milley reportedly saw the officers’ compliance as “an oath.”

In addition, Trump spoke with Mike Pence on January 5 about how the vice president could upset the formal Electoral College count in Congress the next day. Pence said he wouldn’t want any one person to have that power, but Trump replied: “Wouldn’t it almost be cool to have that power?”

No, the Veep replied – he had apparently consulted fellow Hoosier former Vice President Dan Quayle on the matter – “I’ve already (considered) every way around it. It’s simply not possible.” To which Trump replied, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore if you can’t do this.” 

Pro-Trump insurrectionists constructed gallows for Pence outside the Capitol the next day.

The Milley Judgment: Is Gen. Milley a military hero or his own kind of megalomaniac who overstepped his bounds in warning China about a potential military strike, and should he have resigned to reveal Trump’s apparent treason?

Laura Ingraham considers Milley a traitor for having tried to wrest the military from civilian control and took time on her eponymous Ingraham Angle on Fox News Tuesday night to sneer at MSNBC hosts and contributing pundits for lionizing Milley.

Had Ingraham paused her remote at CNN on her way to MSNBC, she would have found more nuance. Alexander Vindman, the retired European Affairs director at the National Security Council who blew the whistle on Trump’s “perfect call” of pressure on Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Hunter Biden, told host Chris Cuomo; “Mark Milley must resign if he usurped civilian power over the military” without accountability. 

Prior to Vindman’s segment on Cuomo Prime Time, Miles Taylor, author of A Warning, and the chief of staff to Trump’s Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said cabinet members and staff had plotted similar checks on Trump’s power as early as 2017. But Taylor declined to make a judgment on Milley (chairman since October 2019) until more details come forth.

Note: Milley will have to step down as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff over the distracting weight of this publicity alone. Trumpists will condemn Milley while giving no consideration to the book’s allegations of the former president’s treason.

•••

Trump Loses California Again – Should Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom be recalled? Californians voted “no,” 64.2% to 35.8%, according to the Los Angeles Times, and so the top challenger to replace him on the second part of the ballot, right-wing radio talk show host Larry Elder, has conceded the race. 

That’s the buried headline.

Newsom’s campaign successfully painted Elder as the Trumpist Republican on the ballot’s second question, and his gracious concession Tuesday night contrasts with charges he made prior to the election that the recall election already was rigged. Trump more recently echoed those inaccuracies. Elder did not rule out the possibility he will run for governor again in November 2022, when Newsom’s first term actually expires. “Stay tuned,” he said.

For his part, Newsom, who was recalled largely because of state-imposed shutdowns responding to the pandemic, and his own poorly timed violation of social distancing with a dinner party at Napa Valley’s French Laundry restaurant, has not announced whether he will run for re-election. The former San Francisco mayor said in his victory speech Tuesday; “’No’ is not the only thing that was expressed tonight. I want to focus on what we said ‘yes’ to. We said ‘yes’ to science, we said ‘yes’ to vaccines, and we said ‘yes’ to ending this pandemic.” (AP)

•••

French Health Care Workers Require Vaccinations — French medical care, home care, and emergency workers must have had at least one COVID-19 vaccination, or they will not be paid as of today, the Associated Press reports. This is the result of approval by the country’s parliament this past summer. A judicial ruling prevents the unvaccinated health care workers from being fired. There are some 300,000 health care workers who have not been vaccinated in France.

Note: The AP story quotes Christophe Prudhomme, emergency room doctor and CGT union member, as saying, “We are raising the alarm ... if you insist on implementing this measure your beds will be closed, thus reducing chances (of survival) for a number of patients.” A sentiment that is repeated by some in the U.S. 

Two points: (1) the R0, the number of people that someone can inflect, was calculated as being 3 for the original virus (one person can infect three people on average) and, as of April, between 4 and 5, according to a mathematics professor at the Sorbonne, so that “health care” can be problematic; (2) where are these unvaccinated workers going to get jobs? Even restaurants in Paris require vaccine passports.

--Edited by Todd Lassa, Gary S. Vasilash and Nic Woods

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TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Secretary of State Antony Blinken hops from the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee pan into the fire of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing today on the Biden administration’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of our longest war.

In his House committee testimony, Blinken  pledged $64 million in aid to impoverished Afghans, who are facing food shortages, that will not go to the new Taliban government there, but instead, go to non-government organizations and United Nations agencies.

President Biden stops in Denver today to promote his infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion spending plan (The Hill). Biden had visited the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise Monday on his way to California, where he touted the spending plans while supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to defeat today’s recall election. Next Tuesday, The Hill says, Biden will address the U.N. General Assembly in person.

August Inflation Slows to a Still-High 0.3% -- The August inflation rate was 0.3%, a troublesome number, but eased a bit from July’s 0.5% increase. The U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says the inflation rate for the last 12 months is 5.3%.

Price increases weigh heavily on President Biden’s infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation spending plan, the latter of which no Republicans in either the House or Senate support, citing its likely effect on inflation.

August energy prices were up 2%, versus a 1.6% increase in July, while gasoline prices rose 2.8% from a 2.4% inflation rate the previous month. But food prices were up 0.4% in August, compared with an 0.7% July rate. 

With computer chip supplies stifling production, the August inflation rate for new vehicles was up 1.2% in August, compared with 1.7% in July. The 12-month cumulative rate is 7.6%. Used car prices, which led increases in previous months, actually fell 1.5% in August, after an 0.2% increase in July, and with a staggering 31.9% 12-month inflation rate, the BLS reported.

•••

Blinken Testimony Goes Where You’d Expect – If you’ve watched any congressional committee hearings on contentious matters of the day since, oh, perhaps the Watergate era, you’ve seen the Q&A of various cabinet members and even Supreme Court nominees devolve into a bipartisan circus. 

Monday’s House Armed Services Committee virtual grilling of Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan actually was not quite that, because some Democrats are upset as at least the moderate Republicans for the “disastrous” manner in which we left, leaving behind allies who were promised safe refuge, as well as $85 billion in high-tech weapons. 

But with Blinken essentially blaming the quick withdrawal on the “deal” the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban and on the 11-day collapse of Afghanistan’s democratic government propped up by nearly 20 years of U.S. support, Republicans called on the secretary of state to be fired. There will be a congressional investigation into the “debacle.” 

Note: Blinken’s defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal essentially is that the Biden administration did the best it could by actually getting out of a war that outlasted three previous presidents. While the U.S. was able to fly out some 120,000 individuals out of a Kabul airport surrounded by Taliban, including all but roughly 100 American nationals, 13 U.S. troops died in the effort days after the helicopter airlift off the roof of the U.S. embassy looked just like Saigon 1975. The question we would have liked answered is; How many Afghani translators and other allies promised safety by U.S. troops over the two decades remain in the country, facing certain threats by the new Taliban government?

•••

Putin Self-Isolates – Russian President Vladimir Putin has self-isolated after COVID-19 cases were detected in his entourage, Russian media reports Tuesday, via Politico. The Kremlin released a statement that “in connection with the detected cases of coronavirus in his environment, he must observe the regimen of self-isolation for a period of time.” 

Putin, 68, shook hands with Syrian President Bashad al-Assad in Moscow Monday. 

Note: Another opportunity for Putin to appear in photos shirtless after he emerges from isolation?

•••

California Gov Looks Likely to Keep His Job – Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks likely to keep his job after today’s recall election, in which he must get better than 50% of the first part of the ballot to avoid being replaced by the leader of more than 40 candidates on the second part of the ballot. An average of polls finds that 57.3% of voters want to keep Newsom, compared with 41.5% who will vote to remove him, says FiveThirtyEight. Leading Republican candidates to replace him are Los Angeles right-wing talk radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Falconer and “YouTube Landlord Influencer” – whatever that means – Kevin Paffrath, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.

Note: Despite Democrats’ dominance of California politics, particularly on the Coast, the state’s entrepreneurial class, upset over Newsom’s pandemic clampdown on small businesses while he ate cake at a staff party held at Napa Valley’s French Laundry restaurant would score an unusual upset if the first part of the ballot doesn’t go Newsom’s and the polls’ way, and the second part of the ballot does go Larry Elder’s way. 

On Monday President Biden traveled to California to support Newsom. Keep Newsom in office, Biden said, “or you’ll get Donald Trump.” Already, the ex-prez has told Newsmax that the recall election is “probably rigged,” according to Politico, as the GOP, via such pre-emptive strikes against a near-certain loss combined with restrictive voter laws in such states as Texas and Georgia continue to chip away at democratic elections.

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods

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MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2021

•The House Armed Services Committee today grills Secretary of State Antony Blinken on President Biden’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Blinken testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (NPR and Roll Call).

The Senate returns from its summer recess today and must get to work writing the $3.5 trillion “social infrastructure” budget reconciliation bill. Congress must also fund the federal government, with the fiscal year ending September 30. 

Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned Congress it must raise or suspend the debt ceiling or face running out of money by October.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall election is Tuesday.

Manchin on Unknown Unknowns — Sen. Joe Manchin, D-WV, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos Sunday spoke about the need to make a “strategic pause” in the $3.5-trillion Build Back Better funding program due to what he refers to as “the unknown,” saying, “So the unknown is there, and we don’t know what that’s going to — going to partake.” While he was talking about the economic effects of the additional spending, it is conceivable that he was glossing the late former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who once noted, “There are known knowns, things we know that we know; and there are known unknowns, things that we know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns, things we do not know we don't know.”

Manchin noted elsewhere that “strategic pause” will result in a much smaller reconciliation bill. “It’s going to be $1, $1.5 (trillion),” Manchin told Dana Bash on CNN’s State of the Union Sunday. “It’s not going to be at $3.5, I can assure you.” 

Note: As an example of his rationalization for the need of a pause, Manchin said, “People are talking to me in West Virginia about the price of gas, the price of everything they buy, including their groceries, how it's affecting them.”

Let’s look at gasoline.

According to AAA, as of 9/12/21, the day of Manchin’s appearance, the national average for a gallon of gas is $3.175. The average price for a gallon in West Virginia is $3.024.

Looking at the states that share a border with West Virginia, there is Virginia at $2.977, Kentucky at $2.896, Ohio at $2.986, and Maryland at $3.041. Yes, all lower than West Virginia. The remaining border state, Pennsylvania, is higher, at $3.296.

Three known things to keep in mind about gas prices, which, admittedly, have risen.

1. Last year petroleum demand collapsed due to the pandemic and fewer people were on the roads, thereby resulting in decreased gas prices.

2. This past week included Labor Day. Federal holidays are when more people take to the roads. More demand drives higher prices.

3. According to a Bloomberg report September 9 about the consequences of Hurricane Ida, “The historic storm, which swept through the Gulf of Mexico almost two weeks ago, drove a record 1.5 million-barrel decline in daily crude output, according to weekly data from the Energy Information Administration going back to 1983. Nearly three-fourths of U.S. Gulf oil output was still offline as of Thursday.”

•••

North Korea Tests Long-Range Cruise Missiles – The state-run Korean Central News Agency announced Monday that North Korea successfully tested long-range cruise missiles that hit targets about 930 miles away on Saturday and Sunday. The announcement “implies” North Korea developed the missiles with the intent to arm them with nuclear warheads, the Associated Press reports.  

Note: With just a short break for a “love affair” between President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a few years ago, the Hermit Kingdom has consistently sought attention from the West with such potentially deadly antics. North Korea appears to be suffering a more critical famine than usual thanks to the pandemic’s supply chain shortages, and negotiations over the country’s nuclear capabilities that would have potentially mitigated its famine have gone nowhere since negotiations between Trump and Kim stalled in 2019. But that’s of no comfort to South Korea and Japan, both well within the range of the missiles tested last weekend.

•••

Worth Repeating – Former President George W. Bush, in a speech at the Flight 93 National Memorial Saturday in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks: “There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols – they are children of the same foul spirit, and it is our continuing duty to confront them.” (Per The Washington Post.)

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Coming up soon in the right column: David Iwinski on President Biden's vaccine mandate.

Scroll down using the vertical bar on the far right of the page to read “Twenty Years After the 9/11 attacks,” a collection of reflections by our editors and contributing pundits.

In the right column, scroll down further for comments by contributing pundit Bryan Williams, and pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay, on Texas’ new abortion law. 

Comment on these columns and on today’s News & Notes by emailing us at editors@thehustings.news or click on the “comment” tab. Subscribe to our daily newsletter at thehustings.substack.com.

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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2021

By the Editors

Twenty years ago, 19 terrorists of the organization al-Qaeda, including those secretly trained to operate passenger jetliners highjacked four U.S. airliners and crashed two into the World Trade Center towers and another into the west side of the Pentagon. Passengers stormed the cockpit of United Airlines Flight 93, crashing it into the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania instead of the terrorists’ intended target, believed to be either the White House or the U.S. Capitol. 

A total of 2,753 people from 115 countries were killed in the attacks, including 343 firefighters and paramedics, 23 New York Police Department officers and 37 Port Authority police officers. U.S. troops killed in Operation Enduring Freedom, the name for President George W. Bush’s war on international terrorism, stands at 2,343. The U.S. began bombing Afghanistan 26 days after the 9/11 attacks (statistics by New York magazine). 

New York further notes that 12,962 civil rights complaints were made nationally to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, between 2002 and 2008. But there also was an initial outpouring of sympathy worldwide for the United States, and both its victims and survivors of the terrorist attacks, at least until the Bush 43 administration’s war on terrorism extended to invasions of both Iraq and Afghanistan, renewing the pre-attack divide. 

For Saturday’s anniversary of the attacks, The Hustings asked staff editors and contributors to reflect on the awful events of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Their remarks are in the center column below. To respond with your own comments and reflections, please email editors@thehustings.news.

•••

Fighter-Jets Hitting the Sound Barrier

I was a reporter in D.C. and was due on Capitol Hill for a hearing. I never made it there. About 30 minutes after the Pentagon attack, I heard what seemed to be a loud explosion that immediately put me on edge. I later learned it came from fighter jets hitting the sound barrier and scrambling into place. My wife was working downtown a half-mile from the Capitol and it took a while to connect as cell service was limited, but all turned out O.K. for us.

It was a harrowing day, and it ushered in a long period where we monitored the latest color-coded terrorism alerts and made contingency plans in case of an emergency. I’ve lived in the Washington area for decades and it was a period unlike I’d ever seen.

--Charles Dervarics

•••

Fearful of Our Response

In the aftermath, we, as country, weren’t at our best. Sure, some people gave blood for a few days and the first responders did an impeccable job and deserve everything we can give them still, but what I remember from that time is being more fearful of our response as a nation (at the time, we hadn’t made a decision about who we would retaliate against – I knew it would be a Middle Eastern nation), as well as the blind rage of my usually sensible coworkers and random people on my daily commute.

Everyone wanted retribution. I failed to see the point of retribution because those who were responsible were dead and incinerated. They were out of our reach. Everything outside of that was speculation and I still believe in the rule of law and due process – even for nations. You don’t get to bomb or invade over mere speculation. We went into Afghanistan because bin Laden was supposed to be there, we found him in Pakistan. So are we O.K. with that? I’m not.

I wasn’t angry at the time. I was terrified at what the country was going to become when it operates from a place of vengeance and fear.

--Nic Woods

•••

Airplanes

My mom never called me at work. Perhaps it was because my dad had worked in a factory all of his life and getting him to a phone during working hours was a challenge. Even though she knew I was in an office with just three other people, even though she knew that I was the “boss,” even though she knew I had a phone on my desk, she didn’t call.

Until the morning of 9/11.

She knew I flew a lot for my job and she wanted to make sure that I was in town. She was afraid I was on one of those planes.

Sons and daughters were lost on that day.

My parents flew rarely during their lives. My mom didn’t like it. My dad wished they’d gone more.

In early October, on one of those fall days that blesses Detroit with wonderful weather, my dad and I stood on my patio. He looked to the sky and saw one of the few planes that was making its turn for a final approach into Metro Airport.

He shook his head. Sadly.

Stephen Macaulay

•••

Disbelief

Disbelief is all I could muster. To think that two dozen men could wreak that kind of havoc on a stunned country in a single day! And that one day has led to trillions of dollars of American wealth being spent on a 20-year-long unwinnable war. Worst single day in American history since December 7th, 1941.

--Jim McCraw

•••

9/11 and Today

We all remember where we were, those of us old enough, when the tragedy of 9-11 occurred. I was the CEO of a medical transcription company located in Pittsburgh and got a call that morning from my mom, Eleanor Iwinski, who told me a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. In an earlier career I had made hundreds of visits to those towers doing negotiations with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Friends and acquaintances worked there, but I assured my Mother that it wasn't something to worry about as the design of the towers made it unlikely that a small plane -- my assumption -- would have much effect. She called back a few minutes later and said I should get to a television.

I gathered with my team in the conference room and watched with utter shock as the North Tower burned, and then witnessed the strike on the South Tower. It was apparent by now this was no accident and these were not small planes. Shortly after that, the emergency notification system advised that a third plane was flying over Pittsburgh and that people should leave work. Everyone quickly gathered their things and headed home to share the tragedy with their loved ones. It turns out the third plane that briefly flew past Pittsburgh was Flight 93 and it came to rest in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Billions of words have been shared about the sacrifices made and what heroes did on that horrific day. I cannot adequately add to the poetry of sorrow already expressed.

It would seem to me, however, that the best memorial to those lives taken away and those later sacrificed in far-off lands like Afghanistan and Iraq would be that we, as Americans, would have learned and matured and take a more serious view of our place in the world and the inherent responsibilities that fall upon the most powerful nation on the planet, both economically and militarily.

So where do we stand, 20 years later?

• Our political system is in chaos with the last two elections seriously contested by the losing party and trust in both politicians generally and our system of governance as fallen to all-time lows.

•Those who would challenge us militarily and economically for global dominance have gained ground while we have had a series of increasingly ill-considered global doctrines.

•Our allies no longer trust us and our enemies no longer respect us.

•We undertook a 20-year struggle in Afghanistan to root out terror to protect American people and instead exited in a most ignoble and pathetic fashion, leaving allies and Americans behind along with $85 billion worth of sophisticated military ordnance that will undoubtedly be used to attack Americans as terrorists may now walk across the southern border unhindered.

I do have hopes that these trends can be reversed but it is by no means certain if we continue our Benjamin-Button-like acceleration to immaturity and insignificance.

--David Iwinski

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Please email your reflections and memories of 9/11 to editors@thehustings.news

•Tomorrow, The Hustings will post reflections and memories of the terrorist attacks of 20 years ago by our staff and contributors. To join the conversation, please email your comments on September 11, 2001, to editors@thehustings.newsAll comments will be posted in the middle column.

Scroll down to read …

•Jim McCraw comments on the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider challenges to Texas’ new abortion restrictions.

•Reader comment on President Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

•Stephen Macaulay on the Biden administration’s $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation bill.

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FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

On Saturday, September 11, The Hustings talks about the terrorist attacks of 20 years ago. Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news or click the comment button here.

Biden Mandates Vaccines – In a speech Thursday afternoon, Joe Biden presented a six-point plan to stop the spread of COVID-19, including specific mandates as well as recommendations. During his address Biden scolded the vaccine-refusers: “Our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.”

Key provisions of the White House mandate:

•Requires all employees with 100 or more employees to ensure workers are vaccinated or tested weekly, requires vaccination for all federal workers and for millions of contractors that do business with the federal government, and requires COVID-19 vaccinations for more than 17 million health care workers at Medicare and Medicaid participating hospitals and health care “settings.”

•Also “calls on” entertainment venues to require either proof of vaccination or testing for entry.

•Requires employers to provide paid time off for employees to get vaccinated.

•Provides easy access to booster shots for all eligible Americans, and ensures Americans know where to get such shots.

•Calls on all states to adopt vaccination requirements for all school employees, provides federal funding to school districts for safe re-opening, requires students and staff to get tested regularly, and provides “every resource” to the Food & Drug Administration to “support timely review of vaccines” for children under 12 years old.

•Increases testing and masking and adds new support for small businesses affected by shutdowns, while also streamlining the paycheck protection program (PPP) loan guarantees.

Note:  Vaccinating America to stop the spread of COVID-19 should be an uncontroversial method of stanching damage to the nation’s physical and economic health, but it has become a key tool in the GOP’s efforts to make Joe Biden’s presidency a failed administration. Not surprisingly, the Republican National Committee announced Friday it would sue the Biden administration over “un-Constitutional mandates.” 

“Joe Biden told Americans when he was elected that he would not impose vaccine mandates. He lied,” said RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, in a statement. “Now small businesses, workers, and families across the country will pay the price.”

Several Republican governors have said that they will sue the Administration for “overreach.”

Even some supporters of the president are critical, noting that the White House waited so long to impose such vaccination and masking mandates, after a summer in which it began to celebrate an end to the pandemic and economic recovery too early. The CDC’s confusing policy on masking in public is a particular point of criticism.

•••

Long-Distance Phone Bill for Biden and China’s XI – President Biden spoke with Peoples Republic of China President Xi Jingping on their first phone call since February, Thursday night. It was a long gap considering the cold economic war growing over trade between the two countries, as well as the COVID-19 pandemic and cybersecurity concerns. The call, which Biden initiated, was an “effort to responsibly manage the competition between the United States and the PRC,” according to the White House.

Note: Leaders in Beijing had hoped Biden would take a more conciliatory approach to trade between the two countries than had Donald Trump. But U.S.-Chinese trade policy has proven to be one of the few issues on which Biden agrees with the former president, and the White House’s concentration on the coronavirus pandemic has put any progress on improving relations on ice. It’s hard to imagine much improvement through next year.

•••

Vets Support Afghan Exit — A Morning Consult poll finds that 58% of veterans of the war in Afghanistan support Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from the country. Specifically, 42% strongly support it and 16% “somewhat support it.” On the other side, 35% are against it (27% strongly and 8% somewhat). 

When the survey pool was opened up to all voters, 27% strongly supported the decision and 25% somewhat support it; 23% strongly oppose it and 14% somewhat oppose it.

Note: While it is easy for armchair pundits (including those of us here at The Hustings) to opine on Biden’s decision, it is interesting to note the support of the women and men who actually were in the Afghan war. What’s more those surveyed against the decision — both vets and the general public — come in below 50%. While the exit may have been messy, the decision to make an exit has solid support.

•••

Cheney Tweets Her Response to Trump’s Primary Pick – Former President Trump, asserting his position as the GOP’s national leader, has endorsed attorney Harriet Hageman for next year’s Republican primary for Wyoming’s single, at-large member of the House of Representatives (per Roll Call). The incumbent representative, fellow Republican Liz Cheney, responded via a platform Trump can no longer use, Twitter: “Here’s a sound bite for you: Bring it.”

--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

•Tomorrow, The Hustings will post reflections and memories of the terrorist attacks of 20 years ago by our staff and contributors. To join the conversation, please email your comments on September 11, 2001, to editors@thehustings.newsAll comments will be posted in the middle column.

Scroll down to read …

•Bryan Williams and Stephen Macaulay comment on the Supreme Court’s refusal to consider challenges to Texas’ new abortion restrictions.

•David Iwinski’s commentary on President Biden’s mismanagement of the Afghanistan withdrawal. 

•Iwinski, again, comments on Democrats’ $3.5-trillion budget reconciliation “boondoggle.”

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Please email your comments to editors@thehustings.news

Our columnists react to the Supreme Court declining an interim decision on a new Texas law, which restricts abortions after six weeks...

There used to be a concept in the United States called "settled law," a term that has been quoted by SCOTUS justices thousands of times in oral and written arguments. 

There are videos of current justices referring to Roe v. Wade as "settled law." In the face of the original decision almost half a century ago, considering settled law, how is it possible that the Texas law can stand? The court's decision in 1973 seemed pretty damn final to me then, and it seems final to me now. Legal abortion is the right of every woman to operate her own reproductive system without fear or favor, every day. ALL women in America, rich and poor, white and Asian, Black women and Hispanic women. --Jim McCraw

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By Todd Lassa

After 48 years as the most contentious issue in American politics, abortion rights created by the Roe v. Wade decision faces a likely reversal after the Supreme Court of the United States reconvenes its regular session next month. The means for this is a restrictive Texas law that essentially deputizes citizens from inside and outside the state to turn in any woman who seeks an abortion after a heartbeat is detected. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, R, signed the new law, SB 8, in May.

The guarantee of this challenge would not be possible without former President Trump’s success in replacing three Supreme Court justices (and former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s, R-KY, blocking of then-President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to replace the late Justice Antony Scalia) with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Last week, as the House of Representatives and Senate were on summer recess, the Court rejected challenges to the new Texas law, 5-4, thus allowing it to stand for now.

But Merrick Garland, now U.S. attorney general under the Biden administration, promises to “protect” women’s rights to abortion in the state. Such companies as Uber and Lyft say they will legally cover any contractors fined as a result of the new law, which makes it possible the services’ drivers could be fined $10,000 for delivering a woman to an abortion clinic, whether they know the reason for the trip or not. SB 8 places enforcement of the abortion restrictions on private citizens, whether from Texas or another state, instead of government officials. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, has announced that the House will take up Rep. Judy Chu’s, D-CA, Women’s Health Protection Act by the end of September (per USA Today). It would codify SCOTUS’ 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and guarantee a pregnant woman’s right to access an abortion and assure a provider would be able to perform abortions. 

Bolstered by national polls that suggest a majority of American voters – especially young voters – support abortion rights, Democratic Party leaders are taking Republicans’ longstanding opposition to next November’s midterm elections, with hopes of defeating a widely held expectation that the GOP could potentially retake both chambers. 

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Our columnists react to the Supreme Court declining an interim decision on a new Texas law, which restricts abortions after six weeks...

All I smell in this Texas abortion law brouhaha is politics and gamesmanship. Abortion is, of course, an age-old moral issue. Just pick your side: The morals of protecting life, or the morals of protecting the individual (woman’s) right to do with her body as she see most fit.

I am of the Millennial Generation, but as with any label, it is not One Size Fits All. The mainstream media will always portray Millennials as progressive (and not wanting to pay for things, but that is a story for another column). 

I fit somewhere in there – somewhat left-of-center, to the center of moral/social issues, and pretty conservative on all the rest. To me, abortion is an issue for families; Mother and father, or for the mother and her God to work out, not governments, and especially not a random citizen, even from another state, to sue abortion providers and anyone helping a woman obtain an abortion. All the Texas law does is stoke the flames of the political battle for control of Congress in the November 2022 elections. I am sighing.  --Bryan Williams

•••

Look at a simple dictionary definition of incest: “sexual intercourse between two members of the same family, such as a father and daughter, brother and sister.”

Look at a simple dictionary definition of rape: “sexual intercourse carried out forcibly or under threat of injury.”

And while on the topic of sexual intercourse, know that statistically there is a 25% probability that a woman will become pregnant if it happens during her fertile period.

The Texas anti-abortion law doesn’t give any leeway for victims of incest or rape.

If they don’t get the abortion within the six-week window, too bad.

Think about that.

Some father rapes his daughter. She is the victim. And she carries the child to term? What happens to her life, knowing, as she will that she was the object of incest and rape?

Some thug rapes an innocent woman who, perhaps, never intended to have a child or who already has several that she has trouble taking care of. Even though a crime was committed against her, she is expected to carry the child? Or what about a 12-year-old who is raped and terrified to tell her parents?

What will the lives of the people who are borne of these violent acts be like?

Yes, because I am writing these words I understand that I have the opportunity to make observations and had I been aborted, I wouldn’t. Although I am not in favor of abortion as a bizarre method of birth control, I am firmly against forcing victims of crime to do something they don’t want to do. Should the victim of incest or rape decide to go forward with the pregnancy, this should be their decision, just as they should be able to decide otherwise.

While there is a considerable amount of deserved attention on the fact that people can get cash bonuses if they behave like citizens of the former East Germany, where squealing on your neighbors—or even family members—was promoted, this making pregnancies that are the result of incest or rape seemingly normal is something that is really abhorrent.

Texas Gov. Abbott says they will “eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas.”

Sure, tell yourself that. --Stephen Macaulay

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