A member of the White House staff who is a close contact of the President tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday, the White House revealed in a statement.
The individual, who the White House described as a “mid-level staffer,” tested positive on Monday morning after experiencing Covid symptoms on Sunday.
“Three days earlier, on Friday, that staff member had spent approximately 30 minutes in proximity to the President on Air Force One, on the way from Orange, South Carolina to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” the statement from press secretary Jen Psaki said. “This staff member is fully vaccinated and boosted, and tested negative prior to boarding Air Force One, as is required for everyone traveling with the President. This staff member did not begin to experience symptoms until Sunday, and was tested on Monday.”
The President received a negative PCR test on Monday and will take another one on Wednesday, the White House said.
— Read on www.cnn.com/world/live-news/omicron-variant-coronavirus-news-12-20-21-intl/h_cb7faec866ff2fd117ffd2e51e1e2d19
President Joe Biden will deliver a speech on Tuesday to address the omicron variant and unveil new steps the administration is taking to help communities in need of assistance, a White House official told NBC News on Saturday.
Biden is expected to go beyond his already unveiled “Winter Plan” with additional measures while “issuing a stark warning of what the winter will look like for Americans that choose to remain unvaccinated,” the official said.
National security officials at the White House were recently issued a warning: move away from the immediate area as soon as possible if you ever feel the acute onset of pressure, sound or heat in the head.
In brown bag lunches over the past week, policy staff at the Pentagon have been instructed to report any strange, sudden health symptoms without delay.
The U.S. government is sending a message to diplomats, national security staff and intelligence officers that “anomalous health incidents” — also known as “Havana syndrome” because it was first detected in Cuba — are serious, widespread and pose real danger to their health at home and abroad.
— Read on www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article254754432.html
This interesting report comes a day after global news articles published opinions that the entire syndrome was just imaginary and conflated by attention..
Clearly the government is taking it seriously.
We have previously reported that government buildings including even the White House were targets of the potential attacks..
The Federal Bureau of Investigation on Saturday released the first of what is expected to be several documents related to its investigation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks and suspected Saudi government support for the hijackers, following an executive order by President Joe Biden.The newly declassified document, which is from 2016, provides details of the FBI’s work to investigate the alleged logistical support that a Saudi consular official and a suspected Saudi intelligence agent in Los Angeles provided to at least two of the men who hijacked planes on September 11, 2001. The document, released on the 20th anniversary of the deadly attacks, still contains significant redactions.It details multiple connections and witness testimony that prompted FBI suspicion of Omar al-Bayoumi, who was purportedly a Saudi student in Los Angeles but whom the FBI suspected to be a Saudi intelligence agent. The FBI document describes him as deeply involved in providing “travel assistance, lodging and financing” to help the two hijackers.
The Saudi embassy in Washington, DC, previously said Wednesday that it “welcomes the release of” the FBI documents and that “any allegation that Saudi Arabia is complicit in the September 11 attacks is categorically false.”
Biden is failing to adequately explain why he so badly failed to predict the swift collapse of the Afghan state. And his credibility has been sullied because his confident downplaying of the risks of the withdrawal has been repeatedly confounded by events. Seven months into his term, Biden no longer gets credit simply for not being Donald Trump.
The article continues:
The atmospherics around a White House that was on a roll have shifted in a matter of days. Just over a week ago, Biden was taking a victory lap for his unlikely feat of passing a bipartisan infrastructure deal in the Senate and also ramming a $3.5 trillion spending framework through the chamber. As the pandemic rebounds, his July Fourth partial declaration of independence over the virus looks like a “Mission Accomplished” moment, even if the reluctance of millions of Americans to get vaccinated has fueled its spread.
Biden said he is directing the Department of Health and Human Services to draw up new regulations making employee vaccination a condition for nursing homes to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The decision on nursing home staff represents a significant escalation in Biden’s campaign to get Americans vaccinated and the tools he is willing to use, marking the first time he has threatened to withhold federal funds in order to get people vaccinated.
MORE..
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid will issue an emergency regulation in September, making staff vaccination a condition of funding.
A nursing home industry group, however, said imposing a mandate only on such facilities could cause a “disastrous workforce challenge,” instead arguing all health care workers in all settings should be subject to the requirement.
“Focusing only on nursing homes will cause vaccine-hesitant workers to flee to other health care providers and leave many centers without adequate staff to care for residents. It will make an already difficult workforce shortage even worse,” said Mark Parkinson, president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living, which represents 14,000 facilities. “The net effect of this action will be the opposite of its intent and will affect the ability to provide quality care to our residents.”
All of this news come amid the booster shots being made available in September..
The booster shot-plan, which applies only to the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines, calls for Americans to get a booster shot eight months after receiving their second doses.
There are expectations that a booster shot will be needed for people who received the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, but they are still reviewing data and will announce plans at a later date.
Today was a bad, bad day for President Joe Biden. But maybe worse for the United States.. and global stability..
The collapse of the Afghan government is the biggest foreign policy crisis of Biden’s presidency at this point..recalling setbacks for past presidents such as the withdrawal from Vietnam and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. The AP wrote in a fresh dispatch that the reverberations of the Taliban’s success were startling, endangering Afghan women and girls, posing new security threats and threatening to undercut global views of America’s reliability..
After Biden addressed the nation around 4pm, he flew back to Camp David again..
As he boarded Marine One, an image of him saluting appeared to featuring him covered in the late summer flies of August.
Other images showcased today are not pleasant.. they are actually graphic.
The fall of Saigon and Kabul are perfectly compared in this photo, chilling in similarities:
Other images were more harrowing.
People hanging on for dear life as a plane leaving the nation was swarmed with civilians attempting to escape for their lives… At least two died as they fell from the aircraft as it reached into the sky..
A war, 20 years in the making.. and an ending of the Taliban taking back over in just 20 hours …
Disturbing reports are already emerging from Afghanistan as the government collapsed and the Taliban seized power once again nearly 20 years after being driven out by the West.
There have already been reports throughout the advance of the Taliban of women being shot dead and girls as young as 12 being dragged from their homes to be “married”. Afghanistan’s descent into chaos has seen unverified reports emerge of thousands gathering to witness an execution in Kandahar at a sports stadium.
The media began to turn on Biden tonight in pure feeding frenzy style — even the fans at CNN and MSNBC questioned the Commander in Chief over decisions made in the past few days.
Decisions that included promises that the Taliban’s advance would NEVER be as fast it was..
Throughout the weekend, Biden had remained at the presidential retreat, receiving briefings on screens or over the phone while sitting alone at conference table. Advisers huddled separately to discuss when and how he should address the situation. When he returned to the White House midday Monday, many of his aides assumed he would at least spend the night. Yet almost as soon as Biden touched down in Washington, word went out that his stay at the executive mansion would be brief. After his 18-minute speech, Biden quickly decamped again for the mountains.
Meanwhile on Peacock: Former CIA Analyst and US veteran Matt Zeller said he was “appalled” by Joe Biden’s Afghanistan speech on Monday…
U.S. Army veteran Matt Zeller goes off on MSNBC about Biden’s remarks on Afghanistan:
Zeller: “I feel like I watched a different speech than the rest of you guys. I was appalled.” pic.twitter.com/eGC5tMBvy4
Those who made big pronouncements in 2001 when we invaded, all the while the smoke was still billowing out and embers were still smoldering at Ground Zero ….?
Bush? Cheney? Obama? Trump? Biden?
This war went on, and on, and on for 2 decades.
5 presidents
American service members killed in Afghanistan through April: 2,448.
U.S. contractors: 3,846.
Afghan national military and police: 66,000.
Other allied service members, including from other NATO member states: 1,144.
We have written about Mr. Leeds before. His name comes from the film LADY IN THE WATER. That movie was panned by critics and remains one of the most unpopular of the M. Night Shyamalan films–but we have always loved it. It’s a bed time story, a fable, and a beautiful tale about mundane lives of human beings that can become extraordinary when you least expect it. And characters who rise to an occasion as they are all equipped with hidden talents and deep purpose. True purpose..
In the film, Mr. Leeds plays an important role.. Played by actor Bill Irwin, Leeds is one of the tenants in the apartment building where a magical fairy tale will soon ensue.. but until it does, he is busy daily watching his television set of the latest scenes of chaos, strife, warfare and murder across the planet.
Shyamalan presents him as a stoic man, someone who watches chilling news broadcasts play out 24/7 in his living room in a silent agony.
So often through the years, when big news occurred, I pictured Mr. Leeds continuing to watch developments with his expressionless face–but taking it all in and craving for peace and love to take over the planet.
During LADY IN THE WATER, Leeds questions whether humanity should be saved in his dialogue in the film. He goes on to inspire the main character of the film at the most crucial time. And it leads to redemption–redemption of the entire group of apartment misfits that never realized the power of humanity to work as one.
2020 TO THE ‘NORMAL’
During the 2020 presidential race and COVID pandemic, we were reminded by the media and purveyors of clickbait on the socials that everything was wrong. Upside down. Abnormal..
The kind of life that even had Mr. Leeds contemplating throwing in the towel.
After the tumultuous election and eventual Inauguration of Joe Biden, Mr. Leeds and all of us watched the media portray the new presidency as a return to “normal.” A return to the mundane.. the life that Mr. Leeds had previously gotten used to. Sure 2020 threw a number of wrenches into his life, but he wanted his typical 6 o’clock news back.
So as 2021 took flight, we were ready to get back into normal!
Back to work! Offices reopening.. businesses back! Vaccines rolling out and sleeves rolling up.
Until Delta. Until Lambda.. And until a brand new variant took hold across the southern United States, including Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and even beginning in some vaccinated Northern states..
What about normal?
THE ABNORMAL NORMAL
Mr. Leeds had become very used to warfare on his newscasts. Reports of battle lines, reports of casualties and coffins draped with American flags were his normal in LADY IN THE WATER.
But now a new normal is playing out. Mr. Leeds feels right back at home again as war begins to become the top story…
President Joe Biden on Saturday doubled down on his previous decision to withdraw US forces from Afghanistan despite the Taliban’s rapid advances. However he pledged to send more troops to evacuate civilians and warned the insurgents not to threaten that mission.
After consultations with his national security team, Biden said a total of “approximately 5,000” US soldiers — up from 3,000 — will now help organize evacuations and the end of the US mission after 20 years on the ground.
He warned the Taliban that any action “that puts US personnel or our mission at risk there, will be met with a swift and strong US military response.”
“When I came to office,” Biden wrote, “I inherited a deal cut by my predecessor—which he invited the Taliban to discuss at Camp David on the eve of 9/11 of 2019—that left the Taliban in the strongest position militarily since 2001 and imposed a May 1, 2021 deadline on U.S. Forces. Shortly before he left office, he also drew U.S. Forces down to a bare minimum of 2,500.”
Biden faced a choice as his presidency began, to either follow through on the deal, “or ramp up our presence and send more American troops to fight once again in another country’s civil conflict.”
“I was the fourth President to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan—two Republicans, two Democrats,” he concluded. “I would not, and will not, pass this war onto a fifth.”
The working assumption in Biden’s inner circle had been that Kabul could hold for the short term, allowing the U.S. to stay diplomatically engaged and help Afghan women secure their rights beyond the U.S. withdrawal.
Some who read this today were not alive like us, and Mr. Leeds, in 1993.
During that year, when Bill Clinton launched a hasty withdrawal of troops (Bush put them there to feed the hungry and do a ‘humanitarian mission’ in 1992), things got out of control, as illustrated by this TIME magazine cover in October 1993:
Pictures on the cover: Michael Durant. He was held prisoner for 11 days..
The images can still be found today. Media had them at the time but immediately stopped showing.
But Mr. Leeds saw them.. It affected him greatly. It taught him the horrors of war, and the evils of humanity… He doesn’t forget.
And that, my friends, is why Mr. Leeds today is a little worried. A little concerned about what will occur in Afghanistan.
He is torn..
20 years in this nation, and for what?
For the same towns once liberated of the Taliban to be taken over by the Taliban two decades after 9/11..
Officially the Pentagon says there are about 2,500 American troops serving in Afghanistan as part of an advise-and-assist mission to help Afghan security forces. However, U.S. officials have acknowledged the number is higher as U.S. counterterrorism forces are not counted in the official training mission number.
As the Taliban takes hold, inch by inch, women are back in Burqas. Where are the Woke Crowds to lament? People are back in fear.. Mr. Leeds knows that we cannot be nation builders. But what is the right way to withdraw vs. the wrong way..? What is worse?
