USA Update

Two children have suffered critical injuries after a buggy rolled over on a regional property.

Scores of Australians have been evacuated from earthquake-hit Vanuatu overnight on the final ADF repatriation flights.

Pakistan will go into their Test series against hosts South Africa encouraged after wrapping up an ODI series sweep with victory at The Wanderers.

Anthony Albanese has labelled the vision as ‘concerning’ after an alleged Australian soldier has been interrogated by Russian forces following his capture in Ukraine.

Commercial flights out of Vanuatu have resumed after the quake as the RAAF completed it last two evacuation operations bringing Australians home for Christmas.

Nayanthara, often hailed as the "Lady Superstar" of South Indian cinema, has consistently been a style icon.

Barry Sweet has a front seat to the mass of humanity that descends on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii, for the Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational. “If you watch from early morning until early afternoon, it’s like a pilgrimage,” he said of the crowds for the surf competition, better known as the Eddie. Alongside […]

Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, on Sunday compared tech mogul Elon Musk to a “prime minister,” praising Musk for speaking out against an early version of a stopgap funding bill last week. “It’s kind of interesting,” Gonzales said during an interview on CBS News’ “Face the Nation.” “We have a president, we have a vice president, […]

I am repeatedly told by certain pundits that “tariffs are a tax on consumers.” These pundits, who don’t foresee a scenario where their own income might be outsourced, are probably correct in some cases — tariffs could increase consumer prices on certain products. So what? Another “tax” on consumers is the erosion of purchasing power […]

JOE BIDEN is on his way out.

In less than a month, the most important job in the world will be handed back to Donald J Trump.

Reuters

With any luck the world is about to get a tough, strong, competent leader in the White House with Trump[/caption]

And finally, at this last moment, some of the left-wing media are starting to ask the question: where did it all go wrong?

There is a certain pleasure in watching this late-life discussion.

After all, if anyone had watched or read any conservative media in the past four years, we already knew the answers.

But part of the American Left have spent their recent years in a state of terrible denial and are now proving to be very slow learners on top of everything else.

The Washington Post has just published an expose about the problems that went on in the Biden White House.

Such as the fact — to sum it up — the President was not all there.

During Covid they could cover for him and pretend he just had to be in his basement, with the excuse that public appearances — let alone ­interviews — would be deeply dangerous.

As indeed they would have been.

But not in the way the ­Democrats pretended.

After guiding him into the presidency, a small group of staff and carers around the president simply continued to keep him away from the media.

He did fewer press ­conferences than any recent president.

He refused to put himself forward for media scrutiny.

There were hardly any ­Cabinet meetings.

And he didn’t even appear to be running the country.

Major figures such as his Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin appear to have been almost strangers to him.

And now it turns out that even when someone in office did get a meeting with Biden, the things they were allowed to ask about and the things he had to say were all deeply scripted.

Again, of course, that was the case. Anyone with eyes could see it.

But the Democrats didn’t want to see it, because they knew that swapping him out could be a disaster.

And so they decided to run him again.

At 81, they accepted the ridiculous assertions from Joe and his wife Jill that he had never been in better form and well — dang it — he just needed another four years to finish the job.

Cognitive decline

There’s no reason to stop someone running just because of their age.

But there is a very good reason not to run a candidate when it is clear he is in cognitive decline.

And anyone could see that Biden was.

But the whole country saw it in the fatal debate this past summer against Donald Trump.

At each Biden stumble, you could hear a Democrat ­operative smack their forehead.

And so they swapped him out, failed to have a regular selection process and instead crowned Vice President Kamala Harris as their candidate.

Rarely has any party political machine gone to so much work to choose such a total dud.

That fact was clear from the outset.

For a few days, diehard Democrats tried to pretend that a character who sounded like a dunderhead was just a bit sloppy at times. A bit messy.

A bit “Brat”, to cite a phrase they tried to push.

Landslide win

Of course Trump won in November in a landslide — ­taking not just the Electoral College, the Senate and House of Representatives but winning the ­popular vote as well.

It was a tremendous victory.

And while the credit goes to him, the size of the sweep must also be credited to the Democrats.

They lied for years about how fit Biden was for office.

They hid him from the ­public.

Then they staged a coup and put in Kamala — and so gave many people who might never otherwise have voted for Trump no other choice but to do so.

That will be Biden’s real ­political legacy.

Through his vanity, and the conceit of the people around him, he helped destroy the ­political side he had dedicated his life to.

The Democrats are now in disarray. But that is to focus on the parochial.

The real ­legacy is on the world stage as a whole.

Spread terror

During Biden’s time in office it was clear that not just him but the United States was asleep at the wheel.

The disastrously bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan gave the Taliban back control of that country, while leaving behind billions of dollars of high-grade weaponry.

Vladimir Putin felt emboldened to invade Ukraine, in a move that is still costing ­hundreds of thousands of lives.

And the evil mullahs in Tehran used their cash bonanza from Biden’s sanctions-lifting to spread terror across the Middle East.

Including invading, rocketing, murdering and kidnapping the citizens of Israel.

None of this needed to ­happen. All of it could have been deterred.

But for that you would need a tough, strong, competent leader in the White House.

With any luck the world’s about to get one. About time.