“Straight news” has chosen sanctimony over circumspection.

America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has yet to cost our nation a single casualty. Evacuations of U.S. citizens and allies from Kabul’s airport are proceeding at a faster pace than the White House had promised, or than its critics had deemed possible. Afghanistan’s decades-long civil war has reached a lull, if not an end. On the streets of Kabul, “order and quiet” have replaced “rising crime and violence.” Meanwhile, the Taliban is negotiating with former Afghan president Hamid Karzai over the establishment of “an inclusive government acceptable to all Afghans.”

In other words, Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been a “disastrous” and “humiliating” “fiasco,” in the words of the mainstream media’s ostensibly objective foreign-policy journalists.

This may be an accurate description of what recent events in Kabul have meant for the president, politically. The latest polls have shown sharp drops in Biden’s approval rating, driven in part by widespread opposition to “the way” his administration handled its (otherwise popular) exit from Afghanistan. Yet this political fiasco is not a development that the media covered so much as one that it created.

The Biden administration made some genuine errors of contingency planning. It could have done (and should now do) more to facilitate the mass resettlement of Afghan refugees. But as far as conclusions to multi-decade wars go, America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is thus far proceeding with relatively little chaos and tragedy. And it’s far from clear that the withdrawal could have been much more orderly had the White House only executed it in a better “way.”

Wisdom hatched around 1951, and possibly earlier. In 1956, she was tagged by scientists as #Z333 at the Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge. It is likely that Wisdom is older than 70, as when she was banded in 1956, she was conservatively estimated to be five years old — the earliest age that the Laysan albatross reaches sexual maturity.[2] The person to attach the first tag was Chandler Robbins, who was a senior scientist at the United States Geological Survey (USGS).[3] Birds are banded so that their populations can be monitored and individuals can be studied for data such as their longevity, behavior and migration patterns.[4]

On December 3 2014, Wisdom made headlines when she laid an egg at Midway Atoll. Her mate had arrived at the atoll on November 19, and Wisdom was first spotted by the refuge staff on November 22.[5] The egg was estimated to be the 36th egg that Wisdom had laid; albatrosses lay one egg per year, and have monogamous mates for life.[6] Smithsonian speculated that due to Wisdom's unusual longevity, she may have had to find another mate in order to continue breeding.[7]

The USGS has tracked Wisdom since she was first tagged, and have estimated that Wisdom has flown over 3,000,000 miles (4,800,000 km) since 1956 (approximately 120 times the circumference of the Earth). To accommodate her longevity, the USGS has replaced her tag a total of six times.[3] She and her chick survived the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that killed an estimated 2,000 adult Laysan and black-footed albatrosses, and a much larger number of chicks, at the refuge.[8]

Wisdom has laid some 30-40 eggs in her lifetime. Between 2005 and 2014, Wisdom laid eight eggs,[9] and hatched and reared another chick in December 2016 at the approximate age of 66. In December 2017, she bred again, and has successfully hatched a chick every year since 2006.[10][11] In December 2018, USFWS Pacific Region reported that Wisdom had returned to the Midway Atoll and had laid an egg.[12] The egg hatched in February 2019.[13]

In December 2020, it was reported that Wisdom was again incubating an egg.[14] The chick hatched on 1 February 2021.[15]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom_(albatross)

I’ve been a pastor in the church for over two decades, much of that in predominantly white churches in the American South.

I’ve spent countless hours in church staff meetings and men’s Bible studies and youth pastor conferences.

I’ve stayed connected on social media with thousands of people still there in those churches. I read what they share and post and amplify and I know how they think and what they believe.

I need you to understand something and I say it without any hyperbole: white Evangelicals need to be stopped, now.

If the 2022 midterms elections allow Republicans to gain control of Congress, Conservative Christians will decimate this nation, and LGBTQ people, Muslims, women, people of color, and non-Christians will never have equality under the law again. We will all be at their mercy—and they will no longer have use for mercy.

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2021/06/05/im-a-christian-pastor-evangelicals-have-to-be-defeated-in-2022/?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=johnpavlovitz