Vicious Circle

Dire Day: So far US forces have managed to airlift more than 100,000 people out of Afghanistan.  Though a few thousand US citizens have been evacuated, most of those who have been flown out are Afghans who stood with us during our twenty years in their country.  It’s not that we aren’t trying to get more US citizens out but just that there aren’t that many left to remove and some of the remaining aren’t all that interested in leaving.  Sadly, the evacuation effort which is still ongoing will forever be marred by the tragic deaths of 13 US soldiers and somewhere around 85 Afghans, the result of yesterday’s two suicide bombings outside of Kabul Airport by ISIS K militants. By the way, in case like me your alphabet soup of terrorism hasn’t been kept up to date the ISIS K terrorists are a regional affiliate of that Islamic state crowd that the Former Guy said he eliminated even though he really didn’t largely because they are hard to eliminate and are quite immune to bombastic claims of their demise.  Simply put ISIS K is made up of former Afghan and Pakistan Taliban fighters who believe that the Taliban aren’t Taliban enough. They hate the west and as yesterday’s events show they are thoroughly into killing westerners but they are also are fighting those “too liberal” Taliban who were kind of cooperating with our evacuation and who are likely to have their hands full fighting their own civil war after we complete our departure. Late yesterday President Biden said that he will do everything he can to find and punish the ISIS K guys behind the deadly attacks and he probably will, but if this sounds all too familiar it’s because it is, we got into Afghanistan to rout out Osama bin Laden and now as we are leaving and Biden says we are still leaving probably still by August 31, it feels like we’re back to where we began.  The horrifying vicious circle continues.  Not surprisingly, just about everyone is now a foreign policy expert with a specialty in all things Afghanistan so the extreme wings of the Republican Party which these days is most of the party are calling for Biden to be impeached or worse, the Former Guy is saying that none of this would have happened if he was still in charge because the Taliban and ISIS K guys would have listened to him or else, those Republicans trying to get back into their base’s favor like Liz Cheney, Ben Sasse and the like are going after both Biden and the FG  and a few others on both sides are just second guessing every decision made or to be made.   

Politics Unusual: While all of the attention has been on Afghanistan, Pelosi’s team in the House has made some progress moving their $3.5 trillion along. As usual, Nancy managed to squelch the infighting between her moderates and the left and got everyone in her party to vote for the plan.  There’s still a lot to do, it’s likely that some Senate Democrats named Sinema and Manchin will do their best to shave a few billion off the plan so it’s too soon for anyone to raise hockey sticks in the air but still Pelosi and by definition Biden’s accomplishment is significant.  Of course GQP leader Kevin McCarthy says that he’ll be having none of it since he won’t support anything the Democrats want and to that end everyone in his party, including Adam Kinzinger and Liz Chaney, the two we’d like to believe are more rational that most, voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act this week because even they are all in on using voter suppressive legislation to prevent more people who won’t vote for them from voting.  As to Kevin McCarthy, though the chances that he’ll be the next Speaker of the House continue to grow especially if Biden and the Democrats face fallout in the midterms from the Afghanistan situation, he's got some immediate concerns from the House Select Committee on all things January 6^th.  The committee is seeking lots of records related to the days’ events and Kevin finds that a bit personal and concerning. No surprise then that the FG who previously said that he wouldn’t claim executive privilege to protect what he could, is now screaming privilege.  His screams aside, some of his former lawyers including Lin Wood, Sidney Powell and a long list of lesser known not so luminaries are finally facing consequences for all those lawsuits that claimed that some combination of fraud, space aliens, Jewish lasers, and the Italian military threw the election to Biden.  A Federal Judge in Michigan has sanctioned them and wants the state bars, legal not favorite watering spots, they belong to give them the Giuliani treatment.  Meantime, the results of the Cyber Ninja audit in Arizona are on ice, something to do with the head ninja and some of his staff being very sick with COVID, or at least claiming to be sick with COVID.                            

Viral Musings:  The Delta variant continues its onslaught particularly among conservative radio hosts and in those under vaccinated parts of the country where for some reason that totally escapes me local politicians like Florida’s DeSantis and Texas’ Abbott believe that mandating vaccines and face masks is akin to a crime against humanity, their god and/or will hurt their chances of ever becoming president. A concern apparently shared by South Dakota’s Kristi Noem who enthusiastically hosted the Sturgis Motorcycle super spreader event which so far has kicked her state’s virus levels up by about 450%.  According to the NY Times, there were 2210 US COVID deaths yesterday,  901 of them in Florida where a doctor is “selling” face mask exemption notes to local covidiots.  Not to be outdone a doctor in Arkansas is prescribing invermectin. a horse de-wormer, to  inmates at a local prison to treat and ward off COVID.  Given their predicament the prisoners are probably not among the thousands calling poison control hotlines right now, but elsewhere in the country the lines are jammed with those who’ve poisoned themselves with the drug that does nothing for COVID but can be, especially in large doses, poisonous. At least their scabies will be cured.  For the rest of us it looks like the FDA and CDC are going to say that boosters are warranted after six months rather than eight and that those who got J & J will be eligible as well.

More:  NYS’s Governor is now a woman named Kathy Hochul, voting has begun in California’s inexplicable recall election where Governor Newsom could be replaced by someone less popular and far more tarnished in an FG kind of way. There’s also an election percolating in Virginia where one time Governor Terry McAuliffe is facing off against an FG supported candidate named Glenn Youngkin.  And because FG supported candidates are going to be all the rage going forward despite pressure from Mitch McConnell for him to stay out of the race former football star and alleged wife abuser Herschel Walker has announced his run to seek the Republican nomination to run against Senator/Reverend Raphael Warnock whose “replacement” term  is up in 2022.        

Stay safe

Enjoy the weekend.