If you’re following the infrastructure negotiations, you’ll know the various bipartisan deals involve funding infrastructure with no new taxes. As Josh Kovensky explains here, when you look at the details, the demand is to get the money by cannibalizing the Covid relief bill Biden pushed through Congress in March.
From TPM Reader AJ …
JoinWhile in general I agree with your take on the Lab Leak hypothesis, I would point out that the evidence is not as balanced as you suggest.
There are strong empirical suggestions that this is a natural event – specifically to do with genetic structure and the distribution of initial cases.
Yesterday I reminded everybody that it’s important to keep up on the right wing media ecosystem to understand what Republican politicians are saying. In this instance, Republicans have galloped far past the possibility that a lab leak may have been the origin point for the COVID. They’re now pushing the idea that Anthony Fauci was involved in the experiments which created COVID and has conspired with the Chinese to cover-up the lab leak which created COVID.
As you can see from this tweet this morning, Sen. Marco Rubio is pushing just that idea.
From TPM Reader MT …
JoinI have been following your conversations on the lab leak theory for Covid, and how the perception has changed in the near absence of the facts changing. I am a biomedical scientist (soon to be retired!) and my reaction to the lab leak possibility when I first heard about it early during the pandemic was to dismiss it out of hand. But I quickly changed my mind when I realized what the Wuhan labs had been doing with bat viruses and that the Chinese government was, at best, not being forthcoming with information.
From TPM Reader DA …
JoinI think your analysis is penetrating and dead-on in your argument about the self-criticism by “liberals” concerning the Wuhan Lab leak issue. I believe we have seen this same error crop up in another context concerning Covid.
From TPM Reader HC …
JoinI’ve been reading your posts on the lab leak, and while I agree with your assessment that the “media failure” has been overblown, I think you overstate a few things yourself and perhaps aren’t comparing the lab leak and natural spillover theories on an equal basis. Couple points:
1. You say several times that there is “no evidence” for the leak theory. That’s true, at least in public. But the Chinese government has sealed all the records of the lab in question! So there’s kind of a situation where we know that any evidence that would be there isn’t available to us. It also raises suspicion, rightly or wrongly.
Two days after Oregon Republicans called on in-state insurrection conspirator Rep. Mike Nearman to resign, a House committee has recommended unanimously that he be expelled from the same House. Special thanks to TPM Reader SR for flagging the news to us.
The full legislative is apparently voting this evening on whether to expel Nearman
Probably unwisely, I have waded back into the ‘media got it wrong about a lab leak’ debate with my friends Matt Yglesias and and Jon Chait. They’re not the worst on this. But as is often the case in life you’re most ticked by people you think should know better but apparently don’t. As I’ve noted, it’s a complicated question because the informed consensus has shifted a bit. Just not that much. The best informed discussion of the state of play is here.
To the extent there’s a problem with the media coverage on this topic from last year it’s that some commentators went from saying this was a claim with zero evidence, that actual experts didn’t agree with it, that it was very unlikely to calling it a ‘conspiracy theory’ which had been ‘debunked’. These aren’t the same things. But they aren’t terribly far apart either. That is especially so when the people making the claims have a history of being chronic liars.
Still, they’re not precisely the same.
Join
Liberal Democrats are enraged at West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin for opposing the For the People Act and for supporting the filibuster, which would have to be overturned in order for the voting legislation, even with Manchin’s support, to get through Congress. Manchin may, however, be doing these liberal Democrats a favor in this case. Read More
A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is now live! This week, Josh and Kate discuss Senator Joe Manchin’s opposition to S1 and newly reiterated refusal to touch the filibuster, analyzing the way forward for Democrats with a potentially non-functioning Senate.