The government of Afghanistan, created under US auspices and propped up by the US military for almost two decades, appears to be collapsing under a rapid military onslaught by the Taliban. This has been triggered by but I think by no means caused by President Biden’s decision to withdraw all US military forces from the country.
Let me share a few thoughts about this in no particular order.
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We expected folks like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to offer jailed insurrectionists the victim card. They staged a photo-op protest at the jail where some of them are being held last month to paint the rioters as mistreated political prisoners.
Now Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is joining the whitewashing movement.
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With a gaggle of House ‘moderates’, led by the meddling Josh Gottheimer, now trying to strong-arm Nancy Pelosi into decoupling the long-linked infrastructure bills, I’m reminded of a night back in 2010. Republicans made Democrats wait some six months to seat Al Franken after he defeated Norm Coleman in Minnesota in 2008. That finally gave them 60 votes in the Senate, enough to pass what we now know as Obamacare. But now it’s January 19th, 2010. Long-serving Senator Ted Kennedy died the previous August and now there’s a special election to fill his seat. Shockingly, the race is called for Republican Scott Brown. Out of the blue, Republicans have won back their ability to filibuster Obamacare just as its near the negotiation finish line.
Fuck.
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ABC News got its hands on some private messages that it says Matt Gaetz’s buddy Joel Greenberg allegedly sent. The messages, ABC reports, were turned over to federal investigators, and reportedly show Greenberg arranging a meet up between himself, Gaetz, and women who were allegedly paid for sex.
Things are looking increasingly bad — and gross — for the congressman.
JoinThe Chronicle of Higher Education is compiling a list college and universities that are requiring vaccination for at least some students and faculty for the coming school year.
See if you can see a pattern.
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A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is now live! This week Josh and Kate discuss the passing of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the next legislative push on the docket: a potentially historic reconciliation package to wrap up as much of the Biden administration’s remaining agenda as possible.
Watch below and email us your questions for next week’s episode.
You can listen to the new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast here.
As we’ve discussed a number of times, Republican leaders made a clear decision over the winter of 2020-21 to embrace and cater to anti-vax, anti-mandate sentiment to supercharge their midterm election odds. I’ve seen some debate over whether GOP elites convinced GOP voters or GOP voters dragged along the elites. I think it’s a bit of both but mainly a non-issue. Unsurprisingly, elected officials and voters in a political party tend to think in similar ways. They decided to become the anti-vax party and thus helped usher in the fourth COVID wave.
But something happened on the way to the party: the Delta variant.
The Biden administration reportedly sent 200 ventilators and 100 nasal oxygen kits to the state of Florida this week as the state sees an unprecedented spike in COVID-19 cases. As we’ve reported, the number of people hospitalized with the virus increased by 1,173 just in the last two days — putting the total number of confirmed hospitalizations in the Sunshine state at 14,787.
But Gov. Ron DeSantis claims he didn’t ask the feds for the life-saving equipment.
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So a few thoughts on Manchin.
We’ve said repeatedly there’s going to be a lot of drama and haggling before this gets settled. Well, see: I was right. Does this change the global picture? I don’t think so.