Throwback to simpler times, when I was given the greenlight to spend many a TPM workday covering which Twitter farm animal Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) was suing next.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Another One Of Nunes’ Nutty Lawsuits Was Just Dismissed”
I wanted to revisit the question of COVID vaccine booster shots, or rather third doses of the vaccine which are now being administered in Israel and will be in the United States starting next month. (Those with compromised immune systems have already been approved for third doses in the United States.)
The short version is that initial data out of Israel appears to show dramatically increased protection both against infection and disease from a third dose. But there are at least some questions about the data and what they actually mean.
This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
Right before the Senate left for recess earlier this month, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) attempted to once again force a vote on the For The People Act (S. 1), the most significant fair elections bill in generations. All fifty Democratic senators voted to bring the bill from committee to the full Senate floor, but because Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) objected to moving forward immediately, there could not be a motion to proceed to debate it.
House Democrats from both sides of the political spectrum are finding it hard to contain their annoyance at their 10 colleagues threatening to topple President Joe Biden’s entire agenda — for no real reason.
Continue reading “House Democrats Of All Stripes Are Mad At The Disruptive Centrists”
One thing I’ve been wanting to address over the last week is what remains the background premise for the Afghanistan mission: denying a safe haven to al Qaeda or other similar groups from which to mount attacks on the United States. I have already seen numerous analyses claiming that al Qaeda will soon be setting up shop again under Taliban protection. Sometimes it is necessary to grab hold of a bad argument by the root.
Let me address this at a few levels.
In retrospect – and perhaps at the time – the entire ‘safe haven’ argument was greatly overstated. Let’s take the actual 9/11 attacks as our example. As many note, most of the plotting was done by people who weren’t even in Afghanistan. They were mostly people from the Gulf living in Europe or the United States. At a basic level the whole premise was wrong from the beginning. But this critique misses a non-trivial part of the equation. There’s only so much time in the day. If you’re running an international terror group, time spent on the run is time not spent plotting attacks. Obviously terrorist and guerrilla groups have managed to do both throughout history. But it certainly makes sense and I think is borne out by history that if you have a base of operations which is basically protected and secure that’s an advantage. This is the premise on the strategy of ‘pressure’ wrapped up in aggressive surveillance, drone strikes, throttling access to the international banking system, special ops raids and more. Time spent running is time not spent plotting.
Continue reading “The Terror/Consultant Industrial Complex Rears Its Head”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) cheered the attempt by some moderate Democrats in the House to decouple the two infrastructure bills, threatening the future of the Democrats’ sweeping reconciliation package.
Continue reading “McConnell Blesses Centrist Dems’ Attempt To Blow Up Two-Track Infrastructure Plan”
After four days of irrigation austerity, the Orlando officials are urging residents to continue cutting back on watering their lawns and other nonessential water use — because of COVID-19.
Continue reading “COVID Surge Is Cutting Into Supply Of Oxygen Used To Purify Orlando’s Water”
The House select committee on investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection will request phone records of various people, including members of Congress, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) confirmed on Monday.
Here’s an update on the definitely failed evacuation and abandonment of everyone who ever worked for us in Afghanistan. According to the White House, 21,600 people were evacuated over the last 24 hours bringing the total number to 58,700. I know a tone of sarcasm is a bit jarring in what is a very serious and dangerous situation. But in addition to a story of great significance and human drama we’re coming off one of the biggest and most revealing press tantrums I’ve ever seen. Yesterday I said I thought we were only days away from pundit-bewailers shifting to taking credit for turning the greatest military debacle in history into a historically successful airlift. But I was wrong: it’s already happening.
Continue reading “Evacuation Flights Abroad; Tantrum at Home”
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) late-night talks with the moderate Democrats who are trying to force her into holding a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill before voting on the $3.5 trillion budget resolution ended without an agreement.
Members of the Jan. 6 House select committee will be seeking out phone records of several people, including members of Congress, from various telecommunications companies, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) said on Monday.
The President will decide today if he will extend the Aug. 31 deadline for the Kabul evacuation mission, according to Reuters.
“I served in Afghanistan as a US Marine, twice. Here’s the truth in two sentences” – The Kansas City Star
More than 55,000 people in North Carolina who are on parole or probation for felony convictions had their voting rights restored by a state court on Monday, according to civil rights advocates.
Kathy Hochul (D) became the first female governor of New York on Monday after taking the reins from accused sexual harasser Andrew Cuomo, who complained in his farewell address that his resignation was “unfair and unjust.”
— YakubinMag ✡️????♂️ (@EvelKneidel) August 24, 2021
Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys, was sentenced to more than five months in jail on Monday for burning a Black Lives Matter banner that was stolen from a historic D.C. Black church in December, and for bringing a high-capacity rifle magazines to D.C. days before the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Police officers in rural California launched an aircraft surveillance mission in June 2020 in search of nonexistent “antifa buses” that the California Highway Patrol chief had read about in an Instagram story and a Facebook post.
The conspiracy-theory obsessive is fuming over Trump having the audacity to encourage people to get the COVID-19 vaccine, or as Jones likes to call it, a “frankenshot” that will “create mutants.”
Alex Jones on Trump recommending vaccines: “Maybe Trump’s actually a dumbass” https://t.co/vNk63BY3Pi pic.twitter.com/tutB4S0OOm
— Media Matters (@mmfa) August 23, 2021
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