Just who (what) is Joe Manchin

Yet more extremely unflattering information about Joe Manchin...and his daughter.  In this podcast, Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa say multiple times that Joe Manchin raised this woman, insulting both of them, but which is not, in my opinion, indicative of anything one way or another.  The fact that she's a prick like her father has several causes, no dbout.  

Anyway, the wife is no prize, either.  They seem a lot like the Trumps.

UPDATE:

Surprising no one

At the Guardian

Expect a Trump Statement debasing General Frank McKenzie

General Frank McKenzie, the head of Central Command, told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that once the US troop presence was pushed below 2,500 as part of Washington’s bid to complete a total withdrawal by the end of August, the unravelling of the US-backed Afghan government accelerated.

“The signing of the Doha agreement [in which the US promised to fully withdraw its troops by May 2021 and the Taliban committed to several conditions, including stopping attacks on US and coalition forces] had a really pernicious effect on the government of Afghanistan and on its military – psychological more than anything else, but we set a date – certain for when we were going to leave and when they could expect all assistance to end,” McKenzie said.

[...]

The stated objective was to promote a peace negotiation between the Taliban and the Afghan government, but that diplomatic effort had failed to gain traction before former US President Donald Trump was replaced by President Joe Biden in January.

The new US president pushed ahead with the plan for the troop withdrawal but extended the deadline to August 31.

McKenzie said he also had believed “for quite a while” that if the US reduced the number of its military advisers in Afghanistan below 2,500, the collapse of the government in Kabul would be inevitable “and that the military would follow”.

He said in addition to the morale-depleting effects of the Doha agreement, the troop reduction ordered by Biden in April was ”the other nail in the coffin” for the 20-year war effort because it blinded the US military to conditions inside the Afghan army, “because our advisers were no longer down there with those units”.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, testifying alongside McKenzie, said he agreed with McKenzie’s analysis.

  alJazeera

Austin has already been bad-mouthed by Trump. But he may get some more.

[General Austin] added that the Doha agreement also committed the US to ending air attacks against the Taliban, “so the Taliban got stronger, they increased their offensive operations against the Afghan security forces, and the Afghans were losing a lot of people on a weekly basis”.

[...]

[General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,] listed a number of factors responsible for the US defeat going back to a missed opportunity to capture or kill al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora soon after the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

He also cited the 2003 decision to invade Iraq, which shifted US troops away from Afghanistan.

[...]

Republicans have accused Biden of lying about the military commanders’ recommendations to keep 2,500 troops in the country, playing down warnings of the risks of a Taliban victory, and exaggerating the US’s ability to prevent Afghanistan from again becoming a safe haven for armed groups like al-Qaeda.

“I fear the president may be delusional,” said Mike Rogers.

To be clear, he's not talking about Trump.

Wednesday’s hearing was politically charged, descending repeatedly into shouting matches, as representatives argued over what Democrats characterised as partisan Republican attacks on Biden, particularly over an August television interview in which the president denied his commanders had recommended keeping 2,500 troops in Afghanistan.

The connection between white nationalists and elite GOP, media moguls, "conservatives"

A leaked document has revealed the membership list of the secretive Council for National Policy (CNP), showing how it provides opportunities for elite Republicans, wealthy entrepreneurs, media proprietors and pillars of the US conservative movement to rub shoulders with anti-abortion and anti-Islamic extremists.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors rightwing hate groups, describes the CNP as “a shadowy and intensely secretive group [which] has operated behind the scenes” in its efforts to “build the conservative movement”.

[...]

The group was founded in 1981 by activists influential in the Christian right, including Tim LaHaye, Howard Phillips and Paul Weyrich, who had also been involved in founding and leading the Moral Majority. Initially they were seeking to maximize their influence on the new Reagan administration. In subsequent years, CNP meetings have played host to presidential aspirants like George W Bush and 1999 and Mitt Romney in 2007, and sitting presidents including Donald Trump in 2020.

[...]

The CNP is so secretive, according to reports, that its members are instructed not to reveal their affiliation or even name the group.

[...]

Heidi Beirich, of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said in an email that “this new CNP list makes clear that the group still serves as a key venue where mainstream conservatives and extremists mix”, adding that CNP “clearly remains a critical nexus for mainstreaming extremism from the far right into conservative circles”.

The document – which reveals email addresses and phone numbers for most members – shows that the CNP includes members of SPLC-listed hate groups.

[...]

Additionally, the list includes members of groups that have been accused of extremist positions on abortion.

[...]

Several high-profile figures associated with the Trump administration, or conspiracy-minded characters in Trump’s orbit, are also on the list, such as Jerome R Corsi, who has written conspiracy-minded books about John Kerry, Barack Obama and the September 11 attacks. Corsi is listed as a member of CNP’s board of governors.

Along with these representatives of extremist positions, the CNP rolls include members of ostensibly more mainstream conservative groups, and representatives of major American corporations. Other still come from the Republican party, a network of rightwing activist organizations, and the companies and foundations that back them.

A newcomer to the group since a previous version of the member list was exposed is Charlie Kirk, founder and president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), a conservative youth organization.

[...]

Conservative movement heavyweights in the group include Lisa B Nelson, chief executive of the American Legislative Exchange Council; Eugene Mayer, president of the Federalist Society; Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Return; Daniel Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the CPac conference; and L Brent Bozell III, the founder of the Media Research Center and a member of the Bozell and Buckley dynasties of conservative activists.

[...]

Their number also includes sitting congressmen such as Barry Loudermilk and influential operatives like David Trulio, who was the senior adviser and chief of staff to the under-secretary of defense in the Trump administration.

[...]

Other members include pillars of the Republican political establishment, including former GOP congressional majority leader, Tom DeLay; former Wisconsin governor Scott Walker; Reagan administration attorney general Edwin Meese III; and former RNC chair and Trump White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

[...]

The member list also includes representatives of major US corporations, such as Marc Johansen, vice-president for the satellites and intelligence program for Boeing; Jeffrey Coors, of the Coors brewing family, who have extensively sponsored conservative groups; Lee Roy Mitchell, the founder and chairman of the board for movie chain owner Cinemark Holdings; Steve Forbes, the founder and chief executive of the Forbes business media empire; and Scott Brown, a senior vice-president at Morgan Stanley.

Other members of the group represent organizations that operate under a veil of secrecy, with conservative “dark money” organizations well represented.

  The Guardian

That's not all the CNP has been doing.

CNP Action has hosted weekly conference calls to coordinate coronavirus response tactics.

[...]

Working alongside close allies that have helped coordinate the protests, including Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation and FreedomWorks, Council for National Policy Action (CNP Action) has been hosting conference calls and publishing action memos around reopening states’ economies.

CNP Action is the 501(c)(4) nonprofit affiliate of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a coalition of far-right political advocacy and think tank figures that has worked largely behind the scenes since its founding in 1981. CNP’s membership includes conservative Republicans and right-wing extremists who work together to shape policy. Trump allies, including senior adviser Kellyanne Conway and former chief adviser Steve Bannon, were CNP members as of 2014. Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow has also been a member, according to a recently published book by Anne Nelson.

[...]

[An email] announcement directed readers to the private Facebook page of the group ReOpen PA, which was one of three groups that organized an April 20 lockdown protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol. The other two groups’ Facebook pages have been deactivated.

[...]

CNP Action directs allies to send links to op-eds, articles, and social media posts to a TeaPartyPatriots.org email address, indicating that the group is involved in CNP’s organizing efforts.

  Exposed By CMD

In France, no one is above the law

Debt ceiling bullshit

Deadline is October 18.  They'll raise it or suspend it at the last minute.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

Surprising no one.

At the Guardian

Finally getting serious

So what's happening with the Matt Gaetz investigation?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

GOP bid to maintain control: violence, intimidation, and gerrymandering

The Texas state Senate is on the verge of releasing new congressional lines that could very well determine the balance of power in the House for the next decade. While the precise boundaries are still being finalized, the new map is likely to shore up all of the state’s GOP incumbents by packing Democrats together in three new deep-blue seats in the biggest metro areas: Austin, Houston and Dallas.

[...]

The end result is likely to give Republicans control of at least two dozen of the state’s 38 districts — but it is not expected to significantly reduce Democrats’ footprint, which grew slightly over the past 10 years. That's a far cry from the ruthless redistricting happening elsewhere — but also a realization of the GOP's already maxed-out advantage in Texas.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The greatest country on earth

Americans spend more than double per person on healthcare compared to 17 peer nations, but rank near the bottom in health outcomes.

The phenomenon is described as “pervasive”, impacting all age groups up to 75, with life expectancy declining especially for women. In just a few examples, Americans have the highest infant mortality, children are less likely to live to age five, and the US has the worst rates of Aids among peer nations.

The US also has the highest or among the highest rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, chronic lung disease and disability.

[...]

Americans know intuitively that their healthcare is expensive, frustrating and often unfair. Remarkably, even amid the pandemic, roughly 30 million Americans went without health insurance, exposing them to potentially ruinous medical debt.

  Guardian

Why don't we fix this?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Credit where credit is due

I'm still not a Cheney fan, and likely never will be, but Liz Cheney has more guts than all the other GOP Congressfolk put together. (Excepting Adam Kinzinger.)

“I like Republican presidents who win re-election,” Cheney tweeted on Sunday, with a picture of George W Bush.

  The Guardian

In case you weren't around then...Trump once said of POW and GOP "war hero" John McCain, "I like people who weren't captured."

Liz Cheney’s tweet was a response to an image released by Trump on Thursday. Under the heading “ICYMI: Must-See Photo”, a Trump-affiliated political action committee sent out a Photoshopped image which spliced Liz Cheney and George W Bush.

By "spliced", they mean mashed up. Morphed.

Trump could not tweet it himself, as he remains barred from the platform for inciting the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January.

[...]

The spliced Bush-Cheney image was accompanied with a link for donations. It was also displayed at a rally in Georgia on Saturday.

[...]

In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes later on Sunday, Liz Cheney previewed her re-election campaign in 2022, as forces aligned with Trump try to unseat her.

“I think it’s going to be the most important House race in the country in 2022,” she said. “And it will be one where people do have the opportunity to say, We want to stand for the constitution,’” Cheney said.

“A vote against me in this race, a vote for whomever Donald Trump has endorsed, is a vote for somebody who’s willing to perpetuate the big lie, somebody who’s willing to put allegiance to Trump above allegiance to the constitution, absolutely.”

In a surprise admission, Cheney also said she had been wrong about gay marriage, which she opposed ahead of a Senate race in 2013.

[...]

While still opposed to gun control, abortion and the Affordable Care Act, and repeating to CBS her opinion that waterboarding is not torture, Cheney finds herself allied with Democrats over the Capitol riot.

[...]

Asked about her continued membership of a party in which 78% do not think Biden won the election, and in which vaccination misinformation and conspiracy theories are rife, she said that was why she was speaking up.

“When you look at the spread of these mistruths and the spread of the disinformation, you know, silence enables it. Silence enables the liar. And silence helps it to spread.

“So the first thing you have to do is say, ‘No. I’m not going to accept that we’re gonna live in a post-truth world.’ It’s a toxin in our political bloodstream … and it’s a really serious and dangerous moment.”

She's right about that.

Rudy banned from Fox News

Fox News has banned Rudy Giuliani and his son from appearing on its network.

  The Hill

They ban Rudy but let Tucker Carlson have a whole show of his own?

Prior to a scheduled appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Sept. 11, “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth apparently called the former New York City mayor the night before and apologized, telling him he had been canceled from their guest list.

[...]

A source close to the former New York City mayor told Playbook that Giuliani was upset by the decision because he had “done a big favor” for Fox Corp. founder and Chairman Rupert Murdoch.

“He was instrumental in getting Fox on Time Warner so it could be watched in New York City,” the source told Playbook.

The Arizona "audit" is over and Trump was spinning to the bitter end

In a statement issued through his leadership PAC, Save America, the former president called the audit report, which is slated for release Friday afternoon, a political bombshell that “has uncovered significant and undeniable evidence of FRAUD.”

“Huge findings in Arizona! However, the Fake News Media is already trying to ‘call it’ again for Biden before actually looking at the facts—just like they did in November!” Trump said, invoking once again his baseless claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.

“This is a major criminal event and should be investigated by the Attorney General immediately,” he added. “The Senate’s final report will be released today at 4:00PM ET. I have heard it is far different than that being reported by the Fake News Media.”

[...]

“This is not even the whole state of Arizona, but only Maricopa County. It would only get worse!” Trump said. “There is fraud and cheating in Arizona and it must be criminally investigated! More is coming out in the hearing today.”

  The Hill

So let's have a look at that ridiculous "audit", shall we?

The Arizona Senate on Friday heard testimony from the firm it hired to conduct a so-called audit of more than 2 million votes cast in Maricopa County during the 2020 elections, the latest in a cavalcade of election disinformation spread at the behest of former President Trump.

The audit has cost Arizona taxpayers and private donors millions of dollars, and even some of the Republicans who voted to authorize it in the first place began to raise concerns over its handling by Cyber Ninjas, the firm at the heart of the audit.

“They wasted nearly $6 million to tell us what we already knew, meanwhile exacerbating an already unhealthy political environment,” state Sen. Paul Boyer (R), an audit opponent, told The Hill in a text message.

  The Hill

As always, the winners are the scammers.

The main event of the so-called audit was a hand recount of the roughly 2,089,000 ballots voters in Maricopa County cast in 2020.

Those ballots broke for President Biden by a 45,000-vote margin, about four times his winning margin statewide, making him the first Democrat to carry Arizona since former President Clinton.

In the words of the auditors themselves: “[T]here were no substantial differences between the hand count of the ballots provided and the official canvass results for the County.

[...]

In fact, the Cyber Ninjas-led team found Biden’s margin of victory in Maricopa County was 360 votes wider than the official canvass had been.

[...]

The hand recount, a multistep process that included manual data entry from volunteers who were not professionally trained by election administrators, found 2,088,569 votes in the presidential contest and 2,088,396 votes in the Senate race — a difference of 175 ballots.

It’s not a statistically massive difference, but it is a difference. In its first data point, Cyber Ninjas showed its count was marred by human error.

Of course, they couldn't let the affair stand at a total loss...

The Cyber Ninjas report includes several recommended areas that the firm suggests warrant further scrutiny, broken down by level of severity — critical, high, medium, low and unknown (or, in its term, “informational”).

The top priority — one that Trump seized on even before the final report came out — is mail-in ballots cast from a voter’s prior address. The Cyber Ninjas report suggests 23,344 ballots were cast by voters who no longer live at the address at which they are registered.

“Phantom voters!” Trump said in a context-free statement released Friday.

But election analysts and experts said that figure is meaningless without more context. Cyber Ninjas matched voters with commercial data, rather than official data maintained by county elections office. Those who cast ballots but now live in different areas may have moved since the election, or moved out of a parent’s house around Election Day.

Just over 1 percent of voters who cast a ballot in the 2020 elections may have moved since — a figure well within the normal range of the share of people who change residences in a given year.

Garrett Archer, a former top aide in the Arizona secretary of state’s office who now reports for Phoenix’s ABC affiliate, told The Hill that the official data maintained by the county would have answered questions raised by the commercial data — but that Cyber Ninjas did not take that step.

[...]

In its report, Cyber Ninjas dedicates a 158-word paragraph to a description of how ink bleeding through paper might affect a ballot — but really, only the last eight words of that paragraph matter: “No images that were reviewed met these conditions.”

[...]

Cyber Ninjas dedicates a section of its report to the paper on which ballots were printed. Its conclusion: Election administrators used different paper weights. Not a word about bamboo.

“The large number of papers utilized during this election and the lack of official reporting about what paper stocks were utilized made it difficult to identify any potential counterfeit ballots. Standardization on these details would more greatly facilitate future audits,” the report says.

[...]

“The purpose of this audit was to overturn the result of Arizona’s presidential election, prove fraud and expose flaws in our election system. The audit went 0-3,” said Mike Noble, a Phoenix-based pollster and political strategist. “Its one potential true impact is the lasting damage to our trust in our electoral process.”

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:  Oh, for fuck's sake...

FBI informant trying to clear the Proud Boys

The FBI had an informant [affiliated with a Midwest chapter of the far-right group the Proud Boys] in the crowd during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

[...]

The informant has since denied that the Proud Boys intended to use violence on Jan. 6 but rather were consumed by a herd mentality. He has also denied that the group planned to attack the Capitol in interviews, the Times reported.

[...]

Reuters reported in early August that the FBI has found little evidence to suggest that the attack was largely coordinated.

While groups such as the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were intent on entering the Capitol, officials told Reuters that there appeared to be no coordinated plans regarding what they would do once they broke into the building.

  The Hill

Other than stop the electoral count and overthrow the election?

[T]he new information is likely to complicate the government’s efforts to prove the high-profile conspiracy charges it has brought against several members of the Proud Boys.

[...]

Moreover, the records indicate that F.B.I. officials in Washington were alerted in advance of the attack that the informant was traveling to the Capitol with several other Proud Boys.

The F.B.I. also had an additional informant with ties to another Proud Boys chapter that took part in the sacking of the Capitol, according to a person familiar with the matter, raising questions about the quality of the bureau’s informants and what sorts of questions they were being asked by their handlers before Jan. 6.

[...]

The new information was revealed at a time when misinformation continues to circulate among far-right commentators and websites accusing the F.B.I. of having used informants or agents to stage the attack on Jan. 6. But if anything, the records appear to show that the informant’s F.B.I. handler was slow to grasp the gravity of what was happening that day. And the records show that the informant traveled to Washington at his own volition, not at the request of the F.B.I.

[...]

The informant, who started working with the F.B.I. in July 2020, appears to have been close to several other members of his Proud Boys chapter, including some who have been charged in the attack. But it is not clear from the records obtained by The Times how well he knew the group’s top leaders or whether he was in the best position to learn about potential plans to storm the Capitol.

  NYT

The informant sounds like someone who was already part of the Proud Boys, and not an FBI agent who infiltrated the group. How credible is his information?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Thought police coming

A MICHIGAN STATE POLICE CONTRACT, obtained by The Intercept, sheds new light on the growing use of little-known surveillance software that helps law enforcement agencies and corporations watch people’s social media and other website activity.

The software, put out by a Wyoming company called ShadowDragon, allows police to suck in data from social media and other internet sources, including Amazon, dating apps, and the dark web, so they can identify persons of interest and map out their networks during investigations. By providing powerful searches of more than 120 different online platforms and a decade’s worth of archives, the company claims to speed up profiling work from months to minutes. ShadowDragon even claims its software can automatically adjust its monitoring and help predict violence and unrest. Michigan police acquired the software through a contract with another obscure online policing company named Kaseware for an “MSP Enterprise Criminal Intelligence System.”

  The Intercept

Department of pre-crime.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Standing for something

Ambassador Daniel Foote, the United States special envoy for Haiti, has resigned in protest of mass deportations by the US of Haitians gathered on the US border with Mexico.

“I will not be associated with the United States’ inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti,” Foote said in a resignation letter, first reported by PBS and confirmed on Thursday to the Reuters news service by a senior Department of State official.

Haiti is “a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs in control of daily life” and US policy is “deeply flawed”, Foote wrote in his resignation.

Racked by earthquakes and hurricanes, Haiti is struggling with a political crisis following the July 7 assassination of Prime Minister Jovenel Moise by a group of commandos who stormed his private residence.

[...]

“It’s completely unconscionable,” Steven Forester, immigration policy coordinator at the US-based Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti, told Al Jazeera.

“There’s no way Haiti can handle the people that are in Haiti now given the conditions there. It can’t provide for these people.”

[...]

US authorities have begun to forcibly deport hundreds back to Haiti. Others, families with children are being moved into the US asylum programme within the US.

  alJazeera

Slipping away

An anti-abortion bill that would ban abortions after an embryonic heartbeat is detected, about six weeks, and allow citizens to sue doctors who perform them, modeled after Texas’s abortion ban SB8, was introduced in Florida on Wednesday.

Filed by the Republican representative Webster Barnaby, the bill allows people to sue practitioners and others who aid people seeking abortions up to six months after an abortion was performed versus only four months allocated in Texas’s SB8.

[...]

Florida Democrats have condemned the new legislation, including the agriculture commissioner, Nikki Fried, who announced her run for governor of Florida next year against DeSantis.

  Guardian

And good luck to her.

Meanwhile...

A Texas doctor is publicly revealing that he violated a state law that bans abortions after six weeks and says he is inviting legal challenges under the controversial law, which has so far withstood efforts by pro-abortion rights supporters to block it.

"On the morning of Sept. 6, I provided an abortion to a woman who, though still in her first trimester, was beyond the state's new limit. I acted because I had a duty of care to this patient, as I do for all patients, and because she has a fundamental right to receive this care," Dr. Alan Braid, a physician in San Antonio, Texas, wrote in an op-ed published Saturday in The Washington Post.

"I fully understood that there could be legal consequences — but I wanted to make sure that Texas didn't get away with its bid to prevent this blatantly unconstitutional law from being tested," he wrote.

  CNN

Kudos to that brave doctor.

Insane fuckers

Hard to believe that guy was a general.

And people need to stop listening to this asshat:

I believe Mike Flynn is truly cracked in the head, but Tucker Carlson knows better.  He's just lying for dollars.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

More companies pushing back on Texas abortion ban

All of those numbers should be higher.

House Oversight to investigate reproductive rights threats

And...what could they do about it???

Yet another reason to get vaccinated

And this one may work.

Large insurance companies waived cost-sharing for coronavirus care in 2020, but it has sprung back in 2021.

[...]

U.S. health insurance companies declared they would cover 100 percent of the costs for covid treatment, waiving co-pays and expensive deductibles for hospital stays that frequently range into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

But this year, most insurers have reinstated co-pays and deductibles for covid patients, in many cases even before vaccines became widely available. The companies imposed the costs as industry profits remained strong or grew in 2020, with insurers paying out less to cover elective procedures that hospitals suspended during the crisis.

Now the financial burden of covid is falling unevenly on patients across the country, varying widely by health-care plan and geography.

[...]

If you’re fortunate enough to live in Vermont or New Mexico, for instance, state mandates require insurance companies to cover 100 percent of treatment. But most Americans with covid are now exposed to the uncertainty, confusion and expense of business-as-usual medical billing and insurance practices — joining those with cancer, diabetes and other serious, costly illnesses.

(Insurers continue to waive costs associated with vaccinations and testing, a pandemic benefit the federal government requires.)

[...]

“There was no federal mandate for insurers to cover all the costs for covid treatment. Insurers were doing it voluntarily,” said Krutika Amin, a Kaiser Family Foundation associate director who researchers health insurance practices.

  WaPo

I'm actually surprised they even did that much.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ouch

MAGA v. McConnell

Former President Trump is vetting possible candidates to remove Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his leadership position, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sources familiar with the situation told the Journal that Trump has been speaking with senators and allies to gauge if there is any interest in deposing McConnell, though lawmakers and aides told the publication there has so far been little enthusiasm for the prospect.

  The Hill

Works for me. Replace evil with idiocy. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Life and death in Alabama

The state saw some 64,714 total deaths last year, Harris said, compared to about 57,641 births. Those numbers are only preliminary, and officials will confirm them toward the end of this year.

Alabama hasn't hit such a milestone in more than 100 years, even during World War II, noted Harris.

Behind the numbers is the highly transmissible delta variant of the coronavirus which is spreading in Alabama, as well as much of the county.

It's putting a strain on critical healthcare systems in Alabama, as the state currently doesn't have enough ICU beds for those who need them.

Still, some politicians there continue to push back on vaccines.

  NPR

And in other news...

The Biden administration is easing restrictions on foreign nationals wishing to fly to the U.S.

Starting in early November, they will be allowed to enter this country if they can show proof they have been vaccinated for COVID-19, and that they have tested negatively for the virus within three days of their flight.

  NPR

Pretty ironic since we're the country with the worst record on vaccinations.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

The pro-insurrectionists rally

Several hundred pro-Trump demonstrators gathered outside the Capitol on Saturday to protest the treatment of those charged in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection — a crowd that seemed to be dwarfed by the outsize presence of the news media and police forces on hand to monitor the event.

Fearing another violent riot like that of Jan. 6, U.S. Capitol Police had joined forces with other local and federal law enforcement agencies, creating a massive security apparatus that featured road closures, layers of fencing, hundreds of officers, a National Guard corps on standby, a cavalry lying in wait and helicopters buzzing overhead.

[...]

[T]hose arrested for non-violent offenses surrounding Jan. 6, they argued, have been jailed too long or have suffered other mistreatments that defy their constitutional rights. They repeatedly characterized those facing charges as "political prisoners" — with one speaker claiming they're being "tortured" — and accused authorities of punishing them more harshly than the Black Lives Matter protesters of last summer, though they were charged in some cases with similar crimes.

[...]

Although a number of congressional Republicans have raised the same concerns about the treatment of those arrested in connection to Jan. 6, no lawmakers participated in Saturday's event — a dynamic that irked the organizers, the speakers and some of those in the crowd.

[...]

Some conservative groups had also warned, without evidence, that the event was actually an FBI sting operation designed to entrap Trump's staunchest allies.

  The Hill

I wonder who started that rumor.

The protesters came to support the roughly 600 people charged in connection with the Capitol attack on Jan. 6.

[...]

It's unclear how many protesters attended Saturday's rally, and several members of the organizing group, Look Ahead America, declined to offer a guess when asked by a reporter. Yet the protesters seemed to be outnumbered by the hundreds of members of the media, the police and the counter-protesters who had gathered to heckle the pro-Trump demonstrators from the sidelines. Kent guessed the number of demonstrators to be about 300 while Capitol Police estimated the crowd to be between 400 and 450.

[...]

The music blaring in the background just before the event began also seemed to carry a political message: Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." Tensions flared on several occasions between protesters and counter-protesters, who marched around the grounds carrying signs of their own. One read "Loser." Another was more blunt: "F--k Proud Boys."

The quarrels prompted the police to intervene on at least one occasion, when a protester was whisked away. It was unclear if he was arrested.

[...]

Capitol Police also arrested four people, according to The Associated Press: one person had been carrying a knife; another was reported to be in possession of a handgun; and two from Texas had outstanding warrants for a firearms charge and probation violation.

[...]

The protesters came dressed in American flag symbols, constitutional slogans and anti-BLM messages. One wore a coon-skin cap and a Daniel Boone flask. Another boasted a hat that said: "We the People Are Pissed Off." They waved flags — some traditional, some hand-made with messages like "Guilty of Loving America" — and carried signs that warned against the rise of a totalitarian state.

Rather ironic since it's their guy who threatens that.

Matt Braynard, the head of Look Ahead America and a former Trump aide, rejected the idea that the rally was designed to support anyone who committed acts of violence on Jan. 6. Those people, he said, should be tried and imprisoned.

But he argued fervently for the rights of those charged with non-violent crimes who are still being held, urging their immediate release. He also told the assembled crowd to respect the law enforcement officers patrolling the area.

"There are uniformed officers here who I demand that you respect, you're kind to, you're respectful to and you're obedient to. They're here to keep us safe. We're counting on them to do that," Braynard said, adding a similar request for treatment of the media.

Braynard had made another request heading into the rally, asking participants not to bring clothing or paraphernalia promoting Trump or any other political figure — a request that was largely heeded by the crowd.

But just across Third Street, on the eastern edge of the Mall, a vendor was selling Trump hats and T-shirts. Business, it appeared, was brisk.

Joe keeps blowin' it

Last summer, in the final months of the Trump administration, the Department of the Interior approved a 211-mile industrial access road that would run across much of interior Alaska to the Ambler mining district, a massive but remote deposit of high-grade copper and zinc. Ambler’s underground riches are so highly prized that when Gates of the Arctic National Park was created in 1980, the Alaska delegation made sure a provision for possible road access across the park was written into the legislation. The last time a road of this size was built through an undeveloped part of Alaska was in the early 1970s when the 414-mile Dalton Highway was put in to connect Prudhoe Bay, on the north slope of Alaska, with an existing network of roads near Fairbanks.

Ambler Road is similarly ambitious — and equally fraught environmentally. The road would ultimately enable the extraction of more than 43 million tons of copper and zinc over at least 12 years, creating thousands of jobs, say the Ambler mining interests, and pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into state coffers. But even before the first load of copper is removed, the road itself would irrevocably transform a vast region of Alaskan wilderness, potentially disrupting the migration patterns of the state’s largest caribou herd and polluting some of the state’s most important spawning grounds for salmon and whitefish. It would also threaten the way of life of Alaska natives who have lived in the region for thousands of years and depend on those resources as their primary food source.

The Alatna is “the main tributary for life and water down to all of the people on the Koyukuk River,” Gaedeke said. “So they’re pretty worried about that crossing.”

[...]

It was on similar grounds that President Joe Biden, on his first day in office, put a temporary moratorium on oil and gas development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The Trump administration had rushed the lease sale, downplaying scientific evidence of the social and environmental impacts. Biden’s dramatic reversal of a project Donald Trump had made a keystone of his energy policy was celebrated by the conservation community, who saw it as a clear signal that Biden was prioritizing the environment over the needs of industry.

But the Biden administration has been conspicuously silent on the Ambler Road project, showing no intent to interrupt the approval process despite vocal opposition from multiple groups in Alaska.

[...]

After meeting with the Department of the Interior and White House officials in July, Natasha Singh, general counsel for the Tanana Chiefs Conference said, “We hope Biden is not going to defend President Trump’s failed process.”

But that is precisely what the Biden administration appears poised to do

  Politico

Every time an industry complains about jobs versus conservation, I get ticked off anew. Here, they're talking about jobs for 12 years. Versus a lifetime of environmental damage. It's crazy-making. 

Just like the timber industry and the coal industry, these jobs are on the brink of extinction anyway. Finite resources mean finite job opportunities. The better answer would be to sink money into to environmentally sustainable industries and retrain the people who now have jobs that are being phased out. 

For the love of Pete, we are so shortsighted. And corporations are so greedy. As long as there's a dime left to be profited, they intend to be there to get it.

Officials at the Department of the Interior have continued to process permits for predevelopment work this summer, including geotechnical drilling at proposed bridge sites on three major rivers, allowing the road construction to move toward its intended start in 2024. That work continues in spite of the allegations in both lawsuits that the Trump administration cut corners in the environmental review process to hasten approval of the road project, skipping important steps.

[...]

[Interior Director, and Native American, Deb] Haaland, who said during her confirmation hearing that the United States needed to reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers of critical minerals and that mining can be done responsibly, declined to be interviewed for this story. The Interior Department also declined to answer detailed questions about the handling of the environmental impact statement, and a spokesperson said the department had “no comment on ongoing litigation.”

[...]

If the road is built, it will pit the administration’s green-energy agenda against promises it has made to protect ecologically sensitive regions.

In early June, the Biden administration announced that it was establishing a task force to address the supply of critical minerals and emphasized the need to scale up domestic production to “meet national and global climate goals.” Large quantities of rare earth metals and other minerals, including copper, are needed for electric vehicles, solar panels, wind turbines and batteries — all critical to achieving the administration’s ambitious green-energy goals. Over the next few decades, global demand for copper is expected to soar by as much as 270 percent, with the needs of manufacturers outstripping supply by 2050, according to one estimate.

And as long as there's copper to be mined, we won't look for alternatives.

On August 18, a judge in Alaska voided permits for a major ConocoPhillips oil and gas development project on the North Slope, also backed by the Biden administration, because the review process was deeply flawed. The same judge has ordered the Department of Justice to prepare a brief by mid-November in defense of the impact statement for Ambler Road.

Cross your fingers.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA rally in DC to support insurrection

Trump has in the past spoken in support of his fans who attacked the US Capitol on January 6 in a bid to stop Joe Biden's certification as president.

But sources told The Times that he wouldn't be going anywhere near Washington on Saturday and would instead spend the day at his golf resort in Bedminster, New Jersey.

"Mr. Trump views the planned protest as a setup that the news media will use against him regardless of the outcome," The Times said, citing people familiar with his thinking.

[...]

The Saturday rally was organized by Matt Braynard, a former data official for the Trump campaign, and is being held in support of those who have been jailed or have faced other punishments in relation to the Capitol riot.

Earlier this week, Braynard said attendees would not be allowed to wear clothing in support of Trump or Biden, adding that the event was not about the election or the candidates.

  Yahoo

They'll be wearing MAGA shit, and carrying signs in support of Trump. Bet.

The Department for Homeland Security said about 700 people were expected to attend the event.

[...]

The event had raised fears of a repeat of the violence on January 6, with intelligence officials saying that several far-right groups, such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, were expected to attend.

[...]

Trump appears not to be the only one concerned that the event was a setup, with NBC News reporting on Wednesday that hard-line Trump supporters and right-wing extremists on social media were riddled with paranoia that the event could be a decoy used to entrap them.

The most paranoid people on the planet.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) expect to skip the “Justice for J6” rally on Sept. 18, according to the GOP duo's spokespeople. [...] Cawthorn and Greene — two of the most vocal elected Republicans who have said some who breached the Capitol were unfairly prosecuted — would have been VIP attendees.

[...]

Braynard dismissed the possibility of violence at his rally, saying his group held “two similar rallies in D.C. at the Department of Justice and at the prison where these political prisoners are being held. These events occurred without incident.”

He added that in addition to working with the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police, and the Park Police “on a daily basis for over a month,” rally organizers will have “a private, diplomatic security team working with the Capitol Police and many volunteers who will ensure this is a safe and productive event.”

[...]

Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) and Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) had joined Greene and Gaetz for a protest outside the Department of Justice at the end of July, though protesters disrupted their event.

[...]

Prosecutors have arrested more than 600 alleged members of the mob that breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, and more than 60 have pleaded guilty for their actions. More than 150 defendants have been charged with assaulting or impeding police during the breach, and prosecutors say more than 1,000 assaults were committed that day. A small subset of those arrested have been held in prison while they await trial, deemed too dangerous by judges — appointed by presidents of both parties — to remain in the community while they fight the charges against them. Lawmakers who have decried the treatment of these defendants have not identified specific cases they believe to be unfair or inappropriate.

  Politico

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Pentagon comes clean on Afghan drone strike

[O]n Friday, officials said an internal review revealed that no Islamic State members had been killed in the attack, only civilians.

"The strike was a tragic mistake," Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, head of U.S. Central Command, told a Pentagon news conference.

"I am now convinced that as many as 10 civilians, including up to seven children, were tragically killed in that strike," McKenzie added. "Moreover, we now assess that it is unlikely that the vehicle and those who died were associated with ISIS-K, or a direct threat to U.S. forces."

[...]

At the time, a U.S. Central Command spokesman said officials believed the attack in Nangahar Province had killed the target and that there were no known civilian casualties.

  NPR

They could only report no known civilian casualties if they hadn't yet done even the simplest investigation.

The strike was hailed as a success that had blocked "multiple suicide bombers" from further attacks on the airport as people desperately sought to leave the country.

[...]

In a press conference Sept. 1, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley called it a "righteous strike" that correctly followed procedures.

Destroying any credibility he had for his resistance to Trump.

As many as six U.S. Reaper drones had tracked a white Toyota Corolla for eight hours and deemed it an imminent threat, McKenzie explained.

In all, he said, U.S. forces had collected more than 60 pieces of intelligence indicating another attack was imminent.

Sixty pieces of bad itelligence, as it happens.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

EU snubbed in AUKUS agreement

And France is not taking it kindly.

France has recalled its ambassadors to the US and Australia for consultations sparked by the “exceptional seriousness” of Canberra’s surprise decision to cancel an order for French-built submarines and its security pact with Washington and London.

  The Guardian

That sounds pretty shitty on Australia's part. Are there some mitigating circumstances?

The French are furious at Australia’s decision to cancel a A$90bn (£48bn) contract it signed with the French company Naval Group in 2016 for a fleet of 12 state-of-the-art attack class submarines. That deal became bogged down in cost over-runs, delays and design changes.

Ah.

It is the first time France has recalled a US ambassador; the two countries have been allies since the American war of independence. France also cancelled a gala due to be held on Friday to commemorate the anniversary of the Battle of Chesapeake Bay, a decisive event in the war, which ended with the French fleet’s victory over the British on 5 September 1781. A White House official told Reuters that the United States regretted the French decision and said Washington had been in close touch with Paris. The official said the United States would be engaged in the coming days to resolve differences between the two countries.

Ninety billion differences.

Peter Ricketts, a former permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office and former UK ambassador to France, tweeted: “Don’t underestimate reaction in Paris. It’s not just anger but a real sense of betrayal that UK as well as US and Aus negotiated behind their backs for 6 months. I lived the rupture in 2003 over Iraq. This feels as bad or worse.”

OK, that sounds pretty shitty on all of AUKUS.

The Australian foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, in Washington, said she understood the “disappointment” in Paris and hoped to work with France to ensure it understands “the value we place on the bilateral relationship and the work that we want to continue to do together”.

Fine way to show value, negotiating behind their backs.

[Ricketts added,] "A signal Paris regards Washington and Canberra as ringleaders in plot, with London as accomplice. Expect further French measures targeting interests of all three.”

I don't know what France can do on its own, but nobody trusts the US any more.* 

Perhaps the EU will back France in the matter. And we thought Biden was supposed to be restoring connections with our European allies. 

 *

The chaotic withdrawal and evacuation from Afghanistan, which has already prompted soul-searching among Western partners, is now reviving a decades-old debate within the European Union: Does the 27-nation club need its own military?

[...]

Many experts say the prospect of rolling out a free-standing E.U. military anytime soon is unrealistic. But the clamoring, which subsided somewhat after President Biden’s election, has intensified once more, after Biden rebuffed calls to keep U.S. troops in Afghanistan past the Aug. 31 deadline. European leaders say that left them no choice but to cut short their evacuations, leaving thousands of their citizens and Afghan allies behind.

  WaPo

Not good.

E.U. foreign policy chief Josep Borrell asserted that a proposed joint rapid-deployment force of 5,000 troops could have helped to secure the Kabul airport and that a coordinated European security strategy would have allowed the bloc more influence over the “timing and nature of the withdrawal.”

“The only way forward is to combine our forces and strengthen not only our capacity, but also our will to act,” Borrell said after a meeting of E.U. defense ministers in Slovenia on Thursday.

[...]

French President Emmanuel Macron is one of the concept’s biggest boosters and has been calling for a “true European army” since he took office — while at one point criticizing NATO as brain dead.

[...]

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who once endorsed Macron’s suggestion for an army, has nonetheless been a staunch supporter of NATO as well as the U.S. military bases in her country. But Armin Laschet, who is vying to succeed her, said recently that Europe must be strengthened “such that we never have to leave it up to Americans.”

[...]

Some critics say European leaders are attempting to distance themselves from the Afghanistan fiasco despite generally supporting the decision to leave. Germany, for instance, declined to send troops back to help stabilize the country last month as the Taliban made sweeping territorial gains.

Things are rarely just black or white, are they?

But the renewed debate among European leaders also reflects a growing frustration with Biden, who told the world that “America is back” but has pursued foreign policies that echo some of his predecessor’s positions.

“What happened in Afghanistan was a defining moment,” said Nathalie Loiseau, who chairs the European Parliament’s subcommittee on security and defense. When the United States decided to pull out of the country, there was scant coordination with allies, she said. Biden dismissed European calls for a “conditions-based withdrawal,” and he refused to extend the deadline for pulling out. [...] “Now, Europeans must stop focusing on what the U.S. does or does not do.”

[...]

“There is not enough oomph behind all this politically to translate it into something practical,” said [Nathalie] Tocci, the director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, a global affairs think tank. “We are just not prepared to see body bags coming home, and Afghanistan is not going to change that. It’s a political question that Europeans keep on ducking.”

And who can blame them? They still remember WWII.

NATO, now a 30-country alliance, has been the primary military force in Europe since the aftermath of World War II, but the United States has long set its agenda. In the weeks since the Taliban took over Afghanistan, European leaders have called the mission a “failure” and a “debacle,” saying it’s further evidence that the E.U. should be able to act on its own.

[...]

“If you want to go all the way to strategic autonomy, you do have to have a European command — you can’t keep pretending you can follow the NATO command structure,” said Fabrice Pothier, a former NATO policy chief. “That will indeed create some friction with NATO and possibly with the U.S. and the U.K."

[...]

Some steps have already been taken to strengthen cooperation between European militaries. France, Germany and Spain are working together on Europe’s largest defense project, developing a new fighter jet. But four years after the plan’s announcement, the countries have only recently finalized the details.

The E.U. has set lofty targets before. In 1999, member states pledged to build a military force of up to 60,000, but it never materialized. Instead, the bloc has had multinational “battle groups” of about 1,500 troops since 2007, but they’ve never been deployed because of a lack of funding and political will.

Putin must be smiling. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Update on Afghan drone strike

Stand by intel leading to a strike on 10 civilians?  The target was a man delivering water to his home. His kids were collateral damage when they came out to help him.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

FURTHER UPDATE

Where did Covid-19 start?

This isn't going to help people trust the scientists.

From an Intercept email:

The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats. So how did it jump to humans?

Many scientists believe that the virus passed to humans through natural spillover, making the jump in a setting such as a wet market or rural area where humans and animals are in close contact.

But by suing the National Institutes of Health under the Freedom of Information Act, The Intercept has uncovered explosive documents that are bringing renewed attention to the lab-leak theory, which posits that the virus may have escaped from a lab, possibly as part of research funded in part by the U.S. government.

These documents do not provide “smoking gun” evidence of a lab leak. But they show what one expert called “exactly the scenario imagined by many lab-leak scenario proponents” occurring in a Wuhan lab, with scientists intentionally making coronaviruses more dangerous in order to study them.

The records uncovered by The Intercept provide evidence that the NIH has funded this controversial “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology — challenging the accuracy of denials by Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

The U.S. government resisted releasing these documents, which raise questions about the NIH’s previous claims about coronavirus research. But the public has a right to know what kind of experiments the U.S. has funded and whether they could have led to this pandemic — and if the government is still funding risky research that could lead to future pandemics.

Our reporters interviewed 11 scientists for their article, taking care to reach out to experts with a range of views on this complex issue. The scientists were unanimous on one point: The specific experiment funded by the NIH described in these documents could not have led to the pandemic, because the viruses being studied were not closely enough related to the virus that causes Covid-19. However, the fact that this unpublished research was going on raises serious questions about whether other activities at the Wuhan lab could be linked to the pandemic — and about what has not yet been disclosed.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

In case you need a reminder about Pence

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE:

I don't think it degrades all journalism, but it certainly degrades Bob Woodward.

Filibuster reform

President Joe Biden and his advisers have said in recent weeks that Biden will pressure wavering Democrats to support reforming the filibuster if necessary to pass the voting bill.

  Rolling Stone

I wonder what Joe Manchin will require in return for a favorable vote.

During a late-July meeting in the Oval Office, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pressed Biden to do more on voting rights; Democrats needed action from him, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

In that Oval Office meeting, the source says, Biden made a pledge: If Pelosi and Schumer tried every option they had to pass a voting-rights bill with Republican votes and got nowhere, Biden would get involved himself and lobby the handful of moderate Democrats to convince them to weaken the filibuster so that the For the People Act could pass without any Republican votes.

[...]

Biden’s pressure would aim to help Schumer convince moderate Democrats to support a carveout to the filibuster, a must for the party if it’s going to pass new voting protections without Republican votes. According to a source briefed on the White House’s position, Biden told Schumer: “Chuck, you tell me when you need me to start making phone calls.”

Now.

A group of senators will soon release a compromise version of the For the People Act intended to satisfy Manchin’s concerns about earlier versions of the bill. Sources familiar with the compromise bill say it will focus on shoring up voting rights against GOP suppression laws, crack down on dark money and partisan gerrymandering, and create new policies to stop attempts at election subversion like what happened after the 2020 presidential election.

But even if the revised bill earns the support of all Democrats, it won’t be enough to overcome the filibuster. Schumer will not only need to prevent a single defection on the bill itself but also convince — with Biden’s help — all 50 Democrats to create a carveout in the filibuster for voting-rights-related legislation.

[...]

Since Donald Trump’s defeat, Republican-led state legislatures have used the former president’s delusional claims about a “stolen” election as a pretext to enact a nationwide crackdown on voting rights. Eighteen states have passed more than 30 laws that restrict the right to vote. The most recent — and arguably most draconian — example was Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott just signed a law that bans 24-hour voting and drive-through voting, which helped people vote safely during a pandemic, while also giving new powers to outside poll watchers and partisan election officials.

This is insane. Voting is an American's fundamental right, and all other rights depend on it.

Winning over the two Democrats who’ve declared their opposition to filibuster reform, Sens. Manchin and Sinema, won’t be easy. In April, Manchin wrote in an op-ed that he would not support tweaking or abolishing the filibuster, which he described as a “critical tool” to protect the interests of small and rural states like his.

"Small and rural states" are already covered in the Constitution. The founders thought of that. Their perfectly adequate remedy is called the Senate.

Sinema, for her part, likes to point out how often Democrats used the filibuster when they were in the minority during Donald Trump’s presidency. The filibuster, she wrote in June, “compels moderation and helps protect the country from wild swings between opposing policy poles.”

Wild swings between the party exist anyway, and they should be allowed to stand. The People can then decide when a party has gone so far off the rails that they no longer want it to influence government. The Republicans know that and are setting up voter suppression acts to prevent The People from voting the GOP to the dustbin of history.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

War profiteering

While Biden blamed the Afghans for the US failure in their country...

Up to half of the $14 trillion spent by the United States Department of Defense since the September 11, 2001 attacks went to for-profit defence contractors, a new report by Brown University’s Costs of War project and the Center for International Policy found.

And while much of that money went to weapons suppliers, Monday’s report is the latest to point to the US’s dependence on contractors for warzone duties as contributing to mission failures in Afghanistan, in particular. The paper is entitled, Profits of War: Corporate Beneficiaries of the Post-9/11 Pentagon Spending Surge.

[...]

William Hartung, the paper’s author, and others said it is essential that Americans examine what role the reliance on private contractors played in the post-9/11 wars.

[...]

After the September 11, 2001 attacks, American officials embraced private contractors as an essential part of the US’s military response.

It started with then-Vice President Dick Cheney, the former CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton received more than $30bn to help set up and run bases, feed troops and carry out other work in Iraq and Afghanistan by 2008, the study says.

Cheney and defence contractors argued that relying on private contractors for work that service members did in previous wars would allow for a trimmer US military, and be more efficient and cost-effective.

[...]

US corporations contracted by the Defense Department not only handled warzone logistics like running fuel convoys and staffing chow lines but performed mission-crucial work like training and equipping Afghan security forces — security forces that collapsed last month as the Taliban swept through the country.

[...]

In Afghanistan, that included contractors allegedly paying protection money to warlords and the Taliban themselves, and the Defense Department insisting on equipping the Afghan air force with complex Blackhawk helicopters and other aircraft that few other than US contractors knew how to maintain.

[...]

Afghans preferred Russian helicopters, which were easier to fly, could be maintained by Afghans and were suited to rugged Afghanistan. So when US contractors pulled out with US troops this year, taking their knowledge of how to maintain US-provided aircraft with them, top Afghan leaders bitterly complained to the US that it had deprived them of one essential advantage over the Taliban.

[...]

The Pentagon pumped out more contracts than it could oversee, lawmakers and government special investigators said.

[...]

Relying less on private contractors, and more on the US military as in past wars, might have given the US better chances of victory in Afghanistan, [Jodi Vittori, a former Air Force lieutenant colonel and scholar of corruption and fragile states at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who was not involved in the study,] noted.

She said that would have meant US presidents accepting the political risks of sending more American troops to Afghanistan, and getting more body bags of American troops back.

“Using contractors allowed America to fight a war that a lot of Americans forgot we were fighting,” Vittori said.

  alJazeera

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

A rally supporting a coup attempt

This weekend's rally will present law enforcement officials with the first large-scale security test to the Capitol since the attack on the complex by a pro-Trump mob.

On Saturday, right-wing demonstrators plan to protest the ongoing criminal cases tied to individuals charged after the deadly riot. The weekend rally has drawn the attention of far-right extremist groups.

[...]

"They seem very, very well-prepared, much better prepared than before Jan. 6," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said. "And I think they are ready for whatever might happen."

[...]

"The [perimeter] fence will go up a day or two before [the rally] and, if everything goes well ... it will come down soon after," he said.

The perimeter fencing was previously installed in the hours following the Jan. 6 insurrection and remained in place until July. It drew opposition from many Republicans and some Democrats, who said the fencing had turned the seat of American democracy into a fortress.

  NPR

Sadly, it needs to be.

For its part, the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department, or MPD, has also said it's ready to defend the Capitol.

"MPD will have an increased presence around the city where demonstrations will be taking place and will be prepared to make street closures for public safety," Chief Robert Contee said recently.

Congress is not slated to be in session on Saturday.

[...]

[O]n Monday, Capitol Police arrested a man with weapons near Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington.

[...]

Capitol Police noted that since Jan. 6, the agency has improved training, installed a new emergency response plan, added additional equipment and launched a departmentwide operation planning process. It has also held planning meetings for the Saturday event for the last month.