Last week I couldn’t come up with a featured post, so this week there are three.
The first one discusses President Biden’s decision to pull our combat troops out of Afghanistan by September 11. Unlike any announcements by previous presidents, this isn’t a goal that assumes we’ll produce some good outcome by then, and that will be reversed when we don’t. We’re just leaving.
The thing I like best about this announcement is that it has finally provoked the kind of honest discussion we should have had many years ago: Our troops are not fixing Afghanistan, so there is no point in the future when they will be done fixing it. The choices are (1) stay forever, and (2) pull out and let the Taliban take over. There are arguments for and against each path, but those are the choices. I’ll discuss that in “Finally, some honesty about Afghanistan”, which should be out shortly.
The second featured post discusses what I call “the most predictable headline of the week”: Republicans haven’t been able to unite behind an alternative to Biden’s infrastructure plan. The GOP doesn’t have a healthcare plan, a climate-change plan, or a plan to address any other real American problem. Why would anyone expect them to have an infrastructure plan? That post “The GOP: Still not a governing party” should be out around 10 EST.
The third post was supposed to be a note in the weekly summary, but there was too much to cover. When you’re a political party with no solutions to real problems, but you have power, you have to talk about something. So Republican state governments are passing anti-trans laws to address problems that aren’t problems, like confused youth being talked into gender transition by the media and predatory doctors, or cis girls being chased out of girls sports programs by boys claiming to be girls. I don’t have a title for that yet, but I’ll try to get it out by 11.
Finally, the weekly summary has new shootings to discuss, both mass shootings and police shootings. The Chauvin trail is heading into closing statements. Apparently there really was collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Marjorie Taylor Greene briefly tried to assemble a American First Caucus in the House to protect our “uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions”. And a few other things happened. I’ll try to get that out by noon.
The Weekly Sift 