Mr. Speaker

Finally, the long first week of the new year is over, and we have a Speaker of the House. He may be missing some pieces of soul, or body parts, but he got the votes, and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Trump) is the guy who'll be wielding the gavel. 

I went to bed after he lost the 14th vote, the one about which McCarthy was sure he'd win, because he had counted the votes. 

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Blecch) had a different idea, and prevented the victory. It was at that point that the majority of the Republican caucus wanted to punch Gaetz in his smirking fact, and one of them - Alabama's Rep. Mike Rogers - almost did. That would have been a horribly popcorn-worthy moment, for sure. 

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) garnered the most votes during the week, as the Dems stayed united and gave him all of their votes every time. It didn't matter, really, other than to show that even though they're also a fractured caucus, they know how - and when - to stand together.  

In the end, though, what mattered was that all the Rs were sick of the handful that were holding things up, after all of the concessions that were made, and managed to convince them that that voting 'present' - in effect, voting for no one - was better than voting for someone other than McCarthy. After a planned vote to adjourn until Monday was rejected, the 15th round ended the fight. 

There's lots to digest - oh, excuse me, a lot to unpack, in pundit-speak - including the possibility that many representatives from both sides of the aisle are probably secretly happy with some of the rumored rules changes: being able to offer amendments from the floor, having 72 hours to read bills before a vote, and a 'germane' rule that should help ensure that a bill on ice fishing in Lake Ontario, for example, won't include something ridiculously unrelated, like funding flame-throwing drones for Taiwan... you get the drift. 

There's even a promised vote on term limits; I'm definitely looking forward to that. 

So, while I enjoyed the comedy that came from this week, and watching the Rs attack each other, the Dems enjoy a week of unity, the reading clerks Susan Cole and Tylease Alli deftly handle the voting roll calls, and House Clerk Cheryl Johnson maintain control over an often-unruly crowd, there's some really interesting stuff coming down the pike. 

And, of course, there's some really dumb stuff coming down the pike, too - and it isn't going to take long, according to the new Speaker.

I know the night is late, but when we come back, our very first bill will repeal the funding for 87,000 IRS agents. You see, we believe government should be to help you, not go after you.

And there's more.

Now speaking of committees, we will hold the swamp accountable for the withdrawal from Afghanistan, to the origins of COVID and to the weaponization of the FBI. 

We didn't hear Hunter Biden's name mentioned, but we can be sure that those investigations can't be too far off.

We also heard McCarthy and his allies talk about the importance of Donald Trump in securing the win, so it seems pretty clear that any hope of Trump not being a factor can be tossed out the window, at least at this juncture.

Much more to come as the Rs take control, with the newly empowered gang of 20 getting their rewards, and McCarthy hammering away with the smaller-than-usual gavel. 

Wondering on Wednesday 9/29/21

 

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Is it just me, or is there a lot to wonder about today?

I'm wondering whether any of the Rs in the House and Senate who are demanding the resignation of President Biden and Joint Chiefs Chairman General Milley ever demanded the resignation of president Trump, Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Milley, any of Trump's other generals, or any other members of his Cabinet?  I'm sure someone knows this off the top of their head, but I'm not that person today.

And I'm wondering how health care workers - like these women in my neck of the woods - justify not getting the vaccine  because they shouldn't have to put something in their body that God didn't put there, while at the same time they're putting who knows what in their patients that God didn't put there? 

What, exactly, was Gen. Milley thinking when he spoke with Bob Woodward and others on books about Former Guy and his administration, I wonder? Did he forget that he still had the same job today as he had then, even though he has a different boss?

I wonder what the people who think we should have maintained a few hundred or more troops in Afghanistan have to say about the deal the US made with the Taliban? If Former Guy agreed to get everyone out by May, what were our options to ignore that, and what would the Taliban have done if we had? Or was he just kidding about that?

Other Republican states - Florida is one - are looking to implement Texas-style abortion bills. But I have to wonder, if the states that are trying to prevent essentially all abortions are also against sex education and contraception, what are they for?

Is there a reason we're seeing so much news about the Britney Spears conservatorship, or a reason we should care? I don't say that meanly - I just don't worry so much about what's happening in the lives of celebrities. And am I the only one who feels this way?

If the House is unable to pass the multi-trillion-dollar 'human infrastructure' package, and that leads them to defeat the bipartisan $1.9T traditional infrastructure bill, I wonder how proud the progressives will be?

There was more, but this is enough. What are you wondering about?

Wondering on Wednesday 9/1/21

Ready... Set... Wonder!

Where to begin with this week's wondering? Well, how about with a time check?

It's been reported, primarily - but not solely - on the right, that President Biden checked his watch after each of the 11 fallen Americans were transferred from the plane to waiting vehicles at Dover AFB on Monday (two of the 13 transfers were private).  There is video, that has been widely shared, showing him do that once. And, it's been 'fact-checked' by the folks at Snopes that the scene in the video was at the end of the ceremony, after all of the victims of the ISIS-K suicide bomber had been transferred.  

Now, before you go all nutso on me about how Snopes is the Wikipedia of fact-checking and can't be trusted, know that they're not the only ones who have said this isn't true. And, regardless of how you feel about the fact-checkers, don't you wonder why, if this really happened 11t times, no one has video of it?  

And coming on the heels of the false reports that "no one from the Biden administration met the plane" for the dignified transfer on Saturday, when the plane hadn't even arrived yet, how much faith are we to put into a report like this one?

Are you also wondering about the fate of the American service dogs that were left behind in Kabul? I'm sure you've seen the reports from reliable sources such as Donald Trump, Jr., about our leaving crates of dogs at the airport. Other notables also chimed in, like Medicare fraudster Sen. Rick Scott (R-I Took A Huge Golden Parachute and Named it Responsibility).

"Infuriating. Biden stranded Americans. He stranded our allies. Now, he’s stranded our loyal K-9 warriors," Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., wrote on Twitter, posting American Humane's letter.

Sadly, for those who wanted to paint Biden as an animal hater, in addition to all the other stuff he's accused of being, we did not strand our service dogs. 

On Tuesday, the Pentagon denied that any dogs that had worked with the U.S. military were left behind in the country while acknowledging that a series of social media posts about nonmilitary evacuation of Kabul pets caused confusion.

"To correct erroneous reports, the US military did not leave any dogs in cages at Hamid Karzai International Airport, to include the reported 'military working dogs,'" said Eric Pahon, a spokesman for the Defense Department.

I wonder, if the real news out of Afghanistan is as bad as it is, why do people feel the need to make it worse? 

Speaking of making stuff up, there's the Big Lie, that the election was stolen from Former Guy. There was a fun little recording featuring Sen. Ron Johnson (R- Who Doesn't Love Moscow on July 4th?), who pretty much summed up the fallacy of Former Guy's theory that the election was stolen from him. Speaking about the results in his state, Johnson admitted that

There’s nothing obviously skewed about the results...If all the Republicans voted for Trump the way they voted for the Assembly candidates, he [Trump] would have won. He didn’t get 51,000 votes that other Republicans got, and that’s why he lost.

I added the emphasis for the folks in the back, and I wonder why that's so hard for the Rs to understand?

And speaking of rigged elections, the GOP's latest poster boy, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-Not the Naval Academy) has made it clear he's willing to fight over this. Speaking at a GOP event in his home state of North Carolina, he offered this.

If our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen then it's going to lead to one place and that's bloodshed.

Continue to be rigged? There's going to be bloodshed? Huh?

And I will tell you, as much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there's nothing I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American. 

In case you didn't know,  rising star Cawthorn lies about all kinds of things, including the accident that left him paralyzed from the waist down, and about being accepted into the US Naval Academy. Given that he'll lie about those things, I wonder why we should think that he's telling the truth about taking up arms against his fellow citizens? 

And while I don't condone gratuitous violence, I wouldn't wonder at all if the bloodshed Cawthorn spoke of eventually happens when someone who finally had enough of his BS hauled off and punched him in the nose.

And speaking of bullshittery and hyperbole, let us not forget about House GOP Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-You Better Watch Out if We Take Back The House, Dammit!), who seems to be in a bit of a snit about every action taken by the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection. 

The Committee issued a document preservation request to more than 30 telecom companies on Monday, a step taken in advance of a request for specific documents which is sure to follow. And McCarthy wasn't happy about that - at all. 

I'm not wondering about his response, or his threat - I mean, he's a ring-kissing #AlwaysTrumper after all - but I am wondering why he didn't include the traitorous RINOs Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Rep. Liz Cheney in his tweet? 

And I'm wondering if the GOP really is like an elephant. What if they don't retake the majority for a few cycles? Will they remember that they have to take out some of these great American companies that support all those great American jobs and help our great American stock market soar ever higher, making America even greater? 

What are you wondering about?

Sunday School 8/29/21

For this week's Sunday School, I'm only visiting the classroom with the day of the week in its name: Fox News Sunday, where Chris Wallace chatted with the Grim Reaper, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Floundering for Relevance), and with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, which is where we'll start. 

Sullivan said that President Biden "will stop at nothing" to make the ISIS-K terrorists pay for killing 13 Americans (and killing and wounding hundreds more Afghans); he also pointed to our successful 'over-the-horizon' capability that the president mentioned the other day. 

Wallace wondered if our intelligence was so good after the fact, why we didn't prevent the attack from happening in the first place. Here's part of Sullivan's response.

With respect to the attack at Kabul airport, we, of course, had been warning for days that such an attack could take place. We took action to try to prevent and disrupt such attacks. But, of course, all we can do is mitigate risk. We cannot eliminate risk. And this is a fundamentally dangerous and high-risk condition. The president has said that from the beginning. Those of us working on it have reiterated that from the beginning. And it continues, Chris, to be very dangerous. 

They talked a bit about what the next couple of days, and our final hours in Kabul, will look like. Sullivan was careful, particularly when Wallace asked how many people would be left. He said there were 300 or fewer Americans still there, some of whom have chosen not to leave. And we have some commitments from the Taliban about getting our folks out, even after the end of the month. 

Finally, Wallace wondered why President Biden wasn't "taking full responsibility" on abandoning Bagram Airport, instead of "laying this off on the generals." Sullivan reminded Wallace that he's heard Biden "take ultimate responsibility for every decision" he's made And, he explained the difference between a tactical decision, which is the purview of the generals, and a strategic decision, which belongs to the president. 

Moving on to the Grim Reaper, here's his assessment of the war in Afghanistan.

I think what's been lost in all of this, Chris, is why we went there in the first place. We went there to prevent the Taliban from having a regime that would allow terrorists to reconstitute themselves and hit us again here at home. It's been a total success. If you -- this term "endless war," let's take a look at it. The last seven months, the Afghans have lost more people fighting than we have over 20 years. They've taken 65,000 casualties. We've taken roughly 2,000 in 20 years. The last year and a half we've lost no one. With our continued deployment of 2,500 people, we were, in effect, keeping the lid on, keeping terrorists from reconstituting, and having a light footprint in the country. The policy was working. Therefore, I think calling it and endless war or claiming that we're somehow trying to get involved in a civil war is - a domestic civil war is simply not accurate. We went over there to protect us here at home. We've not had a mass casualty attack from over there in these 20 years. I'd call that a successful policy.

Now we're looking at the exit and over the next two days our heroic military is doing the best they can with a horrible policy decision. This is one of the worst foreign policy decisions in American history. Much worse than Saigon because after we left Saigon, there weren't Vietnamese terrorists who were planning on attacking us here at home. That we leave behind exactly what we went in to solve 20 years ago. And I fear for the future in continuing the war on terror. You know, just because we decide to quit fighting doesn't mean the terrorists go away. So they're still out there. They're invigorated. They're emboldened and excited about the success they see in bringing America to its knees in Afghanistan.

Next, Wallace turned to the decision to leave Afghanistan, something he said McConnell opposed when Trump started the process, and he opposed Biden continuing down the path to our full withdrawal.  He asked McConnell

Senator, does President Biden have a point there? If in April he had said, hey, the Trump deal is off, we're staying in and, in fact, we're going to beef up the number of troops, he contends we'd have been back in a full-scale war with the Taliban, and, unfortunately taking a lot of casualties.

McConnell said that's not correct. 

Once again, the president's off the mark. We hadn't lost as many as 13 people, which we lost Thursday, in any of the last four years. In fact, our casualties since 2014 have been quite modest, quite modest. We lost more - I repeat - more of our military personnel last Thursday then we lost in any one of the last four years. So the balance has been dramatically reduced for American personnel. Remember, in the whole war, Chris, we have regretfully lost a couple of thousand of our people. We -- that's very regretful. But the Afghans have lost 65,000. They have been fighting and we've been in the background helping them with counterterrorism and the ongoing training of the military. The policy was working if you remember why we went there, which was to keep the Taliban out and the terrorists from being able to operate with impunity so they could attack us again here at home.

Questions Wallace didn't ask? 

• You say we lost more military personnel in last Thursday's attack than we lost in any of the last four years. But this data from the Defense Casualty Analysis System shows we had 13 'hostile' deaths in 2018, and 17 in 2019. What's the basis for your numbers?

• We did have four hostile deaths in 2020, but they were outside your 18-month window. Isn't the treaty that President Trump signed with the Taliban, which required our full withdrawal, the reason for that?

• Wouldn't breaking the treaty that was negotiated with the Taliban have escalated the terrorism threat in and of itself? 

• How much longer should we have stayed in Afghanistan, training their military to do what they are apparently still unable to do, after all these years? At what point should they be able to defend themselves?

• How much responsibility do the Afghans bear themselves for what's happening in their country? 

• Many people are pointing to the extreme religious beliefs of the Taliban, and how those will impact Afghan women. There's been a lot of publicity about an Afghan folksinger who was killed by the Taliban. How much should these, or do these, play in any decision we make regarding involving our military in other countries? 

Keep an eye out for anyone asking that kind of question, and let me know if you find anyone. 

See you around campus, assuming you haven't been disenrolled for not getting a vaccine.

Poll Watch: A Lack of Seriousness

We're in the middle of an "all-Afghanistan, all the time" news cycle, as you're aware, and that means everyone's tripping over themselves trying to get the most provocative story that can be found. 

As is always the case when we're in this type of frenzy, Twitter is a fun place to hang out for a few minutes here and there. And it was in one of those few-minutes-here-and-there sessions that I stumbled on this survey. The tweet that caught my eye said "tell me again how we're a serious country" - and I simply had to read the linked article, which documented the responses to an IPSOS Snap Poll on Afghanistan.

First, the small print: online, English-language interviews with 1,000 adults from all 50 of the United States were done on August 16th. The survey included 247 Republicans, 443 Democrats, and 310 Independents, and has a 3.5% credibility interval at a 95% confidence level. Additional sampling info is in the link. 

I've seen surveys that illustrated a lack of clarity, but one that led to the questioning of our seriousness as a nation was new to me. Let's see if we can figure out why the poster felt that way.

Overall, 71% of respondents expressed familiarity with our involvement in Afghanistan over the last 20 years and with the US plans to withdraw all its forces from Afghanistan; 68% are familiar with the rapid success of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Independents are less familiar (or more honest?) with 64%, 64%, and 58% respectively, while the Republicans (R) and Democrats (D) were about 75% on each topic.

With more specific questions, answers start to take an interesting, if somewhat confusing, turn. For example:

• Only 50% overall (54% R, 53% D, 45% I) support sending combat troops back in to fight the Taliban - but 68% overall (71% R, 72% D, 62% I) support troops fighting the Taliban to allow time to evacuate Afghans. Which leads one to wonder, if we don't send the troops in, how will they fight the Taliban?

Meanwhile, there's a lot of support for the US to complete our troop withdrawal on schedule, currently meaning by August 31st. Overall, 61% of respondents support this; Republicans (48%) less than either the Independents (60%) or the Dems (72%).

The next questions asked for the level of agreement or disagreement with a series of statements. 

• While 61% want us to complete our exit on time, 51% agree it would have been worth it for the US to leave troops in Afghanistan for another year. Disagreement with this statement is consistent, at 32% overall and similar percentages by political affiliation. 

• We don't want our troops fighting the Taliban, but we also don't seem to mind America sending in additional troops to secure key facilities (airports, embassies, bases) until the US withdrawal is complete. Everyone agrees with this - 75% overall, 81% R, 75%D and 70% I, even though doing so would set us up for fighting the Taliban.

• The war in Afghanistan was going to end badly, no matter when the US left, also brought broad agreement, at 68%. By affiliation, Independents (40% agree, 33% disagree) were the outlier; the Rs (64%/25%) and Ds (78%/14%) were more in the mainstream.

• The rapid collapse of US-trained Afghan forces, and the government, is evidence why the US should get out of the conflict saw 63% of respondents in agreement. Dems agreed more (73%), with Republicans (56%agree/30% disagree) and Independents (58%/20%) less agreeable.

The final question, Have the following generally done a good or bad job in relation to Afghanistan, is the one that most accurately portrays our lack of seriousness as a country, in my opinion. 

TG=Total Good TB= Total Bad	All		R		D		I
	TG	TB	TG	TB	TG	TB	TG	TB
Bush Administration	47%	39%	55%	37%	51%	38%	37%	42%
Obama Administration	51%	38%	31%	63%	77%	15%	42%	39%
Trump Administration	51%	36%	83%	10%	36%	55%	39%	40%
Biden Administration	44%	42%	21%	74%	75%	12%	32%	46%
American news media	42%	44%	28%	65%	65%	22%	32%	38%
US military	77%	14%	85%	11%	78%	15%	69%	15%

It seems the Dubya administration was the last one where abject partisanship wasn't in play. Then we had the black president, the TV host president, and now we have the old guy, who's only been in office for seven months, and the only thing that matters seems to be party affiliation, absent that weird bit of balance from the Dems on Trump's handling of this mess.

• 63% of Republicans say that the administration that got Osama bin Laden did a totally bad job? Seriously? That's why we went there, remember?

• 77% of Democrats say that building troop levels up to 100K, and planning to have all our troops out by the end of 2014, which of course didn't happen, was totally good?

• 83% of Republicans think that talks with the Taliban, including an obscene but discarded plan to bring Taliban leaders to the US, to Camp David, on 9/11, for heaven's sake, or forcing the Afghan government to release 5,000 Taliban prisoners, or setting a troop withdrawal date that's in someone else's administration, is totally good?

• 65% of Democrats think the media has done a totally good job, for 20 years, and 65% of Republicans think the opposite?

"Tell me again how we're a serious country," indeed. It's long past time we got our heads out of our partisan you-know-whats, don't you think?

Wondering on Wednesday 8/18/21

Ready... Set... Wonder!

We'll begin tonight's wondering in Missouri, the Show Me state, so named, it is said, "because of the devotion of its people to simple common sense." And let us wonder about the Second Amendment Preservation Act. As reported in this NY Times article, the law bars local law enforcement from working with the feds on gun cases, and "is already hampering joint drug and weapons investigations," according to the US Department of Justice.

The Second Amendment Preservation Act, which was passed by Missouri’s Republican-controlled legislature in May, is among the most extreme state gun rights bills enacted in recent years, imposing a $50,000 penalty on any local sheriff’s office or police department that “tries to enforce” federal firearms laws instead of abiding by less restrictive state statutes.

Now, I don't know about you, but if I were in Missouri, I'd want someone to show me why we wouldn't want our local LEOs to collaborate with the feds in keeping us safe. And I'd want someone to show me why the Republicans, who have fought against reforming police immunity laws, would pass a law that apparently strips immunity from police officers. Where's the simple common sense in that?

Moving on to the hottest hot topic out there - the US withdrawal from Afghanistan - there's this headline from Yahoo Finance:

'Real chance' Afghanistan withdrawal 'destroys' Biden presidency: Ian Bremmer

That's an eye-catcher, for sure, right? But here's what it means, according to that Ian Bremmer guy. He's the founder of the Eurasia Group, "the first firm devoted exclusively to helping investors and business decision-makers understand the impact of politics on the risk and opportunities in foreign markets."  From the Yahoo Finance article, we learn that

The crisis could severely undermine Biden's standing if Americans die or are taken hostage while the U.S. completes its withdrawal, Bremmer said.

"There are a lot of Americans that we want to get out of there," Bremmer says. "What if we have a hostage crisis? What if we have a firefight? What if Americans get killed? What if we end up not being able to get all these Americans out? That destroys Biden's presidency."

"There is a real chance of that happening," Bremmer adds. "It's not a 50% chance; maybe it's a 5% chance. But it is way higher than it should be."

A real chance? But it's not a 50% chance? And maybe it's a 5% chance? Come on. I wonder what the chances are anyone would have read that article if the headline had stated the actual risk of Biden's presidency being destroyed? 

And let's touch on what was once the hottest of hot topics - the origin of COVID-19. You remember: the wet market in Wuhan... or was it the government lab in Wuhan? And "everyone knows" the Chinese are covering up something, right?

Well, now someone is suggesting that maybe the answer has been right under our noses the whole time. It seems there's a study that conflicts with what the experts from the World Health Organization were told when they went to China and visited only one of two markets near Wuhan.

The research team was told only frozen foods, ingredients, and kitchenware were sold there. But a recently released study that had previously languished in publishing limbo showed, thanks to data meticulously collected over 30 months, that at least two vendors there regularly sold live wild animals... Bloomberg also notes that one of the earliest recorded COVID-19 clusters in Wuhan involved a Huanan stall employee who traded goods back and forth between the two markets.

Stephen Goldstein, of the University of Utah, thinks a link between the two would be "very intriguing," but he said it's not possible to determine whether the employee had contact with any infected animals, because they are "long gone." 

 Still, it seems likely to Goldstein that some authorities didn't want the presence of a thriving wildlife trade to become public knowledge. "It seems to me, at a minimum, that local or regional authorities kept that information quiet deliberately. It's incredible to me that people theorize about one type of cover-up," he said, likely referring to the hypothesis that the virus actually leaked from a nearby government-run lab, "but an obvious cover-up is staring them right in the face." 

I wonder how often that happens, that what we're looking for is right there, if only we didn't try so hard to make the story fit our agenda, and instead let it tell itself? It's long been true with COVID, and it's clearly true with Afghanistan, too.

What are you wondering about tonight?

Sunday School 7/4/21: Extra Credit

As promised in this week's Sunday School, here are highlights from Mike Emanuel's interview with Rep. Mike McCaul (R-TX) on Fox News Sunday. McCaul is the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. Emanuel was sitting for Chris Wallace.

• McCaul agrees with an op-ed in the Washington Post that "rivals such as Iran, China, and Russia" could view our withdrawal from Afghanistan that "President Biden lacks the stomach to stand up for US allies."  He noted that the Intelligence Community's assessment that the Taliban could take over all of Afghanistan in as little as six months, including Bagram Air Base, which we just turned over to the Afghans last week. 
• He criticizes "the lack of planning and preparation" for the withdrawal, and for what's likely to come. According to a meeting he had with Afghan President Ghani, this is going to be "the year of the jihad," with "all the young males in Pakistan at the madrassas are poised with the Taliban to pour over into Afghanistan and you're going to see a major civil war take place." It won't be pretty, he feels, and he's worried about our embassy and he staff there. 
• We need to work on getting visas for the around 9,000 Afghani interpreters, contractors and their families who helped us during the war, he said; "we made a promised to them... we told them we'd take care of them and we can't turn our backs and leave them to die. They will be slaughtered by the Taliban. They're targeted by the Taliban. We have to get them out of there." He said he thinks, finally, there's some attention to the issue and we may be able to move them to Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan while they wait for their visas. 
• Finally, on this subject: he thinks it's political that Biden's going to get everyone out and not leave a few troops behind. "If you talk to anybody in the national security realm or in the Defense Department, you know, they -- you mentioned Secretary Austin, the head of the DOD, nobody thought this was a good idea. A residual force of 2,500 troops is not a whole lot of a footprint compared to where we have troops elsewhere to provide stability in the region." 

I will give McCaul credit for consistency, something I can't say about most Republicans, or most politicians in general. Last November, when Former Guy put forth his plan to have all troops out of Afghanistan in the spring, McCaul joined many other Rs in pushing back against that plan. Here's part of what he said.

A premature U.S. withdrawal would not only jeopardize the Afghan government’s ability to negotiate but would endanger U.S. counterterrorism interests.

Other info from yesterday's chat? 

• The coverup of the origins of COVID-19 by the Chinese Communist Party he calls "the greatest human -- greatest cover-up in human history. And you don't cover-up something if you're not trying to hide something." He wishes "the Democrats would join with us on this very important investigations and what caused this problem," not mentioning that Biden has ordered  a full investigation and a determination of whether the virus came from an animal, or from the Wuhan lab.
• He calls Biden's canceling of Trump's 'remain in Mexico' border policy "a self-inflicted wound and a foreign policy blunder," and doesn't know how they're going to fix it without going back to the Trump-era policies.
• Infrastructure is both "popular" and "bipartisan," if you're talking about roads and bridges and rural broadband, and not any of that other stuff like the Green New Deal and health care and education. And he's not excited about That Guy from Vermont using reconciliation to "basically open up to a massive tax increase. And this is a Trojan horse syndrome that I think we're most worried about."

To be sure, there are things to worry about, just as there were in the previous administration, and the one before that, and the one before that. Endless wars, immigration, and infrastructure are just a few of the things that we've been kicking down the road. 

See you around campus. 

Sunday School 3/28/21

I'm going to spend our Sunday School time in just one classroom - CNN's State of the Union, where Dana Bash shared her pre-recorded exclusive interview with Secretary of State Antony Blinken. 

Blinken did his best to answer as broadly and as collectively as possible, compared to Rex Tillerson or the horrid, condescending liar, Mike Pompeo. 

Here's some of what we learned from Blinken.

• China doesn't really fit under one label, given that "there are clearly and increasingly adversarial aspects of the relationship ...there are certainly competitive ones...there are still some cooperative ones." He says we have to approach them from a position of strength, no matter which aspect of the relationship we're talking about. And, we have to bring our allies along - we're stronger together.

• On the pandemic, he said we need to be able to mitigate something like this much better in the future, and we need transparency from the WHO among other things. And, "China, like every other country, has real obligations that it needs to make good on."  As to punishment or repercussions for their behavior to date, Blinken says we need "both accountability for the past, but our focus needs to be on building a stronger system for the future."

• There will be consequences for Russia on the variety of aggressions they've perpetrated on us, including election interference, bounties on our troops, and the attacks on our computers, and NATO shares our concern with Russia's actions across the board. Everything "really starts with being clear-eyed about the challenge Russia poses and addressing the challenge together." 

• On Afghanistan, we're still working on the troop withdrawal timeline, and he said there are more European troops there than there are Americans. They've been with us on this from the beginning, when "the one and only time NATO's Article 5, an attack on one is an attack on all, has been evoked" was 9/11. So, we're telling them what we're thinking, but we're also listening to them. And yes, Biden will keep his promise to "end forever wars" but diplomacy is a part of that, too - and there's an upcoming conference in Turkey on that effort. 

• There was a lot of talk about MBS, the Saudi Crown Prince, and whether we should call him a murderer. In the end, Blinken said " The crown prince is likely to be the leader of Saudi Arabia far into the future" and that we have to work with them on some critical stuff, including ending the war in Yemen, which he called "probably the worse humanitarian crisis in the world." And he asked, "in terms of advancing human rights and progress in Saudi Arabia itself, are we better off recalibrating the relationship, as we did, or rupturing it?" He's confident the recalibration was necessary. 

Blinken made it clear we are not "America alone;" if the Biden foreign policy had a theme song, it would be "We Are the World."

I'll have more from the classrooms in tomorrow's Extra Credit. See you around campus.

Sunday School 2/7/21: Extra Credit

As I promised in my Sunday School post, I've got Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for you today, along with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Trump), but well start with Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY). 

Cheney talked with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, and said she's not resigning, as her state party requested when they censured her for "betraying the trust of Wyoming voters." 

The censure language indicated people still believe that BLM and Antifa were behind the Capitol insurrection. She said they've got a lot of work to do, and she blamed Trump and his lies for that.

We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth, that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.

She also said the Dems had no business getting involved in which Rs sit on committees; the Rs should have dealt with that.

Wallace asked if she'd vote to convict Trump in the impeachment. She said she'd listen to the evidence, but added there's a "massive criminal investigation underway. There will be a massive criminal investigation of everything that happened on January 6th and in the days before."

People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They want to know, for example, whether the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence... there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved, as there should be.

She said "I obviously believe... that what we already know is enough" to impeach him, and that there's no looking past what happened, no pretending that it didn't happen, no trying to move on. "We've got to make sure this never happens again."  

So far, she's not a fan of the new administration. She described the first few days as being "heartbreaking in many ways," and called the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline "heartless." The Rs must "stand up and fight back against the kind of far-left governing" they've seen so far, she said.

Let's go down the hall to the This Week classroom for George Stephanopoulos' chat with Mr. Secretary, aka Mayor Pete. The conversation started with the COVID relief plan, which Buttigieg said was both important and something that Americans - including Republicans - strongly support. He downplayed the comments on the recovery plan made by Larry Summer, noting that other economists feel the plan is what we need to grow jobs. And, he wants to avoid what happened after the Great Recession.

And part of what was a real struggle the last time we faced a major economic challenge in 2009, was a sense that there needed to -- if there had been more political will in Washington to do more, the economy might have recovered more quickly. 

Paying for his infrastructure agenda could run into partisan arguments, but he said these investments can pay for themselves, with enormous payback for the American people. He said it's clear people are impatient with "the idea of 'infrastructure week' turning into a punch line" and that lots of ideas on how to pay for the programs surfaced during his confirmation hearings. Not only that, but

...we also have a historic moment on our hands where we’ve realized just how critical these needs are. We can't keep kicking the can down the road and while it's not going to be easy to come to terms on exactly how to sustainably fund it, we know once again, with the economic urgency, the interest rate environment and the gathering political will that we can actually make this happen. And I think it's a great example of bipartisan priority. And if we get it right, it might pull other things along too.

Let's close with Margaret Brennan and Graham on Face the Nation. Their conversation started with foreign policy, and Graham said he'd caution President Biden not to get rid of stuff just because it's a Trump policy. They need to review things to determine if they're working, and if yes, leave them alone.

He hasn't spoken with Biden, but he has spoken to Secretary of State Tony Blinken, and is happy with the approach on Afghanistan, including leaving troops there beyond Trump's May deadline. Graham says he hopes that the administration will look at a bill he and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) have proposed that will the Iranians as much nuclear power as they want, but they wouldn't be allowed to enrich it. 

On the hottest of hot topics, Graham said that what Trump did around the insurrection "is not a crime," and further, that "many people had already planned the - to attack the Capitol" before Trump ever spoke back in January, so impeaching him for incitement is wrong.

He said if people think Trump committed a crime, "he can be prosecuted like any other citizen." Impeachment is a political process, and "we've never impeached a president once they're out of office."

I think this is a very bad idea... It's not a question of how the trial ends. It's a question of when it ends... And the only question is... how long does the trial take? But the outcome is really not in doubt. That doesn't mean what happened on January the 6th was okay. It means his impeachment, in the eyes of most Republicans, is an unconstitutional exercise.

He seemed to suggest that Trump was impeached for the wrong thing. Brennan reminded Graham that he said that "the things (Mike Pence) was asked to do in the name of loyalty were over the top, unconstitutional, illegal, and would have been wrong for the country," which sounded like high crimes and misdemeanors to her. Graham's response?

Yeah, well, he wasn't charged with that.

Ultimately, he thinks history will be the judge, and he's in obvious disagreement with Rep. Cheney on the 'moving on' thing.

I'm ready to get on with trying to solve the nation's problems. And as to Donald Trump, he is the most popular figure in the Republican Party. He had a consequential presidency. January the 6th was a very bad day for America, and he'll get his share of blame in history. But I do believe that in 2022, the Republican Party is going to come roaring back...

He thinks Trump's policies have served the country well, and that he "has to rehabilitate himself as a politician." No word on whether he sees himself in need of rehabilitation, after spending the last four years doing the bidding of a "race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot." 

See you around campus - bonus points for anyone wearing a Super Bowl Champions Tampa Bay Buccaneers mask.