•Secretary of State Antony Blinken hops from the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee pan into the fire of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a hearing today on the Biden administration’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan and the end of our longest war.
•In his House committee testimony, Blinken pledged $64 million in aid to impoverished Afghans, who are facing food shortages, that will not go to the new Taliban government there, but instead, go to non-government organizations and United Nations agencies.
•President Biden stops in Denver today to promote his infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion spending plan (The Hill). Biden had visited the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise Monday on his way to California, where he touted the spending plans while supporting Gov. Gavin Newsom’s bid to defeat today’s recall election. Next Tuesday, The Hill says, Biden will address the U.N. General Assembly in person.
August Inflation Slows to a Still-High 0.3% -- The August inflation rate was 0.3%, a troublesome number, but eased a bit from July’s 0.5% increase. The U.S. Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics says the inflation rate for the last 12 months is 5.3%.
Price increases weigh heavily on President Biden’s infrastructure program and his $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation spending plan, the latter of which no Republicans in either the House or Senate support, citing its likely effect on inflation.
August energy prices were up 2%, versus a 1.6% increase in July, while gasoline prices rose 2.8% from a 2.4% inflation rate the previous month. But food prices were up 0.4% in August, compared with an 0.7% July rate.
With computer chip supplies stifling production, the August inflation rate for new vehicles was up 1.2% in August, compared with 1.7% in July. The 12-month cumulative rate is 7.6%. Used car prices, which led increases in previous months, actually fell 1.5% in August, after an 0.2% increase in July, and with a staggering 31.9% 12-month inflation rate, the BLS reported.
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Blinken Testimony Goes Where You’d Expect – If you’ve watched any congressional committee hearings on contentious matters of the day since, oh, perhaps the Watergate era, you’ve seen the Q&A of various cabinet members and even Supreme Court nominees devolve into a bipartisan circus.
Monday’s House Armed Services Committee virtual grilling of Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan actually was not quite that, because some Democrats are upset as at least the moderate Republicans for the “disastrous” manner in which we left, leaving behind allies who were promised safe refuge, as well as $85 billion in high-tech weapons.
But with Blinken essentially blaming the quick withdrawal on the “deal” the Trump administration made last year with the Taliban and on the 11-day collapse of Afghanistan’s democratic government propped up by nearly 20 years of U.S. support, Republicans called on the secretary of state to be fired. There will be a congressional investigation into the “debacle.”
Note: Blinken’s defense of the Afghanistan withdrawal essentially is that the Biden administration did the best it could by actually getting out of a war that outlasted three previous presidents. While the U.S. was able to fly out some 120,000 individuals out of a Kabul airport surrounded by Taliban, including all but roughly 100 American nationals, 13 U.S. troops died in the effort days after the helicopter airlift off the roof of the U.S. embassy looked just like Saigon 1975. The question we would have liked answered is; How many Afghani translators and other allies promised safety by U.S. troops over the two decades remain in the country, facing certain threats by the new Taliban government?
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Putin Self-Isolates – Russian President Vladimir Putin has self-isolated after COVID-19 cases were detected in his entourage, Russian media reports Tuesday, via Politico. The Kremlin released a statement that “in connection with the detected cases of coronavirus in his environment, he must observe the regimen of self-isolation for a period of time.”
Putin, 68, shook hands with Syrian President Bashad al-Assad in Moscow Monday.
Note: Another opportunity for Putin to appear in photos shirtless after he emerges from isolation?
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California Gov Looks Likely to Keep His Job – Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom looks likely to keep his job after today’s recall election, in which he must get better than 50% of the first part of the ballot to avoid being replaced by the leader of more than 40 candidates on the second part of the ballot. An average of polls finds that 57.3% of voters want to keep Newsom, compared with 41.5% who will vote to remove him, says FiveThirtyEight. Leading Republican candidates to replace him are Los Angeles right-wing talk radio host Larry Elder, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Falconer and “YouTube Landlord Influencer” – whatever that means – Kevin Paffrath, according to NPR’s Morning Edition.
Note: Despite Democrats’ dominance of California politics, particularly on the Coast, the state’s entrepreneurial class, upset over Newsom’s pandemic clampdown on small businesses while he ate cake at a staff party held at Napa Valley’s French Laundry restaurant would score an unusual upset if the first part of the ballot doesn’t go Newsom’s and the polls’ way, and the second part of the ballot does go Larry Elder’s way.
On Monday President Biden traveled to California to support Newsom. Keep Newsom in office, Biden said, “or you’ll get Donald Trump.” Already, the ex-prez has told Newsmax that the recall election is “probably rigged,” according to Politico, as the GOP, via such pre-emptive strikes against a near-certain loss combined with restrictive voter laws in such states as Texas and Georgia continue to chip away at democratic elections.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Nic Woods