My latest MSNBC column is up, and it’s focused on the US war in Afghanistan, which, if all goes according to plan, will come to an end sometime in the next month. The US has been fighting in Afghanistan for the past 20 years and, as I argue in the piece, the uncertain outcome there represents a quintessentially American failure — a collective one 20 years in the making, the result of American hubris and a misguided belief in what U.S. power can achieve. Check it out.
I’ll be discussing the piece in my weekly Zoom chat today at 12:30, along with some of my recent pieces for the newsletter. That includes yesterday’s post on the end of triangulation as a political strategy for Democratic presidents and Tuesday’s post on the growing extremism and embrace of violence by the far right.
As always, I’m happy to discuss whatever is on your mind, so if you have some topics you’d like me to address, please leave them in the comment section below.
As I’ve done the past few weeks, I’m opening the live session to all subscribers, but I’ll only be sending the recording to paid subscribers. So if you can’t join me at 12:30 and you want to watch it later … you know what to do.
On another note, I posted yesterday about my friend Gareth Hughes who passed away last week. A reader pointed out that the link to a Go Fund Me page wasn’t working. You can access it here.
Finally, another reader pointed out to me that in a post last week, I misidentified Sister Rosetta Tharpe … here’s some more of her brilliant guitar playing and singing.
Not about Afghanistan, this is about our own domestic horror show. The Census Bureau is providing all the data necessary for power-mad red states to further solidify their hold on their electorate, and for purple ones to move the color wheel to the right: "Redistricting 101".
See:
https://www.census.gov/data/academy/data-gems/2021/how-to-download-the-complete-set-of-2020-redistricting-files.html?utm_campaign=20210806mscacs1ccstars&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
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https://www.census.gov/newsroom/blogs/random-samplings/2021/07/resources-2020-census-redistricting-data-release.html?utm_campaign=20210728msc20s2ccnwsrs&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery
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https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-kits/2021/2020-census-redistricting.html