In pursuit of the votes of just one-third of Americans

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos discussed some things that went on at the beginning of the Afghanistan war that would have saved the US from spending 20 years there.

If, in the wake of 9/11, what the United States had actually wanted was to see Osama bin Laden tried for his involvement and al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan disassembled, that could likely have happened without a single U.S. service member dying and perhaps without a bomb being dropped. However, a trial of bin Laden in Saudi Arabia or Qatar would not have even come close to quelling the anger following 9/11. So that didn’t happen. Two months into the conflict, if the United States had actually wanted Afghanistan to be brought to peace under terms that were likely to generate something like stability, it’s very likely that could have happened. But by then, it would not have satisfied a narrative that had equated any negotiation in Afghanistan with surrendering to terrorists. So that didn’t happen. That may have been the last chance to leave Afghanistan at a point that would not immediately result in a Taliban resurgence. Every action taken after the end of 2001 only made the Taliban stronger and made their return to power more certain. Now it’s happened.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos reported on a poll by Axios-Ipsos that asked about mask mandates. Mask mandates for schools has 69% support, including 44% support by Republicans. Banning mask mandates has 66% opposed, which goes up to 77% opposed to governments defunding schools who have mask mandates. Eleveld concluded:

What the new data makes clear is that House Republicans and many GOP governors are explicitly putting the lives of their constituents at risk in pursuit of the votes of just one-third of Americans. It is just maniacally sick.

I think there is a second reasons many GOP governors are putting their constituents’ lives at risk. They really do want people to die. Sumner reported one reason why Florida Gov. Ron DeathSentence is taking the pro-virus positions that he has. And, as expected, it involves money. The biggest donor to DeSantis in 2020 was Ken Griffin. Griffin has a huge stake in Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. That company makes REGEN-COV. Which means the more people who get sick the more REGEN-COV is needed and the more money Regeneron makes. Of course, there’s a problem. REGEN-COV needs to be administered before patients are sick enough to be hospitalized. Testing is so bad that patients don’t know REGEN-COV could help them until it is too late. Even if they knew in time there isn’t enough REGEN-COV to treat all who might be helped. Then there is the moral problem of letting people get sick in a pandemic in hopes this drug can be administered in time to do any good. What would help is wearing a mask, effective over the last 17 months, and getting the vaccine, effective over the last 8 months. And Gov. DeathSentence is doing all he can to make sure they aren’t used. He’s earned his new name. This is the 224th time in the last 18 months I’ve tagged a post with “coronavirus.” This tag is now the 13th most used tag on this blog. Denise Oliver Velez of Kos reported the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act has been officially introduced in Congress. Alabama Rep. Terri Sewell did the formal introduction and did so in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. This is the bridge that was the scene of Bloody Sunday, when civil rights marchers were brutally beaten on March 7, 1965. One of those beaten marchers was John Lewis. I heard a report in the last few days about carbon offsets when one takes an airplane trip. The report was on NPR program Marketplace in a report by Amanda Preacher. The report said that the price one pays for a carbon offset varies by what organization you donate to and what you ask them to do with the donation. Planting a tree is one price, subsidizing a bit of renewable energy is another. There is also little connection between the passenger’s portion of the actual amount of carbon emitted on the flight and the carbon in the offset. In addition, planting trees doesn’t really solve the problem. The goal should be to eliminate carbon emissions, not in pretending offsets mean we don’t have to. Bodie Cabiyo, getting a PhD in trees and climate, tweeted about another problem with trees serving as a carbon offset:

Welp, one of the biggest carbon offset projects is burning. The Colville IFM project represents over 14M tons of carbon offsets, or ~6% of all credits in the CA compliance market.

IFM is Indian Forest Management, and the Colville IFM is managed by native tribes. Alex Steffen responded:

Our carbon offset forests burning in our climate chaos megafires is so very 2021.