Wednesday's Final Word

AP Photo/Alex Gallardo

What day is it? Tab-Closing DAAAAY ... 

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“I love ‘Karma,’” the senator from Massachusetts said last night during a Zoom event for a group called Swifties for Kamala. “And I have a thing or two to say about private equity!” The 34,000 attendees probably would have cheered, but, as is typical for such a massive webinar, only the organizers had control of the microphone and camera. Warren was undaunted by the lack of response. “It is going to be a tough fight ahead,” she said, winding up. “There are only 24 hours in a day—or 144 ‘All Too Well’ 10-minute versions.” [Pause for no laughter.] “But here’s the thing, just like you’ve done every time before, we will push this boulder up the hill.”

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Only a die-hard Swiftie would have caught all the references in Warren’s words, which included a jab at the investment group backing Swift’s nemesis, Scooter Braun, and a lyric from a Swift deep cut said to be about the singer’s beef with Kim Kardashian. It seems safe to assume that Warren did not write all of these quips herself. But she would not be the only speaker on the call whose staffers had squeezed an unconscionable number of jokes into last night’s remarks.

Ed: "How do you do, fellow kids?"

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The last U.S. troops left Afghanistan on Aug. 30, 2021. Three years later, the Taliban's return to power has allowed al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to regain a presence in the country, and deprived Afghan women and girls of basic freedoms they were granted during two decades of Western-backed government following the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. ...

A year after the U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, a U.S. drone strike killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul's diplomatic district, but since then, the terrorist group responsible for the 9/11 attacks has reemerged and established new training facilities in the country. 

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A U.N. Security Council report published in July said al Qaeda  had regrouped in Afghanistan and warned that it was aiming to conduct attacks beyond the country's borders.

Ed: Joe Biden promised that the US could prevent the re-emergence of AQ, and Kamala Harris has repeatedly endorsed Biden's decisions on the Kabul bug-out that enabled an immediate return to power by the Taliban. They want to blame it on Trump, but Biden and his team made the terrible decisions that led to that rapid collapse, especially the decision to abandon Bagram before leaving Kabul.  

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From Ed: Again, if you're digging the Final Word and want to get into the conversation in the comments, sign up to become VIP and VIP Gold members! Become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code COMMIEWALZ to receive a 50% discount on your membership.

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Al-Qaeda today is much diminished from the organisation that carried out the 9/11 attacks, and the recent US intelligence reports argue the group is less of a threat in the region than the likes of Isis. Nonetheless, its new leader Saif al-Adel – an Iran-based explosives expert – remains the FBI’s most wanted terrorist, with a $10m bounty on his head.

Ahmad Zia Saraj, who handled Afghanistan’s intelligence operations as chief of the National Directorate of Security up until the fall of Kabul in August 2021, claims the Taliban has absorbed what is left of al-Qaeda into a de facto coalition, with the two groups’ leaders regularly engaging in talks in the capital.

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Ed: This was from last week, but it's on point with the previous article. 

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For more than a year, Gavin Newsom was everywhere as a star surrogate for President Joe Biden. Since Kamala Harris took over as the nominee, you almost have to squint to see California’s governor.

Newsom has spent little time campaigning in other states since his fellow Californian leaped to the top of the Democratic ticket, an abrupt shift after barnstorming the country for Biden, especially during the turbulent final weeks of his candidacy. ...

Newsom’s reduced role in the campaign has fueled parlor intrigue in Sacramento for weeks, as political insiders question the governor’s status as a national surrogate and how his own potential future presidential ambitions could be affected by Harris’ rise.

Ed: Harris could be creating a distance from her California/San Fran roots and keeping Newsom at arm's length. The gist from Politico seems more to be that Newsom has decided to back away, perhaps because he believes that any Harris collapse will reflect poorly on everyone around her. I'd tend to think it's the former rather than the latter, except Newsom's not the only Democrat attempting distance from the nominee ...

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Berman told Tyler he would return to the subject of Project 2025 momentarily, but asked the communications director if there was “something that changed her mind specifically” about fracking during her time as vice president.

“No, listen, again, the vice president is very proud of the Biden-Harris Administration’s record on energy production and the economy writ-large. She wants to continue to build upon the progress that we’ve made here,” Tyler repeated. “That goes for energy production, and it goes for the economy across the board, right? She’s proud of the 15 million new jobs that have been created, of the 800,000 manufacturing jobs that have been created.”

Ed: That answer will not satisfy hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians whose livelihoods depending on fracking, either directly or indirectly. It frankly sounds as though Tyler, a Harris surrogate, isn't even sure if Harris has changed her mind on fracking. And she probably hasn't, not really.

Meanwhile, elsewhere in PA ...

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Ed: And finally, in the Alexander Haig-Who's In Charge Department ... 

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