FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

Sure I like Coltrane when he stretches out, but I'm a sucker for this stuff.

•   Got a couple of freebies at Roy Edroso Breaks It Down this week. The first is a scenario for a hot new Hollywood action thriller based on the prestige press’ shitfit over Afghanistan. It’s been highly annoying to watch these idiots – many of whom were gung-ho to get us into Afghanistan and Iraq all those years ago (Eliot Cohen, for fuck’s sake!) – now crying that we should have done something different, like maybe sneak out on tiptoe so no one would notice, or go back in time and convince Trump not to surrender to the Taliban, maybe. Well, fuck them. Getting out of Afghanistan is the right thing to do and most people know it, no matter how much the daughter of Zbigniew Brzezinski (described by Politico thus: “whose brother Mark is Biden’s pick to serve as ambassador to Poland” – man, and I thought I had memory problems!) preens over it. 

The other freebie is about the latest breakout rightwing star, and his probable career trajectory. 

•   Like we needed more examples of creepy conservative COVID grifters, but here's Texas AG Dan Patrick –

“Democrats like to blame Republicans on [the spread of COVID],” Patrick said. “Well, the biggest group in most states are African Americans who have not been vaccinated. The last time I checked, over 90 percent of them vote for Democrats in their major cities and major counties”…

The latest data from the Texas Department of State Health Services shows that the African American population there is not driving the increase in cases. Black residents in Texas accounted for 16.4 percent of the state’s cases and 10.2 percent of deaths as of Aug. 13. While vaccination rates are low among Black Texans, the highest coronavirus case rates are among Whites and Hispanics, who make up 34.9 percent and 35.8 percent of the state’s cases respectively, according to the latest data.

While the black vaccinated rate in the U.S. is lower than that of whites, it’s also true that black vaccinations are going up, particularly in COVID hot spots. That’s probably because black activists are working to get their people to acknowledge and respond to the danger – while, conversely, prominent Republicans, including Patrick’s boss Greg Abbott, have been loudly pushing anti-vaxxer nonsense, including the insane anti-mask mandates favored by Abbott and Florida’s DeSantis.

But Patrick’s blame-the-blacks strategy is actually quite common on the Right, from National Review’s Jim Geraghty to the lowliest Gab Nazi, for reasons that you can guess. It’s always easier for conservatives to indulge the literally suicidal (and homicidal) fantasy politics of their base if they can say "it was some black guys, I swear," and have a bunch of them automatically believe it.