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10:00 AM ET, August 20, 2021

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 Top Items: 
Politico:
‘This is Actually Happening’  —  President Joe Biden and his inner circle were in an ebullient mood.  —  It was Wednesday morning, Aug. 11, and they were basking in the glow of back-to-back legislative wins.  The day before, the Senate had passed a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
RELATED:
Vivian Salama / Wall Street Journal:
Confidential State Department Cable in July Warned of Afghanistan's Collapse  —  About two dozen State Department officials in Kabul sent an internal memo to Secretary of State Antony Blinken  —  WASHINGTON — About two dozen State Department officials serving at the embassy in Kabul sent …
David Ignatius / Washington Post:
The Best and Brightest never recovered from Vietnam.  Will Biden's team fare better?  —  The Afghanistan disaster has rocked the Biden administration's foreign policy team, which may need months to regain its sense of balance and momentum.  —  Senior officials don't have time or emotional bandwidth …
Patrick Reilly / New York Post:
Oklahoma mom of 11 rescues members of Afghan all-girls robotics team  —  An Oklahoma mother of 11 flew to Afghanistan earlier this month to rescue 10 members of the country's all-girls robotics team, and hoping to save more as the Taliban takes power in Kabul.
Michael Crowley / New York Times:
Trump's Deal With the Taliban Draws Fire From His Former Allies  —  The former president and his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, are attacking President Biden over Afghanistan even as their own policy faces harsh criticism.  —  WASHINGTON — Days before the anniversary of the Sept. 11 …
German Election / DW.COM:
Relative of DW journalist killed by the Taliban  —  Journalists and their families are in grave danger in Afghanistan.  The Taliban have no compunction about carrying out targeted killings as the case of a DW journalist shows.  —  Taliban fighters hunting a DW journalist have shot dead …
Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times:
Encounter with the Taliban: Punched, detained — then offered an energy drink  —  FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT AND PHOTOGRAPHER  —  When I headed out to work, it had been five days since the Taliban took over Kabul.  And it was Independence Day, a national holiday, when Afghans celebrate their country's independence from Britain in 1919.
Discussion: The Daily Beast
Ed Morrissey / HotAir:
CNN's Ward: Getting inside the Kabul airport “one of the more harrowing things I have experienced”  —  The good news: CNN's Clarissa Ward and her crew have finally made it into the airport in Kabul.  The bad news: It's not a heck of a lot better inside.  “There isn't a coherent mechanism yet …
Discussion: Euractiv and New York Post
New York Times:
How News Organizations Got Afghan Colleagues Out of Kabul  —  The evacuation of those who worked for outlets like The New York Times and The Washington Post came after a global rescue effort stretching from the Pentagon to Qatar.  —  For hours, they waited on the tarmac in the relentless heat …
Peter Nicholas / The Atlantic:
What Joe Biden Is Betting On
Katherine Tully-McManus / Politico:
Capitol rattled by standoff ahead of House's return next week
Wall Street Journal:
The Right and Our Afghan Allies
Kate Storey / Esquire:   Inside Clarissa Ward's 19-Hour Days Reporting From Kabul
Amnesty International USA:   Taliban responsible for brutal massacre of Hazara men - new investigation
Politico:
Biden and the political fallout from Afghanistan
Discussion: New York Times and New York Post
Paul Krugman / New York Times:
The Quiet Rage of the Responsible  —  Let's talk for a minute about Lollapalooza.  After canceling in-person events last year, a few weeks ago Chicago once again hosted the long-running music festival, drawing more than 385,000 people.  Many feared that the huge, raucous crowds could produce a coronavirus superspreader event.
Discussion: Off the Kuff and Washington Post
RELATED:
CNN:
I live in Texas and I am really angry  —  Gov. Abbott tests positive for Covid-19 after months of blocking mask mandates  —  Stephen I. Vladeck is the Charles Alan Wright Chair in Federal Court at the University of Texas School of Law, a CNN contributor and an expert on the role of the federal courts in the war on terrorism.
Michael Gerson / Washington Post:   Govs. DeSantis and Abbott, in denial and risking lives, have betrayed the public trust
Mac Stipanovich / Tampa Bay Times:
Ron DeSantis has ‘made a monumental mess of masking in public schools’ | Column
Discussion: Raw Story
Reuters:
EXCLUSIVE FBI finds scant evidence U.S. Capitol attack was coordinated-sources  —  The FBI has found scant evidence that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result, according to four current and former law enforcement officials.
Discussion: Townhall, Summit News and Power Line
Carla Marinucci / Politico:
Elder's ex-fiancee said he brandished a gun at her  —  PACIFIC PALISADES, Calif. — Alexandra Datig, the former fiancee and longtime radio producer for California GOP gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder, says she broke off an 18-month engagement with the conservative talk show host in 2015 …
RELATED:
Joe Hoft / The Gateway Pundit:   California Rigging the Governor Election Against Larry Elder and Those Who Voted for Recall
Anne Applebaum / The Atlantic:
Liberal Democracy Is Worth a Fight  —  Of all the empty, pointless statements that are periodically repeated by Western politicians, none is more empty and pointless than this one: “There can be no military solution to this conflict.”  That was what Ban Ki-moon, then the UN secretary-general …
Dave Lieber / Dallas Morning News:
If North Texas runs out of ICU hospital beds, doctors can consider a patient's vaccination status  —  This would be a big change in health care, but doctors have yet to announce it.  So The Watchdog does it for them.  —  North Texas doctors have quietly developed a plan that seeks to prepare …
Daily Mail:
Fox News' Greg Gutfeld is crowned new king of late night television after he scores 220K MORE viewers than Colbert's Late Show on CBS  — Comedian Greg Gutfeld's show pulled in the most viewers during Tuesday's late night time slot with about 2.12 million  — Gutfeld! debuted in April …
Sam Karlin / The Advocate:
‘Locate us a ring’: Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins challenges Facebook user to a fight  —  Louisiana Congressman Clay Higgins has once again threatened someone on Facebook with violence.  —  The Lafayette Republican, who has a long history of bizarre social media antics …
Discussion: Talking Points Memo
 
 
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 More Items: 
Emma Green / The Atlantic:
Why America's Largest Teachers' Union Refuses to Support Vaccine Mandates
Jared Ortaliza / Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker:
Most private insurers are no longer waiving cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment
Discussion: Forbes and ACA Signups
Adam Serwer / The Atlantic:
Demography Is Not Destiny  —  In the more racist corners of the mainstream right …
New York Times:
China's Vaccine Diplomacy Stumbles in Southeast Asia
Zachary Faria / Washington Examiner:
Democrats increasingly embrace censorship from the government and Big Tech: Poll
Discussion: The Western Journal
Adam S. Minsky / Forbes:
Biden To Automatically Cancel $5.8 Billion In Student Loans For Over 300,000 Disabled Borrowers
Discussion: New York Post
Talking Points Memo:
Man Who Claimed To Have Bomb Surrenders To Police Near Capitol
 Earlier Items: 
Amanda Marcotte / Salon:
Unvaccinated terror: Proud Boys push the anti-vaccination movement into a violent threat
Brooks Barnes / New York Times:
Are You Ready for Sentient Disney Robots?
Discussion: HuffPost UK
Lucas Shaw / Bloomberg:
OnlyFans to Block Sexually Explicit Videos Starting in October
 

 
From Techmeme:

OpenAI:
Disney and OpenAI sign a three-year deal to bring 200+ Disney characters to Sora; Disney makes a $1B investment in OpenAI and will become a major OpenAI client

Courtney Rozen / Reuters:
US state AGs sent a letter to Meta, Microsoft, Google, Apple, and nine others, warning that their chatbots' “delusional outputs” could be violating state laws

Cyrus Farivar / Ars Technica:
Operation Bluebird, a Virginia-based startup planning to launch a “Twitter.new” social network, petitions the USPTO to cancel X's trademarks over “abandonment”
 
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