Kevin McCarthy just might have cost Ukraine the war

Plus: Speaker McCarthy invites Matt Gaetz to come after him, and two sides of the COVID vaccine.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy turned to Democrats to avoid a disastrous government shutdown, and it worked. The only thing missing from the 45-day kick-the-can continuing resolution is support for Ukraine. You can’t make the claim that Ukraine isn’t important to our lawmakers, or that it’s not a central issue—if not the central issue—that has held up the legislation and brought our federal government within hours of a shutdown.

Photo by Max Kukurudziak on Unsplash

The Washington Post’s play-by-play blog of the funding plan has no less than 21 mentions of Ukraine aid. Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said the Senate will work on legislation to resume aid to Ukraine “in the coming weeks.” But for now, the aid is stopped. Thus, though Rep. Matt Gaetz and his extreme MAGA Republicans may have lost their bid to shut down the government, they won on Ukraine, and I think that it’s fair to say that makes them happy.

Gaetz rejected an 8 percent cut in discretionary spending, which had the support of the entire GOP caucus, but included aid to Ukraine. He had no plan to replace that version of the legislation with anything. Under the weak cover of reducing spending, the real issue was aid to Ukraine, which MAGA feels is handing billions to a corrupt globalist (Volodymyr Zelenskyy) while we have border issues, fentanyl and runaway debt at home.

To be fair, Gaetz apparently didn’t vote on the 2021 CARES Act that poured nearly a trillion dollars into American pockets—the vote was held under House quorum rules so there was no formal roll call. Then again, Gaetz misses a lot of votes.

The fact is, this is a win for Vladimir Putin, who has run a campaign of denial to make the Ukraine counteroffensive look like a failed black hole where western nations pour cash and war materiel. Without U.S. cash, European commitment may waver. Without foreign support, Ukraine will lose the war. Even if Ukrainians pledge to fight to the last drop of blood and soil, they can’t beat Putin if his play to make the west disengage works.

This plan is specifically targeted at people who are critical but vulnerable. Elon Musk, for instance, posted on X/Twitter an image Sunday with the caption: “When it’s been 5 minutes and you haven’t asked for a billion dollars in aid” with an image of Zelenskyy. Musk’s StarLink is an irreplaceable piece of tech that Ukraine must use for battlefield command and control, since other satcom systems have been penetrated and rendered useless by the Kremlin.

Musk has repeatedly stated that he believes Ukraine should go to the negotiating table, which gives Russia about 20% of their land. Ukraine is not anywhere near ready to do so. Gaetz and his ilk also believe that Putin should be appeased, and some even take his side.

So now we have a situation in Ukraine where Zelenskyy will look even more desperate, Putin will be able to apply maximum pressure to the small salient Ukrainian troops have opened in the south, while having every option open for a nuclear “accident” or other disaster. Ukraine will be forced to rely on more Hail Mary-type strikes on Crimea or in Russia proper, while the Washington politicians hand-wring over funding.

Needless to say, this gives enormous power to Putin, who can threaten World War III and nuclear weapons when the Senate takes up the issue of aid again.

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Now that McCarthy has kept the government running for a few more weeks, Matt Gaetz is going to gun for his seat with a vacate motion. The speaker has basically dared Gaetz for come for him. “If somebody wants to make a motion against me, bring it,” he said after the funding bill passed. If Gaetz files his vacate motion, with just 45 days until another funding bill is due, he might just not have the votes to get away with it.

On the other hand, the GOP caucus has about had its fill of Mr. Gaetz, and there are rumblings of a motion to expel him. From the Daily Beast:

“No one can stand him at this point,” the source told Fox News. “A smart guy without morals.”

I don’t know if that source is talking about Gaetz, whom I do not consider to be very smart at all. If he were running anywhere but Florida (and only certain parts of Florida at that), Gaetz could not be elected dog catcher.

I am no fan of Kevin McCarthy, a sleazy politician whose own tongue is forked, but when it comes to smarts, McCarthy is next-level compared to Gaetz. If the GOP expels Gaetz, I’d laugh very hard. But I doubt that it will happen, and I also doubt the speaker’s chair will be vacated.

However, the damage (to Ukraine) is done.

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One more item: the Nozel Prize for medicine went to two researchers who pioneered the use of mRNA in vaccines; the vaccines used to fight COVID-19.

Drs. Katalin Karikó and Drew Weissman took the prize for what the New York Times described as their “slow and methodical research” into mRNA. The two scientists first met in 1998, and have been researching the field for decades. This puts the lie to the myth that “overnight sensations” break out of nowhere.

Nobody should understand that more than Mr. Elon Musk, who has practiced a lot of shark-jumping and tin-foil-hat wearing in his X/Twitter posts regarding vaccine mandates. If you told Musk that Tesla or SpaceX were just flash-in-the-pan FOMO fads or a lucky government break, he’d have twenty years of toil to show you otherwise.

But tell Musk that two decades of mRNA work led to a quick vaccines for COVID-19, which indeed can be a cold a killer to the unvaccinated, and all of a sudden it becomes a free speech issue. If there was a way to vaccinate minds against conspiracy theories I hope someone is researching it.