We begin today with Heather Digby Parton of Salon saying that Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s pursuit of a formal impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden is, ultimately, a pursuit of Donald Trump’s revenge.

This is payback as anyone with eyes can see. And Trump is no doubt thrilled that they are going after Biden for the same stale lie that got him impeached the first time. The so-called investigation revolves around the disproved nonsense about then Vice President Biden demanding the Ukrainians fire a prosecutor to help his son's business in Ukraine. The timeline doesn't line up any better now than it did when Trump was trying to sell it to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his "perfect phone call." Maybe he thinks that having an impeachment tying Biden to the case will prove him innocent of wrongdoing and lead to the "expungement" of his impeachment. (McCarthy has said that he's all for it even though expungement isn't a thing.)

But it has some other utility for the Republicans.

Trump instinctively projects his own shortcomings and problems on his enemies and then attacks them which is what he's doing with the "Biden Crime Family" thing. I don't know what specific psychology is at work, but it serves a tactical purpose for him and his allies by muddying the water and contributing to the widespread cynicism in American life that leads people to think everyone is corrupt and there's nothing to be done about it.

It's already worked to some degree in this case. According to a recent CNN poll, "61% say they think that Biden had at least some involvement in Hunter Biden's business dealings, with 42% saying they think he acted illegally, and 18% saying that his actions were unethical but not illegal."

There is literally no evidence of any of that. Well played, Republicans, well played.

Ryan Tarinelli of Roll Call says that the Congressional impeachment inquiry may ultimately serve to weaken the power of Congress.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy signed off on the inquiry with much less context and specifics than in previous impeachment efforts, which ultimately could give the public a reason to dismiss them as political and weaken the legislative branch’s powerful tool to keep a president in check, the legal experts said. [...]

“This behavior by Republican House members is just astoundingly self-destructive of the prerogatives of the institution that they serve,” said Bowman. “Because it, of course, devalues impeachment as a meaningful tool to deal with genuine presidential misconduct.”

More broadly, lawmakers could run the risk of denigrating the legitimacy of their own customary demands for information if they start playing games with congressional power to compel information from the president and the administration, Bowman said.

That can “create a situation where presidents of both parties just throw up their hands and say, ‘Look, these guys never operate in good faith, and we’re just going to refuse any subpoenas that they send us,’” he said.

Jim Newell of Slate says there’s no real choice between a short-term funding resolution and an impeachment inquiry: The Freedom Caucus really truly wants both.

Scott Perry, in taking questions, said the impeachment inquiry has “nothing to do with the debt, the deficit, the outrageous spending, the inflation that’s crushing American families—those are two separate issues, and they should be dealt with separately.”

Bob Good, arguably the most unwavering of McCarthy’s antagonists, said the inquiry announcement had “zero” effect on their demands for the spending bill. North Carolina Rep. Dan Bishop described the inquiry as “irrelevant” to the spending fight.

Is there a way that the two could, arguably, be linked? The specific lever McCarthy would have is to argue that if the government shuts down, so too do the committee impeachment investigations. He’s floated it already, telling Fox News in August that “if we shut down, all the government shuts it down—investigation and everything else.” [...]

Impeachment, in short, is not the One Neat Trick to Keep the Government Open. There is no binkie here. To fund the government—whether it’s before or after the shutdown deadline—McCarthy is going to have to put a bill on the floor that doesn’t pass muster with the Freedom Caucus, because it will need to pass a Democratic Senate and be signed by a Democratic president. And yes, that will likely prompt some of those openly threatening to put McCarthy’s speakership up to another vote to go through with it. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who gave a separate floor speech Tuesday putting McCarthy on notice, told reporters that he would move to vacate the chair if McCarthy puts any short-term spending bill on the floor, according to Bloomberg.

Aaron Blake of The Washington Post sees Senator Mitt Romney’s declining to run for another Senate term as a concession that the demagogues have won.

The move is a familiar one — a prominent Republican gathering the courage to arrest his party’s drift toward Trumpism and then, when the next election comes around, heading for the exits.

But rarely has such an exit been so consequential for that segment of the party. And rarely has it come with the degree of resignation Romney expressed.

Unlike other Trump critics who have opted to retire, Romney appeared to have had more than a fighting chance, had he opted to run again. Utah is an unusual state, deeply conservative but also with a large vein of Trump skepticism coursing through that conservatism. And Romney’s personal brand there — dating to his stewardship of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics — clearly gave him latitude that other Republicans have not enjoyed.

[...]

In an interview with longtime Washington Post politics correspondent Dan Balz, Romney played down the idea that he would get involved in supporting a 2024 candidate who is running against Trump. The reason: It would be counterproductive.

Jeanna Smialek of The New York Times writes that the latest rise in inflation makes it more likely the Fed will increase interest rates by the end of the year.

The Consumer Price Index rose 3.7 percent in the year through August, the report showed. That was both faster than the 3.2 percent July reading and slightly quicker than what economists had expected.

After the removal of food and fuel costs, which are volatile, a core price index slowed on an annual basis but increased faster than economists expected on a monthly basis — rising 0.3 percent, compared with 0.2 percent in both June and July. That pickup came as a range of services, including car insurance and airfares, became more costly. The monthly reading matters because economists monitor it to get a sense of inflation’s momentum, and the acceleration in August was the first in six months.

Fed policymakers have been careful to avoid declaring victory over rapid inflation even as price increases have cooled notably this summer, providing some breathing room for consumers, who have been struggling to keep pace with relentlessly heftier bills. The fresh figures underscored the reason for the Fed’s reticence: Inflation may be decelerating, but the process of fully reining it in remains a bumpy one.

Jennifer Rubin of The Washington Post illustrates how much Trump underestimated Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

Her written filings have been tightly argued — the result, no doubt, of months of preparation. Among her most effective arguments: the Hatch Act, which prohibits White House officials’ political conduct while on duty, means that Meadows’s admittedly campaign-related actions were outside the scope of his official duties.

When, over her objections, the special grand jury’s vote tallies for 39 people were released (a terrible injustice to those who were not charged), the public could see that rather than pursue every possible defendant, Willis exercised appropriate discretion. For example, much as some of his critics would have liked to see Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) in the dock, she apparently came to the conclusion that there was insufficient evidence of criminality and/or that the speech or debate clause would make prosecution too difficult. [...]

Willis still faces a host of challenges. Having charged 19 people, she faces the prospect of a single ungainly trial or, more likely, a series of expensive, time-consuming trials that allow those tried later to see the prosecution’s full case. Meadows will appeal his removal case. Other litigants, despite Meadows’s failed bid, will still try to remove and then appeal when their efforts get rebuffed. And no trial, least of all one involving high-profile politicians, is a slam dunk. Even a win at trial can be overturned on appeal.

Well, so did nearly every pundit, to be perfectly honest.

Charles Blow of The New York Times looks at the case of the little girl that survived the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Church in Birmingham and wonders what America owes Sarah Collins Rudolph.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, Congress established a victims’ compensation fund for individuals who were injured or relatives of individuals who were killed in the attacks. It was budgeted at $5.12 billion total for the 2002, 2003 and 2004 fiscal years.

Victims’ families and survivors of the 2015 murders at Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C., sued the federal government, charging that the F.B.I.’s background check system failed to prevent the shooter, a self-proclaimed white nationalist who wanted to start a race war, from buying a gun. He, too, was a terrorist. The case was settled for $88 million.

One Fund Boston was established after the terrorist Boston Marathon bombing, and it raised nearly $80 million from more than 200,000 donors to be paid to the survivors and the families of those killed by the bombing. [...]

This raises a very real question: What does America owe the victims of the country’s past racial terror?

Andy Taylor of The Washington Post reports that Kim Jung Un’s summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin also demonstrates a grim reality for Russian forces in Ukraine.

Analysts have described Russian artillery units in particular as surprisingly skilled, a counterbalance to some of the more chaotic areas of Moscow’s army. A recent analysis by Britain’s Royal United Services Institute found that artillery units were particularly adept at the trial-and-error task of homing in on targets, sometimes able to accurately hit their mark within three minutes — “essentially the limit of what is physically possible,” given the time it takes to fire.

But this heavy use of artillery comes at a cost. Recent Western estimates suggest that Russia fired 11 million rounds in Ukraine last year. Jack Watling, senior research fellow for land warfare at the Royal United Services Institute, told my colleagues that there were estimates that it would fire 7 million more this year. At that rate of expenditure, production alone can hardly keep up.

Accounts from Western officials suggest that while Russia has impressively boosted its military production, its capacity for artillery production is not higher than 2 million a year. From within the Russian military, there have been numerous angry accounts of shortages: The late Wagner boss Yevgeniy Prigozhin had complained of “shell hunger” on the front near the eastern city of Bakhmut, with his troops receiving only 800 of the 80,000 shells it needed per day, by his account. [...]

The Soviet Union once provided weapons to countries around the world that it sought to influence, creating client states that would be reliant on it for weaponry. In many ways now, the situation is reversed, with Moscow forced to ask the weaker countries it once supplied for help.

Finally today, Kelly M. McFarland, Chester C. Crocker, and Ryan Conner write for War on the Rocks about how American diplomacy will need to change after the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine called for a reevaluation of what we thought we knew about the current state of international affairs. In our recent report from Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy we broke down the emerging dynamics into three broad categories. First are those that were previously known but have now been cast in sharper focus. These include the rise of a new non-aligned movement, the limits of Western sanctions, economic regionalization, and an increase in cross-border challenges such as food insecurity. Second are the trends that revealed Russia’s aggression and the world’s reaction. These include the collective investment in security organizations such as NATO and Russia’s slipping grasp on its traditional area of influence. And the final set of trends is best described as black swan events, or those that are hard to predict or understand but will present significant strategic challenges.

Common to all these issues is a global diffusion of power. Middle powers are asserting greater agency relative to major powers, such as the United States, China, and Russia. For Washington, this does not make middle powers adversaries to work against, but rather vital partners in addressing geopolitical challenges. These powers speak with louder voices —though not necessarily in unison — and it is incumbent upon the United States to engage with what they are saying.

Everyone have the best possible day!