Crooked Media - What A Day: The Delting pot

The Biden recovery is in full bloom, but so is the country’s fourth wave of COVID-19—this one blunted by mass vaccination—and so we return to our favorite, age-old question: How much disease will Republicans spread to prevent a Democrat from presiding over a booming economy?
 

• The economy created 943,000 jobs in July, nearly 100,000 more than economists’ consensus forecast. That headline number combined with upward revisions to the two previous monthly employment reports well exceed a million jobs. With such rapid job growth, the unemployment rate plummeted from 5.9 percent to 5.4 percent, even as wages continued to rise. 
   
• President Biden touted the report as evidence that “the Biden plan is working,” but cautioned against complacency, both because the recovery from the Trump crash isn’t complete, and because the U.S. coronavirus epidemic isn’t over. “We got a lot of hard work left to be done both to beat the Delta variant and to continue our advance of economic recovery,” he said.
   
• Delta is the main reason Biden didn’t cast his remarks as celebratory. Though widespread vaccination has assured that the Delta wave is much less deadly than previous waves, enough people remain unvaccinated and intent on flouting mitigation measures to create headwinds that slow the recovery. “I want to thank the local leaders in the private sector, leaders who are imposing vaccine requirements," he said. "America can beat the delta variant, just as we beat the original COVID-19. We can do this, so wear a mask when recommended, get vaccinated today, all of that will save lives, and it means we’re not going to have the same kind of economic damage we’ve seen when COVID-19 began.”

The private sector is heeding the vaccination-requirement call, but slowly, and in the face of continued GOP efforts to sabotage herd immunity.
 

• United Airlines joined the ranks of large U.S. companies to impose a vaccination requirement on employees, becoming the first major carrier to join the vaccine party (though the airline stopped short of imposing the requirement on flyers). And as a result of the latest vaccination push, the White House’s COVID-19 data director announced Friday that 50 percent of all Americans of all ages are now fully vaccinated. 
   
• Progress has been uneven, though, and it’s no mystery why. Responsible outreach by Democratic and private-sector leaders has persuaded more people of color to get vaccinated and helped close the racial vaccination gap nationwide. On the flip side, Republican leaders keep railing against vaccine requirements, and, in the case of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-QQ), going to Alabama to threaten to kill vaccinators, and the result is Alabama providers throwing tens of thousands of expired vaccines in the trash.

The size of the American Rescue Plan and the efficacy of the vaccines should allow the U.S. to weather the Delta-variant wave without sustaining too much economic damage. But some of the most influential Republicans in the country seem hell bent on keeping coronavirus outbreaks burning hot until it mutates into a form that escapes the vaccines. The rest of us need to do everything in our power to make sure they fail. 

On the latest episode of Hysteria, Amanda Knox opens up about writing her Medium post in response to the movie Stillwater, reclaiming her narrative and the power of vulnerability. Plus, Erin Ryan and Alyssa Mastromonaco discuss Andrew Cuomo, predict his resignation to the date, toast Cori Bush for her work in extending the eviction moratorium, and roast Krysten Sinema for refusing to change her vacation plans for the infrastructure bill vote. Then, Rheeqrheeq Chainey and Kiran Deol join to discuss the Bennifer reunion. New episodes of Hysteria drop every Thursday. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Attorney General Merrick Garland marked the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act becoming law with an op-ed urging Congress to come out with an emergency sequel, please. Garland stressed the importance of reinstating the voting-rights protections that the Supreme Court gutted, noting that DOJ can’t solve voter suppression alone: “The Justice Department is using all its current legal authorities to combat a new wave of restrictive voting laws. But if the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance provision were still operative, many of those laws would likely not have taken effect in the first place.” If Democrats want to pass that legislation in time to nix gerrymandering in the 2022 midterms, they’ve got an even tighter deadline than previously thought. The Census Bureau will release the 2020 data used for redistricting on August 12, four days earlier than it had promised in a court agreement with Ohio. As soon as that data comes out, Republican-led states will draw new maps as fast as they can, and the path to keeping the House will get much narrower.

• A former aide to Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) who accused him of groping her at the Executive Mansion last year has filed a criminal complaint against him.
   
• An Ohio rubber-parts factory raised wages this year to combat staffing shortages, and so far the company’s profit margins have risen even as labor costs go up. The company’s president now blames his own reluctance to raise wages for fueling the labor shortage in the first place.
   
• Tucker Carlson suggested that President Biden will meddle in Hungary’s election to prevent authoritarian Viktor Orban from being reelected, during a bootlicking interview with Orban himself.
   
• Apple has announced plans to scan U.S. iPhones for known images of child sexual abuse, a move that privacy advocates warn could lead to the framing of innocent people and enable government surveillance of dissidents. 
   
• CNN has fired three employees for going into the office despite being unvaccinated and evidently yelling about it, since CNN had been using the honor system.
   
• Canadian soccer player Quinn has made history as the first openly trans and nonbinary athlete to win an Olympic medal, after the Canadian women’s soccer team beat Sweden to win gold on Friday.
   
• Come and get your cursed Joe Manchin Houseboat Content, ft. a haunting anecdote about Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) spontaneously bursting into a rendition of “God Bless America.”
   
• Sure, Australia is mostly comprised of animals that want to kill you, but what you have to understand is it also has a recluse called The Button Man who may or may not be luring hikers to their demise with his hand-carved buttons.

Georgia’s planning to remain a swing state for the time being, according to a new Public Policy Polling Survey. Georgians were nearly evenly split on how they felt about President Biden and Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), and next year’s Senate race looks likely to be a tossup. While Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s maneuvering to block Herschel Walker for the GOP nomination (in favor of somebody with less domestic abuse in their past and a more upstanding, respectable history of insider trading), he still looks to be the strongest likely candidate, with a much higher favorability rating among Republicans than former Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA). That tracks with how Georgia Republicans feel about disgraced former president Donald Trump, who’s endorsed Walker: 83 percent still rate him favorably, and only 11 percent unfavorably.

Here at What A Day, we’ve found ourselves with an unofficial team sneaker: the OCA Low from CARIUMA. A canvas sneaker is a summer staple, the closed-toe solution to heat waves and last-minute invites of an unknown dress code. Cool sneakers are a must-have, it’s true—but a lot of what’s out there isn’t worth the wear.

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The Johnson & Johnson vaccine is highly effective against the Delta variant, according to new data from a clinical trial in South Africa. 

An Arkansas judge has temporarily blocked Gov. Asa Hutchinson’s (R-AR) ban on mask mandates from going into effect.

The Biden administration will extend the pause on federal student loan payments through the end of January.

Dolly Parton used the royalties from Whitney Houston’s cover of “I Will Always Love You” to invest in a historically Black Nashville neighborhood, she revealed this week.