Crooked Media - What A Day: An arm and a Greg

Tuesday, August 17, 2021
BY BRIAN BEUTLER & CROOKED MEDIA

 -Speaker Pelosi on the centrist Dems taking the Biden agenda hostage

Mark your calendars and prep your finest injection-wear for eight months after your fully-vaccinated-versary. Or, if you haven’t been fully vaccinated yet: WTF, yo???
 

  • The CDC will reportedly recommend that vaccinated Americans (vaxo-Americans, you heard it here first) should plan on getting booster shots in the coming weeks or months to better protect them against the Delta variant. Seniors and others who received their second mRNA jabs this past winter would be eligible for boosters starting next month. Johnson & Johnson recipients will also likely be advised to get a booster, depending on the results of clinical trials.
     
  • The Biden administration will be taking a page from Israel, where the overwhelming majority of the population received the two-shot Pfizer regimen. It has reportedly shown diminished effectiveness against infection in seniors, due either to the adaptations of the Delta variant, waning immune responses, or both. In early July, CDC said “fully vaccinated Americans do not need a booster shot at this time,” but noted “we are prepared for booster doses if and when the science demonstrates they are needed.” That was before Delta surged in unvaccinated communities and the rate of breakthrough infections increased.
     
  • Between boosters, continued uptake among the unvaccinated, and acquired immunity, the updated guidance could help reduce the risk of breakthrough infections and a winter surge in low-vax pockets of the northern U.S. But it may not come soon enough to reduce the fallout from outbreaks stemming from in-person schooling. Children under 12 remain ineligible for the vaccine; most children aged 12-17 remain unvaccinated; and uptake in communities remains uneven, leading to spikes in child infections and hospitalizations, community spread, and schools shutting down days after reopening.

Fortunately, support for non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccine mandates to protect children and their families remains strong; unfortunately, Republicans have returned to their pro-COVID status quo.
 


The Israel experience suggests we might be poised for boosters, even if Republicans hadn’t encouraged vaccine rejection. But the coming booster season underscores the ugly division they created: On one side, the overwhelming majority of Americans follow public-health guidance and are willing to sacrifice for one another; on the other it’s OK to mass-infect children with a novel virus to hurt political enemies. The stakes of keeping that minority out of power couldn’t be higher.

This week on America Dissected, host Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is joined by the one and only, Dr. Anthony Fauci. To hear his honest thoughts on going toe to toe with Rand Paul and why many are still hesitant to get the vaccine, subscribe to America Dissected on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

After a day of chaos and harrowing, tragic images, the evacuation and withdrawal of U.S. and allied civilians and military from Kabul has settled into an orderly if fragile equilibrium. 

  • U.S. and Taliban forces have seemingly reached an informal understanding that has allowed U.S. troops to retain control of Karzai airport, where Pentagon leaders say they’ll soon be able to airlift thousands of people a day to safety. 

  • The acting U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ross Wilson announced that he and embassy staff are still on the ground in the country to facilitate the departure of thousands of Americans and “vulnerable Afghans.”  

  • A Taliban spokesman (so, grains of salt) announced an amnesty for the toppled government and its fighters, and promised not to interfere with the operation at the airport, under threat of U.S. retaliation.

Still unresolved: Getting at-risk Afghans out of the country, and figuring out whether this was more “botched execution” or “unavoidable fiasco.” To that end 46 senators, including three Republicans, have called on Biden to create a “humanitarian parole category” for them so they can be resettled in the U.S. and three Democratic committee chairmen have vowed to conduct oversight hearings. An improvement over yesterday, though the situation obviously remains unstable. Anyhow, here’s Don Jr. agreeing with the Taliban that right-wing authoritarians should have unfettered free-speech rights on all private platforms, even as they outlaw public speech they don’t like.

The Federal Elections Commission’s internal watchdog has warned that foreign money in American elections threatens U.S. national security, in an investigation that stems (you’ll be shocked to learn) from Donald Trump’s corruption, and news reports that a Trump-loyal senior manager in the FEC's Reports Analysis Division subverted the commission’s oversight of donations to Trump’s inaugural committee. Although the investigation ultimately found that the Trump loyalist delegated the oversight to career analysts, and did not interfere with their work, the report also implies that informal FEC practice and federal law are ripe for abuse by corrupt actors. Together they allow inaugural committees to operate on a kind of honor system for verifying that their donors are U.S. citizens; they then subject donation reports to a highly error-prone FEC review system; and finally shield inaugural committee expenditures from FEC oversight. Given how lousy the Trump campaign and administration were with foreign influence, and how greedily he directed campaign, inaugural committee, and federal dollars to his private businesses, the system practically facilitated foreign bribery and will again if Trump runs for a second term and Congress doesn’t fix these vulnerabilities.

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A rarely used, affordable anti-depressant seems like it might be a pretty decent COVID-19 treatment.
 

The Department of Veterans Affairs has reached out proactively to veterans feeling despondent about their service in Afghanistan given how the war there has ended. 
 

Public scrutiny after the killing of Breonna Taylor and a federal pattern-or-practice investigation of the Louisville Metro Police Department have effectively ended the practice of forced entry in the jurisdiction.
 

Secretary Pete and Chasten Buttigieg have apparently adopted a child.

 

. . . . . .


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