Month: August 2021

Afghans Suffering from ‘Long War’ Syndrome

Buck Banks

“It wasn’t crazy for President Biden and his national security team, including the Pentagon, to have imagined that the Afghan forces — with superior technology and manpower — could have done a much better job holding the Taliban at bay. … But senior U.S. officials are privately acknowledging that the Afghans appear psychologically defeated — and there was insufficient accounting for the psychological consequences of the long war.”

— Jonathan Swan

MTG Resorts to Fatalism

Buck Banks

“Everybody needs to get back down to common sense and remember that, you know, we’re human, we can’t live forever, we’re going to catch all kinds of diseases and illnesses and other viruses, and we get hurt sometimes.”

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) waved off concerns over hospitals exceeding capacity due to COVID-19, saying “we can’t live forever,” The Hill reports.

U.S. Jobless Claims Hit New Low

Buck Banks

375,000

Associated Press: “The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell for a third straight time last week, the latest sign that employers are laying off fewer people as they struggle to fill a record number of open jobs and meet a surge in consumer demand. Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that jobless claims fell to 375,000 from 387,000 the previous week. … A total of about 12 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, down sharply from the previous week’s figure of nearly 13 million… So far at least, there has been little sign that the delta variant has depressed hiring or prompted layoffs.”

A Backlash Against the Unvaccinated Is Beginning

Buck Banks

“While most state and national GOP leaders are focused on defending the rights of unvaccinated Americans, new polling shows that the large majority of vaccinated adults—including a substantial portion of Republicans—support tougher measures against those who have refused COVID-19 shots. … These new results … reveal that significant majorities of people who have been vaccinated support vaccine mandates for health workers, government employees, college students, and airline travelers—even, in some surveys, for all Americans or all private-sector workers. Most of the vaccinated respondents also say that entry to entertainment and sporting arenas should require proof of vaccination, and half say the same about restaurants. … All of this suggests that as the Delta variant’s ‘pandemic of the unvaccinated’ disrupts the return to ‘normal’ life promised by the vaccines, a backlash may be intensifying among those who have received the shots against those who have not.”

— Ron Brownstein

Booker Praises Tuberville Sidestep

Buck Banks

“I am so excited. This is perhaps the highlight of this long and painful and torturous night. This is a gift… because there’s some people who have said that there are members of this deliberative body that want to defund the police, to my horror.”

— Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), quoted by CNN, praising an amendment by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) which allowed every Democratic senator to symbolically vote against defunding the police.

Trump — The Opposite of Helpful on Vaccine Front

Buck Banks

“It’s been more than six months since Donald Trump left office and, despite pleas from multiple friends and advisers, the former president has kept refusing to mount anything resembling a real effort to get his supporters vaccinated …. According to four people who’ve independently spoken to Trump about a potential pro-vaccine campaign, the former president has shown little interest in tying his name to broader efforts to get people inoculated.”

— Daily Beast