September 13, 2023

Wednesday, September 13, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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A sweet memory of the 22nd Anniversary of 9/11.

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Hillary at the White House yesterday.

Hillary Clinton joins Jill Biden at the White House to honor recipients of a prestigious art prize.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden and Hillary Clinton, the first lady and a former first lady, on Tuesday introduced the recipients of a prestigious Japanese award for lifetime achievement in the arts, an event that led Clinton to her first public appearance at the White House since the Obama administration.

“Secretary Clinton, Hillary, it’s an honor to welcome you back to the White House,” Biden said as an audience dotted with Clinton administration alums and some celebrities, including actor Debra Messing and choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, burst into loud applause.

“Wow, you are so loved,” Biden exclaimed. “Your lifetime of work has left an indelible mark on this country. Thank you for always doing all the good you can by all the means you can in all the ways you can.”

Clinton introduced the recipients of the Praemium Imperiale, which is awarded annually by the Japan Arts Association in the categories of music, theater/film, painting, sculpture and architecture. (Associated Press).

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Age and the Presidency.

Frank Bruni of the Times makes the point -

Trump Is Really Old, Too.

To our intensifying discussion about whether President Biden has grown mentally fuzzy and too old for a second term, I’d like to add this question:

How would we even notice Donald Trump’s lapse into incoherence, when derangement is essentially his brand?

Pretty much any interview he gives is a babble bonanza, and his recent lovefest with Tucker Carlson was no exception. He went on wacky tangents, including one about the wages of building the Panama Canal: “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito. Malaria. We lost 35,000 people. We lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world.”

“One of the nine wonders,” he added, then corrected himself. “No, no, it was one of the seven.” Seven, nine – he seemed unable to decide, unwilling to commit. “You could make nine wonders,” he ventured. I guess that’s some limit. Once you hit 10, they’re just curiosities. Wonder-ettes.

But was there a bevy of headlines about a brain ravaged by time? Were there notations that Trump, at 77, was already as old as Ronald Reagan at the end of his presidency, and that after another four years in the White House, Trump would be a touch older than Biden at the end of his first term and thus the oldest president ever?

Most certainly not. And that’s both noteworthy and troubling, because we can’t know — really know — that Biden’s occasionally prolonged, futile search for the right word or name is firmer evidence of cognitive fade than Trump’s hallucinatory musings are.

I’m not claiming that Biden, 80, and Trump project the same degree of vigor. I have eyes and ears. Trump talks louder and faster than Biden does and moves with a thudding force. He’s like a freight train to Biden’s cable car, or a big, bulbous tuba to Biden’s tremulous piccolo. Listening to Biden, I want a volume knob I can turn up. Listening to Trump, I crave nonsense-canceling headphones.

To read the full New York Times column, click here.

One more thing.

And one more.

Last night on MSNBC, former Senator Claire McCaskill suggested that President Biden should create ads pointing out some leaders who are over 80 - sample. Rupert Murdoch, Warren Buffet, Carl Icahn, Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, Gloria Steinem.

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What is wrong with these Republicans!

Today’s GOP Story - A Baseless Impeachment Inquiry and a Caucus that wants to shut down the Government, though Kevin McCarthy is going to lose the Speaker’s gavel anyway. Doesn’t he already look like a dead man talking!

White House not sweating McCarthy’s impeachment inquiry launch: ‘Not even wall-to-wall on cable’ - POLITICO

No administration is excited about an impeachment inquiry being launched into the sitting president.

But inside the Biden White House, the response to House Republicans taking that step was more telling than the launch of the inquiry itself.

“It’s not even wall-to-wall on cable,” a White House official said of the coverage of Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s announcement that he would task the Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees to further investigate allegations — unproven still — that Biden used past offices to help his son’s business ventures.

The White House official, who was granted anonymity to discuss the mood inside the building, wasn’t wrong. While McCarthy’s announcement was widely covered, by midday, television news had turned its attention to other topics. Within Biden world, those programming decisions reinforced the belief that House GOP inquiries have failed to resonate with the public and that Tuesday’s escalation wouldn’t either.

“Most people can’t name the nine Supreme Court justices,” said one Democratic operative working to help counter House GOP investigations into the administration and who was granted anonymity to reveal internal deliberations. “They’re not going to be following these insane conspiracy theories.”

Certainly, inside the White House, some aides had long expected Biden would be impeached. They’d been preparing for it for months.

As the year went along, the president’s team gradually built up a war room to deal with those investigations. All told, about two dozen people — a mix of lawyers, legislative staff and communications aides — have been tasked with producing strategies to push back against the GOP probes. As the rhetoric heated up recently, the West Wing was in frequent communication with the House Democratic leadership to prepare for the process.

The staff has tried to cordon off operations related to impeachment, down to the way it handles press around it. The communications shop notably did not put out a statement in response to McCarthy, instead pointing to a tweet from Ian Sams, the spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office. A Democrat familiar with operations said that the Biden campaign sent out impeachment talking points to surrogates and anyone going on TV Tuesday in addition to leaning on its rapid response team.

The president himself has not spent much time dwelling on it, according to two people familiar with this thinking, though it has obviously taken up some of his time and attention.

No president or White House welcomes such an inquiry, which is time-consuming, draining, creates negative headlines and sometimes leads to unexpected directions. But inside the building, aides believe it is McCarthy, not Biden, who finds himself in a jam politically.

Biden aides believe that the speaker has been lurching from one moment to the next, trying to appease former President Donald Trump and his allied lawmakers while also aiming to placate the more moderate Republicans who won in Biden districts last year. They suspect the launch of a formal inquiry was an attempt to buy goodwill among conservatives to keep the government open when funding runs out in a matter of weeks. They note that McCarthy had recently pledged to seek a vote before authorizing the inquiry but didn’t — either out of a realization the votes weren’t there or because the funding standoff grew more dire.

Biden aides also believe that the escalation is tacit admission by Republicans that their previous probes turned up little.

“House Republicans have been investigating the President for 9 months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing,” Sams said in a statement. “McCarthy’s own Republican members have said so. He vowed to hold a vote to open impeachment, now he flip flopped because he doesn’t have support. This is extreme politics at its worst.”

McCarthy, in his remarks Tuesday, said he did not come to his decision lightly. He also urged the president to fully cooperate, saying it appeared the Biden family had engaged in an “abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption” that warranted “further investigation by the House of Representatives.”

It was presented as a shot across the bow to Biden. But inside the West Wing and among the president’s allies, some aides suggested they couldn’t believe their own good luck that the House GOP’s fall agenda may now largely focus on impeachment and potentially triggering a government shutdown — two significant political risks.

“This is a blatant political move, and I don’t know what they think it nets them because I think the country is tired of blatant political moves,” said Leah Daughtry, former chair of the Democratic National Committee. “Every American citizen can give you a list of things that the Congress should be doing and impeaching President Biden is not one of them.”

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Apparently these Republicans didn’t read their own report.

House Republican Report Finds No Evidence of Wrongdoing by President Biden

After months of investigation and many public accusations of corruption against Mr. Biden and his family, the first report of the premier House G.O.P. inquiry showed no proof of such misconduct.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released their first report on an investigation into President Biden and his family on Wednesday, May 10.

After four months of investigation, House Republicans who promised to use their new majority to unearth evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden acknowledged on Wednesday that they had yet to uncover incriminating material about him, despite their frequent insinuations that he and his family have been involved in criminal conduct and corruption.

At a much-publicized news conference on Capitol Hill to show the preliminary findings of their premier investigation into Mr. Biden and his family, leading Republicans released financial documents detailing how some of the president’s relatives were paid more than $10 million from foreign sources between 2015 and 2017.

Republicans described the transactions as proof of “influence peddling” by Mr. Biden’s family, including his son Hunter Biden, and referenced some previously known, if unflattering, details of the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings. Those included an episode in which he accepted a 2.8-carat diamond from a Chinese businessman. G.O.P. lawmakers also produced material suggesting that President Biden and his allies had at times made misleading statements in their efforts to push back aggressively against accusations of wrongdoing by Hunter Biden.

But on Wednesday, the Republicans conceded that they had yet to find evidence of a specific corrupt action Mr. Biden took in office in connection with any of the business deals his son entered into. Instead, their presentation underscored how little headway top G.O.P. lawmakers have made in finding clear evidence of questionable transactions they can tie to Mr. Biden, their chief political rival. (New York Times).

@DanGoldman -

18 Republican Members of the House are from districts that President Biden won. McCarthy and his red meat crowd don’t seem to understand they can’t win an Impeachment vote or the House in 2024.

One more thing.

Apparently, one of the leaders of the Biden Impeachment, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, was drunk this weekend.

Rep. Lauren Boebert escorted out of "Beetlejuice" musical in Denver.

Rep. Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a Sunday night performance of the “Beetlejuice” musical in downtown Denver, accused by venue officials of vaping, singing, recording and “causing a disturbance” during the performance.

In an incident report shared with The Denver Post on Tuesday afternoon, officials with Denver Arts & Venues wrote that two patrons were asked to leave the city-owned Buell Theatre during the performance of the touring Broadway show. They previously were issued a warning during the intermission regarding behavior that prompted three complaints from other theatergoers, the report says.

The report does not name Boebert as one of the patrons or identify the other person. But her campaign office — while disputing the behavior alleged — confirmed that she was escorted from the Buell on Sunday night during the “Beetlejuice” show.

The incident report states that after receiving the intermission warning, about five minutes into the second act security officials received “another complaint about the patrons being loud and at the time (they) were recording.” Taking pictures or recording is not permitted at shows.

The report quotes one of the ushers: “They told me they would not leave. I told them that they need to leave the theater and if they do not, they will be trespassing. The patrons said they would not leave. I told them I would (be) going to get Denver Police. They said go get them.”

The Republican from Silt is running for a third time in 2024 to represent the 3rd Congressional District, which covers much of western and southern Colorado.

Drew Sexton, the campaign manager for Boebert, told The Post that the second-term congresswoman denied vaping during the show. She did use her cellphone to take a picture of the performance, unaware that photos weren’t allowed.

“I can confirm the stunning and salacious rumors: in her personal time, Congresswoman Lauren Boebert is indeed a supporter of the performing arts (gasp!) and, to the dismay of a select few, enthusiastically enjoyed a weekend performance of ‘Beetlejuice,’ ” Sexton wrote in a statement. He noted that The Post’s review of the show last week described it as “zany,” “outrageous,” and a ‘lusty riot.”

Boebert, he wrote, encourages everyone to see the play and its “fantastic cast, tremendous visuals and plenty of loud laughs” — but, he added, “with a gentle reminder to leave their phones outside of the venue.”

The report also said after the two patrons were escorted out and reached the building’s vestibule, they resisted leaving and said “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board’ (and) ‘I will be contacting the mayor.’ ”

Police arrived and stayed in the lobby of the Buell until Boebert and her companion left, according to the report.

RELATED ARTICLES

• In 911 call, Lauren Boebert’s son accuses father of “throwing” him around the house

• Lauren Boebert’s neighbor called deputies after confrontation with congresswoman’s husband

• Congressional candidate Lauren Boebert has a history of minor arrests, court no-shows

While Sunday’s incident was resolved without much trouble, Boebert has found herself in trouble before. She was arrested and summonsed at least four times in the years leading up to her election to Congress in 2020.

In her first month in office, Boebert — known as an avid defender of the Second Amendment — reportedly attempted to walk through newly installed metal detectors, which sounded as she did. She then refused to turn over her bag to Capitol Police, who in turn refused to let her enter House chambers, according to reporters on the scene.

Last summer, her family made headlines when her husband reportedly threatened their neighbors during what the Garfield County sheriff described as a neighborhood disturbance. No arrests were made. In May, Boebert announced that she and her husband were divorcing. (Denver Post).

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Covid boosters are good to go, and will soon be at Pharmacies and Medical Centers near us.

Here, though, is an important sidebar. What to know if you plan to get the shots simultaneously.

Can You Get the New Covid Booster and the Flu Shot at the Same Time?

Most Americans will be eligible for both the new monovalent Covid vaccine and the annual flu shot this fall. You can schedule your vaccines separately or choose to get them at the same time. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it is safe to get both the Covid vaccine and flu shot together.

Combining vaccines, in general, is not unusual: Children often receive multiple shots at once, said Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious disease specialist at the University of California, San Francisco. Implementing the same strategy among adults can help more people get up to date on all their shots without having to make multiple visits to a doctor or pharmacy. “Convenience trumps everything,” he said.

The downsides are pretty small: Research shows that people are only slightly more likely to experience side effects like pain at the injection site, headaches, fatigue or fever if they opt for both shots at once. In one study published last week, researchers in Israel found that the incidence of side effects in people who just got the flu shot was 12.7 percent. Among those who only received the Covid bivalent booster last year, 27.4 percent experienced side effects, and of the people who received both vaccines, 27.6 percent experienced side effects. In other words, you shouldn't worry too much about feeling extra sore or sick if you get both vaccines together.

You could consider getting one shot in each arm if you want to avoid the discomfort of two needle pricks in the same arm.“It’s personal preference — there’s no medical reason to do it one way or another,” said Dr. Adam Ratner, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at N.Y.U. Langone.

Another concern is whether getting the Covid vaccine and the flu shot at the same time will negatively affect the body’s immune response to one or both vaccines. The same recent study provides reassurance there, too. While researchers did find that antibody levels against the coronavirus were 16 percent lower in people who got both vaccines compared to those who only got the Covid booster, these levels were not “substantially inferior” given the margin of error in the study’s sample size. And when the researchers followed up with participants 60 days after their vaccinations, none had gotten Covid-19.

Some experts believe that spreading out your shots might make sense if you can time them to just before each virus peaks. So while you may get the Covid vaccine this month, as cases rise in parts of the United States, you could consider waiting until later in the fall to get the flu shot. Flu cases typically peak between December and February; you can monitor flu activity in your state through the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s influenza surveillance reports for more detailed information. A doctor can also help you decide the best strategy, especially if you have a high risk of severe disease or are immunocompromised.(New York Times).

A moment of personal candor.

I had my flu shot yesterday, because I could. Eve will have her flu and Covid shot on Monday. I will have my Covid booster then too.

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The WNBA Playoffs Begin.

FIRST ROUND

(1) Las Vegas Aces vs. (8) Chicago Sky

Game 1: Chicago at Las Vegas, 10 p.m. ET Wednesday (ESPN)
Game 2: Chicago at Las Vegas, 3 p.m. ET Sunday (ABC)
Game 3*: Las Vegas at Chicago, tip TBD, Sept. 20 (ESPN)

(2) New York Liberty vs. (7) Washington Mystics

Game 1: Washington at New York, 7:30 p.m. ET Friday (ESPN2)
Game 2: Washington at New York, 7 p.m. ET, Sept. 19 (ESPN)
Game 3*: New York at Washington, tip TBD, Sept. 22 (ESPN2)

(3) Connecticut Sun vs. (6) Minnesota Lynx

Game 1: Minnesota at Connecticut, 8 p.m. ET Wednesday (ESPN2)
Game 2: Minnesota at Connecticut, 1 p.m. ET Sunday (ESPN)
Game 3*: Connecticut at Minnesota, tip TBD, Sept. 20 (ESPN)

(4) Dallas Wings vs. (5) Atlanta Dream

Game 1: Atlanta at Dallas, 9:30 p.m. ET Friday (ESPN2)
Game 2: Atlanta at Dallas, 9 p.m. ET, Sept. 19 (ESPN)
Game 3*: Dallas at Atlanta, tip TBD, Sept. 22 (ESPN2)

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