8/25/21 The Taliban Closes in on Afghanis Who Want to Leave the Country

For Afghanis now on their way to the Kabul Airport, the window for evacuations may be closing frighteningly fast. The deadline is still August 31, and the Taliban has now blocked at least one road leading to an airport gate, stopping Afghanis from reaching the evacuation site.

Throngs of Afghanis are already at the Kabul Airport, waiting to be transported to some friendly country, but the Taliban says it wants to keep those people in the country too. The Taliban is now asking professionals to stay and exercise their skills at home, assuring them that they’ll come to no harm if they stay. It's hard to imagine anyone who doesn't worry that is a lie.

The government has announced Sharia law, but no one seems clear whether that means women must stay inside their homes, unable to go out to work or get an education. Desperate times, for sure.

On Tuesday, President Biden said that 70,700 people had been evacuated since August 14, including some 18,000 on Monday and Tuesday. Only a few more days are left to airlift civilians before the Americans have to evacuate or destroy their equipment and then ferry away their last group of troops. The Taliban has threatened to do something -- they're not clear on what -- if Americans are still on the ground in Afghanistan after that.

We'd guess that the Taliban are worried about brain drain, because practically any Afghani with an education or skills would leave the country just to avoid the clenched fist of the new government.

Let's hope all the Afghanis who helped the United States -- and their families -- can get on a flight.

__________

Do you think that the evacuation ought to go on into September despite Taliban threats? Will it?

Has the US done right by the Afghanis who helped us?

Is there any possibility that the Taliban will not retaliate against Afghanis who stay in the country?

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics/first-us-troops-leaving-afghanistan/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/asia/kabul-airport-afghanistan-intl-hnk/index.html

8/12/21 Floods Leave Scores of Tennessee Residents Dead or Missing

"At least" and "more than" are scary words if you have kith or kin in Tennessee. As of Sunday afternoon, "at least 22 people" were dead and "more than 50 people" were missing in the floodwaters that no one had ever foreseen in middle Tennessee. In rural areas, the flooding took out cell phone towers and telephone lines and made roads impassable. No one outside the area knew who had lived or died. Rescue workers were going door to door to find survivors.

On Saturday, a creek running through Waverly, TN rose so fast that grocery store employees downstream from a devastated area of town climbed on desks and counters and tried unsuccessfully to break the ceiling so they could retreat into the attic. Mercifully, the water began to subside before they were swept away.

Parts of the area took 17 inches of rain in 24 hours, breaking the previous rainfall record by three inches. The deluge was double meteorologists' previous estimates of the maximum flooding possible in that area of the state.

"We had an incredible amount of water in the atmosphere," Hurley said of Saturday's flooding. "Thunderstorms developed and moved across the same area over and over and over."

Nowadays, such destructive, unheard-of weather is happening far more often.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tennessee-flood-death-toll-missing/ Photo: "Heavy Rain, Flash Flooding Possible Across Parts of Lower Mississippi Valley, Southeast" by NASA Goddard Photo and Video is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8/22/21 DeSantis's Press Secretary Threatens Journalists

The ex-President used to call the media "the enemy." DeSantis doesn't say it out loud, but he seems okay with having his press secretary sic strangers on reporters whose stories she doesn't like.

After one story, Press Secretary Christine Pushaw tweeted "drag them." The story reported that DeSantis was touting a COVID19 antibody treatment that a big donor had invested in.

In another tweet, Pushaw threatened to "put [the reporter] on blast." She even set a deadline for the changes, and then retweeted someone else who asked followers to "Light. Them. Up." The reporter was Brendan Farrington with the Associated Press in Tallahassee.

The AP's incoming CEO, Daisy Veerasingham, wrote a letter to DeSantis on Friday asking him to stop "harassing behavior" from Pushaw. Her actions after the antibody treatment story "Resulted in a torrent of abusive comments directed at the reporter," Veerasingham wrote. "We call on you to eliminate this attack strategy from your press office."

Pushaw's response to the letter was defiant. She tweeted that the AP "is embarrassed they got caught pushing potentially deadline misinformation narratives ... and make the story into 'Republicans pounce.' Don't fall for it."

Maybe this sort of thing has happened for years on a smaller scale, but social media have enabled Pushaw's tactics to threaten reporters' lives. In this case, at least, Twitter blocked Pushaw's account, although for a mere 12 hours.

No one needs to tell WRP readers how dangerous an attack on the press -- even from a sycophantic underling -- is to capital-D Democracy. It's a deliberate effort to suppress the truth in favor of a lie. There are NO circumstances that a factually accurate story -- or even an inaccurate story that was written in a good-faith effort to tell the truth -- could be banned under the first Amendment.

Mind you, the Supreme Court justice who was confirmed despite obvious red flags -- Brett Kavanaugh -- is talking about taking a swipe at the First Amendment protections that have stood in place for more than half a century.

This is not Afghanistan. It's not Russia or China. Unless and until the Constitution itself is changed, Christine Pushaw and the man responsible for her prominence, Rick DeSantis, deserve to be sued, not only by the AP, but by the U.S. Attorney General. Or at least by the American Civil Liberties Union. Or somebody. To be frank, I don't know who has the standing to put an end to this.

_________

Do you think that this is a big deal -- or not?

Is this development really a threat to democracy?

Do you think that DeSantis and his press secretary should be sued?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/ap-desantis-reporter-harassment_n_61201c8ae4b0caf7ce30a657 Illustration: "Scream for all your worth" by id-iom is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

8/20/21 "Please Lower the Price of Insulin," say House Dems to Drug Execs

The average price of insulin tripled between 2002 and 2013 and almost doubled between 2012 and 2016, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Three companies produce 99 percent of the insulin in all the wide world: Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi. Yesterday, two leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee -- both Democrats -- asked these companies to explain what they'd done to lower insulin prices since the committee last brought it up with them, in early 2019.

“The Committee is troubled that despite your company’s expressions of shared concern, insulin prices in the United States remain unacceptably high,” wrote Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and oversight subcommittee Chairwoman Diana DeGette (D-Colo.). They pointed out that very little has changed since insulin was first developed a century ago and that everyone but Americans pays less.

The letter's effect is likely to be zilch. Just take a look at the drugmakers' responses to the 2019 letter. Eli Lilly said insured patients who paid more than $35 a month should call the Lilly Diabetes Solution Center. That was the most substantive of the three. Novo Nordisk looked forward "to ongoing dialogue with the Committee on policy solutions that support patients," while Sanofi said it was “committed to helping patients get the treatment that they are prescribed.” The committee's 2021 letter pointed out that the price of one of Sanofi's insulin products had risen 82 percent since 2012.

Meanwhile, Walmart has said it's planning to launch a new, much less expensive brand of insulin. From the evidence, undercutting prices will be a breeze.

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/568548-house-democrats-press-insulin-manufacturers-for-lower-prices Image: "Health" by 401(K) 2013 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

8/19/21 Need a Positive Story? Olympic Javelin Thrower Auctions Her Medal to Save a Baby's Life

She may have a silver medal, but Maria Andrejczyk of Poland has a decidedly gold-medal heart.

The family of 8-month-old Miloszek Malysa, who has a heart defect, was doing an online fundraiser when Andrejczyk heard of it. The boy needed an operation at Stanford Medical Center. The total cost including travel would be $385,000.

Andrejczyk won her silver medal after she recovered from bone cancer. She decided to part with her medal to save his life, and set up an online auction.

A Polish convenience store called Zabka won the auction, paying enough to cover the entire cost of Miloszek's trip. Then they added a noble gesture of their own: They returned Andrejczyk's medal.

Such kindness! 

https://thehill.com/changing-america/well-being/prevention-cures/568470-olympian-sells-her-medal-for-babys-life-saving

Illustration: "Heart" by hile is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8/20/21 Income Up, Revenue Down, Taxes Dive in a Hole in the Ground

In 2019, 44% of U.S. households owed NO federal income taxes. In 2020, that number went up to 61%. That's 76 million households in 2019 and 107 million in 2020.

"But keep in mind: It was only temporary," wrote Howard Gleckman of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. The proportion will fall in the next two years, the TPC figures, to about 57% of households for 2021 and about 42% percent for 2022. Assuming the laws don't change, that is.

How'd it happen? Well, the millions who lost their jobs in the first months of the pandemic had steep drops in their employment income.

Then there were three rounds of stimulus checks, each structured as refundable tax credits. The stimulus checks "had the effect of significantly reducing tax liability in both 2020 and 2021 ... And the payments flipped some households from paying income tax to not doing so," Gleckman writes.

Not that those households went tax free. Heck, no. That's only the bazillionaires. Everyone else paid payroll taxes (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) and state taxes, not to mention sales tax and so forth.

About 21% of households paid neither federal income taxes nor payroll taxes last year -- but you wouldn't want to be in their shoes, because those households didn't bring in a lot of money either. Fortunately, they benefited from some of Biden's tax credits for low-income earners.

Go figure. Hey, go crazy with it! 

https://thehill.com/policy/finance/568567-61-percent-of-households-owed-no-federal-income-taxes-last-year-analysis

8/19/21 Zuckerberg Touts Facebook's Clean-up of COVID19 Misinformation

"If we see harmful misinformation on the platform, then we take it down. It's against our policy," Mark Zuckerberg told "CBS This Morning" co-host Gayle King in an exclusive interview on Wednesday. Zuckerberg said Facebook had deleted 18 million posts with COVID19 misinformation.

"But how many people have viewed the misinformation? Is it more than 18 million? Is it less than 18 million?" King asked. "And Facebook is being blamed for that."

"I understand what you're saying," Zuckerberg said. "The number that I have off the top of my head that I can share is the number of pieces of misinformation that we've taken action against."

Once again, Facebook ends up with egg on its face after a single question from a journalist. Its effort sounds good in principle, but it doesn't take much to peer inside Zuckerberg's statements and find more tap-dancing with the facts.

What's more, while there's no question that 18 million posts is a lot, we've seen an awful lot of innocent posts get censored because Facebook algorithms can't tell the difference between objectionable content and reasonable content that contains similar words. (Similarly, Facebook algorithms have trouble finding offensive photos. Once they though a cow’s head was a human head, for example!)

Facebook's efforts are typically like someone trying to do surgery in a pair of mittens.

Let's hope 18 million deleted posts is enough to put COVID19 misinformation to bed.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-covid-misinformation-post/

Photo: "I hate you COVID" by Matthew Almon Roth is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0