As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
Stephen Collinson has one of many takes on President Biden's first 100 days in office, and previews Biden's upcoming speech to Congress:
The increasingly radical presidency of Joe Biden was built on a straightforward foundation: putting Covid-19 shots in arms and stimulus checks in the bank.
"When
I took office, I decided that -- it was a fairly basic, simple
proposition, and that is I got elected to solve problems," Biden said at
his first official news conference in March. "And
the most urgent problem facing the American people, I stated from the
outset, was Covid-19 and the economic dislocation for millions and
millions of Americans."
Had
Biden stumbled on these key tasks, his emerging, and staggering,
multi-trillion dollar aspirations to remake the US economy and much of
the social safety net would have appeared not just ambitious but
politically inconceivable.
But the President can report at the end of his first 100 days in office to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night that he has successfully embarked on a mission he defined on Inauguration Day to "repair," "restore," "heal" and "build." [snip]
The scale of Biden's spending and the breadth of his ambition suggest he
is planning the most sweeping overhaul of the economy to benefit US
workers and the less well off in generations, and is seeking to reverse
attempts by ex-President Ronald Reagan and his successors to roll back
the New Deal and Great Society programs of Democratic Presidents
Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson. His speech will be an important
step in explaining what this means to the American people, with
opposition building inside Washington to his plans to hike corporate
taxes and capital gains taxes to pay for it all.
Here's David Lauter's view on the same topic.
If a person needs any more motivation to get vaccinated (more than, say, saving your life or lives of those around you!), how about this:
American tourists who have been fully
vaccinated against Covid-19 will be able to visit the European Union
over the summer, the head of the bloc’s executive body said in an
interview with The New York Times on Sunday, more than a year after
shutting down nonessential travel from most countries to limit the
spread of the coronavirus.
The fast
pace of vaccination in the United States, and advanced talks between
authorities there and the European Union over how to make vaccine certificates
acceptable as proof of immunity for visitors, will enable the European
Commission, the executive branch of the European Union, to recommend a
switch in policy that could see trans-Atlantic leisure travel restored.
“The
Americans, as far as I can see, use European Medicines Agency-approved
vaccines,” Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission,
said Sunday in an interview with The Times in Brussels. “This will
enable free movement and the travel to the European Union.
Freedom to travel. That seemed like a dream not that long ago.
Speaking of vaccinations, the "pause" in administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccines seems to be (surprise!) causing a large swath of the public to avoid getting vaccinated at a critical time:
Fewer than 1 in 4 Americans not yet immunized against the coronavirus say they would be willing to get the vaccine made by Johnson & Johnson, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll that finds broad mistrust of the shot’s safety after federal health officials paused its use.
The
nationwide survey shows that slightly fewer than half of U.S. adults
overall say they consider the Johnson & Johnson vaccine very or
somewhat safe after its use was halted this month following reports of
rare, severe blood clots. [snip]
Some leading vaccine authorities said the comparatively slender public
faith in the Johnson & Johnson shot casts doubt on whether the
government’s decision to halt that vaccine was in the best interest of
the nation’s health, balancing the dangers of going unvaccinated against
the low incidence of the brain blood clots.
“If I hear the phrase ‘abundance of caution’ one more time, I’m going to
jump out of my window,” said Paul A. Offit, a vaccine expert at
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “In the name of transparency, in
the name of openness, we scare people.”
To us, it was something of an unforced error by the FDA, and we're now seeing the results. Maybe they should have consulted a psychologist or marketing expert before they made the decision to pause.
Some of them may think they'll not fade away, but is time on their side?
Bob Dylan
was a comparatively young man of 65 when he recorded his gently
swinging “Spirit On the Water” 15 years ago. Now, as his 80th birthday
approaches on May 24, he is among a number of rock legends who this year
will begin their ninth decade of life and are still going strong.
Some of the others turning 80 this year range from David Crosby and Martha Reeves to guitar great Steve Cropper, Art Garfunkel and Temptations singer Otis Williams, who is the sole surviving original member of that fabled Motown singing group.
“It seems quite plausible to be a musician in your 70s or 80s now,” said Jethro Tull founder Ian Anderson,
73. His 54-year-old band is now completing a new album, its first in 18
years. Jethro Tull’s ninth album, released in 1976, was titled “Too Old
to Rock ‘n’ Roll: Too Young to Die.”
“We can continue to be productive and die with our boots on,”
Anderson continued, “which is a lot better than being spoon-fed in an
old-folks home.”
We didn't watch them, but apparently this year's Oscars were plodding, odd, and ultimately disappointing . Here's a list of the "winners."
Please do yourself a favor and head over to Infidel 753's link round-up for his excellent selection of interesting items from around the Internet. While you're in his neighborhood, check out his essay "A reason for blogging," for a revealing look at his motivations.
