A Historic Day: The Electoral College Vote and the COVID Vaccine

To start the new week, we have a lot to get through, including the COVID vaccine deployment, the Electoral College vote, the protests in DC this weekend (thanks to the Seditious 126), and the Russians hacking major government departments and agencies.

----more----

Find Quick News Daily on other podcast platforms: https://rebrand.ly/QuickNews

Sources:

COVID-19 vaccines head to California; Western states' medical experts confirm safety 
US coronavirus: CDC officially allows vaccine to be administered as shipments begin 
White House staff members will be among the first to be vaccinated. 
Electoral college vote may be knockout blow to Trump's ploy to subvert election | US elections 2020 | The Guardian  
https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1337815329158950913?s=20 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/historic-black-churches-attacked-during-pro-trump-rallies-saturday/2020/12/13/d897bfb0-3d54-11eb-8bc0-ae155bee4aff_story.html?itid=pr_hybrid_experimentrandom_with_top_mostshared_2_na-ans_2 
Russian government spies are behind a broad hacking campaign that has breached U.S. agencies and a top cyber firm
Michigan House punishes GOP Rep. Gary Eisen for hinting at Electoral College disruption
Live: Here Are the Electoral College Results, By State   

(Mostly Accurate) Transcript:

OPEN

 

Today is December 14th, welcome to another Monday edition of Quick News Daily. I’d say it’s a pretty exciting and historic day in US history: the COVID vaccine is being distributed as we speak; maybe some of you listening have already been lucky enough to have gotten it. I’d say you’re both brave for trusting this, as well as lucky to be one step closer to beating this virus. We’ll talk more about that in just a bit, as well as the Electoral College, as well as the protests from this weekend. It’s some important stuff, so let’s get caught up right away.  

COVID VACCINES

 

We’ll start right there with the deployment of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to all 50 states. The first shipments of the vaccine left Portage, Michigan early Sunday. States will get vaccines based on their adult population, and more shipments are coming later this week. About 189,000 vials of vaccine departed the plant and are expected to arrive in all 50 states Monday. 400 boxes packed with about 390,000 vials will ship on Monday, meaning they’ll arrive Tuesday. There are five doses of vaccine per vial, according to Pfizer, so doing the rough math, that adds up to 2,895,000 doses that have gone out on Sunday and Monday. 

 

The vaccine is heading to sites across the country (mainly hospitals) that can store it at the 94 degrees below zero that it requires, which is colder than Antarctica. Pfizer is using containers with dry ice and GPS-enabled sensors to ensure each shipment stays cold enough to be useful. 

 

As for where we’re heading with this and what it could mean, the head of US coronavirus vaccine efforts told Fox News Sunday that "all in all, we hope to have immunized 100 million people" by the end of the first quarter of 2021. 

 

Honestly, the sooner the better, because we are breaking records across the country right now. The Public Health Director for Los Angeles County summed up what we’re seeing right now by saying "the issue right now is what we call the Thanksgiving surge. We had a surge, and now we have a surge on top of a surge, and it's really hard for us to calculate exactly what we're going to see in the next week or two." She’s specifically talking about Christmas and people traveling for the holidays, which could be a real problem because there’s always a 2-3 week period in between the superspreader events and the surge at hospitals. 

 

In the country's 10 largest cities, the number of hospital patients who had the virus ranged from about 9% in New York to 23% in Chicago. In El Paso, Texas, more than 50% of patients in city hospitals had COVID between November 27 and December 3, which was nearly double the national average for that period.

 

HYPOCRISY

 

Yes, we’re all starting to get used to that sound by now, and it means we’re going to be talking about the soon-to-be former president, Donald Trump. I want to talk a little bit about the hypocrisy of his administration, and Republicans in general. 

 

The New York Times is reporting that White House staff members who work in close quarters with Trump have been told that they’re scheduled to receive the COVID vaccine soon, you know, when the vaccine is in short supply and only being distributed to high-risk health care workers. Yes, the people who made the decision to let us all die to try and save Trump’s political career are going to be the first ones who are saved. 

 

The goal of distributing the vaccine inside the West Wing is to prevent additional government officials from falling ill. Well here’s a crazy idea: wear masks! Social distance! Do everything we’ve been forced to do for 9 months because of their idiotic decisions. 

 

The Times goes on to say that “while many Trump officials said they were eager to receive the vaccine and would take it if it were offered, others said they were concerned it would send the wrong message by making it appear as if Trump staff members were hopping the line to protect a president who has already recovered from the virus and bragged that he is now “immune.”’

 

Honestly, I’m hoping that there aren’t many people left to be vaccinated since The White House has already gone through multiple waves on its own. First it was Trump, his family, Kayleigh McEnany, and some others in mid-October. A few weeks later, Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, and a handful of other Pence staff members and advisers got sick. By the way, you’re trying to tell me Pence never got it when literally everyone around him was getting it? They just didn’t want to look completely incompetent by saying that both the president and vice president got coronavirus. 

Then, a third wave hit the West Wing after Trump's election night party at the White House. Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Ben Carson were the notable ones from that round of the virus. 

This is just great. I mean, Trump really is the president of the forgotten man in the Midwest. You just know there’s some overweight white dude in Nowhere-town, Kansas who’s fist-pumping, hooting, and hollering at this news. My guy, how many times does Trump have to get preferential treatment before you realize he doesn’t give a damn about you? He does not care if you live or die. 

RUSSIAN HACKING

 

Getting back to some serious news, it was announced over the weekend that Russian government hackers breached the Treasury and Commerce Departments, as well as other U.S. government agencies, during a global espionage campaign that stretches back months, according to reporting from the Washington Post.

 

They say officials were scrambling over the weekend to see how far the Russians got into the systems, and to implement effective countermeasures, but the initial signs suggested the breach was long-running and significant.

 

In some cases, email systems were breached (but her emails…).  Some of these attacks were performed by the same group that hacked the State Dept. and White House email servers during the Obama Administration.

 

All of the organizations were breached through the update server of a network management system called SolarWinds. The SolarWinds company said in a statement that monitoring products it released in March and June of this year may have been tampered with in a “highly-sophisticated, targeted . . . attack.”

 

The scale of the Russian espionage operation is looking pretty large at the moment. My favorite quote was just this one unnamed source who said “this is looking very, very bad.” You don’t say? 

 

SolarWinds is used by more than 300,000 organizations across the world. They include all five branches of the U.S. military, the Pentagon, State Department, Justice Department, NASA, the Executive Office of the President and the National Security Agency, the world’s top electronic spy agency, according to the firm’s website, so that’s good news… 

 

Russia also compromised a leading cybersecurity firm, FireEye, which came out last week and reported it was breached. 

 

It’s not clear yet what info the Russians got to, but FireEye disclosed it has lost hacking tools that the company uses to test clients’ computer defenses.

 

So far there is no sign that the hack was for purposes of leaking information, or for disruption of critical infrastructure, such as electric grids (that actually is good news). The SolarWinds tool monitors a client’s network for performance, identifying problems like failing switches. It has extremely deep “administrative” access to a network’s core functions, which means that gaining access to the SolarWinds tool would allow the Russians to freely play around in the victim's computer systems.

 

The hacking group “APT29” compromised the SolarWinds server that sends updates, meaning that when a client of SolarWinds checked in to update their software, the Russians could latch onto that request and “ride it back into” that company’s computer system. The best way I can describe it is like this: picture it’s 1985, and you’re driving your pickup truck through Hill Valley, California. You’re just driving through downtown, minding your own business when you check your mirror and see Michael J. Fox on his skateboard, hanging on the back of your pickup truck, catching a free ride! I’ll tell you what: I can never pass up a good Back to the Future reference. 

 

I’m not really sure how much more we’ll hear about this for now. I think it could be a while since the hacking is a national security issue. Not to mention that the government probably doesn’t want people to start panicking. 

ELECTORAL COLLEGE

 

Uh oh, there’s that transition again! It’s actually extra-appropriate for this story though, because today, electors are gathering in state capitols all across the country to place their votes for the presidential election. Who knows, by the time this comes out, Joe Biden might already be the winner of the Electoral College! As of the time of this recording, Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Georgia have all voted for Biden, and those are the states that Trump has been trying his hardest to overturn. What that really means is...Joe Biden has won the presidency for like the 100th time in the past two months. 

 

I am excited to finally just get this over with, and I’m also super excited for the history being made by our future Madame Vice President. However, I am also worried that this will drive Trump even crazier, if that’s possible. On Sunday morning he was still tweeting in all caps that this was the “most corrupt election in US history!”

 

He also did an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Sunday, where he said that he’s going to keep fighting no matter what. Side note: the Fox News interviewer, Brian Kilmeade, of course did not push back. I mean, I knew he was always going to be a suck up, but come on man, have some dignity for one second.  

 

There was also news made on Friday when the US supreme court voted not to hear a lawsuit led by Texas to block Biden’s victory in four other states (not even in Texas, which makes sense *extreme sarcasm*). In a different case, a Wisconsin supreme court judge decried Trump’s lawsuit aiming to nullify the votes of 200,000 Americans, saying it “smacked of racism”. Man, there it is again: someone saying something “smacks” of something. That’s just the weirdest phrase to me. 

 

Either way, even when the vote is over today, most Republicans are still going to try and live with their heads in the sand, as evidenced by a recent Quinnipiac University poll that found that 77% of Republicans believe that there was widespread voter fraud in the election. I’m not exactly sure, but I’d wager a bet that if you asked this same group if the moon was made of cheese, about 80% would say yes. 

 

But honestly, that’s what worries me most about next time: that this many people believe in something that’s as real as Harry Potter. Maybe it’s time to start shopping around for houses in Canada. 

 

PROTESTS

 

Ouch. It’s an unlucky day today when we have to hear that music 3 times, but alas, here we are. Speaking of those idiots who believe the election was rigged, there were “Stop the Steal” protests in Washington, DC this weekend. Considering that the Proud Boys showed up, it went about exactly how you would expect. 

 

By the end of Saturday, DC Police said that there had been 33 people arrested, as well as 4 people who got stabbed. The arrests went something like this: six people were arrested for assault on police officers, 10 were arrested for simple assault, four for riotous acts, two for crossing a police line and one for possession of a prohibited weapon -- a Taser. Oh, also, three French hens, two turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree. 

 

Eight police officers were hurt while they were trying to stop the violence. And maybe it’s just me, but isn’t it kind of strange how it’s all about “backing the blue” until the blue actually tries to enforce the law and you don’t like it? Weird how that happens. 

 

A man named Philip Johnson was arrested in the incident and charged with assault with a dangerous weapon. He was “allegedly” in a knife fight, which was caught on video, that shows a black man being surrounded and beaten by a crowd of Proud Boys. Stand back and stand by, am I right?

The group chased the man — again, alleged to be Johnson — who pulls out a blade to fend off the crowd. A separate video shows a man with a stab wound to the stomach. 

Several historic black churches were also vandalized, but of course, there’s nothing about that on Fox News. I mean, can you imagine how unbearable they’d be if a bunch of Black Lives Matter protesters vandalized just one church?  The hypocrisy is maddening. 

This article from CNN says that there are videos circulating on social media that show small fights, but that the large gatherings were mostly peaceful, which I am not buying. It seems like the media is already trying to normalize this. I’m sorry, the only violence I remember happening during the George Floyd protests was when police started beating the crap out of protesters because it was 8pm and past curfew. The only violence is coming from the right, like when a 17-year-old crossed state lines to “defend a business”, except defending a business is actually just code for murdering 2 people who were protesting for equal rights, or guy who had to fend off a mob with a knife, and he’s the one getting arrested! The violence is coming from the right; they’re purposely trying to start it, because it’s exactly what they want. Maybe the protesters in Portland were the worst when they were throwing fireworks at the cops protecting the federal building there, but I’d still argue that was a response to the unmarked agents who were kidnapping people off the street under the orders of Bill Barr and Donald Trump. 

 

This is the direct result of Trump not conceding, and more importantly, the Republicans who are letting Trump keep going on with these fantasies of fraud. I’m going to start referring to these Republicans as the “Seditious 126”, which is something that started on Twitter. The Seditious 126 are the 126 Republican members of the House (actual United States congressmen and women) who signed onto that Texas lawsuit that tried to throw out the votes of everyone in those 4 swing states. I’m going to get into that more later in the week, but they must be held lawfully accountable for their actions. 

 

Just to end this segment on something of a light-hearted note, disgraced former General Mike Flynn was leading a rally during these protests, and his sister tried leading a horrible rendition of America the Beautiful, because nothing is more American than protesting to throw out votes. Anyways, listen to how this went…

 

I’m sorry, what was that? “Land where I sail”? It’s literally the second line of the song, and she still messed it up that badly. Also, who thinks of sailing like that? Is she The Captain from How I Met Your Mother?

 

BIDEN NOMINATIONS CONTINUE

 

One last quick story here: Joe Biden made some more appointments and nominations at the end of last week, which I missed. He named Susan Rice as his domestic policy adviser and Denis McDonough to serve as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.

 

Rice served as the national security adviser and ambassador to the United Nations under President Obama. In a smart move on Biden’s part, the domestic policy adviser is not a Senate-confirmed position, meaning she won’t have to go through a confirmation battle where the Republicans can just rant and rave about Benghazi again, like they actually care. 

 

McDonough served as White House chief of staff for Obama’s second term. He will need to be confirmed by the Senate next year  since VA Secretary is a Cabinet position. Under Obama, McDonough also served as deputy national security adviser and chief of staff of the National Security Council, so they’re both certainly qualified for their roles. 

 

END

 

I don’t think I have any news on my end here, but it is Monday, meaning it’s time to thank our contributors. Thank you to our producer, Kathy, and our executive producer, Gwen!