I Beg Your Pardon - 12/2/2020

On today's show, we discuss the catchy headlines from late yesterday, including a criminal investigation that involves the White House, Bill Barr's admission of no widespread fraud in the election (and why I think this is a distraction). Also, I go over the finalizing of who will get the COVID vaccine first, the new quarantine guidelines, and news that COVID could have been in the U.S. earlier than we thought.

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Here's my article: Hitler Failed First Too: Why the GOP’s Attack on the Election Spells Trouble

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Here's Artur's article: https://www.quicknewsdaily.com/e/how-to-cope-move-forward-after-losing-job-covid/ 

Mostly Accurate Transcript:

Today is Wednesday, December 2nd, thanks again for joining me. I’m going to describe the show today as “deceptively interesting” because if you just hear the headlines of the stories, you’d think that a lot has happened since the last episode. But, because our government is just corrupt and used only for Trump’s profit, nothing is going to come from these stories. Maybe that’s just me being cynical; I honestly hope that I’m wrong, but only time will tell, which is the frustrating thing. 

I do want to mention quickly that there has been some great content on our website lately, if I do say so myself, so stick around until the end for more details on that. But first, let’s get caught

Let’s start with one of the flashy headlines that the news was interested in last night, which is that the DOJ is investigating the potential crime of someone close to the White House offering to give money to the White House or associated Super PACs in exchange for a pardon. 

We learned this from a release of 20 pages of a court document, and those pages were partially redacted, meaning the document does not give out names or dates of any events. However, it does reveal that this document was a request from prosecutors to get access to documents that were seized in a raid at the end of this summer. Law enforcement apparently seized over 50 digital devices, including iPhones, iPads, laptops, flash drives, and computer drives, so when we say “documents”, it doesn’t necessarily mean actual physical documents. 

The prosecutors want this access because in these cases, the seized material is looked over by a “filter team” who goes through the files to make sure there isn’t any privileged information that the prosecutors shouldn’t be seeing. However, the judge in this case granted this request because attorney-client privilege does not apply when they discuss crimes. Prosecutors argued that this seized material included evidence of a “secret lobbying scheme” and bribery conspiracy that offered "a substantial political contribution in exchange for a presidential pardon or reprieve of sentence" for a convicted defendant whose name is redacted. The Justice Department has clarified and said that "no government official was or is currently a subject or target of the investigation disclosed in this filing." The actual court document says "The political strategy to obtain a presidential pardon was 'parallel' to and distinct from [redacted]'s role as an attorney-advocate for [redacted name]," so I’m guessing Rudy Giuliani at this point. He  fits the bill as an attorney-advocate, and I’m sure that all of his funny business in Ukraine and peddling of Russian conspiracy theories is making him rethink whether all that was legal. The Justice Department wanted to keep filings related to the matter confidential in court, because "individuals and conduct" hadn't yet been charged, which also narrows down the possibilities and probably eliminates Michael Cohen. 

Ultimately, the prosecutors say they still intend to “confront” 3 people who had communications about this scheme, whatever that means. Again, my best guess is Rudy at this point, but if it centers around contributions, I’m not sure if Rudy had money to give. Either way, whoever it is, I really don’t think anything will come of this. Nothing ever seems to stick since Trump has Bill Barr for his attorney general, which is like the fox guarding the  hen house.

Speaking of Bill Barr, let’s go over the story that all the news led with last night: Barr said in an interview with AP that the DOJ had not found any widespread fraud that would change the results of the election. The FBI has been following up on complaints, but so far, they’ve found nothing. This story broke after Barr had spent about 3 hours at the White House yesterday, which I’m sure we’re not  pleasant for him. Or maybe they were if this was just put out as a diversion so they could talk about whatever other scummy plans they have. 

Needless to say, this was a big story because Barr has sacrificed his entire legacy to do Trump’s bidding. However, I think the news was missing the point, and that this was released to cover up one or more other things. The one I’m thinking of specifically is the revelation that Barr had appointed a Special Counsel to look into how the FBI opened its investigation into Trump’s campaign in 2016 (this is why Trump is always whining about Obama spying on his campaign). 

An order from Barr was leaked, and in that order, Barr gave the special counsel, John Durham, his instructions. The order said Durham’s investigation should be “including but not limited to Crossfire Hurricane and the investigation of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III” (I should just mention that Crossfire Hurricane is the name of the investigation that the FBI was doing during the campaign). 

If the name John Durham sounds familiar, it’s because he was already investigating this exact stuff months ago, but he wasn’t a special counsel at that time. By getting this title, it just means he’s more protected and can’t be fired as easily by whoever becomes Joe Biden’s attorney general. Special counsel’s are only supposed to be fired for misconduct, dereliction of duty, or conflicts of interest, but the key word is “supposed to”. Trump never did end up firing Bob Mueller, although there were several reports of him ordering people to and those people telling him he was an idiot for trying to. In any case, this move by Barr wasn’t made because he wants justice, it’s just to make it harder for Joe Biden because if Biden’s people fire Durham while Durham is investigating things that happened during the time of the Obama Administration, that obviously won’t look too good. 

Some news on the COVID vaccine front: members of the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices that is advising the CDC voted 13-1 to approve the people who will get the vaccine first (this is the group that makes up Phase 1a that I talked about a couple of Friday’s ago). So, the official word is that healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities will be first, as the group chairman called them “exceptionally high risk”. As for who exactly counts as long-term care facility residents, the CDC defines them as “adults who reside in facilities that provide a variety of services, including medical and personal care, to persons who are unable to live independently”. This group has undoubtedly been one of the hardest hit groups, accounting for 40% of COVID deaths in the United States, which translates to about 100,000 people. To go along with this, they said they’d be efficient in vaccinating the staff members of these facilities as well. 

For their part, 240,000 healthcare workers have gotten COVID in this country, and 858 have died. And for the purposes of the vaccine, this group will also include anyone at these facilities who could come into contact with residents who have COVID, meaning the folks delivering food, housekeeping workers who are trying to get the rooms cleaned up and ready for the next patient, etc., so it’s not just saying nurses and doctors and that sort of thing. 

After the vote passed, the president and CEO of the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living said “Given the asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic spread of this virus combined with the explosion of community spread across the U.S., we are extremely hopeful this vaccine will literally be a lifesaver for thousands of residents and expedite the reopening of our facilities to family members and loved ones”. 

Circling back to the actual vote, the one vote against approving this recommendation wasn’t made out of spite or hate or anything, the doctor was just concerned that the vaccine hasn’t been studied enough in the residents of these facilities, saying “we hope it works and we hope it’s safe. That concerns me on many levels”, but she also said she doesn’t have any concerns about healthcare workers taking it. 

This group will meet again if the FDA’s group of advisers approves the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use, and that meeting is already coming up next Thursday, December 10th. 

Just as a side note, the members of this group expect that 5-10 million doses are going to be made each week in the early months after the vaccine is approved.  

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/01/health/cdc-changing-quarantine-guidelines/index.html 

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/01/health/covid-antibody-blood-december-study/index.html 

There are a couple of miscellaneous COVID stories I still want to get to, the first of which is that two senior White House officials have told CNN that the current director of the CDC informed the Coronavirus Task Force that shortly, the CDC will be officially reducing the number of days that people should be quarantining after they come into contact with someone who has COVID. Like I mentioned just a couple of days ago, the new guidelines will say 7-10 days depending on if you test negative, instead of the original 14 days. If you test negative after being exposed, you can stop quarantining after 7 days. If you don’t get tested, then you should wait the full 10 days. 

The other news doesn’t matter much right now, but it’ll be interesting to investigate once this thing is over. This news comes from researchers for the CDC and the Red Cross, and it states that they’ve found evidence that the coronavirus was here in the U.S. as early as December, not January 15th like the story is now. These researchers found this after screening blood donations from this time period, where they found evidence of COVID antibodies. The part that seals it for me is that this wasn’t just one sample or something like that, this was 84 samples from 9 different states. The thing about these antibodies is that they don’t tell you specifically when you were infected, just that you were sometime before you got tested. According to a doctor at Columbia University, “you cannot distinguish between somebody being infected in December or being infected in March or April”. The one caveat here is that other coronaviruses like the common cold could mistakenly “fool” the test into thinking there are COVID antibodies, so that’s why it’ll be more interesting once this is over and we know what specifically to look for.