Dec. 14, 2020
Vol. 9, No. 286

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Just a Little Pinch: The coronavirus vaccine is on its way to the arms of Americans today. The first shipment is at least three million doses. Network news reporters are following the shipments like tracking Santa on Christmas Eve.

  It will be the biggest vaccination effort in the history of the country with President-elect Joe Biden planning to inoculate 100 million Americans within the first 100 days of his presidency.

  After being caught in a plan to give priority to his White House staff, President Trump last night reversed that decision, delaying to what he described as a more appropriate time. The virus has already ripped through the White House, infecting the President himself.

  With nearly 300,000 Americans dead of the virus, a stunning number of Americans say they don’t plan to be vaccinated against the proven deadly disease.

  A poll conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research  say that only about half of Americans are certain they want the vaccination. About 70 percent of the population needs to be vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

  Breaking it down, 47 percent of adults say they will take the vaccine and 27 percent say they will not. The undecideds are 27 percent. 

  Fifty-five percent of men say they’ll take it, but only 40 percent of women.

  Trust in the new vaccine is low among minorities. Only 24 percent of black Americans say they will get the vaccine and 40 percent say they won’t. Among Hispanics, 34 percent say they’ll get vaccinated and 26 percent say they will not.

Election Day: The Electoral College votes today, officially making Joe Biden the President-elect and causing Donald Trump to go down screaming.

  He told Fox News that “I worry about the country having an illegitimate president.”

  The President tweeted yesterday that, “Everybody knows that dead people, below age people, illegal immigrants, fake signatures, prisoners, and many others voted illegally.”

  Everybody does not “know that” and President Trump lawyers were unable to bring  proof of it to courts around the country. Yet Trump went on,  “Also, machine “glitches” (another word for FRAUD), ballot harvesting, non-resident voters, fake ballots, “stuffing the ballot box”, votes for pay.” 

  Millions of his supporters believe t, and they’re riled up. Saturday night in Washington at which the right wing and racist Proud Boys were prominent, four people were stabbed and nearly three dozen arrested.

Cyber Spying: Russian government hackers who broke into the State Department and White House email servers during the Obama administration have now hacked into servers for the Treasury and Commerce departments, as well as other government agencies, several news outlets report.

  It appears that the breaches have been going on for months, news reports say.

The Russian hackers known as APT29 or Cozy Bear, are part of that nation’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. It’s unknown what damage might have been done.

The Obit Page: British Cold War spy novelist John le Carré, who wrote the landmark 1963 “The Spy Who Came in From the Cold,” has died at age 89. 

    At the center of his novels about moral ambiguity, treachery, and bureaucracy was his anti-hero, the lumpy and unhappy George smiley. Sarah Lyall writes in The NY Times that, “Mr. le Carré’s spies are lonely, disillusioned men whose work is driven by budget troubles, bureaucratic power plays and the opaque machinations of politicians — men who are as likely to be betrayed by colleagues and lovers as by the enemy.”

>> Charley Pride, the country music singer who was a rare black voice in a white genre, died of the coronavirus at age 86. He rose to stardom with his hits “Kiss an Angel Good Mornin’” and “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone.” More than 50 of Pride’s records reached the country Top 10, 29 of them hitting No. 1. For a while early on, some radio stations refused to play his records because he was black.

Name Dropping: The Cleveland Indians baseball team has decided to delete “Indians” from its name after years of pressure from native American groups. Like the Washington Redskins, which is now just the Washington Football Team,  Cleveland conceded to the argument that its team name is racist and demeaning. They had already gotten rid of their logo and mascot, the grinning Indian Chief Wahoo, with a huge hook nose and a feather stuck in a headband.

  It’s a significant development in the effort to erase American Indian references from sports team names and logos. The President of the United States disagrees. He tweeted,” Oh no! What is going on? This is not good news, even for ‘Indians’. Cancel culture at work!”

Southern Strategy: It increasingly appears that the current First Family and some members of the extended clan will be moving behind the red wall of Florida after inauguration day. They’re thinking they won’t be so welcome in New York anymore.

  Melania Trump is reported to have scouted a private school for her son Baron, about 40 minutes away from the President’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Have sympathy for that kid if he has to live there.

  First daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner have bought property in Florida in a neighborhood of mansions. It’s a good place for them. 

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