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Nearly 1,000 Flights Canceled on Christmas Day

December 26, 2021 at 2:49 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“U.S. airlines scrapped nearly 1,000 flights on Saturday, the second straight day of massive cancellations as surging COVID-19 infections have sidelined some pilots and other crew members, upending plans for tens of thousands of holiday travelers over the Christmas weekend,” Reuters reports.

Associated Press: “FlightAware, a flight-tracking website, noted 941 flights entering, leaving or inside the U.S. canceled Saturday, up from 690 Friday. Over 200 more flights were already canceled for Sunday.”

Filed Under: Transportation

Taliban Dissolves Afghan Election Commissions

December 26, 2021 at 2:45 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“The Taliban dissolved Afghanistan’s two election commissions as well as the state ministries for peace and parliamentarian affairs,” the AP reports.

A spokesman called them “unnecessary institutes for the current situation in Afghanistan.”

Filed Under: Foreign Affairs

The Third Year of Covid

December 26, 2021 at 9:19 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“America’s third year of dealing with the pandemic is likely to start as bleak as ever, with a devastating Omicron surge for the first couple of months,” Axios reports.

“Experts are hopeful that once the wave of cases, hospitalizations and deaths caused by the Omicron variant ebbs, life will finally be able to more closely resemble normal.”

“The silver lining of a tough January and February is that most of the country could have some degree of immunity afterwards — either through vaccination, infection, or both — that helps protect them against severe COVID infections in the future.”

Filed Under: Health Care


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Quote of the Day

December 26, 2021 at 8:16 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“This is an emergency Christmas Day warning to President Trump. You are either completely ignorant… or you are one of the most evil men who ever lived… What you told Candace Owens is nothing but a raft of dirty lies.”

— Alex Jones, pushing back on former President Trump’s claim that the coronavirus vaccines work.

Filed Under: Conspiracy Theories

The Redistricting Turnaround

December 26, 2021 at 8:10 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Paul Waldman: “It’s still too early to say how all this will turn out, and the 2022 elections are also an uncertainty. But the big picture, as Dave Wasserman of the Cook Political Report says, is that ‘redistricting is shaping up to be close to a wash.’”

“And as Joel Wertheimer predicted at Data for Progress, ‘when redistricting is finished, more districts in 2022 will be to the left of Joe Biden’s 4.5-point national margin against Trump than in 2020.’ This is about as good an outcome as Democrats could have hoped for.”

Filed Under: Redistricting

Dr. Oz Has Long Given Dubious Medical Advice

December 26, 2021 at 8:06 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

New York Times: “As Dr. Oz jumped last month into the Republican primary for Senate in Pennsylvania, where his celebrity gives him an important advantage in a crucial race, he tied his candidacy to the politics of the pandemic. He appealed to conservatives’ anger at mandates and shutdowns, and at the ‘people in charge’ who, he said, ‘took away our freedom.’”

“But the entry into the race of the Cleveland-born heart surgeon, a son of Turkish immigrants who has been the host of The Dr. Oz Show since 2009, also brought renewed scrutiny to the blemishes on his record as one of America’s most famous doctors: his long history of dispensing dubious medical advice.”

“In ebullient language, he has often made sweeping claims based on thin evidence, which in multiple cases, like that of hydroxychloroquine, unraveled when studies he relied on were shown to be flawed.”

Filed Under: 2022 Campaign

Early Holiday Shopping Helps Offset Omicron Damper

December 26, 2021 at 7:59 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Wall Street Journal: “American consumers spent at a brisk pace over the shopping season, as an early rush to stores amid worries about supply and delivery problems muted the effects of a Covid-19 surge that disrupted some businesses and crimped spending before Christmas.”

Filed Under: Economy

Too Early to Say Omicron Is ‘Mild’

December 26, 2021 at 7:55 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

William Hanage: “Time and again throughout this pandemic, TV talking heads, politicians and many others have gotten tripped up on the simple and immutable fact that hospitalizations lag infection. It can take weeks for an infection to progress to the point where the patient needs to be hospitalized. Omicron burst onto the scene only four weeks ago. Not enough time has passed for us to have a firm grip on disease severity.”

“Again that’s because of math: When a variant spreads extremely rapidly, as omicron seems to do, it can send false signals of reassurance on disease severity.”

Filed Under: Health Care

Desmond Tutu Is Dead

December 26, 2021 at 7:49 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Desmond Tutu, South Africa’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning activist for racial justice and LGBT rights and retired Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town, has died, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa announced Sunday,” the AP reports.

Washington Post: “A small, effervescent man with a crooked nose and infectious toothy grin, Archbishop Tutu served as Black South Africa’s informal ambassador to the world during the dark days of repression and as a crucial voice in the campaign for racial equality that culminated with Nelson Mandela’s election as the country’s first Black president in 1994.”

Filed Under: Religion

The James Webb Space Telescope Has Launched

December 25, 2021 at 9:06 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Scientific American: “The relief was as deep as the stakes were high. At 7:20 A.M. (ET), the rocket carrying the largest, most ambitious space telescope in history cleared the launchpad in French Guiana, and the members of mission control at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore roared their elation.”

“The suspense was not quite over. Half an hour postlaunch, the telescope still needed to decouple from its host rocket, after which had to deploy solar panels to partly power its journey. Only after that first deployment proved successful, said a NASA spokesperson in a statement to Scientific American, would ‘we know we have a mission.’ When the announcement of a successful rocket separation and solar-array deployment finally came, it was almost drowned out by cheers.”

Filed Under: Science

Merry Christmas!

December 25, 2021 at 7:00 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

I wish you all happy holidays and a very merry Christmas!

I hope you use the holiday to catch up with your loved ones — especially your dogs — and take a short break from politics.

Filed Under: Administrative

Trump Spokesman Fights Subpoena for Bank Records

December 24, 2021 at 11:23 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for former President Donald Trump, is fighting a subpoena sent by the House Jan. 6 Committee to JPMorgan Chase for his banking records, arguing in a court filing that he’s being denied due process in the matter after providing hundreds of pages of documents and hours of sworn testimony,” Fox News reports.

Filed Under: House of Representatives

‘The Whole Neighborhood Started Doing It’

December 24, 2021 at 8:26 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Washington Post: “A man strung Christmas lights from his home to his neighbor’s to support her. The whole community followed.”

Filed Under: Trends

Biden, First Lady Visit Hospitalized Kids

December 24, 2021 at 8:21 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden brought some Christmas Eve cheer to hospitalized children who aren’t well enough to go home for the holidays,” the AP reports.

“It’s longstanding tradition for first ladies to visit Children’s National Hospital at Christmastime, but Joe Biden’s visit on Friday was a surprise. It marked the first time that a sitting president had joined the fun.”

Filed Under: White House

The Worst Political Predictions of 2021

December 24, 2021 at 4:05 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Politico covers some of the whoppers, but this is my favorite:

On the morning of Jan. 6, conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt appeared on Megyn Kelly’s podcast and was asked a question on the minds of seemingly every political observer in America: “Joe Biden’s going to get certified today. What does Trump do over the next two weeks before the inauguration? I mean, he’s still going to be saying what he’s saying about the electoral process, and there’s a big rally in D.C. today, but what do you think we can expect?”

Hewitt responded: “I would just say to everybody: It will be fine. Everything’s going to be fine.”

Filed Under: 2020 Campaign

How Georgia Turned Purple

December 24, 2021 at 3:00 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

Coming early next year: Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power by Greg Bluestein.

“The definitive account of how the election of Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff transformed Georgia from one of the staunchest Republican strongholds to the nation’s most watched battleground state—and ground zero for the disinformation wars certain to plague statewide and national elections in the future.”

Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power
Flipped: How Georgia Turned Purple and Broke the Monopoly on Republican Power
  • Amazon Kindle Edition
  • Bluestein, Greg (Author)
  • English (Publication Language)
  • 352 Pages - 03/22/2022 (Publication Date) - Viking (Publisher)
Check Price on Amazon

Filed Under: Political Books

Parent Tells Biden ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ During Christmas Call

December 24, 2021 at 2:24 pm EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

President Biden got a visit from a Christmas troll Friday when a father participating in the annual White House NORAD Santa-tracking call used the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” the slangy stand-in for “Fuck Joe Biden,” the New York Post reports.

Filed Under: White House

Manchin Will Support New Tax on Billionaires

December 24, 2021 at 11:34 am EST By Taegan Goddard Leave a Comment

“Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) told the White House last week that he would support some version of a tax targeting billionaire wealth as part of President Biden’s Build Back Better economic agenda,” the Washington Post reports.

“Despite its endorsement from the most conservative Democrat, the tax on billionaires still faces long odds to approval as part of the final legislation, as it has been greeted skeptically by other Democratic lawmakers in both the House and Senate. It was also left out of the House Democrats’ version of Build Back Better after Manchin publicly criticized it in October.”

Politico: Manchin is not the only big hurdle left for Biden’s megabill.

Filed Under: Budget & Taxes, Senate

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About Political Wire

goddard-bw-snapshotTaegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.

Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.

Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.

Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.

Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.

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