Wednesday, June 30, 2021
WASHINGTON – Presidents typically pick ambassadors for their technical skills or their political connections, but in Cindy McCain’s case it is probably a little bit of both, experts say.
Last week, President Joe Biden nominated McCain – a lifelong Republican who came out strongly in support of Biden’s candidacy last year – to be the U.S. representative to the United Nations Agencies for Food and Agriculture, a post that carries the rank of ambassador.
But analysts say it’s more than just politics, pointing to McCain’s lifetime in the public spotlight. Her nomination fits in a “gray area,” said Doug Bandow, senior fellow at the Cato Institute.
“Sometimes you get this gray area where they’re not necessarily a diplomatic professional, but there’s much more than just handing out cash,” Bandow said.
It wasn’t cash that McCain delivered to the Biden campaign – but what she delivered in 2020 was probably more valuable than that.
“There was no bigger political force in Arizona behind Joe Biden than Cindy McCain,” said Mike Noble, chief of research for OH Predictive Insights. “Her enthusiastic endorsement almost assuredly tipped the scales to send the state’s 11 electoral votes to Biden.”
That’s because McCain was one of the first Republicans to come out, publicly and vocally, in support of Biden against then-President Donald Trump, with whom the McCains have been engaged in a long-running feud.
It began in Trump’s first run for president, when he belittled the service of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a Vietnam veteran who served years in a North Vietnamese prison camp. Trump said McCain was no hero, that he liked “people who weren’t captured.”
John McCain announced that he would not vote for Trump in 2016, and was a critic of the administration, while Trump continued to periodically snipe at the Arizona senator. When McCain died of brain cancer in 2018, former President Barack Obama delivered a eulogy but Trump, the sitting president, was not invited to the ceremony.
Tuesday, June 29, 2021
WASHINGTON – The chief of Border Patrol was forced out after just 17 months in the job, a move that critics blasted as a politically motivated decision by the Biden administration.
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller said Thursday that Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott has been replaced by Deputy Chief Raul Ortiz. Miller’s announcement thanked Scott for his service, but included no details on the reasons behind the departure.
Critics accused the Biden administration of giving Scott a choice of “three Rs” – reassignment, retirement or resignation – because he disagreed with their border policies.
“The chief asked directly why it was happening and was not provided response other than, ‘We want to go in a different direction,'” said Mark Morgan, who served as acting CBP commissioner during the Trump administration and appointed Scott to the chief’s job.
An angry Morgan called the decision “outrageous” and “devoid of all common sense,” saying that the Biden administration is “ending the 29-year career of a man not for just cause, but rather in the name of politics.”
But Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute said Scott’s decision to “align himself, as the head of border patrol, with the president (Trump) personally” was “uncharacteristic” for someone in a career position, not a political appointment.
“From what I know about Chief Scott, he was more political and partisan in the places that he chose to appear during the Trump years than has typically been the case for Border Patrol chiefs,” said Meissner, director of the institute’s U.S. Immigration Policy Program.
“I’m simply guessing that that has been part of the reason that he’s been offered the option to resign or be reassigned,” she said.
The move comes at a challenging time for the Biden administration on its handling of immigration issues. Republicans have repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden for what they call a crisis at the border, where the number of migrants apprehended has surged to the highest levels in years.
Monday, June 28, 2021
The Community Food Bank will be closed on Thursday and will not offer emergency food distribution at its Tucson location and all other resource centers.
New distribution hours will begin on July 6, from 7 to 10 a.m., Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 3003 S. Country Club.
“We continue to offer drive-thru distribution with the earlier hours offering a little relief for volunteers, staff and Arizona National Guard service members who are working getting food into cars as needed,” said Michael McDonald, CEO of the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona.
Masks are optional during outside food distribution hours. People are asked to present a photo ID to receive emergency food.
More information is available at communityfoodbank.org/Locations
PHOENIX – Experts describe “brain fog” as a cognitive dysfunction when your brain isn’t performing in top shape.
Although everyone is susceptible to occasional brain fog, experts say some of the worst cases have been identified in the group known as COVID-19 long-haulers – patients who had the disease and recovered but still can’t “get going” as they did before falling ill.
In February, the National Institutes of Health opened a multifaceted study into “long COVID” and its effects in the United States. Researchers hope to answer such questions as why symptoms are worse and last longer for some patients than others, and does the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 trigger other disorders of the brain and heart.
Two studies in England and Italy showed long-haulers did experience brain fog more commonly than non-COVID-19 patients during the pandemic. Long-haulers coping with brain fog improved over the course of the study.
Dr. Carmine Pariante, a professor of biological psychiatry at King’s College London, told The Guardian brain fog is the “cognitive equivalent of feeling emotionally distressed; it’s almost the way the brain expresses sadness, beyond the emotion” as a response to stress.
Although studies are in their initial stages, researchers don’t think brain fog stems from just one source. A predominant factor, though, is a lack of variety in our daily routine. CNBC reports that brain fog could be “a sign of something underlying, such as a health problem or the consequence of lifestyle choice.”
Doing a lot of the same things every day makes it hard for the brain to differentiate tasks, researchers say, so it essentially goes into an autopilot.
