“When our children
love what we love, it is a
blessing, but O, when they
hate what we hate!”
Author Elizabeth McCracken,
quoted in Harper’s Magazine
“History is merely a
list of surprises. It can
only prepare us to be
surprised yet again.”
Kurt Vonnegut, quoted in
Forbes.com
“It is impossible to go
through life without trust:
that is to be imprisoned in
the worst cell of all, oneself.”
Graham Greene, quoted in
ArtsJournal.com
“Live for the sensation of
life, not for the story you
tell about your life.”
Philosopher John Gray,
quoted in Vox.com
“Keep your eyes wide
open before marriage; half
shut afterwards.”
Benjamin Franklin, quoted
in Inc.com
“A bird does not sing
because he has an answer.
He sings because
he has a song.”
Children’s author Joan Walsh
Anglund, quoted in Vice.com
“Meetings are indispens-
able when you don’t want
to do anything.”
Economist John Kenneth
Galbraith, quoted in INews.co.ukTalking points
Wit &
Wisdom
AP
NEWS 17
Poll watch
QAs Covid-19 deaths
surge past half a million
people in America, 33%
now say that they person-
ally know someone who
has died due to the virus.
45% of Americans think
that the government has
gotten better at handling
the pandemic since the
beginning of the out-
break. 63% are confident
that President Biden’s
administration will be
able to make the vaccines
widely available, and 58%
think it can get the vac-
cines distributed quickly.
Axios/IpsosCuomo: His troubles are mounting
Andrew Cuomo “should be
worried,” said John Daukas
in The Wall Street Journal.
Federal prosecutors are now
investigating the Democratic
New York governor’s attempt
to underreport nursing-home
deaths in his state, and he may
face charges of deliberately
providing false information to
federal Medicare officials and
the Justice Department. Back in March, Cuomo’s
administration ordered nursing homes to accept
recovering Covid-19 patients from hospitals—a
decision that may have led the virus to spread
among vulnerable residents. Then the administra-
tion limited its count of nursing-home deaths to
those who actually died in the homes, excluding
those who died after being sent to hospitals. That
cover-up imploded last month when Democratic
state Attorney General Letitia James revealed that
Cuomo had undercounted the 15,000 nursing
home deaths by about 50 percent. Top Cuomo
aide Melissa DeRosa recently admitted that her
colleagues withheld the real data out of fear of
federal prosecution. “We froze,” DeRosa said.After DeRosa’s admission went public, said Eric
Lach in NewYorker.com, Democratic Assembly-
man Ron Kim—whose uncle died of suspected
Covid in a nursing home—criticized Cuomo in
an interview. That night, Kim received a call athome from the governor. “I
will destroy you!” Cuomo
reportedly screamed. “You
haven’t seen my wrath.” When
Kim told the press about
Cuomo’s threats, it triggered
an avalanche of other public
officials—Democratic and
Republican—telling their own
stories “of being bullied by
Cuomo.” Political consultant
Monica Klein tweeted that “every single person
in NY politics knows someone who has got-
ten the same kind of call” from Cuomo. The
press should be ashamed, said Jeffrey McCall in
TheHill.com. When Cuomo was holding daily
coronavirus press conferences in the spring, gull-
ible journalists depicted him as “a Covid hero,”
the empathetic leader the nation needed. Turns
out Saint Andrew was a self-promoting politician
who bullies people who call him on his mistakes.Can Cuomo’s political career survive these “ugly”
scandals? asked Bradley Tusk in NYDailyNews
.com. Cuomo’s not up for re-election until 2022,
a “lifetime in politics,” and his job approval in
a Democrat-dominated state remains around
70 percent. The state’s weak Republican Party
has never found a popular challenger to take him
on. Unless some unicorn Republican with socially
liberal views suddenly emerges, Cuomo’s wounds,
while serious, are “probably not politically fatal.”America can’t move on from the “trauma” of the
Capitol insurrection “until the full story is told,”
said The Boston Globe in an editorial. There’s
only one way to achieve that: the “9/11-style com-
mission” recently proposed by House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi and backed by a growing group of
lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. In the
wake of a “truncated impeachment process,”
many questions still loom about the attack. We
must understand the security failures, whether
members of Congress were “complicit” in pro-
viding help to the insurrectionists, why hours
passed until the National Guard was summoned,
and what President Trump was doing during this
awful interval. A small, bipartisan commission
that can subpoena witnesses will get us “to the
bottom of what happened and why,” said Henry
Olsen in The Washington Post. The search for
truth will make some people “uncomfortable,”
but “one of the most deplorable and shocking
events in U.S. history” demands a reckoning.Pelosi and the Democrats don’t want the truth,
said the New York Post in an editorial. They want
to “exploit that horrific day for pure partisan
advantage,” bolstering conspiracy theories and
painting Trump supporters and other conserva-tives as terrorists. Nor will Democrats be served
by a prolonged investigation, said Eugene Rob-
inson in The Washington Post. Let the Justice
Department, local prosecutors, and civil lawsuits
unravel what happened and assign responsibility.
Our nation faces a host of pressing challenges,
including vaccinating the population, rescuing the
economy, fighting climate change, and adopting
humane immigration policies. “We must look to
the future,” and not waste any more time and
energy on the 45th president.Is a 9/11-style investigation “even possible in
2021?” asked Harold Meyerson in The American
Prospect. The 9/11 commission succeeded because
Republicans and Democrats were united by a
common foe. While a 1/6 commission has been
embraced even by Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Gra-
ham, “does anyone think that Pelosi and Graham
have the same ideas” about how it will operate?
What happens if Republicans insist on putting
“die-hard Trumpists” on the panel? Will Senate
Republicans allow damaging testimony about
Trump’s refusal to call off the riot? Any effort to
mount a truly credible, impartial investigation will
have to address such hard questions, and “biparti-
san cred is hard to come by these days.”1/6 commission: A needed reckoning?
The Covid ‘hero’ takes a fall.