‘Morning Joe’ Skewers Lindsey Graham for Saying Judge in Jan. 6 Indictment ‘Hates Trump’: ‘So Embarrassing’
Dessi Gomez – August 4, 2023
“Morning Joe” co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski slammed Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham for his words about former President Donald Trump’s latest indictment as well as the judge involved and the broader judicial system of the United States.
“It is so disgusting. Lindsey knows better. He obviously knows better, but he’s slandering the judge. He’s attacking the jury system and it’s very interesting. The judge, who’s gonna actually be overseeing the case, was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in 2013 by a vote of 95 to zero,” Scarborough said. “She was unanimously confirmed by the Senate. It’s just like the Republicans used to defend the FBI. They were the ones defending the FBI against attacks from progressives. The second the FBI actually investigated Donald Trump… well, suddenly they hate the FBI. Suddenly they hate the military. They hate military leaders. They slander the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. We can go on and on.”
Graham appeared on Fox News after Trump was arraigned Thursday.
“Any conviction in DC against Donald Trump is not legitimate. So they’re charging him with the crime of taking bad legal advice. That’s what this is about. They’re trying to criminalize the attorney-client relationship,” Graham said. “They’re trying to criminalize exercising of the First Amendment. The judge in this case hates Trump. You could convict Trump of kidnapping Lindbergh’s baby in DC. You need to have a change of venue. We need a new judge and we need to win in 2024 to stop this crazy crap.”
Brzezinski called the senator’s words “so embarrassing.”
“Lindsey Graham’s attacking the jury, we know and they know, the bedrock, the bedrock of our judicial system. ‘We the People,’ that’s how Madison had it set up. Our former party, from Election Day 2020 through January the 6th, trashed American democracy, told Americans and the world you can’t trust fair and free elections if our side doesn’t win,” Scarborough added. “Fox News paid like close to a billion dollars for the lies that they spread about the election and they’re gonna probably have to pay close to another billion dollars. We turn the page. What lesson is learned from that? Absolutely nothing. Because now they’re trashing the judicial system, which I would say is, it’s Madison’s crown jewel. It’s the great leveler of Madisonian democracy. But now they’re trashing that again, for Donald Trump.”
Scarborough then turned to Charlie Sykes, an American political commentator, to ask if he agreed with what Atlantic staff writer Anne Applebaum tweeted on X Thursday.
“If the Republican Party responds to the Trump indictment solely by attacking courts and judges, and if its leaders continue to work to de-legitimize the legal system, I am not sure how we recover.”
With interest rates climbing, a new form of one-upmanship is making the rounds: the mortgage-rate humble brag. (Getty Images)
At a rooftop party on a steamy July night in Philadelphia, the margarita machine was churning, the seafood boil was hearty, and the conversation turned to the default of the upwardly mobile: real estate.
Almost anyone shopping for a home in the 2020s knows the script by now: Someone mentions their recent home purchase, a tale undoubtedly rich with drama, stress and suspense. Guests, well schooled in the volatility of the housing market, lean in for the follow-up: When did you buy?
The response to that key question “is normally followed by an ‘Oooh,’” said Evan Barker, 36, a lawyer who attended the party and has participated in enough of these exchanges to know that the “Oooh” means one of two things: You either got the interest rate of a lifetime, or you squarely did not.
Fortunately for Barker, he falls into the former category. He and his wife, Laura Gallagher, 36, bought their first house in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, in the early spring of 2020, weeks before home prices began their fastest ascent in U.S. history, as mortgage rates plummeted to historic lows. In January 2021, the 30-year mortgage rate bottomed out at 2.65%, a few months before Barker and Gallagher refinanced, besting the national average with a rate of 2.375%.
So it’s no wonder that Barker spent the evening enjoying the banter almost as much as the stunning City Center rooftop views. He knew his lines for this dialogue. He had spent months fine-tuning his delivery, usually waiting for someone else to toss out an enviable interest rate before he topped it.
“I throw the humblebrag in,” he said. “Hey! Best financial decision of my life was pure luck. It’s just that simple.”
While most of the guests spent the conversation one-upping each other, the person who stood out to Barker was the one who had bought recently, at a substantially higher interest rate than everyone else. “They shocked us with some of their payment info,” he said.
American homeowners now stand on two sides of a divide. On one side are those who had the good fortune to buy or refinance between 2020 and early 2022, and now enjoy notably low monthly interest payments on their principal. On the other side: everyone else.
These prospective and recent homebuyers are watching their purchasing power diminish as home prices hold steady amid rising rates. In mid July, the 30-year mortgage rate hovered just under 7%, after reaching a high of 7.08% in October. The last time rates exceeded 7% was in 2002 — more than 20 years ago.
The contrast creates ideal conditions for ribbing from the winners and resentment from the losers. Homeowners and buyers say the sparring has been happening among friends at parties, with colleagues at the office, and on social media, where it plays out as memes that are smug, shocked or hopeless, depending on where you fall on the spectrum.
“There is almost a cross-generational envy,” said Övül Sezer, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Cornell University, who studies humblebragging.
Flaunting wealth and good fortune is nothing new. But Americans, for the most part, avoid sharing specifics about money. Sure, you’ll plaster news about your promotion on Facebook and on the platform formerly known as Twitter, but you’ll probably keep mum about the salary package that comes with it. When it comes to real estate, the attitude is no different. A gleeful homeowner may gloat about vanquishing the competition in a bidding war, but they won’t mention the sale price, or their monthly payments.
In comes the interest rate, serving as the ideal proxy. Share your mortgage rate and you can showcase your financial prowess without revealing how much money you spent (or how much you have). It almost feels humble. Almost.
“When we brag, we signal our competence,” Sezer said — telling the world, in this case, that we’re savvy consumers. “Yet we also know that bragging is kind of bad, so humblebragging is this seemingly sweet spot. It allows us to both brag, but also look humble.”
Few people are fooled.
“It’s like a talking point. We get it, we know, yes, yes — everybody has 2.6%, you’re all so smart, thanks for informing me,” said Ike Wachuku, 34, a software engineer in Baltimore, who will not be getting a 2.6% interest rate if he and his wife ever manage to find a new house. “People are rubbing your face in it.”
Consumers have little control over what mortgage rate they get, aside from maintaining a solid credit rating. Mortgage rates have been rising in response to the Federal Reserve’s continued efforts to wrestle inflation under control. So timing, not skill, dictates the rate — and timing is a byproduct of luck.
As it happens, luck isn’t entirely random. The pandemic exacerbated inequalities that existed before 2020. For many wealthier Americans, the pandemic was a financial boon. They kept their jobs, were able to work remotely, enjoyed bonuses and raises, and had cash on hand when interest rates plummeted to keep the economy afloat. They were the ones best positioned to pluck up homes, driving up prices. The people who spent 2020 and 2021 struggling through job losses, illnesses or other financial hardships likely missed out on the moment, and are now the ones enduring the hard consequences of rampant inflation.
The interest rate cut “was this free handout to people who didn’t really need it,” said Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin. For everyone else, “that door closed as soon as people started to get back on their feet.”
Or as Sharon Reshef, who last month bought a $400,000 one-bedroom apartment in Washington D.C., put it: “It’s really hard to plan your life around macroeconomics.”
That hasn’t stopped some of her slightly older colleagues in Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s office from teasing her about her 6.625% interest rate.
“It’s just a gentle ribbing,” said Reshef, 30, the research director for the senator from New York, who now spends half of her take-home pay on her mortgage. “But as long as we’re here, I will say that not a lot of people in my cohort own property, especially as a single person. Regardless of the interest rate, I have that one up on them. I can definitely brag.”
In hindsight, Scott Decker, 35, wishes he had been ready to leave Brooklyn for the suburbs in 2021, when many of his friends were leaving. Instead, he and his wife, Maureen Decker, bought a home in Montclair, New Jersey, the following year. Now, when he drives his son to preschool, passing the stately homes on picturesque, tree-lined streets, he plays a tortured game.
“I’m like, ‘I wonder what this house sold for?’ And, ‘We could have gotten this house two years ago if we had wanted it,’” he said. “I’m definitely always thinking about that and always a little jealous.”
Decker, who leads strategic media planning for a tech company, “definitely overpaid” for the four-bedroom house that he and Decker bought for $1.1 million, 40% over the list price. They also took out an adjustable-rate mortgage, with a rate that is fixed at 4.15% until 2030, when it adjusts based on the current rates. “I’m terrified at what I may be forced to change to in the future,” he said.
The Deckers are friendly with another Montclair couple who own a bigger house, but because their interest rate is lower, their monthly payments are about the same. “Every time we go to their house, I’m like, ‘Man, this is unfair,’” Decker said.
Talk to anyone who managed to buy a home in 2020 or 2021, and they will probably tell you the competition was fierce and the experience miserable. But buyers today face similar, if not tougher, conditions. Inventory is anemic, partly because homeowners do not want to part with their low interest rates. So far, a scant 1% of American homes have traded hands this year, the lowest rate in a decade, according to a July report from Redfin.
Of course, things could be worse. In 1981, mortgage rates peaked at a jaw-dropping 18.53%. Still, the average home price in the second quarter of 1981 was $84,300 — even adjusted for inflation, that’s about $287,020, which is far less than the average price of $495,100 in the second quarter of 2023.
But people who remember the days of double-digit interest rates are often quick to remind younger generations that they, too, walked to school uphill both ways in the snow.
“The fate, the gods, determine when you enter that phase of your life and what is happening in the market,” said Allen J. Palmer, 85, who is retired from IBM and bought his house in what is now Silicon Valley, in California, in 1977 for $95,000 (or $480,686 in today’s dollars), with an 8.5% mortgage interest rate. The first year he and his wife spent in that house, they couldn’t afford to fly home to Milwaukee for the holidays.
Young buyers “don’t understand that this is the way it is,” he said. “They probably don’t remember that their parents struggled to pay” the mortgage, too.
On a recent TikTok video, Barbara Corcoran, the 74-year-old real estate mogul, arranged fresh flowers as she chided hesitant buyers for their reluctance to get back into the market — a common refrain among real estate agents, who insist that there is no time like the present to buy a house.
“Pick your poison: high interest rates now, which aren’t so high, or super-high prices once they come down,” Corcoran said, her hand grazing a fern frond. “Your choice.”
Decker, in Montclair, knows which choice he thinks buyers should make. Recently, he was standing at the bar of a local barbecue restaurant and overheard another patron who seemed overconfident about a recent lowball offer he had made on a house in town. Decker had lost enough bidding wars to know how this story would end, and considered schooling him on his grim prospects. Maybe he would lean across the bar, he thought, and say, “Don’t even bother, man, cool your heels somewhere else.” But he hesitated.
“It did make me feel a little good,” he said, “and certainly thankful that I have a place to live and I’m not dealing with that right now.”
Instead of offering unsolicited advice, he ordered a Pabst Blue Ribbon and a shot of Jameson, and walked back to the patio to sit down and enjoy the evening with his family in their new town.
DeSantis says he’d slash federal bureaucratic jobs on his first day as president: ‘We are going to start slitting throats’
Madison Hall – August 3, 2023
Republican Florida governor candidate Ron DeSantis speaks during a Make America Great Again Rally at the Florida State Fairgrounds in Tampa, Florida, U.S., July 31, 2018.Carlos Barria/Reuters
Ron DeSantis railed against the US for having too many federal bureaucrats at a recent campaign stop.
“We are going to start slitting throats on day one,” he said.
DeSantis has previously said he’d eliminate the IRS and other agencies if elected.
GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continued on his tirade against federal bureaucrats while speaking on the campaign trail Wednesday.
“We are going to start slitting throats on day one,” DeSantis said about federal bureaucrats, leading to some dissatisfaction among the crowd at the campaign stop in New Hampshire, according to New Hampshire Public Radio.
Wednesday wasn’t the first time DeSantis said he’d slash government agencies if elected to the White House. In June, he said he wanted to get rid of the Internal Revenue Service, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Education.
“You also have to bring this administrative state to heel, the bureaucracy in Washington is totally out of control,” DeSantis said. “It is exerting power that is not therefore under the Constitution, and we need a President to come in and really, really clean house and I will do that on day one.
The president of the American Federation of Government Employees, a labor union that represents more than 650,000 federal workers, said in a statement that DeSantis’ comments were “disgusting, disgraceful, and disqualifying.”
“These public servants deserve respect and commendation from our nation’s leaders,” said Everett Kelley. “No federal employee should face death threats from anyone, least of all from someone seeking to lead the U.S. government. Governor DeSantis must retract his irresponsible statement.”
In a recent New York Times survey, DeSantis finished second among currently declared Republican presidential candidates, trailing behind former President Donald Trump by 37 percentage points. The same survey found that likely Republican voters much prefer a presidential candidate who thinks the “government should stay out of deciding what corporations can support” rather than one who promises “to fight corporations that promote ‘woke’ left ideology,” as DeSantis has pledged to do time and time again.
DeSantis does have time to claw back supporters in the GOP primary race: he qualified for and has said he’ll attend the first Republican presidential debate on August 23.. And in an effort to get more eyes on his campaign, DeSantis just accepted an offer to debate California Gov. Gavin Newsom (who’s not running for president).
Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine proves safest, most effective for older adults, study says
Clyde Hughes – August 2, 2023
A new study has found that the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was safest for older patients. File Photo by Gary I. Rothstein/UPI
Aug. 2 (UPI) — In examining real-world data on the long-term health of elderly patients who received the COVID-19 vaccine, researchers at Brown University and Boston-based Hebrew SeniorLife determined that the Moderna variety was the safest and most effective for older adults.
The study, in which scientists examined data from some 6 million patients who were administered coronavirus vaccines, was published Wednesday in the peer-reviewed online journal JAMA Network Open.
The study’s investigators conducted the research as part of the IMPACT Collaboratory project that allowed massive monitoring of the long-term safety and effectiveness of the vaccines for Medicare beneficiaries in collaboration with CVS and Walgreens.
The researchers probed data from millions of adults with an average age of 76, who were vaccinated using either the Moderna or Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines.
The researchers found that while the risk of serious adverse events with both vaccines was “very low,” the Moderna vaccine saw a 4% lower risk for pulmonary embolism or a sudden blockage of blood vessels.
The Moderna vaccine was also tied to a 15% lower risk of being diagnosed with COVID-19 compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
“Immunization with either mRNA vaccine is substantially better and safer than not being vaccinated at all,” study lead author Daniel Harris said.
“But in an ideal world where we can have a choice between which vaccine product is used, we wanted to see whether one vaccine was associated with better performance for older adults and those with increased frailty,” added Harris, an epidemiologist and research scientist in the Center for Gerontology and Healthcare Research at the Brown University School of Public Health.
Harris said that up to this point, little in-depth evidence existed about the safety and effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines on older adults and individuals with chronic health conditions.
“The results of this study can help public health experts weigh which mRNA vaccine might be preferred for older adults and older subgroups, such as those with increased frailty,” Harris said.
Older adults, many of whom chronic health conditions, tend to be excluded from clinical trials or represented in small numbers, which is one of the reasons this study was so critical, he said.
This was important considering that older adults, especially those in nursing homes, had a higher risk of developing severe COVID-19.
He added that older adults with frailty can also have differences in their immune responses to vaccines, making it important to understand how these vaccines work for frail older adults compared to their stronger counterparts.
The study, though, only looked at the first dose of the mRNA vaccines, so further research could include similar comparisons for subsequent vaccinations.
“You can imagine regularly updating these types of analyses as new vaccines are developed,” Harris said. “Depending on which one comes out on top, even on a very small scale, that may have big implications at the population level and render a preference for that particular vaccine.”
Why is leprosy spreading in Florida? What to know about recent rise in US cases
Caroline Kee – August 2, 2023
Cases of leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, are on the rise in Florida, and the infectious disease may be endemic in the Southeastern United States, a new report suggests.
Despite its biblical-sounding name, leprosy not a disease of the past. Leprosy still occurs in more than 120 countries, and there are over 200,000 new cases reported every year, according to the World Health Organization.
Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae, which affects the skin and nervous system.
“Leprosy is a pretty unusual infection in the United States, and cases had been dropping very steadily over a long period of time, but then recently, there’s been a bit of a slow uptick,” Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, tells TODAY.com.
Are there cases of leprosy in Florida?
Yes, there are cases of leprosy in Florida. So far this year, there have been 15 cases of leprosy in Florida, NBC affiliate WESH reported.
In 2020, 159 new leprosy cases were reported in the U.S., and Florida was among the top states reporting cases, according to a research letter in the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
There has been a drastic reduction in cases in the U.S. since the 1980s, per the CDC, but the number of cases of leprosy has more than doubled in Southeastern states over the last decade.
Why is leprosy spreading in Florida?
The short answer it’s still not known why leprosy is spreading in Florida or why it’s happening now. “Frankly, these cases are still are a bit of a mystery,” says Schaffner, adding that further public health investigation is needed.
Previously, leprosy in the U.S. affected people who had immigrated from leprosy-endemic countries, per the CDC. “Most of the cases we’ve seen in the past have been in people who came from their homeland where there was much more leprosy,” says Schaffner.
But more recently, the rate of new diagnoses in people born outside of the U.S. has been declining, even though the incidence of leprosy in the U.S. has been increasing overall, the CDC said in its report.
About 34% of new cases between 2015 and 2020 appear to have been acquired locally, per the CDC report. In other words, more and more people are being infected with leprosy in the U.S., Schaffner adds — and Florida may be a hotspot.
Additionally, the CDC said several of the recent cases in Florida showed no evidence of traditional risk factors. The report highlights a case of leprosy in a 54-year-old Florida man who reported that he had no known contact with an infected person, no exposure to armadillos (a known animal reservoir for the bacteria that causes leprosy), and no travel history to leprosy-endemic countries.
The CDC report noted that many Florida residents, like the 54-year-old, spend time a lot of time outdoors, so “environmental reservoirs” should be investigated “as a potential source of transmission.”
Where is leprosy in Florida?
Central Florida seems to be where most of the cases of leprosy in the state are located, based on recent data. Of the 15 cases reported so far this year, most were in Brevard County, in East Central Florida.
Of the 2020 data analyzed in the CDC report, Central Florida accounted for about 81% of the cases reported in the state in 2020 and nearly one-fifth of cases reported nationwide, according to the CDC report. The agency did not specify where in Central Florida had the most leprosy cases.
By most definitions, Central Florida includes the Greater Orlando area and sometimes the Tampa Bay area. Other major cities in Central Florida, according to VisitFlorida.com, include St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Palm Bay, Lakeland and Deltona.
How common is leprosy in Florida?
The rate of leprosy in Florida overall is low, as is the case in all of the U.S. So far this year, only 15 cases have been reported in the state. With a population of 22 million across the whole state, that’s a very low risk of coming in contact with someone with leprosy.
That said, the recent trends and cases add to a growing body of evidence that leprosy is endemic in the Southeastern U.S., namely in Florida. Endemic means a virus is consistently present in a population within a geographic area, according to Medline Plus.
“I keep my fingers on the pulse of communicable diseases in this country, and that number (159 cases in the U.S.) surprised me. It was higher than I thought,” says Schaffner.
There are no Leprosy-related travel warnings for Florida, but the CDC said in its report that travel to Florida should be considered during contact tracing for leprosy in any state.
It’s also important to keep in mind that leprosy is “usually difficult to acquire and requires close, persistent, prolonged contact with a person who has leprosy,” says Schaffner. You cannot get leprosy from casual contact like hugging, shaking hands, or sitting next to someone who has leprosy, per the CDC.
“Leprosy is not communicable in the classic sense the way influenza or COVID-19 is,” says Schaffner. According to the CDC, the risk of getting Leprosy is very low because more than 95% of people have natural immunity.
It’s not fully understood how leprosy is spread, per the CDC, but it is thought to be spread through respiratory droplets produced when an infected person coughs or sneezes. There is also evidence humans can contract leprosy from armadillos, a known animal reservoir for the bacteria, says Schaffner. In this case, transmission would also require prolonged contact with the animal — fortunately most people aren’t getting that close to armadillos, he adds.
Is there a cure for leprosy?
“We used to think it was untreatable, but we can treat and cure this disease now,” says Schaffner. Leprosy is typically treated with a combination of antibiotics and treatment usually lasts one to two years, per the CDC.
“It is a very slowly multiplying bacteria in the body, so you have to take the appropriate antibiotics for a long period of time,” says Schaffner.
If left untreated, leprosy can cause permanent damage to the nerves, skin, hands, feet and eyes, which may result in paralysis or blindness, per the CDC. Early diagnosis is important to avoid long-term disfigurement and disability from the disease.
Previously, leprosy was thought of to be highly contagious and patients were isolated in remote areas, Schaffner explains, but today the disease can be safely managed at home.
Pictures of leprosy
Lepromatous leprosy in a 54-year-old man in central Florida in 2022. (CDC)
Leprosy can cause skin symptoms, including lesions, discolored or flat rashes, thick or stiff patches of skin, growths and painless ulcers (often on the feet) that do not heal over time, according to the CDC.
Disfigured feet on someone with leprosy. (Shutterstitch / Getty Images/ iStockphoto)
Symptoms affecting the nerves include numbness in the affected areas of the skin, muscle weakness, nerve pain, paralysis and eye issues. Leprosy can also affect the mucous membranes lining the nose, mouth, and inside of the eyes and cause bleeding, tissue damage, impaired speech and vision loss, per Medline Plus.
New Science Suggests That Just 4 Minutes Per Day of This Kind of Exercise May Lower Cancer Risk
Karla Walsh – August 1, 2023
Turns out, you could slash your risk for certain cancers in the time it takes to listen to your favorite pop song or power walk across the parking lot.
Getty Images
Reviewed by Dietitian Annie Nguyen, M.A., RD
We’ve been told for decades that walking 10,000 steps per day—or racking up 150 minutes of physical activity per week, no matter what method you choose—should be our goal. But a growing body of scientific evidence is shining a spotlight on the fact that you’ll start to accrue some serious gains at levels far lower than that. (For example, we learned last September that walking for 2 minutes after meals can help lower blood sugar.)
If you feel daunted by going from couch to 10,000 steps or 150 minutes, listen up: A new study published July 27, 2023 in the journal JAMA Oncologysuggests that just 4 to 5 minutes of “vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity” is enough to significantly lower cancer risk.
Read on to learn more about how they landed at this conclusion. Then we’ll explain some of the best workout styles to incorporate into your day to put this study into practice.
Related: Adding Just 10 Minutes of Exercise Per Day Can Improve Health and Slow Aging, According to Science
What This Exercise Study Found
Researchers at University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre in Australia noticed that previous studies suggested that adults who don’t exercise appear to be at higher risk for developing 13 kinds of cancers (breast, endometrial, colorectal, liver, kidney, lung and more), but noticed that there was a knowledge gap about how much exercise might move the needle.
Since we know that about six in 10 American adults don’t meet the recommended activity guidelines (those aforementioned 150 minutes of aerobic exercise, plus 2 full-body strength workouts per week)—and 25% of adults aren’t active at all, according to the latest estimates from the CDC—the researchers involved in this study wanted to try to determine the impact of small bursts of movement.
They decided to call these bursts vigorous intermittent lifestyle physical activity, (VILPA), and place everything from vigorous housework and carrying a heavy basket around the supermarket to quick power walking to get the mail or playing active games with kiddos under this umbrella.
“VILPA is a bit like applying the principles of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) to your everyday life,” Emmanuel Stamatakis, Ph.D., lead author of this study, as well as a professor of physical activity, lifestyle and population health at the School of Health Sciences at The University of Sydney in Australia, adds in the news release.
Related: HIIT vs LISS: Which Exercise Is Right for You?
Bouts as short as 1 minute “count” Dr. Stamatakis and his team confirm. (By the way, yes, lower-intensity activities like yoga and walking can be effective enough to qualify as exercise, too. But you have to invest more time than you would for VILPA to score health benefits.)
Using data from 22,398 people enrolled in the UK Biobank, a database of biomedical information from more than 500,000 UK residents often used for research purposes, the researchers dove into details gathered from wrist accelerometers for 7 days. Then, they compared these activity rates to the health outcomes noted in clinical health records for 7 years. The pool of participants had an average age of 62, and they did not normally exercise or take leisurely walks during their free time. The researchers excluded individuals who had received a previous cancer diagnosis, or who had been diagnosed during the first year (since that was likely not enough time for any VILPA to make a difference on health outcomes). They also controlled for age, smoking status, sleep habits, genetics, diet and body size.
During the 7-year follow-up, the study authors found that 2,356 cancer cases had been diagnosed, and about 1,084 cases were cancers that they think may be less likely if more physical activity was present. About 92% of VILPA bouts lasted about 1 minute, and those who racked up 3 ½ minutes of VILPA per day appeared to be at 18% lower risk for cancer (compared to their peers who did none). Just 4 ½ minutes of VILPA daily was linked to 32% lower risk for physical activity-related cancers, the researchers note. The benefits continue to build with more activity, but that’s a significant shift in a timespan that’s equivalent to a couple commercial breaks or one pop song.
The study authors admit that, as of now, they’re still unsure of exactly why this occurs. However, they believe VILPA relationship to lower cancer risk may be related to better cardio-respiratory fitness, changes in insulin sensitivity and lower levels of chronic inflammation.
The Bottom Line
A new Australian study found that cobbling together 4 minutes of vigorous activity per day—anything from power walking across a parking lot to lifting bags of groceries to chasing a dog or kids will do—is enough to lower your risk for some cancers.
Since the exercise tracking was only done for one week, and considering the study was observational and cannot prove cause and effect, more deep-dives are needed to verify these results.
“We need to further investigate this link through robust trials, but it appears that VILPA may be a promising cost-free recommendation for lowering cancer risk in people who find structured exercise difficult or unappealing,” says Dr. Stamatakis.
Kevin McCarthy’s way to defend Trump: Pivot, confuse and corrode democracy | Opinion
Tad Weber – August 1, 2023
Greg Nash
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is using time-tested political strategies in defense of former President Donald Trump and his legal troubles.
First, pivot. Then deflect. Lastly, confuse.
This was on display recently when the Bakersfield Republican, now the congressional representative for Clovis and eastern parts of Fresno County, was asked about the latest charges added to an indictment against the former president over his alleged mishandling of presidential records.
The Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith, brought additional charges to the indictment that accuse Trump of obstructing justice and willfully keeping a top-secret document. The three charges were added to the 37 already filed.
For review, Trump is being accused of keeping a horde of confidential and top-secret documents at his Florida home in violation of the Presidential Records Act. It requires all such materials to be handed over to the National Archives once a president leaves office.
Trump allegedly did not comply. Among the evidence cited by Smith are photos of documents spilled over the floor at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
In the latest charges, Trump is alleged to have shown some visitors a battle plan for U.S. military forces if they were to attack a foreign country. CNN reported it to be Iran. Trump is heard on an audio recording talking about the document and admitting it is confidential.
In the two obstruction charges, Trump is alleged to have directed a pair of employees to delete security-camera footage at Mar-a-Lago once the Justice Department issued a subpoena for it.
Pivot, deflect, confuse
CNN reporter Manu Raju caught up with McCarthy last Thursday to ask him about the latest charges against Trump.
“What concerns me is you have a sitting president that has a situation like this, but even worse, that had documents, but nothing’s happened,” McCarthy told Raju. “The president, when he was a senator, he took a document. How many years is that and there’s been no prosecution?”
That last point — when Biden was a senator from Delaware — is the attempt to confuse.
McCarthy did not elaborate further, so one is left to assume he is referring to a claim by Trump that Biden has 1,850 boxes of confidential records that he has not turned over.
“By the way, Biden’s got 1,850 boxes,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Georgia. “He’s fighting them on the boxes. He doesn’t want to give the boxes and then they say, ‘Trump is obstructioning’.”
The Associated Press did a fact check of Trump’s claim and found it false.
The National Archives says the 1,850 boxes are actually from Biden’s time in the Senate before he became vice president under then-President Obama. The papers are housed at the University of Delaware.
Records accumulated from serving in the Senate are personal property and not subject to the Presidential Records Act.
“While the FBI has searched the Delaware university records as part of a larger search for classified documents, there is no evidence they were withheld from authorities in any way,” the AP reported.
Corrosive effect
If McCarthy was referring to discoveries earlier this year at Biden’s home and the former private office of official documents from his vice presidential years, the comparison with Trump still does not hold up.
Unlike Trump, Biden has fully cooperated with investigators once the discoveries came to light. He was found to possess a small number of documents. Biden’s attorney general picked a special counsel to investigate the Biden records — a lawyer appointed by Trump when he was president.
Trump, by contrast, has steadfastly opposed efforts by the National Archives to return the documents in his possession. It took an FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago to secure the materials. Thirty-three boxes and 11,000 documents were taken from the Florida home. Trump’s former attorney general Bill Barr said Trump took the documents to “flip the bird” at the government.
As House speaker, McCarthy is one of the most powerful politicians in America today. His constant defense of Trump, in advance of trials, that have not yet even started, is a corrosive agent on American democracy. He stirs doubt and suspicion by regularly repeating that the nation operates with a “two tiers” system of justice — one protecting Biden, one prosecuting Trump.
To see it another way, just flip the script. What if, instead of Trump having been charged for things like obstruction of justice and willful detention of records belonging to the American people, it had been Hillary Clinton? What would McCarthy be saying then?
Column: Is there any way to shift the bizarre Republican conviction that only Trump will save them?
Jonah Goldberg – August 1, 2023
Former President Donald Trump greets supporters as he arrives at New Orleans International Airport on Tuesday. (Gerald Herbert / Associated Press)
“They’re not indicting me, they’re indicting you. I just happen to be standing in the way,” Donald Trump declared (again) in the wake of a new updated federal indictment connected to the classified documents case.
The claim is as effective as it is stupid. The federal government is not, in fact, prosecuting the average Trump supporter for mishandling documents or obstructing justice (save for two Trump aides who allegedly helped him mishandle documents and obstruct justice).
But the idea that Trump is a populist sword-and-shield against the “establishment,” “Deep State,” or “elites” has ensorcelled large swaths of the GOP base, which is at least partly why he’s got a massive lead over his opponents. In the latest New York Times/Siena College poll asking potential Republican primary voters which candidate they would most likely vote for, Trump is at 54%, a 37-point lead over his closest challenger, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Among his core supporters, about 37% of the party according to a breakdown of the poll by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn, literally nobody thinks he committed any crimes and 94% think the party needs to rally around him against these presumably bogus charges.
Cohn notes that no primary candidate with a lead of at least 20 points at this stage of the race has ever failed to get their party’s nomination.
This alone undermines the MAGA base’s argument for supporting Trump. If the Republican establishment forces were as powerful as Trump and his voters think, they’d be able to do something about it. If the Deep State were half as formidable as they think, Trump would never have been president in the first place.
But large segments of the GOP suffer from the delusion that they are victims of the ruling classes and that the woke left is running everything — or will — if Trump doesn’t stop them.
Even in states with Republican governors and legislative supermajorities, like Tennessee, a certain paranoia that the left could take over at any moment dominates politics. As one GOP state legislator recently said on a leaked conference call, “The left wants Tennessee so bad because if they get us, the Southeast falls and it’s ‘game over’ for the republic.”
Of course, if these left-wing overlords were as fearsome as all that, the GOP would not be in total control of the Volunteer State in the first place. Similarly, if the “RINO” establishment were in charge, Trump wouldn’t be the runaway front-runner.
This is the paradox of Republican politics today. The populists run or at least dominate the party but they derive their power and intensity from the bizarre conviction that they’re powerless victims — and that only Trump can save them.
The delusion is vexing but it also points to the only way to prevent Trump from getting the Republican nomination. The last decade has shown that the only kingmakers in American politics are precisely who they’re supposed to be: the voters. In 2008 Hillary Clinton proved that big money and establishment backing weren’t enough in the face of a popular opponent. Jeb Bush proved the same thing in 2016.
Much of the left and right have convinced themselves that American democracy has been hijacked, to one extent or another, by powerful special interests, billionaire donors, the Deep State, hegemonic party establishments and/or the media. And yet, time and again, the string-pullers have proved to be ordinary people.
Trump will be the nominee unless enough Republican voters either change their minds or consolidate around a challenger. And that remains possible.
Cohn is right that it’s unprecedented for a front-runner to lose with such a lead. But Trump is an unprecedented candidate. A former president with multiple criminal indictments despised by a quarter of his party almost as much as he’s loved by a third of it. You could argue he’s running with an incumbent president’s lead, but for an incumbent president, his lead would be disastrously narrow.
Throughout most of 2003, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean was seen as the unstoppable, inevitable, Democratic nominee. “Dean has wrapped up the Democratic nomination for president of the United States,” the widely respected analyst Stuart Rothenberg declared (with some minor hedging), in November 2003. By December, Dean was nearly 20 points ahead of his nearest rivals. The next month he was crushed in the Iowa caucuses, as voters started paying attention and changed their minds. Dean didn’t score a single win outside of Vermont.
For those desperate for a Republican nominee other than Trump, hoping voters will change their minds seems scary. But that’s democracy for you.
The Kremlin has pumped so much money into the economy that it’s creating a boom — but this house of cards could topple anytime soon
Huileng Tan – August 1, 2023
The Kremlin has pumped so much money into the economy that it’s creating a boom — but this house of cards could topple anytime soon. The Russian economy has been doing far better than expected even amid sweeping sanctions, but most analysts do not expect this to last.(AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)
Russia’s wartime economy is thriving, the New York Times reported Monday.
The Kremlin implemented measures to boost military equipment output, benefits, and mortgage subsidies.
These measures have boosted the demand — and prices — for a range of goods and services in Russia.
Nearly 18 months after the Ukraine war started, Russia’s economy appears to be humming along — baffling economists who predicted catastrophic outcomes following sweeping sanctions against Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
While some economists have questioned the quality and veracity of Russian data releases, a New York Times report on Monday offered a nuanced picture of the country’s wartime economy and how it’s helping drum up popular support for Vladimir Putin.
Soldiers fighting the war are also earning far higher salaries than average earnings in poorer regions of Russia, the Times reported. For instance, Russia was offering a minimum of 160,000 rubles, or about $1,740, in monthly wages for contract soldiers last September — three times the national average, Reuters reported at the time.
Large payouts for those who died in the war — for example, a 5 million rubles payout for families of Wagner Group fighters who died in the war — are circulating in the economy.
These measures have boosted the demand — and prices — for a range of products and services in Russia, the Times reported.
Corporate loans have increased 19% in the year to June as investments grew, the Times said, citing the Russian central bank’s figures. Meanwhile, the value of mortgages taken out from Russia’s top 20 banks surged 63% in the first half of the year from a year ago, the Times reported, citing the state-run lender Dom.RF, and the real estate research firm Frank Media.
“As an economist, I don’t know how this bubble can be deflated,” Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher with the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center and a former advisor at the Russian central bank, told The Times.
“One day it could all crash like a house of cards,” he added.
Economy experts, however, are not optimistic about Russia’s economic outlook even as they acknowledge the current robustness of its economy.
In April last year, the Russian central bank’s governor Elvira Nabiullina said the country’s reserves wouldn’t last infinitely. In December, she also expressed concerns about inflation and the tight labor market due to Putin’s military draft. She repeated her concerns about price rises and the labor shortage in her July rate hike announcement.
Ariel Chernyy, an economist at Italian bank UniCredit, forecasts Russia’s GDP to grow by 1% this year — reversing a 2.1% contraction last year, according to a July 6 note seen by Insider.
Chernyy said the country’s economic resilience is due to government spending and the implementation of import-substitution projects that are boosting the domestic industry.
But it “does not mean a higher GDP growth rate that can be sustained in the long term” due to a shrinking labor pool and other issues like inferior import substitutes, he added.
“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democratic fraud should be immediately primaried and get out,” Trump told supporters at a campaign rally Saturday in Erie, Pennsylvania. “We got a lot of good, tough Republicans around. People are going to run against them and people are going to win.”
“If (the Biden administration) does not provide the information we need, then we would go to an impeachment inquiry,” McCarthy said at a press conference last week, referencing House Republicans’ various investigations into whether Biden benefitted from Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he enters the Erie Insurance Arena for a political rally while campaigning for the GOP nomination in the 2024 election on July 29, 2023 in Erie, Pennsylvania.
Republican lawmaker: Impeachment is walking ‘the plank’
McCarthy and other GOP lawmakers are finding themselves in a political bind over Trump’s comments. House Republicans only have roughly three weeks when they come back to Washington in September to approve must-pass spending bills, and an impeachment inquiry could take up valuable time needed to avoid a government shutdown.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., warned that impeachment could force vulnerable members to “walk the plank.”
“Every time we walk the plank we are putting moderate members, members that won Biden districts, we are putting those seats at risk for 2024. We are putting the majority at risk,” Mace said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., holds a news conference as the House prepares to leave for its August recess, at the Capitol in Washington, Thursday, July 27, 2023.
“They impeach me, they indict me,” Trump said at his rally in Erie. “And the Republicans just don’t fight the way … they’re supposed to fight.”
GOP leaders are also facing pressure from their right flank in the conference, with members from the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus calling to impeach the president.
“I don’t know how anyone, any objective reasonable person couldn’t come to the conclusion that this appears to be impeachment worthy,” Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., a member of the Freedom Caucus said last week, reiterating unsubstantiated claims that Biden was involved as vice president in his son’s business dealings.
House Freedom Caucus Chair Scott Perry, R-Pa., left, and Rep. Bob Good, R-Va., clasp hands before denouncing the fiscal year 2024 appropriations process and so-called “woke” spending by Democrats and President Joe Biden, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 25, 2023.
House Republicans walk fine line between investigations and impeachment
Stuck in between the former president’s warnings and the upcoming 2024 elections, GOP lawmakers are struggling between continuing to investigate Biden or swiftly moving to impeach the president.
“We’re working through the process, our constitutional duty to have oversight over the executive branch,” Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., chair of the Republican Study Committee, told reporters last week.
Hern said Republicans are thoroughly investigating whether the president had connections to Hunter Biden’s business dealings and said Democrats “jumped to conclusions” when they impeached Trump.
“The Speaker has said that there may be an impeachment inquiry. That is not impeachment. That is Congress continuing its responsibilities to look into the issues that have been raised,” said Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., who represents a district Biden won in 2020.
“It’s just an ability to get more information,” House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., said at a press conference last week, saying an inquiry is “not in of itself an impeachment.”
Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., listens as Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, and Rep. Maria Salazar, R-Fla., speak during a press conference on immigration outside the U.S. Capitol Building on May 23, 2023 in Washington, DC.
