Month: August 2021

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What A Day - What Haiti Needs

After Taliban fighters took control over Afghanistan this weekend, UN Secretary General António Guterres urged all countries to open their doors to Afghan refugees and refrain from deportations. Panicked civilians flooded the airport in Kabul on Monday, some even clinging to a departing U.S. plane, hoping to escape an uncertain future under Taliban rule. President Biden defended the U.S. withdrawal saying it was the right decision to avoid a third decade of war, and blamed Afghanistan’s military and political leaders.

On Saturday, Haiti was hit by a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, causing at least 1,400 deaths. The recovery effort is lagging, however, due to hospitals being overtaxed as well as Tropical Depression Grace, which made landfall in the island country on Monday night. Haiti is one of the poorest countries in the world due to its historical colonial oppression, and Prime Minister Ariel Henry was reportedly frustrated at the slow international response to their calls for aid.

And in headlines: the Colorado River faces a water shortage, Oklahoma tribes’ SCOTUS victory may be overturned, and Olivia Rodrigo’s merchandise isn’t so “good 4 u” after all.


Show Notes:

A List of Some Charities Helping Those in Afghanistan – https://twitter.com/crookedmedia/status/1427384439466692619?s=20

A List of Some Charities Helping Those in Haiti – https://bit.ly/3CTkDWl


For a transcript of this episode, please visit crooked.com/whataday

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The Daily Signal - Here’s What You Need to Know About the Situation in Afghanistan

The Afghanistan War appears to be over. After nearly 20 years of fighting, America's longest conflict has come to a bitter conclusion. Afghanistan's capital city, Kabul, fell to the Taliban in fewer than 72 hours. This came on the heels of a weeklong blitz that saw city after city capitulate to the Taliban.

How did this happen?

"This was an insurgency that for the past two decades was unable to capture even one of the 34 provincial capital cities in Afghanistan, but then out of nowhere, they sweep across the whole country and they're setting in the presidential palace in Kabul," says Luke Coffey, a veteran of the Afghanistan War who directs The Heritage Foundation's Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy. "It's an utter disgrace and an extreme loss of prestige [for] the United States that President Biden allowed this to happen."

Coffey joins "The Daily Signal Podcast" to help explain how the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated so quickly and what the implications are.

We also cover these news stories: 

  • President Biden briefly returns to the White House from his vacation at Camp David to address the nation on Afghanistan.
  • Taliban leaders declare “the war is over,” just short of 20 years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
  • At least seven are dead amid chaos at the international airport in Kabul when thousands of Afghan citizens desperately attempt to escape the invading Taliban forces. About 1,000 American paratroopers will be deployed to the airport to assist in evacuation efforts.
  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she is going to try to advance the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and the separate $3.5 trillion spending bill together.



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Short Wave - COVID-19 News: A Hospital System Overwhelmed, Booster Shots Update

In the last two weeks or so, the number of new daily COVID-19 cases in the United States has increased by about 40 percent. Compared to a year ago — when we didn't have the vaccine — we have three times the number of new cases on average.

NPR correspondent Allison Aubrey talks with Maddie about a hospital system in Mississippi that's struggling to find beds for patients, the push to get kids vaccinated, and booster shots for people who are immunocompromised.

You can always reach the show by emailing shortwave@npr.org.

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Read Me a Poem - “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers” by Adrienne Rich

Amanda Holmes reads Adrienne Rich’s poem “Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers.” Have a suggestion for a poem by a (dead) writer? Email us: podcast@theamericanscholar.org. If we select your entry, you’ll win a copy of a poetry collection edited by David Lehman.


This episode was produced by Stephanie Bastek and features the song “Canvasback” by Chad Crouch.


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Opening Arguments - OA517: Cuomo Resigns; Dominion Lawsuit Survives Motion to Dismiss – AKA Consequences for Baddies!

It's a consequences episode, our favorite genre! Our first bit of great news is that Cuomo resigned. Andrew has a few follow up thoughts on that and our episode on Cuomo, as well as some introductory information on who will be New York's first ever female Governor, Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul! Then we get to the great news of the Dominion Lawsuit surviving a motion to dismiss. If you've listened to the show for a while, you might have noticed that defamation suits tend to have a tough time surviving motions to dismiss. That's because our 1st Amendment is very broad. But the Big Liars went so beyond the pale, they're finding out even the 1st Amendment has limits. Yay!

Links: NY AG report on Cuomo, Kathy Hochul, Hochul's govtrac, Hochul speaks, Survey USA poll, Emerson Poll, Dominion Opinion

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Pod Save America - “The Taliban takes Afghanistan.”

The New York Times’s Jane Coaston joins Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor to talk about the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, the Biden Administration’s scramble to contain the fallout, and how the latest culture war is the right-wing crusade against vaccine and mask requirements. Cook Political Report Editor-in-Chief Amy Walter also talks to Jon about what the new 2020 Census numbers mean for redistricting and the battle for the House in 2022.



For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. 

For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.


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Consider This from NPR - Chaos And Collapse In Afghanistan: How Did The U.S. Not See It Coming?

The Taliban now control Afghanistan. How did the country's government fall so quickly — and why didn't the U.S. see it coming? NPR put those questions to the former commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus.

Afghanistan's future remains unclear, especially for its women and girls. One of them is Freshta Karim, a Kabul resident and founder of a mobile library project called Charmaghz, who spoke to Audie Cornish. Karim is one of many Afghans who NPR reached in Kabul during the final hours before its collapse into Taliban control. Those interviews aired on Morning Edition, and on special coverage produced by the staffs of Weekend Edition and All Things Considered.

For more Afghanistan coverage listen to Up First via Apple, Spotify, or Google; or the NPR Politics Podcast via Apple, Spotify, or Google.

In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.

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CoinDesk Podcast Network - BREAKDOWN: WTF Happened in 1971? (And in Afghanistan?)

Big-picture power shifts from the past, present and future shape the financial world.

This episode is sponsored by NYDIG.

On this episode of “The Breakdown,” host NLW takes a step back from the nitty-gritty of markets and politics to examine current events from the global macro perspective, including:

  • The 50th anniversary of the “Nixon Shock” – aka the end of the gold standard
  • Afghanistan news and the fall of Kabul


This weekend marked the 50th anniversary of when President Richard Nixon decoupled the USD from the gold standard. That event in 1971, which upended the world of finance, contributed in a large way to the rise of cryptocurrencies.

The site “WTF Happened In 1971?” has chronicled the impacts of Nixon’s decision in the years since with extensive data covering wages, productivity and more. Can 50 years of financial transformations be traced back to one event?

In global news, the Afghan government’s struggle against the Taliban has reached a critical point as Taliban forces have taken Kabul, the capital. The news comes after the U.S. withdrew its troops after a 20-year war. This global event is bound to affect the financial system, but it also has ties to cryptocurrencies as they are a new, completely external tool to provide citizens in tumultuous regions agency over their money in a way that has never been possible before. 

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NYDIG, the institutional-grade platform for Bitcoin, is making it possible for thousands of banks who have trusted relationships with hundreds of millions of customers, to offer Bitcoin. Learn more at NYDIG.com/NLW.

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“The Breakdown” is written, produced by and features NLW, with editing by Rob Mitchell and additional production support by Eleanor Pahl. Adam B. Levine is our executive producer and our theme music is “Countdown” by Neon Beach. The music you heard today behind our sponsor is “Only in Time” by Abloom. Image credit: Paula Bronstein/Stringer/Getty Images News, modified by CoinDesk.

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