Good Wednesday morning. This week is FLYING by, and also, how did it come to be the second-to-last day in September?
It was only yesterday that I was complaining about how slowly time was dragging by, and now it has accelerated again and is galloping toward sub-zero temperatures and snow drifts.
Brrr. I prefer not to think about it too long. I’m not ready.
I am, however, always ready and looking forward to my next cup of my favorite steamy, hot, pick-me-up beverage: Coffee, which gets a whole appreciation day all to itself. Yes, it’s National Coffee Day.
First observed in Japan in 1983, this day is not observed around the world. Some use this as a day to promote fair trade coffee and raise awareness for the plight of international coffee farmers. Others just like to promote the beverage in all its many forms.
We are a coffee worshiping country. Hello, Starbucks, I see you. (Did you know that Seattle has 10 times more coffee shops per 100,000 residents than the rest of the nation has OVERALL?)
Americans consume approximately 400 million cups of coffee per day, which adds up to about 146 billion cups of coffee per year, making the United States the leading consumer of coffee in the world. We import about $4 billion worth of coffee a year.
And despite the growing availability of caffeine in alternate forms – they even put it in water these days – coffee represents about 75 percent of all the stimulant the U.S. consumers annually.
Fifty-two percent of coffee drinkers say they’d rather give up their morning shower than go without coffee, while 49 percent would prefer giving up their cell phone to forgoing their daily dose of java.
Of course, too much coffee isn’t good for you. It’s acidic and not great for those of us who suffer from ulcers. It can give you insomnia if you consume it too close to bedtime. But there’s also evidence that coffee is actually good for you, and drinking it has been linked to a reduced risk of all kinds of ailments, including Parkinson’s disease, melanoma, prostate cancer – even suicide.
Numerous studies have shown that consuming four or five eight-ounce cups of coffee – about 400 milligrams of caffeine – a day has been associated with reduced death rates.
So switch on that percolator, or fire up the espresso machine, or boil water for your French press or pour over, it’s time to raise a mug in celebration of the liquid fuel that drives us and has a number of origin stories, though it’s widely accepted that it came from Ethiopia, originally.
I’m a two-to-three cup a day gal, and I used to start right about now – around 3 a.m. – but I found that contributed to the aforementioned ulcer, and so now I moved the first amazing cup – why is it so amazing?! – to sometime around 7 a.m. or so.
And if you’re out and about today, a number of places – Starbucks, naturally, as well as Panera and Dunkin’ – have coffee deals.
Oh, and not to alarm you or anything, but drink while you can, because the government is going to run out of money soon unless lawmakers in D.C. manage to land a deal. Nothing at all to worry about, given their track record of success.
We’ll have mostly cloudy skies this morning, giving way to clouds in the afternoon. Temperatures will be in the low 60s.
In the headlines…
Liberal Democrats dug in against voting for a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill this week, angrily rejecting Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to push the bill before the party resolves bitter disagreements over a sprawling social policy and climate package.
The White House said that President Joe Biden opposes changing the filibuster to suspend or raise the debt ceiling, closing off a break-the-glass option to avoid financial calamity.
Democrats wanted clarity yesterday from Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema after back-to-back meetings with Biden. They didn’t get it.
In interviews with a range of Democrats, patience is clearly wearing thin and anxiety is growing that the party could see the entirety of the president’s agenda collapse amid deepening disputes between their warring moderate and progressive wings.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the Treasury would be unable to pay all of the government’s bills if lawmakers don’t raise or suspend the federal borrowing limit by Oct. 18.
Yellen warned lawmakers of “catastrophic” consequences if Congress failed to raise or suspend the statutory debt limit in less than three weeks, saying inaction could lead to a self-inflicted economic recession and a financial crisis.
A federal judge temporarily blocked a provision of Arizona’s new abortion ban hours before it was set to take effect, which would have prohibited abortions solely due to a diagnosis of a genetic abnormality or other fetal condition.
An Axios-Ipsos poll found that 53 percent of respondents don’t have very much trust or no trust at all in Biden to provide accurate information about the coronavirus. Forty-five percent trust the president either a great deal or fair amount.
The poll shows that trust in Biden has been in a steady decline since late May. The erosion may have been hastened by his recent decision to enact vaccine mandates for federal government employees and workers in private companies.
Top generals told lawmakers they recommended keeping around 2,500 U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan, contradicting Biden’s statements that no one advised him against a complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from the country last month.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against suggestions that Biden misled the public on what his military advisers were recommending, and said that reporters were not taking the entirety of his comments into context.
Pfizer and BioNTech are another step closer to seeking authorization for young children to receive the COVID-19 coronavirus vaccine.
They submitted data to the FDA that shows a “robust” antibody response and “favorable” safety outcomes in kids ages 5 to 11 who received the two-dose regimen in clinical trials.
But regulatory clearance of the vaccine for young children may not come until November, after the companies said they won’t ask for the green light for a few weeks.
The side effects from a third dose of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine are similar to the side effects from the second dose, according to a Centers for Disease Control study.
The mu variant of COVID-19 that had sent some scientists into worry over its potential to be vaccine-resistant and more transmissible than the delta variant has been wiped out of the U.S., according to new data.
China has constructed a $260 million, 5,000-room quarantine facility for incoming travelers set to open in the southern metropolis of Guangzhou in the coming days.
Country singer and musician Zac Brown announced that he had tested positive for COVID-19, and that his band would be canceling several of their upcoming concert tour dates as he quarantines – including stops in Syracuse and Saratoga.
LA Lakers star LeBron James said he received the COVID-19 vaccine despite his initial skepticism.
James also said he won’t try to convince other players to get vaccinated, explaining: “That’s not my job. I think everyone has their own choice to do what they feel is right for themselves and their family.”
United Airlines Holdings Inc. is moving ahead with plans to terminate close to 600 employees who didn’t meet its Covid-19 vaccination deadline, company officials said.
A recent USDA study found white-tailed deer in New York State have been exposed to the coronavirus.
Thousands of healthcare workers in New York lost their jobs yesterday when a new vaccine mandate went into effect, forcing some nursing homes to stop admitting new patients and hospitals to warn of longer wait times.
Healthcare facilities reported suspensions of unvaccinated employees, and some had scaled back services in anticipation of fewer workers. But they largely appeared to avoid dire staffing shortages so far.
The state’s pioneering effort to force health care workers to receive coronavirus vaccines appears to have pressured thousands of holdouts to receive last-minute shots, though hospitals and nursing homes continue to brace for potential staffing shortages.
Republican Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin, who’s campaigning for governor, rallied with healthcare workers Monday before they are required to get the COVID-19 vaccine by midnight or risk losing their jobs.
Several school staff unions are warning New York City is not prepared to make up for the thousands of employees it could lose because of the reinstated vaccine mandate.
Judges’ orders exempt nearly half of New York court employees from being vaccinated against COVID-19.
The conditions at Rikers Island have gotten so bad that Hochul signed an executive order permitting virtual court hearings to be conducted at the jail, instead of risking transporting prisoners.
The Manhattan District Attorney directed staff not to ask for bail in many nonviolent cases – while acknowledging the policy could result in additional “low level” crimes.
NYPD Police Commissioner Dermot Shea criticized plans to prematurely release dozens of Rikers Island inmates from the out-of-control jail — quipping that the detainees “worked awfully hard to get in there.”
New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams is moving closer to challenging Hochul in a Democratic primary next year, saying he’ll soon be touring the state as he weighs a bid.
Williams announced that he was filing paperwork to form an exploratory committee with the New York State Board of Elections. Hochul has already said she plans to run for a full term.
Williams pledged to press an ambitious progressive agenda if he runs, and attempted to draw overt and implicit contrasts with Hochul — suggesting that she did not do enough to push back on Andrew Cuomo before his sudden resignation in August.
“Our state is attempting to recover from a pandemic and move forward from an era of toxicity, of scandal, of ego, and personality standing in the way of progress,” Williams, a Democrat and former city councilman from Brooklyn, said in a statement.
Cuomo made his first public appearance in weeks on his Instagram account, where he posted photos of himself and his dog Captain on a small boat.
The pictures show Cuomo, 63, with a scraggly beard as he and the Siberian Husky mix, whom the governor reportedly gried to give away before he left Albany, gazed into each other’s eyes and nuzzled.
A consulting company that employed one of then-Cuomo’s daughters — and later scored a job tied to the state’s COVID-19 vaccine rollout — is in the running for a contract to help overhaul the state’s embattled Health Department.
Republican NYC mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa took cover during a shooting near his Upper West Side apartment.
Sliwa announced that he will attempt to enlist members of the Transport Workers Union in his push to convert controversial horse carriages in Manhattan to electric-powered ones.
If elected mayor this fall, will Democratic mayoral nominee Eric Adams try to veganize New York?
Adams missed city inspectors again after an illegal apartment complaint on his Brooklyn building.
Loopholes remain in New York’s sexual harassment laws that that enable attorneys for accused abusers — some at the highest levels of state government and the judiciary — to argue they are not the victims’ employers, making it difficult to assign liability.
State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris is urging the Commission on Judicial Nomination to look beyond “career jurists and prosecutors” and to consider a diverse pool of candidates for an impending vacancy on the state’s highest court.
Student enrollment at the State University of New York’s 64 colleges took another dip amid the lingering coronavirus pandemic. The number of students dropped by 18,600 this fall at SUNY institutions compared to last fall — or 4.7 percent.
Amid a state-imposed freeze on in-state tuition, the State University of New York has raised the tuition for out-of-state students and ramped up non-tuition fees for all students at four research universities, including the University at Albany.
MTA budget cutters focused too much on cutting front-line jobs and largely ignored plans to pare the agency’s administrative back-office staff, says a new report from the state comptroller.
An E-scooter driver faces manslaughter and other charges in the hit-and-run death of “Gone Girl” and “Cocktail” star Lisa Banes.
“Billions,” the Showtime series starring Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis, will film segments of the show in Albany in the coming days. It is just the latest movie or television show to shoot scenes in the Capital Region.
Niskayuna Deputy Police Chief Michael Stevens said he admits to blowing kisses and calling a male fellow officer sweetheart, but denies most of the other disciplinary charges leveled against him by the town.
Former Bishop Howard J. Hubbard has been accused of misrepresenting the Albany diocese’s handling of sexual abuse cases, including making “at least one outright lie,” in an Aug. 13 commentary in which he sought to explain the cover-up of the abuse.
A 50 megawatt solar farm proposed for Greene County received a landmark approval, getting a green light from the state Board on Electric Generation Siting and the Environment.
Twenty-two animals and one plant should be declared extinct and removed from the endangered species list, federal wildlife officials planned to announce today.
Ex-former Trump White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham plans to release a tell-all book that accuses the former president of abusing his staff, placating dictators like Vladimir Putin of Russia, and making sexual comments about a young White House aide.
Grisham has revealed why the media wasn’t made aware that Trump was making an under the radar trip to Walter Reed Medical Center in 2019: he was getting a routine colonoscopy, and did want there to be jokes about the procedure.
Barack Obama broke ground on his presidential center on the South Side of Chicago, a legacy project that has been bogged down by a lengthy discord over its use of a public park and its potential impact on a historically neglected part of the city.
Former First Daughter Barbara Pierce Bush had her first baby on Monday – a girl named Cora Georgia Coyne- just in time for her father’s George H.W. Bush Points of Light Awards.
Brian Laundrie went on a camping trip in Florida with his parents following Gabby Petito’s disappearance, his lawyer confirmed, while insisting that all three Laundries returned home.
The original “Law & Order” is set to return to NBC after more than a decade off the air.
