Distancing and Protector Gear for Today's Voters!

Viral Musings:  Over the weekend Trump denied knowing that he had disbanded most of his pandemic team after taking over the presidency and to be fair he may not remember that he did because, well we all know why.  Yesterday Trump stuck with that theme telling state governors that it was their job, not his, to locate necessary hospital equipment like much needed ventilators. We know he really said that because someone on the call leaked his statement to the press and because NY’s Governor Cuomo raged about it later in the day, calling for Trump to martial the resources of the army corps of engineers to set up temporary hospitals, ala the Chinese, and to put the manufacturing and distribution of other needed equipment on a war footing.  Though Trump finally appears to understand that we are facing a serious crisis so much so that he tempered his words and actually said that the press was doing a good job, he’s still spouting a lot of verbal diarrhea, hogging the microphone from experts like Dr Fauci when he shouldn’t and standing in a too tight cluster with his taskforce.  By the way pandemic expert Fauci  said that if it looks like you are overreacting, you’re probably doing the right thing. Good to know because I for one am in overreacting mode.  Getting back to that disbanding of the pandemic task force thing, former national security advisor John Bolton who did the actual firing, is quite defensive about it, he claims that it was overstaffed and he was just streamlining things to be more efficient. Yeah right.  Also, forget about seeing his book anytime soon, it’s delayed not that any of us care anymore.     

Primary Day:  As I write this it’s still primary day in Arizona, Florida and Illinois, but not in Ohio where Governor Mike DeWine is refusing to open the polls despite a judge’s ruling that he should.  He’s not totally cancelling the election, he’s just trying to find a way to extend voting. If you are voting today, wrap yourself in protective gear, and social distance!  I am all for voting but safety comes first. On the election front, with almost all of the results in from California, Bernie Sanders ended up with 34% of the vote to Joe Biden’s 27.2%; 22% went to late drop outs Warren and Bloomberg.  Bernie’s 34%  is significant because plus or minus a few points it appears to be his ceiling – Arizona polls show him at 31%, Ohio and Illinois polls at 35%, and nationally around 38%.  In Florida, given his affinity for some of Castro’s Cuba policies, Bernie is polling lower, in the mid 20% range. Of course that assumes that the older set actually show up today. Notably with 95% of the vote in from last week’s Washington State primary, Bernie, who won the state’s 2016 caucus getting 72% of the delegates and who pointed to his early lead as one of the justifications for remaining in this race received only 36% of the vote, losing to Biden by more than 20,000 votes.  Note to Bernie – time to pull out, endorse Joe and move on.  And one more thing, assuming he’s the candidate Biden promised during Sunday night’s debate that his running mate would be a woman, not surprising given that his promise is consistent with earlier statements made by South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn, who saved Biden’s candidacy with his endorsement.  By the way, Clyburn wants an African American woman and it’s fair to assume that Clyburn’s preferences carry a lot of weight.       

More:  In other news, it took the House all day to pass some agreed upon corrections to the crisis legislation that they already passed because Texas Republican Louie Gohmert, one of the most despicable members of Congress, tried to hold up the vote. Nothing has happened yet in the Senate largely because Majority Leader McConnell took the weekend off.  He’s back and actually had the nerve to issue a statement saying that passing the legislation was an urgent priority, just not enough of a priority to work over the weekend like Nancy Pelosi and her team.  McConnell also called for Amy McGrath the marine veteran challenging him for his Senate seat to take down her political ads, more or less claiming that it’s unpatriotic right now for her to try to unseat him. The stock markets are the tank, pretty freaked out about a recession as well as Trump’s statement that we may be in hibernation through the summer but you know that already. Trump keeps tweeting that he’s going to pardon former national security advisor Michael Flynn, hoping that given the current mess no one will notice and the Justice Department is going to drop its case against the nefarious players who funded the Russian troll farm that helped disrupt the 2016 election saying that the farm’s lawyers were learning too much about US secret methods from pre-trial disclosure.  It’s not clear if that is the real reason, it could be although the intelligence agencies cooperated with Mueller’s team when the charges were filed.  Anyway, it’s not like any of these guys were going to go to jail but the optics are bad but then again right about now so is everything else.  On the international front, Europe is closed, Canada is restricting visitors and in Israel where extreme measures have been taken to control the virus, Benny Gantz rather than Bibi Netanyahu, has been tapped to form what he’s calling a broad national unity government. At least with regard to Israel’s politics this sounds familiar.

On a more positive front, because we need to hear some positive things, this morning Regeneron announced that is further along with an anti-viral antibody treatment for COVID 19 than previously reported.  The company said that they expect to be ready to start testing on humans in early summer.