Don't Touch Me

Welcome to March:  The Coronavirus is in at least ten states, including California, Washington State, Massachusetts, Arizona, Illinois, Wisconsin, Oregon, Rhode Island, New York and Florida.  Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg are out of the race, and we may or may not have achieved peace with the Taliban.  Other than that it was a quiet weekend.  Turning to the virus, Trump who as recently as Friday night called COVID 19 a hoax, just another attempt by Democrats to destroy his presidency, held an emergency press conference on Saturday to reassure the public that he and he alone could make the virus go away and to tell us all that he had everything under control.  Before turning the podium over to the “experts” he rattled on first expressing his condolences to the family of that unfortunate but wonderful woman who inconveniently died moments before he started speaking, a nice gesture except it turns out that the woman he cited was actually a man and he should have known that because officials in Washington state had already announced his passing.   Trump’s handlers’ failure to get even that fact right speaks volumes about the way the administration has been bungling the whole virus situation.  Don’t get me wrong, containing a highly contagious cold virus would have been tough for any administration but this cast makes the Keystone Kops look competent, lacks adequate management and communication skills and started with a huge disadvantage because under Trump’s direction they dismantled a significant amount of the country’s public health  apparatus essentially because those large corporate tax cuts were partially paid for by cutting things like disease control.  During the same Saturday press conference Trump reassured us that only 20 people in the country had tested positive for the virus, an understatement that excluded all those infected people who had arrived here from overseas and in any case failed to note that so far, due to lack of adequate testing kits, a relatively small number of people have actually been tested but in any case the figure he cited became immediately moot when, shortly after the press conference disbanded,  an announcement out of Washington State revealed that a nursing home was chock full of exposed, and very vulnerable residents. Getting back to those testing kits, yesterday Axios revealed that the reason that so few people have been tested and so few kits have been made available is because the CDC screwed up the manufacturing of the kits.  The bottom line is that though as of this morning there are only 88 confirmed positive cases many more people have probably been exposed and infected by the virus, fortunately most of them aren’t all that sick and are unlikely to get really sick since 80% of the people who get COVID 19 don’t get all that sick.  Anyway once functional testing kits get out to state and local officials we will know more about the spread.  Trump also announced some more travel restrictions, put off those trips to South Korea, Iran and Italy, and he hinted that he might close the Mexican border, not because there have been any Coronavirus infected people crossing it but because he’s been looking for an excuse to slam it shut for some time. Anyway, that probably won’t happen because doing so would really kill transborder trade and the thing that really has Trump spooked is the virus’s impact on the markets or what those witty guys at Saturday Night Live are now calling the Trump Slump.

South Carolina:  It looks like a lot of voters in South Carolina’s black community took Congressman Jim Clyburn’s endorsement of Joe Biden very seriously.  The former VP won the state’s primary with a performance that exceeded expectations.  Biden blew away the competition, earning 48% of the vote.  Sanders came in second with 20% followed by dropouts Tom Steyer and Pete Buttigieg who were trailed by Warren, Klobuchar and Tulsi Gabbard who are all still running as of this morning. For better or worse Mike Bloomberg is still running too, but wasn’t on the South Carolina ballot.  Tom Steyer appeared to really enjoy his South Carolina outing, when last seen he was dancing on stage with rapper Juvenile, but not even those dance moves could save his campaign.  As to Buttigieg, he never gained any traction with black voters.  He should be applauded for recognizing that despite his good performances in the early states he had no path forward to winning.  He’ll be back and if the Democrats manage to win in the fall, he’ll probably show up in the cabinet.  Tomorrow is Super Tuesday, before Saturday and before the recent dropouts, the pundits predictions were that Sanders would sweep the day.  He probably will still do very well but who knows, Biden’s South Carolina win combined with Clyburn’s endorsement, an endorsement that carries weight around the country, could help him bigly.  The race between moderates and the left wing is on now and it’s looking more and more likely that Biden will be carrying the moderate torch.  Probably time for all those others to pull out and start endorsing and financially supporting one of the remaining guys, and by guys I really mean guys. Unfortunately the remaining cast still have aspirations fueled by big egos, and in at least one case huge pockets, so the race goes on.

Et Cetera:  Over the weekend the administration announced that they had reached some sort of peace agreement with the Taliban that would result in the withdrawal of a lot of US troops, a Taliban take over and probably a return to hell for Afghanistan’s female population.   At some point Trump plans to have all those nice Taliban guys visit him in Washington to celebrate, something along the lines of that Camp David tete-a-tete that he previously had planned to host last September 11.  Since revisiting prior plans seems to be a thing right now, Trump also announced that he’s once again picked Congressman John Ratcliffe to become his new permanent Director of National Intelligence.  Last time he selected Ratcliffe, he quickly pulled the nomination in the face of bi-partisan pushback over Ratcliffe’s lack of qualifications. Apparently in a post impeachment world, qualifications for that key position no longer matter and this time around, at least so far Senate Intelligence Chair Richard Burr appears to be all in and it appears that Senate Leader McConnell may have the votes to get Ratcliffe confirmed because why not have a DNI who is fully on the Trump train going into the elections, who needs interference free voting anyway?  In other news, a  DC based  federal judge has ruled that Trump’s appointment of  Ken Cuccinelli as acting US Citizenship and Immigration Services director violated the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, a decision that suspends two policies Cuccinelli implemented while leading the agency.  That order strikes down directives from Cuccinelli that sped up asylum-seekers' initial screenings and limited extensions of those hearings, on the grounds that Cuccinelli lacked authority to issue them.  And another Appeals Court blocked Trump’s policy requiring migrants to wait in Mexico while seeking asylum.  That order has already been stayed but so far the Cuccinelli ruling remains in place.  And Israel is having elections again today because why not?