Passover Edition

Matza, Gefilte Fish and Zoom:  Last night really was different from all other nights at least at the Passover seder table: the plague count was up, everyone zoomed, and even Elijah wasn’t welcome. As to that newest plague, New York may be turning a corner, or at least hitting a plateau, albeit a high one, and though Governor Cuomo is still delivering his must see stream of consciousness press conferences every day, the real hero may well be California’s Governor Newsom.  Not only has he managed to kept his state’s virus morbidity and mortality down but he’s become the go to man for personal protective gear and has been sharing ventilators, a good thing because it appears that the federal emergency supply closet is bare and most of those new ventilators that Trump keeps promising won’t be available until the fall.  As to the coronavirus, it turns out that the strain running amok in New York originated in Europe rather than China, a bit of a problem for Trump who continues to insist that his decision to shut down, or in reality partially shut down, travel from China is one of the reasons that things are going so “well” over here.  Trump did hold another one of his news conferences yesterday, but since it interfered with seder time, I missed most of it.  Apparently I wasn’t alone as CNN and MSNBC skipped parts of it as well as they’ve finally decided that there’s little to be gained by covering his repetitive lies, particularly his assertion that no other leader has done as good a job as he has in squashing the virus and that his administration is leading the world in testing.   

Bye, Bye Bernie?  Bernie Sanders is kind of, sort of no longer running for president.  Much to the dismay of his hard core base, he announced that with no path to the Democratic candidacy, he’s out.  That said, he still wants his bros to show up and cast their votes for him in future primaries to the extent that any of those primaries actually take place because he wants to build up his delegate count in order to maximize his influence on the Democrats’ platform.  One of those “bros,” comedienne Sarah Silverman, an ardent Bernie supporter, tweeted out how heartbroken she was over Bernie’s decision, following up with who she thinks Bernie should now “see” put onto Biden’s ticket and in his cabinet.  Suffice it to say, the non-Bernie twitter verse was less than impressed with her picks particularly her suggestion that Congresswoman AOC, who isn’t even of age, should be considered as Biden’s running mate. Though Sanders had nice things to say about Joe Biden, who he appears to genuinely like on a personal level as opposed to Hillary who he didn’t and still doesn’t, he did not issue an endorsement because he’s Bernie and that’s how he rolls.  Trump is not happy about Bernie’s decision either, as soon as it was announced he sent out a series of tweets, saying ““This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!” He also blamed  Elizabeth Warren, asserting that if it wasn’t for her “Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday!” How typical that he’s blaming a woman.

Et Cetera:  Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler and her husband stock exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher who still haven’t admitted that dumping stocks and selectively buying new ones after being given a heads up about the impending pandemic was wrong are now divesting their stock portfolio “to move beyond the diversion” whatever that means.  And Linda Tripp, the woman to whom Monica Lewinsky foolishly spilled the details of her relationship with former President Clinton, passed away yesterday.  It doesn’t appear that her death had anything to do with the coronavirus.  

Happy Passover to all!