Gone Swimming

100,000:  Assuming you weren’t at a pool party at Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri with hundreds of your nearest and dearest friends and a few too many COVID germs you probably had a quieter than usual Memorial Day weekend or at least I hope you did.  By the way the St Louis County Executive has now advised those Ozark poolsters to self-quarantine for 14 days or until they get a negative virus test but it’s probably fair to assume that anyone stupid enough to hang in a tightly pressed crowd won’t follow that instruction so expect a regional virus uptick shortly.  On the modeling behavior front, though Trump did participate in some Memorial Day activities, he spent most of the weekend doing two of his most favorite things, golfing and grievance tweeting.  On the golfing front, I get that he hadn’t been out on one of his courses for a while, but still the image of him hitting the links, two days in a row, as the COVID body count nears 100,000 was rich particularly given how he criticized Obama for playing during the Ebola crisis, the one where two people died in the US.  To that end he actually tweeted out a reminder that Obama golfed a lot in office, twisting the facts to claim that Obama had golfed and vacationed far more than he has.  Obviously, that’s just another Trumpian fabrication.  In addition he attacked Joe Biden, Columbia University, “Morning” Joe Scarborough, swing district Pennsylvania Congressman Conor Lamb and Roy Cooper, the Democratic Governor of North Carolina, among others. He called Columbia University  a “liberal, disgraceful institution” for its projection that 36,000 fewer people would have died from COVID had the US acted just one week earlier to impose social distancing measures.  On Memorial Day of all days, he attacked Marine veteran Conor Lamb, calling him an American fraud, and a puppet for Crazy Nancy Pelosi, he did that while endorsing Lamb’s Republican opponent. He continued to repeat a false but horrendously hurtful accusation that Joe Scarborough had killed one of his aides back in 2001 when he was still a member of Congress.  For the record the aide, Lori Klausutis, died after falling and hitting her head in Scarborough’s Florida Congressional office while he was in Washington, DC and the medical examiner concluded that her fall and subsequent death was due to an undiagnosed heart ailment. In any case the false accusation and constant reminder of her premature passing continue to cause extreme distress to her family, in much the way that the conspiracy crap about the death of DNC aide Seth Rich tortures his family so basically it’s classic Trump. The Republican Convention is scheduled to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina which remains a virus hotbed, so naturally Trump is now threatening to pull the convention, which isn’t scheduled to take place until late August, unless Governor Cooper opens up his state immediately. That threat likely represents a veiled attempt to move the convention to one of his properties, the Miami Doral perhaps?  And then there’s Joe Biden, who Trump went after bigly this weekend.  First he jumped on the former VP’s comment to influential The Breakfast Club radio host, Charlamagne tha God, that Black voters considering Trump over him “ain’t Black enough.”  That comment which was said in jest didn’t go over well so Biden apologized afterwards upon realizing he’d committed one of his gaffes, but the Republican campaign machine jumped on it, as did Trump’s ethnic apologists former UN Ambassador/South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and current South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the Republican party’s sole Black Senator who made it clear that they were offended, as if, or more likely that they have higher political aspirations.  Of course neither one was all that offended when Trump said that "any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat are either uninformed or show "great disloyalty" to Israel. Trump and members of his media echo chamber also jumped on Biden for wearing a mask during his lowkey unannounced visit to a Delaware Veterans Memorial.  Frankly I thought the svelte Biden looked suave with his holiday appropriate black mask, dark sunglasses, and well fitted suit almost Bond like, especially in comparison to the bloviated mask-less Trump but I admit I am biased.  Did I mention, that Trump who has now “mandated” the reopening of religious institutions, and by that think mostly evangelical churches with large aerosol spraying choirs, did not go to church over the weekend.

Et Cetera:  Trump also continued to attack absentee voting, mostly out of fears that facilitating voting will lead to his electoral demise.  He went with his “absentee votes are all fraudulent” argument.  Following his lead, the California Republican Party is now suing Governor Gavin Newsom over his plans to expand  vote by mail with RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel chiming in that “A national vote-by-mail system would open the door to a new set of problems, such as potential election fraud.” Notably her uncle Senator Mitt Romney’s largely Republican home state Utah has had mail in voting for years and despite her claims and Trump’s assertions voter fraud is not a problem.  Even Trump’s voter fraud commission quietly disappeared because there was no notable fraud to uncover.  Democrats and never Trumper Republicans are increasingly  concerned that Trump is looking for a way to discredit any election that he doesn’t win and who doesn’t fear that?  The Michael Flynn case continues to take unexpected turns.  Presiding Judge Emmet Sullivan has now hired lawyer Beth Wilkinson who represented newest Supreme Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation hearing to help him respond to Flynn’s effort to get his case dropped.  It’s worth remembering that lying about his Ambassador Kislyak conversations wasn’t Flynn’s only misdeed, he also misrepresented his work lobbying for Turkey. On the virus front, Dr Debby, who should know better, has been engaging in a lot of double speak lately, warning about the virus while also assuring us all that we should go out and play, but only if we really have to, in opened up states that are failing to meet the open up guidelines that she helped author.  Politico reports that the Trump administration is considering moving pandemic response to Mike Pompeo’s State Department to a new group to be headed up by none other than Dr Debby Birx.  And, finally, Brazilians are no longer welcome, at least for now.  Who would have guessed that President Bolsonaro’s no social distancing but let them eat hydroxychloroquine approach to controlling COVID wouldn’t be effective? That’s the drug that Trump has stopped taking and that the World Health Organization has stopped investigating because it doesn’t help but does have some deadly side effects.