Oh Crap!

Deep Dreck:  Yesterday, ousted vaccine expert Rick Bright testified before Congress reporting that Health and Human Services leadership told him that his January and February pandemic warnings were causing a commotion and that he knew we were in “deep sh-t” when they rejected his pleas to stock more N 95 masks and swabs, ignored his concerns about buying mass quantities of the unproven and subsequently shown to be ineffective hydroxychloroquine from unapproved manufacturers in Pakistan and India and failed and, he believes, are continuing to fail to develop an adequate plan for dealing with the pandemic.  Additionally, although he thinks the odds that a COVID 19 vaccination will eventually be developed are good, he questioned that it will be ready by the end of the year or early next year because for that to happen everything will  have to work perfectly and that rarely if ever happens, especially in Trump land.  Moreover, he doesn’t think that the administration is doing what it needs to do to be in a position to ramp up vaccine production and distribution while also ramping up flu vaccine resources. We’re going to need lots and lots of vials and hypodermic needles.  He did give one shout out to trade advisor Peter Navarro, saying that he was one of the few who took his warnings seriously.  For the most part the Committee’s Republican contingent did what Republicans usually do these days, they questioned why Bright was even testifying, suggested that the visibly stressed out expert wasn’t really suffering from the hypertension that has kept him from showing up to work at his as yet undefined new job for the past few weeks and then provided countless anecdotal reports from their constituents about how that Trump/Fox endorsed wonder drug hydroxychloroquine had saved their lives.  Not surprisingly, Trump spent his morning tweet calling Bright, who he insists he doesn’t know, a disgruntled employee, an opinion he shared again before boarding his helicopter to head to swing state Pennsylvania to visit a personal protection equipment manufacturer. Standing by his side, Health Secretary Alex Azar, who Bright had criticized as unresponsive to his pandemic warnings, asserted that the crochety Bright was out of date because the wonderful and glorious Trump administration had already done all the things he claimed they hadn’t.  Following Azar’s remarks, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany whipped out a marked up copy of Obama’s pandemic playbook, the one that to date everyone on planet Trump, including Senate Majority Leader McConnell had said didn’t exist, calling it useless and out of date.  She said that while waving a beautiful colorful brochure, saying it was the Trump pandemic playbook and that it was far superior, or at least far more colorful than that piece of crap left by those Obama guys.  For his part, last night McConnell admitted that he’d misspoken when he said that Obama hadn’t left a pandemic playbook.  Oopsy. 

#WearAMask? At the Pennsylvania factory, Trump who of course wasn’t wearing a facemask, called for Pennsylvania to reopen ASAP, patted himself on his back for solving the virus crisis, and called virus testing overrated, saying that even though we have the best tests and everyone who wants one can get one because he’s great and he says so, all testing does is make US infection statistics look bad versus other countries. That last point probably reflects advice he received from his strategery expert/son in law Jared as yesterday the Financial Times reported that earlier this Spring the pale faced genius advised his father in law that “testing too many people or ordering too many ventilators” could “spook” the stock market.  Sadly that attitude, combined with a lack of example setting from the mask avoiding Trump, goes a long way towards explaining the hordes of MAGA hat wearers showing up in places like Michigan, Wisconsin and even eastern Long Island calling for the reopening of everything as well as the fact that after the Republican dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the state’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers’ stay at home order, a bunch of those red hatted daredevils went on to celebrate in quickly reopened densely packed bars.  Apparently, in their frenzy to get out and chug some brewskis they’d forgotten about the  upsurge in virus cases that took place after the same court ruled that the in-person Wisconsin primary had to go forward virus or no virus.  Either that or maybe they think that drinking beer while wearing MAGA caps provides immunity?

           

Et Cetera:  Speaking of deep doo doo, it looks like North Carolina’s Senator Burr’s insider trading problems are bigly problematic.  He “voluntarily” stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday after turning over his cell phone to the FBI.  Apparently both California Senator Diane Feinstein and Georgia newbie Senator Kelly Loeffler have also spoken with the FBI but neither of them have had to deal with FBI agents showing up at their homes.  Though it’s likely that Burr really did some bad stuff, I am not the only one who fears that he is getting “special” treatment because he’s angered Trump by agreeing with the intelligence community’s assessment that Russian interference helped him in the last election. The Senate Intelligence Committee’s final report is due to be released soon and it’s quite possible that it will either get quashed or that its conclusions will be watered down to meaningless without Burr at the helm. Though its not yet clear who will step into Burr’s chairman shoes, last night Florida’s Senator Rubio and Idaho’s Senator Risch’s names were being bandied about.  In addition to traveling to Pennsylvania, yesterday Trump found time to launch some more attacks against former President Obama, tweeting “If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the US by FAR, is former President Obama. He knew everything.”  At least for now Lindsey Graham, the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has been saying that he wants to get to the “bottom” of the so-called “Flynn Affair” says that while he intends to call some of those nefarious Obama era officials to testify, he doesn’t think that calling on Obama sets a good precedent. Trump of all people should get that but then again he’s Trump.  Sh-t show coming?