The Housewives of Suburbia

Viral Musings:  Another day, another virus news conference.  This time the scarf mistress Dr Debby was present but muzzled.  Former Yankee reliever Mariano Rivera was there too, well actually he was hanging at the White House for a Little League event but Trump needed another prop so he had him sit in on the virus presentation.  That’s the virus presentation where Trump said nothing useful but did show a map of the country with all those not so little hotspots in the west and south highlighted, the little hotspots that have propelled the country over the 4 million and counting COVID infection rate.  He launched into another one of his speeches about the importance of getting kids back to school full time and again threatened to redirect funding away from any schools that don’t fully reopen to Betsy DeVos style private, religious academies, though he did appear to understand that school openings in those hotspots, mostly in states that reopened too soon because he urged them to do so, might have to be delayed a bit and by bit think until next year.  Notably Trump failed to mention that his son Barron’s tony private school isn’t planning to fully reopen and is instead deciding between a hybrid part time plan and a fully online program but he did reference the CDC’s new school guidelines, as in the amended watered down pamphlet that now pushes full reopenings at the expense of children’s health because that’s the way he wants it. The amended CDC guidelines conveniently omit any reference to recent studies indicating that children over ten shed virus like adults and also don’t appear to be all that worried about the health of teachers.  That’s the CDC that used to serve as the model of excellence for disease control agencies worldwide, with an emphasis on the used to, pre-Trump.  

Getting back to those southern hotspots, Trump finally admitted that holding the Republican convention in Jacksonville, Florida would be a bigly problem, because of the virus but mostly because no one wanted to attend, and announced the cancellation of all his Jacksonville events.  Remember when he made fun of the Democrats for deciding to hold a virtual convention and when he subjected North Carolina’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper to unending criticism for his refusal to agree to lift virus protocols to facilitate a huge Republican affair, now the only parts of the Republican convention that will go forward in person will take place in Charlotte subject to local virus rules, the rest of it, including all those lock him/her up speeches will be virtual.  Trump also mentioned that he’d spent some time phone kibitzing and commiserating about the virus with his besties Vladimir and MBS, which probably means he was getting tips on protestor suppression techniques. During the limited Q & A that followed his remarks, he made sure to stay away from any reporters who might ask about that and about whether he discussed Russian bounties.  Spoiler alert, according to the read out provided by the Russians, he did not ask about or push back against those bounties. Getting back to baseball, perhaps because Virus Guru Fauci who was not at the news conference had been tapped to throw the ball out at yesterday’s opening day game between the Washington Nationals and the NY Yankees, Trump mentioned that he’d be throwing out the ball at the Yankees first home game.  Two things on that, first he would never do that in front of a live NY crowd because he knows he’d be mercilessly booed and second, he probably won’t do it anyway because all the players at yesterday’s game took a knee at the start, a gesture that Trump once again said he wouldn’t tolerate. 

Justice:  Michael Cohen is due to be released from prison again later today following a ruling by a New York Federal Judge that his reincarceration had amounted to retaliation by the government intended to prevent him from engaging with the media and writing a tell all book about Trump. Think about that, Trump who got his convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort an early release, commuted his friend Roger Stone’s sentence so that he never even went to prison and had his Justice Department drop, or at least try to drop, the charges against admitted liar Michael Flynn was just accused by a Federal judge of retaliating against the one former crony who turned on him.  In a separate case, after admitting to the court that they had made misstatements about New York State’s policies to justify excluding New York residents from the Global Entry trusted traveler program, the Department of Homeland Security agreed to reinstate NYS residents back into the program, not that any countries will let any of us visit right now. In other DHS news, a judge in Oregon barred their so called federal law enforcement officers from arresting or using physical force against journalists and legal observers covering the crowds of nightly protesters in Portland as long as they’re not suspected of committing crimes. No ruling yet from another judge who yesterday heard complaints from the state’s Attorney General about DHS using camouflage-clad, unidentified agents to round up protestors.  Today is Friday, that’s significant because Trump tends to disappear people on Friday nights, particularly US Attorneys and Inspectors General so keep an eye on Michael Horowitz, the Justice Department’s Inspector General.  Yesterday Horowitz opened an investigation into allegations that DOJ personnel, as in those DHS camouflaged guys, improperly used force in Portland as well as an inquiry into their role in responding to the protests in Washington DC, including the one where tear gas was used to clear the area for Trump’s photo op. And one more thing on the legal front, yesterday the judge overseeing Ghislaine Maxwell’s case ruled in favor of releasing a trove of documents that have been kept under seal.  Though the judge has given Maxwell’s lawyers one week to appeal, she wants the documents ready to go.  A lot of prominent people, including possibly even Trump who earlier this week wished Maxwell well, may be very distressed about that.      

Et Cetera:  Earlier in the week, Republican Congressman Ted Yoho called New York Congresswoman a f-cking bitch for no apparent reason other than the fact that he doesn’t like her “radical” politics and also because she’s AOC and he’s not.  Then he kinda, sorta apologized while denying he’d used inappropriate language.  In response she took to the floor yesterday with a ten minute long speech that really made him look very, very small and very, very bad.  Bottom line, don’t mess with AOC and don’t call women you don’t like f-cking bitches or at least don’t do so in front of the press.  You probably shouldn’t refer to suburban women as housewives either; that’s what Trump did in a tweet he sent out warning “the Suburban Housewives of America” that “Biden will destroy your neighborhood and your American Dream,” part of his effort to spur racial division and fear.  The pushback was fast and furious and also a bit funny with many pointing out that that in addition to being a racist Trump is tone deaf and frozen in an earlier era. Speaking about frozen, the next round of virus relief legislation is stuck, Republican Senators are fighting with each other and with Trump.  Though they’ve agreed not to include a payroll tax cut in the package, the Senators have not yet agreed to the amount of or even the continuation of unemployment payments, a problem because those payments are about to expire.  They’re fighting with Trump about including money for a new downtown FBI building in the relief legislation largely because funding the FBI building has nothing to do with coronavirus relief, it’s all about keeping the FBI in DC because Trump doesn’t want their current site sold to a competing hotel developer as the presence of a new, shinier hotel would negatively impact the value of his DC Trump International Hotel and protecting the value of his assets is his top priority. And the Republicanas still haven’t spoken with Democratic Leader Schumer or Speaker Pelosi. Lastly, the Chinese retaliated against our closing of their Houston consulate by closing ours in Chengdu this morning.. Forget about a trade deal, we’re now in the middle of a cold war with China, one that Trump, who continues to sink in the polls in all the swing states, thinks will improve his reelection prospects.   

Stay safe.  #WearAMask