Calamari

Zooming On:  Apparently calamari is big in Rhode Island which must explain why a chef stood by with a heaping plate of it as Rhode Island Democratic leader John McNamara announced his state’s delegate votes during last night’s presidential nomination roll call.  In addition to the calamari, a diverse group of Democrats were featured prominently during the roll call including Congresswoman Alessandria Ocasio Cortez who used her meager minute to second the nomination of Bernie Sanders, the only other Democratic candidate nominated last night, the parents of Matthew Shephard, the Wyoming college student who was beaten to death for being gay in 1998, Khizr Khan, the Virginia Gold Star father who schooled Trump in the Constitution in 2016 and Florida dad Fred Guttenberg who lost his daughter to the gun massacre at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School  Like the rest of last night’s virtual convention, the nomination process went off without a hitch, impressive given that it spanned all the states and territories.  In a sweet touch the process was initiated by New York security guard Jacquelyn Brittan, her reward for having expressed her love to Biden during his elevator ride to the NY Times editors’ office for his interview for the odd primary endorsement that ultimately went to Senators Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar, not that it did either much good.  Former president Bill Clinton spoke, effectively skewering Trump for his chaotic response to the coronavirus.  Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter spoke too, with the former president saying “We deserve a person with integrity and judgment, someone who is honest and fair, someone who is committed to what is best for the American people,”  by that he meant Biden not the current liar in chief.  The Republican contingent was represented by one time Secretary of State Colin Powell who endorsed Biden and Cindy McCain who didn’t but did narrate a tribute to Joe and her husband John’s long term, across the aisle friendship.  Jill Biden spoke too, she was humble, a bit nervous and very impressive, unlikely we’ll ever see her in a jacket emblazoned with the words “I really don’t care, do u.” And unlike Melania, she didn’t swat her husband away when he embraced her at the end of her speech. Sally Yates, the onetime acting Attorney General who was summarily fired after she refused to implement Trump’s Muslim ban also spoke, she accused Trump of fawning over Putin an accusation that was documented during the day after the Senate Intelligence Committee released some of the love letters that Trump had written Putin over the years, including one where Trump told Putin that he was “a big fan of his” and another where he hand wrote a promise that his Miss Universe contest would have “the world’s most beautiful women,” hint, hint.

Russia, Russia, Russia: While the convention dominated the evening airwaves, the really big stories of the day concerned the Russia investigation and the Post office.  On the Russian front, the Republican led Senate Intelligence Committee released their final report. In addition to those Trump/Putin missives, the report confirmed Special Counsel Mueller’s findings while providing some additional details that even the Mueller team hadn’t uncovered.  It said that the Russian government disrupted the 2016 election to help Trump become president, that Russian intelligence services viewed members of the Trump campaign as easily manipulated, and that some of Trump’s advisers were eager for their help.  Most notably the report revealed that US intelligence viewed Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort as a grave intelligence threat, that Manafort’s Ukrainian/Russian partner Konstantin Kilimnik was and is a Russian intelligence officer linked to the Russian GRU’s election interference efforts, that Trump lied about his conversations with Roger Stone about the WikiLeaks DNC email dumps and that the Senate Committee had made criminal referrals of Donald Jr, Jared Kushner, Steve Bannon, Betsy DeVos brother/soldier for hire Erik Prince and former campaign/Agriculture official Sam Clovis to federal prosecutors in 2019, passing along their suspicions that the men may have “misled the committee” during their testimony. Immediately after the report was released Florida Senator Mario Rubio who replaced North Carolina Senator/accused insider trader Richard Burr as the Intelligence Committee’s chairman, tried to walk back the conclusions that he’d signed on to and to no one’s surprise Attorney General Barr’s Justice Department is apparently too busy trying to prove that the Russian investigation was inappropriately initiated to do anything about any of those criminal referrals.  It turns out that lying is bad only when done by people not trying to cover up for Trump.

Going Postal:  Trump’s still out there asserting that mail-in voting will result in the most fraudulent and inaccurate election in history, claims that sadly are causing a lot of voters to lose confidence in the whole election process. In response to the huge pushback and alarm expressed by lots of Democrats and even a few vulnerable Red state Republicans, Trump’s handpicked Postmaster General DeJoy has put a hold on making anymore changes to USPS service, a nice gesture but one that doesn’t rollback the removal of all the sorters or boxes that already have been taken out of service and that so far at least hasn’t resulted in the reinstatement of any of the members of the post office management team who were fired two weeks ago in one of those Trumpian Friday night massacres.  DeJoy who is scheduled to appear before the Democratic chaired House Oversight Committee next week is now scheduled to appear before the Senate on Friday, providing some preemptive testimony  to the more friendly Republican led Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee; that’s the committee chaired by Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, the Trump toady who’s currently spending most of his time investigating and tweeting accusations against Hunter and Joe Biden based on information provided to him by those sketchy Ukrainian/Russian sources that the FBI doesn’t want him talking to.  The post office story is likely to have legs, twenty State Attorney Generals are suing over service cuts and Democratic Congressmen Ted Lieu and Hakeem Jeffries, frequent thorns in Trump’s side, have requested that the FBI open an investigation. Sadly, the Ukraine story is likely to have legs too as Johnson is like a dog with a bone, one dipped in Trump steak sauce with a Rudy Giuliani treat on the side.

Et Cetera: Yesterday Trump followed through with the pardon that he had dangled on Monday night.  No he didn’t pardon Roger Stone or Paul Manafort yet, instead he pardoned Susan B Anthony to commemorate yesterday’s 100^th anniversary of the passage of the 19^th Amendment that granted women, or at least white women, the right to vote.  An effort to win votes from those suburban housewives? As to good old Roger who so far has only had his sentence commuted, earlier this week he dropped his felony conviction appeal, an indication perhaps that he expects to get a pardon someday too.  Lying for Trump has its rewards.