Family Feud

Weekend Recap:  Trump is still attacking mail-in voting, or at least mail- in voting by everyone who isn’t planning to vote for him.  Postmaster General DeJoy claims that all is fine at the USPS and that despite Trump’s assertions to the contrary that all of our trusty rain, sleet or snow mail couriers will be able to deliver each and every absentee ballot dropped in one of its blue boxes, assuming that you can find one and that it’s not crusted in those COVID germs that Trump says makes them dangerous to go near.  DeJoy also said that all of those sorters taken out of commission weren’t needed anyway, especially the ones in blue parts of the country that various local postal officials have been reassembling against orders because they feel that they really need them. Trump’s Aunt, Maryanne Trump Barry, inadvertently confirmed that Trump is the creepy, lying, SAT cheating, soulless idiot that his niece Mary says he is and Kellyanne Conway, the queen of alternative facts, is leaving the White House at the end of the month to save her family or what’s left of it. Trump wants us to know that convalescent plasma which has been in use since the early 1900s is the miracle cure for COVID that everyone wants it to be even though it’s not and he also implied that the reason we don’t have a COVID vaccine already is because deep forces at the FDA are slow walking the approval process in order to tank his reelection prospects.  The Republican convention starts tonight, every member of Trump’s family not named Mary or Maryanne will be speaking and Trump will be speaking every night.  Kellyanne Conway will be speaking too, as will Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who will be zooming in from Jerusalem even though traditionally the Secretary of State does not speak at partisan events such as conventions.  Both former UN Ambassador/SC Governor Nikki Haley and VP Pence will be speaking also as will South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, part of what may be a final bake off for the VP slot in the event that Trump decides to dump Pence to get some Kamala Harris offsetting estrogen on his ticket, a move that having Pompeo speak from the Holy Land might portend because Pompeo calling in from Jerusalem could offset the anger that the evangelicals would feel about losing Pence (and Mother) from the ticket.  As to the convention, last night the RNC announced that the party no longer is bothering with a platform because with Trump, who repeatedly says that he is deserving of at least two more terms, who needs a platform.  And of course the Republicans are holding many of the convention events at the White House despite the fact that doing so violates the Hatch Act, that’s the White House with the Melania supervised newly renovated Rose Garden that got trashed on Twitter over the weekend, something having to do with her replacing the beautiful crabapple trees with a concrete sidewalk. 

The Mail Blues:  Postmaster DeJoy testified in front of the somewhat friendly, Republican dominated Senate Homeland Committee on Friday.  He repeatedly made it clear that he’d only been on the job for two months and as such nothing that’s happened at the USPS is his fault.  Though he claimed that there had been no USPS service cuts, he also admitted that as a result of his mandate that trucks adhere to their schedules, many had been going out empty due to staff shortages that he attributed to coronavirus related absenteeism and summer holiday schedules. “Efficiency expert” DeJoy didn’t seem all that concerned that having the trucks adhere to a fixed schedule meant that stacks of letters and packages, including key drug deliveries, were left piling up in warehouses, because who cares about actually delivering mail as long as the trucks are on time?  He denied that there had been cutbacks in overtime and also refused to provide a lot of the back-up information that the Democratic members of the Homeland committee requested, possibly because leaked copies of some of that information, particularly data about the overtime cutbacks, reveal that he was lying.  For the most part, with the exception of “RINO” Mitt Romney, the Republican members of the committee were happy with his testimony, the Democrats who came armed with complaints from their constitutents not so much.  On Saturday, Speaker Pelosi’s House held a rare weekend session, passing, with the help of 26 Republicans, 27 if you count the Republican who voted “no” but meant to vote “yes,” a $25 billion USPS funding packages that called for DeJoy to rollback all of the service cuts that he denies having made. Curiously enough, NJ Republican Van Drew, the Congressman who switched to the Republican party this year and who is speaking at the RNC, voted for the package.  It’s unlikely that the Senate which is on holiday will even reconvene to vote on this legislation anytime soon if ever. Today DeJoy will be on the Hill for a House grilling; armed with proof that he prevaricated a lot on Friday, the House isn’t expected to treat him with kid gloves. 

People, Places, Things:  Trump niece Mary got tired of people claiming that she had made up parts of her book so she released some of the tapes of her conversations with her Aunt Maryanne.  It turns out that though she didn’t know it as it only takes one side to legally tape calls in NY the good judge, was the source of a lot of the information included in the book.  One particular conversation where she dissed Trump’s intellect, recounted that she had to pull strings to get into Fordham, arrange for him to get “help” with his SATS and then help him transfer to the University of Pennsylvania, not Wharton as Trump likes to say, is notable. She also mentions that he doesn’t really read, a statement that the very complicit abettor/Chief of Staff Mark Meadows called into question this weekend saying that Trump reads more than anyone he knows, that he reads so much and is “so well prepared that it causes me to have to read many times well into the night to keep catch up to him.”  Kellyanne wasn’t the only Conway to announce her departure from the scene, her husband George also announced his retreat from the very anti-Trump Lincoln Project; he did that with a lengthy series of tweets that made it clear that he still supports the Project’s efforts and still thinks that Trump is woefully incompetent and evil.  Both members of the Conway cult appear to be stepping back to save their fifteen year old daughter Claudia who appears to be teetering on the edge, she threatened to seek emancipation from them over the weekend and, sadly, that may be the least of her problems.  As to convalescent plasma, Trump’s first FDA Director Scott Gottlieb said it’s probably incrementally helpful to COVID patients and meets the criteria for an Emergency Use Authorization but that more “evidence generation” is needed and that it’s hardly a miracle cure.  He added that we need to keep FDA decisions with the FDA, his way of saying that Trump should not be forcing approval decisions to aid his campaign and certainly shouldn’t be rushing the approval of any vaccines. By the way neither vocally challenged virus guru Fauci nor Dr Debby, who wants us all to know that if we are willing to go to Starbucks we should be happy to vote in person, were present at Trump’s press conference but his Fox TV expert, radiologist Scott Atlas was.  On the international front, no comment from Trump condemning the poisoning of Vladimir Putin’s opponent Alexei Navalny, who was finally flown to Germany for treatment but only after most of the telltale signs of poison had probably left his body, but expect something to come out of Pompeo’s trip to Israel. Pompeo’s traveling squad includes son in law Jared who is probably there to convince the Israelis to enthusiastically back the sale of those stealthy bombers to the UAE, the planes that UAE wants as payment for their agreeing to recognize Israel, their new “peace partner.” Jared was out on the Sunday talk show circuit this weekend talking up his father in law and Middle East peace for fairly obvious reasons.     

Tune in tonight, or not, it’s going to be either very entertaining or sickening or both.