Yo Semite

Viral Musings:  Yesterday, fresh off his disastrous interview with Axios’ Jonathan Swan, Trump continued to play fast and loose with virus facts, asserting many of the same lies that Swan debunked. Keeping with that theme he also called yesterday’s massive Beirut, Lebanon explosion an attack, citing what appears to have been imaginary conversations with his generals only to have the Pentagon walk that back later in the evening.  Getting back to the virus Trump once again ignored the disproportionate number of Americans who’ve died from COVID, instead focusing only on the number of COVID positive people who’ve survived and, as usual, he blamed the large number of COVID positives on excessive testing.  On the testing front, he again stated that the US is the only country where asymptomatic people are tested, another lie; it’s only countries with limited test capacity that reserve tests for the symptomatic.  He even claimed that “many world leaders” had called him to congratulate him on his testing achievement; unfortunately Jonathan Swan wasn’t there to ask him to name one.  Then in an effort to justify his claims that things are improving on the virus front, he insisted that  NY and those other areas that had been hit hardest first should be excluded from the country’s statistical picture, because as we all know blue states, especially NY don’t count.  The bottom line, on Monday more than 1200 people died from COVID, bringing the US total to 159,000, hardly anything to brag about. 

 

Yosemite Sam: Beyond a few tweets, Joe Biden was relatively silent yesterday which makes sense.  Why talk when Trump keeps putting his foot in his mouth.  It wasn’t just the Axios interview, yesterday morning while signing a bipartisan conservation bill, Trump mangled the pronunciation of Yosemite, calling the national park Yo Semite on his first attempt and then Yoseminitie on his second. Of course Yo Semite quickly went viral as did refences to cartoon character Yosemite Sam.  Raise your hand if you knew that the mustachioed, gun toting cartoon character’s real name is Samuel Rosenbaum and that he is Jewish.  Really, I am not making that up.  Who knows, maybe Yo Semite is the code name for Trump and Jared’s much anticipated Mideast peace plan.  Back to Biden, the former VP is finishing up his VP selection process, one that Axios reports appears to be coming down to a choice between Ambassador Susan Rice and Senator Kamala Harris.  California Congresswoman Karen Bass, last week’s star, seems to have fallen out of contention, too many odd speeches associating her with communists and Scientologists.  Fair or not, that’s the kind of stuff that would make her an easy target for the Republican slime machine. That said, Axios warns that only Joe, and possibly his wife Jill Biden, who told Fox News yesterday that her husband is all in on participating in three debates, know what he’s thinking.

 

Et Cetera:  During his virus press conference Trump once again attacked mail in voting, well at least mail in voting in blue states.  Apparently its fine in red states like Florida which he cited as particularly well managed because Governor DeSantis is such a superstar at managing things.  That’s the same DeSantis who has done such a marvelous job dealing with the virus outbreak. Trump went on to say that he’s all in on his campaign suing Nevada to prevent the state from implementing plans to send all voters mail in ballots because Nevada’s Governor is a Democrat. Trump also cited the delay in announcing results from two of NY’s Congressional primaries as proof that Democrats can’t handle mail in voting, insisting that Representative Carolyn Maloney’s race would have to be redone.  The results of both races had been held up by an issue related to whether ballots missing postmarks should be counted. Despite Trump’s call for a do over, it looks like both those races are now done as last night they were certified by the NY Board of elections with Maloney declared the victor in hers and Ritchie Torres declared the victor in his, though for the record Maloney’s opponent hasn’t yet conceded. Yesterday the Trump administration also said that despite its early assertion that given virus constraints extra months were needed to complete the 2020 census, they now plan to cut the timetable, ending the census count within the month, another way to ensure that hard to count populations, mostly minorities, immigrants, Native Americans and inner city residents are excluded.  Devious but not surprising given that just last week, Trump ordered that the undocumented shouldn’t be included in the count even though they always have been and should and probably will be and earlier this year he tried, but was rebuffed by the Supreme Court when he attempted to have a citizenship question included on the census from.  The next round of coronavirus relief legislation is still being negotiated, don’t be surprised if Democrats now fight to include an extension of the census schedule in it.  As to that legislation, Senate Majority Leader McConnell announced yesterday that he’s open to a continuation of the $600 special unemployment supplement even though he couldn’t pass a package with that provision without the help of Democrats. That’s a recognition that his vulnerable Senators who he reportedly told last week to distance themselves from Trump need the $600 to be included to stand any chance of retaining their seats as well as an acknowledgement that he’s lost control over his Republican coalition with Senators like Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton now jockeying to run for president in 2024.  On the 2020 front, despite or maybe because of his fragile mental state Kanye West is still running and, according to the NY Times, apparently at least four GOP operatives are helping him to get on the ballot in those keys states where the possibility of him siphoning votes from Joe Biden could help Trump win.  So much for Kanye no longer being a MAGA guy.  Lastly, though Trump is still trying to kill Obamacare, the very red Missouri voted yesterday to opt in to the program’s Medicaid expansion.