Lord of the Fly

Superfly:  For the most part last night’s vice president debate was tedious and hard to watch.  The candidates mostly did the usual deflection dance, doing their best to get their practiced talking points across without directly answering questions.  The moderator once again had trouble stopping interruptions, mostly by Mike Pence, who while better behaved than his dear leader Trump was almost as rude. Kamala Harris was more polite than Pence, in part because she knew that anything over the top from a woman, especially a  woman of color, wouldn’t fly well with large segments of the viewing audience.  She did however manage to highlight Trump and Pence’s coronavirus failures and their ongoing effort to take health insurance away during a pandemic by quite effectively stating “if you have a pre-existing condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you.  If you love someone who has a pre-existing condition they’re coming for you.” For his part, Pence stuck with the Trump party line claiming that the two had a health care plan, you know the one that will be released in two weeks, while also artfully slipping in as many of Trump’s talking points as he could, even managing a few lines from the Republican’s newest mendacious playbook, that Obama and Clinton had conspired to undermine Trump with their faux Russia investigation.  Notably Pence, like Trump before him, failed to say that Trump would peacefully turn the keys of the White House over to Biden, or more likely to a virus fumigation team, if he was voted out.  The debate would have been even more of a yawn fest had it not been for the surprise guest, the fly that landed on and then spent two long minutes lazily lolling on the clueless Pence’s over sprayed silvery white coif. The hero fly finally flew off but not before Biden’s rapid response team had set up a flywillvote.com URL, which directed voters to the Democrats’ blue and white “I will vote” website. The industrious Democrats also tweeted out a picture of Biden with a fly swatter and offered up a “Truth over Flies Fly Swatter for $10, ” which to the extent it ever really existed, sold out in minutes. This morning it was announced that Trump and Biden’s next debate is still on but that it will be virtual with the two candidates located in different universes.    

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest:  Earlier in the day, Trump’s doctor posted another incomplete and misleading update about his health status, one that asserted that Patient Number One no longer has any COVID symptoms citing as proof a statement from Trump that he was feeling “great”.  The report noted that Trump’s had lots of antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 in his blood but failed to mention that he had them largely because of that infusion of Regeneron’s monoclonal antibodies.  Later in the day, Regeneron confirmed that those antibodies circulating through Trump’s substantial body were theirs.  For his part Trump violated his promise not to stray from the residence side of the White House by returning to the Oval Office to tape another proof of life video. In the video, the splotchy, oddly made up spreader-in-chief, who is already making plans to return to the campaign trail next week assuming he can breathe, characterized his infection with coronavirus as a “blessing from G-d” before launching into an informercial for Regeneron’s monoclonal antibody drug cocktail.  He went on to promise that he planned to make the drug available to everyone, for free, which probably came as a surprise to the top White House Security official, Crede Bailey, who has been hospitalized for COVID since late September, is reported to be in grave condition and as far as anyone knows has not received any of that miraculous, free monoclonal serum.  By the way, now might be a good time to point out to Trump that his miraculous “cure” was developed with the use of a cell line that was derived from abortion tissue, something that his administration has taken a firm line against. Another question for SCOTUS wannabee Judge Amy?  As to new positives, Rudy Giuliani insists that he’s passed two tests but is downing hydroxychloroquine tablets on the advice of his doctor, who he says is the best COVID expert in the universe while awaiting his next test and the assistant commandant of the Marine Corp, one of the members of the Joint Chiefs who had put himself into quarantine, has tested positive.  We haven’t heard much from Chris Christie who remains in the hospital, which isn’t a good sign.  And apparently, the White House quietly contacted the charity in charge of that Gold Star event that was held in their petri dish before Trump came clean about the infection he may already knowingly had, alerting them that their attendees had likely been exposed. 

Catch Me if You Can:  Peter Strzok, the much maligned but highly competent FBI Agent who has achieved more notoriety for his sexts than for his role in the capture of the Russian team who served as the model for The Americans series and Andrew McCabe, the Former acting FBI Director, have both accused the Department of Justice of doctoring documents that were then provided to the court by former national security advisor Michael “lying” Flynn’s defense attorney’s to justify the dropping of the case against him.  Yesterday the DOJ admitted that Strozk and McCabe’s accusations were true as it “inadvertently” copied and included some post it notes along with those documents and that, oopsy, those notes included “inaccurate,” as in made-up, meeting dates that were then used to throw shade on Obama and his team, making it seem like they were part of a conspiracy to make Flynn and Trump look bad.  To be clear, if we did that we’d be in bigly trouble.  To put it mildly, the judge overseeing Flynn’s case, Emmet Sullivan, is not going to be amused. In other court news, yesterday Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance moved one step closer to getting Trump’s financial information after a NY Federal Court ruled once again that Trump’s arguments against releasing them had no merit.  Trump of course is expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.  Keeping SCOTUS busy, the Trump administration filed an emergency appeal yesterday to stop the Census ASAP in an effort to halt an earlier appeals court decision that extended the count to the end of October.  If you’re wondering Trump and his crowd’s motivations are all about getting the count done so that they can press forward with their plans to exclude undocumented individuals from the figures used to reapportion Congressional districts in order to limit blue state representation.   

It’s Nobel Prize week, want to bet that Trump goes on a tweet tirade tomorrow if he doesn’t receive his coveted “Noble” Peace Prize.