Oh So Embarrassing

Viral Musings: A few weeks ago Kristi Noem, the Governor of South Dakota who eschews masks and believes that COVID is so not a problem appeared in an advertisement encouraging tourists to come visit all those beautiful places in her state.  And who doesn’t thing that it would be a good idea to see Mt Rushmore before she carves her hero Trump’s face into that historic site. To the extent that you were considering taking her up on her offer, you might want to reconsider your plans.  One out of every fifty-four people in the state is considered an active COVID case now and one out of 1500 are in the hospital, a 51% increase since the day before the election.  It’s not just South Dakota, across the US COVID hospitalizations are at peak levels and rising, Texas is now the first state to surpass one million cases, the US Death count has hit 240,000 and there were 1400 COVID deaths yesterday.  Nevertheless Republican leadership remains focused on casting doubt on the outcome of the presidential election, not the House and Senate elections that they won, just the Biden-Trump race and anything and everything related to Georgia because of the state’s two upcoming run-offs. Senate Leader McConnell says its fine for Trump to request investigations into all that non-existent election fraud and, with his trademark smirk firmly planted on his face, Secretary of State Pompeo said that he was looking forward to Trump’s second term, Trump’s bureaucrats are working on next year’s federal budget as if they’ll be around in February to deliver it, and Trump is continuing to reinvent the Pentagon.  Including Defense Secretary Esper, four senior civilian officials responsible for overseeing policy and intelligence have been shown the door,  replaced by Trump loyalists including retired Brig General Anthony Tata, a controversial figure whose earlier nomination for a position requiring Senate confirmation was pulled due part to his belief in fringe conspiracy theories and his assertion that Obama is a terrorist.  In addition, Kash Patel, a former aide to Trump toady Congressman Devin Nunes has been named as new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller’s Chief of Staff.  Depending on who you ask, Trump is either preparing for a coup d’état or needs these nefarious characters in place so that they can erase evidence detailing his conversations with Putin and his other autocratic besties.  Those are these transcripts that are hidden deep within that super-secret server that houses things like his Ukraine cover-up call. 

What Me Transition: Following Trump’s orders, no one in government is cooperating with President-elect Biden’s transition team. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence isn’t even providing Biden with the PDB, the top secret daily presidential briefing that is routinely provided to incoming presidents during transition periods. The 9-11 report cites maintaining continuity about security matters as key to avoiding future terrorist attacks but none of that is of concern to Trump who the Republicans insist must be coddled to help him get over his bruised ego and besides they need his help with the Georgia runoffs which explains why Georgia’s embattled incumbents Senators Loeffler and Perdue are sticking to him like glue.  The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that their call for Georgia’s Secretary of State to resign over his “mishandling” of the election  originated in the White House. The myth of rampant voter fraud continues to dominate the Trump twitterverse.  The most egregious example that Trump has cited, an accusation by an Erie Pennsylvania postal worker that he’d witnessed ballots, presumably only “Biden blue” ones, backdated has now been retracted by that postal worker who admitted to Postal investigators that he’d made the whole thing up, but you’re unlikely to see that mentioned in Trump’s twitter feed or by any of his nearest and dearest fans. That said, GoFundMe is now returning the $129,000 that Trump’s fans raised in the postal worker’s support.  To date the list of Republican Senators acknowledging Biden’s victory hasn’t grown but a few more, including Pennsylvania’s Toomey,  are now saying that Trump should follow precedent and cooperate with the Biden transition while all that faux fraud is being investigated.  That’s the fraud that Trump and his most dedicated fans and abettors still hope will allow them to delay state verifications so as to overturn the election results.   For his part, Biden, who has got to be inwardly fuming, is maintaining a calm outward appearance, something that before the days of Trump was called presidential.  Yesterday, during his press conference, he called Trump’s failure to concede and cooperate an “embarrassment” that  “would not help his legacy” but said not to worry, his team is working away and will be ready to hit the ground running on January 20 with or without Trump’s help.  Biden also slammed the Republican lawsuit against Obamacare while saying that he plans to improve and expand the health care program as soon as he moves into the White House, assuming that he can convince any of those not so cooperative Republican senators, the same set that refuses to acknowledge his victory, to play ball while also convincing those Democrats who want Medicare for all that it’s a nonstarter given the make-up of the Senate and their shrunken House majority.  As to the Obamacare lawsuit, yesterday the Supreme Court heard oral arguments from both sides and, assuming that they weren’t faking us out, it appears that Justices Roberts and Brett “Beer” Kavanaugh do not believe that it’s their role to invalidate the whole of Obamacare.  Roberts essentially said that if Trump and the Republicans wanted to kill the whole plan, they would have done so on their own, that they can’t get SCOTUS to do their dirty work.  Regardless of how the other Justices rule, If Kavanaugh joins Roberts and the Court’s three liberals. Obamacare will survive. For his part Justice Thomas went off on a tangent, questioning whether a law mandating face coverings would be valid if it didn’t have a penalty attached. Of course he did. 

Off Ramp: Trump may have found his off ramp.  Reports are that he’s now in the process of setting up a PAC to raise money for his preferred candidates.  People with the last names of Trump and Kushner?  If true that means that Trump has found his newest grift, one that will allow him to line his and his kids pockets, at least until he gets investigated for violating any and all relevant campaign finance laws.  Hey, if it gets him out of the White House, it works for me.   

70 Days