The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

The Good:  The day opened with some good news from Pfizer.  The pharmaceutical company announced that the vaccine that it’s developing with its German partner BioNTech appears to be 90% effective.  Shortly after that announcement President-elect Biden, who much to Trump’s dismay had been given a heads-up from Pfizer the night before, revealed the panel of experts who will be guiding his coronavirus policy and vaccine rollout. Biden’s team doesn’t include relatives, herd advocates or inexperienced junior McKinsey consultants but will be headed up by former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, one time FDA head David Kessler and Yale doctor Marcella Nunez-Smith.  Other participants include Rick Bright, the BARDA vaccine expert who testified against Trump after being ceremoniously dumped for speaking truth about how badly the Trump team was handling things and the hydroxychloroquine fiasco, Dr. Michael Osterholm who is familiar to news junkies largely because of how distressingly accurate his dire predictions about the virus’ trajectory have been and Dr. Zeke Emanuel, the health care policy expert who makes up one third of the agent Ari and former mayor Rahm brother trio.  VP Pence countered by holding a White House virus Task Force meeting, the first one he’s attended in one time. He gave Trump credit for the Pfizer vaccine, even though the company did not benefit from Project Warp Speed funding for its research and development and then announced that he was heading to Sanibel Island Florida, not to help with hurricane relief, but to take some much needed vacation, who knew that obsequiousness was so exhausting? He did not mention if his fly will be joining him.

The Bad: As noted Trump still hasn’t conceded and despite reports that some in his camp have advised him to do so, his efforts to delegitimize election outcomes in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin and Georgia continue. After testing positive for COVID, David Bossie, the non-lawyer who had been heading up Trump’s legal effort has stepped aside but the lawsuits contesting the validity of the vote counts continue. Bossie probably caught his case of the ‘rona at Trump’s election night covidfest, as did HUD Secretary Ben Carson who revealed he is also COVID positive.  Carson has nothing to do with the recount so there’s no point in spending too much time addressing his covidiocy, but really, shouldn’t a 69 year old brain surgeon, part of a vulnerable ethnic group, have known to stay away from a Trump covidpalooza?  On the recount front, while its easy to dismiss the Trump team’s efforts as a waste of time, they’re keeping me up at night, not because they are going to uncover massive fraud, or any fraud for that matter but because, the efforts which are intended to give Trump time to “cope” with his loss and delay the certification of state vote counts, have the support of most Senate and House Republicans, including leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.  Thus far only the usual cast of Republican Senators, Romney, Collins, Murkowski and Sasse, have congratulated Biden and Harris on their victory as have former President George Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Late yesterday Attorney General Barr emerged from where ever he’s been hiding to announce that he’s changed Department of Justice policy, authorizing federal prosecutors to begin investigating “substantial allegations” of “voting and vote tabulation irregularities” across the country. As Barr himself admits in his letter, the change represents a stark break from longstanding practice. Barr’s statement may just have been his way of placating crybaby Trump, but given the way Barr handled the Mueller Report “reveal” we know and he knows his statements have power in the public sphere so a large percentage of the public has just had their beliefs in election fraud validated and a few of the more partisan US Attorneys, including the ones from key state Pennsylvania, have just been given the green light to cause bigly trouble. It certainly doesn’t help that Barr’s statement was released right after Senate leader Mitch McConnell said that that Trump was 100% within his rights to question election results. Concerned by Barr’s statement, Richard Pilger, the Justice Department figure responsible for overseeing voter fraud allegations stepped down, telling colleagues that “having familiarized myself with the new policy and its ramifications… I must regretfully resign from my role as director of the Election Crimes Branch,” in other words Barr is out of line and I’ll have none of it.  Picking up on Trump and Barr’s theme, Georgia embattled Senators Loeffler and Perdue, the two who face January run offs against Democratic contenders Ossoff and Warnock, are now demanding the resignation of Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger citing his “mismanagement and lack of transparency” as the reason for their demand.  Raffensperger who called their complaints “laughable” does not plan to resign. He knows what we know, that the Georgia Senate duo want a compliant hack put in place to tip the scales in their direction in time to help them win their rematches.  And who knows, maybe Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp will comply.

As to the election results, Biden’s lead remains solid.  He’s up by 11,413 votes in Georgia;  by 45,336 in Pennsylvania; 20,540 in Wisconsin; 14,746 in Arizona;  36,185 in Nevada; and a whopping 146,123 in Michigan.  Though the Trump team keeps citing the infamous Bush v Gore case to justify their calls for recounts, it worth noting that Bush v Gore involved only one state, Florida, and that Bush’s lead over Gore was only 537 votes at the time that the Supreme Court weighed in. As to Trump’s claims of rampant fraud, CNN randomly selected 50 of the 14,000 Michigan votes that the MAGA crowd asserts were cast by dead people: 37 were dead people who did not cast votes, 5 were alive and did vote and the remaining 8 on the list were also alive but didn’t vote.  Massive fraud, not!

The Ugly: Trump tweet “terminated” Secretary of Defense Esper yesterday, replacing him with Christopher Miller, the director of the National  Counterterrorism Center. Esper’s firing was not a surprise, he’d angered Trump for refusing to send troops to control civilians in all those cities that Trump calls “anarchist jurisdictions” but we should probably be concerned that Trump leapfrogged over the next in line in the Defense Department picking Miller instead because though it’s not clear how he made his decision, there likely is a nefarious motivation behind it. Trump also removed Michael Kuperberg, the scientist responsible for the National Climate Assessment, another sign that he plans to use his remaining days in office to continue impeding climate science and policy.  His push back to Biden’s announcement that he’ll be rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement on day one of his administration assuming we ever get there.  Next up, CIA Director Haspel and/or FBI Director Wray?  One more thing, Michael Ellis, a WH attorney/political operative who previously worked for Trump co-conspirator Congressman Devon Nunes was appointed as the NSA’s chief counsel yesterday leading many to surmise that he’s being put there to delete implicating documents from the super-secret server that houses things like transcripts of calls with Vlad.  

71 Days