Stuck on Gilligan's Island

Stop the Insanity:  The year is almost over but the crazy continues.  Up until yesterday it wasn’t clear that any Republican Senator would step up to abet the Republican Congressional contingent who had previously announced their intention to object to the certification of certain swing state Electoral College votes during the January 6  joint session of Congress.  Unfortunately yesterday one did, and it’s not the woefully ignorant former football coach newbie Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, it’s Missouri’s Josh Hawley, the Stanford College/Yale Law School graduate who until now has been known mostly for his extreme anti-abortion views and who knows better but who plans to run for president in 2024 and wants to get out ahead of his Republican competitors, laying a claim to Trump’s base. One can only imagine that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio spent a sleepless night fuming over being beaten to the punch. By joining the insurgency crowd, Hawley ensures that the January 6 session will be loud, messy and time consuming.  Everytime he joins with the House crazies’ objection to a state’s electoral college results the vote tabulation will be put on pause, making way for a debate where allegations of random Krakens, vote flipping machinery and the influence of the very dead Hugo Chavez will be brought up.  Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will win, again, at the end of the process because overturning any state’s results would require the approval of both the House and the Senate and under no circumstances would the Democratically controlled House vote to overturn any state’s results.  It’s highly unlikely that the Senate will either, like them or not, there are a few reasonably sane Republicans who want nothing to do with this crap, folks like Mitt Romney, Ben Sasse, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski aren’t going to vote to over turn the results of the election, but it is quite possible that a few Republicans Senators will, just to gain some traction with Trump’s followers. 

Nightmare Island: As to Trump, he’s thrilled that Hawley has jumped on his train, he may actually believe that Hawley’s participation, combined with the violence in the street that he’s been stoking and that his Proud Boys crowd is planning, is all he needs to stick around for another four years and let’s be honest, who doesn’t fear that there’s a chance, albeit a small one, that he’s right.  To that end last night Trump announced that he’ll be returning to Washington today, bailing on the New Year’s COVID superspreader shin dig that he’s supposed to be hosting at Mar a Lago, the one that 500 of his fans paid bigly bucks to attend.  And of course, he’s not coming back to work on fixing the seriously flawed roll out of the coronavirus vaccines that his Warp Speed team admits has been an unmitigated disater, in part because of all those holidays that no one could have anticipated take place in December but that Trump’s Defense Department is using as an excuse to freeze Joe Biden out of critically necessary transition meetings. Trump is also still planning to travel to Georgia to campaign for Senators Loeffler and Perdue. It’s unlikely that he’ll meet up with the Governor Brian Kemp or Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger since the three don’t appear to be on the best of terms.  Yesterday, Trump called for Kemp to resign for refusing to back up his claim that he rather than Biden carried Georgia in the November election.  In addition he attacked Raffensberger again, tweeting out a false allegation that Raffensberger can’t be trusted because his “brother works for China and they definitely don’t want ‘Trump’. So disgusting!.” To be clear, Raffensberger’s brother does not work for China.  Raffensberger is a life long Republican who has been consistently supportive of traditional Republican voter suppression policies like limiting polling locations in minority locales, he’s just unwilling to overturn legitimate election results, particularly those that have been recounted three times and that just passed a recently undertaken audit of absentee ballot signatures with flying colors.

Viral Musings:  A record setting 3624 people died yesterday, raising the US death count above 342000.  The states haven’t received anywhere near the number of vaccine doses they were supposed to have received by now and, more depressingly, most have failed to get the doses they have received into people’s arms.  According to the NY Times, though Maine has managed to inject all 8,000 of its doses, most states haven’t been anywhere as efficient.  New York’s Governor Cuomo, spent most of his Wednesday news conference discussing his efforts to facilitate in person attendance at the upcoming Buffalo Bills playoff game but had the feeblest of excuses as to why only 14% of the doses that NY State has received to date have been administered.  CNN reports that Florida’s “county-by-county plan to vaccinate its elderly population has created a mass scramble for a limited number of doses, leading to hours long lines at vaccination sites and overwhelmed county hotlines and websites.” In Wisconsin, a now fired employee actually threw out 500 vaccine doses, not by accident but intentionally.  It doesn’t have to be this way, there’s been plenty of time to prepare for the implementation of an efficient vaccination plan, one only has to take a look at Israel, where 2% of the population is being vaccinated daily to see how an efficient plan works.  Sure they’ve got fewer people, but they’re also way more organized and committed to getting the job done.  No small feat for a country with a political system so fractured that it is about to embark on its fourth election in two years. Maybe instead of working on testing protocols to get people into football games, Governors like NY’s Cuomo should be calling up the National Guard and using stadiums, convention centers and parking lots for shots.  Just saying.   

Wishing all a happy and healthy New Year, with an emphasis on the healthy. 

20 Days

RIP Dawn Wells, our favorite Mary Ann

 

Annus Horribilis

Poison Pill:  Our annus horribilis is almost over but the usual antics go on.  The good news for those getting a $600 “stimulus” payment, according to Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, electronic payments starting going out last night, the bad news is that Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has figured out how to minimize the likelihood that an additional $1400 will follow.  Yesterday, as expected, Mitch refused to move forward with an immediate vote on the straightforward legislation that Speaker Pelosi passed with an assist from some House Republicans that provides for increasing the stimulus payment to $2000, instead saying he would bring up a discussion of that personally offensive subject only after his priority, the vote to override Trump’s veto of the Defense Act, is completed.  Mitch doesn’t want to increase the payment, he’s still not happy about the $600, but he does want to boost his two struggling Georgia Senators’ runoff chances so his intent is to bring the payment increase up for some kind of discussion, and maybe even a vote, but after the Defense Act vote and only after he attaches a poison pill to the legislation passed by the House.  Mitch’s “poison” is expected to include those other two items on Trump’s wish list:  the revocation of the “Section 230” provisions that shield tech companies from being held liable for what users post on their platforms and a provision that addresses all that faux election fraud that Trump blames for the loss he doesn’t recognize. One problem with that approach is though many from both sides of the aisle want to do something about the Section 230 protections, it’s a complex subject that requires extensive discussion and negotiation, ironically just deleting the protection would likely result in the banning of most of Trump’s mendacious posts.  Moreover, as Mitch knows, Democrats aren’t going to agree to any legislation that implies that the 2020 election results were the result of fraud.  So, what’s really going on is a kabuki dance, an opportunity for Senators Loeffler and Perdue to say that they’re all in on increasing the stimulus payments to $2000, even though they previously opposed doing so, but that it’s the Democrats who are obstructing the increase. Vermont’s very independent Bernie, plans to counter Mitch’s poisonous plan by demanding a vote on the House’s single issue version of legislation before any Defense Act vote, filibustering through New Year’s eve, a strategy that will ruin the holiday plans of the rest of his Senate colleagues, including Senators Rubio, Hawley and Graham who’ve actually said that they’ll support upping the payment to $2000, and force Loeffler and Perdue off the campaign trail.  The dance goes on.

Viral Musings: And so does the virus.  The new, uber contagious British version of coronavirus has been detected in a COVID positive patient in Colorado, not a surprise since we’ve already been told several times by an assortment of virus experts, including guru Fauci, that it was fair to assume that it had caught an early flight from Heathrow and was already here, something that we would have detected earlier but hadn’t because of our woefully inadequate gene sequencing capabilities.  In addition, 41-year old Congressman-elect Luke Letlow, a mask shunning Republican from Louisiana, was one of the 1900 people who died yesterday from COVID.  Yesterday, not long after VP-Elect Kamala Harris and second dude Doug, got their Moderna shots, a really concerned and somber Joe Biden took to the podium to warn us again that next month will be even deadlier than December.  He also slammed the pace of Trump’s vaccine roll out, noting that producing vaccines is nice, but getting them in to arms is far better and that with only 2 million first doses done so far, we’re far short of that promised 20 million by year end figure. Warp Speed is looking more and more like the Long Island Expressway during pre-COVID rush hour.  Biden is still talking about getting 100 million vaccinated during his first 100 days in office.  To that end he announced the appointment of three new national coordinators: Kaiser Permanente executive Bechara Choucair as vaccine coordinator; NJ Human Services Commissioner Carole Johnson, as  testing coordinator; and former FEMA deputy administrator Tim Manning as supply coordinator.  Note none of these individuals are Biden family members or in-laws.  Trump responded to the criticism by tweeting that it was only his job to get the shots to the states, that coordinating anything more wasn’t the Federal government’s job, an echo of his earlier PPE excuse and a repeat of his statement about every virus related failure of his administration.  Besides, it turns out that Trump has far more pressing things on his mind.  He Kraken legal team has initiated a few more lawsuits, part of his continuing efforts to upend the results of the election, the Manhattan DA’s office has retained forensic accounting specialists to help in their criminal investigation of his business operations and, most tragically, he hates Melania’s redecoration of his Mar a Lago digs.  Another Trump contractor or two who isn’t going to get paid? Little sympathy there, they should have known better than to take on that assignment.

339,839 Dead

Twenty-one Days

Cash and Carry

State of Dis Union: Yesterday, in the aptly named CASH bill, the House took Trump up on his offer, voting 275 to 134 to increase the previously approved $600 stimulus payment to $2000.  All but two Democrats voted for the increase as did a number of Republicans, however some of Trump’s die hard supporters including Louis Gohmert, Jim “Gym” Jordan, Devin Nunes and Matt Gaetz voted against the increase even though Gaetz recently announced that he’s a member of the Trump rather than the Republican Party.  House Minority Leader, Kevin McCarthy didn’t even bother to vote. The House also voted 322 to 87 to override Trump’s veto of the annual Defense Authorization Act with all but nine of the Republicans who’d originally voted to pass the act sticking with guns over Trump who only wanted to tank the bill because it didn’t include the curtailment of Twitter’s right to mark his lie filled tweets as deceptive and because of the provision stripping bases of their Confederate names.  The action now moves to the Senate where Leader McConnell’s preference would be to focus only on overriding Trump’s Defense Act veto, keeping the CASH Act from even coming to the floor for a vote as the very concept of cold cash going to constituents who aren’t rich gives him the willies. A majority of his crowd doesn’t want to increase the cash payment and he doesn’t want to expose their delicate egos and future political aspirations to Trump and/or the public’s wrath, particularly Senators Loeffler and Perdue, his two exposed Georgia Senators, especially since Trump is scheduled to campaign for them this weekend. Unfortunately McConnell may not be able to pull his head in shell routine this time around as Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders has announced that he intends to filibuster, preventing a vote on the popular Defense Act if a vote on the CASH Act doesn’t precede it.  He insists he’s willing to keep at it through New Year’s Eve if that’s what it takes. It’s not clear whether he’ll take a page from Texas’ Ted Cruz who once read his very frustrated Senate colleagues Dr Suess’ Green Eggs and Ham during a filibuster or if he’ll go with something more edifying, like the complete works of Karl Marx.  

Peaches and Pence:  Getting back to the Georgia duo Loeffler and Perdue, they remain locked in neck and neck battles with their Democratic rivals Warnock and Ossoff with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer expressing concern that his team is running short of the cash needed to get over their January 5^th finish line, a bit surprising and maybe just a fundraising and/or expectations management tactic as the two have already raked in a record haul.  One thing’s for certain, though he is polling ahead of Ossoff by a teeny but sufficient margin to win, Perdue is twitching, he’s one of the Republicans who called Trump over the weekend to impress upon him the need to sign the coronavirus relief/omnibus spending bill.  South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham also gets credit for pushing Trump to keep the government running, not only did he caddy for Trump this weekend but he also helped convince him that it would be better for his legacy not to crash the government.  Graham’s message wasn’t all that different from the message delivered by Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post yesterday. They called for Trump to step aside, acknowledge his election loss and for him to dump Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, his current crop of crazies, saying that doing so would preserve his legacy.  Could someone please explain what legacy they’re talking about?  As to acknowledging loss, Trump isn’t ready to go that route yet or ever, neither is Texas Republican Congressman Louis Gohmert. Gohmert, in the running for worst representative ever, whose sanity is frequently questioned even by those in his disintegrating party, filed suit against Mike Pence to force him to replace those inconvenient Biden electoral college slates from states like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan with Republican ones.  Gohmert’s argument is that Pence has the “exclusive authority and sole discretion” to decide which electoral votes from a given state should be counted on January 6, at the Electoral College confirmation session. He filed his case in Texas where the presiding judge is a Trump appointee, though his argument has no merit, who knows, it is still 2020. Don’t be surprised if Pence decides to remain in Vail forever or go into witness protection to avoid having to decide whether to confirm Biden’s victory or upend Democracy.  He can ask the Senate’s President Pro Tempore Senator Chuck Grassley to preside over the January 6 session in his place, that wouldn’t be without precedent. After losing to Richard Nixon in 1968, Hubert Humphrey did not preside over the Electoral College Session, not because he thought that overturning election results was something he could do but because he thought that the losing candidate shouldn’t run the session.  Notably, despite the litigation surrounding his loss to George W Bush, then Vice President Al Gore did man the session.                 

And More:  It appears that President-Elect Biden is losing his patience, yesterday he went public with complaints about Trump’s team’s unwillingness to cooperate with the transition.  In particular he noted that the Defense Department’s failure to be more forthcoming is putting the country in jeopardy.  That’s the Defense Department currently run by the unconfirmed acting Secretary Chris Miller and some Devin Nunes cronies all of whom were put in place to obfuscate and do only Trump’s bidding.  On the virus front, VP-Elect Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff are due to get their vaccinations today.  Counting theirs, the country’s total number of shots in arms is only at 2 million, far short of the 20 million that we were assured would be completed by year end.

334,967 dead

22 Days

 

Not So Gentle Bossa Nova

Noise and the Hurry: Last week shortly after the Washington Post ran an article describing how a bipartisan group of senators including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Utah’s Mitt Romney, Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, and Virginia’s Mark Warner came together over moonshine provided by Manchin, but not touched by Mormon teetotaler Romney, to craft the $900 billion virus relief legislation that was then combined with the $1.4 trillion omnibus spending act and passed by both houses of Congress, toddler Trump threw a temper tantrum. Of course he waited until after everyone celebrated the passage and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin who had served as his designated negotiator promised that the $600 checks included in the virus portion of the legislation would hit bank accounts within days.  During his fit, the petulant, bitter and grievance spewing Trump shocked all by saying that he wouldn’t sign the legislation, calling the meager $600 payment a disgrace and everything in the omnibus spending part, i.e., the funds to keep the country running irrelevant to coronavirus relief, largely because those things were as that was the point of combining both pieces of legislation. While there’s a chance, a teeny, tiny one that Trump really cares about upping the size of the virus relief payments to $2000, who believes that, after all he seemed equally aggrieved that Vogue had failed to put Melania on the cover of one of its issues during the whole four years of his term, another thing he tweeted about this weekend.  It’s more likely that Trump was just angry that others were getting credit for the legislative breakthrough, especially a group that included pro impeachment Romney, and that he wanted to prove his own relevance while injecting more chaos into the already turbulent environment in the run up to January 6, the Electoral College confirmation of his election loss, that Democratic process that he still hopes to upend with the help of some Congressional toadies and violence in the street.  After Trump rejected the legislation, he headed to Mar a Lago to golf, VP Pence headed to Vail to hit the slopes and Treasury Secretary Manchin flew off to his home in Mexico to pull the knives out of his back.  While they were frolicking in the sun and snow, the unemployment insurance program that was serving as a lifeline to the jobless expired and the shutdown of the entire government and the end of eviction protections loomed. 

Forget all Your Troubles:  Facing increasing pressure from Mitch McConnell whose concern that Trump’s antics would lose him the leadership of the Senate had to be weighing heavily on his shell, last night Trump relented and signed the virus/omnibus legislation. He did so while issuing a statement calling for Congress to vote on increasing the virus relief payments to $2000 and to excise wasteful stuff from the legislation; he claims that he’s going to send them his redlined copy, as if anyone believes he’s actually taken the time to read and edit all 5,000 plus pages.  He also called on the Senate to initiate an investigation into all that imaginary voter fraud and to begin the process of eliminating the social technology companies’ Section 230 protections, things he asserts Mitch McConnell promised he would do during the six remaining days that Congress is in session, as if.  Among other things, those Section 230 protections allow companies like Twitter to mark Trump’s false assertions about election fraud as false, thus he hates them.  Today, Speaker Pelosi plans to vote on increasing the $600 payments to $2000, something her caucus is happy to do. Senate Leader McConnell commended Trump’s decision to sign the legislation but his statement notably did not reference the $2000 payment which his crowd abhors and is unlikely to pass, voter fraud or any effort to eliminate any of that “wasteful” stuff through the passage of another bill.  The focus now turns to the easily passed Defense bill, which Trump, angry over the renaming of the Confederate bases and furious about it not including the elimination of those Section 230 provisions, actually did veto.  The House is going to try to override his veto, assuming they’re successful the Senate will try to do the same. Republicans now face a dilemma, do they stand by the military and the soldiers they claim to love so much and vote to override Trump’s veto or do they side with the irrational mango maniac?

Forget All Your Cares:  First the good news, or at least the potentially good news.  The UK is likely to approve Astra Zeneca’s coronavirus vaccination later this week. Owing to some screw up in dosages given to trial participants, the US is unlikely to immediately follow suit but assuming more data is presented and things go well across the pond, we will probably get it soon.  Unfortunately, the virus remains out of control, the US death count is now up to 333,140, California is out of ICU beds, and following the example set by leaders like Trump, Pence and Mnuchin, people are still traveling, hanging with their friends and family and spreading the virus. The vaccine rollout isn’t ramping up as quickly as hoped, no surprise there but still depressing unless of course you are one of the few who managed to get vaccinated by the medical group in Brooklyn who, at least until they were caught, got hold of some shots to give their clientele at the expense of the rest of us.  

Music in the City:  Setting his van to play Petula Clark’s 1965 hit Downtown, lone suicide bomber, 63 year old Anthony Quinn Warner blew up his van, some of the streets of downtown Nashville and damaged an ATT facility on Christmas morning.  His motive remains unclear, it might have had something to do with his belief in a conspiracy theory linking 5G cell phone technology to the coronavirus epidemic and brain destruction. In case you’re wondering, those things aren’t linked unless you’re part of the tinfoil hat wearing and/or QAnon sets.  Though the explosion was huge, thanks to the quick action of the mostly junior policemen and women stuck on Christmas duty, Warner was the only one killed by his deadly deed.  Of course since he wasn’t a Black Lives Matter demonstrator or an Antifa guy, aside from a statement from the White House communications office that he’d been briefed, Trump pretty much ignored the situation because who interrupts a golf game for something so trivial?

Twenty-three very long days.

    

Jingle Bells

Pardon Me: Earlier this week when asked why he didn’t try to rein Trump in, Jared Kushner who tends to disappear whenever his father-in-law in chief is engaging in his most evil activities, said what can I do, he’s my children’s grandfather. Well we know now that the grandfather that Jared was really thinking about when he made those remarks was his father Charles, the charmer who, in addition to buying Jared’s way into Harvard, once hired a prostitute to entrap his sister’s husband in order to cover-up some financial crimes, an action that former NJ Governor/US Attorney Chris Christie who prosecuted and sent him to jail called “most loathsome and disgusting.” Last night Kushner’s dad got one of Trump’s pardons, a reward to Jared for abetting his father-in-law’s worst acts and maybe also for helping him set up a secret slush fund to pay for a lot of questionable “campaign” items like Lara Trump, Kimberly Guilfoyle and aide Jason Miller/child support evader’s salaries. Trump also pardoned one time campaign manager Paul Manafort and long term BFF Roger Stone along with a bunch of other characters, their pardons mostly as favors to their Republican benefactors a crowd that includes a former aide to Senator Rand Paul, someone with a connection to Conservative lobbyist Matt Schlapp, and Margaret Hunter the wife of the bunny flying Congressman Duncan who got his pardon in Tuesday’s dump.  Both Stone, whose sentence was previously commuted by Trump, and Manafort refused to cooperate with the Mueller Russia investigation so their pardons aren’t surprising, they’re gross and likely constitute obstruction of justice but we saw them coming and now, as a result, only Manafort’s one time side kick Rick Gates and Michael Cohen, the two who “ratted” out Trump, to use his preferred jargon, remain unpardoned. 

What Me Legislate? Before he launched yesterday’s pardon stream Trump vetoed the Defense Spending bill, citing it’s requirement that Confederate named bases be renamed but really because it doesn’t include a repeal of the provision that shields social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, a change that both Republicans and Democrats say is irrelevant to a military policy bill but that Trump wants because he is really pissed that both companies have been pointing out his lies, particularly those claims about the “rigged” election and what he calls his victory but what the rest of us call Joe Biden’s landslide. The defense bill was passed with wide bi-partisan approval, enough votes to override his veto, assuming Republicans have the cojones to vote against him, a bigly if.  If they don’t, our soldiers will get screwed and the beefing up of cybersecurity will to have wait a while longer, and really why would we want to do something about cybersecurity, we’ve already been hacked? Turning to the combined omnibus spending/coronavirus relief bill, that other piece of key legislation that Trump threw a wrench at on Tuesday, Democrats plan to vote in a provision for the $2000 payment that Trump now says he wants, but Republicans seem a whole lot less interested so instead House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who is still firmly on the Trump train, plans to propose cutting foreign aid, that’s the foreign aid included in the omnibus portion of the bill at the request of the Trump administration that Trump is now claiming he knew nothing about. There’s still a chance that Trump will sign the spending/virus bill as is because, among other things, without it the states won’t have the money to go forward with their vaccination programs, or at the very least that he won’t veto it, no one knows for sure.  Yeah, I get it, none of this makes sense but this administration and it’s Republican flunkies gave up on logic and sense many kids in cages ago when they traded in their souls for conservative judges. 

More Musings: Another 3400 of us died yesterday, bringing the death count to 327,123 but none of that seems of concern to Trump who, together with Melania, has decamped to Mar a Lago for now or forever no one knows for sure, especially those White House staffers who received an email yesterday instructing them on how to sign up for post-employment health care plans while telling them to start cleaning out their desks in preparation for their January departures only to have that email recalled moments later.  Did I mention that the US Navy recently sent a guided missile submarine to the Mediterranean and that Trump took time from his pardons and vetoes yesterday to have a “secret” lunch with some Republican Pennsylvania legislators, to discuss his overturn the election plans maybe and to tweet threaten Iran, he did that when he wasn’t encouraging his white supremacist fanboys to show up and protest in the District of Columbia streets on January 6, otherwise known as Electoral College confirmation day.  One more thing, Attorney General Barr exited yesterday, his replacement Jeffrey Rosen is now the Acting Attorney General and no one knows if he’s into guard rails or if he will do anything, and I mean everything Trump wants him to do. 27 Days.

Merry Christmas.  Enjoy the eggnog but avoid large gatherings! #WearAMask

 

Flying Bunnies and War Criminals

Pardon Me:  Last night Trump pardoned a slew of people:  three disgraced former Republican Congressmen, a Medicare fraudster, a few Mueller convicts and a bunch of war criminals and that wasn’t even the biggest story of the day because he also upended the combined omnibus spending/coronavirus relief bill.  The pardon crowd included coffee boy George Papadopoulos and Russian oligarch son in law/one time Skadden lawyer Alex van der Zwann, two of the Mueller convicts who lied for him.  On the Congressional front, Trump pardoned California’s Duncan Hunter, the representative who tried to blame his wife for flying their giant bunny with misspent funds; New York’s Chris Collins who called in some insider trades during Trump’s inauguration festivities and Texas’ Steve Stockman who was serving ten years for absconding with charitable funds, a crime very relatable to Trump and his children. It’s worth noting that former Congressmen Collins and Hunter were Trump’s first two House endorsers.  Possibly because he has an affinity for war criminals, particularly those associated with Betsy DeVos’ bro Erik Prince, Trump pardoned four former Blackwater security guards/mercenaries who were found guilty of wantonly killing fourteen civilians including two children in Iraq in 2007.  Less explicably he also commuted the sentence of Philip Esformes, a Miami healthcare mogul convicted in one of the biggest Medicare fraud cases ever. Though no one’s suggested a connection, it’s worth noting that Florida’s Senator Rick Scott, a big Trump fan and donor, once served as the CEO of a company that paid a $1.7 billion fine for its Medicaid and Medicare fraud.  On the legislative front, Trump who has been far too busy trying to upend the results of the presidential election to get involved in the nitty gritty of legislative negotiations surprised everyone by slamming the coronavirus relief bill, calling it a disgrace. Apparently missing that it was an already passed piece of legislation that combined funding to keep the government running for months more with coronavirus relief, he attacked it for including items unrelated to coronavirus relief and then insisted that it be rewritten to provide a $2000 rather than a $600 payment to  qualified recipients.  No word yet from Mitch McConnell and his contingent of stingy Senators, who only agreed to the meager $600 payment to help their two Republican Georgia Senators win their upcoming runoff elections, but Speaker Pelosi said sure, she’ll get her contingent to vote on upping the payments to $2000 because that’s what we wanted all along.  The bottom line is that the deal that took months to negotiate and only required Trump’s signature for checks to go out to the needy is now in Trump limbo.  Of course, Trump is still living in alternative reality land, handing out end of term pardons while still insisting that he won the election, that there were massive quantities of election fraud and threatening those like McConnell and Senator Thune for recognizing Biden’s victory while pressuring VP Pence to refuse to confirm any Electoral College votes for Biden come January 6 or else. 

Human Resources:  Dr Debbie Birx will be leaving government early in the year. Not even her impressive scarf collection could save her from her most recent hypocritical action, a three generational family get together that she hosted at one of her three homes because she unlike all the rest of us who she’s told to stay away from large family gatherings really missed her family and anyway she had to winterize her vacation home.  Birx who once had a stellar reputation is now just another victim of Trumpitis.  She may not be alone, yesterday son in law Kushner and Trump’s Deutsche Bank financiers Rosemary Vrablic and Dominic Scalzi submitted their resignations which could make it that much more difficult for Trump to refinance all that soon to mature debt. Vrablic said that, of course she’ll cooperate with any investigations into any activity that anyone wants to investigate.  Others in Trump world are still being rewarded as Trump has been handing positions on various government boards to a long list of his faves.  Last week he put Rudy’s son Andrew Giuliani and his body man Nick Luna on the US Holocaust Memorial Council where they’ll sit with former Ambassador/Director of National Intelligence for a minute Richard Grenell and yesterday he appointed aide/one time pants presser Hope Hicks to the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship board.  He also added former Florida attorney general Pam Bondi who once accepted a campaign contribution from Trump before conveniently dropping her investigation into Trump U to the board of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and appointed Melania’s chief of staff/one time WH communications director Stephanie Grisham to the National Board for Education services.  Kellyanne Conway has already been given an Air Force board position.

Viral Musings:  This morning the US virus death count stands at 323,944.  Soon to be 80 years old Dr Fauci got his first shot yesterday as did Health Secretary Azar who is only 53.  A number of critics are up in arms about all those members of Congress, especially the younger ones, getting their first shots ahead of the pack.  Frankly, its not a bad idea to have some of them serve as an example to help convince the vax shy set but it does burn to watch deniers like Senator Joni Ernst who claimed that the virus was so not a bigly deal get hers ahead of health care providers.  As to the virus, so far the experts, including those at Pfizer and Moderna, continue to assert that the vaccinations will do their job despite the most recent virus mutations which Fauci says are probably already here in the US.  However, COVID tests might not be as reliable, not that they all are so reliable anyway, as they might not recognize the newly shaped “spike,” just one more reason to socially distance, mask and stay away from Birx type family gatherings. President-elect Joe Biden and his team are warning that it might take months longer for all of us to get vaccinated, their way of saying that Trump’s team of misfits is painting a rosier picture of the vaccine roll-out than is warranted.  As to Biden, yesterday he announced the selection of Connecticut’s Miguel Cardona to serve as Education Secretary and keeping with the Latin theme, California’s Governor Newsom picked his Secretary of State Alex Padilla, the son of Mexican immigrants, to serve out Kamala Harris’ remaining term.  If you haven’t seen it, check out Newsom’s zoom conversation with Padilla, one of those heartwarming moments we need more of right about now. 

The next 28 days are going to be crazier than ever and by crazy think criminally insane.  Trump isn’t going off into the sunset easily though he is expected to head to Mar a Lago for Christmas shortly because having thrown a wrench into the omnibus/coronavirus relief legislation he sees no reason to stick around to fix it.   

 

Twenty-nine Bumpy Days

Basta: Evangelist Pat Robertson, appears to have thrown in his Trump towel, saying that Trump lives in an alternative reality, Robertson recognized Biden’s win and said that he’ll be president come January 20. Though he applauded what he called Trump’s accomplishments, he noted that the mango maniac is erratic and has had his day, and then said that it was time for him to move on.  Geraldo Rivera agrees, he called on Trump and his followers to stop talking nonsense about “crossing the Rubicon” towards civil war and dictatorship, adding “Biden won, Trump lost. Stop acting like spoiled brats, or worse the lunatic fringe. Enough basta.”  Though Attorney General for a few more days Bill Barr didn’t yell basta, he made it clear that he too has had enough.  Yesterday he said that he saw no basis for appointing special counsels to investigate Hunter Biden or election fraud, that he believes that the cyber breach that Trump suggested came from China came from Russia and that there was no basis for seizing election machines from state election authorities. As to those election machines, Trump continues to hold dead Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez responsible for conspiring with George Soros and election machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic for that alleged massive flipping of votes to Biden. However, facing lawsuits from the machine manufacturers, particularly from Smartmatic whose machines weren’t even used in any of the swing states, Fox and Newsmax have forced their “stars” to walk back their stories on the subject.  As much as they love Trump, losing boatloads of money in a libel suit is bad business model, especially for Newsmax, the company that hopes to usurp Fox’s position as the official  Trump station.  Even Giuliani is in the action, well a little.  Rudy issued a statement distancing himself and Trump from Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell yesterday going on Newsmax to announce that “Sidney Powell is not part of our legal team, she hasn't been for five weeks, she speaks for herself."  That’s probably news to both Powell and Trump as Kraken Sidney was seen entering the White House yesterday. That said, it’s fair to assume that Rudy whose emails are being sought by SDNY prosecutors, something to do with his Ukrainian shenanigans, wouldn’t do anything to make Pardon King Trump unhappy. As to Trump, he’s told everyone working the Biden transition to make sure to hold back anything that can be used against him even if that means withholding critical information, a message consistent with reports that he’s laying as many traps, international and domestic, as he can in an effort to doom Biden’s presidency.    

Lunatic Fringe: Despite these “minor” setbacks Trump is nowhere near giving up on upending the election.  To that end he hosted a crowd of his most avid Congresspeople yesterday.  Led by Alabama’s Mo Brooks, who is spearheading the effort to turn the January 6 Electoral College certification process into a sh-t show, the group included Georgia’s Jody Hice, Ohio’s Jim “Gym” Jordan, Arizona’s Andy Biggs and QAnon’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. The group of insurrectionists also met with VP Pence, who in his role as President of the Senate will be presiding over the Electoral College confirmation as well as members of Trump’s legal team.  Senator John Thune, a member of Republican leadership says that Brook’s effort is “going down like a shot dog.” But even if he’s right, it won’t be pretty as Brooks says that his growing crowd plans to challenge the results in six of those states that went for Biden. That could result in 18 hours of debate, stretching the vote-counting process into the “wee hours” of January 7.  Just what we need, more must see TV?  Also, Trump has officially turned on Senate Leader Mitch McConnell.  Late yesterday he shared a slide with Republican legislators in which he slammed Mitch for being the first one off the ship, a criticism of the Senate Leader’s recognition that Joe Biden is the President-elect.  Trump called Mitch out for forgetting how he stepped up to save his reelection with a “robocall” and an endorsement tweet, as if that was the sole reason that McConnell trounced Amy McGrath by 20 points.  That broadside is intended as a message to any other Republicans who ever hope to seek reelection that Trump expects them to step up on January 6.   

Viral Musings:  The good news first, Joe Biden got his first vaccination on live TV yesterday and didn’t go into anaphylactic shock.  Virus guru Fauci is due to get a Moderna shot today as the State of Maryland has decided NIH employees like him are critical workers.  Now the bad news, the US COVID death count is up to 320,663 and though no one is suggesting that the mutated coronavirus strains will be immune to the current crop of vaccines, they are being taken seriously, studies on their response to the vaccines are being initiated.  It’s not just the British uber contagious strain that has people concerned, there is also a possibly more virulent one making the rounds in South Africa. So far at least the Feds don’t seem all that concerned about travelers coming into the US from the UK, but Governor Cuomo, whose authority is limited, has persuaded British Air, Delta and Virgin Air to require that any travelers flying to JFK Airport show proof of a negative COVID test before boarding their flights.  NJ’s Governor Murphy hasn’t done the same for Newark, but is thinking about it. What’s to think about, frankly anyone getting on a plane to anywhere should first show proof that they’ve tested negative for COVID.  Ask those passengers who were on that United Orlando to Los Angeles flight, the one where a patient keeled over from what was initially assumed to be a heart attack but what turned out to be a COVID related incident.  The good Samaritan who gave him CPR is now symptomatic awaiting the results of a test.  The deceased passenger claimed to be just fine before boarding his “last” flight even though he knew he wasn’t.  Who would have guessed, the honor system doesn’t work.

 

Thirty Days

State of Disunion:  Going into the weekend Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller cancelled the Defense Department’s transition meetings with the Biden team, asserting that they were taking a mutually agreed upon holiday break but really because the Biden team was heard talking about cutting funding for border wall construction and who needs a transition anyway? The Biden team quickly denied that they had agreed to any “vacation,” pointing out that transitions trump vacations particularly when they’re already off to a late start due to complicit Trump loyalists like @GSAEmily.  Then, more ominously, we learned that Trump spent some quality weekend time with crazy Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, former security advisor Michael Flynn and oozing ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani.  During their meeting Trump floated the idea of appointing Powell, who he removed from his legal team last month because of her obvious insanity, as a Special Counsel to investigate election fraud.  He also entertained declaring martial law to force election do overs but “only” in some of those states he lost, a solution advocated by Flynn who tested out the subversive idea on Newsmax where he asserted that martial law happens all the time; in case you’re wondering it only happens a lot in banana republics, countries not stores.  For good measure Trump also discussed ordering the Department of Homeland Security to seize and turn over voting machines to Rudy something that DHS officials Ken Cuccinelli and Chad Wolf, usual Trump loyalists, have already said they have no authority to do even though Rudy really wants those machines.  We know about Trump’s diabolical plotting only because details were leaked to the press, likely by Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and/or someone from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s office, part of their effort to let us all know that after years of abetting Trump they are now trying to stop the crazy but they’re not sure that they can.  

Even before the weekend meeting Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy and the Army’s Chief officer General James McConville both issued a statement saying “There is no role for the US military in determining the outcome of an election.” In addition only the Attorney General can appoint a Special Counsel so with AG Barr departing this week Trump would have to get his replacement Jeffrey Rosen to do so, or start firing down the Justice command chain until he found himself a cooperative “Bork” (as in Robert Bork who did Nixon’s bidding during Watergate’s infamous Saturday Night Massacre).  As to the martial law proposal, Trump denied it was discussed by tweeting “Martial law = Fake News, Just more knowingly bad reporting,” pretty much a confirmation that it most certainly was on the table. That wasn’t the only thing he tweeted about, after remaining silent about the massive breach of critical government and corporate computer systems and after his usually complicit Secretary of State Pompeo acknowledged that it was “pretty clear” that the Russians were behind the hack, Trump took a moment away from conspiring to overturn the election to wave away concerns about the cyber Russian invasion, tweeting that “The Cyber Hack is far greater in the Fake News Media than in actuality. I have been fully briefed and everything is well under control. Russia, Russia, Russia is the priority chant when anything happens because Lamestream is, for mostly financial reasons, petrified of... discussing the possibility that it may be China (it may!)." To be clear the hack is serious and the consensus is that the Russians are to blame but Trump still won’t or can’t point the finger at Putin.  One more thing, Trump is still suing, yesterday his campaign announced the filing of a lawsuit with the Supreme Court, still another attempt to get Pennsylvania’s mail-in votes tossed. In addition Trump is still pushing Republican Senators to join with the House insurrectionists who plan to cause trouble during what’s supposed to be the January 6 rubber stamping of the Electoral College vote.  As of now Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville appears to be on board and over the weekend Georgia’s Senator David Perdue said he would help too, though Perdue’s offer is likely meaningless as his run off election takes place on January 5 and even if he wins, and there’s a good chance he will, he won’t be sworn in by January 6.     

Viral Musings:  First the good news:  the Moderna mRNA vaccination has been approved and will be rolled out this week and since it doesn’t require the extreme refrigeration that the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine needs it will be more accessible in more regions of the country.  Now the bad news, people are still dying, the US death count is up to 318,572, and given behavior and holiday travel that number is likely to near 500,000 by February.  Not that any of this overly concerns members of the House and Senate, shots were made available to them late last week, and even many of those who’ve been the most egregious flouters of virus mitigation rules showed up for their poke, right behind VP Pence and Mother.  As to the rest of us it, last night the CDC recommended that after frontline health workers and long term care residents are inoculated, next in line will be the 75 and over set as well as essential workers such as emergency responders, teachers and grocery store employees. After them will come the 65 to 74 crowd and those with preexisting conditions.  Don’t even think about going to the UK anytime soon; a mutated strain of the virus is circulating there, it doesn’t appear to be more lethal but statistical modelers say it appears to be 70% more transmissible. A lot of the UK is  now in lockdown, and Boris Johnson has cancelled Christmas.  The rest of Europe, already unhappy over Brexit has imposed travel bans.  So far the US hasn’t, but New York’s Governor Cuomo is jumping up and down calling for a ban or at the very least serious testing at arrivals terminals.  Don’t be surprised if Trump responds by banning travel from China, it is the “China virus” after all.  Anyway, no need to panic as those in the know remain confident that the vaccines will work on this mutated strain, though there’s a good chance we will need a booster sometime next year for subsequent more problematic mutations but one of the advantages of the RNA technology is that it allows for the quicker development of follow-on vaccines, or so they say.     

Lucy’s Football: Fresh off their first round of shots, Congressional leaders finally agreed to some virus legislation.  The $900 billion relief package includes a $600 per person check to the eligible, $300 per week in Federal unemployment insurance, $284 billion for small business loans, $25 billion in rental assistance, $69 billion for vaccine distribution and a deduction for three martini lunches; that last provision was Trump’s contribution to the process.  The relief package does not include the state and local funding that Democrats wanted or the liability protections for businesses that was being sought by Republicans although some of the designated funding, like the money for vaccine distribution will help the states.   Senate Leader Mitch McConnell blamed the delay on the Democrats, who had hoped to negotiate a better deal post-election but saw those hopes dashed when they failed to gain more leverage because of a failure to pick up more seats in the Senate and the loss of seats in the House.  The Democrats returned the favor by pointing the finger back at Mitch, noting his repeated assertions that no additional aid was necessary.  Notably McConnell jumped on board this time not because he’d grown a conscience but to help Georgia Senators Loeffler and Purdue who need to point undecided Georgia voters to their great accomplishment.  Final language is still being hashed out, and we all know that anything can happen between now and the signing of any bill so if you’re one of those getting a check don’t spend it until you have the funds in hand.  As to Georgia, after spending the better part of the week complaining about all the pushback he was getting from Trump and his fans for certifying his state’s presidential results, Governor Kemp attended one of those unmasked White House Christmas shindigs because at the end of the day, he is who he is.

 

Solar Maelstrom

Cyber Clouds:  After the 2017 G20 summit Trump tweeted that he and his good buddy Vladimir had “discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded and safe.” Not surprisingly, he received a lot of pushback for that lamebrained suggestion and at least as far as we know the two BFFs didn’t move forward with their joint effort.  Then in 2018 Trump eliminated the NSA’s cybersecurity czar position to “streamline” things.  So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that the Russian SVR, Putin’s equivalent of our CIA, has been trolling around inside the computer systems of at least 40 companies and a number of key US departments including Energy and its National Nuclear Security Administration for the past nine months, and that we only know about it because the cyber security experts at the FireEye technology company detected hinky doings in some regular software updates provided by SolarWinds, a network monitoring company used by the “government, hundreds of Fortune 500 companies and firms that oversee critical infrastructure like the power grid.”  The White House and Trump have still not commented on the attack, possibly because Trump is far more focused on his coup plans, but echoing others Senator Mitt Romney likened the situation to a “Russian bomber flying undetected over the country, including over the nation’s capital, adding not to respond is really stunning.”  Remember those halcyon days when people said that as long as there wasn’t a real global crisis we’d make it through a one term Trump administration relatively unscathed?  Now we’ve got a cyber emergency and a pandemic, the effects of which were magnified here in the US in part because Trump threw out the Obama handbook while remaining focused on keeping his “economy” instead of focusing on virus reality.  As to that pandemic as of this morning our death count is at 311,684 and climbing.  HHS Secretary Azar’s wife is in quarantine with COVID,  as are four Republican Congressman and one Democratic one, Cedric Richmond who, as member of Biden’s incoming administration, traveled with him to Georgia a few days ago. Following a positive test by his nine year old daughter, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti and his wife are now in quarantine too. Secretary Azar insists that since he’s tested negative so far and he is “essential” he’s going to keep working which makes no sense unless he and his wife live in different cities.  Biden’s people report that he too is negative and that he didn’t come into close enough to matter contact with Richmond but that provides little comfort since as was earlier reported, a member of the press corps covering the Biden team is also positive.

#WTF: This morning VP Pence, Mother and Surgeon General Jerome Adams are scheduled to get their arm pokes on air to set an example for the vax wary and because who but the anti-vax don’t want one of those still scarce shots?  Biden is still on schedule to get his early next week and last night it was reported that for continuation of government purposes Speaker Pelosi and Mitch McConnell will be getting theirs shortly.  Unlike Pelosi, McConnell is not in the order of succession but as a polio survivor he’s been a vocal vaccination advocate so if his convinces a few of the wary to step up and get theirs, so be it.  As of now Trump has no plans to get a vaccination and Melania says that whether she does or not is her business not ours.  Maybe they’ve been listening to Tucker Carlson, well forget the maybe, we know Trump listens to everything Tucker says.  Last night the racist fish stick heir stepped away from calling Dr Jill Biden “borderline illiterate” and critiquing her doctoral dissertation to tell his adoring viewers that they should be skeptical of the “glitzy” effort to get people vaccinated.  So much for ever achieving vaccine induced herd immunity.  By the way,  Butcherbox has pulled its ads off of Carlson’s show because of his Jill Biden slams; all that white supremacy stuff never bothered them but that illiteracy comment was a step too far?  As to steps too far, apparently it’s okay for Trump to lie, sexually harass, tweet insults, ignore the virus and slam veterans and totally cool for Press Secretary/Campaign spokesperson Kayleigh McEnany to spew endless lies and insults but Republicans have a bigly problem with incoming White House deputy chief of staff Jen O-Malley Dillon referring the them as “f-ckers.” Don’t get me started on that. And talking about screwed-up things, a number of states report that their Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine deliveries have been cut back due to what the Trump administration says are Pfizer’s production problems but Pfizer asserts that they are having no problems but are waiting for shipping instructions from the federal government. 

Incoming:  Biden still hasn’t settled on an Attorney General: soon to be former Senator Doug Jones’ name is still in the mix as is one time Obama Supreme Court nominee/Circuit Court Judge Merrick Garland’s, and don’t count out Sally Yates, her name is still being bandied about.  Everyone holds Garland in the highest regard but, and it’s a big but, he’s really needed where he is and appointing him runs the risk that McConnell, depending on the Georgia runoff outcome, would thwart all attempts to replace him with an equally fair minded soul.  Biden has picked Michael Regan who runs the North Carolina Department of Environment Quality to be EPA Head and has picked New Mexican Congresswoman Deb Haaland, a Native American, to serve as Secretary of the Interior.  Haaland’s selection is a bigly win for progressives and Native Americans but somewhat controversial, not because of the appropriateness of her selection or her competence but because until her replacement is put in place Pelosi’s already slim majority will be made that much slimmer exposing her to the whims of her progressives while Minority Leader McCarthy does his usual nasty stuff.     

Other News:  Senate Republican leaders have sent the message out that no Republican Senators should join in when House Republicans let by Alabama’s Mo Brooks goes forward with their last ditch effort to overturn the results of the November election during the January 6 joint meeting of Congress that’s supposed to be a rubber stamp of the Electoral College results.  To delay the process, Mo and his stooges need at least one Senator to sign on.  Though it’s not a done deal, they may have found one, not one of the usually suspects, but incoming Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, the clueless onetime football coach who owes his election to Trump.  Someone needs to explain to Tuberville that crossing Mitch McConnell comes with consequences, and that with six years left on his term, that he ought to be more concerned about Mitch than the Donald. Only time will tell if Tommy has the intellectual capacity to comprehend that.  There’s still no virus relief package, every time it looks like the deal is set something pops up to set it back.  A short government shutdown may be in the offing and Trump is still threatening to veto the defense bill.  So everything is going according to plan, well at least according to Vlad’s plan.

 

Rabbit Holes 

Smoking Gun:  No tapes or transcripts of Trump pledging loyalty to Putin, well at least so far, but now we’ve got written proof of his plan to “solve” the coronavirus problem through herd immunity, something that the rest of us call mass murder.  Yesterday the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis chaired by South Carolina Congressman Jim Clyburn released some email correspondence finally obtained from the CDC; included were emails from Paul Alexander, a former HHS “science” advisor who pushed the White House’s “herd” agenda. Alexander had been hired by Michael Caputo, the former HHS  assistant public affairs secretary who took a leave of absence after blaming his faulty lymphatic system for his own erratic behavior some of which included accusing CDC scientists of forming a “resistance” unit against Trump.  Alexander’s emails to people like CDC head Robert Redfield reveal his advocacy for letting young and middle-aged Americans become infected with COVID to get the country to herd immunity without a vaccine; no exaggeration on my part, he actually wrote “we want them infected….there is no other way, we need to establish herd, and it only comes about allowing the non-high risk groups expose themselves to the virus. PERIOD." His misguided, lethal theory, the same one pushed by one time Trump advisor radiologist/faux virologist Scott Atlas was built on two faulty premises: the first, that older and other more vulnerable people could be isolated from all those stronger young ones and second, that the number of those younger/middled age folks getting really sick and/or actually dying wouldn’t be significant. Tell that to the families of the 308,143 who have died to date, the 3000 plus who make up yesterday’s record death count or the health care professionals staffing overloaded and makeshift hospitals.  Anyway, that the White House was pushing herd immunity and didn’t have much sympathy for those affected by their plan shouldn’t come as a surprise, Trump’s more or less been saying so ever since March and wasn’t it Jared Kushner who said early on that the virus wasn’t really a concern since only New Yorkers were dying? By the way, it wasn’t just Trump and Jared, apparently Ivanka and Kellyanne Conway called their educated advice into HHS and the CDC too.  Of course, yesterday being a day of the week that ended in “day” a few more prominent people, some of whom might really have bought into Trump’s herd logic have entered quarantine. Among those are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo who is now in quarantine, not positive, at least no so far, but recently exposed to an infected close associate, likely the reason why he and his wife failed to show up for one of their own spread-a-thon holiday parties; Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, who recently attended a function with a number of Trump staffers as well as Republican Senators Barrasso, Daines and Cramer and who found out about his diagnosis right before he was supposed to attend what hopefully was Trump’s last Cabinet meeting; French Prime Minister Emanuel Macron who announced his positivity early this morning; and, of huge concern, a member of President-elect Biden’s transition press corps, who is now in isolation.  That last positive shows how sneaky and insidious this virus is and explains virus guru Fauci’s insistence that Biden and VP-elect Kamala Harris get vaccinated as soon as possible.  Biden’s and presumably Harris’ vaccinations are now scheduled for early next week while current VP Pence and mother are scheduled to get theirs on Friday. All are planning to get their shots on camera to set an example, hopefully none of them will go anaphylactic on us. That side effect, while rare, occurred again yesterday in Alaska, the good news is that the affected individual is doing okay now. By the way, having passed on ordering more Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines in November, HHS Secretary Azar says that the government is now actively negotiating to get more and that Trump is or says he is, with him you never know, authorizing the fast tracking of some of the necessary components to get that order in place. 

Crazy Train: Yesterday while soon to be Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg was expressing his affinity for trains and revealing that he’d proposed to his husband Chastain at O’Hare Airport, Republican Senator Ron Johnson, who is right there with Mitch McConnell, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Joseph McCarthy on that list of the worst Senators ever, went ahead with his Homeland Security Committee meeting.  Instead of focusing on a real issue, like that incredibly damaging invasion of all those key US government and corporate computer systems, he dwelled on election fraud.  His current position, one echoed by the other Republicans on the committee is that since so many people voted for Trump and so many of them believe that the election was stolen from him by all the Biden voters, a majority of whom the Trump echo chamber insists were dead zombies fresh off the apocalypse, illegal or both then there obviously must really have been fraud even if there’s no proof of that fraud.  That circular reasoning didn’t go over well with Ranking Member Gary Peters who called Johnson out saying “I don’t know what rabbit hole your running down,” or with former cyber head Christopher Krebs who was there to counter Republican assertions of rampant fraud.  Krebs urged all to “put baseless election disputes behind them,” warning that false conspiracy claims were fueling violent threats to election officials himself included.  As to the risk of violence, one of yesterday’s wildest news stories concerned the Texas van driver who was stalked for days until he was “captured” at gun point by a vigilante ex-policeman funded by a Trump friendly rich loony tune who previously tried but failed to get thousands of fraudulent as in people of color Texas votes disqualified.  The retired policeman accused the innocent van driver of transporting hundreds of thousands of purloined ballots.  Spoiler alert, the driver had only air conditioning parts in his truck and the former police officer is now in jail, a relatively happy ending to an escapade that could have easily turned out lethal. 

What Can Go Wrong?  No surprise here, but reports are that Trump is growing increasingly delusional, that he isn’t faking his belief that he really won the election just to raise money from his base, but that egged on by some of his most ardent supporters at Fox, OAN and Newsmax, he really believes he won.  One of those “anonymous” White House sources, probably someone named Ivanka or Mark Meadows, calls him “f-cking crazy.” Apparently, he’s even thinking about refusing to leave the White House come January 20, something that might please those Palm Beach residents who don’t want him taking up permanent residency in their neighborhood but isn’t really a good thing, though who among us wouldn’t want to see him dragged out in a tight fitting armhole-less white jacket?  As crazy as he is, he is focusing on important things, like pardons, a list that may now include his finance guy Alan Weisselberg, and getting rid of shower head and toilet bowl flow restrictions, better than tossing the football.  Oy. 

34 Days   

Snow Day?

Mitch Has Spoken: Not long after Trump retweeted a message from Lin Wood, his favorite crazy conspiracy lawyer, calling for Georgia’s Republican Governor Kemp and Secretary of State Raffensperger to be arrested for failing to overturn the legitimate results of their state’s election, Senate Majority Leader McConnell took to the podium, lauded Trump’s awesome accomplishments and then did what he should have done weeks ago, recognized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ victory.  He even commented on how neat it was that the country’s first female VP was coming from the Senate.  McConnell’s announcement wasn’t a surprise to Trump, according to Axios the turtle notified the White House in advance of making his remarks.  McConnell also gave a heads up to House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, suggesting that he too should recognize that the election was a done deal, but with visions of becoming Speaker of the House in 2022 in the event that Democrats shed seats during the mid-terms, a thoroughly depressing but not totally unrealistic assumption, McCarthy’s sticking with Trump and his rigged election myth because he knows his base in nuts and he needs those nuts to stick with him.  Later in the day, McConnell told his Senators that he doesn’t want any of them to cause trouble when Congress meets on January 6 to confirm the Electoral College vote. Notably Wisconsin’s Senator Ron Johnson who for a while appeared willing to protest the vote has already gotten the message, yesterday he said that while he still plans to hold his planned election fraud Homeland Security hearing, he doesn’t plan to upset the election apple cart.  That’s good news, because absent a participating Senator the rogue Republican House members who still do plan to protest, won’t be able to do much more than yell.  Trump who had to be even more enraged after Biden reported that he’d had a nice conversation with his good friend Mitch to thank him is still yelling and planning nefarious deeds, overnight he retweeted another one of Lin Wood’s messages together with one from his former national security advisor/ pardon recipient Mike Flynn;  both tweets slammed “power hungry,” “not a patriot” McConnell because obviously he, like soon to be former Attorney General Barr, is now part of those deep state anti-Trump forces. As to Barr, he’s not gone yet but already his designated replacement Jeffrey Rosen is being pressured to assign a special counsel or two, one to go after all things Hunter Biden and another to investigate election fraud.  In addition NBC news reports, that as previously noted FBI Director Wray is holding on by a thread, that Trump wakes up every morning with plans to fire him but only hasn’t because the White House counsel’s office has advised him that firing Wray would raise concerns about loyalty tests and would bring about the same type of crisis that firing Comey initiated.  Frankly with his term ending, why would that stop him? 

Peaches: Trump also doesn’t appear to really care all that much about the upcoming Georgia election.  Sure he’s been sending out multitudes of fundraising emails, but much to the RNC’s dismay, instead of forwarding the money on to Senators Loeffler and Perdue’s campaigns, he’s been keeping 75% of the proceeds generated for his own account. Loeffler, the richest member of the Senate and Perdue, the Senate’s most active stock trader are running neck and neck with their opponents Ossoff and Warnock. Apparently only a few Georgians are turned off by pictures of Loeffler with KKK members and with reports of both of their profit gauging and many have bought into the Republican attacks on the Democratic duo, that they are both radical socialists, that Ossoff is too Jewish and that Warnock, a Reverend, hates religion.  At the end of the day, the election is expected to hinge on turnout, and so far a lot of Georgians are turning out, more of the early voters who turned out for the first day of early voting were Democrats but just like there was a red mirage in November that could just be a blue mirage, only time will tell, which explains why Biden was there yesterday trying to rally those who voted for him as well as those who split their tickets to go all in for Warnock and Ossoff.       

Rhodes to Roads:  Rumors that Pete Buttigieg was being considered for an ambassadorship were wrong.  Yesterday the Rhodes Scholar was put in charge of roads, Biden plans to nominate him to serve as Secretary of Transportation.  He may not be an expert on trains, planes and automobiles but he’ll definitely be an upgrade from Mitch’s wife Elaine Chao who was only interested in doing things to help her family’s ship company. Expect a few real infrastructure weeks next year.  Its also reported that Biden has picked former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm to serve as his Energy Secretary.  Granholm who steered Michigan through its recovery from the 2008 recession is a long-time advocate of renewable energy.  Hopefully, she’ll also be a quick learner of all things nuclear, but it’s not like Trump’s first energy secretary, Rick Perry, who once advocated getting rid of the whole department,  knew anything about either subject when he was confirmed.

Viral Musings: Secretary of State Pompeo’s planned year end gala fizzled last night as most of the 900 invitees to the mask free festivity opted instead to heed the advice of virus experts by staying home.  As a result only 70 or so covidiots showed up.  Given that the COVID death count is now up to 304,683 the decision by many to stay home was wise.  Recent reports that herd immunity advocate/Florida Governor DeSantis is playing games with his death numbers, hiding them when it suits him and releasing them when he hopes no one notices makes it likely that the death statistic is understated.  By the way, DeSantis is one of those who’s still having a hard time acknowledging Biden’s victory because even though he kind of admitted that Trump lost, it’s not for him to recognize who won, or so he says.  One piece of good news, it’s highly likely that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine will be approved by week’s end, assuming the company can ramp up production, that will mean a lot more vaccinations in the coming months.    

Et Cetera:  The thought to be Russian cyber-attack on the Solarwinds software was even biglier than reported, lots of government departments and corporations were impacted. Still nothing from Trump but national security advisor Robert O’Brien who was on a boondoggle  European trip with his wife that involved a private tour through the virus closed Louvre has cut short his trip to head home to deal with the emergency.  Thanks mostly to the efforts of a bipartisan team of moderate Senators including West Virginia Democrat Manchin and Maine Republican Collins working with Speaker Pelosi and anyone else who would listen we may finally be getting a coronavirus emergency relief package, it won’t be perfect, it will be smaller than desired but it will be something, a placeholder until Biden tries for a bigger one.      

35 Days

 

So Much Winning 

And Again:  So Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won again yesterday when, as expected, the Biden/Harris team received 306 electoral college votes to Trump/Pence’s  232.  That’s the good news, the not so good news is that quite a few too many delusional, diehard TrumpPublicans scattered across the country haven’t thrown in the towel yet.  Yesterday, they threatened Democratic electors, tried to force their way into several state houses to disrupt Democratic electors from casting their votes for Biden and went so far as to send alternative pro-Trump electoral college slates from states like Michigan and Arizona on to Washington. Republican Michigan state legislator Gary Eisen actually showed up on a radio show to brag about plans to disrupt the Michigan vote, plans that he casually said to an astonished radio host might have a violent outcome.  Fortunately his plan got squashed and he was stripped of his committee positions but only because of his stupid on air bragging, not because the plans weren’t real.  The alternative electoral slate shenanigan is meaningless but not surprising as it was heralded by Trump’s nefarious advisor Stephen Miller who appeared on the Fox & Friends morning show to announce that “the only date in the Constitution is January 20. So we have more than enough time to right the wrong of this fraudulent election result and certify Donald Trump as the winner of the election." To that end, as of now a number of Republican Congressmen are still planning to be as disruptive as possible on January 6 to delay the inevitable.  At least one Republican Congressman has had enough with his party’s behavior, saying that “it is unacceptable for political candidates to treat our election system as though we are a third-world nation and incite distrust of something so basic as the sanctity of our vote,” Michigan’s Paul Mitchell announced his “disaffiliation” from the Republican Party, nice but he’s also on his way out of Congress so big whoop di doo for him. Where was he when the kids were caged or better yet, the impeachment vote?  With the electoral college vote in the bag a number of Republican Senators including Ohio’s Portman, Tennessee’s Lamar Alexander, South Dakota’s Thune and West Virginia’s Moore Capito begrudgingly acknowledged that Biden is the President-elect, of course none of them are named Mitch McConnell though there’s a chance he’ll recognize Biden’s victory during his scheduled Tuesday press conference, just don’t count on it. For his part South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham played both sides, saying he’s spoken with Biden and likes some of his cabinet nominees but still thinks that Trump has a teeny weeny chance to pull out a victory so for now he’ll just call Biden “Joe” rather than “president-elect.”   

Bye Bye Barr: Moments after California’s vote put Biden over the 270 vote threshold needed for victory but before Biden got a chance to take to the podium for a scheduled victory speech, in an attempt to steal back the limelight, Trump tweeted Attorney General Barr out.  Literally, he tweeted Barr out of his job saying that though their relationship has been a very good one and he’d done an outstanding job, he was being kicked to the curb or was kicking himself to the curb and would be gone by Christmas.  At least for now, Barr is being replaced by his deputy Jeffrey Rosen.  For his part Barr had nothing but wonderful things to say about his awesome experience working for Trump.  Neither Trump nor Barr mentioned that Barr had fallen out of favor for failing to “uncover” massive election fraud and for failing to broadcast the Justice Department’s investigation into all things Hunter Biden when it might have helped Trump’s election prospects.  It’s not clear whether Barr’s departure also reflects a refusal or two on his part to do anything else illegal or inappropriate that Trump wants taken care of ASAP. We’ll know that soon enough if some new evil action is announced by the Justice Department or if the newly anointed Acting AG Rosen ends up on the curb too because though there are only 36 days remaining until January 20, there’s still plenty of time for a Nixonian like Saturday Night Massacre.  As to Biden’s speech, he’s clearly had enough with Trump and the TrumpPublican party’s antics.  In an unusually animated and pointed speech he detailed their shenanigans and laid into their failure to acknowledge that the election was over and that he had won, by a lot in the popular vote and by as many electoral college votes as Trump got during that landslide 2016 victory that he likes to brag about.  Biden’s speech was great but he also coughed a bunch of times, causing my Spidey senses to go into overdrive.  Please someone get that man a vaccine and wrap him in a hermetically sealed cocoon, pronto.   

Viral Musings:  In a move that couldn’t have made publicity hungry Trump happy, yesterday morning the equally camera friendly New York Governor Cuomo stole the vaccine limelight by hosting the country’s first vaccination in Queens, New York.  It’s great to see those shots going into arms, except it would be a whole lot nicer if those shots weren’t being accompanied by such dreadful news on the virus front.  Yesterday, the US death count rose to 301,438 and a record number of 232,000 new COVID cases were diagnosed, sadly that’s an indication of far more deaths to come and we haven’t even gotten to what is likely to be a post-Christmas surge.  HHS Secretary Azar asserts that by the end of February it will be as easy to get a COVID vaccination as it currently is to get a run of the mill flu shot, not that he’ll be around when that date passes and we’re still waiting. 

Et Cetera:  In a move that couldn’t have pleased his puppet, Vladimir Putin sent his congratulations to Biden last night. Nice but unfortunately that’s not the only holiday gift he has delivered.  Apparently his techno wizards have been frolicking around inside and by frolicking think stealing secrets and other sensitive information from the State Department, Homeland Security and the Pentagon, among others, the result of a way too successful attack on  Solarwinds software. US Cyber experts rate the Russian computer incursion as an 11 on a scale of 10, a combined goodbye present to Trump and welcome on board gift for Biden?  Of course, so far no condemnation from Trump who may still hope to secure Putin’s signoff for his Moscow Trump Tower, maybe as soon as January 21.  And sadly, while Rudy Giuliani and Ben Carson were beneficiaries of Trump’s miracle cure drugs, it appears that Crede Bailey, the White House Director of Security was not. He’s been in the hospital for months and though he finally appears to have turned the corner, he lost a few body parts during his illness.  Short of cash to pay his rehabilitation bills he’s been raising money through a GoFundMe account. I could be wrong but I’m guessing that since he’s only raised $30,000 so far no one named Trump or Kushner has anted up, yet if ever.             

 

 Spies and Gardeners

The Russia House: As expected by everyone not named Trump, the Supreme Court squashed Texas’ attempt to toss those inconvenient Georgia, Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania election results. That’s the case that was supported by 126 Republican members of the House including Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise but not Liz Cheney or Devin Nunes, who was too busy dealing with his recent COVID positive diagnosis to sign on. The Orlando Sentinel was so upset that their local Congressman Michael Waltz endorsed the Texas suit that they apologized for endorsing him.  Though two of the Court’s Justices, Alito and Thomas, would have allowed the case to proceed for a minute longer owing to their position that states’ do get to sue other states for even the most frivolous of reasons, they were fine with the decision to throw the case into the waste bin of history largely because of its baseless claims about the election.  Notably Trump’s three handpicked Justices, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett didn’t come to his support and why would they, with their lifetime appointments secured, they can move on to the things they care about, like cutting away at reproductive rights and the separation of church and state, they don’t need Trump in office to do any of that. Trump called the decision wrong, attacked the Justices for having joined the amorphous and growing dark state and said that he would press on with new appeals: to the Galactic Council perhaps? Speaking for others like the Pillow Man, the Proud Boys, Trump era Medal of Honor recipient Rush Limbaugh, and Newt Gingrich, Alan West, the head of the Texas GOP said it was time for “law-abiding states to bond together and form a Union of states that will abide by the constitution.” In other words he called for secession and civil war. To that end after he visited the White House, Proud Boy leader Enrique Tarrio’s followers joined a number of like- minded demonstrators on the streets of Washington DC on Saturday.  By the end of the night, they had desecrated a few African American churches, set fire to a bunch of Black Lives Matter flags and gotten into a few fights with counter protestors.  Oddly enough, Attorney General Bill Barr didn’t call out any of his special forces to shoot off pepper balls and the like possibly because white supremacists acting out hate doesn’t concern him and also because his days are numbered.  It’s only a matter of time before Barr either jumps or is pushed off the Trump train and he has so many other things to do before being replaced by newly minted lawyer Tiffany, like executing a few more inmates, expanding his killing options beyond lethal injection to include firing squads and the electric chair.  As to Proud Boy Tarrio’s White House visit, he asserts that he was invited but apparently he misread his coded message, he was supposed to keep that a secret.  To cover-up for Tarrio’s brag the White House insisted that the patriotic American racist just showed up of his own accord for a routine tour. Apparently, that’s not the only move that the White House tried to keep on the down low.  After it was revealed that all members of the White House staff would be getting those reserved for front line health professionals Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations this week, Trump retracted the announcement saying that they and he wouldn’t be lining up for a poke anytime soon. Trump is still furious that the Pfizer vaccine wasn’t approved before the election and that the Brits starting jabbing people first so despite concerns that pushing the FDA to jump regulatory hurdles will negatively impact public willingness to get vaccinated, he threatened to fire FDA head Stephen Hahn if he didn’t approve the “dam” (sic) shot by end of day Friday.  Hahn did sign off on Friday night, though he insists that Trump’s threat wasn’t the reason, his assurance probably carries little weight with the vax nervous masses so once again Trump has made things worse. Surprised? Not.  As of this morning 299,597 Americans have died from the COVID, that number will most certainly cross through 300,000 by noon. 

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy:  Something’s rotten at the Department of Veterans Affairs.  Most of the country’s major veterans organizations including the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America, AMVETS, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Minority Veterans of America, the NYC Veterans Alliance, the Modern Military Association of America and the Service Women’s Action Network are calling for the immediate firing of VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, citing a lack of confidence in his leadership over a report from the VA Inspector General.  The IG report blasted Wilkie for his handling of a sexual assault allegation at the Washington DC VA Medical Center.  In short, though Secretary Wilkie promised a full, independent investigation into the allegations asserted by the victim, the IG report concluded that he and other senior leaders instead worked to discredit her, spreading rumors about her honesty. By the way one of those nasty rumor mongers was Congressman Dan Crenshaw, the Republican up and comer best known for his eyepatch.  Of course, dissing women is so on brand for the multiply accused harasser Trump and his crowd which might explain why the Wall Street Journal published a really awful and disrespectful op-ed by one time Northwestern lecturer/Conservative pundit Joseph Epstein. The piece which began by addressing the future FLOTUS as “kiddo," goes on to say that she should drop the “'Dr” before her name saying that  “Dr Jill Biden sounds and feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic.”  Apparently, Epstein and for that matter the Wall Street Journal editors have no problem with Melania’s questionable route to citizenship, her misrepresentation of her academic credentials or her cribbing of Michelle Obama’s speech but do think that a PhD/active college professor using the Dr title is a stretch. This morning the WSJ editorial board responded to criticism about Epstein’s piece by saying that the complaints were just more organized Democratic kvetching to be ignored.   

Constant Gardener:  The Electoral College Vote takes place today. That’s one of those boring events that most of us ordinarily pay little or no attention to because we live in, or thought we lived in an orderly democracy, but given recent events interest is high, a number of states will be live streaming theirs and Michigan plans to provide its electors with protection in case they  get ambushed by any of those gun toting MAGAs, friends of the ones who tried to kidnap Governor Whitmer.  The good thing is that Biden will get to win again, and Loser Trump who likes to brag about all his winning, will lose again.  The bad thing is that a number of Trump’s diehard Congressman are expected to act out on January 6, turning what should be a routine confirmation of the Electoral College vote into a clown show.   When this is over, and hopefully it will be over in 37 days, Trump will go tend his Mar a Lago garden.  He might not be alone, The New Yorker reports that California’s very senior Senator Diane Feinstein, who recently announced that she would step down as the Democrat’s ranking member of the Justice Committee, is showing signs of dementia. Hugging South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham after the Amy Coney Barrett hearings may have been a tell that all was not well with her thought processes.  Anyway, it’s not clear if the 87 year old Feinstein, the oldest member of the Senate, who was reelected in 2018 will make it to the end of her term. At this rate, California’s Governor Newsom may get to appoint two Senators instead of one.     

Smiley’s People:  It’s hard to know exactly what’s up with Hunter Biden but if the NY Times is right, the Rudy Giuliani inspired investigations into all things Hunter may have turned up some significant unreported earnings and owed taxes, granted not in the order of the $100 million plus that Trump owes the IRS but enough to cause him trouble.  Trump of course is furious that Hunter’s legal problems weren’t fully revealed before the election, just one of those things alongside absentee ballots, a not slow enough Postal Service, the failure of the vaccine to be approved sooner and the moon orbiting the earth that he holds responsible for his loss, the one he won’t acknowledge.  Two more things, last night Trump said he would veto the Defense bill, maybe he will, maybe he won’t and maybe enough Republicans will stand by their votes and maybe they won’t.  The coalition of Senate centrists, or the group that thinks that they’re centrists, and compared to the nefarious Mitch McConnell they are, is still trying to force a vote on a coronavirus relief bill, maybe they will and maybe they won’t.  Stay tuned and keep wearing those masks.  We won’t be getting vaccinated for months.

40 Days If We Make it

Sedition Anyone?   To paraphrase Ben Franklin, a republic, if you can keep it, is a good thing.  Right now that good thing is in danger, under attack from within.  Yesterday, 106 Republican Congresspeople joined with the 17 red state attorneys general who had previously signed on, indicating their support for the case initiated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton to have Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania’s election results thrown out so that Trump can be crowned the “real” winner of the November election. It’s not clear what really motivates any of these duplicitous  characters, a handful may really believe that the election was rigged due to all those “fraudulent” absentee ballots, a few more may just be thoroughly demented Trump cultists, others like one local Pennsylvania representative may fear that failure to show fealty to Trump will result in their homes being bombed, but most have probably concluded that their personal political aspirations are best served by aligning with Trump, democratic principles be damned. Trump of course is thrilled, yesterday he flew a few of those Republican attorneys general to the White House to express his appreciation, maybe he promised some antibody cocktails if they turn up COVID positive, a heightened risk to anyone visiting his virus invested lair which explains why the Biden people plan to have the General Services Administration fumigate it with aerosol mists before he moves in. No doubt, Texas AG Paxton, used some of his alone time with Trump to press for the pardon he needs to get out from under his own mounting legal problems, nothing like a quid pro quo among friends.  

On the bright side a few Republican attorneys general are resisting Trump’s pleas; Idaho’s AG Lawrence Wasden announced his refusal to join the effort because “the legally correct decision may not be the politically convenient decision. But my responsibility is to the State of Idaho and the rule of law.”  Even Texas Senator John Cornyn knows the effort to undermine the election is wrong, he questioned why a state, “even a such a great state as Texas should have a say-so on how other states administer their elections?" Quite a contrast from his colleague Ted Cruz who is committed to arguing on Trump’s behalf in the unlikely event that the case makes it to the Supreme Court, clearly Cruz knows that’s not going to happen, or shouldn’t happen, but he’s all-in on scoring points since he hopes to run for president again if and when Trump ever steps aside and needs to be seen as a Trumpist to secure the support of Trump’s base. In the brief he filed in response to the Texas suit, Pennsylvania’s AG Josh Shapiro called the bid to invalidate the four states election results a “seditious abuse of the judicial process" going on to urge the Supreme Court justices to "send a clear and unmistakable signal that such abuse must never be replicated.”  The AGs from the three other affected states, including Georgia’s Republican AG Chris Carr who at the urging of Georgia Senator David Perdue was warned by Trump to step aside or else, filed similar briefs. No surprise that Senators Perdue and Loeffler are totally team Trump on this, for personal reasons of course as they need him to help rally his base to support them in their upcoming runoffs.  Placing personal ambitions over principles and country is clearly the Republican party’s new raison d'etre.  The expectation is that SCOTUS will dismiss this suit as soon as today’s end, but at the very least before Monday’s Electoral College vote.  Even if they do, the end isn’t in sight.  Trump’s squad plan to continue their battle at least until January 6 throwing as many wrenches in to the process. Let’s hope that wrenches are the only thing that gets thrown, Trump’s rabid supporters are energized and teetering on the edge and it won’t take much more for them to go postal. 

Viral Musings:  The death count is rising, it’s up to 293,360, and there’s no room left in a lot of hospitals but the vaccine is on its way, well on it’s way to a selected few health care providers and congregate care residents, the rest of us will have to wait months for our arm pokes.  Yesterday, the FDA’s advisory panel of experts greenlighted the Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA vaccine sending its recommendation on to FDA Head Stephen Hahn. The panel’s recommendation wasn’t unanimous, a few expressed concern about teens receiving the shot but overall the conclusion was that it’s both safe and effective for those over seventeen with more study needed before signing off on younger people, pregnant women, babies and people with certain underlying conditions.  After the remaining approval steps are completed vaccine deliveries to selected hospitals across the country will begin, as soon as this weekend, but no later than Monday.  By the way, according to the NY Times the facts behind the Trump team’s failure to preorder more of Pfizer’s vaccine when they had the chance are even worse than previously reported. Not only were larger amounts offered up, but they were offered up several times with no prepayment required.  Yet those offers were swatted aside putting the US to the back of Pfizer’s growing order line.  Unless something changes, or Biden’s team can get another experienced pharmaceutical manufacturer to help Pfizer ramp up production, if that’s even possible, we won’t be receiving more Pfizer vaccines until the end of June. Is now a good time to mention that Moderna whose mRNA vaccine is expected to be approved next doesn’t have a production track record?  

Et Cetera:  Senate Leader Mitch McConnell is still playing a sadistic game of Lucy and the football with coronavirus relief legislation possibly because the nefarious turtle wants to hand off as damaged as an economy as he can to President-elect Biden or perhaps because he really doesn’t care about the food and housing insecure set or both.  Biden continues to announce advisor and cabinet appointments.  Yesterday’s selections included some former Obama officials: former national security advisor Susan Rice to run the White House Domestic Policy Council and former chief of staff Denis McDonough to run the VA. Biden is being criticized by some progressives for sticking with experienced Obama hands, but really given the mess we’re in maybe seasoned people running things is a good idea until the ship can be righted.  By the way Pete Buttigieg is still in the running for something, possibly an Ambassadorship where he can put his language skills to use while building up his international chops.

Happy Hanukkah!