114 Pearl Harbors

Rona Rudy: it’s not surprising that Rudy Giuliani tested positive for COVID yesterday, given his travels, time spent in the White House petri dish and his disdain for masks what’s amazing is that the virus hadn’t taken up residency in his soulless body sooner.  It also isn’t all that surprising that Trump was the one to announce Rudy’s infection, by Twitter of course, as it’s fair to assume that Rudy called him the moment he got his test result to secure transfusions of monoclonal antibodies, Remdisivir and whatever else those in Trump’s orbit get when they contract the disease.  Rudy, who appeared fine, or as fine as he ever looks, during a morning appearance on Fox News, was admitted into Georgetown University Medical Center yesterday for those special Trump treatments. His partner in crime, the very inept but camera ready Jenna Ellis, who claims teaching constitutional law at a Christian college that doesn’t have a law school as one of her most relevant qualifications wished him well but doesn’t seem all that concerned about anyone else’s health, as of now she has no plans to self-quarantine because there are still all those election fraud cases to file.  However, given that Rudy spent more than ten hours last week spreading aerosol secretions during his election fraud spiel to Arizona Republicans, a group that included two members of Congress and at least thirteen current and future state lawmakers, the Arizona legislature announced plans to closed for the week. Rudy who appeared maskless, while flouting distancing guidelines and posing for photos also pressed one of his witnesses, a woman sitting by his side at a similar event in Michigan, to remove her mask so people could hear her better.  She’s probably relieved that she refused but just a bit concerned that she was within spitting distance.  As to Trump, the coronavirus’ accelerating onslaught on the country is not his concern, between hosting crowded super spreader holiday parties, he’s found other ways to keep busy. Before traveling to Georgia, ostensibly to campaign for Republican Senators Loeffler and Perdue, but really to spread his rigged election claims, he called Governor Brian Kemp, the state’s Republican to press him to call a special session of the Georgia legislature to replace Joe Biden’s slate of popularly elected electors with a more suitable Trump slate. Kemp, no innocent when it comes to voter suppression, refused to comply, as even he knows that so obviously overturning a legitimate election has consequences.  Apparently so does crossing Trump, the mango maniac attacked Kemp and the Georgia’s secretary of state Brad Raffensberger during his Georgia campaign speech/tirade, calling for his base to vote them out, or worse.  Clearly, Kelly Loeffler who Trump managed to endorse, just a little, during his campaign appearance, got the message.  Last night during her debate with Democratic contender Raphael Warnock, who she repeatedly attacked as a radical Democratic socialist, she refused to acknowledge that Trump had lost the election.  Georgia’s other Democratic contender, Jon Ossoff debated an empty chair as Georgia’s other Republican candidate David Perdue, the Senate’s most prolific day trader, refused to even show up for a debate because defending all that trading is so stressful. With polling, to the extent it’s to be believed showing both races too close to project, the outcomes likely rely on who does a better job motivating their voters to show-up and, in the case of Perdue and Loeffler, in convincing state and local officials to lose and/or disqualify absentee ballots. 

Revolving Door:  Trump continues to disband advisory panels, particularly those that have anything to do with Defense, so goodbye to people like Henry Kissinger but welcome to Corey Lewandowski and David Bossie.  Those two Trump uber partisans who know absolutely nothing about defense policy are now members of  Trump’s Pentagon Advisory Panel.  Lewandowski was Trump’s first campaign manager, the one who got into trouble for hitting a female reporter.  Bossie, another one of his on again, off again campaign advisors, is the non-lawyer who was supposed to head up his elite legal force but was sidelined when he came down with COVID.  Trump also recently nominated another loyalist, Scott O'Grady to a top Pentagon spot. O’Grady, along with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, recently shared a petition on Twitter that calls for Trump to "declare limited martial law to temporarily suspend the Constitution" and hold a new presidential election. In other Defense Department news, after it was widely reported that Kash Patel, the former aide to Congressman Devin Nunes who was recently appointed as the Pentagon’s Chief of Staff was refusing to allow meetings between Biden’s transition team and the Defense Intelligence departments to take place, Patel caved, insisting that reports of his lack of cooperation were exaggerated.  It’s hard to tell if Trump has an ulterior motive beyond making Biden’s transition and presidency more difficult or if he’s persuing something along the lines of that whole martial law thing.  One more possible departure, the NY Times reports that Attorney General Barr, who is now at the top of Trump’s enemies list for failing to acknowledge all that election fraud and for also failing to produce that much anticipated Durham report, is thinking about stepping down by year’s end.  In other news Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe insists that there was election fraud, and like all but 27 Republican members of Congress, refuses to acknowledge Biden’s victory.       

Biden Update: Democratic progressives continue to complain about Biden’s picks not being inadequately progressive, and diverse enough, something they will likely do for as long as he’s in office.  As to those picks, though we still don’t know who will be heading up Defense or Justice, Biden is expected to announce that he’s chosen California’s Attorney General Xavier Becerra to serve as his Secretary of Health and Human Services and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Head of Infectious Diseases Rochelle Welensky to replace the underperforming, embattled Robert Redfield as the Director of the CDC.  Becerra’s nomination makes California’s Governor Newsom just a bit more popular with aspiring politicians in his state, assuming Becerra is confirmed  he gets to appoint both a new Senator and a new Attorney General and, depending on his choices, he may also get to appoint their replacements as well.   

Et Cetera:  Arizona’s favorite former astronaut Mark Kelly was sworn in last week giving the Democrat’s one more Senate vote.  Kelly could get the chance to vote for something big soon enough assuming that the ever nefarious and obstructive Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell  allows the compromise coronavirus relief bill being bandied about to come to the Senate floor before the end of year holidays, those are the holidays that are likely to further feed the virus that the bill is supposed to address by, among other things, providing some money to the states to pay for vaccine distribution.  By the way, it’s already looking like we won’t be getting as much of the vaccine on the originally projected schedule, something to do with the difficulties associated with ramping up production of all those mRNA related biologics, which shouldn’t be surprising as to date no one has produced an mRNA vaccine, much less produced it in the amounts that will be needed to dig us out of our hole. 

2403 people died at Pearl Harbor.

2977 were killed on September 11.

282,000 and rising from coronavirus.

44 Days.