Fifty Days

Winter is Here:  Technically December 21 is the first day of winter but practically we are already there, in the deep dark winter phase of the coronavirus epidemic.  Sure, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, the first two vaccine rollouts are expected to start soon, but the tunnel is long and most of us won’t see a needle until Spring so naturally Scott Atlas, Trump’s favorite expert, the radiologist with no virus or epidemiology expertise, who spent his time in the White House whispering herd immunity into Trump’s ears resigned last night.  Atlas, who once “inadvertently” called for an uprising against Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer to protest her virus restrictions wished Joe Biden’s incoming team good luck as he walked out the door, and no thanks to him, they and we will need lots of it. Though Trump is so over the virus and has been for some time, he’s still into ignoring science so he’s had Chief of Staff Mark Meadows summon FDA Head Stephen Hahn to the White House to appear today for an urgent meeting.  He intends to scream at him for insisting on actually reviewing the Pfizer and soon to be delivered Moderna emergency use applications before authorizing that those vaccine shots start going into willing arms.  Nothing will inspire confidence in the safety of the vaccines more than truncating the final review, but doing so would be so on brand for Trump who besides taking credit for the vaccines continues to spend most of his time trying to shake off his election loss.  Yesterday, Loser Trump’s crack legal genius, Rudy Giuliani held another one of his fake hearings, this one in Arizona, where he called witness after witness to testify about imaginary election interfering algorithms in a last ditch effort to get Arizona’s Republicans to overturn the state’s popular vote.  Rudy’s efforts didn’t work, Arizona’s Republican Governor Doug Ducey certified the state’s election results, and adding insult to injury, he did so while ignoring a call from Trump.  We know that because the dulcet tones of “Hail to the Chief,” the tune he earlier bragged about setting to let everyone know that he was getting a call from the Oval Office, were picked up over the open microphone. Wisconsin, one of the other states that Trump hoped to “win” in nefarious ways also certified yesterday. More states still need to complete their certifications, but with all of the swingy close states done, the dye is set, for the presidential race at least.  Two congressional races are still in dispute. Iowa certified Republican Mariannette Miller-Meeks six vote victory over Democrat Rita Hart but given that skinny margin, a court challenge is expected and 2500 disputed absentee and affidavit ballots still haven’t been counted in the upstate New York State race where as of now Republican challenger Claudia Tenney leads one term Democratic Congressman Anthony Brindisi by twelve votes.  The final outcome of both those races means the difference between Pelosi’s Democrats having a seven or five member majority in the House, where every vote will count and satisfying the competing interests of her moderate and progressive wings is already testing her octogenarian mettle. 

Lamb Chops: Biden formally announced his economic team yesterday. Team Biden includes Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen as Treasury secretary, Princeton’s Cecilia Rouse as the head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and American Center for Progress chief Neera Tanden as head of the Office of Management and Budget. Economists Jared Bernstein and Heather Boushey will serve as the other members of the economic advisory team. Neera Tanden is already coming under attack from Senate Republicans, something to do with her trail of snidely anti-Republican tweets. Fresh off their victories the charming Lindsey Graham minced no words calling her a “nutjob,” a spokesperson for John Cornyn said she had no chance of being confirmed and Susan Collins sniped that she heard that Tanden was a “prolific user” of twitter.  That’s rich, four years of Trump and Tanden is getting attacked for her tweeting. Oddly enough none of them seem all that concerned that Trump attorney Joseph diGenova called for the execution of former Cyber guy Chris Krebs on Newsmax yesterday.  It’s not clear whether Tanden will survive the confirmation problem, some have suggested that she’s Biden’s sacrificial lamb, nominated to ease the confirmation of his other picks.  Other’s say that he doesn’t play those kind of games, we’ll know soon enough maybe once his all women communications team to be led Kate Bedingfield and Jen Psaki as Communications Director and Press Secretary, respectively, assume their formal roles.  Good bye and good riddance to Kayleigh McEnany, the press secretary who will go down in history as the queen of obvious mendacity. And while we’re talking historical footnotes, here’s a disturbing piece of news: Stephen Miller became a father over the holiday weekend when his almost as equally cruel wife gave birth to their first child, a girl. Let’s hope juniorette Miller takes after her uncle, the one who openly chided Stephen for his cruelty. 

Yet Again: The Senate is still working on their much elusive version of coronavirus relief legislation.  A bipartisan group including “centrist”  Democrats Chris Coons, Joe Manchin, Mark Warner and Michael Bennet and Republicans Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Rob Portman are taking another stab at coming up with something, anything.  Of course Senate Leader McConnell who is far more concerned about maintaining his leadership position by protecting his two vulnerable Georgia Senators from having to take a vote on anything other than judges continues to cast the blame for the lack of a package on the Democrats even though he’s been standing in the way of compromise legislation for months. The end of the year is near and absent more aid those already long food lines will grow longer but none of that concerns Mitch or Trump who has already raised in excess of $150 million for his election fraud fight and next campaign, and by that think legal bills. living expenses and new gold toilets at Mar a Lago.