One Last Putsch

Fighting the Inevitable: Hitting a new record, more than 3000 Americans died from COVID yesterday, the daily infection rate now  exceeds 200,000 and in total 290,616 Americans have died but the White House and Mike Pompeo’s State Department are all in on the holiday season, holding mask free, alcohol infused super spreader Christmas parties, like the one that Jenna Ellis, Rudy’s COVID positive associate attended last Friday. Of course, since Trump really wants to stick around for a second term, he also remains keenly focused on overturning the results of the November election.  To that end he’s seeking to join the Supreme Court suit originated by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the meritless case that seeks to get Trump’s SCOTUS justices to toss the “rigged” results from Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin, the battleground states that Trump lost due to all those bothersome inner city Democrats, i.e., people of color, who had the nerve to actually vote for Sleepy Joe and to, horror of horrors, cast those votes by “fraudulent’ absentee ballots. In addition to claiming that the states in question acted illegally when their Republican legislatures approved changes to their election rules to accommodate the pandemic and therefore ought to have their results thrown out, Paxton’s brief cites an “expert witness” who claims that Biden couldn’t have won because he had “less than one in a quadrillion” chance of winning each of the four states in question given the early red mirage lead that Trump had built up before the mail-in ballots were counted, an assertion that ignores how ballots are actually counted and makes flawed comparisons with 2016 vote totals. As crazy as all that sounds, Paxton has been joined by Republican attorneys general from  seventeen other states that voted for Trump including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.  Additionally, at Trump’s request, loyalist Louisiana Congressman Mike Johnson spent the day soliciting all the Republican House members demanding that they sign on to an amicus brief, not so subtly suggesting that if they refuse they’ll get coal in their Christmas stockings or worse yet Trump will unleash his gun toting MAGA maniacs to protest outside their homes. So basically, Trump is trying to steal the election, hoping that the 80 million plus who voted for Biden won’t notice and, if they do, won’t care.  A recipe for civil war, maybe?  A number of Republicans have expressed some concern about Trump’s persistence but with the exception of the usual suspects like Mitt Romney who called Trump’s action out as “madness” and Jeb Bush who called it a case based on no legal theory they don’t seem to be losing any sleep over his attempted putsch.  A number of them say that they’ll publicly acknowledge Biden’s win after Monday’s scheduled Electoral College vote formally confirms his victory but that vote won’t be enough for all of them including Trump’s most dedicated House acolytes who plan to object when the results of the Electoral College are presented to a Joint session of Congress on January 6, during the acceptance vote that is usually just a formality.  That last ditch effort would require help from at least one Senator and the mango maniac’s worshipers think they’ve found one who’ll join in on their madness, Wisconsin conspiracist, vax denier Ron Johnson who says that he’s thinking about it and who doesn’t think that Senator Ted Cruz, whose offer to argue in front of the Supreme Court, assuming that Texas case makes it there, has already been accepted by Trump won’t join in? Nothing to worry about, right? By the way, Trump’s other lawyer Rudy Giuliani is out of the hospital because being friends with Trump pays off bigly and by that think miracle potions and the like.

The Children’s Hour:  Yesterday, Joe Biden’s son Hunter revealed that his “tax affairs” are being investigated by the Justice Department and the IRS.  It’s not clear what exactly that investigation is focused but it’s fair to assume that Hunter went public to get out in front of some expected leaks from Justice. This morning CNN reported that  investigators have been examining multiple financial issues, including whether Hunter and his associates violated tax and money laundering laws in business dealings in foreign countries, principally China. While it’s lovely that Attorney General Barr held off on going public with all this until after the election, even if Hunter did some bad things, the investigation reeks of politics and most certainly puts the President-elect in a tough spot.  No doubt Republicans will call for a special counsel to be appointed to take over the investigation once Biden is inaugurated, assuming of course they don’t manage to block the inauguration.  A parting gift from Trump and Barr? A message that if you go after my kids, I’ll go after yours with a bigger stick? 

Et Cetera:  Still no stimulus package but both the House and Senate have called Trump’s bluff, passing the Defense Authorization Act with “veto proof” majorities.  The question now is whether Trump will really go forward with his promised veto and if he does whether all of those who voted for it stick with it to override his veto.  On the vaccine front, though so far medical professionals don’t seem concerned, a few Brits experienced severe allergic reactions after receiving their Pfizer/BioNTech shots.  Those in the know say that the affected individuals are people who’ve had similar reactions to other vaccinations and that they are doing fine now so hopefully nothing to be concerned about unless of course you are one of those with an egg allergy. The bigger problem here in the US is likely to be actually getting enough shots to go around because, surprise, surprise, Trump’s cracker jack team is already in SNAFU land.  Who would have anticipated that?