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.