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.