Rudolph's Red Nose

Ho, Ho, Ho:  Am writing today’s note mostly to wish everyone happy holidays. I was hoping to have good news about a NY indictment of that certain FG but though it could still happen, there’s nothing new to report there, yet.  That said, the House’s January 6^th Committee has gifted us with a few bold subpoenas and interview requests which explains why Ohio wrestler Jim “Gym” Jordan who was knee deep in insurrection and communicated quite frequently with his bestie the FG in the run up to and on coup day is looking even more dazed and acting more obstreperous than usual. Gym and his crowd were all in on torturing Hilary Clinton over Benghazi and her emails but suddenly they don’t believe that Congress, or at least anyone not on their side in Congress, has the right to investigate them which explains why Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry, who pushed for the FG to upend his Justice Department, is also refusing to cooperate. Don’t be surprised to see any of them join Mark Meadows and the rest of the FG crowd in suing the Committee, Nancy Pelosi and anyone else they can.  Roger Stone, another one called in to testify, sued but had his suit thrown out almost immediately and will probably try again since the whole idea is to stall as much as possible.  With the January 6^th anniversary on the horizon, the FG has broadcasted plans to deliver a celebratory speech from Mar a Lago.  Could be his soliloquy includes an announcement that he’s running in 2024? Ugh. That would upset Ted Cruz who believes that since he almost won the nomination in 2016 it’s his turn this time.  Double Ugh. In other political news, the Democrats are still trying to pull Build Back Better out of agony of defeat status.  BBB killer Senator Joe Manchin, who Republican Leader Mitch McConnell keeps trying to flip, did participate in Chuck Schumer’s Democratic caucus call this week, a sign that he might not be ready to hand the Senate over to the Republicans right now.     

Viral Musings: On the Omicron front, it’s everywhere, almost completely pushing Delta out of the picture.  So far most infected boosted infected people, and who doesn’t know more than a few, have had varying degrees of cold symptoms. Not fun, but if that’s as bad as it gets, not horrible, and this year a good explanation for Rudolph’s nose being red.  A lot of the experts say given Omicron’s contagiousness, infection is inevitable so if you are fully vaccinated and get a scratchy throat don’t panic but do stock Kleenex, drink lots of fluids and hibernate. If you are not vaccinated, what were you thinking???  Pfizer’s highly effective antiviral Paxlovid, which involves taking pills for five days starting shortly after infection, was approved yesterday but since initially the pills will be in short supply and reserved for high risk individuals don’t count on them getting you out of a case of Omicron over the holidays.  Speaking of supply issues, those COVID home tests remain hard to come by and if you like me stocked a few this summer, the ones you have may not work all that well as their shelve lives are rather short, at least that’s what today’s Wall Street Journal reports.  One more thing to look forward to, yesterday the Supreme Court scheduled a hearing on Joe Biden’s large employers and health care workers vaccine mandate for January 7.  We’ll soon learn if the Court’s conservatives care more about the safety of the unborn than the living, as if we don’t already know their view on that with regard to some other things.     

Have a very Merry Christmas!  Outdoors or with windows wide open.      

 

Just Say No

Reversal of Fortune:  Yesterday West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced on Fox News Sunday that he was a hard NO on Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. As if making that announcement on Fox wasn’t bad enough, he also failed to alert the White House in advance.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Mitch McConnell who has had nothing but nice things to say about Manchin lately knew it was coming.  Probably a few coal and drug industry lobbyists knew too though quite a few insulin dependent diabetics in West Virginia and everywhere else probably didn’t get the call.  A shocked and very unhappy White House released a statement that detailed meetings that Manchin had been having with Joe Biden, including a reference to the good faith negotiations that Biden thought he was having with Manchin over the plan that Manchin had provided the White House last week.  The White House also said that they would continue to press Manchin to “honor his prior commitments and be true to his word." Those are the prior commitments Manchin made to convince House progressives to agree to vote for the infrastructure bill separate from the bigger BBB.  It’s still possible that large parts of the BBB get passed in the New Year but judging by the public knifing and resulting acrimony it’s also possible that Manchin jumps ship, joining his good friend Mitch in the Republican Party or just becomes an independent which is essentially what he is. That wouldn’t just put all of Biden’s legislative initiatives in jeopardy, it would also make it impossible for him to get a Supreme Court Justice confirmed should the opportunity arise.  Sadly, the consequences of Justice Breyer’s decision to remain on the Court for life may already be in effect. As to acrimony, the FG who is on a not very well attended harassers grievance tour with his good friend, the very disgraced former Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly, has been issuing some pretty wild statements of his own of late.  In addition to making a series of anti-Semitic remarks he’s been ranting even more than usual about the “communist” January 6^th Committee.  Some pundits believe that his higher than usual level of hysteria might be because he’s expects to be indicted shortly in  New York under the state’s New York racketeering law.  With Manhattan DA Vance’s term stepping down at year end that’s a real possibility, well maybe.    

Viral Musings: The jury is still out on whether infection with the Omicron variant results in less severe cases of COVID than its predecessors.  News out of South Africa remains promising however a preliminary analysis of the UK, albeit one based on a really small number of cases, less so.  Despite  reassurances that the boosted remain highly protected, a message that Moderna confirmed this morning, a number of prominent boosted people including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Corey Booker and Congressman Jason Crow now have breakthrough cases.  Given how quickly Omicron spreads, that’s not surprising because even if breakthroughs are uncommon with thousands upon thousands more people getting infected it’s inevitable that more than a few boosted folks will end up “positive.”  The good news, if there is any, is that most of those infected “boosterinos” are either asymptomatic or only experiencing cold like symptoms, not fun but not deadly.  While official reports are that most home rapid test kits do pick up the Omicron variant, there are many anecdotal reports of them failing to perform as promised meaning that sniffle might not be just a cold or then again it might be so act accordingly. And you probably won’t be surprised to learn that it wasn’t our collective imagination, the FG’s administration really did try to obfuscate virtually everything about the pandemic.  The House Oversight Committee is out with its report, they conclude that the FG’s administration made “deliberate" efforts to undermine the federal response to COVID -19 after it arrived in early 2020, so that the crisis wouldn't harm him politically.  Over the weekend, retiring National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins confirmed those conclusions by revealing how he endured repeated pressure to approve unproven medical treatments like hydroxychloroquine and that he was told many times to fire virus guru Fauci.  He refused to do either saying “Can you imagine a circumstance where the director of the NIH, somebody who believes in science, would submit to political pressures and fire the greatest expert in infectious disease that the world has known, just to satisfy political concerns?" Of course, the answer to that is yes.  As to bad decisions, right after Nets management decided to let vaccine holdout Kyrie Irving return to playing road games, he was placed into the league’s “health and safety protocols” meaning he is either COVID positive or has returned an inconclusive test.  Given how many other basketball and football players, SNL stars and Broadway actors have recently tested COVID positive that’s not much of a surprise.  Who but everyone would have ever predicted that?      

 

Plaque and Gingivitis

Dangling Democracy:  Those texts that members of the House January 6^th Committee read out loud before the vote seeking a contempt charge against former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appear to have hit a nerve with certain Fox newscasters named Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as well as some Republican members of the House which explains why Ohio Congressman/Gym Rat Jim Jordan, has acknowledged that he was the one who texted Meadows “suggesting” that VP Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believed to be unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.  To be clear those so called “unconstitutional votes” were the votes from the swing states that the FG lost to Biden; the vote counts from the states that the FG won as well as all those votes for House and Senate Republicans, well duh, they were obviously legitimate.  Simply put, the plan which came close to succeeding, was to toss the legitimate results of the presidential election and then declare the FG victorious because who needs elections anyway when the FG was obviously the “best” guy for the job?  Jordan has no remorse about his text, he’s just pissed that RINO Liz Cheney and those evil committee Democrats had the audacity to read them out loud on the House floor. Of course Jordan wasn’t texting in a vacuum, according to one of those NY Times tick tock articles at least five other House Republicans were part of the cabal working closely with ringleader Meadows to overturn the results of the election. In addition to Jordan, the seditionist six included five other nefarious white guys: Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, and Texas’ Louie Gohmert. Perry was the one who advocated for the replacement of then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who remains “too ill” to show up for his scheduled January 6^th Committee testimony where, when and if he ever shows, he says he will be pleading the Fifth, an admission that he’s got lots to hide.  For his part Louis Gohmert, who is now seeking the Republican nomination to run for Texas Attorney General, helped further the plan by suing to get the courts to endorse having Pence toss out those “illegitimate”  state electoral slates in the hope that the case would make it to the Supreme Court where he believed that “FG ally” Samuel Alito, the Justice responsible for the circuit covering Texas, would rule in his favor.  As crazy as all of this sounds, it’s important to remember that the coup almost succeeded, and that next time around it could especially with all those voter suppression laws being passed across the country and with so many of the main stream Republican state officials who stood in its way, people like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, under attack and likely to be replaced by coup friendly extreme right wingers by 2024.  In case there is any doubt the Republican Party continues to bow to the FG, look to the RNC’s decision to pay up to $1.6 million of his legal bills, ones related to his NY business activities rather than those related to his presidential duties.  That’s the billionaire FG who is sitting on about $100 million in PAC money that could be used to cover his legal expenses. Also look to the group of forty conservative leaders, including former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, Citizens United President David Bossie, Club for Growth President David Mcintosh and Conservative Partnership Institute Chairman Jim DeMint who sent a letter to GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urging him to remove Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney from the House GOP conference due to their “egregious actions” as members of the House January 6^th Committee. They are so afraid of Liz Cheney, and to be fair they should be, she’s working methodically, taking no prisoners and really wants to take all of them down.  #TeamLiz at least for now, when she runs for president, not so much.   

Politics Unusual: President Biden and Senate Leader Schumer have shifted their attention from getting the Build Back Better legislation passed before year end to pushing forward with voters rights legislation.  That shift is largely because Biden can’t get West Virginia’s Joe Manchin to sign on to BBB or at least to sign on before year end but also because of the Republican Party’s continued onslaught on democratic principles and, let’s be real here, whether one supports Biden and his policies or not, voter suppression and coups should be beyond the pale.  Unfortunately, getting voters rights legislation passed is another one of those things that isn’t easy when you barely have a majority and the other side is opposed to making voting easier for anyone who might vote blue.  To get voter legislation passed Biden and Senate leader Schumer will have to get all their Senators to agree to suspend the filibuster, the way they just did for the debt ceiling, and so far at least one of them, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema who claims that she’s all in on voters rights, doesn’t seem all that interested in upsetting the filibuster status quo.  Stay tuned, the year is almost over, we will know soon enough whether Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock’s recent impassioned speech about the importance of stopping voter suppression has had any impact on the eccentric Sinema.

Viral Musings:  Well that didn’t take long.  Omicron is spreading like wild fire and New York City appears to be its US base of operations.  Covid positivity levels in the city have doubled to just under 8% in the past three days.  While some of that rise is due to Delta, holiday festivities, and the seasonal move back to indoor activities a lot of it is believed to be due to the highly contagious Omicron variant. The rest of the country should be very concerned because NYC is one of the most vaccinated locales in the country so what’s happening here will be worse where vax rates are lower.  The experts continue to believe that boosters combined with mitigation behavior are the way out of this mess but given the war on both shots and masks in lots of places we’re probably in for a tough few months.  As to boosters, yesterday the CDC recommended that people, even those who previously got J & J shots,  get boosted with either Moderna or Pfizer.  Their decision was based on those rare and sometimes fatal blood clots associated with the J & J jabs combined with the fact that as low as the J & J risk is, with Moderna and Pfizer shots more effective, the risk is not worth taking.  Also, the results are in and the Moderna vaccine, like the Pfizer one needs a boost to be effective against Omicron.  One more thing, contrary to the rantings of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson who is now pushing Listerine as a COVID cure, the mouthwash doesn’t do anything for COVID but as promised it does help with bad breath, plaque and gingivitis.            

 

Best Coup Ever!?

Contemptible: Last night the House voted to hold former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress.  Unlike the earlier Steve Bannon contempt vote, this time around only Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted along with all the Democrats. The ball is now in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s hands.  Though it’s clear that Meadows is contemptible, the decision to seek an indictment is more complicated this time given that Meadows, unlike Bannon, really was a member of the FG’s administration.  That said, given the tidbits he revealed in his recent book and the subjects covered in those thousands of texts and emails that he already shared with the January 6^th committee Meadow’s argument that he’s protected by the FG’s claim of executive privilege and that the House Committee isn’t playing nice appears to be chock full of holes.  As to all those texts, they include some from as yet unnamed members of Congress, from Fox TV hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade, and even one from son Don Jr, who instead of going straight to his father asked Meadows to get him to “condemn this sh-t as soon as possible,” and by sh-t son Don was referring to the violent invasion of the Capitol rather than a visit by a nice group of tourists.  That son Don didn’t go straight to his father could fill pages of psychology text books but it’s the Fox hosts who, if we weren’t living in an alternative media universe, would have lots of explaining to do.  As they were imploring Meadows to get the FG to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol they were busy presenting a totally different narrative to their viewers blaming the insurrection on antifa and the like rather than the FG and his fans, a story they and their comrade in mendacity, Tucker Carlson, continue to push nightly to their depressingly large, gullible viewer base. Though we still don’t know for sure which members of Congress were texting pro-insurrection messages to Meadows, we now have a clue as late yesterday the January 6^th Committee subpoenaed the phone and social media records of some of the likely suspects including: Margie Q, Muslim hatemonger Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Madison Cawthorn, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry and Jody Hice.  Of course they could and likely will follow the example of FG lawyer John Eastman who is now suing both Verizon Wireless and the House January 6^th Committee to protect his phone records from prying eyes, a tactic that probably won’t succeed but could slow things down.  In any case we are likely to learn more about which Congressperson said what in each of those messages that were read aloud during the speechlets that preceded last night’s vote soon enough.

Follow the Money:  In other legal news, yesterday a federal judge ruled that it was okay for the Treasury Department to share the FG’s tax filings with the House Ways and Means committee.  Those are the records that were requested more than two years ago.  Of course since a two year delay isn’t long enough, the judge then gave the FG’s team two weeks to appeal his decision, something the FG has already announced he will do. Because the FG’s cases are keeping quite a few courts busy these days we also learned that Donald Bender, an accountant from the Mazers USA firm who helped prepare the FG Organization’s financial statements recently spent some time testifying before a NY Grand Jury looking into the extreme valuation disparity technique that the FG employed to pay less in taxes while convincing lenders that his assets were worthy of large loans.  Additionally, Manhattan District Attorney lawyers also met with some current and former Deutsche Bank team members including Rosemary Vrablic, the private banker who used to handle the FG account.  Completing yesterday’s investigation trifecta, the FG’s finances were also on the agenda in Scotland where the country’s highest court was hearing arguments on whether it was the Scottish government’s duty to use an Unexplained Wealth Order to investigate suspected sketchiness behind the FG’s 2014 purchase of the Turnberry Golf Course and by sketchy think possible money laundering, a plausible explanation of how more funds keeps getting pumped into the money losing facility.

Viral Musings:  Omicron is expected to take over the London scene even sooner than previously predicted.  Likewise it continues to make serious inroads here in the US, a further indication that it really is more contagious than the Delta variant.  The current view remains that Omicron results in less severe disease than the Delta strain but not as much less severe than had previously been hoped. As to vaccine effectiveness, a new study from Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest private health provider, shows that two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, which provided more than 90% protection against the original COVID virus, is only 33% protective against Omicron infection although full vaccination continues to provide 70% protection against severe disease.  The consensus view continues to be that boosters are the way to go as they do appear to prevent far more disease than the two shot regimen, especially as the effectiveness of those two shots wane over time. On the therapeutic front, Pfizer reports that it’s anti-viral Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalization or death in high-risk adults by 89% if given shortly after the onset of symptoms, confirming the first set of data that Pfizer released last month.  Pfizer also reports that their drug works is effective against Omicron.  It’s likely that Paxlovid will be approved in the US and available for limited use by the end of the year which means very soon.  But, tell your friends, especially the unvaccinated to the extent you know any, that jabs, including boosters, remain the first line of defense as prevention is the better way to go.  Preachy but true.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Whirlwinds:  The top story of the weekend concerned the killer tornados that ravaged parts of six Southeast and Midwest states, particularly the rare quad state tornado that ripped through Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas.  It’s late in the season for tornadoes but then again weather patterns have grown more extreme, one of those nifty side effects of global warming that the right and their number one mouthpiece, Fox, like to mock and deny.  Notably Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was among the first to request aide for his state, that’s not surprising, it’s the thing that elected politicians are supposed to do.  The irony is that Paul, who voted against helping Puerto Rico deal with its weather related tragedies, generally opposes that kind of aid, citing it as just another socialist waste of money.  No surprise that the Biden administration is already helping, despite the fact that so many “red” states are the ones in need and also no surprise that unlike his predecessor he isn’t requiring that any of the relevant governors prostrate themselves in exchange. Getting back to Fox, the media outlet lost its one “real” journalist this weekend after Chris Wallace whose contract was expiring announced that he was leaving Fox News Sunday and Fox effective immediately. He’s on his way to CNN’s new streaming network. It’s fair to assume that Tucker Carlson downed some champagne with some of those fish sticks he inherited in celebration as Wallace’s departure leaves Fox firmly in his thrall.  Wallace’s departure is a loss for all of us because his Fox perch allowed him to book Republican politicians who wouldn’t appear elsewhere, getting them to admit to revealing things that they wouldn’t ordinarily say. For example, on Sunday Wallace’s guest was Senator Lindsey Graham who he skewered for supporting the FG’s deficit increasing tax cuts while attacking all those “expensive” paid for components of the still floundering Build Back Better legislation. By the way, the current Republican plan is to keep West Virginia’s Joe Manchin from supporting the legislation. To accomplish that they’ve gotten a hypothetical “score” from the CBO that “shows” the plan would increase the deficit if some of its provisions, particularly those involving child care, are extended beyond the term included in the BBB legislation. Spoiler, that’s only if they were extended without any offsetting rollback of some of the FG’s tax cuts.  Graham also criticized Mitch McConnell for helping Democrats implement their creative work around to get the debt ceiling raised, saying that it was far more important to kowtow to the FG than ensure that the country avoid default. Left unsaid, if the Democrats can get all their caucus on board, and that’s a big if, they could now use a similar solution to pass some voting rights legislation and whatever else they might want to do.  Chris Wallace isn’t the only one jumping ship, MSNBC’s Brian Williams is also seeking new pastures.  It’s not yet known where he’ll show up next, rumor has it he’s been talking to ABC and CNN.  If you have a chance, watch the video of his Thursday night signoff, he spared no words with his warning about the darkness facing our Democracy right now.    

Insurrection Update:  About that darkness, this weekend we also learned more about the nefarious coup activities that were going on after the election.  Though, as expected, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows failed to show for his scheduled testimony, the January 6^th committee went ahead without him, revealing the questions they would have asked him if he was in attendance.  Those questions focused on the information included in his book and in the trove of emails that Meadows, who is now suing both the committee and Nancy Pelosi largely because that’s what FG acolytes do when they’re stalling for time, provided the committee before he decided to stop cooperating.  The Meadows’ emails revealed how he was knee deep in helping the FG with his plot to overturn the election results as well as some more about the FG’s desperation to hang on to power.  For example Meadows helped with the outreach to Republican state legislators to try to get them to send alternative electors to Congress, advised that the National Guard should be used to protect those “nice tourists” who attacked the capitol on January 6, and even reached out to a number of sitting Republican Senators, reviewing with them the power point presentation about how they could overturn the election results.  That’s the same power point presentation that said the FG could declare a national emergency and take control of ballots and voting machines in swing state by citing unsupported and seriously wackadoodle claims that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states. Oddly enough, Mike Pence, who’s out on the road these days trying to drum up support for his presidential run, and whose former chief aide Marc Short is cooperating with the January 6^th committee, really was the one who threw the wrench into the FG’s plans.  Not so oddly given the cast of characters who surrounded and continue to surround the FG, Philip Waldron the retired Army Colonel/current conspiracy theorist who distributed the power point presentation also appeared in Pillow Man Mike Lindell’s election “documentary,” or should I say mocumentary.  And because no one should forget about Jenna Ellis, the traffic court lawyer/faux Constitution expert who was with Rudy Giuliani the day his hair dye dripped down his face in the outskirts of Philadelphia she takes credit for some of the report’s conclusions as well.

Mock Court: Late next Spring, what remains of Roe v Wade will likely be overturned but for women in Texas the federal right to abortion established by Roe is already far gone.  Late Friday, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court left Texas’ anti-abortion bounty law in place while granting abortion providers a small concession by allowing them to continue with some of their lawsuits, those against Texas licensing officials but not state court judges, court clerks or the state attorney general.  Suffice it to say the anti-abortion crowd is winning as women in Texas continue to have virtually no access to abortion services unless of course they have the means to fly the coop to another friendlier state.  Not mincing words, Justice Sotomayor said the decision will have “castatrophic consequences.”  Chief Justice Roberts, hardly a fan of abortion, but someone who seems to get stare decisis and who also fears for what’s left of the Court’s dwindling reputation, joined the three liberal justices in dissent saying that the “nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”  Over the weekend California Governor Gavin Newsom took a shot at the conservative justices’ decision by tweeting if “SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!.... then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets. If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.”  Newsom has a good point, sadly it’s one that the conservative majority and probably even the Court’s liberals would never endorse.

Viral Musings:  We’re back to masking in public places in New York State. Omicron is likely to become the dominant variant in Europe over the next few weeks and what happens there usually happens here too.  The situation in South Africa seems to be improving which probably means that Omicron was there earlier than was previously known. Omicron really is more contagious than Delta, the previous super spreader king, but the jury is still out on its lethality. For now the belief – well hope – is that it is less likely to result in serious illness and hospitalization but it’s still too early to be certain.  Also, it’s looking more and more like boosters are needed to fend off the variant and that prior infection isn’t protective.  And in what looks like an admission that the FG’s administration has a lot to hide about how it handled coronavirus, former advisor Peter Navarro is refusing to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee. No surprise that he says he’s just following orders.

US Death toll: 800,000

 

Family Values

Law and Disorder:  The Former Guy’s Teflon shield took a few more hits yesterday, to the extent that matters.  First, shortly after pulling out of the NYS Governor’s race, NY State’s Attorney General Tish James “requested” that the FG stop by on January 7 for a deposition under oath as part of her ongoing civil investigation into potential fraud at his real estate company. In all likelihood, the FG will take her to court to avoid showing up so don’t mark the date in your calendar just yet. Then, later in the day,  a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously rejected the FG’s claim that he had the right to prevent his January 6 related documents from being shared by the National Archives with the House’s January 6th Committee saying that he “has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Biden's assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided.”  In other words, elections have consequences, despite his big lie claims, the FG’s no longer the president and the guy who is, has chosen not to invoke executive privilege. Again, don’t expect to see those documents released just yet, as the Appeals Court also granted the FG’s legal team two weeks to appeal their decision to the Supreme Court and it’s fair to assume that they will because though most legal pundits don’t think he’ll win, in fact most don’t even think that SCOTUS will take the case, he did appoint three of those Justices and the wife of a fourth, Clarence Thomas was herself involved in those January 6^th shenanigans.  As to what, the FG is so desperate to hide, we got a sense of some of it from the thousands of communications that his last Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has already shared with the January 6^th Committee.  Those files include a Power Point presentation detailing the steps to be taken to overturn the 2020 election results, kind of a guide to how to end American Democracy.  They also include texts and emails from Meadows who unlike the FG is a prolific texter, about sending “alternate” electors to Congress, part of a strategy that was intended to facilitate the extension of the FG’s presidency for another four years, or maybe even longer. In one of those texts, Meadows professed “love” for the alternate elector plan. Meadows, who according to Politico, is currently in discussion with the National Archives about “fixing” his failure to “properly” turnover presidential  records that he was required to turnover to them pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, is still refusing to testify in front of the January 6^th Committee which plans to vote on citing him for criminal contempt of Congress on Monday night.  Worth noting that the administration that got into power by making Hillary Clinton’s emails an issue committed far worse infractions while trying to stage a coup, something that she never did. Speaking about Hillary, remember those absurd claims by the QAnon set about her and a number of other prominent Democrats abusing kids in the basement of a Washington DC Pizza Parlor, the so-called Pizzagate nonsense which was of course total and complete bunk.  Surprise, surprise, they were focused on the wrong party as it turns out that Josh Duggar, an outspoke conservative Republican who complained loudly about liberal values,  as in values that he didn’t share, and who was an Executive Director at the evangelical Family Research Council was the guy they should have been hounding.  Yesterday Duggar was found guilty of receiving and possessing some extraordinarily gruesome child pornography. For those not up on the Duggar’s, Josh previously admitted to molesting some young girls including a few of his sisters. His father Jim Bob who is running for a seat in the Arkansas State Senate broke his silence yesterday to say that he’s praying. No comments from the rather large number of former and current Republican officials including former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, father of current gubernatorial candidate/former press secretary Sarah, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin who all gladly posed for pictures with Josh to get some of that all-important evangelical vote. As far as I can tell the Q set also has nothing to say.

Viral Musings:  Though a lot of the focus right now is on the Omicron variant, it’s the Delta strain that’s causing the current seasonal and holiday surge and almost all of the cases and deaths here in the US.  That’s truly sad because we know that the current crop of vaccines work on Delta and it’s largely the unvaccinated who are jamming up hospital ICUs and even dying.  One of those recent unvaccinated COVID casualties is Michigan’s William Hartmann, the Wayne County canvasser who tried to hold up the certification of Michigan’s presidential election results.  Hartmann who died from COVID this week had accused Democrats of needing mask and vaccine “panic” to “screw up” election results. Getting back to Omicron, the current view remains that the best defense is to get vaccinated and for vaccinated people to get boosted when they become eligible, six months after getting their second mRNA shot or two months after their J & J jab.  Yesterday, the CDC expanded that recommendation to the 16 to 17 year old set, a group that it previously did not cover. Another study out of test case country Israel where boosters were administered first, confirms that they really do extend protection by reducing  both illness and death dramatically. The Israel study focuses on Pfizer shots since that’s the vaccine that has been given to most Israelis but it’s fair to assume that the results pertain to Moderna and the other non mRNA vaccines.  One caveat, the Israel study took place before the Omicron variant was in circulation, so at least for now we’ll have to rely on the emerging lab studies that show that boosters increase protection against Omicron too.  

And:  It looks like Representative Lauren Boebert, who recently posed for one of those charming Christmas cards showing all four of her very young sons holding their Christmas gifts which naturally were automatic weapons, may be the next Republican to lose her committee assignments.  Not because of the holiday card which the Colorado Department of Children Services should be looking into but because of her anti-Muslim statements.  Also, Salon reports that left leaning watchdog group Accountable US has sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee asking them to look into questionable ties between certain Brazilian investors and the FG’s new social media company.  The assertion is that the FG may have been pitching his company to the Bolsonaro crowd back when he was still in office.              

7 Day average of new cases:  118,000

7 Day average of deaths:  1295

 

#ButHerEarbuds

Seasons Greetings: Facing the end of year rush and Rudolph’s pull, Congress moved one big step closer to raising the debt ceiling and passing the defense authorization act.  Getting the debt ceiling deal agreed to took some heavy lifting and creativity but knowing that being responsible for pushing the country into default is not the best way to win elections, Mitch McConnell signed off on a deal with Democrats that involved the Nancy Pelosi controlled House passing what is supposed to be a one time work around that will allow the Senate to raise the debt ceiling with the barest of majorities. Biden’s Build Back Better remains up in the air, though Senate Leader Schumer insists he’ll get it passed before Christmas break, not that anyone else thinks that’s likely to happen. While all the Congressional maneuvering was taking place President Biden was having a phone summit with Putin, trying to convince Vlad that he would suffer bigly if he moved to invade Ukraine over the holiday break or anytime thereafter.  Given Putin’s build up on his border with Ukraine an invasion is a real possibility, especially since he’s pulled off some Ukraine land grabs before.  Biden’s likely talking financial penalties not war but the stakes are high so the situation could get really messy and since mess and disarray seems to be something that some Republicans love, a few of them including no one’s favorite Senator Ted Cruz continue to stand in the way of the confirmation of most of Biden’s State Department, national security and Ambassadors because why would we want diplomats in place with peace in jeopardy? Cruz claims that he’s holding them all up over Biden’s decision to remove sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline project from Russia to Germany, but really he’s probably just doing it because he loves the attention, national security be damned.   On the international front, it’s not just Russia that’s causing problems, China is also acting up, saber rattling over Taiwan, the island they want back, and continuing to trample on the human rights of the Muslim Uyghurs.  Then there’s the problem of Peng Shuai, the female tennis player who has just about disappeared after alleging that she was sexually assaulted by a senior Chinese party official.  As a protest against all that human rights trampling the Biden administration announced that while our athletes will still be allowed to participate in the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, our diplomats won’t be in attendance.  Yesterday, Australia announced that they are following suit.  Suffice it to say, China’s President Xi is not pleased.

Reindeer:  On the domestic front, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who didn’t show up the first time he was called to testify in front of the House January 6^th Committee but then said that he would show up to avoid being cited for criminal contempt  has announced that he’s back to not showing up.  Meadows who whined something about changing his mind because the House Committee weren’t playing fair because they “went behind his back” by going after his phone records really changed his mind because the Former Guy is squeezing his cojones, to the extent he has any, over his book.  That’s the book where Meadows provided details about the FGs bout with COVID and how he knowingly exposed more than 500 people to the virus.  Apparently doing a tell all book is okay but testifying before Congress is a violation of executive privilege, at least according to Meadows.  For his part Roger Stone, another one that the committee has called in now says that he, like lawyers John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, will plead the Fifth, an acknowledgement that they all have lots of criminal deeds to hide.  And why not pull that delaying tactic, the frequently red nosed Steve Bannon’s trial date has now been set for July, which while earlier than Bannon wanted, is still late enough to make it highly likely that he’ll skate until there is a new Congress, one controlled by either Kevin McCarthy, Gym Johnson or maybe even “Speaker” FG, if Matt Gaetz gets his way.

Cows:  One person who won’t be there for all that fun is California Congressman Devin Nunes who announced that he’ll be stepping aside at the end of the year to become the CEO of the FG’s new media company. Nunes made his announcement about a minute after it was revealed that the company and the SPAC (special purpose acquisition company)  that is facilitating it going public are being investigated by the SEC over conversations they may have had back when they weren’t supposed to be canoodling.  The SEC is also asking questions about the identify of the investors who are shoveling an additional $1 billion into the fledgling company, maybe looking into how many of them are relatives of the Saudi royal family?  In case you are wondering Nunes, who claims to be a dairy farmer, has no experience in managing a tech company but has sued a number of them as well as a cow, or a person pretending to be a cow.  Nunes’ decision to leave the House is odd given that he was up for the Chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in 2022.  That said, he may have been concerned about winning reelection because his “safe” district was likely going to be redistricted and then there’s all that money that he was probably promised by the FG who always meets his financial obligations, well not really.  Speaking of redistricting, it looks like some additional Democratic leaning voters are going to be tossed into the NYS’s mostly Republican leaning Staten Island district which explains why moderate Democrat/veteran Max Rose who lost his one term seat to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020 announced that he’s running again.  Malliotakis who voted against confirming Joe Biden’s electoral win took heat from a lot of people in her party including the FG for voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.  She’s been trying to have it both ways, we’ll know soon enough if that strategy is working.  Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the “controversy” about VP Kamala Harris and her earbuds.  Yes, her earbuds.  Politico, which was recently taken over by right leaning German publishing company Axel Springer, ran a “major” expose yesterday about how she shuns blue tooth in favor of wires.  Apparently Harris believes, correctly it turns out, that blue tooth buds are less secure.  To repeat, Harris who has endured countless stories about her staff turnover is now being criticized for her choice of ear buds.  Count me among those who think that this has a lot to do with her being a powerful woman, of color.         

Viral Musings:  Omicron is sprouting up everywhere but at least for now Delta remains the current problem especially here in the US where new cases are up again (7 day average just under 120,000) as are deaths (1700 plus yesterday). Preliminary indications are that the Omicron variant is less lethal than earlier ones, but since hospitalizations and death are lagging indicators it’s still too early to be sure whether that’s the case or wishful thinking.  As to vaccines, a small study out of South Africa indicates that the Pfizer vaccine, the one they examined, isn’t as effective at protecting against Omicron.  Pfizer acknowledges that but also say that two doses will still prevent a lot of disease while adding a booster does provide good protection against the new variant. The conclusion for now, get boosted ASAP because that third shot is more important than ever.

 

Godwin's Law on Steroids

Bias: It’s not your imagination, President Biden really is being trolled by the press. Sure he’s not perfect but its hard to miss how his successes get short shrift while his problems get amplified.  According to the Washington Post, data analytics completed by artificial intelligence company FiscalNote show that coverage of Biden is now worse than that received by the Former Guy.  And we’re not just talking about obvious right wing outlets like the New York Post, some of the worst trolling is coming from places like Politico and other mainstream sources that hide behind patinas of “fairness” and legitimacy. This matters because as Wapo’s Dana Milbank writes his “colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.” Think about the coverage of inflation and supply problems.  Yes they’re both real concerns but not totally of Biden’s making and in any case unemployment is way down, almost at pre-pandemic levels, and that much trumpeted shortage of turkeys has not materialized.  Yet relentlessly pushing those kind of stories has an undue influence on voters and as we move into an important election cycle we’re likely to experience first hand some really dire consequences due to the mainstream press and its both siderism.  For his part the Former Guy is doing his best to take advantage of situation by getting as many “friendly” candidates in place.  Over the weekend one of those “friendlies” David Perdue, the ex-Georgia Senator who lost his seat to Jon Ossoff announced plans to primary Brian Kemp, Georgia’s current governor. Kemp is reliably right wing and accomplished at voter suppression so this isn’t about policy but because he didn’t step in to overturn the results of the last election and for that “crime” the FG wants him ousted and is particularly keen to see Georgia “right” itself which is why he also gifted the state with Senate candidate/football guy Herschel Walker.  Whoever gets the Republican gubernatorial nod will then go up against Democratic darling Stacey Abrams and while she’s been highly successful at getting more voters registered, it will still be a tough election during what is likely to be a particularly horrendous mid-term cycle.  While we’re talking crimes, real ones rather than the “steal” that the FG keeps pushing, it’s worth noting that Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who is quite possibly guilty of a few, including pushing for Georgia’s presidential electors to be replaced by an FG friendly set, did not show up to testify, or even plead the Fifth this weekend, something about him suffering from a “credible” illness. 

Viral Musings:  The jury is still out on the Omicron variant.  Scientists now think that it picked up some of its mutations from a run of the mill cold virus and that those are the mutations that are making it more contagious.  There’s also a chance that those mutations are making it less lethal which would be a really good thing but if we’ve learned anything thus far positive news reports should be taken with a grain of salt until we get more convincing data.  While Delta remains the dominant strain, fears of Omicron are causing a lot of people to run out for jabs, over two million shots were administered last Thursday. That’s a good thing but not as good as it sounds as a large proportion of those getting shots are either getting boosters or are among the newly eligible 5 to 11 cohort.  Under-vaccinated parts of the country remain unvaccinated and the consequences there are deadly.  According to NPR people living in counties that went 60% or higher for the FG in 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. As to vaccination and science, Fox’s Lara Logan who once was a respected 60 Minutes journalist has an opinion about all that. Taking Godwin’s Law to the extreme she equated virus guru Dr. Fauci with the Nazi’s most heinous doctor Joseph Mengele who among other things tortured children and did those horrific twin studies that are too disgusting to detail.  She also suggested that COVID was no worse than the flu but the Mengele comment is the one getting all the attention as it should.  Though Fox management has had nothing to say about her disgusting utterances, even they know she went beyond the pale which could explain why she disappeared from their airwaves at least for now.    

People:  Also disappearing from the airwaves is now former CNN host Chris Cuomo who has been fired for violating ethics for helping his brother/NY Governor Andrew. It’s worth noting that while both of them are out, fish heir Tucker Carlson is still employed riling up hate and pushing white supremacy on a nightly basis. We also lost former Senator, war hero and presidential candidate Bob Dole this weekend.  Lots of tributes coming in for him for being an honorable, nice guy and a war veteran who suffered for his patriotism but keep in mind that he was the only one of the living GOP presidential candidates to endorse the FG and may look good now in comparison to the Republican’s current crop of clowns.    

     

Mary's Typhoid Uncle

Something Stinks:  Let’s start with the good news, last night Congress averted one of those unnecessary, stupid shutdowns by voting to fund the government at current levels through February.  In the House all Republicans with the exception of Adam Kinzinger, who appears to have grown increasingly untethered from his party possibly his way of positioning himself for his future political aspirations like a run for Illinois Governor, opposed the resolution.  The vote in the Senate was more bipartisan, but only after an agreement was reached to allow a show vote on defunding Biden’s “immoral” vaccine mandates to placate a few Republicans Senators who threatened to let the government shutdown unless the jabs were defunded.  Count me as one of those people who thinks  it defies logic to question the value of vaccine mandates in the face of a new highly contagious variant during a pandemic but then again what about the Republican Party and its push against science and vaccines makes any sense.  Also, count me as very concerned about what will happen  with these types of necessary housekeeping votes if, or more likely when, this crop of Republicans takes control of the House.  As to COVID, this was the week that we learned that the Former Guy tested positive before his September 2020 debate Biden.  That’s both shocking and not shocking at the same time.  Shocking because by hiding his test results, the FG put candidate Biden, everyone associated with the debate, everyone at the Justice Amy Coney Barrett White House shindig/super spreader event, more than a few elderly veterans and all of his staff at risk of getting sick at a time when vaccines weren’t not yet available and the few effective medicines we now have weren’t yet approved for use. We learned this horrifying tidbit from former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who helped cover up the FG’s COVID lie, only because he’s about to embark on a book tour, one that he surely hopes will result in him selling more than the pathetic few thousand that Chris Christie managed to unload despite his countless TV appearances. Then again nothing about the FG’s behavior should really be shocking as the story we were fed about his illness and the timeline that led up to his hospitalization was sketchy from the start. Speaking of sketchy, Sean Conley, the White House physician who helped the FG hide his disease is now in that category.  Sure patients are entitled to privacy but not when they’re both serving as president of the country and endangering the lives of others.  So much for medical and that military thing about not following unethical orders.  Speaking of ethical behavior, Justice Sotomayor has had it with her conservative colleagues’ march to overturn Roe v Wade.  During this week’s hearing on the Mississippi case that seeks to dismantle the fifty year precedent of the Roe abortion rights decision, she suggested that the Court won’t “survive the stench” of eliminating reproductive rights.  Her point being that following politics rather than adhering to precedent will kill the whole idea of an independent judiciary. We won’t know for sure how far the Court’s conservative majority plans to go until their decision is published next Spring but based on their questions and comments it’s fair to assume that the outcome will be fairly dreadful unless of course you think that its okay to force all pregnant women to stay pregnant until delivery at which time they can, as Amy Coney Barrett suggested just toss that newborn off on the stairs of a church or police station for adoption. The Conservative crowd appears to have a limited understanding of biology and also don’t seem to care about the impact that forcing mothers regardless of their age, health, health of the fetus, economic status and or whether the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest can have on their future mental and physical health and economic status. They also appear unconcerned that most of the members of their preferred political party aren’t all that interested in funding the kind of prenatal and child care programs that all those future mothers and babies need because who really worries about providing diapers, food, health care and an education to children. Enough said, you get the gist.

People News: On the political front, voting rights champion Stacey Abrams has announced what everyone kind of knew she was going to announce, that she plans to run again to become Governor of Georgia.  Her path to the Georgia Democratic nomination is probably a sure thing which contrasts her to all those candidates in New York where still another Democrat, Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi, has thrown his hat into the already very crowded Democratic field.  On the January 6^th committee front in an effort to avoid indictment for obstruction of Congress, former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark now plans to testify on Saturday, however few believe he will do much more than plead the Fifth, an acknowledgement that he’s got lots to hide about how he tried to get then sitting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen fired so that he could take over the leadership of the Justice Department in order to abet the FG’s illegal coup.  Clark’s dance with contempt is probably not over yet as the members of the committee are unlikely to be all that happy if he refuses to answer any questions.  As to the FG, worth noting that he was so busy with his election overthrow project that he stopped taking security briefings before the Christmas Holidays when he decamped to Mar a Lago for a bit and then never started them up again even when he returned to the White House.  VP Pence, the guy he tried to get lynched did apparently keep reading those secret memos so at least one person, albeit one who was almost taken out and hung, did stay in the security loop.

Viral Musings:  Omicron is here in the US.  We still don’t know much more about its lethality, vaccine evading skills or contagiousness but we do know that it’s landed on our shores.  Not much of a surprise but still rather disconcerting.   President Biden says that “We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion” which sounds good but who are we kidding, chaos and confusion is the American brand these days. Far too many Republican politicians are protesting vaccines while rooting for the virus to kill more of us not because they’re all as stupid as they sound but because they view an increase in virus spread and related deaths as something they can use to win elections and attack Biden’s competency.  And of course there are also a lot of people, like RFK Jr, the Kennedy scion who is just a loony, run of the mill anti-vaxxer.  In addition to pushing jabs, the Biden administration is pushing for more testing, for those boarding incoming international flights and also for those at home by having insurance companies pay for those do it yourself testing kits that cost more than they should when you can find them.  For now vaccines, boosters, masks and frequent testing are the solutions to managing the spread.  So mask up and get boosted if you haven’t already and stay home and test if you think you’ve been exposed or aren’t feeling up to snuff.  It’s likely to be a long winter.

Have a good weekend.

The Wizard of Oz?

Celebrity Shuffle:   Mehmet Oz, Oprah Winfrey’s favorite heart surgeon who is now better known for pushing quack cures and worthless diet supplements, announced that he is running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.  Oddly enough like former football star Hershel Walker who is running in Georgia, Oz isn’t even a resident of his “chosen” state, or at least wasn’t until moments before his announcement.  Though he used his in-laws’ address to submit a possibly fraudulent absentee Pennsylvania ballot during the last election, his wife’s website confirms that he resides in New Jersey. Oz who once pronounced that the FG was healthy enough to be president before being appointed to serve as a member of his presidential fitness council is likely to get the FG’s coveted endorsement now that the candidate he previously endorsed has withdrawn from the race, something to do with losing a child custody battle over allegations of spousal abuse.  It’s not all that clear that Pennsylvanians will line up to support Oz but should he go the distance in the primary and the general election, he’ll fit right in with those other medical superstars, like Senator/Eye Doctor Rand Paul, Congressman/Dentist Paul Gosar and one time White House physician/Congressman Ronny Jackson who yesterday called the feared Omicron variant a midterm election trick.  On the subject of unqualified Republicans serving in Congress, yesterday after another video emerged we learned that Colorado’s Lauren Boebert has been doing her anti-Muslim shtick for a while now.  That could explain why her not really an apology call to Ilhan Omar fell on deaf ears. Of course Georgia Congresswoman Margie Q has weighed in on the matter now too.  After Nancy Mace, the newbie Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina, criticized Boebert’s Islamophobia, calling her the “trash in the GOP conference,” Margie laid into her, calling her a pro-choice RINO.  Mace who is neither a RINO nor pro-choice did not back down from her criticism.  Though he still hasn’t had much to say about Boebert’s hate speech, GQP Leader McCarthy responded by telling both Mace and Margie to stop their public twitter fight. Of course that went nowhere with Margie, who came out of her tete a tete with McCarthy and immediately called for someone to primary Mace, promising that whoever did would get the FG’s endorsement. Worth noting Mace comes from a swing district so someone to her right might not come out on top in the general election, well maybe.  In other Republican news, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows now says that he will cooperate with the House January 6^th committee by providing them with some of what they’ve asked for and that he would answer some of their questions.  Only time will tell whether he’s stalling or if he plans to be forthcoming enough to avoid one of those contempt indictments. It’s fair to assume that the FG can’t be all that pleased with his cooperation but then again it’s not like he’s offered to pay any of Meadows legal bills.  We also learned yesterday that there is an ongoing federal probe into kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, something to do with her using money raised to fund her Defending the Republic election lie organization to pay her personal expenses.  Back in the semi-real world the Senate still has a lot to do on the funding and legislative front which likely explains why the wily Mitch McConnell and a number of conservative funded PACs have been putting the squeeze on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, whose key vote makes him the most powerful man in the Senate.

Viral Musings: There’s not much more to say about the Omicron variant yet which probably explains why a lot of news reports seem hyper focused on the correct pronunciation of the Greek letter’s opening “O,” as if that’s the problem.  Although the World Health Organization has pushed back against the idea of blanket travel bans, they ominously (an easy to pronounce O word) warn that older people, as in people over 60 (ugh), and those with health issues should refrain from travel.  As to those travel bans that were implemented over the weekend, though they are politically expedient and temporarily soothing they probably don’t do much more than buy a week or so of time as the coronavirus is pretty stealthy and the Omicron variant has probably already arrived in most places.  Moreover, it turns out that though the South Africans were the first to detect Omicron, that’s mostly because they’re particularly good at genome sequencing.  It turns out that Omicron was already in the Netherlands even before the South Africa announcement. It’s starting to look like South Africa is being slammed for being the messenger, a policy that could cause them to go silent when they detect other strains.  On the anti-viral front an FDA panel narrowly approved Merck’s not so miraculous pill with some reservations over its less than impressive effectiveness and safety profile. And of course a spate of courts keep knocking down Biden’s federal vaccine mandates because why would we want to stop the viruses spread?   Now some good news, though NYS positivity is climbing particularly upstate, levels are low in NYC where were no reported COVID related deaths on Monday. 

Stay safe!     

Send in the Clowns

Turkeys and Menorahs: Last week before we went off to our Thanksgiving feasts we learned that it was okay for a teenager to play vigilante in Colorado even if those actions ended up with some dead bodies, that it was not so okay to kill a man for jogging while Black and that despite the FG’s assertion there weren’t good people on both sides.  Kyle Rittenhouse, that teenager, has now visited Mar a Lago, appeared on fish stick heir Tucker Carlson’s show, become a hero of the right and is on the receiving end of several internship offers from a number of members of the Republican House clown squad.  He’s also provoked a fun to watch fight between some members of the FG’s loon squad with lawyer Lin Wood, Michael Flynn, Rittenhouse’s mother and Sidney Powell all taking potshots at each other over money, Q and other issues. As for the jogging murder, it turns out that calling out jogger Arnaud Arbury’s unpedicured toes as evidence that he deserved to be gunned down was probably not the best defense strategy to employ.  Similarly and thank goodness Virginia jurors get that neo-Nazis extolling white supremacy and the like while running down Heather Heyer was something that deserved consequences, financial ruin while not enough is better than nothing.  With Thanksgiving behind us and only one Chanukah light lit, this year by second gentleman Doug Emhoff,  it’s time to focus on what’s to come before year end.  The Government still needs to get funded, the debt limit needs to be raised, and there’s still that Build Back Better legislation to get passed through the Senate.         

Viral Musings: Going into Thanksgiving the talk was mostly about increasing COVID positivity levels in cold places with the focus on getting people vaccinated and boosted to blunt the seasonal increase in cases.  That’s still a big problem but now we know it may only be the tip of the iceberg or in this case the spike because as we’ve been told since the beginning of the pandemic, viruses especially coronaviruses mutate continuously and that absent high worldwide vaccination levels we ran the risk that a mutation that was both highly contagious and evasive of current vaccines would likely evolve.  The fear now is that with Omicron we’ve got one of those evasive and contagious variants to contend with.  Despite all the panic and accompanying market drops and travel bans we don’t yet know enough about Omicron, we’re not even sure if it’s as lethal as its predecessor variants as very preliminary reports out of South Africa indicate that it may not be.  That said the suspicion is that Omicron is highly contagious, possibly more contagious than Delta, the previous king of contagion.  We also don’t know if its plethora of spike mutations will allow it to evade, or even render the current crop of vaccines less effective.  For now the experts who are quick to point out that they need a few more weeks to get a handle on Omicron’s evil powers, seem to believe that the current vaccines and boosters remain the answer, or at least they hope so.  To the extent that a tweaked vaccine is needed both Moderna and Pfizer appear to be on the case, asserting that they can have a new mRNA version ready early next year. And while we’re into not so good news on the virus front, it turns out that the Merck antiviral pill, one of the one’s that was supposed to be our ticket out of the pandemic, has a much lower effectiveness at preventing hospitalization than promised, 30% rather than the 50% originally billed. So for now stay tuned, wear a mask when indoors and in crowds and, if you haven’t already, get boosted!                    

Human Resources: Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, the gun toting high school dropout from Colorado put her foot in her mouth last week, going after Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar not over her positions which may be fair to criticize but over her ethnicity which is not.  Boebert more than suggested that Omar, who she referred to as a member of the jihad squad, was a terrorist.  The sad thing about Boebert is that little about what she said was all that shocking given who she is as she, like far too many members of the Republican caucus including the sanctioned Representatives Gosar and Margie Q and the Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz and North Carolina not so wonder boy Madison Cawthorn, are what they are, and still they were voted in by their constituents and in most cases will be again while run of the mill conservatives like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney suffer. Facing a lot of pushback and probably a call from her party’s sniveling House leader Kevin McCarthy, Boebert did issue a lame “apology” of sorts but it was clear that she had her fingers crossed behind her back and it was also clear that McCarthy who finally did say something meaningless about her hate speech only cares to the extent it damages his chances of becoming Speaker in 2022. Speaking of clowns, Sean Parnell who the Former Guy had endorsed in the Pennsylvania Senate race, pulled out after losing custody of his children to his estranged wife who has accused him of abuse but nothing to worry about as another clown appear to be entering that race since Dr. Mehmet Oz of Oprah Winfrey fame appears poised to jump in because who doesn’t need another quick cure peddling medicine man in the Senate?  On the state front, Matthew McConaughey who was toying with running for Governor of Texas announced that now is not his time but Texas being Texas, “big lie” insurrectionist supporting Congressman Louis Gohmert has thrown his hat into the ring for State Attorney General, threatening the current one, the indicted FG fan Ken Paxton.  George P Bush son of Jeb who refuses to ever criticize the Former Guy despite all those nasty things he said about his father and his mother’s ethnicity is also in the race.  As to the House, a large number of Democrats, have announced plans to retire, they’re mostly older and from safe seats, still their departure plans likely reflect their expectation that Kevin Q really could become Speaker after the midterms.  Ugh.       

 

Messaging

Politics Unusual:  The CBO report is in, the Build Back Better plan would add about $160 billion to the deficit over the next decade, nothing to sneeze at but a mere pittance when compared to the trillions that the FG’s tax cuts added.  In fact the CBO estimate was better than the administration expected.  A number of the hold out House Democrats are now on board and according to Speaker Pelosi she’s got the votes needed for passage and as hard as it is to believe, Biden and Senate Leader Schumer believe they also have the votes needed for Senate passage meaning that Senators Sinema and Manchin are on board too, well maybe.  The House vote was supposed to take place last night but didn’t because GQP Leader McCarthy took to the floor and spoke until 5:10 this morning to stall its passage.  The vote is now expected to take place later this morning.  As to Kevin most of what he said was garbled nonsense, a performance intended to impress the FG and his party’s extremist wing, part of his effort to ensure that he rather than Gym Jordan, or even the FG, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz’s choice, gets the speaker nod when the Republicans retake the House; and just a reminder, given all that gerrymandering they are odds on favorites to grab it back in 2022.  Though the focus was supposed to be the Build Back Better legislation, Kevin was all over the place, at one point he attacked the Afghan pullout, saying Biden hadn’t taken in enough refugees only to later say we’d taken in too many so you get the gist.  He did manage to get into the record books for longest speech, beating Speaker Pelosi, who had held the previous record.  Frankly, it’s hard to care about his crazy speechifying, it’s the other stuff he’s done and will do if and when he becomes speaker that should concern us. Among other things he’ll likely give Representatives Gosar and Margie Q back their committee assignments while going after those of a few Democrats.  Likely targets will be Maxine Waters, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell though Adam Schiff and a whole bunch of other names are also being bandied about.  As to Gosar, he’s now officially sanctioned; two Republicans, Kinzinger and Cheney, joined the Democratic majority in stripping him of his committee positions.  GQP Kevin expressed outrage because apparently threatening the life of a fellow Congressperson and harm to the sitting President is no biggie for him.  Gosar, who Kevin claims “apologized” to his Republican brethren for his heinous tweet, responded to the censure by retweeting the offensive anime and, of course, the FG announced that he’s endorsing Gosar for reelection. That’s the same FG who sent out a long incoherent statement on Wednesday, ramping up his attack of “Old Crow” Mitch McConnell, calling him “stupid” and a “fool” while accusing him of “incompetence” for facilitating the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill and allowing the debt ceiling limit to be lifted, albeit temporarily.  Having taken down a few House Republicans who didn’t vote his way,  the FG seems determined to do the same to the “Old Crow.” Those four years when Mitch consistently pushed through the FGs judges, forgotten.  As to the debt limit, which runs out again in the beginning of December, reports are that Senate Leader Schumer and “Old Crow” McConnell have been having behind the scenes talks to facilitate its passage.  That’s how things are supposed to work but don’t get too used to it.  If the Republicans retake the House after the midterms routinely raising the debt limit could be come near impossible given the heat those few Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure bill have gotten.

Viral Musings:  The seven day average of new coronavirus cases is now tapping at the door of 100,000 with deaths stuck stubbornly above 1000.  Given the beginning of the holiday season, dropping temperatures in the north, waning vaccine effectiveness for those previously vaccinated but not yet boosted, and the number who remain unvaccinated the infection number is likely to climb a lot, sooner rather than later. On a more positive note, 10% of eligible 5 to 11 year-olds have already gotten their first shots, a faster jab uptake for the pediatric COVID shot than was achieved with the adult rollout. As to adults, 80% have gotten their first jab and though a handful of covidiots have sought to “undo” the effectiveness of their shots with borax baths, that’s just stupid and probably dangerous but not effective. Hopefully, those experts who say that the country’s vaccination rate will blunt the lethality of the winter COVID wave are correct. It’s still not clear whether the Biden vaccination mandates will withstand the legal challenges being pressed by Governors and Attorneys General from red states but those in place at the local level do appear to be working despite the borax idiocy.  The administration also reports that 31 million adults have gotten their boosters, good but not enough. Hopefully, expectations that the FDA will endorse both Pfizer and Moderna boosters for all adults today are true.  That endorsement should clear up confusion about who should get boosters getting the message out to all. Though the Pfizer COVID pill has not yet received emergency use authorization, that authorization is expected which likely explains why the US government has entered into a contract to purchase $5.3 billion, or 10 million courses of the drug. The government earlier ordered some of Merck’s pills as well.  Lastly, we keep on learning more about how hard the FG administration worked to muddy the COVID message over fears that admitting how much of a problem it was would “hurt” his economy and chances for reelection.  Crazy, that as a result we’re still fighting over vaccine effectiveness and face mask mitigation, particularly since he was the one who funded so much of the vaccine development.

One More Thing:  Though the news has been focused on inflation and the Republican party is stoking the “we’re about to turn into Argentina or worse” story it turns out the economic picture is actually pretty good.  Jobless claims are down under 300,000 and 531,000 new jobs were added in October.  Even more significantly,  prior months figures understated job growth missing more than 600,000 jobs that have now been added back in.  Retail sales and manufacturing output are both up.  The issue now may be more about how people, burnt out from the long COVID experience, feel about the economy rather than dire economic problems. If only messaging was something that Democrats were good at. 

Have a great weekend! Boost up.      

 

Flu Gap

Infrastructure Week:  The bipartisan infrastructure bill has been signed into law and President Biden is traveling around the country, standing in front of dilapidated bridges, trying to explain to voters why it’s a really good thing to fix our crumbling infrastructure.  Meantime, the FG and his cronies in Congress are still going after those “RINOs” who voted for its passage .  At this point it’s unlikely that any of the targeted will be censured although the Republican’s Freedom Caucus wants to see that happen.  GQP Leader McCarthy knows that punishing those who voted for it isn’t a good idea but he’s also afraid of losing support from his right as that could jeopardize him winning the speakership if and when the Republicans win back the House, an increasing probability given the success of all their gerrymandering. Of course Margie Q who no longer has any committee assignments is pushing hard for NYS Republican John Katko who voted for the law to lose his ranking position on the Homeland Security Committee.  The clueless Margie wants that position to go to an FG loyalist from a threatened border state.  Apparently she doesn’t remember 9.11, nor does she know that NY is a border state. And of course, while the FG stews about Biden getting an infrastructure law passed when he never could, and Republicans attack those who voted for the law, Alabama Representative Gary Palmer, one of those Republican “no” voters has already started bragging to his constituents about all the money that his district will be getting as a result of the new law.  He won’t be the last no voter to take credit.  Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer are now focused on their next hurdle, getting the Build Back Better reconciliation bill passed.  Holidays are upon us, the debt ceiling limit will be running out again soon and there’s not much time left in the year so we’ll see what really happens next.

Betrayal: Turning to the FG, Jon Karl’s Betrayal book is now out.  It’s chocked with a lot of new factoids about the destructive and dysfunctional last days of the FG administration.  My personal favorite is that son in law Jared Kushner refused to intervene to stop the FG’s insanity because he was too busy working on Middle East peace or maybe just getting funding for his new investment fund to worry about all that.  Then there’s wacko lawyer Sydney Powell not to be confused with that other wacko attorney Jenna Ellis the campaign lawyer who is best remembered for sitting alongside Rudy at his Four Seasons press conference.  The really odd Powell who was once a respected US Attorney, was so convinced that former CIA Head Gina Haspel had been kidnapped and injured while trying to get one of those “vote flipping” machines back from Europe that she together with an equally unhinged Michael Flynn attempted to get Defense aide Ezra Cohen-Watnick to send forces overseas to bring her back. Even Cohen-Watnick, an FG loyalist who had managed to get a position high up in the Defense department because of his relationship with Flynn knew that was nuts so he refused.  Flynn called him a quitter and the two haven’t spoken since.  For her part Ellis was busy working on VP Pence, force feeding him a memo detailing how he could flip the election back to the FG. By the way Ellis whose previous legal experience included working traffic cases is far from a  Constitutional law expert. Naturally, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is implicated in a lot of this which goes far to explaining why he’s so afraid to testify in front of the January 6 committee. Then there’s Mitch McConnell, we may have him to thank for the FG boycotting the inauguration.  It turns out that Mitch didn’t want the FG there as he feared he would turn it into a sh-tshow.  When the FG found out that Mitch was working on banning him, he preempted the effort by announcing he wouldn’t attend.  Of course the FG is still out there being a disruptive force.  Last night he appeared with Pillow man Lindell.  He agreed with Pillow’s assertion that all voting machines used in 2020 should be burned and then went on with to slam his one-time VP again saying “It was very sad when Mike Pence gave those votes over. When you have more votes than there are voters, when you have other things that are so wrong.” Repeat the lie often enough…..

Human Resources:  A few more Democrats are throwing in the towel. Yesterday Vermont’s 81 year old Senator Patrick Leahy, the senior most member of the Democrat’s Senate contingent announced that he will not be seeking another term.  His decision isn’t all that surprising as he’s hardly a spring chicken and he had a serious health scare this year, one that could have ended up turning the Senate back to Mitch McConnell as Vermont has a Republican governor.   Peter Welch, Vermont’s lone Congressman, a Democrat, is eying Leahy’s seat.  If Independent Bernie Sanders endorses him, he’ll probably get the nod but nothing is certain right now.  On the Congressional front, California’s Jackie Speier also announced her plans to retire from her reliably Democratic seat.  She’s only 71, young by House standards, but she’s apparently ready to move on to spending time with her husband and probably something else closer to home. Speier, a Pelosi acolyte, survived the Jonestown massacre, not as a member of the cult but as an aide to Congressman Leo Ryan who was killed during the related airport siege so January 6^th was particularly resonant to her.  She isn’t going away quietly, she’s co-sponsoring a resolution to censure Republican Congressman Paul Gosar for threatening the life and limb of Biden and AOC.  In other news, the Wyoming Republican party has ousted the state’s one member of Congress, Liz Cheney, from their party.  The reliably conservative Congresswoman’s crime,  failing to kowtow to the FG’s forces. Beto O’Rourke announced that he’s running to be Texas’s next governor and everyone appears to be running for the Democratic nomination to be NYS’s next Governor.  That crowd includes current Governor Kathy Hochul, AG Letitia James, former NYC public advocate Jumaane Williams, and maybe even ousted Governor Andrew Cuomo.  As a reminder on the Republican side, it’s Suffolk County Congressman/FG supporter Lee Zeldin vs Rudy son Andrew which means it’s Lee Zeldin who must be enjoying the Democrats duking it out and hoping that the most progressive candidate emerges from the pile so that he can seal up the upstate, eastern Long Island votes. Also, with Letitia James focused on the governorship, yesterday the impressive Daniel Goldman, no relation, who represented the Democrats in one of the FG impeachment cases, announced that he’s running for NYS AG.    

Viral Musings:  Expectations are that the FDA will approve boosters for all adults by the end of the week, a recognition that the effectiveness of the vaccines wane after six months for everyone not just the elderly or the immune suppressed, that almost anyone can get them anyway, that many states and localities have already jumped the gun and that boosters raise effectiveness back up into the 90 plus percent area.  In other news,  Pfizer has submitted an emergency use authorization application for its COVID anti-viral pill Paxlovid.  Taken over several days the pill, appears to have an efficacy of just under 90% at preventing severe disease and death when taken within three days after the start of symptoms.  Merck already has it’s EUA application in for its drug which is about 50% effective and already approved for emergency use in the UK.  US COVID cases are trending upward again mostly among the unvaccinated and in colder areas but also among those who got their shots early and haven’t yet been boosted.  Depressingly flu cases are up too with something new on that front:  apparently there is now a partisan divide when it comes to getting flu shots with 68% of Democrats saying they’ve gotten one or plan to and only 44% of Republicans saying the same.  In past years that differential, 58% vs 54%, fell within the margin of error.       

 

Religious Establishment

Teflon: Since we all need some good news, here’s some.  American journalist Danny Fenster who had been sentenced to serve eleven years in a Myanmar jail for acting like a journalist was freed this morning.  Details are still coming out but it looks like his release was due to the work of former US Ambassador Bill Richardson.  Not so lucky is Steve Bannon who was finally indicted on Friday on two counts of contempt of Congress.  Unfortunately his case has been assigned to an FG appointed judge so Teflon Bannon who is due to turn himself in today could end up skating, again.  That said his indictment probably caused some anxiety for former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who failed to show up for his scheduled testimony on Friday.  Word is that that Meadows may now be trying to see if he can provide written testimony, likely because he believes it would allow him to avoid an indictment while making it harder for him to get caught lying.   Of course the  FG responded to Bannon’s indictment by calling the country a “radicalized mess” though naturally he didn’t mention that he was the source of that radicalization nor did he have anything to say about his other BFF, Michael Flynn who told his fans that “if we are going to have one nation under God, which we must, we have to have one religion. One nation under God and one religion under God.” So much for the First Amendment and that whole prohibition against establishing a religion thing.  Bizarrely enough, Josh Mandel who Jewish and is running and at least for now leading the pack of those seeking to get the Republican nomination for the Ohio Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Rob Portman, responded to Flynn’s statement by tweeting “we stand with General Flynn,” because when you are vying for the FG’s endorsement why not sell your soul to the devil?  Mandel’s more well-known competitors for that coveted FG endorsement are the Peter Theil funded author of Hillbilly Elegy fame JD Vance who appears to be flailing and Jane Timken former chair of the Ohio Republican Party but it’s one of his lesser known ones Mark Pukita who got a lot of attention last week after he defended some ads where he asks “Are we seriously supposed to believe the most Christian-values Senate candidate is Jewish?” by saying “all I did in an ad was pointed out that Josh is going around saying he's got the Bible in one hand and the constitution in the other. But he's Jewish, everybody should know that though, right.”  Let me repeat he’s attacking Mandel for being Jewish.  There are lots of reasons to go after Mandel, that shouldn’t be one of them.  Getting back to Bannon, the indictment doesn’t appear to have crimped his style, this weekend he told his podcast listeners that all Hell would break loose this week after the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict comes in.  That  exhortation probably goes far to explaining why Wisconsin’s Governor announced plans to call out the National Guard. 

Politics As Usual:  As to the FG, ever self-centered he called Chris Christie around the time the former NJ Governor was suffering with COVID and getting last rites to make sure that he wouldn’t be holding him responsible for catching the virus.  Though it would be nice to ignore the FG, that would be foolish as he continues to do all he possibly can do to be a disruptive force. Anyone who doesn’t think that he is working to return to the Oval Office is delusional, probably as delusional as his pillow man Mike Lindell and one religion only Flynn, who undoubtably would end up back as National Security Adviser or in an equivalently important position if the FG gets his wish. Over the weekend, the Mango Maniac called for "good and SMART America First Republican Patriots to run primary campaigns against Representatives Tom Rice, John Katko, Don Bacon, Don Young, Fred Upton (challenge accepted), Andrew Garbarino, Peter Meijer (challenge accepted), David McKinley (challenge accepted), Nancy Mace, Jaime Herrera Beutler (challenge accepted) and Chris Smith?"  Their crimes, they either voted for the infrastructure legislation or something equivalently awful in his eyes.  He also once again attacked Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski who he called the “disaster from Alaska.”  Murkowski, who is expected to be one of the few Republicans planning to show up today for Biden’s signing of the bipartisan infrastructure bill because it’s popular in her state, announced that she’s running for reelection over the weekend.  Biden needs the good press that maybe, just maybe he’ll get at the signing as the main stream media is focused on inflation and his sinking poll numbers. VP Harris could use better press too.  CNN’s weekend hit piece was nasty and odd. Odd because the contents seemed like more of an indictment of the Biden team than of her but the headline slammed her.  Shifting back to inflation, Larry Summers who’s been talking up inflation ever since the passage of the cash infusing virus recovery legislation, is bullish on both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the as yet unpassed Build Back Better legislation.  He says neither will contribute to inflation but both will achieve long term improvements.   That’s a message that he needs to share with West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, who appears to be getting cold feet, again.        

Viral Musings:  While he still sees a light at the end of the COVID tunnel, former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb warns of a post-holiday spike in new COVID infections and with the 7 day average of new cases already above 80,000 his warning may already be a reality.  To that end a number of states, including California, Colorado and New Mexico have already made boosters available to all adults.  From a practical matter boosters are available to most who want them right now since the categories for who qualifies are so broad, still officially opening up getting a booster to all combined with better messaging is one way to keep new cases down. It working in Israel where cases remain low.   

Inflation, Inflation

Stalling Tactics:  We’re not going to see all those implicating January 6 files that document the coup efforts of the FG and his cronies, at least we’re not going to see them yet.  Yesterday, as expected, the Court of Appeals for DC granted a temporary injunction while it considers the FG’s request to hold off the files’ release pending his appeal of a lower court’s decision.  The Appeals court judges fast-tracked oral arguments setting a hearing for November 30.  Two of the three judges on the randomly selected panel are Obama appointees with the third recently appointed by Biden, not that any of that is supposed to matter except that sometimes it does.  The expectation is that they’ll rule in favor of releasing the information and that the FG’s lawyers will again appeal, requesting a full court review and then that “his” Supreme Court get the final say.  Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice still hasn’t done anything about the Steve Bannon contempt issue which is why former chief of staff Mark Meadows is unlikely to show up to testify in front of the January 6^th committee because unless someone suffers some serious consequences for refusing, why would he bother?  As to the courts in general, some really strange stuff is happening at the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the teenager who shot three, killing two in Kenosha, Wisconsin and in the trial against the three Georgians who are being tried for murdering jogger Arnaud Arbury.  The Rittenhouse judge seems more interested in adopting the teen than seeing justice done, and also seems to think that it was perfectly normal for him to cross state lines with a military style weapon he shouldn’t have had to play vigilante in Kenosha.  It’s even been reported that the judge’s phone played the FG’s campaign theme when it “accidentally” rang during the trial.  Then there’s the bizarre racially tinged comment he made about Asian food yesterday.  On the Arbury front, referring to the presence of Al Sharpton who was sitting with the victim’s family, a Defense attorney complained about too many Black pastors being present in court and how that could influence jurors, not just odd because of the race reference but also strange since there’s only one Black person on the jury as the defense team excluded all others from the jury, something the judge hearing the case allowed even as he noted it wasn’t all that Kosher. It got even worse when the Defense counsel  added that no one would be happy if his side invited a bunch of people dressed like Colonel Sanders in white masks. What? And because odd things are also happening outside of court, in another one of his Twitter alternate statements the FG announced that he had sent his “Envoy Ambassador” Ric Grenell to the Kosovo-Serbia border to promote “peace.”  To state the obvious former presidents don’t have or get to send ambassadors anywhere.  As if that isn’t bad enough, today’s NY Times reports on how Don Jr and Steve Bannon have been working hard to help Brazil strongman Jair Bolsonaro get reelected. The FG recently took to his Twitter alternate platform to endorse Bolsonaro’s reelection, not surprising given how the two have so much in common and by that think their similar responses to the “fake” coronavirus pandemic and their ongoing criminal enterprises.  Sadly, with inflation now the story of the day, we could end up with the FG and all of his best and most corrupt buddies in charge again because nothing spurs voter dissatisfaction more than increasing fuel prices and inflation fears.  What’s a lot of hate mongering, death threats, pollution and the like if the alternative is more expensive gas at the tank?  One more thing, reports are that NJ Republican Ciattarelli plans to finally concede that he lost his race by about 74K votes.  

 

Viral Musings:  So after all those reports came out about actor/possible Texas governor candidate Matthew McConaughey not vaccinating his kids, he responded by making it clear that he’s not opposed to vaccinations, just nervous.  He added that he, his wife and  his 13 year son are vaccinated but that he’s taking it slow with his younger kids which is sort of relatable so credit to him for clarifying his position. Perhaps the experiences of the 1 million or so 5 to 11 year-olds who have gotten the shot so far will help him through his angst.  On the COVID front, spurred on by those who remain unvaccinated, rates are rising again in too many places.  Let’s hope that those experts who insist that the incoming wave won’t be as bad as last winter’s because so many are vaccinated are correct.  Notably two anti-vax leaders have cancelled their plans to attend their own planned anti vax events.  One of them a North Dakota lawmaker is missing his North Dakota rally because he’s sick with COVID, the other white supremacist/anti vax advocate Nick Fuentes is “sick” with a mystery disease that sounds awfully like COVID and won’t be able to go on with his plans.  Horse paste anyone? Singapore where the inappropriate disposal of chewing gum can get you into bigly trouble has had it with people like Fuentes, they announced plans to stop covering the hospital medical bills of those who remain unvaccinated by choice. 

759K: US COVID deaths

74K: 7 day average of new cases