Ted's Excellent Vacation

Fun in the Sun?  In 2018 when Texas had the chance to replace Senator Ted Cruz with then Congressman Beto O’Rourke, voters punted, narrowly reelecting Cruz, sending him back to Washington where he stood out as one of Trump’s most sniveling supplicants and went on to participate in the January 6^th insurrection.  Yesterday, while millions of Texans were suffering in the cold, without heat, electricity, adequate food supplies and potable water, Cruz again showed his true colors.  He caught a flight to Cancun for an impromptu, get out of Dodge vacation with his wife and daughters. We know about the trip because he and the police protection entourage he’d requested were caught at the airport where he was getting ready to board his Mexico bound flight and one or maybe more of his wife Heidi’s “friends” shared the group text where she encouraged a few of those friends to join them at the “great security” $300  per night Cancun Ritz Carlton. Cruz, who Trump, there goes that name again, of all people fittingly anointed Lyin’ Ted, then lied about the purpose and duration of his trip, claiming he was just a dedicated father, accompanying his daughters to Mexico, insisting that, despite his overstuffed wheelie and Sunday return ticket, he had never planned to stay more than a few hours.  Of course, Lyin’ Ted didn’t mention that Heidi, a Goldman Sachs partner, was more than capable of taking his daughters to Mexico on her own. Anyway, after trying to lay the blame for the trip on his daughters need for fun in the sun, Cruz returned to Texas where he finally admitted the whole episode was a mistake. In contrast, Beto, the candidate Texas didn’t elect, spent the day acting like a Senator is supposed to act, asking people on his extensive campaign list to help reach out to the neediest while also personally providing assistance to storm victims.  It’s hard to feel too sorry for the 50.9% of those Texas voters who went with Cruz, given his track record they should have known better.  Unfortunately those 48.3% who voted for Beto were also left out in the cold. The sad thing is that Texans and maybe even a lot of the remaining members of the increasingly right wing Republican party, would vote for Cruz again, after all he was the Republican candidate who came closest to beating Trump in 2016 and Texas is Texas.

Truth and Consequences? We keep hearing that now that he’s out of office Trump will suffer some consequences for all his “alleged” financial crimes and other misdeeds, like the slandering of sex crimes victims E Jean Caroll and Summer Zervos, but we’re still waiting.  Yesterday we learned that the Supreme Court is okay with the delay,  apparently Trump’s Justices are still sitting on the decision to release his financial information, that’s a ruling that should be a slam dunk and should have been issued months ago.  That’s the bad news, or good news for Trump.  The good news for the rest of us is that in addition to his earlier hire of a topnotch forensic accounting firm, Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance has now retained the services of Paul Weiss partner Mark Pomerantz a topnotch white collar, organized crime expert/former prosecutor who has stepped away from his firm to serve as Vance’s special assistant on all things related to the expanded investigation into Trump’s financial machinations, things like tax and bank fraud and maybe even the keeping of two sets of books.  Of course the response from Trump’s spokesman is that this is just another Democratic witch hunt.  Apparently, the usual crowd of Republican officials agree with that characterization as Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise, whose Republican House leadership position sandwiches him between GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy and on the outs Liz Cheney visited Mar a Lago this week, something to do with polishing Trump’s golf shoes.  Former UN Ambassador/aspiring presidential candidate Nikki Haley who recently suggested and now regrets saying that praying at the Trump altar wasn’t such a good idea, apparently tried to do that first but given her recent not so friendly to Trump utterance she was refused an audience.

Viral Musings:  The news on the virus front remains mixed. Snow storms and flight problems delayed a significant number of yesterday’s vaccinations. A number of medical experts/pundits, including frequently Dr Doom Peter Hotez of Baylor College of Medicine, warn that the current dip in virus cases could be temporary, that infections will spike back up again by April as one or more of those super contagious variants, particularly the one from the UK, starts to dominate in the US.  However, others including the very talkative former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb says that the vaccine ramp up which he believes is likely to exceed the Biden administration’s conservative projection, combined with seasonal changes will contain the UK variant in most of the country with the possible exception of southern parts of California and Florida.  Yesterday Bloomberg analysts projected that the number of vaccine shots should rise to almost 20 million a week in March, more than 25 million a week in April and May and over 30 million a week in June.  Despite concerns that the sneaky, concerning variants are less deterred by current vaccines, they are “cautiously optimistic” that the shot ramp up, on top of the current virus decline, will lead us out of virus hell sooner rather than later.  In other vaccine news, a number of US experts are pushing to delay second doses of the Moderna and Pfizer shots beyond the three and four week periods included in the companies’ test protocols under the theory that one shot provides almost as much protection, at least for a while, and that protecting more people faster rather than less people thoroughly is the way to go or at least the way they’d like to go and the way that the UK which has widened the shot interval to twelve weeks is going.  Pfizer and Moderna continue to recommend their three/four week intervals.  Additionally, though the one shot J & J vaccine is still due to be reviewed and probably approved by the end of the month, the company is now testing the benefit of adding a second shot to their vaccine protocol in an effort to raise effectiveness to Pfizer and Moderna’s levels. Also, Pfizer is now seeking permission for its vaccine to be stored at higher temperatures which should make for easier storage and wider administration and is beginning a clinical trial on the vaccination of pregnant women.   

493,119

57,737,800 shots in arms

Perseverance rocks.

Stay safe. Double Mask-up.