The Sequel

Goats: If I had told you last February that Trump would face a second impeachment trial for staging an attempted coup; that the media would be obsessed by a Qster Congresswoman spouting conspiracy theories about Jewish lasers and staged school shootings; that we’d be debating the value of wearing one, two or no face masks; that we’d be scouring the internet for vaccine appointments and talking mRNA vs adenoviruses; that Trump had almost made the now pardoned Michael Flynn, who may or may not be the new Q, the FBI Director so that he could push forward with his martial law fantasy; that Lou Dobbs would be fired for claiming that election software flipped Trump votes to Joe Biden;  that Joe Biden would after countless attempts finally win the presidency; and that Tom Brady would lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to Super Bowl victory you would have questioned my sanity, at least about everything but Tom Brady, but here we are at Impeachment Week, The Sequel, and all those other things have or really are happening.

Dude Worship: Merely very conservative Republicans like Nebraska’s Ben Sasse who slammed his state’s Republican Party for censoring him while engaging in “dude worship” and Liz Cheney, who doubled down on her correctness of her vote to impeach Trump while also being censored by her state party, continue to play the long game while key members of the Republican contingent including Senators Graham, Cassidy, Paul and Johnson are still team Trump.  They were out this weekend pushing their argument that an out of office Trump, can’t be impeached with Johnson actually blaming Nancy Pelosi for the January 6 Capitol attack and Paul arguing that if anyone should be impeached it should be Senate Leader Chuck Schumer.  As to that argument that only current president’s can be tried, Charles Cooper, a top conservative lawyer who has represented the who’s who of Republicans including Ted Cruz, QOP leader Qevin McCarthy, John Bolton and Jeff Sessions posted an op-ed to the Wall Street Journal last night arguing that impeaching an out of office president is totally legit and to say otherwise “defies logic.” Logic is not a concept familiar to Lou Dobbs who continued to push the absurd conspiracy theory about the Dominion Voting Machines and Smartmatic voting software companies, even after he’d been told that doing so from his Fox perch was a big no-no so after Smartmatic named him, Fox, Jeanine Pirro, Maria Bartiromo, Rudy Giuliani and Kraken lawyer Sidney Powell in a $2.7 billion defamation suit, Fox pulled Dobbs off the air permanently.  Fox of course brushed away any suggestions that Dobbs is a sacrificial lamb and that his dismissal had anything to do with the very credible lawsuit that they will probably try to settle in order to avoid all that messy, implicating discovery instead claiming that he had been axed just minutes before he was supposed to on air to interview one of Trump’s impeachment lawyers as the result of a year-end review of the profitability of their programming.  As to Bruce Castor the impeachment lawyer due to be interviewed by Dobbs, he made it on to Fox News but had to settle for a tete a tete with an emergency stand in.  By the way, Trump’s other impeachment lawyer, David Schoen, has let it be known, that since he hasn’t been granted one of those special Rabbinical dispensations that son in law Jared always managed to obtain whenever he needed to toil on the Sabbath, he needs the impeachment hearing to rest next Saturday if it’s not put to bed beforehand. Leader Schumer has promised to accommodate him as long as he leaves his lasers at home and doesn’t try to jump any of the Capitol metal detectors like Republicans Reps Louis Gohmert and Andy Clyde who have started running up $5000/jump fines.

Politics as Usual:  Joe and the Democrats are getting roundly criticized by the Republicans for moving full speed ahead with their COVID relief legislation, the aptly named $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that former Democratic Secretary Treasury Larry Summers said is too large but that the current one Janet Yellin said will lead to full employment sooner rather than later. Biden wants the legislation  wrapped with a bow before March 14 before unemployment checks end.  The Republicans are squawking about Biden failing to honor his promise to be a unifying president because to them unification means concessions galore, at least that’s what it means when their leader Mitch isn’t in charge.  To Joe unification means balancing the needs of his left wing with the demands of Joe Manchin while keeping the majority of the country’s population happy rather than satisfying the wishes of ten or maybe even one Republican Senator.  The one major thing that will probably fall out of the package is the $15 minimum wage, not because of any negotiation but because the Senate Parliamentarian is likely to rule that it doesn’t qualify for inclusion in a budget package. That doesn’t mean that Biden has given up on increasing the minimum wage, it’s just unlikely to be in with COVID relief.   

Viral Musings:  The race to get as many of us vaccinated as soon as possible is on, hitting speed bumps but making some progress.  The not so good news is that the much discussed troublesome variants are spreading and that doses, and thus shot appointments, are frequently out of reach.  Though South Africa has paused the rollout of the AstraZeneca vaccine that is being used in the UK over concerns that it doesn’t adequately prevent against their dominate virus variant, they are moving forward with the Pfizer/Biotech and J & J vaccines, the other two in their national arsenal.  The much better news is that the J & J one dose vaccine which appears to be fully protective against the things that really matter, hospitalization and death, is likely to be approved for use in the US by the end of the month making it available to go into arms in early March. Noting that we are already up to vaccinating two million per day, former FDA head/frequent vaccine pundit Scott Gottlieb says we are on track to vaccinate 150 million by the end of March. Moreover he believes that we will be in the position of having to “boost” the demand side of the vaccine equation as we move into April. That’s good news for those seeking appointments, less so for the need to get to herd immunity, but hopefully the marketing gurus, the ones who cleverly cast Timothee Chalamet as Edward Scissorhands and Michael B Jordan as the steamiest Amazon Alexa ever will be able to come up with a few pitches to solve that part of the equation.  And by the way, the second shot can be just a bit more annoying than the first, but well worth the pain.

463,482

41,210,900 shots in arm