Mines and Dealerships

Border Assignment: While other things like the state of the pandemic, the vaccine rollout, school rules and the risk of encountering an AK 15 armed shooter during a trip to the supermarket might be of more concern to you, the media universe, starved by the absence of the Former Guy’s tweets and impromptu pressers, has grown increasingly apoplectic over President Biden focusing more on getting things done than spending time with them.  Their pain is about to end as Biden will be holding a formal press conference today.  Expect lots of questions about the situation at the border, a real issue but one that probably concerns you less than your place on the shot line or the gun problem. As to that border “crisis,” while much of the media and all of the Republican Party continue to push the “record setting, infected, hordes of terrorists coming because Biden said the borders are now open” narrative, yesterday the Washington Post reported that “the current increase in apprehensions fits a predictable pattern of seasonal changes in undocumented immigration combined with a backlog of demand because of 2020’s coronavirus border closure.” In addition, members of the Biden transition team, the crowd that was held back from performing their jobs by the Former Guy and his OMB toady said despite the recognition in December that more border facilities were needed, then HHS head Alex Azar sat on plans to open new facilities until the last possible moment.  Of course he did. All that said, there is a problem at the border, one that originates in Central America, which explains why Biden is detailing VP Harris to be his point person on all things migrant. Her assignment, like it or not, will be to slow the flow of migrants by addressing the “root causes” that prompts them to come as well as “strengthening relationships with Mexico and the Northern Triangle countries where the bulk of the migrants arriving at the border come from.” Maybe not what she had planned when she accepted the VP slot but no one said that her job would be easy. 

Insurrection Update: We keep learning more and more about the lead up to and the events of the January 6^th insurrection, none of it pretty.  It appears that some of the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys, who were also protecting Roger Stone, were working in cahoots. We’re mostly learning this through court filings provided by prosecutors seeking to keep some of those charmers in jail pending their trials. We also learned last weekend from former AG Barr appointee Michael Sherwin who until recently had been serving as the interim US Attorney for Washington DC that sedition charges are also being considered. His disclosure, made during a 60 Minutes interview, was unusual given that the DOJ doesn’t typically preview its plans on prime time TV.  It’s not clear what motivated Sherwin to speak out, whether he thought he was “cleansing” his Barr tinged reputation or whether he was trying to damage the investigation but he’s now in trouble with his bosses at the Merrick Garland run DOJ and with US District Judge Mehta who called an emergency meeting to make it clear that he’s not happy about Sherwin’s interview as he believes that he and by extension the DOJ violated the court’s rules and its own internal procedures to refrain from speaking about ongoing cases outside of court.  Sherwin is still working for the DOJ but may not be for much longer. Not particularly on topic but related to the District of Columbia, the push is on, at least by the District and the Democrats for it to be made the 51^st state something that really freaks out Republicans because with statehood comes Senators and DC’s would most definitely be Democrats.  The DC position is that its tax paying residents should count and that with a population larger than Wyoming and Vermont they’re entitled to state status. Wisconsin’s Republican Congressman Glenn Grothman however is far from convinced, he cited DC’s lack of mines as a reason that they shouldn’t be made a state, while Georgia’s Jody Hice insisted that that DC’s lack of car dealerships was the problem, absurd and erroneous, DC has three dealerships, and not in my copy of the Constitution.  The truth is that Republicans just don’t want DC to be a state because not only would its Senators be Democrats they’d probably also be people of color.  As to other people who don’t fit the Republican mold, yesterday with the help of Senators Murkowski and Collins, Dr Rachel Levine, the transgender pediatrician who previously served as the Pennsylvania Secretary of Health was confirmed as Assistant Secretary of HHS while Vivek Murthy, who served under Obama, was confirmed as Surgeon General.  And after Senators Tammy Duckworth and Mazie Hirono kvetch threatened that they wouldn’t confirm any more of Biden’s candidates unless he added more Asian Americans or Pacific Islanders to the mix, the Biden team promised to hire a special liaison officer to the AAPI community. Worth recalling that Biden tried to get Neera Tanden confirmed as OMB director but couldn’t due to those ridiculous concerns by Republicans and Joe Manchin about her tweets. One more thing, it looks like California Congressman Adam Schiff isn’t going anywhere any time soon.  Yesterday, California Governor Newsom named Yale College/Law School graduate Rob Bonta, as the state’s next and first Filipino American Attorney General, that’s the slot that Schiff hoped to use as his stepping stone to the Senate.   

Viral Musings:  Astra Zeneca is out with its study results, again. Released late last night those results indicate its Covid-19 vaccine is 76% effective at reducing the risk of symptomatic Covid-19, and 100% effective against severe disease.  That’s just a few points lower than the 79% they reported earlier this week, an insignificant difference but still a stupid unforced error on their part.  Biden is expected to announce some new, more aggressive vaccination targets during today’s news conference.  Those targets will rely on administering the Pfizer, Moderna and J&J shots as our initial stash of Astra Zeneca is likely to go to Canada and Mexico.

Et Cetera:  The results of Israel’s fourth elections appear to be even less decisive than the results of its prior three, an indication that while good vaccine rollouts are important they don’t necessarily trump indictments and divisiveness at least for some voters. In other news a ship remains stuck in and blocking passage through the Suez Canal and North Korea keeps launching missiles.

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130,473, 853 shots in arms, a pace of 27.8 million per week