Run for the Exits

Party Politics:  Roy Blunt, Missouri’s senior Senator, not to be confused with Josh Hawley, the state’s fist pumping insurrectionist, announced yesterday that he will not be seeking reelection in 2022.  Blunt joins the ranks of four other Senators: North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Alabama’s Richard Shelby, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey and Ohio’s Rob Portman, all Republicans who’ve decided to throw in the towel rather than run for reelection. Additionally, while he hasn’t announced his plans, there’s a good chance that Iowa’s 87 year old Senator Chuck Grassley whose term is also up in 2022 will follow suit and we’re still waiting to learn more about Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson’s plans. Although it’s hard to characterize any Republicans as moderate these days, all of the members of this crowd not named Johnson are considered rational, traditional conservatives, well rational and traditional by current Republican standards. While there remains a good chance that Democrats could pick up one or more of their seats, it’s too early to celebrate their departures as it’s also highly likely that a few of these “traditionalists” will be replaced by right wing Trumpists or worse yet, members of the FG’s family.  That’s certainly what the Former Guy hopes.  Yesterday, just days after his lawyers requested that the Republican party stop using his name and image for fund raising purposes, he sent out a press release telling contributors to direct their money to his Save America PAC instead of to Republicans who he called RINOS because “they do nothing but hurt the Republican Party and our great voting base – they will never lead us to Greatness,” and by greatness he probably means that contributions to other Republican PACs won’t adequately line his pockets. Those pockets probably need a cash infusion to fund his mounting legal woes. Over the weekend California Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell, one of this year’s impeachment managers, announced that he is suing the Former Guy, Rudy Giuliani and some other members of the insurgency brigade “for the injury and destruction” caused by the deadly January 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection because they called for the violence, then watched approvingly as the building was overrun.” It’s not clear that Swalwell’s suit will go anywhere but the one brewing in Atlanta probably will.  Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis who is investigating whether the FG illegally interfered with Georgia’s election when he told Georgia’s secretary of state to find him enough votes to win has hired an outside lawyer who is a national authority on racketeering; that’s particularly problematic for the FG because Georgia’s election fraud statue is written broadly enough to include racketeering. Then there’s that phone call that’s been tracked from at least one insurrectionists to someone in the White House, the arrest of an Oath Keeper who was seen hanging with Trump buddy/convicted felon Roger Stone on insurrection day and the Montana man who was seen pushing a metal barricade into police offers during the siege who was just deported by Kenya where he was hiding back to the US. Any of those characters could conslude that ratting out others suits their future prospects. In other political news, Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds just signed some restrictive voting laws and an even more restrictive, voter suppressing set is making it closer to the Governor’s desk in Georgia. The ones percolating in Georgia, the state that delivered the two Senators who swung the Senate to the Democrats,  are so problematic that the state’s Republican Lieutenant Governor boycotted their debate in his own state’s Senate in protest.  Switching parties for a moment, NYS Attorney General Tish James announced that she’s appointed Joon Kim, a former acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York and Anne Clark who has represented numerous plaintiffs in sexual harassment lawsuits to conduct the independent investigation into whether Governor Cuomo’s boorish behavior crossed the line into sexual harassment.  One more curious thing, Mitch McConnell, who was seen not too long ago sporting some serious unexplained bruises is pressing for the passage of new Senator succession law in his state of Kentucky, one that would move the appointment of an interim replacement Senator from the hands of the state’s governor, currently a Democrat, to the leaders of the departing Senator’s party.  Unless, he’s thinking that Kentucky’s other Senator Rand Paul’s neighbor is about to be beaten to a pulp again by his neighbor, that’s an odd request to make. McConnell who is 79, young by Senate standards, just won reelection.       

Viral Musings: One year into the pandemic, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter.  Yesterday the CDC issued new, much anticipated guidelines for people who’ve been fully vaccinated. Two weeks after getting their second vaccine or the one dose J & J vaccine, the vaccinated set can visit indoors with other fully vaccinated people without wearing masks or social distancing.  They can also engage in unmasked visits with people from another household who are not vaccinated as long as those people are at low risk of serious illness from the virus.  Don’t throw the mask collection out yet as they are still required when in public and when gathering with unvaccinated people who are at high risk of serious illness. To be clear, we’re not out of the woods, those nasty variants continue to multiply and concerns remain that some of them could effectively evade the vaccine versions that are being administered.  That said, as more vaccines make it into arms, the risk should diminish as the supply of vulnerable hosts decreases.  If current attitudes continue as vaccine delivery ramps up, more of those vulnerable hosts are likely to  be Republicans since for some absurd reason more of them remain in the “will never get a vaccine” camp.  If only a certain FG, the same guy who surfaced in NYC yesterday, had been more visible about getting his.

Et Cetera:  The migrant children crossing the border problem is back, well to be truthful it never went anyway, it was just artificially suppressed by the FG’s cages and the pandemic and solving it is one of those truly complicated things, especially during these viral days.  And, Biden pups Major and Champ have been shipped back to his Delaware home, the result of the younger rescue dog Major biting someone on the White House grounds. Yikes.  

525,816

92,898,852 shots in arms