SOB Alert

Politics as Usual:  The Former Guy remains the herpes of politicians.  He’s out of office but still erupting when not golfing or drinking soda and yes that soda is still Diet Coke. This weekend at a Mar a Lago Republican event he went off script and attacked a bunch of mainstream Republicans including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who he called a son of a bitch who never adequately thanked him for having hired his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao.  He also said he remained keenly “disappointed” that his one-time partner former VP Pence didn’t upturn the 2020 election results, repeating, of course, the Big Lie that the election was stolen from him while pushing the myth that those January 6 insurrectionists were just nice guys out for a walk on a sunny day who accidentally found themselves in the Capitol beating up police, destroying property and calling for Pelosi and Pence’s heads on sticks. The FG isn’t totally irrational, listening to his advisors, he refused to meet with Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who was last seen Friday night at the Doral in Miami with his still loyal fiancée Ginger Luckey in hand speaking to the right wing Women for America, one of the groups that participated in the January 6 insurrection. At least for now, it also looks like Ivanka has put aside her political ambitions as the FG who last week endorsed Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks, one of his most outspoken supporters/co-insurrectionists, for the Senate position being vacated by the retiring Richard Shelby, has now also endorsed Florida’s Marco Rubio who’s up for reelection in 2022.  On the Democratic front, President Biden and his team, including the very articulate Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg who more than holds his own during his frequent Fox News visits have begun their infrastructure/jobs legislation push. This week Biden will begin meeting with a bipartisan group of Senators to drum up support though those meet ups are probably just  Kabuki theatre, as few if any Republicans are really expected to sign on. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin isn’t on today’s invite list but it’s highly likely that he’s the one that Biden is trying to convince. Taking a page from departed Senator McCain’s handbook, Manchin keeps calling about the need to return to the regular way of passing legislation, and by that he means compromise and back room arm twisting.  It’s not clear that Manchin can’t be placated, at least with regard to infrastructure funding, some of what he’s doing and saying now may be part of that Kabuki exercise, after all West Virginia probably needs a new bridge or a jobs program.  Ultimately, Biden will have to satisfy the left wing of Speaker Pelosi’s House contingent too.  She can’t afford to lose any votes, last week one of her members, Florida Congressman Alcee Hastings, passed away, his loss, combined with the number of House Democrats who’ve joined the administration, leaves her with a very, very slim majority. Though the FG probably thinks it’s amusing that the Anti-Defamation League is calling for Fox star Tucker Carlson to be fired for pushing the racist/Anti-Semitic replacement theory crap he’s probably experiencing some agita over New York prosecutors getting their hands on additional boxes of financial documents and receipts from the former wife of one of CFO Allen Weisselberg’s sons. It’s fair to assume that Weisselberg is being subjected to some back room arm twisting, though it’s not clear how he’ll respond or whether any of this will ultimately affect Teflon Don.                 

Viral Musings:  The US vaccination rollout continues to ramp up, yesterday 4.6 million doses were administered. So far approximately 35% of the US population has received at least one dose, placing us fourth behind Israel, the UK and Chile in terms of percentage of population at least partially protected.  Yesterday Israel, where over 61% have received one dose,  reported only 120 new cases.  To put that in perspective, New Jersey with almost the same population reported 3,387 cases. Overall the case count in the US still remains high, a 7 day rolling average just under 70,000 largely because the now dominant UK variant which is both more contagious and more virulent is still a step ahead of the vaccine rollout, doing to us what it did in Europe, spreading like wild fire. That probably explains the bad news out of Michigan where the positivity rate is above 17% and disease levels as well as hospitalizations are climbing.  That said, there are pockets of good news as positivity rates and hospitalizations are trending down in large bell weather states including California where the positivity rate stands at 1% and New York where it’s down to 3.4%.   On Friday, Pfizer/Bio N Tech submitted an emergency use application to the FDA for the 12 to 15 year age group, the companies plan to request similar authorization from other international bodies in the coming days. It’s not yet clear when the approval for use for the adolescent set will come through but it likely will be sooner than originally forecasted, quite possibly before the summer.  With regard to the Pfizer vaccine, and probably with regard to the others as well, an analysis in Israel of those relatively rare but still possible break through cases, i.e. COVID positives in people already vaccinated, indicates that the Pfizer shot isn’t working as well against the feared South African variant.  The data which is still preliminary showed a higher than expected percentage of the small number of Israel break through cases were attributable to the South Africa strain.  That doesn’t meant that the Pfizer vaccine isn’t working, it is working remarkably well, but it may mean that we may all need that much talked about and still hypothetical booster shot at some point, particularly if we don’t get our  act together nationally.  In other vaccine news, Gao Fu, the head of the Chinese CDC admitted that his country’s vaccines aren’t working much better than a not particularly effective flu shot.  It looks like their efficacy levels could be as low as 50%, that’s a problem for a lot of the countries that have “benefited” from China’s much hyped vaccine diplomacy including Chile and Turkey which have been dispensing Chinese shots as part of their vaccine program and could explain why COVID levels continue to climb in Chile despite the country’s relatively high vaccination rate.  

Et Cetera:  Biden is trying to get the US back into the Iran nuclear agreement but this weekend’s event might make that just a bit more difficult as it appears that the Israelis sabotaged centrifuges at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility and judging by reports in the Israel press, the usually more circumspect Israelis aren’t denying that they are the likely culprits. In other international news, Putin is amassing forces on the Ukraine border again and more and more citizens keep getting shot by the Myanmar military. Domestically, the Derek Chauvin trial continues this week and because Minneapolis isn’t already on edge, there was another lethal police shooting of a Black man there during a traffic stop this weekend.  That shooting follows news out of Virginia about a December incident where a Black soldier in uniform was stopped by police while driving his newly purchased vehicle and then pepper sprayed as was his dog after he questioned why he’d been stopped.  The police later asserted that they’d stopped him because his car didn’t have plates despite the fact that the required new vehicle paperwork was prominently and appropriately displayed on his vehicle window.  It’s more than fair to assume that the soldier was being profiled and had every reason to be upset about the way he was being treated and fearful of a far worse outcome.  We know about this incident now because the soldier is suing and video evidence supports his assertion that he was mistreated.                  

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187,047,131 shots in arms