What Me Vote?

Red Alert:  The Republican crazy continues.  Yesterday about to be ousted Republican conference leader Liz Cheney took to the floor of the House to make her case that her party and the country cannot and should not forget the actions of the seditious Former Guy.  She said that “we face a threat America has never seen before.  A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol, in an effort to steal the election, who has resumed his aggressive effort to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him" adding he “risks inciting further violence. Millions of Americans have been misled by the former President. They have heard only his words, not the truth."  Of course not wanting to hear the truth most of her colleagues vacated the premises before she started talking leaving her speaking to a mostly empty room. Cheney made it clear that she plans to continue speaking out as she’s playing the long game, hoping that at some point her party will return to its senses and that she’ll then be rewarded for having the guts to speak truth.  Like her or not, that’s very noble but she’ll likely be waiting a long time as GQP  leader McCarthy and most of her colleagues are on the other side of the wager, putting their eggs in the FG basket.  For his part Kevin McCarthy is counting on becoming the Speaker after the 2022 midterms, assuming of course that the Republicans retake the house, a frighteningly possible outcome because of redistricting and because the out of power party generally gains seats during the midterms and Democrats can’t afford to lose more than a few seats given their tiny majority.  Here’s a fun but beyond scary factoid: the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress so if a certain FG decides that he wants to be speaker and can intimidate enough of his crowd to vote him in he could take over the spot.  Sounds a bit preposterous but what about the FG’s rise and continued dominance isn’t? Talking about preposterous reality TV celebrities, during an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash Caitlyn Jenner of Olympics and Kardashian fame revealed that she’s running for California governor not because she has any ideas on how to improve the state  but because she got bored during quarantine, at least she got bored when she wasn’t playing golf.  The golf kept her so busy that she never got around to voting in November or so she says.  While the no good ideas part is probably true, it turns out that she did vote, or at least records indicate that she did, so now we know that she has no constructive policies and is a liar, but then again maybe being a liar makes her perfect for the job. Getting back to the FG and his family, a new book from Pulitzer Prize winning author Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post reveals that a few members of his family got inappropriately close to their Secret Service protectors, and no we’re not talking Melania and her much rumored relationship with one of the FG’s former body guards but are talking about Don Jr’s former wife Vanessa and the other daughter Tiffany.  As to those Secret Service guys, we don’t know who they are but we do know that they, unlike the FG, are svelte because the FG refused to have the tubby ones on his protection squad.  And proving that Republicans aren’t the only ones who don’t know what they don’t know, of all the many, and there are many, Democrats running for NYC mayor, when asked by the NY Times only Andrew Yang knew that the average price of a home in Brooklyn was $900,000.  A few of the other candidates who should have known  including former HUD Secretary Sean Donovan and Citibank Executive Ray McGuire  were so far off the mark, or as they say they “didn’t understand the question” that they thought that $80,000 to $90,000 was the right amount.  Wonder if that even buys you an outhouse?   By the way, the NY Post has endorsed former police officer/reformer Eric Adams though it’s not clear that an endorsement from the NY Post is a good thing for a candidate running in a NY Democratic primary.  The NY Times has endorsed former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia who also served as former Mayor Bloomberg’s environmental chief but then again they endorsed both Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren as Democratic nominees for president. By the way, Garcia knows the price of Brooklyn real estate, she went with $800,000 which wasn’t far off.    

Viral Musings:  The CDC is expected to formally approve Pfizer’s COVID vaccine for the 12 to 15 year old set today and New York is planning to start delivering those shots into adolescent arms tomorrow but responding to demand a few locales across the country, including Atlanta and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania have already started jabbing the younger set.  After dipping, daily US vaccinations are trending up again.  To keep that trend going, the Biden administration announced that Uber and Lyft will provide free rides to vaccination sites for those lacking another means of transportation or for who just want to be chauffeured to their shots.  The free rides will be available through July fourth.  New COVID cases in Israel are down to around 40 cases per day, although given the fireworks that are going  on there right now it’s fair to assume that some people are sheltering in place rather than running out for tests. Who would have guessed that the Abraham Accords weren’t going to solve the long simmering problems?  It turns out that money and commerce are not the solution for everything.

Question, should I pull a toilet paper and run out to the gas station to fill my half full tank or should I hope that the east coast pipeline shutdown problem is solved soon, very soon?

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