Ranked Lunacy

Election Morass:  With most attention focused on red and swing state Republican legislatures’ efforts to disenfranchise blue voters and the bizarre Cyber Ninja Arizona audit it has been easy to forget about the historical and ongoing ineptitude of New York City’s Board of Elections.  Not anymore.  Yesterday afternoon the BOE released “preliminary” results for the June 22 Mayor primary.  Those results, adjusted to reflect NYC’s new ranked voting system, were so preliminary that they didn’t include 120,000 as yet uncounted absentee ballots.  The preliminary ranked choice results appeared to show that the gap between Eric Adams, previously so far ahead of the rest of the crowded field that he’d been doing victory laps and planning his transition, and Kathryn Garcia, who’d previously appeared to be in third place, had narrowed to just a few easily surmountable points.  Moreover, they eliminated progressive Maya Wiley who had edged out Garcia for second place in the election day count. With a disproportionate percentage of the as yet uncounted absentee ballots coming from Garcia leaning Manhattan, it looked like there was a good chance that Garcia could actually overtake Adams to emerge the winner. Well forget about all that. Late last night the bumbling Board of Elections admitted they’d made a bigly mistake by including 140,000 test ballots in their tally, they didn’t indicate how those “test” vote had been allocated so at this point we know nothing more than we knew before yesterday’s “preliminary” announcement.  Hardly reassuring given how many voters already doubt the integrity of election results but totally on brand for NYC where in 2020 it took months for them to announce that Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney had won her primary.  In other New York news, despite expectations that the FG’s company and one or more of his company’s officials would be indicted this week the waiting game goes on there as well.  The silence from Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s office has been deafening.  The only one talking is FG lawyer Ron Fischetti who after meeting with Cy Vance’s office on Monday, acknowledged that some indictments are likely to be handed down against the FG Organization and possibly one or more of its executives while asserting that none of them will involve the FG.  As to the FG, he issued one of his Twitter alternative “statements” in which he kind of admitted that his company routinely engaged in questionable compensation practices while saying, so what, everyone else he knows does the same. In other news, Rudy Giuliani’s woes continue to mount. He’s now being investigated by the Justice Department for doing some “improper” lobbying for Turkey. In other Giuliani news, son Andrew asserts that he still all in on running for Governor of New York despite getting zero votes in a recent straw poll of Republican leaders.  Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin, a steadfast FG advocate, won that poll.  

Politics as Usual: Back in the real world, President Biden hit the road yesterday, engaging in a charm offensive and stopping for ice cream in Wisconsin for, what else, infrastructure. He’ll need lots of charm as Republicans leadership continues to cast stones at his two pronged bipartisan/reconciliation strategy, helped along by Democratic progressives from far across the aisle who continue to insist that there will be no bipartisan plan unless there is a simultaneous grand reconciliation plan as well.  On the subject of bipartisanship, with no support from Republican House leadership and insufficient support from the Senate, Speaker Pelosi is moving ahead with a vote to set up a House select committee to investigate the January 6^th insurrection, the event that many of her Republican colleagues refer to as a Capitol Hill tourist stop. Though she plans to offer Republicans a few seats on the committee, she will have final say on who joins, her way of making sure that the committee isn’t stacked with Qs and other obstructionists.  That said, the committee could end up with no Republican representation as GOP Leader KQvin McCarthy doesn’t appear inclined to cooperate.  He’s also not doing anything to rein in his white supremacist flank as he and his sidekick Steve Scalise appear to be ignoring that one of their members, Representative/Dentist Paul Gosar is planning to attend a fund raiser hosted by Nick Fuentes, a far-right white supremacist this weekend.  Though McCarthy and Scalise together with 65 other Republicans joined with Democrats yesterday in voting to remove Confederate statues from the US Capitol building, 120 Republicans including newbie leader Elise Stefanik voted to keep them.

Viral Musings:  The really good news is that the mRNA vaccines appear to be creating a persistent immune response that could last for years making booster shots for all but the most vulnerable unnecessary unless of course another even more transmissible and/or virulent coronavirus variant emerges from those parts of the country where people continue to avoid getting jabbed or from the rest of the world where there aren’t enough jabs.  It’s still not clear that the J & J shot works as well especially against the Delta variant which explains why some experts, including the University of Washington’s Dr. Vin Gupta are now suggesting that J & J recipients consider boosting their immunity with a single mRNA shot.   

Parting Shot: Swanson fish stick scion/Fox guy Tucker Carlson has spent the last few nights claiming that the NSA has been reading his private emails.  Last night, in a highly unusual response the NSA issued a denial saying that Tucker is not one of their targets. Of course that could mean that he was caught up in an investigation of some foreign person’s communications raising the question:  is Tucker routinely communicating with Vlad?                        

 

Fortune Fritter

Politics As Usual: Last week, full of unbridled enthusiasm about the bipartisan infrastructure plan that his team had hashed out with about twenty “moderate” Senators from both sides of the aisle, Joe Biden went off script and said that he wouldn’t sign the bipartisan legislation until a Democrat-only mega reconciliation bill also hit his desk.  That remark, his way of assuring the left wing of his party that he still planned to move forward with their multi-trillion wish list of projects, went over about as well as expected with the Republican crowd.  Egged on by Republican leader Mitch McConnell, who would rather bridges fall down than see Biden have any successes, quite a few of them then said not so fast, if that’s the deal we’re not going to support the bipartisan plan that we just said we supported even though we kind of knew that the Democratic mega reconciliation bill was going to follow a parallel track. Biden spent part of his weekend walking back his off the cuff remarks, issuing a carefully worded statement in an attempt to keep the bipartisan deal on track with Republicans while also insuring that he doesn’t lose the prickly progressives he’ll need to get it through the House.  As indicated by Senator Mitt Romney who did the Sunday talk show thing this weekend, the Biden “fix it” statement combined with a series of one on one phone calls has the Republican “moderates” back in the deal.  That said, to get to the endgame, Biden’s going to have to keep on script while threading the needle to keep Pelosi’s left flank on board. 

Crazy Train: While Biden was playing his balancing game, the Former Guy took off on his grievance tour.  He headed to Ohio where he attacked Republican Congressman Anthony Gonzales, one of the Republicans who voted for his impeachment, throwing his weight behind Gonzales’ primary opponent.  Of course the delusional FG also insisted to the equally delusional crowd that he won the last election. Rumor has it that the Delta coronavirus variant was also in attendance, we’ll know for sure when Ohio’s positivity levels start pointing upward.  So far the FG hasn’t endorsed a candidate for the seat being vacated by retiring Senator Rob Portman, one of the so-called moderates who endorsed the bipartisan infrastructure plan.  A gaggle of fairly despicable Senator wannabees, including Hillbilly Elegy scribe JD Vance, one time state party chair Jane Timken and former state treasurer Josh Mandel who always shows up in the mix are doing their worst to earn his praise.  By the way it turns out that Ivanka and Jared aren’t the only ones trying to distance themselves from the FG.  Over the weekend, The Atlantic ran an article detailing how former Attorney General William Barr “finally” turned on him.  Barr wants us to know that his relationship with the FG hit bottom once he told him and the public that the election hadn’t been rigged.  He also wants us to know that McConnell encouraged him get that message to the FG because all that election doubt was making the Georgia elections more challenging.  That’s Mitch who condemned the Trump inspired January insurrection but then refused to vote for impeachment or for the establishment of a commission to investigate it. While there will be no bipartisan commission, Speaker Pelosi is now in the process of setting up a House select committee to do what would  have been its job.  Of course House Leader Kevin McCarthy, who finally, after months of delay, met with injured Capitol Police Officer Michael Fanone at the end of last week is dismissing her efforts.  Despite Fanone’s request, McCarthy also refused to publicly chastise his insurrectionist members or to promise not to appoint any of them to Nancy’s new committee which makes Margie Q very happy as she is seeking a spot.  Getting back to Georgia, where newbie Senator Raphael Warnock will be back on the ballot in 2022, on Friday Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department is suing the state to get some of its recently passed election provisions declared illegal for being disproportionately discriminatory against minorities.  He’s facing an uphill battle.

Indictment Week?  Those indictments that many of us been waiting for could start flying as early as today.  On Friday, the NY Times reported that the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has informed the FG’s lawyers that it is “considering” criminal charges against the FG Organization  “in connection with fringe benefits the company awarded a top executive.”  After the article appeared an assortment of legal pundits, including a few former US and Manhattan office Attorneys, took to the airwaves to interpret that tidbit.  They say that despite the hedgy language the indictments are happening, that the “considering” is legal speak for giving the FG Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg one last opportunity to cut a deal.  They also say that it’s more than likely that the indictments will cover far more than just untaxed fringe benefits and that being indicted will make it difficult, if not impossible, for the FG’s business to remain financially viable as financial institutions don’t do business with indicted entities. They even used words like foreclosure and bankruptcy.  Needless to say, the FG isn’t going to go down without a messy  fight, he’s issued one of his “it’s just more of a witch hunt” statements and it’s fair to assume that he’ll be saying and doing far worse shortly. In other legal news, one time convict/former NYC Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik took to Twitter to announce that he’s set up a Rudy Giuliani Freedom Fund to help the former Mayor fund his legal defense.  It’s not clear why Rudy needs his fans to fund his defense as he reportedly has or at least had $45 million in assets which makes him only a bit less wealthy than Britney Spears whose assets are around $60 million. Makes you wonder why it is that wacko Rudy was allowed to fritter away his fortune on multiple wives, girlfriends, trips to Ukraine and Four Seasons Total Landscaping while Britney remains under the control of a conservatorship and forced to sport an IUD.  Several members of the Missouri Republican party are really upset, not about Britney being subjected to forced birth control but because they believe that IUDs are abortifacients and therefore should be outlawed. Given that, it’s not all that surprising that Missouri has the third highest COVID positivity rate in the country. Apparently neither vaccines nor science comprehension are a thing in the Show Me state.     

US Average 7 day case count 11,867  

603, 597          

(source NY Times)

 

Trillions and Trillions

Infrastructure Week?  Yesterday, surrounded by a group of Senators from both parties and speaking a little more clearly than usual, President Biden put his seal of approval on a bipartisan $1.2 trillion infrastructure deal, one that would finance traditional projects like roads, tunnels, rail and broadband while also reinforcing some waterways and coastlines and building electric vehicle charging stations.  Notably the $1.2 trillion will not be allocated to the health and child care, higher education and climate change programs that also make up the Democrats’ infrastructure wish list which isn’t to say that those projects have been forgotten.  Biden still plans to get some if not all of them financed without any Republican support through the same reconciliation process that allowed the Former Guy and his enabler Mitch McConnell to push through their tax cuts.  To that end Democratic progressives are talking an additional $6 trillion, not a typo, of financing and though that number will likely shrink, even moderate Democrat Joe Manchin is on board, well at least for most of it. There’s still no guarantee that either piece of legislation will make it to the finish line, the devil is in the details and in coordinating the timing of both in a manner that assures progressives that they’ll get their piece of the pie, or in this case their hugely expanded pie. Talking about reinforcing waterways and coastlines, though it’s still not clear what caused the catastrophic collapse of the Surfside Florida condominium that disintegrated on Wednesday night, engineers report that the building had been sinking at the rate of about 2 millimeters per year, sounds small but over time combined with other possible structural problems maybe the sinkage was the straw that broke a waterlogged camel’s back? Like COVID, coastal buildings falling down might not be an out of the blue, once in a century event but another one of those problems that occurs when science is ignored. 

Viral Musings: Speaking of COVID while it may seem like the worst is behind us, the much discussed Delta variant now has a variant of concern of its own that is being called the Delta Plus variant and by concern think in terms of even more transmissibility. If buildings falling down along the coast of Florida don’t concern you Delta and its mutation should.  Coronavirus star Israel is now experiencing an uptick in COVID cases, yesterday’s count of new cases was up to 227, well above the 10 to 30 or so daily case count that had become more typical.  In response, Israel has reinstated its indoor mask mandate and is also recommending that people attending crowded outdoor events don masks as well.  One more thing on the COVID front, the consensus view of the experts is that the very, very small uptick in pericarditis and myocarditis in younger shot recipients is likely attributable to the mRNA vaccines but that the inflammatory condition is rare, poses little threat to the wellbeing of the affected and that the benefits of the vaccine far outweigh the risks of COVID which is far more likely to cause heart inflammation than the vaccines.   

Human Resources:  Much to New York gubernatorial wannabee Andrew Giuliani’s dismay, dad Rudy, one time America’s mayor and one time US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, had his legal license suspended yesterday.  He hasn’t been disbarred, at least so far, but it turns out that spreading “demonstrably false and misleading statements” in order to “mislead judges, lawmakers and the public” about the 2020 election is a bigly ethical violation, the kind of thing that could lead to his disbarment.  For his part, like his son, Rudy isn’t at all pleased with the punishment as he believes that he did nothing wrong, the suspension is part of demonic Democratic plot to take him down and anyway he’s been violating ethical rules for years so why would anyone want to punish him now? The FG responded to Rudy’s woes by saying that “all of New York is out of control” as in out of his control.   In other news, OAN host Pearson Sharp tried to walk back, or at least pretend to tiptoe back, his on air assertion that those individuals who “overturned”  the FG’s election were traitors who should all be executed. Of course, by overturn, he meant confirmed the valid election results, you know the thing that former VP Pence and the House did. In case you missed it OAN has been helping to fund that bizarre Arizona election recount, the one being done by the Cyber Ninjas.  On the Ninja front, despite their plans it doesn’t appear that they’ll be able to take their show on the road to either Michigan or Georgia, not that they won’t try.  Yesterday a judge in Georgia dismissed most of a lawsuit that alleged there were fraudulent mail-in ballots in mostly Democratic stronghold Fulton County, dealing a “blow” to those who want to inspect all 147,000 absentee ballots cast in the county. Even more significantly, on Wednesday a Michigan Republican led investigation concluded that there was "no evidence of widespread or systematic fraud" in its 2020 election.  Assuming that no one from OAN has any of them executed their conclusion should put an end to the Michigan madness, at least for this election cycle. The prospect for future elections remain murky as a number of those Republican controlled states, including some of the swingy ones, keep passing new laws that strip key responsibilities for elections and final signoffs on results from Secretary of State officials to Republican controlled legislatures.  And yes, that’s as scary as it sounds. Also scary, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed another likely unconstitutional law yesterday.  This one requires colleges and universities to conduct an annual survey measuring “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” on their campuses. In other words, they’re supposed to assess incoming students opinions on social issues to make sure that they’re not attracting too many of those dangerous free thinkers and by free thinkers think liberals, Democrats and people who believe that the Tulsa massacre happened.  DeSantis is grandstanding but his shenanigans appear to be working with his targeted audience.  He beat the FG out in a recent conservative straw poll. In other Florida news, panhandle putz Matt Gaetz is still walking free, insulting US Generals and the military, while also calling for the defunding of the FBI.  He’s not alone in that, the Fox echo chamber is now also questioning the value of our military.  Remember when Republicans were the pro military party.  Not so much anymore.

603k US COVID deaths total  

355 US COVID deaths yesterday

14,707 new cases

 

Mayor TBD

Politics as Usual:  Not a surprising day, just a disappointing one.  Only fifty Senators, all Democrats of course, voted to bring the broad sweeping For The People Act voter legislation to the floor for debate.  The good news, and there wasn’t much, was that Senators Manchin and Sinema voted with their Democratic colleagues, Manchin in exchange for a promise to bring up his more moderate voting legislation during the debate period that now won’t happen as a result of the failure to override the Republican filibuster and Sinema because her issue is the filibuster, she’s a supporter of the For the People Act.  The bad news is that as long as the filibuster remains intact, Manchin and Sinema’s votes were just symbolic.  It’s notable, and a sign of their huge hypocrisy, that no Republican, even those so-called moderates Murkowski and Collins, voted to bring The People Act to the floor for debate because Manchin’s alternative included a provision for voter IDs, something that Republicans have wanted for years and that, until now, few if any Democrats have supported and because in past years most Republican Senators, even Mitch McConnell  have supported some voter protection legislation. As to the filibuster despite yesterday’s defeat, neither Manchin nor Sinema appear willing to give it up, at least so far. In fact, Sinema defended it once again in a Washington Post op-ed where she argued that it’s the only way to promote moderation and that any legislation passed with only 51 votes (the Democratic Senators plus VP Harris)  could be too easily dismantled if or more likely when the Republicans regain control of the Senate.  She’s probably not entirely wrong about that, the overturn part rather than the moderation thing, but who doubts that Republican Leader Mitch McConnell won’t get rid of the filibuster when it suits him to do so? Afterall, he pushed through the FG’s tax cuts without Democratic support and look what he’s done to the Supreme Court. Also Sinema’s arguments fail to take into account that not standing up for voter protections now increases the likelihood that the Republicans regain control of at least one of the two houses of Congress in 2022 and the presidency in 2024 especially given that states like Georgia, Arizona and Texas have either passed or are likely to pass legislation that will make it harder to vote while allowing Republican controlled state legislatures to override elections results they don’t like. The Biden administration indicated that they have other solutions to dealing with the attack on voters rights, only time will tell if they do, in the meantime it will be up to the courts and if we’ve learned anything by now, it’s that court solutions take time and the current Supreme Court, which is due to release a voters rights decision shortly is unlikely to upturn any done by the states.  In other legislative news, the infrastructure debate goes on and despite claims that progress is being made, there’s also no police reform legislation.

Viral Musings:  The Delta (India) variant now accounts for about 20% of cases in the US, a big problem in parts of the country where too few are vaccinated.  Though the 7 day average of new cases in the US is now hovering around 12,000 with deaths down into the 300s, the statistics are misleading in that the under vaccinated parts of the country are experiencing significant upticks, just ask those folks in Manatee Country Florida where several of the unvaccinated died.  As to vaccinations, yesterday the Biden administration acknowledged that the country is unlikely to meet its “70% of adults with at least one shot” by July 4^th goal which isn’t to say that at 65.5% they haven’t made a lot of progress or that they’ve given up trying, it’s just that getting the vax wary to take the jabs is tough, particularly given that getting a shot is challenging for those in health care deserts and how people like Fox ratings king Tucker Carlson continue to throw shade on the safety and/or need for the vaccine. It shouldn’t be surprising that the FG who likes to take full credit for the vaccines, is now saying that it’s not appropriate for the younger set. He said that while also complaining about how he should have been able to get his Justice Department to stop those Democratic tools at SNL to stop making fun of him when he was in charge. Getting back to Tucker, the NY Times reports that despite his constant disparagement of the main stream media, he’s been one of their biggest anonymous sources, the go to guy for dirt about the FG. That’s the FG who early on in the coronavirus epidemic wanted to send infected people to Guantanamo Bay, possibly while he was nuking hurricanes as a distraction.

New York City:  No report yet as to who will be the city’s next mayor.  As of this morning, with 82% of the results in Eric Adams who has 31.6% of the counted first place votes is leading the Democratic list by a significant margin with Maya Wiley (22.3%) and Kathryn Garcia (19.7%) trailing behind in second and third.  Late last night Andrew Yang bowed out, saying that he knows math and the math tells him that there’s no way he’ll ever get to the 50% needed for victory.  He may know math but few of the rest of us understand how the ranked voting really works and even those who do probably don’t know who will emerge on top.  We’re being told that it could be weeks before we know who actually wins.  On the Republican side, not that it matters, Guardian Angel founder Curtis Sliwa trounced his opponent Fernando Mateo by 40 points.  It turns out that Mike Flynn’s endorsement didn’t help Mateo, who but everyone in NY would have guessed that?

 Footnotes:  CFO Allen Weisselberg still hasn’t flipped but former bodyguard, current FG executive Matthew Calamari may be in the fryer.  And journalists on the Florida beat are reporting that the investigation into all things about Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz has expanded to cover more Florida politicians.  Hmmm.      

 

 

The Stacey Plan

Home Again: President Biden is back from Europe.  According to right wing media his trip, particularly his much anticipated meeting with Vladimir Putin was an embarrassing failure; their evidence for that assertion is that Biden went in prepared and carried notes.  House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed Biden, asserting that he had given Putin a pass; of course he had nothing to say when the Former Guy said that he believed Vlad over our intelligence agencies during their infamous Helsinki summit.  Trying to prove their independence, mainstream media which mostly had good things to say about Biden’s performance and his Vlad meeting spent a whole news cycle upset that he had snapped at a question from CNN’s Kaitlin Collins after she inaccurately reported on something she’d said he said.  Notably, he didn’t go full FG on her, he just expressed some sharp dismay for which he then apologized.  Does anyone remember the FG apologizing for far, far worse? Anyway, though Biden didn’t come home with any obvious deliverables like one or both of the Americans in Russian prisons, he and his staff report that he made it clear that we’d respond in kind, perhaps even targeting Russia’s oil industry, for further serious cyberattacks on our infrastructure.  Putin who deflected questions about his habit of murdering and/or imprisoning dissidents by bringing up our “mistreatment” of those nice tourists who invaded the Capitol building on January 6, actually complimented Biden yesterday calling him a “professional” who “does not miss a thing,” lending credence to Biden’s assertion that he had made it clear to Putin that further serious cyberattacks and incursions into places like Ukraine won’t go unpunished.  While Putin appeared to have left his meeting convinced that Biden has all of his marbles, Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson isn’t convinced and/or is a publicity seeking troll.  The disgraced former White House doctor who once said that the FG was a svelte picture of health embarrassed himself by demanding that Biden take a cognitive test. Of course, if he was really concerned about mental stability, he’d direct his attention to his state’s Governor, Greg Abbott,  who seems little concerned about doing anything to fix the state’s crumbling electrical grid but is rediverting $250 million of state funds to kick start a crowdsourcing campaign to get the FG’s border wall construction project back in gear.  The last guy who tried to do a GoFundMe for the wall was Steve Bannon, and he only escaped prison after getting one of those last minute pardons.

The Supremes:  It appears that the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is here to stay.  Yesterday by a vote of 7 to 2, with newbie justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh joining a majority that also included Clarence Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts along with all of the more liberal justices including Stephen Breyer who wrote the majority opinion, the Supreme Court ruled that the eighteen 18 Republican-led states and two individuals who brought the case had not suffered the sort of direct injury that gave them standing to sue.  Though the court decision hinged on a technical issue, the consensus view is that Obamacare is now an enshrined social service up there with Medicare and Social Security.  Republicans won’t admit it but mostly they’re relieved as having to deal with millions of people losing health insurance during the next election cycle wasn’t what they really wanted. In another much watched case SCOTUS ruled unanimously in favor of Philadelphia’s Catholic Social Services ruling it was okay for them to discriminate against gay couples because their contract with the city allows officials to make exceptions to things like their ban against discrimination based on sexual orientation.  The decision hinged on the technicality of the Philadelphia contract but portends an uphill battle for LGBTQ rights going forward as the more conservative members of the court indicated that they are likely to do whatever they can to  “protect” religious rights.

Politics Unusual:  Something’s cooking on both the infrastructure and voting rights fronts.  With regard to infrastructure funding, right now a bipartisan group that includes enough Republican Senators to actually get to 60 votes, is filling in the details on a plan that would provide about $1 trillion for largely traditional infrastructure.  In parallel, Bernie Sanders and the more progressive wing of the party are working on a $6 trillion kitchen sink plan that funds everything including the expansion of Medicare. There’s no way that Bernie’s $6 trillion plan can pass even through reconciliation because quite a few of the more moderate Democrats are unlikely to sign on but it’s also not clear that Nancy Pelosi’s contingent in the House will get on board for the more modest bipartisan plan. We might actually see two plans, a modest one that passes with bipartisan support and another one with some though not all of Bernie’s wish list items that goes through reconciliation.  On the voting rights front West Virginia’s Joe Manchin has come up with a proposal of his own that includes some but not all of the Democrat’s desired laundry list.  Among other things his proposal would make Election Day a holiday, require 15 days of early voting and ban partisan gerrymandering, it would also support voter IDs. Yesterday progressive star, voting right advocate Stacey Abrams said that she thinks that Manchin’s approach works.  Of course immediately after she signed on Republican leadership said that the idea was awful with Senator Roy Blunt and Mitch McConnell renaming the proposal the Abrams rather than the Manchin plan, saying that it would result in a socialist takeover of the government. That’s the kind of response that might actually result in Manchin giving up on bipartisanship.  Stay tuned.  

Viral Musings:  The seven day average count of new US coronavirus cases is down to 12,800. There were 312 deaths yesterday with the CDC still reporting the total count as under 600,000 and the NY Times reporting it at 600,524.  The overall vaccination picture is promising but large pockets of the unvaccinated remain, particularly in the south and in minority communities countrywide, leaving the opening for some localized hotspots to emerge as the more contagious and virulent Delta strain starts to dominate.  Yesterday the Biden administration announced the allocation of $3.2 billion to further the development of COVID antivirals in the quest to find a Tamiflu like drug to blunt the effects of the disease’s progression immediately after its diagnosed.   And the NY Post reports that contrary to some social media postings claiming that the mRNA vaccines affect fertility, scientists at the University of Miami have concluded that they do not lower sperm count or quality.

 Happy Juneteenth tomorrow to everyone except those 14 House Republicans who voted against recognizing that the emancipation of the slaves is something worth celebrating.

New Holiday Alert

Joe and Vlad:  Joe Biden spent yesterday finalizing preparations for today’s much anticipated meeting with outside adversary, autocrat, election disrupter, enemy poisoner Vlad Putin while his Attorney General Merrick Garland spent part of his day speaking about our internal enemies, those Q adherents, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and the like, some of whom organized and participated in the January 6^th insurrection in an effort to upend the results of the 2020 election. Both men have their hands full, Russia is far from an economic powerhouse, but though its economy is in bad shape Vlad’s got nukes, is wily, hits above his weight and cyber warfare is relatively cheap.  Fortunately unlike the Former Guy, Biden knows what he’s up against and isn’t groveling or seeking favors to get an eponymous Moscow tower built in his name.  Garland’s tasks aren’t all that simple either.  In addition to dealing with the Qs who the FBI warns are growing increasingly dangerous and desperate, he’s got to clean up the mess at Justice, and what a mess it is.  Yesterday the House Oversight Committee released transcripts of some of the email conversations that took place between the Former Guy’s White House advisors and leadership at the DOJ after the November election.  Those transcripts reveal how hard the FG, with the help of then chief of staff Mark Meadows, were working to get the election results in those swing states he lost thrown out during the waning days of his administration.  Even before Attorney General Barr had fully exited, the FG team started pressuring his replacement Jeffrey Rosen to join those wacko suits challenging the legality of election results especially in Michigan and Georgia. The email strings show that Rosen had his staff do some follow up on some of the requests but mostly didn’t take them seriously since he viewed them as largely absurd, especially the suggestion that the Italian military had employed some super weapon, maybe one of those Soros inspired Jewish laser beams to cause US based voting machines to flip votes to Biden.  The released correspondence also appears to confirm earlier reports about the efforts of then Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, a FG loyalist and fellow conspiracy theorist, to get Rosen pushed out so that he could take over his position. Though we know that Rosen, who remained in office until the administration changeover, successfully resisted those nefarious efforts we still don’t know the full story behind the demise of BJ Pak, the US Attorney for Georgia who resigned suddenly likely because he was being asked to take some questionable actions he refused to take.  Former Chief of Staff Meadows is knee deep in this sinkhole but nevertheless he was seen dining with some Republican colleagues in the Senate yesterday and why not, it’s not like any members of the FG’s political team have suffered lasting consequences for their actions. Well at least, no one other than Michael Cohen that is.  As to Cohen he may be getting closer to getting some revenge.  Yesterday it was reported that NY District Attorney “may” charge the FG’s CFO Allen Weisselberg for some tax crimes this summer; with summer beginning on Sunday that could be soon.  That indicting Weisselberg is being so publicly discussed is probably an indication that Weisselberg hasn’t turned on the FG but hope springs eternal.   

Human Resources:  Yesterday by a vote of 53 to 44 with Senators Murkowski, Graham and Collins joining with the Democratic contingent, Ketanji Brown Jackson was confirmed to fill the seat on the Washington DC Appellate court vacated by former judge/current AG Merrick Garland. That’s an important slot; the confirmation tees Jackson up as a top nominee if or when a seat opens up on the Supreme Court.  As to the Supreme Court, Minority Leader McConnell is already assuring his crowd that should he become Majority Leader again he won’t bring any of Biden’s judicial nominees up for confirmation, not a surprise but still pretty awful for him to say the quiet part out loud.  The pressure on 82 year old liberal Judge Stephen Breyer to step down at the end of this court session, already intense, is building as no one on the left wants to see another Ruth Bader Ginsburg situation.  A 6-3 split is bad, a 7-2 split would be substantially worse.  Biden nominated a number of people to serve as Ambassadors yesterday. Given that the Middle East remains a tinder box, last night Hamas launched fire balloons at Israel and Israel responded with missiles, it’s good that Biden has finally nominated his Ambassador to Israel, Tom Nides.  He also nominated former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to serve as Ambassador to Mexico and hero pilot “Sully” Sullenberger, the former Republican who endorsed him for president, to serve on the international aviation council.  Reality Winner, the former NSA contractor who received a harsh sentence for  leaking about Russian government efforts to penetrate a Florida based supplier of voting software and the accounts of election officials ahead of the 2016 presidential election was released from jail to home confinement, not special treatment but a reward for good behavior.  Winner was spot on about the problem, but unfortunately for her leaking is illegal. Georgia Congresswoman Margie Q publicized her recent performative visit to the DC Holocaust museum and now acknowledges what we all know, that the Holocaust was real and shouldn’t be mocked.  She hasn’t turned a page though as she and 20 of her like-minded Republican colleagues including Representatives Gaetz, Gosar, Biggs, Gohmert and Moore, voted against awarding members of the Capitol Police medals for their bravery in defending them during the insurrection, because January 6^th was just a tourist stop and as the FG’s new spokeswoman Liz Harrington says just a peaceful one, and who gets medals for serving as tour guides on peace missions?   

Viral Musings: Though the CDC COVID tracker that I generally cite still shows the US COVID death count at under 600,000 yesterday a number of other sources said that we had crossed through that barrier, sad proof that COVID still results in hospitalizations and deaths mostly among the unvaccinated.  The good news is that in some parts of the country more and more people are getting vaccinated.  Yesterday New York and DC joined the 70% of adults at least one shot vaccinated list and both California and New York have now eliminated most of their COVID restrictions.  That said, even states with high vaccination levels have frustrating disparities with minority populations remaining far behind.  In NY about 70% of Black residents have not received even one shot, that number is at 61% for the Hispanic population.                               

And we are close to having a new Federal holiday.  Yesterday by a voice vote the Senate voted to add June 19, the Juneteenth National Independence Day, to celebrate the end of slavery in the US onto the list. The House is expected to follow suit.   

Wasabi and Apples

Diplomat in Chief: While the rest of us were weekending, Joe Biden spent his time charming his fellow G7 leaders, a task made easier by their obvious and collective relief that he rather than the Former Guy who spent his weekend issuing nasty statements about many of them is now president. Even Queen Elizabeth seemed chipper.  For the most part Biden, who at one point referred to Libya when he meant to say Syria and committed a royal faux pas by revealing some details of his conversation with the Queen, performed admirably helped along by the really low bar set by his predecessor.  He even managed to get all the other participants to sign on to a final communique that criticized China, much to China’s obvious dismay.  As to China, as if sharing and obfuscating details about a bat virus hasn’t been enough for this decade, last night it was revealed that they have a leaky nuclear reactor, one that they claim to have under control which probably means that they don’t.  Biden’s now in Brussels reaffirming the US commitment to NATO, another one of those things that the Former Guy had a hard time doing.  Next up will be a meeting with Vladimir Putin, but don’t expect a joint post news conference, Biden says that’s off the table, no surprise given that the only thing the two agree upon is that relations between the US and Russia are at a low point.  In other international news Bibi Netanyahu is no longer Israel’s Prime Minister.  Late yesterday, a coalition that agrees on little beyond wanting him out of office took over, secured power by a one vote margin.  On his way out of office Netanyahu embarrassingly went full Former Guy, attacking the legitimacy of the winning coalition, claiming that his departure from power will doom Israel’s security.  He asserted that he’ll be back and the sad thing is that given Israel’s parliamentary system, he actually could return, indictments and all.  Israel’s new Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, a right wing politician whose party only has six Knesset seats, was sworn in last night.  Assuming the new coalition holds, Bennett will turn over the reins of the country to centrist politician Yair Lapid in two years.  Lapid whose party holds 17 seats will serve as Foreign Minister until then.  Biden, who likes Netanyahu about as much as Netanyahu likes him, which isn’t much, immediately congratulated Bennett, Bennett responded in kind.

 

Politics Unusual: It turns out that a lot of people in Washington had their Apple meta data subpoenaed by the Justice Department during the FG era, so many that those politicians and journalists who were excluded might feel as if they were slighted. Before the weekend the NY Times reported that House Intel Committee Chair Adam Schiff’s information was subpoenaed, now we know that one of the other Democratic committee members who had data grabbed was Congressman Eric Swalwell, the outspoken one time Democratic presidential candidate.  Former White House counsel Don McGahn and his wife’s information was scarfed up as well, not coincidentally their data was grabbed around the time that he was spilling all he knew about the Former Guy’s obstructive behavior to Special Counsel Mueller.  Oddly enough, FG Attorneys General William Barr and Jeff Sessions say they have no recollection of any of the relevant subpoenas.  As far as I can tell, no one has asked AG for a few minutes/endowed toilet marketer Matt Whitaker what he knows.  In any case, either someone is lying, that deep state exists and is aligned with the Former Guy or all of the above. Anyway we only know about all of these subpoenas now because Attorney General Garland’s Justice Department let the gag orders covering Apple and, as it turns out,  Microsoft also expire.  Garland is due to meet with members of Congress shortly, he’ll have lots to explain. While calling the grabbing of opposition phone and email data something that even Richard Nixon wouldn’t do, Speaker Pelosi hinted that she is closing in on creating a January 6^th commission of her own though she also suggested that the Senate might try voting again on a bipartisan commission, suggesting that a few more Republicans may have seen the light.       

New York City: All politics is local except maybe in the Big Apple where early voting has begun in the mayor’s race primary. For the first time, New Yorkers will be ranking their choices so recent polls showing Brooklyn Borough president/former police captain Eric Adams in the lead should be taken with a grain of salt.  Progressive Maya Wiley, best known for her days working in Mayor de Blasio’s administration and her time on MSNBC, appears to be moving up in the polls, benefiting from recent endorsements from Congresswoman AOC and Senator Elizabeth Warren. Like her or not at least AOC is a bona fide New Yorker, I have no idea why Warren is endorsing NY mayoral candidates.  For what it’s worth, Adams has been endorsed by the NY Post, while former Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, another top tier candidate, has been endorsed by the NY Times. And let’s not forget Andrew Yang and a whole bunch of other candidates including former Citibank executive Ray McGuire.  That’s just the Democratic contingent, on the Republican side, we’ve got Guardian Angel founder Curtis Sliwa who has been endorsed by Rudy Giuliani and Taxi Driver Federation head Fernando Mateo who has been endorsed by Mike “Q” Flynn, yes that Mike Flynn.  I have no idea who’s going to win the Democratic nomination but I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that he or she will ultimately prevail over either one of the Republican nominees.

Viral Musings: New virus cases and deaths are way down in the US.  That’s good but the news on the vaccine front remains spotty, with Biden blue states way more vaccinated than a lot of those FG red ones. Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wyoming remain extreme laggards, a problem because the Delta (India) variant which is more contagious and possibly also more virulent is gaining traction in the US.  The UK is so concerned about Delta that officials there have delayed the country’s reopening by four weeks, waiting to make that announcement until after all of those G7 visitors departed. On the vaccine front, we’re likely to have a fourth one approved by the end of the year as American biotech company Novavax announced that its much awaited two jab regimen is 90.4% effective at preventing COVID and 100% effective at preventing severe disease.  Sadly, while COVID deaths are trending down, mass killings are on the rise.  Who but everyone could have figured out that guns sold in a no or low restriction states could be used to kill people elsewhere.

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64.4% of 18+ vaccinated             

Magnets and Crystals

On the Road:  President Biden is in Europe seeking to improve relationships with those long term allies that the Former Guy dissed during his days in the White House. He announced that the US will be buying and donating 500 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine to the international effort.  Jill Biden is doing her part too, she delivered a sartorial message, wearing a jacket with the word LOVE emblazoned in crystals across the back, her way of not so subtly throwing Jilly shade at Melania’s “I really don’t care, do u” border visit garb.  Later in his trip, after he meets with the Queen, hangs with the rest of the members of the G7 and participates in NATO and European Commission meetings Biden is scheduled for a “faceoff” with Vladimir Putin.  The Former Guy who seems a bit bent out of shape that Biden is being so warmly received by our allies, even his one-time buddy Boris Johnson, and that our reputation abroad is now on a steep upswing issued his own comment about Biden’s trip.  Still without a social media platform, he released an old style statement bragging about his days on the road, specifically about his “great and productive” meeting in Helsinki, the one where he freaked many including some of his Republican allies out by siding with Putin over his own intelligence experts, calling assertions that Putin had interfered in the US elections a hoax.  The FG ended his written remarks saying “good luck to Biden in dealing with President Putin –don’t fall asleep during the meeting and please give him my warmest regards!” Note how the mango maniac referred to Putin as “president” but failed to call Biden POTUS, just a little signaling to this fan base, guys like the Three Percenters who were indicted yesterday for conspiracy to overthrow the government.  As to social media platforms, yesterday FG spokesman Jason Miller announced he was moving on from his FG job to take over as president of a tech start up.  That news was met with some surprise by those who wondered what kind of company would hire the married Miller who in addition to being a deadbeat dad to one former girlfriend’s child has also been credibly accused of slipping abortifacient drugs into at least one other former girlfriend’s drinks.  Politico seems to have answered that question, apparently Miller isn’t really leaving the FG’s orbit, the start-up he’s joining plans to develop a “conservative” social media platform, one that will provide the FG with an outlet for his hate messages.  On the Former Guy front, during the week we learned some fairly distressing things about what “his” Justice Department had been up to.  First we found out about their relentless efforts to obtain emails and call records from the NY Times, CNN and the Washington Post in order to find those leaking information about him, efforts that also involved  gag orders that prevented the media companies’ legal departments from alerting the affected reporters about the attempted info grabs. Last night we learned from the NY Times that those “leak” efforts didn’t just target the press, the DOJ also went after members of the House Intelligence Committee, only Democratic ones of course.  Apparently, both Jeff Sessions and William Barr were involved in seizing  the records of Congressman Adam Schiff, a number of his aides, at least one aide’s minor child and a few other not yet publicly revealed Congresspeople.  Those records were obtained by subpoenaing Apple while subjecting the company to a gag order that prevented it from notifying those targeted.   We’re only learning about this now because the gag order prevented earlier disclosure but disturbingly the investigation continued for a while under new Attorney General Merrick Garland, an indication that there is a deep state in the Justice Department, one that’s made up of conservative attorneys rather than those liberals and socialists that the right keeps warning us about.  By the way, according to the NY Times, the DOJ found no leaks from Adam Schiff’s team so while Schiff who the FG targeted with cruel nicknames and threatened to go after for treason appears to have followed the law, the same can’t be said about former AG Barr. You may recall how he refused to give straight answers when then Senator Kamala Harris pummeled him with questions about whether or not the FG or anyone at the White House ever asked or suggested he open an investigation of anyone? Barr who pretended not to understand her questions ultimately never answered directly but did leave the impression that the Justice Department was up to things it shouldn’t have been doing.  It turns out that impression was accurate. It’s fair to assume that we haven’t heard the end of this. Intel Chair Adam Schiff is one very angry guy.  The subpoenas for whatever they’re worth are about to start flying, again.  

Viral Musings:  For the record despite assertions made by some wacky Pillow Guy associated doctor in front of the Ohio State legislature, mRNA vaccines do not turn you into Magneto so forget about your forks suddenly sticking to your heads and pay attention to where you leave your keys because you’ll still have to remember. At least one usually not all that impressive “red” Senator appears to care about his fans and constituents and is trying to do something about the very real and quite distressing red-blue vaccine divide.  Yesterday one time famed football coach current Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville released a really good video extolling the safety and effectiveness of COVID vaccines.  The message from Tuberville, who revealed that he had gotten vaccinated as soon as he could and that the vaccine was free to all, is important because there are many who won’t listen to Fauci and the like but who will listen to people like him. As to the vaccines, the shelf life of the J & J vaccine has just been extended, a good thing because a significant number of vials are still available, now the government has to get them into arms.  Also, recent studies indicate that the current crop of vaccines work on the feared India variant which to confuse us has been renamed Delta largely because Indian officials were upset with the India moniker. The Delta variant which is very contagious is now dominant in the UK and appears to be showing up more and more here as well. On the mRNA front, it turns out that reports of a higher than usual number of mostly younger men getting myocarditis after receiving their second shot are real and possibly vaccine linked, the myocarditis incidence is still very low – somewhere around 230 cases vs the 100 that would be seen in that population.  The CDC is tracking the cases and plans to meet to further discuss the linkage but so far the view is that the likelihood of getting one of the mostly mild inflammation cases is far outweighed by the benefits of the vaccines.                 

Politics as Usual: Last night a bipartisan group of ten Senators reported that it has reached an agreement on a framework for a proposed infrastructure spending bill that would not include any tax increases. The group of five Republicans (Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman and Mitt Romney) and five Democrats (Joe Manchin, Jeanne Shaheen, Krysten Sinema, Jon Tester and Mark Warner) gave no details, but Reuters reports that their plan would cost $974 billion over five years and $1.2 trillion over eight years, and that it includes $579 billion in new spending. No indication whether Biden or anyone in leadership will be impressed by this plan, which shouldn’t be confused with the one that Shelly Moore Capito had tried to negotiate, but it’s fair to assume that Mitch McConnell will do his best to doom it and that Chuck Schumer will say that it’s not large enough.  In other news, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar got loads of heat from both sides of the aisle for her comments, something about equating the US and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban. Her usual set of supporters said that she said nothing wrong but was just misunderstood but Democratic leadership made it clear that they didn’t agree with her and really could do without her rhetoric especially given that the mid-terms keep getting closer and closer.  She then walked back her statement. Turns out that “both sides” have problem children.      

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Queens and Spawns

Politics as Usual: Here’s a shocker, those kabuki negotiations on infrastructure funding that were being spearheaded by West Virginia’s Republican Senator Republican Shelly Moore Capito have broken down largely because Capito and presumably the rest of the Republican caucus mostly want to shift money allocated to other things like COVID relief to infrastructure funding, wouldn’t support any new “pay for” taxes and Mitch McConnell really didn’t want the negotiations to succeed because who really needs infrastructure funding anyway especially anything that would make Biden look good. Still the performative dance goes on as West Virginia’s other Senator, the more well known Joe Manchin, is working up a “bipartisan” plan with Mitt Romney and Susan Collins. It’s likely that those negotiations will eventually fall by the wayside too which is why Democratic leadership is now working on a plan to pass as much infrastructure funding as the Senate parliamentarian will allow by reconciliation.  Of course, to pass anything by reconciliation Biden will need at least 50 Senate votes which means either that at least one Republican will have to cross the aisle or that Joe Manchin will have to get on board which is why Biden continues to tolerate Manchin’s footsie with Romney and Collins.  Manchin, the most watched and maybe the most important Democrat right now, also met with some civil rights leaders yesterday.  Their intent was to explain to him the filibuster’s racist origins and why he needs to support the all-encompassing For the People Act legislation that he will probably never support, not because he is against fair elections but because he likes being the go to guy, thinks the act includes too much other stuff like campaign finance reform, a concern shared by some other Democrats who continue to let him take the heat, and because it will get no Republican support.  As to the John Lewis Act, the other legislation that could save some of those voters rights under attack nationwide, Manchin would support it but wants it to pass with 60 votes, which won’t happen because to date the only Republican on board is Alaska’s Lisa Murkowski and yesterday Republican leader Mitch McConnell said that even though he fashions himself as a supporter of voter rights, LOL, he won’t support it and will tell his caucus not to either.  So basically, politics as usual accept that we’re still being told that the police reform legislation being worked on by Senators Cory Booker and Tim Scott is almost done, maybe, and by a vote of 68 to 32 the Senate passed the US Innovation and Competition Act which aims to counter China's growing influence by investing more than $200 billion in American science and research because everyone, or at least a lot of people on both sides of the aisle agree that China’s ascension is a problem.  On the migrant front VP Kamala Harris is in Central America serving as a lightening rod on the immigration problem.  According to politicians and pundits on both the right and the left she’s failing miserably which probably means that she’s doing some things right.  Still her task is thankless and is probably doing little to advance her brand.  And anyway as she’s said, solving the migrant problem isn’t just a matter of waving a wand and building a wall.  For his part Biden is off to Europe where he’ll be meeting with new baby Lilibet’s grandmother Queen Elizabeth and the spawn of the devil Vladimir Putin.

Justice for All?  Republicans and their echo chamber continue to beat up on virus guru Fauci, examining and twisting all of his emails on the benefits of masking and the origins of the coronavirus so it’s probably only fair that Democrats have started to turn on Attorney General Merrick Garland.  Yesterday, a lot of them were in an uproar about the Justice Department’s decision to continue to support the Former Guy against  the defamation lawsuit filed by writer E Jean Carroll who argued that he slandered her when he said that her rape allegation against him was false in part because he would never have been attracted to someone like her in the first place.  Ouch.  During the presidential campaign Biden criticized the then Barr controlled Justice Department for defending Trump but he also said that his Justice Department would be allowed to act independently.  Well, it looks like Garland is now acting a bit too independently, taking the position that protecting the president even if the president is the FG is  the way to go.  Suffice it to say a lot of people, especially those of us who remain frustrated that the Teflon Former Guy gets away with everything, aren’t happy about Garland’s position.  This is another one of those issues that will ultimately be resolved in the courts as in those Justices that the FG appointed. As to the courts, finally, two of Biden’s district judge nominees were confirmed yesterday with some Republican votes.  One of the newly confirmed judges was New Jersey’s Julien Xavier who had first been nominated by Barack Obama but had been kept off the court by Mitch McConnell who had refused to bring any of Obama’s judge nominations up for a vote because he could and will do so again if he ever regains control of the Senate.

Viral Musings:  We continue to be a split country, not just when it comes to fealty to orange wannabee emperors but also with regard to virus mitigation.  The number of states reaching Biden’s 70% of adults partially vaccinated goal by July 4th is now at thirteen with a number of states, including New York at 68.9% soon to join the list.  However, the accomplished states are largely blue and/or coastal.  For example, redder than red Mississippi has partially vaccinated the least amount of adults of any state in the country with Alabama, Louisiana, and Wyoming also seriously lagging. In addition the usual cast of Governors continue to push back at policies that could advance vaccination rates with Texas Governor Abbot signing a bill banning vaccine passports and Florida’s DeSantis pushing, someone successfully, a ban on cruise ship companies requiring their passengers to be vaccinated because who doesn’t want to get both norovirus and coronavirus while having fun in the sun?   And why wouldn’t we want to help all those new variants survive and prosper?  

One More Thing:  The Former Guy is no longer blogging and has no access Twitter or Facebook but he still has a pulpit so his congratulations to Nigeria for indefinitely banning Twitter was widely distributed last night. The FG is super pleased that Twitter is in the Nigerian penalty box for deleting a particularly abusive and threatening tweet sent by Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari. Wonder if the FG has removed Nigeria from his list of sh-t hole countries?  

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Wet Pants

The Other Joe: A recent poll of Republican and Democratic Hill staffers revealed that a majority of them expect that the Republicans will win back control of the House in 2022. As horrifying as that sounds, it’s far from an irrational expectation since the party out of power typically wins back some seats during the midterms and given the Democrats’ slim margin of control even the loss of a few seats would turn the House red. There’s a better chance that the Democrats will hold on to the Senate but with all that voter suppression legislation being passed in Republican controlled and swing state legislatures even that is far from certain.  The fear of Republicans emerging from 2022 in control of at least one house and possibly two is part of the reason that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s very public embrace of the filibuster along with his insistence that he won’t vote for the For the People Act, the far reaching and all-encompassing almost 1000 page voters’ rights bill passed in the House, is freaking out most of his Democratic colleagues.  Another reason for the freak out is that though Manchin says that he’s inclined to vote for the less encompassing  John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act that could undo some of the voter suppression legislation by restoring the federal oversight over state-level voting law changes to protect targeted minority groups that was dismantled by the Supreme Court in the Chief Justice Roberts authored Shelby vs Holder decision, he would want bipartisan support there too and so far Lisa Murkowski is the only Republican on board. Of course it’s not just voters rights, Manchin’s embrace of the filibuster also puts a lot of other legislation with the possible exception of the infrastructure provisions that can be passed through reconciliation out of reach. Manchin isn’t the only Democrat who stands by the filibuster, a few others appear to be letting him take the increasingly brutal incoming from the left because just about everyone knows that primarying him would be pointless given that he’s widely viewed as the only Democrat who could win in his state.  Nevertheless Manchin’s position is frustrating given the specter of a return to control by the current Republican party.  And we’re not just taking the likes of Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Devin Nunes and those other House insurrectionists, we could also be talking about the Former Guy who is now saying he wouldn’t rule out taking over the Speakership, something he could do even without winning a House seat. 

FG Chronicles:  The Former Guy showed up on the stage this weekend at the North Carolina GOP convention.  Despite his disheveled appearance, his pants were so oddly wrinkled that the Twitterverse went wild with suggestions that he was wearing them backwards to hide an “accident,” and his more than usual slurred speech, the crowd applauded his every word wildly except, of course, his endorsement of vaccinations.  On the endorsement front, with Eric’s wife Lara announcing that she’s too busy raising kids and helping her husband remain calm in the face of all those depositions to run for the Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Richard Burr, the FG endorsed Republican Congressman Ted Budd, one of several Republicans running.  Though the others were disappointed, they still had nothing but nice things to say about the FG, evidence of his continued hold on their party.  For his part the FG spent much of the rest of his speech dissing that communist Joe Biden and asserting that his 2020 loss was only because of all the fraud, hinting to the crowd that they shouldn’t be surprised to see him back in the Oval Office by August because of all what all those faux audits are and will be uncovering, especially the one in Maricopa where some purloined ballots are currently being “protected” in a Montana cabin.  That tells you a lot about the current state of the Republican Party and what could be coming our way in 2022 especially if Joe Manchin sticks to his guns.  On the subject of guns a federal judge in California overturned the state’s long time ban on assault weapons writing “like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment….Firearms deemed as 'assault weapons' are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles.”  A bunch of people were killed again this weekend by guns, so far no reports of any falling to Swiss Army knives.

Malign Actors:  The FG isn’t the only out of control malignancy imperiling the country.  There were more cyber and ransomware attacks on the country’s infrastructure last week.  At one point it looked like our sources of meat were imperiled and even travelers to Martha’s Vineyard were affected, not by the hamburger hack but by one on the ticketing system of the Massachusetts Steamship Authority. In all likelihood the sources of the cyber attacks reside within Russia, not necessarily within the government but still doing their evil deeds with the tacit okay of Vladimir Putin.  Biden is scheduled to meet with Putin in a few days, no doubt the cyber war actions which Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov categorically denied will be on the agenda.  Working with the private sector, where most of our vulnerability lies, to improve our cyber security is just another one of those things that Biden needs to do with or without the support of those friendly across the aisle Republican guys.  Over the weekend the NY Times reported that during the waning days of the FG administration, Mark Meadows, the FG’s last chief of staff, tried to get then Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen to investigate some bogus claims of Italian military technology being used to flip FG votes to Biden.  It’s not just the claims that were beyond outrageous, Meadow’s pressure on the Justice Department crossed all boundaries of acceptable behavior but so did his demands on the Georgia Secretary of State and he still appears to have escaped any consequences for that.  Though Rosen did not accede to Meadow’s pressure, it turns out that the Barr led Justice Department did engage in some questionable behavior by going after the phone records of a number of reporters from the NY Times, Washington Post and CNN.  To be clear, other administrations, including Obama’s, have aggressively pursued reporter’s records but usually their actions, justified or not, had to do with getting to the sources of leaks related to national security concerns.  Barr’s efforts appear to have been related to finding out who was leaking about the FG. The leak investigation which was carried on by some District of Columbia Justice Department staffers was only recently shut down.  Biden and now the Merrick Garland Justice Department say they will respect the First Amendment, until of course they do otherwise.  In other legal news, one time White House Don McGahn finally testified in a closed door House Judiciary session, the transcripts of his testimony should be available in a week or so.  Worth noting, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz is a member of the House Judiciary committee.  In New York City, the Grand Jury looking into the FG and his company’s financial finagling/crimes has called in company controller Jeffrey McConney.  It appears like that the point of getting McConney’s testimony isn’t to indict McConney but to pressure CFO Allen Weisselberg to get him to turn on the FG. Postmaster General DeJoy is being investigated for campaign finance violations, something to do with him pressuring his employees to contribute big bucks to Republican candidates. On the good guy front, the FG echo chamber continues to beat down on virus guru Fauci, apparently they are holding him personally responsible for COVID, even suggesting that he colluded with the Chinese to “intentionally” release it from the Wuhan Lab.  To be clear, Fauci is not responsible for COVID, it’s still not known whether the coronavirus escaped from a lab or an open market and Biden has no intention of firing him.  That said, Fauci’s protection detail probably needs to be boosted because the threats against him go up every time someone blames him for the virus.  As to the echo chamber, the FG will remain banned from Facebook at least until 2023, so no posts during the midterms but maybe plenty during his next presidential run?  

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63.5% of adults with at least one vaccination

 

Beer and Donuts

On the Road Again:  As most bloggers, including me, know getting people to go to your blog site isn’t easy but then again most of us aren’t former Oval Office denizens whose tweets previously went viral.  Yesterday, embarrassed by his relatively anemic readership the Former Guy had his spokesman, deadbeat dad Jason Miller, announce that the From the Desk of the FG Blog was no more.  While it’s true that far fewer people were going to the FG’s site than had followed him on Twitter,  he still had a lot of readership as far too many, particularly main stream media reporters, tweeted out his posts/rants but that wasn’t what he wanted and besides blogs, unlike individual tweets, require too much effort so the blog is officially dead.  Anyway, the FG appears to have bigger plans, he’s still teasing that a more robust social media platform is in the works even though we know that’s not true and more significantly he believes that he’ll be back in the Oval Office by August.  Of course we only know about those August plans because of an article published in the NY Times by FG whisperer Maggie Haberman who seems to really miss her days as the White House’s go to reporter.  Maggie reported that the FG believes that the still ongoing Arizona election audit like a few more that he believes/hopes will follow will uncover so much fraud that the country will have no choice but to conclude that he rather than Biden belongs in the White House.  Yesterday, Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell took full credit for the FG’s August delusion, saying that he’s the one that assured him that he’ll be back in office by the end of the summer.  While the FG’s other buddy, one time national security advisor Mike Q Flynn, remains all in on the FG returning to his “rightful” place, he spent a good party of the past few days walking back his suggestion that the US would benefit from a Myanmar style coup.  Apparently someone informed him that former generals  receiving military pensions could get into lots of trouble and possibly even lose their freedom and/or government income for advocating violent military takeovers.  Getting back to the FG, good news for his fans but not so much for the rest of us, he plans to start up his rallies again shortly. He’s either really bored or needs to fill his diminishing coffers with some more campaign contributions because as his sons Eric and Don Jr have been loudly kvetching, mounting defenses against all of those “frivolous” and “politically” motivated “witch hunt” lawsuits is costing bigly bucks and eating into their inheritances.

Politics as Usual:  While Democratic “moderates” Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema  still appear to be committed to the maintenance of the filibuster, Biden appears to be losing his patience with their position.  Though he didn’t mention them by name, he more or less singled them out when he said that though the Democrats control the Senate they have the slimmest majority complicated by a few Senators who vote like Republicans. For the record Sinema and Manchin typically vote with the Democrats on key legislation but only after they, especially Manchin, influence what’s in that legislation. Biden acknowledged the importance of getting some form of voter protection legislation passed sooner rather than later or never, and has now assigned Vice President Kamala Harris to lead that effort because solving the migrant crisis isn’t enough of a Sisyphean task for one person.  In other political news, Arizona’s Democratic Secretary of State Katie Hobbs announced her plans to challenge Republican Doug Ducey for Governor, her ActBlue account is already up and running  In Florida, as expected, Democratic Agriculture Commissioner/pot advocate Nikki Fried has thrown her hat into the Governorship ring challenging Ron DeSantis’ continued reign though first she’ll have to get past current Congressman/former Governor current Democrat/former Republican Charlie Crist who previously announced his run. As to DeSantis, he’s all in on the culture wars so in addition to saying that cruise ships docking at Florida ports can’t mandate proof of vaccination for their employees and travelers, he’s now banning transexual girls from competing on sports teams because while that’s not really a problem of any magnitude it’s one of those things that keeps his ardent base up at night. DeSantis has hit one speed bump, his nemesis Florida data expert Rebekkah Jones, who accused him of pressuring her to manipulate the state’s coronavirus data and was then fired for her outspokenness has been designated an official whistle blower by the state. In other Florida news Politico reports that Teflon panhandle putz Matt Gaetz is now also being investigated for obstruction of justice.                       

Viral Musings:  Twelve states including Vermont, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, NJ, Rhode Island, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maryland and California have all crossed the 70% of all adult vaccinated threshold with overachievers, Vermont and Hawaii exceeding 80%.  Several more states including New York, Virginia, Washington, and state wannabee Washington, DC,  are closing in on Biden’s July 4^th goal.  Notably all of these high vax states are coastal and/or predominantly blue maybe because watching Fox, especially Swanson fish stick heir Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham who in addition to besmirching guru Fauci continues to hawk faux preventative hydroxychloroquine, comes with consequences.  Nationwide the average is 62.9%. To encourage vax laggards to do their part to get the country to Biden’s 70% goal, Bud producer Anheuser Busch has offered to buy all of us over 21 a round of beer or one of their non-alcoholic beverages on Independence Day but only if we make the goal.  By the way no need to chug your Bud with one of those free Krispy Crème donuts previously offered, but go for it if that’s your thing.  Not to be outdone by the Bud guys West Virginia has upped the ante, they’ve added guns to their giveaway list for the vaxxed which in addition to adding another death enhancer to the mix  goes a long way towards explaining Joe Manchin’s balancing act.  While new COVID cases and deaths continue to decline here in the US, large parts of the rest of the world aren’t so lucky.  In particular, despite its relative wealth, Japan has really mucked up their vaccination roll out and as a result the future of the already postponed once summer Olympics remains in jeopardy with local newspapers and the medical community calling for its cancellation.       

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Perils Ahead

Insurrection Blues: To no one’s surprise, most Republican Senators heeded Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “personal” request and voted  against legislation creating a January 6^th commission even though the legislation was negotiated by House Republican John Katko and was passed in the House with the support of 35 House Republicans though with no support of anyone in Republican leadership in part because Qevin McCarthy fears having to testify under oath about what he knows.  Six Republican Senators including Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, Ben Sasse, Rob Portman and Bill Cassidy did vote for the commission with Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, who was absent for personal reasons, saying that he would have voted for it if he’d been there. Toomey’s absence didn’t affect the outcome because had he showed it still would have taken three more Republicans to overcome the sixty vote filibuster hurdle.  With the outcome certain a number of Democrats were also absent for the vote including eccentric Arizonan Kyrsten Sinema who, given her support for maintaining the filibuster, appears to be increasingly raising the ire of those on the left.  As to the filibuster, those critics have a point, if the Republicans who spent years investigating Benghazi can’t get behind a 9.11 like commission to investigate a home grown insurrection, it’s hard to believe that they’ll get behind anything else that needs sixty votes.  By the way, Joe Manchin is also disturbed, he and his across the aisle buddy Susan Collins tried really hard to get more Republicans on board for the commission, however, despite his distress Manchin is still not on board for getting rid of the filibuster either. The ball is now in Nancy Pelosi’s court, odds are she’ll set up a committee to investigate January 6^th but it won’t get the respect nor have the power that an independent commission would have had.

Politics as Usual:  Though Biden’s team continues to negotiate an increasingly shrinking infrastructure package with a team lead by West Virginia Republican Shelly Moore Capito and Democrat Cory Booker and Republican Tim Scott appear to be closing in on a police reform package, or at least that’s what we keep on been told, it’s hard to believe that much if anything substantive will pass through the Senate as long as the filibuster remains intact.  That matters for so many reasons, not just because the country’s physical and social infrastructure is crumbling but because wherever they can pull it off Republican legislators are passing voter suppression legislation and, absent the passage of one or the other of the Democratic proposals advancing fair voting practices, may well make it easier, if not inevitable, for Republicans to retake the House and possibly the Senate in 2022.  On the suppression front, the Republican dominated Texas legislature failed, at least for the moment, to pass their latest efforts to squelch votes in their increasingly diverse state after state Democrats played hardball, staging a walk out that prevented Republicans from having the quorum needed to move forward with legislation that among other things would have made obtaining absentee ballots more difficult, criminalized sending out some ballots applications, limited voting locations in minority dominated cities, made it illegal to drive too many people to voting locations, and worst of all, made it easy for judges to overturn undesirable, or at least undesirable to Republicans, election results.  The Texas legislature doesn’t spend much time in session and still hasn’t addressed the state’s power problems,  but Governor Abbott who is as all in on suppressing blue votes as he is on no permit gun ownership is expected to call a special session to restart the voter suppression efforts.  For the record, Texas already has the most restrictive voting rules in the country and has virtually no voter fraud but Republicans assert even more restrictive procedures are needed to give voters more confidence in election results.  Of course, they fail to mention that to the extent confidence is low, it’s because the Former Guy and his fans keep pushing his big lie BS. As to those fans, one of the Former Guy’s biggest advocates, former national security advisor Michael Flynn, spent part of his weekend calling for a Myanmar like coup in the US because as far as he and his innumerable Q followers are concerned, the FG won the election and needs to be put back into the oval office ASAP.  That may explain why President Biden included a warning about the future of democracy here and abroad being in peril in his Memorial Day speech.   

Viral Musings:  New COVID cases and deaths are way down but not as low as they should be largely because of the number of  people who still haven’t been vaccinated. Though a few more states are closing in on reaching Biden’s goal to have 70% of adults at least partially vaccinated by July goal so far only ten states are there. Notably though New York State’s 0.65% positivity is among the best, it remains five points away from reaching the July goal.  While over 45% of adults are fully vaccinated in many states, there are still far too many laggards including the usual largely “red” suspects Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, South Carolina, West Virginia and Missouri, which all fall below 35%. Though efforts to get more people vaccinated remains a priority a considerable amount of attention has shifted to figuring out how the virus originated.  The lab hypothesis appears to be gaining steam, again only the most ardent conspiracists think that the Chinese intentionally created COVID-19, but a significant number of experts now believe that the theory that the virus was accidentally leaked from China’s Wuhan bat lab is credible, that the Chinese are doing their best to make uncovering the source of the outbreak difficult if not impossible and that the World Health Organization has not been able to solve the puzzle because they are afraid of losing Chinese support.  If any of that sounds familiar, it’s because it is as a number of FG fans have been pushing the lab leak theory for a while. However, since some, though not all of those FG guys are the same crowd who also believe that he won the election or in the case of Senator Tom Cotton because they also believe that militia takeovers of certain states would be okay, their theories haven’t been taken seriously until now in part because of the political divide but also because a lot of their theories weren’t based on what they really knew, just on their suspicions.  With more information surfacing they, or at least their theories, are being taking seriously now; Biden has told the intelligence agencies that he wants as deep a dive as possible undertaken, with an answer on his desk in 90 days.      

More:  Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz remains unindicted though he appears to have been scammed out of some money he and his fiancée Ginger Luckey spent on a yacht that he had prematurely rechristened the “Thirsty. “ Either that or he redirected the funds to pay his mounting legal bills.  Congresswoman Margie Q is still all in and not suffering any punishment from Republican leadership for equating mask mandates with the yellow stars that the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Holocaust before they were sent to death camps though one of her fans, a Nashville hat shop owner, who was selling “not vaccinated” yellow stars is suffering some consequences for her actions. A significant number of her hat suppliers, including Stetson, are no longer providing the newly nefarious Nashville numbskull with their products. At a speech at the Reagan Library, former House Majority Leader Paul Ryan called for the Republican Party to end its obsession with the Former Guy. Nice thought, but first of all what took him so long and second, if he truly believes that, why does he remain on the board of Fox Corp? Hypocrite much?

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