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?