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