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