Twisties and the Twisted

Heart Wrenchers:  Some really disturbing news this week and I am not just referring to Simone Biles dropping out of the gymnastics competition but to the heart wrenching testimony provided to the House Select Committee investigating January 6^th by four of the Capitol police who endangered their lives while fighting off the terrorists, those “tourists” who assert they were following the FG’s call to “stop the steal” something that involved threatening to lynch former VP Pence and Speaker Pelosi.  Of course a number of cretins on the right insist that those Capitol Police officers were just crisis actors and Arizona Congressman Andrew Biggs stands by his assertion that those flag pole wielding, armed to the teeth, “N” word screaming insurgents were nothing more than sight seers.  No surprise that there is a lot of overlap between the insurgent defenders and those who think that Biles should have proceeded with her death defying triple flips and the like despite her case of the twisties, a condition described as three dimensional yips on speed and steroids, because who really cares if her loss of three dimensional awareness could have resulted in her literally losing her head.  While the GOAT “crisis” at the gymnastics and the Capitol Police testimony was front and center a bipartisan group of Senators* must have been toiling away, actually accomplishing something big on the infrastructure front.  As a result yesterday we finally got the infrastructure announcement that the FG and his crowd had been teasing for four long years. Seventeen Republicans, eighteen if you count that Republican Senator Mike Rounds, one of the plan’s supporters was absent for the vote, joined with all Senate Democrats voting to move forward on a $1 trillion infrastructure package.  Remarkably  Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and FG supplicant Lindsey Graham were among the Republicans moving the package forward, particularly notable as the FG spent his day threatening to primary any “super RINO” who voted for it revealing once again that his countless infrastructure weeks were the shams that we all knew they were. The deal’s not done yet, there’s still time for it to crater and it will still have to make it through the House where a number of those on the left, including Congresswoman AOC who last night tweeted her distress, not at the substance of the legislation but over the fact than the bipartisan group that worked on the package lacked “diversity,” are likely to squawk but the odds are that it will pass especially since a much larger “reconciliation” infrastructure plan is still in the offing.  This is a big achievement for President Biden and his promise of bipartisanship. 

Viral Musings: News on the virus front is less promising as the Delta strain is doing here in the US what it previously did in India and the UK, spreading like wild fire.  Ironically some on the right, are finally starting to understand that failing to take COVID seriously and refusing to get vaccinated to own the libs is probably not the best strategy.  A number of Republican Governors have started pleading with their residents to get vaccinated, they’re still not supporting any mitigation efforts and continue to diss masks but they are encouraging, though not mandating, vaccinations.  Mitch McConnell who as a polio survivor understands more than many the value of jabs has been supportive of vaccination from the start but hasn’t done much to help has finally stepped up,  He plans to use some of his campaign funds to promote vaccinations in his home state of Kentucky, better late than never but wouldn’t it have been nice if he’d been out aggressively promoting getting jabbed sooner. News on the vaccine effectiveness continues to be both confusing and concerning.  One report out of Israel said that the Pfizer shots were only around 40% effective against Delta, but that analysis, an outlier, appears to be incorrect as it included a computational error. That’s not to say that the vaccines, aren’t less effective against the huge viral load associated with the infection by the Delta variant, they are, but the figure for the mRNA shots is probably somewhere in the 80 percent range, a number that appears to decrease over time as the body’s antibody protections wane rather than due to a lack of effectiveness of the current vaccines against the Delta variant.  Yesterday Pfizer reported that its studies show that a third jab of their shot in its current form will boost immunity significantly.  Assuming that the FDA and CDC agree that the third shots are necessary and safe some of us will probably start getting them in October which is likely to also be the time that children 5 to 11 years of age get their first jabs. On the policy front, facemask recommendations and mandates are springing up around the country.  The CDC is now recommending that even fully vaccinated people wear them indoors in high virus locales which probably means that the vaccinated risk averse will don masks while the devil may care unvaccinated, virus deniers continue on their merry way with the vaccinated but less risk averse doing whatever they feel comfortable with.  Masking isn’t the only thing on the table, vaccinations mandates are springing up.  A number of companies including ironically Facebook, where anti-vaxxers continue to spread their deadly messages, are following the lead of hospitals and other health care providers by now requiring that their employees get vaccinated. A number of city and state governments are now requiring that employees either show proof of their jabs or subject themselves to weekly testing and though Biden, fearful of alienating any vax hesitant voters, appears to be dancing around a Federal vaccine mandate, the VA is imposing one for anyone in their system responsible for taking care of “vulnerable” veterans.  Daily coronavirus cases climbed to just short of 85,000 yesterday while the death count climbed by 501.

Legal Update: Attorney General Merrick Garland who has been criticized for being too moderate is finally flexing his muscles.  The Justice Department will not defend Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks who together with the FG and some of his family is being sued by fellow Congressman Eric Swalwell for his “incitement” of the January 6^th insurrection because apparently calling for a coup does not fall within the scope of a Representative’s duties.  As to good old Mo who wants to be Alabama’s next Senator, while he insists that he didn’t do anything wrong when he called upon the FG’s fans to fight against the “steal” he admitted yesterday that he was wearing body armor because he had heard that things might get out of hand when those nice tourists started their invasion.  The Justice Department has also notified current and former staff that it won’t prevent them from testifying about what they knew about or were asked to do to overturn the election results.  That’s a problem for the FG because according to the Washington Post, he called then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen daily during his last weeks in office asking him to find fraud anywhere and everywhere to get the election results thrown out.  Some of those calls were memorialized by Rosen’s aides.          

 

Woke Up Call

Human Resources:  In a move that wasn’t surprising, the Former Guy endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who is running for reelection.  That’s not surprising because Paxton is an ardent FG guy, so much so that he led the Republican Attorneys General efforts to get the results of the last election thrown out. He also led the charge to have Obamacare declared unconstitutional.  Paxton is facing criminal indictment on fraud charges and a separate FBI corruption investigation too, but if we’ve learned anything by now, to the FG that’s a positive attribute.  One Republican running against Paxton, Jeb Bush’s son George P, has got to be bummed.  Despite the way the FG treated his “low energy” dad, George P has been a fervent FG supporter, he even made the trek to Mar a Lago in an attempt to get the FG’s endorsement.  Still, all is not lost for George P, there’s still a chance that he could beat Paxton in the primary if enough Texas voters prefer a renegade Bush to an indicted Attorney General or maybe not.  In other “best the Republicans have to offer” news, after being gifted with  a new AR 15 rifle by the pastor at an evangelical Church of Good Tidings in California one time national security advisor/convicted but then pardoned felon Michael Flynn joked “maybe I’ll find someone in Washington,” a not so humorous quip under any circumstances but particularly concerning given that many of the FG’s supporters are prepared to go January 6^th crazy if he isn’t back in the White House come August. Just wondering, is it normal for pastors to give guest speakers automatic weapons?  Talking indictments, Thomas Barrack, the FG’s former adviser and inauguration chairman, who is now out on $250 million bail, pleaded not guilty yesterday to those federal charges that he was working for the UAE, putting their interests above those of the USA when he was successfully influencing the FG’s Middle East policy.  On the January 6^th front, the House’s new select committee on all things insurrection will be having its first hearing today.  In addition to Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, Speaker Pelosi added Illinois Republican Adam Kinzinger to the committee.  GQP leader Kevin McCarthy is not all that happy about that, he’s now calling Liz and Adam Nancy’s Republicans.  It turns out that voting against an independent commission and then trying to place two insurrectionists on the House committee may not have been a good strategy for Kevin. Lastly, on a sad note former Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi who retired from the Senate last year died yesterday, after being critically injured in a bicycle accident.  

Viral Musings: Unfortunately with too few Americans vaccinated, the plentiful Delta variant has been finding plenty of bodies to inhabit which explains why there were 88,696 new coronavirus positives yesterday. The initial news out of Israel that Delta had been making inroads among some of their vaccinated population is now accepted as a given rather than just a statistical anomaly. The good news is that at least so far few vaccinated people have gotten seriously ill from the strain, the not so good news is that while the vaccines continue to protect against severe infections, they aren’t doing as good a job as had been hoped at preventing infection, likely because the viral load associated with Delta is very high, it’s highly contagious, and the strength of the vaccines is starting to wane just a bit among those who received their shots early and among the more vulnerable immune suppressed, particularly those who’ve been the recipients of organ transplants.  All that  means that the 65 plus set and the immune suppressed are likely to be getting another shot, probably beginning sometime around October, of course by then the Delta variant which is already on the decline in India and the UK is likely be past its US peak not that there couldn’t be another variant of concern to worry about. The Delta onslaught is also the reason that a number of municipalities are either reimposing mask mandates or mask recommendations for all, even the vaccinated and are moving forward with vaccine mandates.  The Delta onslaught has also spurred a number of dyed in the wool conservatives/FG supporters like Arkansas gubernatorial aspirant Sarah Huckabee Sanders to publicly announce their vaccinated status, a belated effort to encourage some additional COVID deniers to get jabbed. On the 5 to 11 year old kid front, the FDA has asked Pfizer and Moderna to add more children to their studies in the hope that increasing the pool of participants will shake out any rare side effects before the shots are made available to the younger population.  Pfizer may still be able to meet their hoped for fall timetable but the increased study requirement is likely to delay Moderna’s approval.  

Politics Unusual:  There’s still no bipartisan infrastructure plan.  As the NY Times reports the infrastructure deal is either near or about to collapse.  It turns out that the Olympics is political too, not totally surprising as sports and Olympics have been political for some time. Still it was kind of weird to hear the FG come out loudly against the “too woke” US women’s soccer team and to also hear the crowd of attendees at his weekend rally, yes he’s rallying again, applaud his slam. Also, a number of the recent books about the final days of the FG cite his expectation that his SCOTUS justices, particularly Brett Kavanaugh would throw out the Arizona and Pennsylvania election results just because.  Well we may now know why he felt that Kavanaugh owed him the favor.  It turns out that the FBI received somewhere around 4500 tips alleging some bad Kavanaugh behavior in the run up to his confirmation. No doubt a lot of those were just crank comments from the peanut gallery but some of them may have revealed some really bad behavior.  The FBI turned the most concerning ones over to the White House but did not do further investigation as they say they only did what the WH engaged them to do.  The FG White House appears to have put the concerning complaints through the shredder.  We may never know if any of them were truly damning but we do know that the FG believes that Kavanaugh owed him a bigly favor and that may be all that we really need to know. Mississippi is asking the Supreme Court to overturn the Roe v Wade abortion decision and given the current make-up of  SCOTUS that could really happen this time.

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Despicable Jims 

Politics Unusual: Infrastructure legislation remains up in the air and there is a reason that the oft promised police reform legislation hasn’t come to the Senate floor.  On the infrastructure front, as expected all Republican Senators, even the ten or more who have been part of the team working on the so-called bipartisan form of the legislation voted against bringing it up for floor debate.  That doesn’t mean that the bipartisan legislation is dead, or at least dead yet, it’s still being negotiated, well maybe, we should know more next week.  Similarly, up until last month we’d been hearing a lot about all that progress that the bipartisan team of Senators Cory Booker and Tim Scot were making on criminal reform legislation, but despite their efforts the party divide over qualified immunity remains. It’s also fair to assume that with crime rates up, or at least getting huge coverage in the news, Republicans just don’t feel that there’s much urgency in reform, especially since they plan to use those crime rates, which actually climbed during the Former Guy’s term, as a campaign issue against those “defund the police,” inflationist, socialist Democrats during the midterms.  On the insurrection front, Speaker Pelosi rejected both of the Jim’s that GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy tried to foist upon the House January 6^th committee concluding that both “Gym” Jordan and the lesser known Jim Banks had little interest in getting to the bottom of the causes of the insurrection and that both would be highly disruptive participants. It wasn’t just that the two opposed the certification of the election, don’t believe that there was an insurrection and that Banks has hung with one or more of the insurrectionists, but they are also on record blaming the Capitol invasion on Pelosi’s failure to call up the National Guard, even though doing so wasn’t something she could do. Then there’s that added wrinkle that Jordan along with McCarthy could actually be called in to testify in front of the committee.  McCarthy responded to Pelosi’s diss by pulling all of his appointments and blaming her for taking such an unprecedented, anti-democratic action. Of course he didn’t mention that he’d previously voted against setting up a truly bipartisan commission.  Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney backed up Pelosi’s decision to eject her fellow Republicans, pointing out that McCarthy is “despicable” while adding his lack of “commitment to the Constitution” should disqualify him from being House speaker if the GOP wins in 2022.” McCarthy, third in line for the presidency, oy.  Word is that Pelosi is now considering adding that other relatively rational Republican, Adam Kinzinger, to the committee and that she is also considering asking former Virginia Congressman Denver Riggleman to become an advisor.  Riggleman, who may or may not still be a Republican, lost his House in 2020 seat after he was successfully primaried from the right, punishment for officiating at the same sex wedding of two friends.

Viral Musings:  It’s hard to believe but here we are, three emergency approved highly effective vaccines available with one even available to those as young as twelve but still facing a raging pandemic, not because the shots aren’t working but because too few people are getting jabbed. Daily new COVID cases hit just under 64,000 yesterday.  Cases are on the rise throughout the county but especially in Missouri, Florida and Texas which account for 40% of new cases. The good news is that the vaccinated are holding their own; while breakthrough infections occur, most are asymptomatic positives caught due to regular testing with few of those positive testing folks getting sick enough to require hospitalization.  Unfortunately, the unvaccinated are not faring as well so we’re back to hearing horrible stories about wards filled with the sick and dying. The NFL is Team VAX, they announced plans to have a full season and are pushing teams to get all their players and staff vaccinated. Going forward, teams with unvaccinated positive cases will face consequences in the form of forfeits and fines. Despite rising COVID positivity in Japan and more positives among participants, the Olympics starts this morning. Will we actually get to see Simone Biles’ awesome moves, who knows.  Though the CDC continues to resist more mask mandates for the general public, a lot of municipalities are pushing them for everyone, largely because those who aren’t vaccinated aren’t following recommendations that they should be wearing masks. It’s kind of crazy that the adults wearing masks in stores and other inside venues are actually more likely to be vaccinated than those who aren’t. And with kids still not able to get shots, school districts, at least rational ones are likely to follow the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that children where masks in school.

Have a good weekend.

 Delta, Delta, Delta

Crunch a Bunch: Today is infrastructure crunch day, well maybe.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says that he plans to bring up a motion to begin debate on the bipartisan portion of the planned legislation sometime today.  Of course a number of those Republicans who are supposedly part of the ten who will join the Democratic majority to get to the sixty votes needed to proceed are squawking about being rushed to vote before details have been finalized.  At least one of those details already deleted from the proposed legislation involved funding some infrastructure by giving the IRS the funds to raise money by going after super rich scofflaws.  Don’t be surprised if Schumer pushes off his planned vote, also don’t be surprised if the bipartisan legislation goes the way of the rotary phone and ends up rolled into one big reconciliation package.  On the people front, there were two notable pieces of news yesterday.  The GOAT Tom Brady finally made it to the White House, part of the celebration of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers Super Bowl victory.  Brady’s presence was notable, he did not accompany the Patriots when they visited either the Obama or FG White House after their victories.  It turns out that Brady has quite a sense of humor, he riffed about how about 40% of football fans didn’t believe Tampa had really won their game and also made a joke about being referred to as “sleepy Tom” when he forgot what city he was in during the season. Joe Biden appeared to be in on the joke but it’s fair to assume that wherever he was, the FG was not laughing.  Also while we’re talking Toms, another one Thomas Barrack, a long-time FG associate, advisor and the chair of the 2016 Inaugural Committee was indicted on charges of acting as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates yesterday.  Barrack is accused of “secretly advancing the interests of the UAE at the direction of senior officials of that country by influencing the foreign policy positions of the FG’s 2016 campaign, and then those positions of the U.S. government during Trump’s presidency through April 2018.”  He’s also charged with obstruction of justice and making multiple false statements during an interview with federal law enforcement agents.  Barrack’s influence on the FG goes far towards explaining the prioritization and direction of a number of his administration’s Middle Eastern policies.  Barrack has the means to hire the best lawyers but since one of his co-defendants has already fled the country, the DOJ is likely to press hard to keep him in jail until trial. Although the charges are serious, Barrack may have a few cards to play as he knows a lot about all those allegations about the questionable and still unexplained expenditures associated with the FG’s Inauguration, things that some of the FG’s kids might have done, just another reason that the mood at Bedminster might be glum right now.  Of course a glum FG is dangerous.  In addition to golfing and guiding GQP Leader McCarthy on who to pick for the House Committee on the January 6^th Insurrection, he’s giving lots of thought as to who to endorse to run against current nemesis Wyoming’s Liz Cheney in that state’s Republican primary.  As to the January 6^th  Committee, McCarthy’s picks include five white guys, two named Jim: Jim Banks of Indiana, Jim Jordan of Ohio, Rodney Davis of Illinois, Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota and Troy Nehls of Texas.  Obviously Gym Jordan was chosen because he can be relied upon to be loud and disruptive.  Together with Banks and Nehls, he voted against recognizing the results of the 2020 election, obviously another qualifying attribute. It’s not clear whether Speaker Pelosi will seat all of McCarthy’s choices or try sending him back for a redo.    

Viral Musings: Remember when we were celebrating that the US count of new daily cases of the coronavirus was down to around 12,000 per day, forget about that, the new case count was up to 62,000 yesterday. While the virus, almost completely the Delta variant these days, is mostly infecting, hospitalizing and knocking off the unvaccinated, the super contagious Delta is also showing up among the vaccinated.  A number of vaccinated Olympians, at least six members of the Texas Democratic squad hiding out in Washington, a member of Congress, a member of the White House Staff and a member of Speaker Pelosi’s staff have all tested COVID positive, and those are just the ones we know about, the House physician’s office and Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirm that there have been other positives.  The good news, so far, is that most, though not all, of those in the halls of government showing up positive are asymptomatic and none of them appears to be getting ill.  Also good, it appears that neither the Speaker nor VP Harris who both met with the Texas contingent have been affected. A few more Republican officials as well as a few at Fox appear to finally be taking the virus seriously.  Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Congressman who is second in command of the Republican House contingent finally got his first Pfizer jab in front of a camera over the weekend, Mitch McConnell who has been team vax from the start once again repeated advice that people should get vaxed and Utah’s Governor Spencer Cox, another Republican, is out there telling people to ignore the ignoramus anti vax set and to get jabbed. Though Tucker Carlson still isn’t on board, his colleague Sean Hannity admitted on air that he’s gotten his shots and that “after consultation” with their doctors his viewers should too.  Fox, of course, has implemented an internal “passport” program, allowing those who are vaccinated to bypass otherwise daily health screenings before entering their premises. Apparently those passports aren’t a communist plot after all.  Last night the New York Times reported the that the J & J one shot wonder isn’t doing as good a job at building up antibodies against the Delta variant, suggesting once again that recipients of the J & J shot consider getting another shot, anyone, as a booster sooner rather than later.  As to boosters, the CDC appears to be moving closer to recommending them for those who got their shots early on: health professionals, organ transplant recipients and the older set.  We should expect to hear more on the subject shortly.  Lastly, virus guru Fauci has just about had it with Senator Rand Paul, one of the unvaccinated.  Paul continues to blame Fauci for having a hand in creating COVID 19.  Yesterday during Congressional testimony Fauci responded to Paul’s accusations by calling him out as a know nothing liar. Count me as #TeamFauci       

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Merch

FG Follies:  We keep on learning more about the final days of the FG’s regime and to put it bluntly, they were more dangerous than we thought; his coup attempt was for real and it wasn’t spontaneous.  Moreover, the FG had the help of a number of his closest aides and allies including several of Congressman Devon Nunes’ former aides including Kash Patel who almost made it to acting head of the CIA.  At least that was and remains the assessment of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley who, according to “I Alone Can Fix It,” the newly published book by the Washington Post team of Carol Leonnig and Phil Rucker feared a “Reichstag” moment and did everything he could to impede the FG’s efforts.  Milley saw the FG’s successful firing of Defense Secretary Esper and the attempted removals of CIA head Gina Haspel and FBI head Chris Wray for what they were, part of a plan to fill the top ranks of government with toadies who were all in on helping the FG fulfil his autocratic, Hitlerian ambitions.  Despite all that, GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy remains fully on the team FG bandwagon, before attending a Biden hosted dinner for German Chancellor Angela Merkel who the FG not so fondly called a bitch during his days in office, McCarthy traveled to Bedminster NJ yesterday for a meet up with the FG purportedly to discuss mid-term election strategy but really to talk about who, if anyone, McCarthy should put on the House’s January 6^th committee.  Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz also remains fully on the FG bandwagon.  Apparently, Gaetz who has been running up some bigly legal bills fighting off those hopefully impending child trafficking charges has also been making payments to various and sundry entities associated with the FG.  Among those payments is one to none other than that other Floridian/pardoned felon Roger Stone.  Two more of the FG’s Kraken lawyers, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, appear to be on their way to joining Rudy Giuliani in the bar penalty box, and by bar, I am not talking local tavern.  A judge in Michigan is likely to kick them to the curb shortly, something to do with all of their false claims about election fraud.  On the election fraud front, the Arizona cyber ninja audit is still out there. At least one Arizona Republican, State Senator Wendy Rogers, believes that the results will “prove” that the FG won. She’s calling for a new election, something that the FG in one of his increasingly frazzled statements from the desk of the 45^th President agrees with.  Elsewhere in the political universe, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer plans to move forward with votes on the as yet unwritten infrastructure bills as early as next week, Biden’s child tax credits started hitting bank accounts yesterday and the increasingly controversial filibuster remains intact because Senator Manchin appears to remain team filibuster.

Viral Musings:  That Delta variant continues to spread, more in unvaccinated “red” states and counties but everywhere else too because COVID is apolitical.  It still doesn’t look like the Delta variant is more virulent than other forms of COVID but unfortunately because it is so much more contagious it is making more and more people, including children, sick.  That explains why Los Angeles County is now mandating that everyone, even the vaccinated wear masks when indoors.  The CDC isn’t calling for indoor masking for the vaxxed but Israel and the WHO are so give serious thought to  wearing one the next time you step into a store, elevator or a closely packed crowd.  On the children front, it’s looking less and less likely that shot will be approved before the school year starts, at least that’s what an “unnamed FDA” official said yesterday.  His or her, or should I say their, prediction is that the kid jabs won’t be available until early to mid-winter.  None of that seems to be of concern to Florida Governor DeSantis who is raising campaign cash by selling anti-Fauci merch while his state coronavirus levels are in the midst of another spike.  That’s DeSantis who, if the FG doesn’t run, could be the next Republican candidate for president unless of course he turns into the next Scott Walker or Jeb Bush.

Stay safe, keep a mask handy but enjoy your weekend. 

Playing Poker

Texas Holdem:  Texas Governor Abbott doesn’t seem at all concerned about his state’s failing power grid but he is hyper focused on further suppressing voter turnout particularly notable since Texas already has some of the most restrictive voting laws in the country.  Texas Republicans are all in on suppression largely because they fear that the state’s increasingly diverse demographic will ultimately result in the state turning blue and suppressing votes is easier than promoting policies geared towards attracting more of those voters.  Abbott wasn’t able to get his new restrictive voter law passed during the state’s regular legislative session because the state’s Democrats legislators staged a collective walk out which resulted in the session expiring without the passage of the law.  He responded by calling the legislature back for a new session, again not to deal with that failing grid but to get his new voter law passed but Democrats aren’t making it easy for him.  They have once again flown the coop, this time making it all the way to Washington where they are trying to serve as the catalyst to get Senate Democrats to do whatever it takes even if that means ditching the filibuster to pass voters rights legislation.  On the Texas front, Abbott is threatening to arrest all those errant Democratic legislators, something he really can’t do and is also threatening to keep on calling the State legislative back into session, which he can do at least until September when it will run out of money because he’s cut their budget to punish those problematic Democrats.  Abbott wants to force the wandering Democrats to either remain in the wilderness until it hurts or to return and do their duty. In Washington, so far Senate Democrats still don’t have the votes they need to put the kibosh on the filibuster, largely because of West Virginia moderate Joe Manchin but also because of a few other less visible swing state Democratic Senators who are letting Manchin take the heat, which explains why President Biden, who yesterday gave an impassioned speech calling out all those “have you no shame” Republicans for doing their best to suppress blue voter turnout didn’t mention the filibuster.  That’s not to say that the White House isn’t pushing to add voters rights legislation to the growing list of things, like judicial confirmations and budget reconciliation that can be passed by a majority rather than a super majority vote, it just means that at least so far they don’t have the votes to do so. So to sum the current state of play up, Mitch McConnell who would trash the filibuster in a nanosecond if it suited his purposes is laughing, progressives are going nuts and attacking their Democratic colleagues and absent the passage of a voter protections, the House will probably go red in 2022 when Republicans might decide to vote the FG in as Speaker.  And because the filibuster remains alive and well, the two track infrastructure legislation plan is still on the table.  The smaller bipartisan plan is still struggling to keep the requisite ten Republicans needed for regular way passage while a larger, though not as large as previously discussed, Democratic “wish list” plan was passed out of the budget committee last night.  That proposal which now stands at $3.5 trillion will need complete Democratic buy in to pass.

 

Human Resources: Jeff Flake, the former Senator from Arizona who was an early and persistent critic of the Former Guy even though he generally voted with him is going to be our next Ambassador to Turkey.  He joins that other Biden supporting Arizona Republican Cindy McCain who has been nominated to be the next Ambassador to the UN Food Agency.  Stephen Calk who aspired to be the FG’s Secretary of the Navy so much so that he had his bank lend one time campaign manager/convicted but then pardoned felon Paul Manafort lots of money will not be getting any government appointments in this or any administration as he was found guilty yesterday for bribery for lending that money to Manafort.  Calk is just another one of those fringe players caught up in the web that so far hasn’t snared any member of the FG’s immediate family.  Because just about everyone including journalists from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal and Michael Wolff wherever he is from these days, has released a book about the FG’s days in office we’re hearing more and more about how crazy and delusional the FG is and how nuts those days were.  It’s not just that the FG admired Hitler’s accomplishments, considered starting a war with Iran to distract voters from his virus failings and really thought he had “his” Supreme Court appointees in his pocket but apparently Rudy Giuliani, his lawyer of choice, spent most of the final days inebriated.  During one of those drunken moments Rudy advised the FG to go ahead and declare victory on election night, preferably before the results were in, and as we all know the FG liked that advice so much that he’s still following it.

 

Viral Musings: The Greek alphabet has lots of letters but Delta appears to be the one that we’re stuck at.  The nefarious variant is spreading like wild fire right now, causing upticks everywhere.  So far it appears that while those upticks are responsible for some breakthrough cases, Delta is mostly affecting and killing those who are unvaccinated.  It’s fair to assume that more and more of those cases, along with Measles, HPV and a spate of other childhood diseases will probably be on an upward trajectory in Tennessee where the official responsible for promoting vaccinations was just fired for promoting the COVID vaccine. Going forward, promoting any vaccines, especially for children is now verboten there.  It turns out that Senator Martha Blackburn, one of the Senates insurrection friendly members, really is representative of her community. It’s still not clear when or if we’ll need a booster that Pfizer is pushing though Israel has started to offer a booster up but only as a precaution to its most vulnerable, not to everyone. In all likelihood the next news about Pfizer and Moderna will involve their vaccines getting full, rather than just emergency approval.  That’s important because some of the people who’ve shied away from vaccinations so far have said that they’re waiting for that sign off.  Virus guru Fauci says that he expects that the J & J vaccine will get full approval too despite current news that about 100 out of the 13 million people who’ve gotten it have come down with some form of Guillain Barre syndrome.  Two things about that are worth noting, Guillain Barre is also a very, very rare side effect of some flu shots and of the Shingles shot and the symptoms for those rare cases generally show up within two weeks so if you’ve been jabbed with a J & J you are likely well outside of the rare “risk” window.  On the international front, the coronavirus pandemic is taking its toll on Cuba, and may be the straw that breaks their government’s hold on its population but not before more already stressed out Cubans suffer from the virus. Cuba is a manufacturer of vaccines and has developed its own very effective COVID shots however due to the tight restrictions reinstated by the FG’s administration, their vaccine program and drug exports, usually a source of needed cash, have come under extreme pressure and as a result the country has been unable to source needed ingredients and unable to ship abroad to raise needed funds.  Political views aside, the Cuban population is once again collateral damage.  No one should be surprised if Cubans, like residents of Haiti, start showing up on our shores.

 

Major Tom's Newest Friend

A Flash Gordon Weekend: I flew on the British Air Concorde once which is about as close to space travel as I ever plan to get so I don’t intend to get on line to buy one of those $200,000 Virgin Galactic tickets nor do I plan to enter Richard Branson’s lottery for two free trips.  However, despite my personal aversion to space travel unlike all those complaining about all the money that Branson and Amazon’s Jeff Bezos have spent on their billionaire toys and battle for space, count me as one of those who admires their guts and aspirations even if I also wish they would pay more in taxes.  And who doesn’t understand why, given our overheated west, flooded out east, insane politics and, of course, COVID and all its variants, plenty of people would be happy to line up for an opportunity to leave planet Earth. Talking about COVID, the Delta variant is spreading rapidly particularly among the throngs of unvaccinated, even raising positivity rates in highly vaccinated areas.  Though virus guru Fauci spent some time on the Sunday morning talk shows reassuring folks that there is no certainty that a vaccine booster shot is in the immediate offing, largely because he hasn’t seen any data that shows we need one yet and because he wants to keep the focus on getting the unvaccinated jabbed, the Washington Post was the first to report that Pfizer is scheduled to meet with federal officials today to present the data that they say justifies their position that we, or at least some of the more vulnerable among us, should get another dose soon. To that end Israel is beginning to  offer third jabs to those with impaired immunity and may also offer the shot to some of the most vulnerable under twelve. 

FG Follies: While Richard Branson is now officially an astronaut and Jeff Bezos will likely be one very soon,  the Former Guy doesn’t appear to have any aspirations to join them or to go on an untethered spacewalk so at least for now we remain stuck with him.  He appeared as the keynote speaker at this weekend’s Dallas Conservative PAC group grope, a meet up that appeared to be chock full of QAnon nutsters, white supremacists, wannabee Nazis, basically what are now mainstream Republicans. He repeated his usual message, that he was cheated out of an election that he really won, that those marauding insurrectionists who beat the crap out of some Capitol officers and were seeking to do the same or worse to his VP Mike Pence, were really nice guys who were just expressing love of country and fury over the “stolen” election and the like while also targeting crime and critical race theory, another cudgel intended to promote white fear.  While this all sounds like nuts to most of us, the FG is the master at repeating bigly lies until enough people believe them so while it would be easy to dismiss his rantings as just crazy speech from an insane Florida retiree, don’t.  The FG also continued to tease that he’s running again in 2024, something that would make his base and the anti-Vax CPAC crowd, who ranks him at the very tip top of their candidate list with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis next in line but far behind, very happy. Though 2024 may seem far away, 2022 is just around the corner and among other things a seven point plan for reinstating the FG in the Oval office was handed out at CPAC.  The plan calls for him to replace Nancy Pelosi as Speaker. As farfetched as that sounds, the FG for Speaker concept keeps getting lots of air time, another one of those things that when repeated enough starts to sound possible, at least to his fans.  Moreover it’s worth repeating that the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress and that some in the party fringe, including Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who may or may not be indicted or possibly even in jail by the time 2022 rolls around, say that they will nominate him if or more frighteningly when the Republicans retake the House which given historical mid-term trends and all that voter suppressive legislation getting passed around the country and on the table again in Texas is quite likely to happen despite the fact that those of us living in Democratic bubbles find it hard to imagine.  This might all sound very pie in the sky alarmist, but the FG is like the angry bear who has been repeatedly poked; he’ll do anything to regain power especially to ward off all those investigations into his and his families “alleged” crimes.

Politics As Usual: Back in the more normal world, to the extent that anything about politics is ever normal, Joe Biden is still trying to move his infrastructure plan forward, the filibuster is still being discussed and both VP Harris and Hunter Biden are again under the microscope.  Kamala Harris because who doesn’t like to attack women, particularly women of color?  And Hunter having something to do with his paintings possibly selling at astronomical prices.  Am I the only one who remembers when the highly respected and competent Senator Amy Klobuchar was trashed for eating salad with a comb or when the RNC spent donor funds buying up all of FG son Junior’s books? Focus folks, on getting out the vote and getting infrastructure done because if we don’t, paintings and VP office politics will be the least of our problems.  

 

That Florida Retiree

Stormy Morning:  Yesterday Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniel’s one time lawyer/presidential candidate for a nanosecond who appeared in a few early chapters of the Former Guy saga was sentenced to 2 ½ years in the slammer, not for anything he did on behalf of Stormy but for extorting sneaker behemoth Nike.  Meanwhile, the FG who Speaker Pelosi is now referring to as the “twice-impeached Florida retiree” and who reportedly told former Chief of Staff/General John Kelly that “Hitler did a lot of good things” remains out and about keeping busy engaged in his favorite activities:  golfing and grifting.  His current grift involves suing Facebook and Twitter, claiming that the social media companies violated his First Amendment rights by kicking him off their platforms. To get around the sticky technicality that the First Amendment doesn’t apply to companies, the FG’s lawyers, or the people representing him who given that they use AOL email accounts may be just pretending to be lawyers, argue that since they’ve granted Twitter and Facebook quasi-governmental status the companies should be subjected to First Amendment rules.  The FG who, with the assist of those friendly Murdoch’s, had an op-ed on the subject published in the Wall Street Journal is making a big deal about his lawsuit as are his friends in the FOX, Newsmax and OANN loonie-sphere but don’t be fooled, it’s highly unlikely that he really wants his lawsuit to proceed in the courts because if it does, he’ll be deposed and have to answer, under oath, all those sticky questions about his coup attempt and how he urged his adherents to storm the Capitol. As to the grift part, would it surprise you to learn that he and son junior are already using the lawsuit as a fundraising tool?  After all grifters gotta grift. Getting back to the events of January 6^th, the FG is now pushing the lie that Ashli Babbitt, the delusional insurrectionist who was shot and killed by one of the Capitol police officers defending Mike Pence was an innocent heroic victim.  And on the Nazi front, Georgia’s Margie Q who has already forgotten all those things she was supposed to have learned during her performative visit to Washington’s Holocaust museum is back to comparing Biden’s efforts to get people vaccinated to the Nazis, her newest analogy involving equating Biden bringing jabs to people’s doors as “medical brown shirts.”  Obviously Margie Q has learned from the FG’s “both sides” playbook.  It worked for him so why wouldn’t amplifying anti-Semitism work for her?  It doesn’t appear to have hurt Paul Gosar, the Texas Congressman/dentist who still hasn’t faced any Republican blowback for raising money at white supremacist group gropes.  At least Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar gets criticized by some, though unfortunately only some, of her colleagues when she goes into hate mode.

Viral Musings:  The Delta variant is raging, now dominating the US coronavirus front. That’s a problem even for the vaccinated largely because Delta, which may or may not be more virulent than other virus variants, is far more contagious than other forms of the virus, so much so that it appears to have squeezed the troublesome South African strain out of the picture.  Though the vaccines still appear to be holding their own against Delta, the jabs aren’t perfect so when there’s lots of virus out there, it’s inevitable that some vaccinated people will get infected.  The good news, at least good news for those who’ve gotten their shots, is that at least so far, more than 99% of the people hospitalized and dying from COVID have not been vaccinated.  In addition in Israel where non-symptomatic cases are being caught because vaccinated people are being screened for COVID, only two people died yesterday.  Though that’s two more than the zero that had been reported over the past two weeks, one of those was an unvaccinated 48 year old and the other was well into his 80s.  As to the vaccines, Pfizer announced last night that they plan to submit study results for a Delta targeting booster to the FDA in a few weeks with hopes to get emergency use authorization in the Fall.  That said the CDC, the FDA and a number of infectious disease experts insist that the current shots are working fine and the science doesn’t yet indicate that a booster will be necessary, at least for most of us.  Of course, if you listen to FOX, you’d believe that no one really needs the vaccine unless they are foolish enough to really want one, of course those assertions are made by FOX pundits including a number who’ve been vaccinated as indicated by the fact that they’re back sitting in a tight cluster in their studio.  Sadly, apparently people in 30 clusters in the country, primarily in five areas of the country  starting in the east in Georgia and stretching west to Texas and north to southern Missouri as well as parts of Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Tennessee are drinking the Fox “why get vaccinated” Kool Aid, feeding the Delta variant, potentially taking the rest of us down with them.

War and Not Peace:  After twenty long years our military’s days in Afghanistan will come to an end by August 31.  Yesterday President Biden defended his decision to leave, saying that he couldn’t justify the loss of another American life for a mission that originally was supposed to be just about protecting the US mainland from terrorist attacks ala 9.11 but has morphed into a far reaching nation building project, something that would take forever and a day and that even then wouldn’t be done once we left.  At the same time he promised that all of our Afghan interpreters will be moved out of the country to safer places while they’re screened for visas.  Of course the Taliban are already taking over but as the Brits and Russians learned during their Afghanistan sojourns, that was always inevitable. The crowd in Washington is still working on their infrastructure plans, well some of the crowd.  Republican Congressman Chip Roy clearly isn’t and he may have spoken for many of his colleagues when he said the quiet part out loud that “"For the next 18 months, Republicans' job is to do everything that we can to slow down and block the Democrats' radical agenda, and then win the majority and lead." A thought that’s consistent with Wyoming Senator John Barrasso’s statement that it’s the Republicans’ job to make Joe Biden a half term president.”  Of course neither of them have any idea what leading means other than dismantling government and seating judges.  One more thought on leadership, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz who really should be concerned about his own future given that his one-time bestie Joel Greenberg has had his sentencing date delayed 90 days to accommodate his fruitful cooperation with the Feds, says that when Republicans retake the House, he’ll be nominating the FG to serve as Speaker.

606K, up 366 yesterday

Happy weekend.              

GrubJab 

Anniversary:  Yesterday marked the sixth month anniversary of the January 6^th insurrection, the violent coup day that far too many Republican pundits and legislators claim was either a tourist stop, didn’t happen or, if it did, was committed by some combination of antifa and FBI informants. It did happen, and more and more of those who stormed the Capitol are being turned in by neighbors, amateur twitter sleuths and the like.  Tucked between countless articles on critical race theory, whatever that is, the NY Post reported today that the FBI “seized a fully constructed US Capitol Lego set” from one of those arrested “tourists,” along with a notebook containing instructions on how to create a hometown militia.  That charming “tourist” allegedly led rioters in “one of the most intense and prolonged clashes” against the Capitol police. Of course the Former Guy, the biggest instigator of them all is still out and about; he spent part of his weekend pushing the big lie, asserting repeatedly during an inappropriately timed trip to Florida that he did not lose the election, that it was stolen from him due to all that non-existent election fraud, adding just for the heck of it that everyone cheats on their taxes, at least everyone with lots of inherited money. As to that election, over the weekend it was revealed that Clint Hickman, a Trump supporting Republican who also took the responsibility of his position as chairman of the Maricopa County, Arizona Board of Supervisors seriously, rebuffed several calls from Rudy Giuliani, Arizona Republican chair Kelli Ward and the White House because he understood that they were trying to get him to claim that due to all those election irregularities that weren’t he would toss the county’s Biden winning election results.  By the way, that faux ninja cyber audit that was supposed to end months ago is still ongoing, perhaps the ninjas are waiting for a slow news day to release some ginned up outrageous claims about all the cheating that didn’t happen.

More Crazy:  Lots of other bizarre things happened over the  weekend news, two odd groups, well two that we know of, were caught doing things that they shouldn’t have been doing.  In Philadelphia about 200 masked members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front descended on the city's downtown Saturday night chanting "reclaim America" and saying the presidential election had been stolen. Proving that not all crazies and/or militias are white, eleven armed for battle members of the Rise of the Moors militia were arrested as they were travelling through Massachusetts on their way to Maine. The Moorish guys, mostly former military men, believe that they are an independent sovereign country, the Massachusetts police who arrested them after a long standoff do not agree.  In other news, despite President Biden’s warning to Putin, some Russians were up to their evil computer games again over the weekend.  A group that actually calls itself REvil completed what may turn out to have been the biggest ransomware attack ever on Kaseya, a “managed service” company that provides computer services to companies too small to have their own tech departments.  REvil is Russian based; though they’re not an official state actor they most likely could be controlled by Putin if he were so inclined.  It wasn’t just REvil, the Russian based Cozy Bear group who’ve been known to work with Russian intelligence, hacked the RNC.  Those are the same bears who were involved in a lot of 2016 election interference activities. JD Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy who once called the FG cultural heroin was not hacked but is acting like he was, he now regrets all the nasty but true things he said about the FG because he now wants his endorsement as he’s running for Rob Portman’s Ohio Senate seat.  Biden says that he’s got our cyber experts weighing possible responses to the Russian hacking not that we’ll necessarily know when he initiates any of them because the best counterattacks are frequently secret, at least for a while.  And lastly, at least for now, we are almost completely out of Afghanistan, our never ending war that maybe is finally ending.  Critics, many of whom wanted us out, are now whining about us leaving and they have a point in that the Taliban are taking over but sadly, beyond staying forever, there is probably nothing we can do about that.                                               

Viral Musings:  Last week we were told that the vaccines, all of them, were holding up well against the Delta variant.  Yesterday we were told maybe not.  That as yet verified update was based on preliminary data out of Israel where there were more than 400 new coronavirus positives yesterday, many among vaccinated individuals.  The good news is that most with those breakthrough cases are asymptomatic and that Israel’s seven day average COVID death rate is still zero, the bad news is that the Delta variant probably is more effective at evading the vaccine than we were told last week.  What’s not clear is whether the Israel data which has not yet been peer reviewed means much and/or whether the diminished, though still impressive effectiveness of the vaccine is due to the power of the Delta strain or whether it’s because the vaccine’s effectiveness is starting to wane, another one of those things we were told last week wasn’t happening. Given the conflicting information, if you’re living or visiting a high COVID positivity region, are in a crowded area, an elevator or are just risk averse go ahead and wear a mask especially when in doors.  As to Israel, a few weeks ago it was reported that the government was transferring some excess Pfizer vaccines to the Palestinian Authority, however, the PA decided to refuse the donation over what they say were concerns that the offered vaccines were approaching their expiration date. Apparently officials in South Korea don’t see that as a problem; to meet current demand they are taking the supply from Israel in exchange for a future delivery which Israel will use for boosters, if they prove necessary, and younger children when they become eligible.  In the mean time lots of Palestinians are going unvaccinated, showing once again why regional problems, even with regard to something as crucial as vaccine sharing, are so difficult to resolve.  Getting shots into the arms of resistant Americans, the 33% of US adults who haven’t even gotten one jab, is also proving difficult which is why Biden announced yesterday that this phase of his vaccine campaign will involve home delivery, Grubhub for shots. And parts of the country, particularly red states and counties really need to stick out their arms as their reticence is allowing the Delta variant to run amuck so much so that Missouri is now running short of ventilators.  A sadly familiar story.               

Perks

First of Many?  Neither the Former Guy nor his kids were charged with anything yesterday but that doesn’t mean that they should be resting easily as their company was charged with running a 15 year scheme to help its executives, note the plural, evade income taxes by compensating them with valuable fringe benefits that were hidden from authorities. The same shenanigans also facilitated the company’s avoidance of payroll taxes. As part of the scheme, one of those executives, CFO Allen Weisselberg, is accused of avoiding taxes on $1.7 million in perks that should have been reported as income.  He now faces grand larceny, tax fraud and a bunch of other charges. It wasn’t just that Weisselberg received and didn’t pay any taxes on several Mercedes, apartments and private school tuition, and got company help in claiming that he was no longer a NYS resident, he also kept and then “edited” a ledger documenting the value of those perks so that they could be used to offset his taxable pay. The FG and sons Junior and Eric don’t deny that Weisselberg received all those unreported benefits which would be hard to do since we know that the FG signed the rather substantial tuition checks, rather their defense is that all rich guys do the same or would do the same if they could get away with it. Granted a lot of rich people who own large private companies probably do engage in questionable financial practices, but most of them would know better than to risk exposing their financial finagling to the public eye by running for office.  At first blush the charges against Weisselberg and the FG’s company appeared someone disappointing because who among us weren’t hoping to hear that a full library of legal tomes had been thrown at the FG and his spawn, but by the end of the day officials including NY Attorney General Tish James said that yesterday’s indictments were just the beginning, that there’s more to come, for fraud and the like, and that more executives including possibly those like Ivanka who received questionable consulting fees and who seems to understand that staying away from the nightly Fox shows is a good idea, might be next. That’s Ivanka who allegedly lied about her involvement in a case focused on Inauguration spending.   As to the FG, we know he’s concerned because he’s now saying that though he won’t tell us, he's made a decision on whether or not to run again in 2024.  Whether he’s made that decision may be irrelevant, at least for now, he’s just calculating that implying that he’s a candidate adds credence to his claims that he’s done nothing anyone else in his position wouldn’t have done and that he’s only being targeted because he’s running again. Of course if, as he also claims, he’s still president and will be back in the Oval office by August, that would be his third term.

The Supremes:  As usual the Supreme Court saved its worst for last.  Yesterday before heading out for a summer of fun in the sun, SCOTUS released two more decisions proving that while they might not care a whole lot about the bathroom preferences of transgender youth the conservative majority is all in on allowing states to make it more difficult for people to vote and feel that it remains essential for the super rich, especially those politically active right wingers to have their privacy protected when making donations to charities and by extension to political organizations because more dark money is what we all need?  With regard to voting rights, the Court further chipped away at the Voting Rights Act by saying that it was okay for Arizona to have laws that effectively discriminate against minorities because if those folks really wanted to vote they’d figure out a way to do so even if all drop boxes are removed and there are few if any voting locations on Native American reservations.  That decision will make it a lot harder for the Merrick Garland led Justice Department to unwind all those voter suppression laws being passed around the country and put more pressure on those Democratic Senators who continue to defend the filibuster. One other thing, despite hopes of many who want to make sure that Biden gets to seat his replacement,  Justice Stephen Breyer did not announce his retirement.

Political Gamesmanship:  Speaker Pelosi announced her appointments to the new select committee on the events of January 6.  The committee will be chaired by Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson and will include Democrats Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin, Elaine Luria and ….. Republican Liz Cheney.  Liz Cheney’s inclusion was a surprise to GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who reportedly had warned his crowd that accepting a Pelosi appointment to the committee would result in the loss of their committee assignments, that’s McCarthy who still hasn’t punished Paul Gosar for fundraising with Nazi sympathizers.  Cheney’s acceptance of the appointment is a win for Pelosi, and an indication that Liz is doubling down on her principles.  Cheney is still as conservative as they come, but she is all in on the fight against Trumpism.  McCarthy still won’t say if he plans to appoint any Republicans to the committee.

Viral Musings:  The Delta variant is causing a 10% uptick in cases particularly affecting those parts of the country, mostly red states and counties, where vaccination rates are low.  Overall, 66% of adults have received at least one shot, short of the 70% that Biden hoped to see at least partially vaccinated by July 4^th.  As of Monday, 20 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico had or were projected to have reached the 70% target.  No surprise that most of those states are coastal and in the Northeast. The states with the lowest percentage jabbed are Mississippi, Louisiana and Idaho. The good news for those who received the J & J shot is that based on as yet unpublished study the company reports that its shot is holding its own against Delta, it’s not clear if that means that it is preventing disease altogether or if it is preventing severe disease so it may still be too early to say whether or not J & J recipients would benefit from another jab.

Happy Fourth!

Free Cosby? 

Theater of the Absurd:  Yesterday, a judge in California denied Britney Spears’ request that her father be removed as her co-conservator, bad news for the sometimes erratic pop star who shaved her head and got married impulsively in Las Vegas but has never been convicted or even accused of any crimes.  Bill Cosby who admitted in a civil case to dosing women with quaaludes to in order to have nonconsensual sex with them, evidence that was used against him in his criminal trial, had a far better day.  Cosby was released from jail after the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned his sexual assault conviction over a technicality, ruling that due to a “non-prosecution agreement” with a previous prosecutor that had “induced” him to cooperate in a related case he should not have been charged in the first place. Perhaps because who really cares about the fifty women he drugged and then assaulted the court also ruled that he could not be retried.  To be clear, the court didn’t say that Cosby wasn’t a despicable sexual predator, they just decided that his quaalude admission shouldn’t have been used against him. It should surprise no one that the previous prosecutor who agreed to that “non-prosecution agreement” because he didn’t think he could get a criminal conviction was Bruce Castor, the much ridiculed lawyer who defended the Former Guy in his second impeachment trial, the defense that a below average monkey could have won given that no one ever expected enough Republican Senators would vote to convict.  Taking a page from the FG’s playbook,  Cosby who never showed any remorse for his actions, flashed a victory sign as he returned to his suburban Philadelphia home. His TV wife, Phylicia Rashad, stepped into a huge pile of sh-t when she celebrated his release by tweeting “FINALLY!!!! A terrible wrong is being righted - a miscarriage of justice is corrected!" Though Rashad tried to walk back her tweet with a subsequent one that affirmed her support for victims of sexual abuse, it can’t easily be forgotten which explains why Howard University where Rashad serves as Dean released a statement that her initial tweet “lacked sensitivity towards survivors of sexual assault.”  You think?    

Indictment Day: In other legal news, late yesterday several media outlets reported that the Manhattan District Attorney and the New York Attorney General obtained indictments against the Trump Organization and its CFO Allen Weisselberg.  Those indictments which  relate to unreported compensation, things like free luxury apartments, tuition and the like, are expected to be unsealed in court this afternoon at 2 PM.  To be clear, assuming the reports are correct, neither the FG nor any of his family members were indicted, at least so far.  The widely held view is that Weisselberg who is scheduled to show up in court today was indicted because he refused to play ball with prosecutors who still hope to pressure him into cooperating.  Today’s charges are probably just the prosecutor’s opening barrage because if they don’t have more, the FG could emerge relatively unscathed, maybe even more empowered, from what he is continues to call just more of that witch hunt being waged against him by various and sundry disgruntled Democrats from the woefully inept state and city that can’t even conduct elections.  He does have a point about NYC and it’s Board of Elections which yesterday released corrected preliminary results of the city’s Mayoralty contest.  Unlike the first report, this one does not include any test ballots but like the previous one it shows Eric Adams in the lead by about 2 points with Kathryn Garcia in second place. Over 120,000 absentee ballots have not yet been counted, their inclusion could upturn the results in more ways than one.  Not only is it possible that Garcia could overtake Adams, emerging as the next Mayor but it’s also possible, though unlikely, that Maya Wiley who Garcia barely edged out for second place after the ranked choice voting was computed could emerge on top.  Stay posted.

Politics Unusual:  Yesterday the House voted to create a select committee to investigate the January 6^th insurrection.  Only two Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed the aisle to  join with the Democrats to create the committee.  It’s not clear yet if Speaker Pelosi will ask either of them to sit on the committee but if she does Kinzinger appears interested in doing so.  For her part Cheney released a statement saying that she would have much preferred a bipartisan commission but with that choice no longer on the table she felt she had to vote for the select committee because insurrections can’t be ignored.  She pointed out that 34 of her Republican House colleagues had also voted for the bipartisan commission, her way of noting how they had all skulked away for this vote.  One of those skulkers, GOP Leader Qevin McCarthy did do something yesterday.  He tasked Trump acolyte Congressman Devin Nunes with looking into Tucker Carlson’s assertions that he is being stalked by the NSA because when Tucker speaks Qevin jumps, high.  And isn’t it more important to make Tucker happy than to get to the bottom of the insurrerction?  That’s the attack that came so close to doing away with VP Pence that it’s reported that one of his protectors shot insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt while she was trying to break in to the Capitol.