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.