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.