Drain Circling

Tipping Points:  There were 149,788 new coronavirus cases and 668 related deaths in the US yesterday; so much for that low disease summer that we all thought the vaccines would bring us. The spike in cases is largely due to the hyper contagious Delta variant running amok, mostly but not entirely through the unvaccinated population which, despite the US finally making Biden’s 70% of all adults with at least one shot goal, is still finding plenty of people to infect including children everywhere and those adults who still refuse to get vaccinated.  To convince more of the unvaccinated adults to get with the program, NYC announced that it will be requiring proof of vaccination for entry to restaurants, fitness centers and indoor venues. NYC is not along, a number of corporations around the country are now requiring their employees to get jabbed or else.  Notably Tyson Foods, hardly a woke entity, is requiring its 120,000 US workforce to get vaccinated, a policy that Disney put in place for its salaried and non-union hourly employees last week.  The number of corporations pushing mandates for employees is growing and is likely to grow even more after Labor Day, especially if as expected the Pfizer’s Emergency Use Authorization is upgraded to a full one with Moderna’s and J & J’s expected to follow.   The vaccine mandates have got to be annoying wannabee president, flailing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who continues to insist that no one should be shamed for not getting vaccinated and that no one should mandate that children wear masks in school if their foolish parents don’t say they should.  His state accounted for one third of yesterday’s US coronavirus new case count.  President Biden called for DeSantis to get with the program on COVID, and Floridians, even some Republican ones, appear to get that DeSantis’ approach to coronavirus mitigation is woefully lacking as a new poll shows him in a statistical tie with former Governor Charlie Crist, one of those vying for the Democratic nomination.  Florida polls are notoriously inaccurate and the gubernatorial election is a year away but that’s a significant decline for DeSantis.  Talking about governors NY’s one time COVID hero Andrew Cuomo appears to be circling the drain.  Yesterday, NY Attorney General Latisha James announced the results of her investigation into those sexual harassment allegations against him. To put it mildly the conclusions were not good and just about everyone including Biden who to date has stayed away from commenting on Cuomo’s troubles is now calling for him to resign.  Cuomo, of course, continues to insist that he’s just an irrepressible hugger, a point he tried to prove by showing what was clearly a waiting in the wings video of his and other’s hugs.  Unfortunately for him, that video and all of his protestations are unlikely to save him.  Like Florida, NY has a gubernatorial election coming up in 2022 and Democrats need a viable candidate or else the state will be run by one of those aspiring Republican candidates, someone like Trump supporter Lee Zeldin or maybe even Andrew Giuliani. Even though a number of New Yorkers would probably still vote for Cuomo, he’s unlikely to be on that ticket because he appears to have lost the support of state Democratic leadership who is likely to start moving to impeach him if he doesn’t resign first.   

Politics Unusual:  The Senate unanimously voted to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the officers of the US Capitol Police and the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department for their heroic efforts pushing back at the January 6th insurrectionists.  Unfortunately that delayed appreciation came too late for two of the beleaguered defenders, Kyle DeFreytag and Gunther Hashida, who committed suicide this week.  While it’s impossible to know exactly why they did what they did, it’s more than fair to assume that their mental state was hardly helped by the right wing echo chamber’s insistence that the insurrectionists were nice tourists who were just at the Capitol to hug the officers.  Speaking of one of those “huggers” the Former Guy is now 1 for 2.  Last week, his favored candidate lost a run off for a Texas Congressional seat, leading many pundits to say that his magic was waning but maybe their reports of his end were premature as last night his candidate won a special election in a mostly red Ohio district.  In another race, in Ohio’s heavily blue Columbus area, the Hillary Clinton/Jim Clyburn endorsed moderate Shontel Brown comfortably defeated the Bernie Sanders/Squad endorsed candidate Nina Turner for the seat vacated by Marcia Flood who left Congress to serve as Biden’s Housing Secretary. It turns out that Turner’s criticism of Biden’s not left enough policies as well as memories of how she treated Clinton didn’t go over with the mainstream. That said, not all squad members had a bad day.  One of the newest Congresswoman Cori Bush,  chalked up a notable victory yesterday.  Bush who was once homeless had been sleeping outside of the Capitol to protest the end of the eviction freeze. As a result of a combination of Speaker Pelosi’s insider efforts and Bush keeping the issue front and center,  Biden got the CDC to extend the federal eviction moratorium in most areas of the country for two more months, that is assuming that the Supreme Court which isn’t all that supportive doesn’t weigh in to tank those plans. Getting back to the Former Guy, would it surprise you to learn that though he’s sitting on a $100 million war chest, funded largely by members of his base who contributed thinking that they would be funding his battle against the “steal,” he’s hasn’t spent money on those election legal fights or Rudy Giuliani’s legal bills but has been using the funds on his personal legal expenses and for his political action committee staff.  And though he did send a last minute infusion to his losing Texas candidate, he mostly hasn’t been contributing to others because after all grifters got to grift.  By the way, according to The New Yorker, those election steel legal fights, most notably the long sham audit in Maricopa County is being funded by a number of right wing Republican entities including Overstock founder Patrick Byrne who was one of Russian Sparrow Maria Butina’s boyfriends and the Heritage Foundation, the holier than thou group that also tees up Conservative nominees for the Supreme Court.  The FG is only one of the threats to the continuation of Democracy as we know it.