Continuing Peril

Perilous Times:  The more things change, the more they stay the same so Congressional Democrats are still grappling with how to keep the government funded and raise the debt limit while also passing their build back better infrastructure bills.  Republicans are still refusing to help raise the debt limit, a largely pointless and arcane provision but one that is needed to fund the tax cuts and expenditures they voted for when the FG was in office.  And of course that FG continues to be nefarious.  He spent the weekend claiming that the Arizona Cyber Ninja faux audit proved he won Arizona even though it actually did just the opposite while also finding a few more Biden votes; he campaigned in Georgia alongside his preferred Senate candidate, alleged wife beater/former football star Herschel Walker; and he accidentally, or intentionally, endorsed Democrat Stacey Abrams by trashing Georgia’s Governor Brian Kemp for failing to respond to his request to overturn the state’s election results, an admission against his own interest given that he’s being investigated for trying to tamper with Georgia’s election.  His behavior would be laughable if it wasn’t so effective with his base and if the Republican party, including those who ought to know better, like South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham weren’t out there saying that he should run again in 2024, something the FG says he’ll do unless his doctors tell him otherwise, and others like Texas’s embattled Governor Abbott wasn’t so quick to accede to his demand for an audit of their 2020 election results.  Of course that Texas audit will focus on the large urban Democratic counties, not the rest of the state.  Not to be outdone, Pennsylvania Republicans are trying to conduct a “forensic” audit of their state’s results too, demanding access to personal voter data that they shouldn’t be allowed access to.  The bottom line is that the FG was and is dangerous.  Ignore him at your own peril.

Viral Musings:  Over the weekend Pfizer CEO Bourla said that his company would be submitting its data for the vaccine for 5 to 11 year old set to the FDA in a matter of days making shots by Halloween a real possibility.  Like the adult shot, the children’s protocol will, at least initially, entail two jabs but their dose will be about one third of that given to the rest of us.  Yesterday, once again setting an example for the rest of us, President Biden got his Pfizer booster in front of the cameras, while assuring us that there are plenty of shots to go around, for both boosters and those finally stepping up to get their first shots.  Though the media is full of stories about workers quitting their jobs to protest vaccine mandates the reality is that where mandates are imposed, vaccine rates rise.  NYC’s mandate for teachers and other education staff to get jabbed was temporarily halted but then reinstated yesterday after a US Circuit Court three judge panel said it could move forward.  That decision is likely to be appealed but in the meantime, school employees have until Friday to get their first jab.  Given how many of their colleagues have suffered and or died from COVID, you’d think they’d be running to get their shots, but sadly though many have been vaccinated, too many remain resistant.  It’s not just education staff, NYS Governor Hochul is preparing to call up the National Guard to fill in for those health care workers who refuse to get their jabs.  Doesn’t everyone want to be cared for by someone unvaccinated when seeking care??   On the booster front, there’s more data out of early booster country Israel. Two weeks after receiving their third dose, Israel’s over 60’s, the first group to receive the extra jab, were 11.3 times less likely to become infected with the contagious/predominant Delta variant that’s been causing so much trouble.  Worth mentioning, the entire Brazil UN delegation is now in quarantine as a fourth member of their squad has tested COVID positive.  The quarantined included President Bolsonaro who has already had a bout of COVID and was never vaccinated.  In case you missed it, check out the NY Times article on COVID vaccination and COVID incidence by political affiliation, no surprise but still stunning how people in “red” counties are shunning vaccines and getting sick.  Apparently getting sick and dying is preferable to trying to stay healthy and alive.  Who knew?  Though COVID cases do appear to be dropping a bit, with more than 2000 deaths per day, and 691K dead, we will probably cross above 700k deaths within the week.  

Other News: Though Pensacola Congressman Matt Gaetz remains out and about, he may know something that we don’t about his future as he has retained a high priced team of sex crime lawyers. On the legal front FG loyalist Sydney Powell said that the point of the January 6 insurrection was to get the election into the hands of the Supreme Court Justice Alito so that he could stop the certification of the electoral college votes.  She says that no one ever expected Speaker Pelosi to reconvene the House later that night.  She’s crazy, and there’s no indication that Alito knew he was part of the coup plan but still there are probably others, like the FG, who bought into that strategy. As to some of the crazies, Mike Lindell is back to advertising on Fox but don’t expect to see Rudy Giuliani there anytime soon as Fox higher ups have banned him over concerns that his presence and his wackadoodle assertions are upping their legal exposure.  That from the company that allows fish stick heir Tucker Carlson to push vaccine lies.

 

 

Still a Loser

Good, Bad and Ugly:  Good news, we’re friends with France again. President Biden and President Macron had their make-up call and France is sending its ambassador back to Washington.  Bad news, the mess at the border is bad.  Those pictures of Border Control agents whipping Haitian migrants with reins aren’t going to disappear though the offending agents are off border duty for now and have had their horseback riding privileges suspended, at least along the border where the Haitians are crossing.  The debt ceiling continues to loom with all those Republicans who had no problem running up expenditures while cutting taxes during the FG’s administration continuing to insist that default is an option even though they, or at least most of them, and a number of former Treasury Secretaries from both sides of the aisle who have contacted them, know it isn’t.  Late yesterday, a draft of the Cyber Ninjas audit report of Maricopa County, Arizona’s 2020 presidential results made its way into the hands of the press.  Guess what, it turns out that the FG is still a loser, in fact, the Ninjas found some additional Biden votes and fewer FG votes.  The final report which may or may not be released today still claims fraud and the like and makes recommendations for how to make it more difficult for likely Democratic voters to vote, of course it does.  Already the Twitterverse is full of complaints about the audit.  Expect the FG to issue a few more of his Twitter substitute statements slamming the Ninjas.  Curiously, Texas, where Republicans did better than expected in 2020, is now planning to embark upon a similar audit, and no that doesn’t make any sense at all but what makes sense these days anyway?  The FG who appears to have replaced a number of his “name” lawyers with a local Bedminster attorney named Alina Habba maybe because he’d grown tired of paying their rates and figures his new less experienced attorney will cost less is also upset about the subpoenas that the January 6 Select Committee issued for a few of his nearest and dearest aides and friends.  Among the subpoenaed are Steve Bannon, Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino and Kash Patel all of whom were with him during the lead up to the Capitol onslaught.  According to the new Woodward/Costa book Peril, days before the insurrection Bannon told the FG that “we're going to bury Biden on January 6th, f--king bury him” and admitted that he told the FG that they needed to “kill” the Biden presidency.  For his part, then Chief of Staff Meadows had his fingers in a lot of what was happening too, he made some calls to try to upturn the Georgia results, attempted to get loyalist Kash Patel who ultimately ended up as the Chief of Staff to Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, placed in a key job at the CIA, only failing because then CIA head Haspel threatened to resign. Prior to joining the FG administration Patel worked for and engaged in questionable behavior for Republican Congressman Devon Nunes, another FG loyalist.  The FG has been a particularly prolific issuer of statements this week, he’s slammed “RINO” former President Bush over his endorsement of his arch enemy Liz Cheney, he’s railed at the “lamestream press” for calling his ongoing election claims “baseless and unproven” and he’s attacked two allies, Senators Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham saying that they “should be ashamed of themselves for not putting up the fight necessary to win” because they failed to endorse his six point plan to upturn the election results. Despite the FG’s insanity, he appears to be outpacing Biden in the polls.  Yikes.     

Viral Musings:   You’d be excused if you weren’t quite sure whether or not you qualify for a COVID vaccine booster shot yet because the qualifier list which had contracted during the day expanded again after midnight after CDC Director Walensky added healthcare workers and other exposed workers back onto the list.  Boosters, or at this point Pfizer boosters, will be made available to that group plus those 65 and older, nursing home residents and those 50 to 64 with risky underlying health problems.  The extra dose would be given to those at least six months past their last Pfizer shot. More details are expected during the day but that list of underlying health problems is expected to be quite broad meaning a lot of people will qualify.  Those who received Moderna or J & J shots will qualify as soon as their booster shots go through the FDA approval process.  Worth noting that quite a few people have been getting Moderna boosters by certifying that they “need” a booster, and as far as I can tell, nothing has been done to close that possibility. Stay posted because things keep changing.

And….:  Despite the best efforts of a number on the left, the House passed funding for Israel’s Iron Dome yesterday by 420 – 9.  The 9 naysayers included 8 Democrats and 1 Republican.  Author Hillbilly JD Vance who is running for the Ohio Republican Senate nomination to replace outgoing Republican Rob Portman against a field that also includes frequent candidate Josh Mandel reiterated his support for the Texas abortion law by calling rape and incest inconvenient.  Vance’s campaign has gotten about $10 million from right wing tech guy Peter Thiel.  In case you are wondering, the very anti-immigrant Mandel, a grandchild of immigrants, is also anti-abortion.  Remember Maria Butina, the Russian red sparrow.  She just failed to win her bid to serve as a representative from Siberia in the Russian Duma, notable because she had Putin’s support and he, of course, won bigly.  She also had the financial backing of former Overstock CEO/conspiracist Patrick Byrne, one of her US boyfriends.  To put it mildly she wasn’t pleased.   

Enjoy the weekend.

Stay safe.      

 

 

Relentless

Viral Musings: As every New Yorker who follows traffic gridlocks knows, late September is when international leaders come to the city for the UN’s annual meeting.  This year the meetings are once again being held in person which means hundreds of possibly unvaccinated dignitaries are interacting with each other and roaming the streets of New York because though the UN participants are supposed to be vaccinated, officials are relying on an honor system rather than trying to confirm status.  One of those leaders, Brazil’s Bolsonaro isn’t even pretending to be vaxxed.  An adherent to the Rand Paul philosophy, he says that he’s good to go because he’s already had COVID.  His country’s health minister, a member of Bolsonaro’s entourage, has now tested positive and is in quarantine.  The minister says that his is a breakthrough case, apparently he received one of the Chinese vaccines. Note to all, if you run into any other members of the Brazil delegation or anyone they were seen sharing pizza with, keep your distance.  The presence of all those possibly positive and/or unvaxxed attendees explains why President Biden returned quickly to Washington DC after delivering his speech to the General Assembly.  Getting back to COVID, while still high the number of US daily cases appears to be finally “dipping” below 130,000.  Unfortunately, daily deaths, a lagging indicator, are still running above 2000.  Crossing through 675,000, the US COVID death count now exceeds that of the previous winner, the deadly 1918 influenza epidemic.  On the vaccine front, we’re still waiting for the official announcement from the CDC.  They are due to meet today and tomorrow before announcing the details of the much awaited booster plan.  Yesterday J & J released results from their not yet reviewed studies showing that while their one jab shot has been about 80% effective at preventing hospitalizations, a second jab raises its effectiveness to 94%.  Tennessee, one of the red states where inadequate mitigation is a thing, appears to be taking a page from Florida Governor DeSantis’ how horrible can you get playbook.  They are now recommending that scarce monoclonal antibody treatments only be used on the unvaccinated.  As to DeSantis, he appears to have found a new state Surgeon General, one who isn’t all that into either vaccines or masks.  Just what Florida needs.

Legal Update:  The Former Guy is now suing his niece Mary, the NY Times and its reporters over their in depth analysis of the tax information that she provided the paper. Mary, not one to mince words, responded by calling him a “f—king loser.” The  loser may have a few other things to explain, as, based on documents filed in a defamation lawsuit from a former employee of Dominion Voting Machines,  the NY Times reported that officials working for his reelection campaign were aware that the claims that the Dominion machines were flipping votes from the FG to Biden that were pushed by him and his crack- a-jack legal team were baseless not that any of that stopped anyone named Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell or Mike Lindell from pushing those claims. Regarding the 2020 election, Peril, the new tome written by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa includes a copy of a six point plan authored by John Eastman, another one of the FG’s lawyers.  The Eastman memo provided a game plan for how VP Pence could throw out the official 2020 election results and announce that the FG had won reelection, democracy be damned.  The plan which the FG embraced was so nuts that loyalist Senators Mike Lee and Lindsey Graham rejected it. Worth noting, Eastman, a conservative darling, previously argued that Kamala Harris could not be the VP, something to do with questioning her citizenship because her parents were immigrants.  In other news, while the FG crowd would prefer that everyone remain focused on the Democratic lawyer who was indicted last week for allegedly lying to the FBI, an accusation that might not go the distance, two GOP operatives, with long time Republican ties that include working for Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul,  have now been charged with funneling Russian money to the FG’s 2016 campaign.   And for good measure, Allen Weisselberg’s lawyers say that they expect a few more indictments will be handed down in his case; no one is suggesting at this point that any of the targeted share the FG’s name, though it is worth noting that son Eric who is scheduled to speak at a Q Anon anti-vaxx event seems to be having a bad week as Marc Mukasey, one of his lawyers quit yesterday.    

Other News:  The Democrats are still struggling to get their two part Build Back Better funding legislation passed.  Speaker Pelosi appears to be putting in a considerable amount of overtime engaging in serious arm twisting.  The debt ceiling looms. By a party vote, House Democrats passed a bill last night to fund the government through Dec. 3 and to suspend the nation's borrowing limit until the end of 2022, sending it to the Senate where Mitch and his Republicans who seem not to care that a national default would have dire economic consequences have vowed to block it because they can.  Members of the “squad” forced the funding of Israel’s Iron Dome out of the bill and though it will likely still get funded through another bill, that action probably just handed the Republicans another effective 2022 talking point.  On the abortion front, after a Texas doctor wrote an op-ed admitting to performing 6 week plus procedures in violation of the new Texas law he was sued; one of those suits comes from an Arkansas lawyer on house arrest another from a man in Chicago.  Neither of the plaintiffs seem to care much about abortions, the Arkansas lawyer may just want to cash in while the Chicago man says that he wants to see the law overturned and figured his would be a good test case.  Regardless of their motives, their suits mean that the Texas law will once again be challenged in court.  The Haitian migrant crisis is both tragic and ugly and for different reasons is fueling fury from both the right and left.  When an administration has to explain that the claim that whips are being used on migrants by Border Patrol agents isn’t  accurate because what looked like whips were “just” reins it’s a bigly problem.  Talking problems, there’s been a lot of press about the tragic drone attack that killed innocent Afghan civilians rather than the terrorists who killed so many at Kabul airport.  That event was tragic but sadly not a drone outlier as drone attacks all to frequently get the wrong target, which is one of the reasons that President Obama who authorized them quite often insisted on final sign off, a practice that the FG unwound by giving “trigger” authority back to the military.  As Biden said at the UN yesterday, it’s time to move from “relentless war” to “relentless diplomacy” if that’s even possible.         

Fried French

Not so Easy:  It turns out that being president is hard even when you’ve got lots of experience working the gears of government, something to do with Haitian migrant surges, a persistent pandemic, vaccine “hesitancy,” disgruntled allies, ending endless wars, a big tent party, an opponent who still insists he won and the like.  As to that pandemic, while the press is pushing the narrative that President Biden was out over his skis with his “booster for almost all” promise, it’s not all that clear that he was that far out.  True, the Pfizer’s booster shot won’t be approved for everyone six months out from their second but it will be made available to a fairly large group:  those 65 and over, those in high risk professions, and those with a rather long list of health issues, in other words almost all of the people who received their shots early in the vaccine roll out.  That’s a lot of people, the same group who would have been prioritized for appointments.  Additionally as time passes and Moderna and J & J get their approvals, its widely expected that the groups eligible to receive shots will grow as well.  On the ally front, the French appear to be truly peeved over the Australia nuclear sub deal, likely because of their embarrassment at losing out on what they hoped was a done deal for their equipment but also because of the revenue loss.  They’ve pulled their ambassador for now but it’s hard to believe that the situation won’t be resolved soon enough, we’ve had tiffs with the French before.  Does anyone remember when French fries were renamed freedom fries?  Those arguing that that the FG was more diplomatic and didn’t “offend” our allies as much when he was in charge probably are engaging in some selective memory loss because I seem to remember that his ongoing threats to pull the US out of NATO, his Ukraine games and his embrace of Putin left our European brethren quite shaken. 

Another Letter?  As to the FG, he still hasn’t given up his 2020 fight.  He actually sent a letter to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Friday.  Citing newly discovered “large scale voter fraud” he again insisted that Raffensperger decertify the 2020 election.  Worth remembering, that legal authorities in Georgia are currently investigating the FG’s earlier attempts to influence Raffensperger on this subject. The FG’s continued harping about election fraud would be funny if he still didn’t have such an outsize influence on the Republican party.  Though it’s unlikely he’ll succeed apparently he’s also trying to get Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell replaced with someone more loyal to his cause.  Apparently he’s miffed that McConnell is pushing back at his efforts to run less or possibly even unelectable candidates for Senate seats that the Republicans need to retain or gain in order to take back the Senate leadership.  States of immediate concern to both parties include Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona and even Alaska where the FG is backing Lisa Murkowski’s primary opponent. One piece of somewhat bright news is that Washington DC didn’t going up in flames this weekend as the heavily policed rally for the January insurrectionists turned into a big nothing despite the FG endorsing its purpose.  That said, it was truly moving but sad to see clips of those 670k white flags set out along the National Mall to memorialize those who’ve lost their lives to COVID, a group that includes far too many who didn’t get vaccinated for mostly irrational and unfathomable reasons. On the vaccine front, early this morning Pfizer that their vaccine is safe and effective for 5 to 11 year-olds bring vaccination closer for that important group.  Regarding the Washington DC corridor, time to focus on Virginia where Democrats are fighting to hold on to the governorship.  Voting starts this week for the November election between former Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe and Republican rich guy/FG fan/anti-reproductive rights candidate Glenn Youngkin. Polls are closer than you’d hope.

Politics as Usual:  The big tent Democrats continue to do what they do, disagree over everything they can because while the current Republican party is fairly awful, when it comes to unity they are much better than the Democrats even if that current unity is awfully despicable right now.  The final votes over both parts of Biden’s infrastructure plan are hung up over a disagreement about the size of the partisan reconciliation bill.  Over the weekend, once again wielding his outsize influence, Senator Joe Manchin suggested that the vote should be put off for a while, which would be especially problematic both because of optics and substance.  Obviously after a rough couple of weeks Biden needs the win but also because Mitch McConnell is on record saying that he won’t support the raising of the debt limit and Democrats may have to fold it into reconciliation bill to get it raised. Miserly Mitch is playing hardball over an issue that shouldn’t even exist, the debt limit is backward looking and as the rest of us know, if you charge stuff on your credit card, you have to pay the bill when it becomes due unless of course you think default is an option.  Because the Senate approved large expenditures and tax cuts during the joint reign of the FG and McConnell, the debt limit needs to be raised to bay that bill or else.  One other thing to watch, the Democrats have all lined up behind a voters rights bill, one that includes compromises proposed by Manchin.  He’s been trying to line up ten Republicans Senators to vote for the bill.  He’s probably not going to be able to get any Republican support which could, just maybe, mean that at some point he agrees to join his Democratic colleagues in modifying the dreaded filibuster just for voters rights, not for anything else.  One more thing that is likely to remain unresolvable for now, is immigration reform.  Late last night the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that Democrats can’t include it within their reconciliation bill.  Not surprising, but sad especially for those up in the air Dreamers.              

       

Going Nuclear

Potato, Potatoe:  So it turns out that former Vice President Dan Quayle who until now was mostly remembered for his very public misspelling of potato may well have saved our democracy when he told his fellow Indianan Mike Pence that not signing off on the results of the 2020 election was not a legitimate option.  Similarly, though he’s facing some strong criticism mostly from those on the right but even from a maybe not so surprisingly rigid Alexander Vindman,  Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, may have completely pushed his poor decision to appear by the FG’s side in military fatigues the day that the mango one marched across Lafayette Square for a staged photo op after tear gas and rubber bullets were used on peaceful protesters, out of the first paragraph of his eventual obituary.  According to Peril, the about to be published book joint co-authored by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa, Milley reached out to Chinese authorities before the election and again after the January 6^th insurrection to assure them that the FG wasn’t planning a “wag the dog” attack despite their fears that he might be.  By the way it appears that Milley wasn’t acting on his own, before he was fired Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper shared the same concern and authorized providing reassurances to the Chinese.  It also appears that Milley consulted with others in the military hierarchy before making his calls so while some on the right including the usual cast of presidential wannabees like Josh Hawley and up for reelection Senators like Marco Rubio are trying to make this an insubordination/treason narrative, the real story is that a number of high placed military officials were so concerned that the FG would act irrationally and perhaps even trigger a nuclear war that they felt compelled to take action to rein him in. As to insurrectionists, a few hundred or more are enroute to Washington DC  to participate in a “Justice for J6 rally,” an event in support of those nice tourists caught breaking into the Capitol, threatening Mike Pence, Speaker Pelosi and the rest of Congress while also beating up/killing some Capitol defenders.  The Capitol and DC police as well as the National Guard are on high alert and the area around the Capitol is once again surrounded by fencing.  Early yesterday the media reported that the FG was distancing himself from the rally thinking it was a set up to make him look even worse than we know he is but those reports were premature as late yesterday he proclaimed “Our hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly” in connection with the attack, which he referred to as a “protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.” 

 

Not Gone, Not Forgotten: The bottom line, is that the FG was as dangerous a president as we though he was, he really was doing his utmost to stay in office despite his election loss and he’s still here and continues to wield an outsized influence over the Republican party.  To that end, Ohio Congressman Anthony Gonzales, one of the ten Republicans who voted for impeachment announced yesterday that he would not be running for reelection.  While he said that he thought he stood a reasonable chance of winning a tough primary challenge from the right he also said that the “current state of our politics, especially many of the toxic dynamics inside our own party” was a significant factor in his decision. We did learn this week that the FG’s magic only goes so far.  Despite his support of the efforts to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom, Californians voted overwhelming, by a margin of around 30%,  to keep Newsom in office.  Despite his poor decision to dine in a fancy restaurant during the height of the pandemic Newsom’s efforts to combat COVID are pretty much supported by the California electorate likely because the state is doing comparatively well.  Larry Elder, the FG supported candidate to replace Newsom, won the large field of wannabee Governor replacements with 42% of the vote but that number was deceptively high as a large number of those who voted against the recall did not bother to vote for a replacement candidate. Some other factoids: the recall cost $276 million, Caitlyn Jenner received about 1% of the vote and Newsom will be up for reelection next year.   

 

Viral Musings:  COVID continues to race through the unvaccinated. About 670,000, one in 500 Americans, have now died of COVID.   Idaho, one of those states with low vaccination rates and weak mitigation policies has declared a statewide hospital resource emergency because it turns out that not even trying to take the virus seriously has consequences.  Unfortunately those consequences go beyond Idaho, as neighboring states are now being asked to help. The FDA is due to vote on the much awaited booster decision today.  Though the decision to proceed is not as sure a thing as the Biden administration has made it out to be, data presented by Pfizer and Israel’s Ministry of Health show rather convincingly, at least convincingly to a lot of professionals, that the effectiveness of the vaccine in early recipients is waning and does benefit from a boost. Moderna whose shots starting going into arms later than Pfizer’s, says it’s shots are starting to wane too so expect that if a Pfizer booster is approved, a Moderna one will follow shortly after.  Odds are that the FDA will at the very least approve boosters shots for those over 60 and maybe even to others today.  On the kid front, Pfizer continues to indicate that they are on schedule to present their test results by month’s end.  And because he really is cruel and driven by his own ambitions, Florida’s Governor DeSantis continues to fight facemask mandates.  His strategy of focusing on monoclonal antibody treatments rather than mitigation may have just hit a snag as the Biden administration is now exerting control over the distribution of what has become a dwindling supply due to the overreliance of DeSantis style policies.  While manufacturing is ramped up they are trying to more equitably distribute the monoclonals across the country. Idiocy has consequences. 

 

Other News:  Last night Robert Durham, the US Attorney holdover from the FG/Barr era got an indictment against Michael Sussmann, a respected cyber lawyer and one time Justice Department professional.  The allegation is that Sussman lied about his clients when he provided information to the FBI about possible communication between FG company servers and Alfa Bank, a Kremlin linked financial institution. Those links were never proven.  Durham asserts that Sussman failed to mention that he was being paid by others including Hillary Clinton at the time that he reported his concerns to the FBI. Given that the FG position is that Michael Flynn was unjustly prosecuted for some serious, proven lying about promises to the Russians it seems highly political to go after Sussmann for this, particularly since the evidence that he actually lied doesn’t seem all that provable. The Wall Street Journal says that this is as far as Durham is going to go, that he has no other criminal indictments in the works.  Seems like a lot of trouble for so little output. By the way, the statue of limitations on this alleged crime was due to expire which is why the indictment had to be handed down this week.  In other legal news a Federal Judge denied the FG’s request to stop E Jean Caroll’s lawsuit against him.  A reminder, she’s accused the FG of rape, he called her out as a liar and she’s suing for defamation and may or may not have DNA evidence proving the rape.  The French are mad at us because together with the Brits we reached  an agreement with the Aussies to provide them with nuclear submarines to bolster their position vis a vis the Chinese.  The French are miffed because they were out of the loop and because they hoped to reach a lucrative agreement to provide their equipment. Expect some make up canoodling to follow. Canoodling is also going on among Biden and his crowd, part of an effort to get legislation passed.  Stay posted.

  

Foul Spirits

Viral Musings:  Another week and the crazy goes on. New COVID cases and deaths remain high and another one of those anti vax conservative radio show hosts, a Coloradan named Bob Enyart, died yesterday joining the growing list of vocal vax deniers who should have known better but didn’t.  It’s not just conservative radio show hosts who decry vaccines, rapper Nicki Minaj turned down one of those coveted invitations to the Met Gala, refusing to meet its mandatory vaccination requirement.  In a series of tweets that immediately went viral she said that she might get vaccinated someday but only after she completes her own independent “research,” adding that her Trinidadian cousin’s friend got the vaccine and “became impotent” although the gruesome symptoms she described sounded a lot more like those associated with syphilis or some other STD rather than a vaccination side effect which probably explains why, according to Minaj, her cousin’s friend’s fiancée dumped him. Even those who don’t follow Twitter or rap are now up on Minaj’s TMI assertion as fish stick scion Tucker Carlson who is probably vaccinated but would never admit it repeated the icky “side effect” on his nightly show. By the way though Ivanka and Jared are both vaccinated, neither were at last night’s Gala, something about their invitations being lost in the mail but sister in law Karlie Kloss was there looking quite chic.  In other COVID news, it appears that Florida Governor DeSantis who early on was accused of directing then scarce vaccine supplies to rich Republican donors and condo communities is now leaning anti vax.  While slamming President Biden’s vaccine mandates he lent credence to the “mRNA vaccines change your DNA myth” being propagated by the anti-vax conspiracy set, anything to deflect from the miserable job that he’s doing in his state and his ongoing battle against face masking. Then there’s Mississippi Governor Tate Reeve who echoing many other Republican governors called vaccine mandates tyrannical, ignoring that his state has some of the most inclusive vaccine mandates for virtually all other contagious diseases.  His tyranny nonsense brings him in line with GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy, apparently a fan of polio, who spent his weekend tweeting “No Vaccine Mandates.”  All that aside, if former FDA commissioner, current Pfizer board member Scott Gottlieb is right, Pfizer’s vaccine for the 5 to 11 year old set which will be a lower dose than the one’s adults and tweens have been receiving, will be approved  to go into arms early in November. Pfizer’s booster for adults is still expected to be approved by September 20 with Moderna’s and J & Js to follow.  Some, most notably those who recently departed the FDA, believe it’s unnecessary for most but their conclusions appear to be largely based on concerns about giving third shots to Americans while the third world goes without.  To be fair, that is a concern but the issue appears to be one of distribution capability rather than the availability of supply.

California Dreamin’:  It’s election day in California.  Voters are determining whether Governor Gavin Newsom should be recalled or allowed to stick around for the rest of his term.  It’s a two part vote.  First voters vote on whether or not Newsom should be recalled.  Then they pick from one of the many candidates running to replace him.  If a majority of those who actually vote want Newsom kicked to the curb then the candidate who receives the most votes becomes the new governor even if that candidate fails to get a majority of the votes.  The leading “replacement” contender appears to be Larry Elder another one of those anti vax conservative radio show hosts, albeit one who is still alive.  In addition to being anti-vax, Elder, who is Black, doesn’t believe that there is such a thing as systemic racism, is against gun control and opposes minimum wage requirements.  Ordinarily a candidate like Elder would stand no chance in winning the governorship in heavily Democratic California but he doesn’t need a majority to win, if voters vote to remove Newsom, an outcome that right now appears unlikely, Elder only needs more votes than the other candidates and right now he leads the large replacement field with about 24% of the vote.  Elder is already claiming election fraud and refuses to say that he will concede if he loses.  Sound familiar?  Get used to that because it appears it will be the Republican strategy going forward. Another one of those things that we can hold the FG responsible for.  That’s the FG who spent his weekend providing commentary at the very short Evander Holyfield-Vitor Belfort fight before going on to speak at a 9.11 Moonies/Unification Church event.  His words, not worth repeating, contrasted markedly from those of former President Bush who cast shade on the FG and his crowd this weekend, saying “we have seen growing evidence that the dangers to our country can come not only across borders, but from violence that gathers within. There is little cultural overlap between violent extremists abroad and violent extremists at home. But in their disdain for pluralism, in their disregard for human life, in their determination to defile national symbols, they are children of the same foul spirit.”

And More:  It’s fair to say that the withdrawal from Afghanistan was ugly, though it’s probably also fair to say that it was always going to be challenging and that the only way to avoid the withdrawal mess was to stay there indefinitely but nuance and balance isn’t a thing in Congress, on either side, so yesterday Republicans skewered Secretary of State Blinken about it.  And because irony is not dead, appearing at the University of Louisville McConnell Center Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected claims that decisions by the Supreme Court are driven by political views adding that the Justices are not political hacks.  Barrett who recently helped end abortions in Texas made that statement with Senator Mitch McConnell, who prides himself on only appointing said hacks to the Court, sitting by her side looking on with a smirk. Meantime, liberal Justice Stephen Breyer appears to be determined to wait until Republicans regain control before leaving the Court.  In other news, we’ll be hitting the debt ceiling soon and McConnell who relied on Democrats to raise the ceiling when he was in control of the Senate says he won’t help them do so.   

 

Twenty Years

Taking No Prisoners:  President Biden has moved into the take no prisoners stage of the battle against COVID and the covidiot set.  Yesterday, he announced a series of new provisions include mandates for federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated or else.  The mandates affect those working in Medicare and Medicaid funded health care facilities too. Biden also announced that the government would be teaming with Walmart, Amazon and Kroger to expand the availability of affordable, at cost COVID tests.  His objective is to protect the vaccinated and the vulnerable from the idiocy of the unvaccinated. Los Angeles gets it, their school system followed by announcing that all students 12 or over will have to be vaccinated, a mandate that is likely to spread to other school districts.  Of course a number of political idiots, including some of Republican governors with presidential ambitions and pundits who know better responded by attacking the “fascist” directives because despite the fact that the public supports mandates they see this as a wedge issue on steroids even though many of them are vaccinated and in the case of Fox, their companies already have mandates in place.  As to one of those other wedge issues, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Justice Department announced that they are suing Texas over their new abortion ban law asserting that the law effectively denies women the right to obtain their constitutionally protected right to abortion.  Again, reproductive rights, including the right to obtain an abortion, are popular with a majority of the country but provide great fodder for those with higher political ambitions because of the energy of the anti-abortion set.  As to Afghanaistan, the most recent wedge issue, more folks, including US citizens were flown out to safety yesterday.

9.11: To commemorate the 20^th anniversary of September 11, Biden will be attending ceremonies at all of the locations where the planes crashed that dreadful day. Former Presidents Obama and Bush will join him at the World Trade Center site.  Though the FG initially had no plans to do anything suitably reverential it has now been announced that he will traipse through the WTC after the current and other former presidents depart.  That visit was added to his schedule at the last minute likely to blunt the significant amount of blowback he’s been getting for his prior commitment, his “job” providing ringside commentary for what he describes as a huge fee at a Hollywood, Florida exhibition boxing match featuring Evander Holyfield scheduled to take place in the evening.  By the way, the FG’s eldest son wants us all to note how young and robust he looks these days.  You know who also looks a lot better?  North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, who appears to have gotten some kind of weight loss surgery or the like.  Maybe they share the same surgeon? Anyway, Junior’s comments on his father’s “robust” look may be another clue that the FG is prepping himself for another run at the Oval Office. Whether he is or isn’t, he continues to do his meddling thing.  Yesterday he endorsed Harriet Hageman who is running against Liz Cheney for her Wyoming Congressional seat. He took the opportunity to slam Cheney as a “warmonger,” “RINO” and “the Democrat’s number one provider of soundbites.”   An uncowed Cheney responded by tweeting: “Here’s a soundbite for you. Bring it.”   As to sound biters, the Democrat’s real number one is probably West Virginia’s Senator Joe Manchin, who together with Arizona’s Sinema continues to assert that there’s no way he’ll vote for Biden’s $3 trillion plus human infrastructure bill unless a trillion or so is shaved off.  So far Biden and Majority Leader Schumer are swatting Manchin and Sinema’s comments away.  Only time will tell who prevails, my guess is that despite the House progressives’ assertion that they’ll hold up all infrastructure legislation unless they get all of what they want, there will be a compromise of some sort.  Maybe.    

Human Resources:  Biden has been ridding the government’s advisory boards of the FG’s last minute appointees.  To that end he fired the last minute additions to the Pentagon Advisory Board.  Among others, that group includes Kellyanne Conway and Sean Spicer.  Both responded about as well as could be expected.  Alternative facts Kellyanne actually called the firings a “break from political norms,” as if her guy didn’t shatter norms regularly.  Anyway the firing of political appointees happens, a lot. Citing his “military” service as an occasional weekend public affairs officer, Spicer said his expertise which includes dancing or something like that in purple shimmery attire would be sorely missed and that firing him was unconscionable.  Both are talking about suing.  Good luck with that.  On a more serious note, the Biden administration withdrew the nomination of  David Chipman to serve as the head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).  Chipman’s nomination was going nowhere largely because of his extensive relevant experience included working as a gun control advocate. Sigh.  Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio turned himself in to start his 5 month jail term.  The FBI has circulated new surveillance clips of the unique sneaker wearing guy who placed those bombs outside of the DNC and RNC on January 6^th and the Capitol police are putting up barriers again in anticipation of another visit by those lovely “tourists” who plan to come back to Washington DC to “praise those nice folks” who are being “persecuted” for their participate in the insurrection.

170,000 new COVID cases yesterday

3200 deaths, 1296 in Florida        

Apples and Honey 

Welcome to 5782:  The year is new but the problems remain, except for rape that is, well at least according to Texas’ Governor Abbott.  Yesterday while signing his new restrictive election law, the one that gets rid of all that fraud that isn’t, Abbott said that Texas women shouldn’t be concerned that the state’s new vigilante abortion law doesn’t include exceptions for rape and incest because he’s going to end rape in Texas.  It’s fair to assume that Abbott has no credible plan to do anything about rape and sexual assault where according to FBI statistics Texas ranks 15^th in the nation.  Don’t be surprised if his “plan” involves recategorizing a lot of those rapes as consensual acts.  As to the new Texas abortion law, last week by a 5 to 4 vote with Chief Justice Roberts, hardly a champion of reproductive freedom,  joining the minority who as Justice Sotomayor put it were “outraged by their conservative colleagues’ breathtaking disregard for precedent,” the Supreme Court let it go into effect.  The conservatives “believe” that the whole vigilante thing which encourages anyone, anywhere to sue anyone who abets any abortion that takes place after six weeks is just too hard to tackle right now but really they love the idea of making it almost impossible for women to control their own destinies.  By the way, in case you are wondering, Maine’s Senator Susan Collins who assured us that Justice Brett Kavanaugh would uphold precedents related to reproductive rights criticized SCOTUS’s decision saying the law was “extreme” and that they shouldn’t have left it in place, the same response she’ll likely have when they kill Roe v Wade altogether something that is looking more and more likely to happen during the upcoming term when they rule on the constitutionality of Mississippi’s no abortions after 15 weeks abortion law.  To be fair, not that this court seems all that into fairness, it’s highly likely that the Texas law will ultimately be ruled unconstitutional because as crafty as it is, endorsing vigilantism is probably not the such a good idea even for the likes of Alito, Thomas, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Coney Barrett but that’s unlikely to be providing much solace to women currently in need of services and anyway, their action is probably their way of “softening up” public opinion, making us all think that we should be “relieved” when they toss Roe to uphold the Mississippi law. On the just a little a bit positive side, a number of corporations have stepped up to help Texas women.  Uber and Lyft say they will pay the legal fees of any drivers sued under the new law, Go Daddy has de-platformed a vigilante website run by Texas Right to Life as has their replacement host who also wants nothing to do with them and Match and Bumble, both based in Texas, are setting up a fund to help affected women but sadly most of corporate American is turning a blind eye because that’s what they do.  Also of note, a trip to Mexico, this morning’s 7.0 earthquake in Acapulco aside, might be in the offing for some as yesterday Mexico’s Supreme Court decriminalized abortion.

Storm Clouds:  The right and the much of the mainstream press are still all twisted in knots over Afghanistan so much so that the NY Times actually criticized President Biden for mentioning the loss of his son Beau while consoling family members of the soldiers who were killed during the terrorist attack outside of Kabul airport.  Of course that’s the same NY Times who helped doom Hillary Clinton with countless #ButHerEmails stories so they’re being very on brand.  That’s not to say that the Kabul attack and the resulting loss of lives and injuries weren’t awful, but really, going after a guy who is still mourning the loss of a son to brain cancer, they must really miss the Former Guy.  For the record, most of the country seems happy that we’re finally out of Afghanistan, they’re just not happy about the messiness of the withdrawal and that messiness, avoidable or not, is taking a toll on Biden’s popularity ratings which have, at least for now, taken a hit. Makes you wonder if the generals got the Former Guy to put the brakes on his withdrawal plans by telling him that the process would be a ratings crusher.  Anyway, it’s well worth noting that more Americans, 63 and rising, were killed by Hurricane Ida, which likely explains why Biden is trying to pivot to the ills of climate change, a real problem that needs more attention and aggressive funding but also one that the right hates to focus on because of their fossil fuel industry backers. 

Viral Musings:   The 7 day average of new US COVID cases is hovering around 170,000, it’s fair to assume that number will be up this week, the result of Labor Day travel and related frolicking.  Yesterday there were more than 2000 new US deaths, 650 of them in Florida where Governor DeSantis continues to treat the virus as his most important constituent.  Boosters are coming for those who got shots last winter or in the early spring with later groups to follow. As in almost everything related to the vaccines, Pfizer boosters will be approved before the Moderna or J & J ones with the latter two likely approved by the time that any of their recipients reach the 8 month time period.  The Biden administration is taking some heat for getting out ahead of the FDA on boosters but judging by the number of people who have already gotten their extra jabs, the criticism is mostly academic, flying over the heads of the booster friendly crowd and irrelevant to those who have been only recently jabbed or who aren’t planning to ever get vaccinated.  The FDA is due to meet on September 17^th to evaluate Pfizer’s booster data, at the FDA’s request that review will include a presentation from Israel’s Health Ministry on the results of their booster rollout.  Assuming the meeting goes as planned, Pfizer boosters will be rolled out beginning on September 20 as previously indicated. By the way, the Pfizer and Moderna boosters given thus far to the “Immune suppressed” and the concerned others who have lined up to get them are the same as the second dose shots.  That said, the WSJ reports that Moderna has asked for approval to lower the dose of their third shot, but it’s not clear that the FDA is on board for them to do that.  In any case, though the mRNA producers have tested Delta specific shots, at this point according to Pfizer’s CEO they don’t appear to be more effective than the original version so the boosters will not be Delta specific.  It remains unclear as to when shots will be rolled out to the younger set, some are suggesting that kids won’t get shots till the end of the year while others are saying that shots will be available sooner.  Stay tuned. 

L'Shanah Tovah to all because who doesn’t want to get wishes for happiness and sweetness twice every year!

 

Bye Bye Roe

Just an Ordinary Day:  President Biden announced the end of the twenty year war that never should have been, or at the very least never should have lasted so long, saying that he was just doing what presidents before him said they would do but didn’t, ending it because as messy as pulling out was, he didn’t want to pass the buck on and keep sending troops to remake a country that couldn’t be remade, or at least one that no one else ever managed to remake.  Aided by the media, both mainstream and rightwing, fake stories even ones about the abandonment of US military dogs and the like, have dominated the news cycle only to be quietly retracted when proven false.  “Experts” who got us into and extended the Afghan mess as well as war correspondents who seem more upset about the loss of their beats than anything else continue to get far too much air time leaving the impression that they’re all shilling for the industrial military complex.  And sadly, that’s the good news as portions of the country are flooded and lacking electricity, facing weeks in the dark and far longer recoveries, with the effects of global warming, a real problem that the anti-science and fossil fuel set prefers to ignore, likely a significant contributing factor. Then there’s Texas, not satisfied with its COVID mess, its legislators finally passed the most restrictive voting laws ever to combat fraud that hasn’t been happening, and, upping the ante on cruel absurdity, saw its new anti-abortion law go into effect last night at midnight.  That’s the law that enforces a ban on abortions after six (!) weeks by empowering any private citizen to sue anyone who performs or abets one of those now illegal abortions. Drive your wife, friend or girlfriend across the state border if you want and/or counsel someone who wants to end a pregnancy but know that you can be sued for $10,000 by any anti-abortion activist who chooses to do so and many will.   The law went into effect last night after the Supreme Court failed to block it and though SCOTUS could still act, focusing their anti-abortion knives on the Mississippi case that’s on its Fall docket, the fact that they let the Texas law go into effect has got to be seen as a clue to what they are likely to do to Roe v Wade and reproductive freedom as we’ve known it since that landmark decision was decided in 1973.  

Viral Musings:  Anti mask and anti vax advocates continue to drop like flies, something that, combined with more and more vax mandates, seems to be influencing some people as vaccination rates are climbing again, not enough everywhere but at least headed in the right direction.  Civil rights activist Jesse Jackson who is vaccinated and has Parkinson’s disease is recovering from his breakthrough bout of COVID.  He was moved from the hospital into a rehab facility for some extra TLC because of his Parkinson’s, however, his wife who is still hospitalized ended up spending her weekend in the ICU because …… she’s not vaccinated.  Also on the mend is Maine’s 77 year old Senator Angus King, who said while he was walloped by his breakthrough case, he firmly believes his vaccination helped him come out the other end of the COVID tunnel alive.  As a result of the US’s high COVID levels, the EU is again recommending that it’s member countries tell Americans that while they really want our tourist dollars, maybe we should stay home for now.  The US 7 day average of COVID cases is hanging around 160,000 but is probably higher as folks in those hurricane Ida ravaged areas are probably not showing up in the case count right about now and to the extent that they’re really ill probably can’t make it to hospitals either.  Another 1397 died yesterday, but again, that count is probably short a few from the flood ravaged areas. Something’s up at the FDA, where senior staff appears frustrated by the push to approve booster shots which might explain why two high level regulators recently announced their resignations, apparently their complaint is that the CDC is running roughshod over their decision making process.  The issue appears to be less over whether boosters are a good idea and more over the push to approve them by September 20 as the FDA crowd would prefer to spend more time torturing data. It’s fair to assume that the same crowd who are used to working methodically rather than dealing with a raging pandemic are also feeling pressure over the process to approve vaccines for the younger set, something that isn’t expected until late in the year.

Peanut Gallery:  Wisconsin’s usually wacky Senator Ron Johnson admitted on camera that President Biden fairly won Wisconsin, attributing Biden’s victory there to the fact that a bunch of Republican voters who voted for statewide Republican candidates didn’t vote for the FG. Johnson actually laid out the facts in a sane and coherent manner to one of his constituents. The jury’s out on whether he’s trying to appear rational to bolster his shrinking chances of winning reelection or whether he’s just tanked his chances by infuriating the FG and his adherents. Over the weekend, another prominent Wisconsin native, former speaker Paul Ryan, agreed with Johnson’s assessment, adding that Biden won the election because he got more votes, period.  GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy appears increasingly freaked out about the decision of the House Select’s Committee on all things January 6^th to subpoena phone records of that day’s calls between his and other insurrectionist abetting members of Congress and the FG. Yesterday he warned the telecom companies that if they comply with those requests he’ll make their lives miserable when (yikes) he becomes Speaker.  Obstruction much?  Gym Johnson and Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz also appear concerned about those records, they keep “remembering” the calls they had with the FG that day, saying that there was nothing unusual as they routinely spoke with him a lot.  Reports are that despite their assertions that those January 6^th insurrectionists were just nice tourists, they begged the FG to call them off.  John Pierce, the lawyer representing over 20 of the Capitol hill insurrectionists and Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed a BLM protester, has gone missing.  His associate who has been standing in for him even though he’s not properly licensed says that he’s on a ventilator somewhere suffering from COVID, a real possibility as Pierce is also an anti-vaxxer.  However, it’s not clear whether Pierce is sick or just avoiding the courts as a number of his clients are less than pleased with the quality of his lawyering.  As to legal skills Sidney Powell who’s legal future is in jeopardy as is her financial security, says she stands by her crack a doodle statements and knows who she is even if no one else gets her. That’s worth noting since she is a former US Attorney albeit from the Texas, the state that rivals Florida for crazy.