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.