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.