Boo

Theater of the Absurd:  Facebook has a new corporate name, it’s now called Meta, largely because name changing is so much easier than rooting out disinformation, hate and conspiracy theories.  One person on Twitter pointed out that “meta” means death in Hebrew and while the pronunciation might not be a perfect match, that’s indicative of how Zuckerberg does or doesn’t think and maybe also how Rupert Murdoch’s mind works.  After publishing an op-ed/whine by the Former Guy that was chock full of lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, the Murdoch owned Wall Street’s Journal Editorial Board then published one of its own that started by trashing the “progressives who were a flutter” about them giving the FG a platform to spread his venom before saying that they know that almost everything in his op-ed was “bananas” but since he’s an ex-president  and quite possibly a future one they had to publish it because his “monomania is news and it reflects his fitness for 2024.”  It’s not clear whether they always intended to follow the FG’s op-ed with their own editorial or felt compelled to do so in response to the scathing pushback they received from reporters on the “news” side of the paper. Clearly there’s a lot of “fluttering” going on inside the WSJ these days because though they generally trash all things Biden especially his efforts to get his Build Back Better plan to fruition, earlier in the week the editorial board supported the contempt citation against Steve Bannon, celebrating the bravery of the nine Republicans who voted with the Democrats to hold him in contempt. By comparison, that other Murdoch owned media outlook, Fox, doesn’t even pretend to have even a pea sized conscience.  It’s now running ads for a three part series called “Patriot Purge” created by its leading hatemonger and conspiracist Tucker Carlson.  The series which is due to air on Fox News’ streaming service Fox Nation, calls the January 6^th insurrection a “false flag” operation created to demonize the political right.    

Finally, Maybe: As to the now downsized to $1.75 trillion Build Back Better/reconciliation legislation, it appears to be done, well almost done though it’s not entirely clear what’s in it and progressives are still waiting to wade through the written details and see sign off in blood from Senators Sinema and Manchin before they’ll agree to vote on its partner legislation, that bipartisan infrastructure package that passed in the Senate what feels like eons ago.  According to the Washington Post, the Build Back Better legislation includes $555 billion for transformative clean energy investments.  Additionally, it will fund universal prekindergarten, subsidized health care coverage for low income Americans stuck in the Medicaid coverage gap, it would shore up the Affordable Care Act, expand the child tax credit but not provide the parental leave that Biden and the progressives wanted to see included.  All of this would be paid for with a 15% minimum tax on big companies, multinational corporate tax reform and a surtax on individuals making over $10 million per year but not by that tax on billionaire’s unrecognized gains that was bandied about earlier in the week.  And lastly, while the FG still has faced no criminal penalties for all his many alleged attacks on women, yesterday evening former NY Governor Andrew Cuomo was charged by an Albany County sheriff’s department with a misdemeanor complaint for groping one of the women who has accused him of harassment.  Of course, immediately after that complaint went public, the Albany District Attorney, not to be confused with the sheriff, said he was surprised about its timing, as was the woman involved who wasn’t notified that it was coming.  In other NY news, Tish James, NY’s Attorney General who gets the credit for taking Cuomo down is expected to announce that she’s running for Governor but then again that’s not all that surprising.

Viral Musings:  Check with your pediatrician, though the COVID vaccine for the 5 to 11 set  hasn’t been approved yet, some doctors may already be giving out appointment slots as it appears that those shots will start going into arms at the end of next week.  Depending on where you live, the shots will be available at doctor’s office, pharmacies, and/or some of those group sites that delivered the adult shots.  Also on the COVID front, a study of 1500 patients in Brazil convincingly showed that the relatively inexpensive anti-depressant fluvoxamine is effective in treating high risk COVID patients. Assuming the study results pass muster with the NIH and the WHO, expect to see fluvoxamine added to the COVID arsenal.  At $4 per dose it’s way more affordable than Merck’s experimental anti-viral molnupiravir which will cost about $700 per course.  That said, don’t write off the Merck drug yet, it may be that since the two drugs work differently and neither is completely effective they will ultimately be used in tandem.

Happy Halloween 

Puerto Rico Rocks

Still Dithering: The Democrats still haven’t come together on the final details of their Build Back Better/reconciliation multi trillion dollar legislation but we keep on hearing that they will very soon and they’d better because their future control of Congress and several state governorships including the too close to call and obsessively watched Virginia race may depend on it.  It’s hard to tell but it appears that in addition to the billionaire wealth tax which may or may not be constitutional, they are also planning to impose a 15 percent minimum tax rate on corporations based on the profits they report to their shareholders rather than what they are allowed to show to the IRS. That should be a rather popular solution as who other than Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and their crowd doesn’t believe that hugely profitable companies should actually pay taxes? Arizona’s Senator Sinema who has been adamant about leaving the FG tax cuts in place, is on board for the corporate minimum tax as is West Virginia’s Manchin.  Though Manchin still says he isn’t switching parties, he says that he doesn’t really relate to his Democratic colleagues these days though he loves all of them.  That’s nice but he also says that he loves all of his Republican colleagues too.    

Insurrection Update: On the January 6^th front, Rolling Stone reports that some of those who helped organize, then participated in the January 6 “festivities,” and are now cooperating with the House January 6^th committee, allege that multiple members of Congress were “intimately” involved in planning both the FG’s efforts to overturn his election loss and the events of “coup” day. They claim that there were dozens of those so-called planning meetings. In addition to cooperating with the House committee, two of those cooperators have told their version of events to Rolling Stone. According to the Rolling Stone article Arizona Congressman/Dentist Paul Gosar, actually told some of the January 6th organizers that he’d spoken with the FG who told him that they would get a “blanket pardon” for anything they might do during the insurrection.  According to Rolling Stone’s sources, in addition to Gosar, the other members of Congress involved in planning the insurrection included Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn, Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Texas’ Louis Gohmert, in other words the usual suspects.  The allegation is that those members of Congress either participated directly or sent high level staffers to help out and that some of those meetings also involved then chief of staff Mark Meadows.  So far the substance of the Rolling Stone article hasn’t been verified by other news outlets but it’s highly likely that they’re on to something big which explains why a number of those suspected Congressional insurrectionists have been issuing carefully worded but odd statements that kind of sort of deny their involvement in the planning of the coup.  Mo Brooks, who wore protective combat gear under his clothing that day, said he had nothing to do with the planning but his staff might have and good for them.  Though Qster Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn’t on the Rolling Stone list, she probably wishes that she was.  Yesterday on Steve Bannon’s podcast she said that “January 6 was just a riot at the Capitol and if you think about what our Declaration of Independence says, it says to overthrow tyrants.”  To be clear by tyrant she doesn’t mean the FG.  Isn’t it nice that Bannon gets to keep podcasting when he should be in jail?

Viral Musings:  The big news on the virus front is that yesterday the FDA’s advisory committee recommended by a vote of 17 to 0 with one abstention that regulators authorize the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 5 to 11 year-olds. Like the adult shots, the kids shots will include two jabs spaced three weeks apart, however the dose delivered to kids will be one third the adult dose. Assuming the FDA follows the advisory panel’s advice and then the CDC agrees, and it’s highly likely that both will, shots will likely be available at the end of next week.  In other news, Moderna said that its study of more than 4500 youths shows that its shots for kids aged 6 through 11 show a “robust" immune response.  Their kid dose, like their adult booster, is half of the full adult dose. Moderna plans to submit data to the FDA "in the near term."  So far, in the US Moderna is only approved for those 18 and over so, at least for now, the status of the Pfizer shot is more relevant for those hoping to get their children vaccinated in the near term.  One more thing, Dr Debbie Birx who we haven’t heard from in a while told the House subcommittee on the pandemic, not to be confused with the January 6^th committee, that had the FG not been so distracted by his reelection 130,000 lives could have been saved.  On a more positive note, if you are looking for places to go to on your next vacation, consider Puerto Rico.  The island which mostly gets bad press for its storms and failing electricity grid has the highest vaccination rate in the USA, something to do with politicians there focusing on protecting people rather than politicizing that which shouldn’t be political.  We could learn a thing or two from them, maybe it’s time for statehood?    

   

War Room

Battle Cry:  As the Former Guy inches closer to announcing another run for the Oval Office, more details about his efforts to overturn the 2020 election continue to emerge.  The Washington Post details the plotting that went on at Washington DC’s Willard Hotel in the run up to January 6^th.   A group headed by Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon and also including one time NYC Police Commissioner/one time felon Bernie Kerik and Conservative lawyer John Eastman, author of the now infamous memo detailing how former VP Pence could refuse to certify the results of the election, used the Willard as the control center for their devious plan to upend democracy.  To this day, the Willard conspirators and far too many Republican legislators continue to insist that the election was rife with “widespread” fraud though by fraud they really mean that too many “blue voters” were provided access to the ballot box by states seeking to adapt for virus conditions, or something like that because none of them have been able to cite actual situations of wide spread fraud.  Ironically, Dan Patrick, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas who promised a bounty to anyone who could document voter fraud recently anted up a payment of $25,000 to a Democratic poll watcher who documented some Republican fraud in Pennsylvania, hardly what he intended when he made that promise.  By the way Patrick is so far to the right that he makes Governor Greg Abbott look almost moderate by comparison, hardly an east feat.  In other Texas news, the Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal to the state’s onerous abortion law but, and this is a big but and sadly quite ominous for reproductive rights, they are allowing the law to stay in force until they rule on its constitutionality.  They’ve scheduled arguments on the law for November 1.  

 

Political Morass: Last week nine House Republicans voted with all the Democrats to refer a criminal contempt charge against Steve Bannon to the Justice Department over his refusal to honor a House October 6^th committee subpoenat.  The ball is now in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s court. The list of somewhat rational Republicans included Liz Cheney, Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, Ohio’s Anthony Gonzalez, Washington’s Jaime Herrera Beutler, New York’s John Katko, Adam Kinzinger, South Carolina’s Nancy Mace, Michigan’s Peter Meijer and Fred Upton.  Mace, who comes from a swing district previously held by a Democrat, was a surprising addition to the list, sometimes she appears somewhat moderate and other times she kowtows to the lunatic right fringe.  Anyway, with the FG now gunning for all of them, those who haven’t already said that they’re not running for reelection are now likely to be the target of some rather venomous FG incoming. To that end, the NY Times reports that a prominent Washington lobbyist close to GQP leader Kevin McCarthy has warned Republican political consultants that they must choose between working for Liz Cheney or McCarthy and as a result at least one prominent firm has dropped Cheney as a client. In more hopeful political news, well maybe, the Democrats once again appear to be closing in on an agreeing on their Build Back Better reconciliation package. Reportedly Senator Manchin has agreed to a package size of $1.75 trillion and, in response to Senator Sinema’s opposition to rolling back the FG tax cuts, Democratic leadership is now focusing on taxing billionaire’s unrealized capital gains.  According to the Wall Street Journal the tax is expected to affect people with $1 billion in assets or $100 million in income for three consecutive years, so it’s fair to assume that most of us aren’t lucky enough to be affected.  

Viral Musings:  New virus cases in the US continue to decline with the 7 day average around 72,000.  Unfortunately at 1600 plus the 7 day average death rate remains stubbornly high.  On the vaccine front, Pfizer reports that its third dose is proving to be over 95% effective at preventing symptomatic disease, not a surprise given how much new case rates have plummeted in test country Israel.  Interestingly, Israel has now approved the AstraZeneca shot for the very, very small number of people who are allergic to a component of the mRNA vaccines.  That’s notable because it likely means that US people with similar allergies might be able to get a J & J jab instead of a Pfizer or a Moderna, subject of course to advice from a medical doctor who is actually a real expert. In other words call your doctor if you are one of the very rare who is allergic.  In preparation for the meetings that will soon be held on Pfizer’s shot for 5 to 11 years old, Pfizer reported that its jabs are 91% effective in kids.  Additionally, late Friday Federal health regulators said that kid-size doses of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine appear highly effective at preventing symptomatic infections in elementary school children and caused no unexpected safety issues.  Over the weekend virus guru Fauci said that assuming no unexpected wrinkles in the approval process which will be taking place through the end of the month, those shots are likely to be available during the first or second week of November.   

Faceplants:  The more we learn about what goes on at Facebook, the worse it looks for the company and us, not that management appears all that distressed. They’re busy focusing on a name change and bashing whistleblowers.  At least one major hedge fund investor has bailed out of all of its unrestricted shares in the FG’s new “Truth” social media platform not that institutional investor flight concerns the FG’s followers who have jumped in pushing share prices way up, at least for now.  And of course because this is an FG company, it appears that it is already violating the software agreement for the Mastodon open source code that the platform is based on.  Law suits likely to follow.    

Nor’easter on its way.  Stay safe and dry.   

  

Pravda

Politics As Usual:  The Democrats are still trying to get Build Back Better done.  They’re either closing in on an agreement with each other, one that leaves out much of the climate change agenda and free junior college education among other things or they’re as far away as ever.  Yesterday Yahoo News reported that West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, the thorn in the side of all that climate change legislation, is now threatening to leave the Democratic Party possibly to become an independent with no clear indication of who he would caucus with, something that would obviously be a huge problem for Chuck Schumer who can’t afford to lose a single Democratic Senator.  Manchin called the report bull sh-t and it may have been that Manchin was either caught whining to colleagues or is using the threat as a negotiating tactic  but Yahoo stands by its story.  It’s also been reported that Schumer’s other thorn, Arizona’s Krysten Sinema continues to stand by her opposition to tax increases on the rich and corporations, both of which are key to Build Back Better’s funding.  Getting back to Manchin, remember when he persuaded  his Democratic colleagues to make changes to their voting rights legislation to make it more palatable to Republicans in the hope of getting ten of them to sign on? As shown by yesterday’s Senate vote, his approach didn’t work out as planned as everyone in the Republican contingent voted against even bringing the bill to the floor for debate. Apparently Republicans don’t like voting rights these days perhaps because facilitating voting by more people scares the bejesus out of them.  So much for Manchin’s attempts at reaching across the aisle. Democrats are once again talking about making some kind of change to the filibuster rule to address voting rights legislation.  Of course to do that they’ll need Manchin and Sinema on board. Both voted for the voting rights legislation but neither seems inclined to deal with the filibuster, at least so far, though Maine’s Independent Senator Angus King, a previous supporter of all things filibuster is now advocating for change to preserve our “fragile” democracy.

SPAC Attack:  Last night the FG, the same guy who commemorated General Colin Powell’s death with a Twitter alternative statement dissing him while also questioning whether anyone saying those nice things about “RINO” Powell will care when he dies, announced  a new digital-media venture saying it would go public by merging with a special-purpose acquisition company (SPAC).  For those unfamiliar with current trends in financial manipulation, SPACs are all the rage these days. Simply put, a SPAC is a blank check shell company that lists on a stock exchange with the “sole intent of merging with a private firm to take it public.” The private company, in this case the FG entity, then gets the SPAC’s place in the stock market. The FG plans to merge his Media & Technology Group with a SPAC called Digital World Acquisition Corp. creating the Truth Social Media Company.  Leave it to intelligence and security pundit Malcolm Nance to remind us that in the original Russian, Truth translates to Pravda.  Anyway, the SPAC that the FG is now associated with hasn’t been all that successful with some of its prior endeavors so the Truth platform could go the way of FG Steaks, Airline, Casinos and University only more quickly.  Then there are all those securities laws that public companies need to follow, we all know how good he is at following rules and at full disclosure. Speaking about disclosure and cooperation, apparently the House Republican set isn’t all that into any of that when the people being asked to cooperate are Republicans so GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy is urging his contingent to vote against the Steve Bannon criminal contempt referral which is due to come up for a floor vote today.  It will still pass but probably with few Republican votes beyond those from outcasts Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger  Remember when Hillary Clinton cooperated by testifying for 11 hours before the sham Benghazi committee, apparently only Democrats have to do things like that, at least that appears to be the Republican party line right now.  That said, at least one Republican Congressman is facing some consequences for his actions, not Matt Gaetz whose alleged sex trafficking crimes still haven’t caught up with him, but Nebraska’s Jeff Fortenberry who following GOP rules, stepped down from his committee assignments yesterday after being indicted for making false statements to the FBI about his knowledge of illegal contributions to his 2016 campaign by a Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire.  The last two Congressmen in his position both ended up in bigly trouble but were subsequently pardoned by the FG.  Too bad for Fortenberry that the FG is no longer in the position to pardon him.  At least right now that is.  Also I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that Westchester County’s new DA, Mimi Rocah, a former SDNY prosecutor and MSNBC legal commentator,  is investigating the FG’s National Golf Club Westchester over how it valued its property in a bid to lower its taxes.

Viral Musings: The 7 day new coronavirus case average is just under 77,000 but sadly 3,122 COVID deaths were recorded yesterday bringing the US total to 732k.  Fox Business News anchor Neil Cavuto, who has Multiple Sclerosis,  is one of those new positives as is Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.  Cavuto appears to be doing well so far, publicly attributing that to the fact that he, like Mayorkas, is vaccinated. CNN’s John King, who thankfully has not tested positive, did disclose in a rather impassioned statement and follow up interview that he too has MS and that people like him, Cavuto and the late Colin Powell rely on others getting vaccinated to protect them and others who are similarly immune compromised.  Kudos to King, who until now has kept his thirteen years long MS diagnosis private, for speaking out so forcefully.  Also, sending a lot of admiration his way for how well he did working the map on a very long election night when unbeknownst to the rest of us he was suffering a flare up. On the vaccine front, yesterday evening the FDA okayed Moderna, J & J and mix and match boosters.  The decision now goes to the CDC which is expected to follow with the formal authorization shortly.  Additionally, the White House COVID 19 Response Team issued a statement yesterday addressing their preparedness for the widely expected approval of vaccines for the 5 to 11 set, an indication that they are positioning to be in ready to hit the ground running when that okay which is expected during the first week of November comes down.   One more thing, not that we want to hear it, the UK is experiencing a coronavirus uptick which may or may not be attributed to a new and thought to be even more transmissible variant of the Delta strain.  Oy.                           

 

Mix and Match

Slimmer than Shady: To state the obvious, when your majority is barely a majority and getting things done relies on all of your members getting to the same place, passing legislation is near impossible.  That doesn’t mean that the Democrats won’t ultimately get their build back better legislation passed in some form or other, it just means that doing so remains challenging.  So Senators Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin have been alternatively taking pot shots at each other and engaging in behind the scenes negotiating sessions, an indication that they will probably agree to something at some point leaving the enigmatic and increasingly under attack from the left Kristen Sinema as the outlier as she appears to be talking only to President Biden and only doing that between running marathons and fund raising trips to Arizona and Europe.  That said, one indication that some progress is being made is that Washington State Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the head of the House Progressive Caucus has also met with Manchin and has appeared on a few news shows saying that though no one will be totally satisfied with where they end up, progress is being made. Interesting that the progressive wing of the party appears to be doing the heavy lifting right now.  Can you imagine the Republican right doing the same, ever? The progress that is being reported likely means some the total package will be smaller than envisioned, that some environment provisions will be left out of the legislation and some income limits for certain benefits will be included even if that means that the cost of implementing those provisions is higher than just giving those benefits away to more people.

L, M, NO Pee:  The FG continues to do his thing.  He’s still pushing the big lie, calling for election do overs in places he lost; attacking the Justice Department for settling with his nemesis, former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe; and lashing out at critics, including Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, the Republican Senator who said this weekend that he didn’t think that the FG could win the Republican nomination to run again in part because he was the first president on the Republican side to lose the House, the Senate and the presidency in four year and that “elections are about winning.”  A reminder, Cassidy was a surprise vote for impeachment so while others may privately share his views, he’s one of the very few brave enough to say them out loud which is of course the very bigly problem.  Oddly enough at a Palm Beach meeting of large Republican donors this weekend, the FG went off on an unscripted tirade, shouting that he wasn’t “into golden showers,” adding that even Melania knew that.  His out of the blue fit pretty much shocked the audience none of who were planning to ask him about his proclivities.  The reason the subject was back on his mind became apparent over the weekend when ABC’s George Stephanopoulos aired his interview with Christopher Steele, the former British Spy responsible for assembling the infamous FG dossier.  Steele continues to stand by the validity of his product, and says that he believes that it is very likely that the so called “pee tape” which was never found does exist and that the reason it’s never been released is because Putin got what he wanted without having to doing so.  Steele also stands by his assertion that former FG fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen did travel to Prague to meet with some Russian agents, an assertion that Cohen emphatically denies and that special counsel Mueller and the FBI  discounted.  Steele’s view is that Cohen and many of the others who’ve gone quiet about what they’ve done and/or contributed to the dossier are too fearful too admit the truth and given that Putin has a habit of poisoning dissenters, maybe he’s got a point.  In any case, Steele appears to have gotten under the FG’s skin so there’s that.  And of course the always litigious FG is now suing the January 6^th Committee and the National Archive to block the release of those likely implicating White House documents about the insurrection.  Of course he is, because stalling is what he does best and in this case he’s hoping to stall until the Republicans retake the House, that’s the same strategy that Steve Bannon, who the House is expected to hold in contempt, is following as he continues to refuse to cooperate with the House investigation.  The FG finally did testify on something yesterday, for about four and one half hours he “responded” under oath to questions about his role in a 2015 incident where protestors “allege” they were assaulted by his security team outside his eponymous Tower.  Those assaults happened on camera so the question, which he probably dodged, is whether they were done at his request.  Next up, the FG is scheduled to sit for a deposition in the Summer Zervos case.  Zervos is a former Apprentice contestant, one of the many women who have accused the FG of sexual assault. After he called her a liar, she sued for defamation.

Viral Musings: Sadly, 84 year old General Colin Powell died yesterday from complications of COVID.  He was vaccinated but was also particularly vulnerable as he was suffering from both Parkinson’s Disease and multiple myeloma, a blood cancer that minimizes the effectiveness of vaccines. His vaccinated wife, Alma, also tested positive, but is fine at least health wise, at home experiencing only minor symptoms.  Of course the press jumped on the Powell story, at first harping on the point that he was doubly vaccinated rather than mentioning his other vulnerabilities. Never one to accurately report a beat, Fox News reporter John Roberts quickly tweeted out that Powell’s death raised “new concerns about the vaccine.”  Keep in mind that he’s considered, or at least was once considered, to be a serious news guy.  Facing serious blowback, Roberts deleted his tweet, announced that he was pro vaccination and then appeared on Fox later in the day with a doctor who explained Powell’s complications and how they affected his ability to achieve adequate protection.  Of course last night Swanson fish stick heir Tucker Carlson omitted all that comorbidity stuff during his broadcast.  On the vaccination front, the FDA advisory committee endorsed both Moderna and J & J boosters on Friday, adding that anyone four weeks out from their first J & J shot should go get a second.  At some point this week, the FDA and CDC will issue their official boosters guidelines, the expectation is that they will allow mixing and matching of shots, purportedly to make it easier for those ready for boosters to get one anywhere regardless of what’s available but also a not so subtle suggestion that people who got the once “one shot” J & J wonder go out and get themselves one of the mRNA jabs.  With COVID on the decline in a lot of the southern states where it had been running rampant, the 7 day average of new cases is around 83k but daily deaths remain stubbornly high around 1800. Don’t count Delta out yet, as people move indoors due to colder weather, cases are rising in the northern states, particularly in low vax areas, so vigilance and boosters remain important. Also, don’t count out the inexplicable resistance of people who should know better.  Though most people have responded to mandates by getting vaccinated, Washington State Coach Nick Rolovich and four of his assistants have now been fired for their refusal to get jabbed; an NHL player, Evander Kane, has been suspended for 21 games for providing a false vax card; the still unvaccinated Brooklyn Nets player Kylie Irving is watching his money go up in smoke; and five times as many police officers have died from COVID than from gun shots while they illogically remain among the most unvaccinated probably a political statement more than anything else.  Next on the agenda are kids shots, the states have already received directions from the CDC about preparing to administer them, a clue that they are likely to be okayed soon, probably ready to go into arms in  the beginning of November.

 

Live Long and Prosper

Human Resources:  Captain Kirk wasn’t the only one who saw his dreams come true this week, former FBI Acting Head Andrew McCabe did too. McCabe, one of the Former Guy’s favorite punching bags who was fired just hours before he would have earned his full pension, is getting his benefits restored, his legal fees paid and his firing expunged from his record, the result of a settlement of a lawsuit with the Justice Department over what was clearly a politically motivated firing.  Steve Bannon who was once fired by the FG but is now currently back in his good graces remains in a hot seat of his own choosing.  Yesterday, after his lawyer reiterated that Bannon would not honor their subpoena or cooperate with their investigation, the House January 6^th Committee announced that they would recommend that he face criminal contempt charges. Bannon’s position is that even though he was not working for the White House at the time of the January 6th insurrection he is protected by the FG’s executive privilege.  That’s bunk, he knows it and the FG knows it but they’re playing for time, hoping that they’ll be able to stall a final court resolution until the end of this Congress and the beginning of one run by Republicans and sadly that strategy might work. By the way Bannon is still doing the FG’s bidding.  He’s been campaigning in Virginia for Glenn Youngkin, the FG endorsed Republican candidate.  Though polls indicate that Youngkin is currently trailing Democratic candidate and former Governor Terry McAuliffe by a few points, the spread is within the margin of error, truly disturbing given Youngkin’s positions on things like reproductive rights, the big election lie and vaccination mandates. For his part the FG appears to be sending out conflicting messages.  On the one hand he called into a rally for Youngkin, the one where participants were asked to say the Pledge of Allegiance to one of the American flags used by the January 6^th insurrectionists, and encouraged his people to get out and vote.  On the other hand, earlier this week in one of his Twitter replacement missives he told Republicans not to vote in upcoming elections unless the “fraud” of the 2020 elections is “thoroughly and conclusively documented.”  Why not?  That message worked so well for him and his party in Georgia, didn’t it?  Snark aside, the FG’s message is reverberating around the country not necessarily with his die hard supporters who probably will show up and vote but with Republican state legislators who continue to press for “audits” of the 2020 results even in states where they won. In other news, though we only learned about it last night, while nonagenarian William Shatner was spinning through space former President Clinton was on his way to a California hospital for an unspecified but not COVID related infection.  The 75 year old Clinton, who is still hospitalized, appears to be doing well which is more than can be said for any of those women in Texas who were hoping to get an abortion this week.  Last night by a vote of 2 to 1, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals said that it will allow the Texas law that bars abortions after six weeks to stay in force while it considers an appeal of a judge’s order blocking it.   

Viral Musings:  Yesterday, the FDA’s vaccine advisory board voted unanimously to recommend emergency use authorization of a half dose Moderna booster shot for the same relatively broad categories of people who previously were authorized to receive their Pfizer boosters. Pending CDC signoff and instructions to pharmacies and other jab delivery sites about the booster dosage, those shots should be good to go as early as next week.  The panel is set to discuss J & J boosters today.  Since they are also expected to discuss an NIH study that found that J & J recipients benefited more from either a Pfizer or a Moderna shot than from a second J & J shot it’s not clear what they will recommend.  Though trends aren’t consistent across the country, overall COVID cases are down to a seven day average of  86k with the seven day average of deaths, a lagging indicator, down to around 1600.  Still too high but heading in the right direction, for now. It’s great that we’re making progress on the virus front, but sadly we don’t seem to be doing much about misinformation and hate.  Yesterday, a truly disturbing tape of a school administrator in Southlake, Texas was released.  In it, during a “training” session, she advises teachers that if they have a book about the Holocaust in their classrooms, they should also have a book with an “opposing” perspective in order to comply with a new Texas law that requires teachers to offer divergent perspectives when discussing “widely debated and currently controversial issues.” What more can I say than #WTF.

 

Revenge Tour

Bye Bye Matt:  Hope you had a better Indigenous Peoples Day than Matt Amodeo who saw his million dollar plus winning streak end. Judging by his tweets, Matt seems to be handling his loss well which is much more than can be said for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.  Malevolent Mitch wants everyone to know that though he got some members of his contingent to join Democrats in raising the debt limit,  raising it until December that is, he won’t do it again because Senate Leader Chuck Schumer was mean to him and he’d rather see the country default than endure a few harsh words. Assuming Mitch isn’t bluffing, Democrats will have to pass the next increase by themselves through reconciliation at the same time that they pass their multi trillion dollar infrastructure/wish list package, the one that they’re still trying to get Senators Sinema and Manchin to sign off on. The pressure is now on Democrats to put away their differences and get something done to save Biden’s presidency, at least that’s seems to be the view of the media who find the “disarray” in the Democratic party as opposed to the FG led Republican destruction of democracy the most compelling story of the day.  The media spent the weekend focusing on a truly depressing Quinnipiac poll that showed Biden’s popularity down to 38%, ignoring that most of the other polls that they usually cite show him in the upper forties or even at 50%, not great but not yet a disaster. Speaking of disasters, or potential ones, the FG spent his weekend campaigning in Iowa for the presidential run that he hasn’t yet announced. With octogenarian Senator Chuck Grassley who previously criticized him but is now fully in his camp because he needs his endorsement for his run for reelection standing with him, he did his thing and got covered by all the media outlets including, somewhat inexplicably, CSPAN.  When he wasn’t campaigning or sending out missives, the FG found the time to tape a birthday wish for “martyr” Ashli Babbit, the insurrectionist who was shot while trying to break into the Capitol on January 6^th.   We are now being warned by a diverse bipartisan group of former FG administration including Cyber guy Chris Krebs, Russian expert Fiona Hill and press sec Stephanie Grisham that should he win again the FG will be a vengeful maniac and that he will staff his administration with all the “broken toys,” people like Mike Flynn and Seb Gorka, that he surrounded himself with last time but with none of those so called adults.  As to those “broken toys,” three of them, former chief of staff Mark Meadows, one time defense official Kash Patel, and social media guy Dan Scavino who was finally served, appear to be engaging with or pretending to do so with the House’s January 6^th committee in response to the subpoenas that they received, but one, Steve Bannon, refuses to cooperate at all.  Though the law isn’t on his side, he wasn’t on the White House staff during January 6, time is, so its quite likely that if someone like his fugitive Chinese billionaire friend Guo Wengui is paying his legal bills Bannon will continue to fight in the hopes that the next Congress will be led by Republicans with no interest in investigating January 6.   

Loon Star State:  Texas continues to be Texas. With the help of the very conservative Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, the ban on abortions was reinstated pending an appeal by the DOJ. Last night the DOJ filed that appeal but even though Roe v Wade is still the law of the land, it’s quite possible that the 5^th Circuit, given its leanings, will leave the ban in force while the case makes its way to the Supreme Court because they can.  In other Texas news, last night Governor Abbott who is facing a primary from his right, banned COVID vaccine mandates by private companies based in his state.  His action will likely do little to affect all those Texas base airlines who are now required to get their employees vaccinated as they are subject to Biden’s federal mandate which should prevail.  Nevertheless it allows Abbott who is vaccinated to appeal to his right flank, the flank that his Republican competitor Allen West, an anti vaxxer who is currently hospitalized with COVID pneumonia is going after.  By the way, West who attacked COVID vaccinations as something pushed by money sucking pharmaceutical companies received some $2000 Regeneron antibodies over the weekend. Don’t try to make sense of his nonsense because it makes no sense.   Also, despite insistence on the right that Southwest Airlines’ high rate of cancellations this weekend were due to those vaccine mandates, the airline and the Pilot’s union say they weren’t, rather they were due to weather and the challenges of ramping up capacity to pre COVID levels.

Viral Musings:  US cases are declining in most places though continued vigilance and more vaccinations are required to keep the trend going as people will be moving indoors to virus friendly environments soon in the northern states.  Right now the 7 day average US case count is still high, at around 90,000 while the 7 day average death count is 1600 plus. On the regulatory front Merck has applied for emergency use authorization for its COVID anti-viral pill, the FDA will be meeting on Moderna and J & J boosters this week and the kid shot meetings are still on the schedule for later this month.  The FDA is also expected to address, though not necessary sign off on, the mixing of shots this week.   

    

Blinking Contests

Politics As Usual:  President Biden’s poll numbers continue to tank, a bigly problem when you consider that the FG, who is no longer on the Forbes 400 richest billionaires list largely because he never deserved to be but also because he would have been better off if had he liquidated his assets and reinvested the proceeds in mutual funds during his term, is waiting in the wings, ready to resume his presidency.  Yesterday, in one of his increasingly unhinged Twitter alternative statements the FG actually claimed  “that the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6^th” which he went on to call “a day of protesting the Fake Election results." As to those claims and his almost successful coup, today’s NY Times provides more details about just how hard the FG and his loyalist flunkies tried to get Department of Justice leadership to “find” that nonexistent election fraud for him. Suffice it to say, the FG really did try to replace then acting AG Jeffrey Rosen with a loyalist flunky.  Additionally, it turns out that even Pat Cipollone, his last White House counsel and Cipollone’s top aide Patrick Philbin were ready to resign if the FG went forward with what they called a “murder-suicide pact.”  So basically, we were just a few marginally ethical attorneys away from a successful insurrection.  The FG also continues to issue candidate endorsements, picking candidates based on their level of loyalty to him and him alone.  Yesterday he actually endorsed one of Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s challengers.  That’s notable because Baker, who hasn’t yet decided whether to run for reelection, is widely popular in his state, a notable accomplishment for a Republican.  Should the moderate Baker decide to run again, he would probably win, in fact, for him the FG calling him out as a RINO is a good thing.  Moving on to the most devious guy still in office, yesterday Mitch McConnell blinked; after spending weeks saying that neither he nor any of his fellow Republican Senators would support the raising of the debt limit he put an offer on the table to raise it.  That’s good but not great as the offer he’s proposed is only a short term fix, one that was likely spurred by all the US Corporate leaders who made it clear yesterday that pushing the country into default would result in a “catastrophic” recession.  One of those leaders, JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon, said that some damage has already been done by the threat of default as financial companies have already started positioning themselves for the worst.  Democrats are likely to take McConnell up on the short term solution while they continue to battle internally over their infrastructure legislation and decide whether or not to raise the debt limit  via reconciliation; even eliminating the filibuster is back on the table. In other FG related news, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, estranged strategist Steve Bannon and Defense Department aide Kash Patel all seem to be ignoring the subpoenas they received from the House January 6 committee.  Scavino appears to be altogether MIA.  Expect a clash of sorts soon.  Something may be up on the Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz front too.  His former BFF, Joel Greenberg has asked his judge to delay his sentencing, again, saying that he’s still cooperating with the Feds and Gaetz actually said yesterday that he deeply regrets his association with Greenberg and that it was fair for his constituents to evaluate him based on the company he kept. Of course, he doesn’t want them to hold a grudge even if he ends up indicted.      

Shooting Star:  Yesterday was a big day in Texas.  The gun happy state was the site of another school shooting, sad but not much of a surprise given how easy it is to go full Rambo in a state where the Governor and the state legislature prioritize the unborn over the living.  As to that priority, late yesterday a Federal Judge in Austin put a hold on the state’s 6 week abortion ban, ruling that the controversial law that the Supreme Court had unconscionably let stand in the dark of night on procedural grounds had “from the moment” it went into effect, unlawfully prevented women from exercising control over their own lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution.  Concluding that the US Justice Department had standing to sue, in a rather lengthy and detailed ruling the judge went on to say that “This court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right.”  That’s good news but not the end of this handmaid’s tale, as the State of Texas has already said that it will appeal the to the very conservative Fifth District Court of Appeals and then on to the Supreme Court which is widely expected to curtail reproductive rights significantly by the end of the year not with this case but with a Mississippi case as it’s weapon of choice, or lack of choice as the case may be.   

Viral Musings:  Daily deaths remain above 2000 but new cases continue to decline in the US.  However,  we are far from out of the woods as the 7 day average remains above 100,000 and, unfortunately, far too many are still unvaccinated.  One positive note is that vaccine mandates appear to be working.  Though too many press reports continue to go with ledes about those quitting in protest of vaccine requirements, the reality is that those quitters represent a very small percentage of those subject to the mandates.  Most when pressed to make a decision between employment and a jab are getting their shots. United is no longer the only US airline with a vaccine mandate, others including  JetBlue, American and Southwest have jumped on board the vax train.  Though we aren’t there, yet, our Canadian neighbors to the north announced yesterday that all commercial air travelers to Canada, passengers on trains between provinces and on cruise ships will be required to present proof of vaccination starting October 30. Oh Canada!!  On the jab front, a number of countries are considering cutting the two shot mRNA series back to one shot for young adults over concerns about those rare cases, mostly in young men, of myocarditis. To be clear, those cases are rare and almost always mild.  Hong Kong has made the decision to go with one shot but, and this is a big but, they have also done a great job at containing COVID so the risk of disease is very, very low there right now which influences their risk benefit analysis.  They don’t have to contend with the kind of internecine/politically motivated spats that we deal with here like the one in Idaho where the rogue Lt Governor is trying to undo the few mandates in place in that state. Also worth noting, some of the countries making this decision have been dispensing Moderna shots to teens; in the US, Moderna, which contains a higher dose than the Pfizer series, has not even been approved for those under 18. Lastly, the shots being evaluated for the younger set, including Pfizer’s next up shots for those 5 to 11  will contain a fraction of the adult dosage.

                  

Faceplanting

Another Week, Same Story.  The two infrastructure bills remain locked in limbo, stuck between the two “moderate” Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema and the party’s progressives. West Virginia’s Manchin must really be loving Arizona’s Sinema these days because her odd behavior combined with her state’s purple status are making him look more reasonable.  So far, no one has stalked the more media saavy Manchin into the men’s room.   For his part Mitch McConnell is playing dirty politics, refusing to help raise the debt limit, not that his behavior is all that surprising.  Mitch is never out for the good of the country but is deviously skilled at coming up with disposable rationales for making life difficult for Democrats especially if he thinks his party can come out on top while he preserves the fossil fuel industry.  That’s how he stacked the courts, why should his debt shenanigans surprise anyone?  As if the specter of national default isn’t bad enough, the Washington Post reports that the Former Guy has decided to run again in 2024 and that the only reason that he hasn’t made a formal announcement is because his advisors have told him he should hold off for awhile.  His pending announcement may partially explain why he’s suing Twitter, trying to force the company to reinstate his access because he would really need the platform to spread his lies.  For good measure, he’s also written to the Pulitzer Prize Committee asking them to take back the prizes that the Washington Post and NY Times were awarded for their Russia stories, citing John Dunham’s indictment of the Clinton associated lawyer Michael Sussmann for the alleged lie he made about communication between Russian bank and Trump servers as evidence that the entire Russia investigation was made up by his political enemies.  It wasn’t.  Also, though we are supposed to believe that Corey Lewandowski has been banished from FG land, he hasn’t been because politicians, even those who skirt the rules, can’t fire people who run PACs even if those PACs more or less do their bidding so the FG’s team has created a new one with everyone from the old one except Lewandowski who asserts he’s still running the old one. MAGAA?

Viral Musings:  We’ve turned the corner, again but don’t go out and celebrate or plan wild Christmas bashes just yet as COVID has more corners than a centipede has feet.  The good news is that new cases in the US are down to around 103,000, not that being over 100k is something to celebrate, though daily deaths, that awful lagging indicator, remain around 2000 and over the weekend just about everyone counting said that the total US death count crossed over 700,000.  On the vaccination front, the FDA’s advisory committee is scheduled to meet on October 14 and 15 to evaluate the Moderna and J & J boosters and again on October 26 to evaluate vaccines for the 5 to 11 year old set.  The Moderna booster might be a half dose and the kid vaccien will be a third of the adult dose. That should mean boosters for those who got the Modernas or J & Js by the third week of the month and maybe even approval for the kids by Halloween.  Fingers crossed on that.  In test country Israel. the Pfizer booster really seems to be doing its job, cutting deaths in thrice jabbed elderly to one fiftieth of comparable unvaxxed oldsters which explains why authorities there now don’t consider people fully vaccinated for vax passport purposes until after they get their third shot.   

Karma:  Just a day after Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen, the source of the Wall Street Journal’s damning series about the social media company’s prioritization of profits over tween mental health and that little thing called democracy went pubic on a much watched 60 Minutes episode,  the company’s systems crashed.  The crash, which had to do with a router/infrastructure SNAFU, something way beyond my technical expertise, or theirs for that matter, didn’t just impact Facebook, it also took out Instagram and WhatsApp.  While the inability to like pictures of friends, post photos of pets and push anti-vaccination poison might have been just a small inconvenience or good thing depending on your view, a lot of people in many countries rely on Facebook and its related platforms for Internet access, communication and their livelihood so the crash actually had a significant impact around the world.  It also had at least a temporary impact on Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth.  Facebook apologized for the outage but not for anything whistleblower Haugen had to say.  The company’s spokes people  continue to insist that likening the intentional addictiveness of its platform or the destruction of democracies and young people’s mental well being to the smoke and mirrors game that the tobacco companies played back when they insisted that cigarettes were misunderstood diet aids is wrong because its not like management could change any of their nefarious algorithms if they were so inclined.  At least that’s their party line.  Haugen, who was hired by Facebook to work in its Civil Integrity Unity, a group set up to combat election interference and misinformation in the run up to the 2020 election is due to testify before Congress today. By the way, that Civil Integrity Group, it was disbanded after the election and well before January 6 while that certain FG and his crowd kept pushing their big lie.

       

 

Tussles

State of Play:  The government won’t be shutting down, at least for now, as a bipartisan group in both the House and the Senate voted in a stopgap funding package that will keep parks and everything else open through the beginning of December.  That’s good but the debt limit still looms as Republicans, including both Mitch McConnell and Kevin “Q” McCarthy continue to insist that it’s the Democrats responsibility to deal with  paying all those debts incurred under the FG’s reign, an approach they only take when their party isn’t in power.  The struggle to get Biden’s infrastructure funding, both the bipartisan $1 plus trillion bill and the likely to shrink $3.5 trillion reconciliation package through the House continues as House progressives duke it out, on TV and behind closed doors, with Senators Manchin and Sinema who both continue to insist that they have no interest in supporting what they believe is too large a package.  While it would be far better if the Democrats could unite behind the legislation, it’s probably premature to characterize their negotiations and the vote delay as a “humiliation,” but nevertheless that’s what the NY Times is calling it.  That’s the same paper that went on for what seemed like forever about Hillary’s emails during the run up to the 2016 election while giving far less attention to the FG’s obvious failings so there’s that. Anyway, the Wall Street Journal is describing the vote delay as a “tussle” between progressives and the moderate Senators and to the extent that the vote ultimately goes through, their less hyperbolic description will turn out to be more accurate.  In any case, Nancy, Chuck and Joe are doing their best to push the legislation through.  At least with regard to the reconciliation package, the “big tent” Democratic contingent remain on their own because no Republicans are going to provide any support, not even those who want us to believe that they’re rational players because their rationality only pertains to opposing the FG, not to things like the environment or childcare.

Lechery: While most attention remains rightfully focused on the legislative tussle, a real humiliation has been taking place elsewhere.  I am talking of course about the Corey Lewandowski affair.  Lewandowski, one of those characters who starred in the first chapters of the FG saga but never really left has stepped in it again.  A little refresher, Lewandowski served as the FG’s first campaign manager before he was ousted from his position, something to do with him lacking the chops to run what was turning out to be a bigger campaign than anyone had anticipated as well as his “women” problems, as in predatory behavior that included him being caught on camera hitting a female reporter as well as his much gossiped about affair with Hope Hicks, particularly notable given that he’s a married father of four.  Anyway back in the day Lewandowski was shown the door at the urging of Jared Kushner, who one time FG press secretary Stephanie Grisham calls for somewhat obvious reasons “Rasputin in a slim-fitting suit” in her new tell all book, a book that also details that the FG’s temper was “controlled” by having her former boyfriend sing him Broadway show tunes.  Say what you want about Grisham, she never held a press conference during her tenure in part because she says that she didn’t want to have to defend the FG’s virility, that description of Kushner is spot on.  Of course Lewandowski, an FG loyalist never went away.  Most recently he’d been running the FG’s MAGA Action super PAC.  Note the past tense, he was pushed aside this week and replaced with former Florida AG Pam Bondi, who once received a conveniently timed campaign contribution from the FG when he was trying to get her to ignore one of his crimes, after a $100,000 donor named of all things Trashelle Odom went public with an accusation that the lecherous Lewandowski was up to his old shtick.  Apparently Trashelle says Corey made unwanted sexual advances, repeatedly touching her inappropriately, during a Las Vegas fund raising event last weekend in front of many witnesses who confirm her allegations. Simultaneously, a conservative website alleged that Lewandowski was having an affair with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem who he was advising on political matters and helping with profile “raising.’  While denying the affair, Noem, also an FG loyalist, announced that the two had broken up or at least broken off their “political” relationship.  Similarly, though their relationship was likely purely professional, Nebraska Republican gubernatorial candidate Charles Herbster has also kicked Lewandowski to the curb.  Start counting, it’s only a matter of time before Corey ends up back working for the FG in some capacity or another.

Viral Musings: Though daily deaths remain around 2000, the US coronavirus case count appears to be dipping, not that we haven’t been here before.  Hopefully, this time with vaccinations increasing, that trend will continue even as people in the north start spending more time indoors. As to vaccinations, though a lot of people are still kvetching about mandates, those mandates are working.  Most of those who said that they would quit if pressed to get their shots are actually getting jabbed.  That said, though the majority of teachers have gotten at least one shot, as predicted a group of NYC Teachers are appealing their anti-mandate case to the Supreme Court, complaining that it isn’t fair that they have to get protected and protect students when others in other sectors aren’t subjected to the same rules.  On the vaccine front, the Moderna shots appear to be modestly more effective at preventing hospitalization than the Pfizer shot.  That’s not to say that Moderna recipients won’t ultimately need and qualify for boosters, but it may partially explain why Moderna is seeking approval for a lower dose booster.  While vaccines still trump horse dewormer and home ECMO machines, yes there are people out there trying to source their own heart/lung bypass machines instead of getting vaccinated, there is some good news on the anti-viral front.  This morning Merck announced that its COVID antiviral molnupiravir reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by nearly half and that the independent board monitoring their clinical trial recommended that their study be stopped early because of those impressive positive results. Together with their partner Ridgeback Biotherapeutics Merck plans to apply for emergency use authorization asap.  

Enjoy the weekend!