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.