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.