Blondes and Milk

Punditry: The pundits are punditing away about Tuesday’s elections with many bemoaning the dire implications of the results of the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races.  I get it, losing Virginia, while not unexpected, was a bummer and the New Jersey race was closer than expected but still a few things are worth noting.  First,  though the final vote tally isn’t in yet in New Jersey as of this morning Governor Murphy didn’t squeak through, he leads by  more than 56,000 votes or 2.3%, numbers that are likely to grow as much of the uncounted votes are from blue leaning areas.  By contrast Youngkin won Virginia, where voter turnout was higher, by 80,000 or 2.5% of the vote, only a slightly higher margin.  As to that voter turnout, it’s likely that seeing polls that indicated Murphy was going to cruise to victory, too many New Jersey voters stayed home. One more point, the last time the president’s party held on to even one of those two states the year after his election was when President Reagan was in office.  So while Democrats should remain very concerned about next year’s midterms and do need to hone their message and get legislation passed, maybe citing the NJ and Virginia results as an indication of national tumult is an overreaction, at least for now.  As to legislation, Speaker Pelosi’s team spent yesterday whipping votes and according to all the news reports are ready to bring both the infrastructure bill and the Build Back Better “reconciliation” bill up for a vote today, hopefully a good sign since Pelosi rarely takes votes she can’t win.   One more thing, you may have heard a lot about milk yesterday.  That’s because CNN’s Brianna Keilar interviewed someone who complained that their grocery costs had skyrocketed in part due to the extraordinary increase in the cost of their weekly purchase of 12(!) gallons of milk.  Putting aside why someone would buy that much milk, the prices quoted in the segment were off substantially. Prices of milk have gone up in during the past year but by 15% rather than the 40% cited.  CNN, always quick to fact check others has some explaining to do.        

Justice?  On the legal front, the Manhattan District Attorney’s office has convened a new special grand jury focused on things FG.  The old one is due to expire shortly so it’s not clear whether the new one was created for procedural reasons or because, as some legal beagles surmise, prosecutors are now focusing on the FG’s alleged finagling of asset valuations. Barr/FG appointee John Durham has also been busy.  He’s obtained a few indictments for lying against Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst who contributed to the Steele Dossier.  The New York Post would like us all to believe that those indictments prove that the whole Russian investigation was a lot of Hillary Clinton invented bunk but since the FBI’s and Special Counsel Mueller’s investigations relied little on the dossier, that’s not the case; still Durham’s actions are providing a lot of fodder for those on the right who think that the FG was an innocent victim of left wing propaganda. In other legal news, the FG’s attempt to prevent some of his papers and records from being released continues to meander through the courts.  Based on her comments, it doesn’t sound like Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan is buying his lawyer’s arguments.  She’s expected to rule shortly but hers won’t be the final word as the FG is expected to appeal until he gets to “his” Supreme Court.  In other legal news, a lot of weird stuff coming out of both the Ahmaud Arbury and Kyle Rittenhouse cases these days. Arbury is the Black Georgia jogger who was shot and killed by vigilantes. Defense attorneys have managed to select a jury with only one Black voter as even though the judge noted “intentional discrimination” he let that slide.  Rittenhouse is that other vigilante, the one who is being tried for shooting three and killing two Kenosha Wisconsin demonstrators.  There, Bruce Schroeder, the presiding judge has forbidden prosecutors from referring to the unarmed victims as victims, he also went of on a rant yesterday giving the jury a law school class on the hearsay rule which “veered off into a discussion of a New Testament passage on the trial of Paul.” As to the jury, one of them was dismissed yesterday, something about making a tasteless joke about Jacob Blake, the Black man whose shooting  triggered the protests and accompanying riots.  On the January 6^th front, Texas real estate agent Jenna Ryan who flew to DC on a private jet and bragged that she would never be jailed because she’s white and blonde was sentenced to serve 60 days for her participation in the invasion of the Capitol. We’ll know how blonde she really is in a few weeks assuming she actually serves her full sentence.   

Viral Musings:  It turns out that vaccine mandates work which explains why vaccination rates have gone way up among municipal workers where they’ve been imposed.  So while vaccination rates among NYC firefighters still lag behind 92%, the rate of the rest of the NYC municipal workforce, with 80% of firemen jabbed, the 40% of fire houses that were going to be forced shut by quitting firefighters, not happening. The Biden administration which had earlier signaled vaccine mandates announced that they will go into force on January 4.  Workers in companies with 100 or more employees will be required to be vaccinated or get tested weekly at their own expense for the tests not the shots if their employers don’t want to foot the bill.  Workers in the health care field will not have the testing option, they’ll just have to get jabbed.  Of course Florida’s DeSantis is suing.  On the virus front, concerns are that at 75 to 80k the US decline in cases may be stalling, the result of colder temperatures in the north, waning vaccination effectiveness particularly among those due for their boosts and absurdly low vaccination rates in places like Wyoming. Montana and parts of Colorado.  On the anti-viral front, the UK has approved Merck’s as yet to be approved in the US new drug Molnupiravir for use in people with mild to moderate COVID-19 and at least one risk factor for developing severe illness, such as obesity, older age diabetes, and heart disease.  Also on the anti-viral front, this morning Pfizer announced that its experimental Covid-19 pill Paxlovid reduced hospitalizations and deaths in high-risk patients by 89%, The company is no longer taking new patients in its clinical trial “due to the overwhelming efficacy” and plans to submit the findings to regulatory authorities for emergency authorization as soon as possible.  That’s good news for all of us but maybe a little late for the Green Bay Packers and their quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Rodgers who earlier said he was “immunized” wasn’t vaccinated but instead got some kind of faux homeopathic treatment.  He’s now COVID positive and in a ten day, or possibly longer, quarantine. He didn’t follow all of the mitigation procedures that unvaccinated players are supposed to follow, like face masking when indoors, so he’s also exposed others on his team.  Hard to feel too sorry for management though, they knew his status because they had earlier rejected his faux treatment.  Unfortunately Rodgers isn’t the only one newly positive, apparently a Biden aide and some of those who were near him or her tested positive before boarding the return flight from Scotland.  They’re now in quarantine in Scotland awaiting confirmatory results.  We’re told that Biden was not near the aide and that he tested negative on Tuesday.  Of course it is now Friday so maybe we’ll hear about another test shortly.