Not So Beloved

Elvis, JFK Jr and Q:  First the good news, the FG wasn’t reinstated yesterday, disappointing to those hundreds of Q Anon crazies who showed up in Dallas to welcome him back together with his “new” vice president, the still very dead JFK Jr.  Now the not so good news by 50.7% to 48.6 % Republican Glenn Youngkin beat Democrat Terry McAuliffe in Virginia.  Youngkin’s win wasn’t all that surprising.  However, what’s happening in New Jersey, the other state that held a gubernatorial election yesterday, is.  There incumbent Democrat Phil Murphy who was widely expected to comfortably win reelection is locked in a neck and neck, too close to call battle with Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli.  As of now Ciattarelli is leading Murphy by about 1200 votes with thousands of votes yet to be counted. Though Ciattarerlli’s performance caught a lot of people by surprise, it probably shouldn’t have given that NJ’s Democratic governors rarely win reelection.  No doubt the FG will weigh in shortly taking full credit for both of these candidates’ performances but it’s worth noting that these Republicans did better in part because he wasn’t on the ballot, that absence left some of those who showed up in 2020 just to vote against him home.  Nevertheless, Democrats should be very concerned, whether it’s Biden’s declining popularity, the failure of Democrats to get their Build Back Better legislation passed, concerns about inflation, fears of a gift-less Christmas, the “horror” of “critical race theory” being taught in schools or Beloved on their kids reading lists, yesterday’s results should serve as a wakeup call because they, together with the Republican party’s masterful messaging, could portend a shellacking in next year’s mid-terms, one that could hand the House back to the Republicans and that could erase Democratic hopes of not only gaining Senate seats but of even maintaining their control. And all of that could encourage you know who to run for reelection, or as his followers would say, returning to his rightful place in the Oval Office with or without JFK Jr. 

Guns and Roses:  Keep an eye on the Supreme Court.  On Monday the Justices heard arguments about the Texas abortion “bounty” case.  Two of the more conservative Justices, Barrett and Kavanaugh, seemed to buy into a concern that allowing abortion bounties to continue could empower anti-gun locales to pass laws that would allow activists to turn on AR 15 owners, something that wouldn’t make the pro-gun ownership twosome and the rest of the Conservative Justices all that happy.  Keep in mind that the conservative newbies will have the opportunity to overturn the Roe and Casey precedents next month when they hear arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization over an abortion restricting Mississippi law, so while they may vote to overturn the bounty law now, reproductive rights remain on the chopping block.  As to gun rights, the Court is also hearing arguments on New York’s restrictive gun permit law to determine if the limits it places on carrying guns in public violates the Second Amendment.  The law’s not new but the make-up of the court is so the concern is that SCOTUS will rule against the law resulting in more guns on the streets of places like NY and Los Angeles because we really do need guns in subways, airports, bars, churches and other places where lots of hotheaded people gather?  In other legal news, apparently special counsel John Durham, the Barr/FG who was appointed to “prove” that the Russian investigation never should have happened wasn’t all that forthcoming when he got that indictment claiming that attorney Michael Sussmann lied to the FBI about the much disputed Russian Alfa Bank communication with the FG company’s servers. A number of the computer technologists involved in the case claim that they concluded that there really was something to the assertions that those communications between Alfa and the FG company took place. And of course, the FG is still fighting to hold back as many of his call logs and notes from January 6 as possible.  To that end the National Archives says that they will release the relevant information by the end of the week unless a court tells them they shouldn’t.     

Viral Musings:  The big news on the vaccination front is that the CDC signed off on the shot for 5 to 11 year-olds.  Those shots will start going into arms today though it probably will take a few more days before providers are fully ramped up so most who want them won’t start getting their shots until next week.   In New York, vaccination rates among civil service workers continue to climb.  Despite all those stories about thousands upon thousands of them planning to quit, as of yesterday only a few dozen have actually pulled the trigger and most of those were probably going to retire soon anyway.