Rudolph's Red Nose

Ho, Ho, Ho:  Am writing today’s note mostly to wish everyone happy holidays. I was hoping to have good news about a NY indictment of that certain FG but though it could still happen, there’s nothing new to report there, yet.  That said, the House’s January 6^th Committee has gifted us with a few bold subpoenas and interview requests which explains why Ohio wrestler Jim “Gym” Jordan who was knee deep in insurrection and communicated quite frequently with his bestie the FG in the run up to and on coup day is looking even more dazed and acting more obstreperous than usual. Gym and his crowd were all in on torturing Hilary Clinton over Benghazi and her emails but suddenly they don’t believe that Congress, or at least anyone not on their side in Congress, has the right to investigate them which explains why Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry, who pushed for the FG to upend his Justice Department, is also refusing to cooperate. Don’t be surprised to see any of them join Mark Meadows and the rest of the FG crowd in suing the Committee, Nancy Pelosi and anyone else they can.  Roger Stone, another one called in to testify, sued but had his suit thrown out almost immediately and will probably try again since the whole idea is to stall as much as possible.  With the January 6^th anniversary on the horizon, the FG has broadcasted plans to deliver a celebratory speech from Mar a Lago.  Could be his soliloquy includes an announcement that he’s running in 2024? Ugh. That would upset Ted Cruz who believes that since he almost won the nomination in 2016 it’s his turn this time.  Double Ugh. In other political news, the Democrats are still trying to pull Build Back Better out of agony of defeat status.  BBB killer Senator Joe Manchin, who Republican Leader Mitch McConnell keeps trying to flip, did participate in Chuck Schumer’s Democratic caucus call this week, a sign that he might not be ready to hand the Senate over to the Republicans right now.     

Viral Musings: On the Omicron front, it’s everywhere, almost completely pushing Delta out of the picture.  So far most infected boosted infected people, and who doesn’t know more than a few, have had varying degrees of cold symptoms. Not fun, but if that’s as bad as it gets, not horrible, and this year a good explanation for Rudolph’s nose being red.  A lot of the experts say given Omicron’s contagiousness, infection is inevitable so if you are fully vaccinated and get a scratchy throat don’t panic but do stock Kleenex, drink lots of fluids and hibernate. If you are not vaccinated, what were you thinking???  Pfizer’s highly effective antiviral Paxlovid, which involves taking pills for five days starting shortly after infection, was approved yesterday but since initially the pills will be in short supply and reserved for high risk individuals don’t count on them getting you out of a case of Omicron over the holidays.  Speaking of supply issues, those COVID home tests remain hard to come by and if you like me stocked a few this summer, the ones you have may not work all that well as their shelve lives are rather short, at least that’s what today’s Wall Street Journal reports.  One more thing to look forward to, yesterday the Supreme Court scheduled a hearing on Joe Biden’s large employers and health care workers vaccine mandate for January 7.  We’ll soon learn if the Court’s conservatives care more about the safety of the unborn than the living, as if we don’t already know their view on that with regard to some other things.     

Have a very Merry Christmas!  Outdoors or with windows wide open.      

 

Just Say No

Reversal of Fortune:  Yesterday West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin announced on Fox News Sunday that he was a hard NO on Biden’s Build Back Better legislation. As if making that announcement on Fox wasn’t bad enough, he also failed to alert the White House in advance.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that Mitch McConnell who has had nothing but nice things to say about Manchin lately knew it was coming.  Probably a few coal and drug industry lobbyists knew too though quite a few insulin dependent diabetics in West Virginia and everywhere else probably didn’t get the call.  A shocked and very unhappy White House released a statement that detailed meetings that Manchin had been having with Joe Biden, including a reference to the good faith negotiations that Biden thought he was having with Manchin over the plan that Manchin had provided the White House last week.  The White House also said that they would continue to press Manchin to “honor his prior commitments and be true to his word." Those are the prior commitments Manchin made to convince House progressives to agree to vote for the infrastructure bill separate from the bigger BBB.  It’s still possible that large parts of the BBB get passed in the New Year but judging by the public knifing and resulting acrimony it’s also possible that Manchin jumps ship, joining his good friend Mitch in the Republican Party or just becomes an independent which is essentially what he is. That wouldn’t just put all of Biden’s legislative initiatives in jeopardy, it would also make it impossible for him to get a Supreme Court Justice confirmed should the opportunity arise.  Sadly, the consequences of Justice Breyer’s decision to remain on the Court for life may already be in effect. As to acrimony, the FG who is on a not very well attended harassers grievance tour with his good friend, the very disgraced former Fox pundit Bill O’Reilly, has been issuing some pretty wild statements of his own of late.  In addition to making a series of anti-Semitic remarks he’s been ranting even more than usual about the “communist” January 6^th Committee.  Some pundits believe that his higher than usual level of hysteria might be because he’s expects to be indicted shortly in  New York under the state’s New York racketeering law.  With Manhattan DA Vance’s term stepping down at year end that’s a real possibility, well maybe.    

Viral Musings: The jury is still out on whether infection with the Omicron variant results in less severe cases of COVID than its predecessors.  News out of South Africa remains promising however a preliminary analysis of the UK, albeit one based on a really small number of cases, less so.  Despite  reassurances that the boosted remain highly protected, a message that Moderna confirmed this morning, a number of prominent boosted people including Senators Elizabeth Warren and Corey Booker and Congressman Jason Crow now have breakthrough cases.  Given how quickly Omicron spreads, that’s not surprising because even if breakthroughs are uncommon with thousands upon thousands more people getting infected it’s inevitable that more than a few boosted folks will end up “positive.”  The good news, if there is any, is that most of those infected “boosterinos” are either asymptomatic or only experiencing cold like symptoms, not fun but not deadly.  While official reports are that most home rapid test kits do pick up the Omicron variant, there are many anecdotal reports of them failing to perform as promised meaning that sniffle might not be just a cold or then again it might be so act accordingly. And you probably won’t be surprised to learn that it wasn’t our collective imagination, the FG’s administration really did try to obfuscate virtually everything about the pandemic.  The House Oversight Committee is out with its report, they conclude that the FG’s administration made “deliberate" efforts to undermine the federal response to COVID -19 after it arrived in early 2020, so that the crisis wouldn't harm him politically.  Over the weekend, retiring National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins confirmed those conclusions by revealing how he endured repeated pressure to approve unproven medical treatments like hydroxychloroquine and that he was told many times to fire virus guru Fauci.  He refused to do either saying “Can you imagine a circumstance where the director of the NIH, somebody who believes in science, would submit to political pressures and fire the greatest expert in infectious disease that the world has known, just to satisfy political concerns?" Of course, the answer to that is yes.  As to bad decisions, right after Nets management decided to let vaccine holdout Kyrie Irving return to playing road games, he was placed into the league’s “health and safety protocols” meaning he is either COVID positive or has returned an inconclusive test.  Given how many other basketball and football players, SNL stars and Broadway actors have recently tested COVID positive that’s not much of a surprise.  Who but everyone would have ever predicted that?      

 

Plaque and Gingivitis

Dangling Democracy:  Those texts that members of the House January 6^th Committee read out loud before the vote seeking a contempt charge against former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appear to have hit a nerve with certain Fox newscasters named Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as well as some Republican members of the House which explains why Ohio Congressman/Gym Rat Jim Jordan, has acknowledged that he was the one who texted Meadows “suggesting” that VP Pence, as president of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believed to be unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all.  To be clear those so called “unconstitutional votes” were the votes from the swing states that the FG lost to Biden; the vote counts from the states that the FG won as well as all those votes for House and Senate Republicans, well duh, they were obviously legitimate.  Simply put, the plan which came close to succeeding, was to toss the legitimate results of the presidential election and then declare the FG victorious because who needs elections anyway when the FG was obviously the “best” guy for the job?  Jordan has no remorse about his text, he’s just pissed that RINO Liz Cheney and those evil committee Democrats had the audacity to read them out loud on the House floor. Of course Jordan wasn’t texting in a vacuum, according to one of those NY Times tick tock articles at least five other House Republicans were part of the cabal working closely with ringleader Meadows to overturn the results of the election. In addition to Jordan, the seditionist six included five other nefarious white guys: Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, and Texas’ Louie Gohmert. Perry was the one who advocated for the replacement of then acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who remains “too ill” to show up for his scheduled January 6^th Committee testimony where, when and if he ever shows, he says he will be pleading the Fifth, an admission that he’s got lots to hide.  For his part Louis Gohmert, who is now seeking the Republican nomination to run for Texas Attorney General, helped further the plan by suing to get the courts to endorse having Pence toss out those “illegitimate”  state electoral slates in the hope that the case would make it to the Supreme Court where he believed that “FG ally” Samuel Alito, the Justice responsible for the circuit covering Texas, would rule in his favor.  As crazy as all of this sounds, it’s important to remember that the coup almost succeeded, and that next time around it could especially with all those voter suppression laws being passed across the country and with so many of the main stream Republican state officials who stood in its way, people like Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger, under attack and likely to be replaced by coup friendly extreme right wingers by 2024.  In case there is any doubt the Republican Party continues to bow to the FG, look to the RNC’s decision to pay up to $1.6 million of his legal bills, ones related to his NY business activities rather than those related to his presidential duties.  That’s the billionaire FG who is sitting on about $100 million in PAC money that could be used to cover his legal expenses. Also look to the group of forty conservative leaders, including former Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp, Citizens United President David Bossie, Club for Growth President David Mcintosh and Conservative Partnership Institute Chairman Jim DeMint who sent a letter to GOP Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy urging him to remove Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney from the House GOP conference due to their “egregious actions” as members of the House January 6^th Committee. They are so afraid of Liz Cheney, and to be fair they should be, she’s working methodically, taking no prisoners and really wants to take all of them down.  #TeamLiz at least for now, when she runs for president, not so much.   

Politics Unusual: President Biden and Senate Leader Schumer have shifted their attention from getting the Build Back Better legislation passed before year end to pushing forward with voters rights legislation.  That shift is largely because Biden can’t get West Virginia’s Joe Manchin to sign on to BBB or at least to sign on before year end but also because of the Republican Party’s continued onslaught on democratic principles and, let’s be real here, whether one supports Biden and his policies or not, voter suppression and coups should be beyond the pale.  Unfortunately, getting voters rights legislation passed is another one of those things that isn’t easy when you barely have a majority and the other side is opposed to making voting easier for anyone who might vote blue.  To get voter legislation passed Biden and Senate leader Schumer will have to get all their Senators to agree to suspend the filibuster, the way they just did for the debt ceiling, and so far at least one of them, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema who claims that she’s all in on voters rights, doesn’t seem all that interested in upsetting the filibuster status quo.  Stay tuned, the year is almost over, we will know soon enough whether Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock’s recent impassioned speech about the importance of stopping voter suppression has had any impact on the eccentric Sinema.

Viral Musings:  Well that didn’t take long.  Omicron is spreading like wild fire and New York City appears to be its US base of operations.  Covid positivity levels in the city have doubled to just under 8% in the past three days.  While some of that rise is due to Delta, holiday festivities, and the seasonal move back to indoor activities a lot of it is believed to be due to the highly contagious Omicron variant. The rest of the country should be very concerned because NYC is one of the most vaccinated locales in the country so what’s happening here will be worse where vax rates are lower.  The experts continue to believe that boosters combined with mitigation behavior are the way out of this mess but given the war on both shots and masks in lots of places we’re probably in for a tough few months.  As to boosters, yesterday the CDC recommended that people, even those who previously got J & J shots,  get boosted with either Moderna or Pfizer.  Their decision was based on those rare and sometimes fatal blood clots associated with the J & J jabs combined with the fact that as low as the J & J risk is, with Moderna and Pfizer shots more effective, the risk is not worth taking.  Also, the results are in and the Moderna vaccine, like the Pfizer one needs a boost to be effective against Omicron.  One more thing, contrary to the rantings of Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson who is now pushing Listerine as a COVID cure, the mouthwash doesn’t do anything for COVID but as promised it does help with bad breath, plaque and gingivitis.            

 

Best Coup Ever!?

Contemptible: Last night the House voted to hold former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in contempt of Congress.  Unlike the earlier Steve Bannon contempt vote, this time around only Republicans Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger voted along with all the Democrats. The ball is now in Attorney General Merrick Garland’s hands.  Though it’s clear that Meadows is contemptible, the decision to seek an indictment is more complicated this time given that Meadows, unlike Bannon, really was a member of the FG’s administration.  That said, given the tidbits he revealed in his recent book and the subjects covered in those thousands of texts and emails that he already shared with the January 6^th committee Meadow’s argument that he’s protected by the FG’s claim of executive privilege and that the House Committee isn’t playing nice appears to be chock full of holes.  As to all those texts, they include some from as yet unnamed members of Congress, from Fox TV hosts Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Brian Kilmeade, and even one from son Don Jr, who instead of going straight to his father asked Meadows to get him to “condemn this sh-t as soon as possible,” and by sh-t son Don was referring to the violent invasion of the Capitol rather than a visit by a nice group of tourists.  That son Don didn’t go straight to his father could fill pages of psychology text books but it’s the Fox hosts who, if we weren’t living in an alternative media universe, would have lots of explaining to do.  As they were imploring Meadows to get the FG to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol they were busy presenting a totally different narrative to their viewers blaming the insurrection on antifa and the like rather than the FG and his fans, a story they and their comrade in mendacity, Tucker Carlson, continue to push nightly to their depressingly large, gullible viewer base. Though we still don’t know for sure which members of Congress were texting pro-insurrection messages to Meadows, we now have a clue as late yesterday the January 6^th Committee subpoenaed the phone and social media records of some of the likely suspects including: Margie Q, Muslim hatemonger Lauren Boebert, Paul Gosar, Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs, Madison Cawthorn, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, Gym Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Scott Perry and Jody Hice.  Of course they could and likely will follow the example of FG lawyer John Eastman who is now suing both Verizon Wireless and the House January 6^th Committee to protect his phone records from prying eyes, a tactic that probably won’t succeed but could slow things down.  In any case we are likely to learn more about which Congressperson said what in each of those messages that were read aloud during the speechlets that preceded last night’s vote soon enough.

Follow the Money:  In other legal news, yesterday a federal judge ruled that it was okay for the Treasury Department to share the FG’s tax filings with the House Ways and Means committee.  Those are the records that were requested more than two years ago.  Of course since a two year delay isn’t long enough, the judge then gave the FG’s team two weeks to appeal his decision, something the FG has already announced he will do. Because the FG’s cases are keeping quite a few courts busy these days we also learned that Donald Bender, an accountant from the Mazers USA firm who helped prepare the FG Organization’s financial statements recently spent some time testifying before a NY Grand Jury looking into the extreme valuation disparity technique that the FG employed to pay less in taxes while convincing lenders that his assets were worthy of large loans.  Additionally, Manhattan District Attorney lawyers also met with some current and former Deutsche Bank team members including Rosemary Vrablic, the private banker who used to handle the FG account.  Completing yesterday’s investigation trifecta, the FG’s finances were also on the agenda in Scotland where the country’s highest court was hearing arguments on whether it was the Scottish government’s duty to use an Unexplained Wealth Order to investigate suspected sketchiness behind the FG’s 2014 purchase of the Turnberry Golf Course and by sketchy think possible money laundering, a plausible explanation of how more funds keeps getting pumped into the money losing facility.

Viral Musings:  Omicron is expected to take over the London scene even sooner than previously predicted.  Likewise it continues to make serious inroads here in the US, a further indication that it really is more contagious than the Delta variant.  The current view remains that Omicron results in less severe disease than the Delta strain but not as much less severe than had previously been hoped. As to vaccine effectiveness, a new study from Discovery Health, South Africa’s largest private health provider, shows that two shots of the Pfizer vaccine, which provided more than 90% protection against the original COVID virus, is only 33% protective against Omicron infection although full vaccination continues to provide 70% protection against severe disease.  The consensus view continues to be that boosters are the way to go as they do appear to prevent far more disease than the two shot regimen, especially as the effectiveness of those two shots wane over time. On the therapeutic front, Pfizer reports that it’s anti-viral Paxlovid reduced the risk of hospitalization or death in high-risk adults by 89% if given shortly after the onset of symptoms, confirming the first set of data that Pfizer released last month.  Pfizer also reports that their drug works is effective against Omicron.  It’s likely that Paxlovid will be approved in the US and available for limited use by the end of the year which means very soon.  But, tell your friends, especially the unvaccinated to the extent you know any, that jabs, including boosters, remain the first line of defense as prevention is the better way to go.  Preachy but true.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Whirlwinds:  The top story of the weekend concerned the killer tornados that ravaged parts of six Southeast and Midwest states, particularly the rare quad state tornado that ripped through Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas.  It’s late in the season for tornadoes but then again weather patterns have grown more extreme, one of those nifty side effects of global warming that the right and their number one mouthpiece, Fox, like to mock and deny.  Notably Kentucky Senator Rand Paul was among the first to request aide for his state, that’s not surprising, it’s the thing that elected politicians are supposed to do.  The irony is that Paul, who voted against helping Puerto Rico deal with its weather related tragedies, generally opposes that kind of aid, citing it as just another socialist waste of money.  No surprise that the Biden administration is already helping, despite the fact that so many “red” states are the ones in need and also no surprise that unlike his predecessor he isn’t requiring that any of the relevant governors prostrate themselves in exchange. Getting back to Fox, the media outlet lost its one “real” journalist this weekend after Chris Wallace whose contract was expiring announced that he was leaving Fox News Sunday and Fox effective immediately. He’s on his way to CNN’s new streaming network. It’s fair to assume that Tucker Carlson downed some champagne with some of those fish sticks he inherited in celebration as Wallace’s departure leaves Fox firmly in his thrall.  Wallace’s departure is a loss for all of us because his Fox perch allowed him to book Republican politicians who wouldn’t appear elsewhere, getting them to admit to revealing things that they wouldn’t ordinarily say. For example, on Sunday Wallace’s guest was Senator Lindsey Graham who he skewered for supporting the FG’s deficit increasing tax cuts while attacking all those “expensive” paid for components of the still floundering Build Back Better legislation. By the way, the current Republican plan is to keep West Virginia’s Joe Manchin from supporting the legislation. To accomplish that they’ve gotten a hypothetical “score” from the CBO that “shows” the plan would increase the deficit if some of its provisions, particularly those involving child care, are extended beyond the term included in the BBB legislation. Spoiler, that’s only if they were extended without any offsetting rollback of some of the FG’s tax cuts.  Graham also criticized Mitch McConnell for helping Democrats implement their creative work around to get the debt ceiling raised, saying that it was far more important to kowtow to the FG than ensure that the country avoid default. Left unsaid, if the Democrats can get all their caucus on board, and that’s a big if, they could now use a similar solution to pass some voting rights legislation and whatever else they might want to do.  Chris Wallace isn’t the only one jumping ship, MSNBC’s Brian Williams is also seeking new pastures.  It’s not yet known where he’ll show up next, rumor has it he’s been talking to ABC and CNN.  If you have a chance, watch the video of his Thursday night signoff, he spared no words with his warning about the darkness facing our Democracy right now.    

Insurrection Update:  About that darkness, this weekend we also learned more about the nefarious coup activities that were going on after the election.  Though, as expected, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows failed to show for his scheduled testimony, the January 6^th committee went ahead without him, revealing the questions they would have asked him if he was in attendance.  Those questions focused on the information included in his book and in the trove of emails that Meadows, who is now suing both the committee and Nancy Pelosi largely because that’s what FG acolytes do when they’re stalling for time, provided the committee before he decided to stop cooperating.  The Meadows’ emails revealed how he was knee deep in helping the FG with his plot to overturn the election results as well as some more about the FG’s desperation to hang on to power.  For example Meadows helped with the outreach to Republican state legislators to try to get them to send alternative electors to Congress, advised that the National Guard should be used to protect those “nice tourists” who attacked the capitol on January 6, and even reached out to a number of sitting Republican Senators, reviewing with them the power point presentation about how they could overturn the election results.  That’s the same power point presentation that said the FG could declare a national emergency and take control of ballots and voting machines in swing state by citing unsupported and seriously wackadoodle claims that China and Venezuela had obtained control over the voting infrastructure in a majority of states. Oddly enough, Mike Pence, who’s out on the road these days trying to drum up support for his presidential run, and whose former chief aide Marc Short is cooperating with the January 6^th committee, really was the one who threw the wrench into the FG’s plans.  Not so oddly given the cast of characters who surrounded and continue to surround the FG, Philip Waldron the retired Army Colonel/current conspiracy theorist who distributed the power point presentation also appeared in Pillow Man Mike Lindell’s election “documentary,” or should I say mocumentary.  And because no one should forget about Jenna Ellis, the traffic court lawyer/faux Constitution expert who was with Rudy Giuliani the day his hair dye dripped down his face in the outskirts of Philadelphia she takes credit for some of the report’s conclusions as well.

Mock Court: Late next Spring, what remains of Roe v Wade will likely be overturned but for women in Texas the federal right to abortion established by Roe is already far gone.  Late Friday, by a 5 to 4 vote, the Supreme Court left Texas’ anti-abortion bounty law in place while granting abortion providers a small concession by allowing them to continue with some of their lawsuits, those against Texas licensing officials but not state court judges, court clerks or the state attorney general.  Suffice it to say the anti-abortion crowd is winning as women in Texas continue to have virtually no access to abortion services unless of course they have the means to fly the coop to another friendlier state.  Not mincing words, Justice Sotomayor said the decision will have “castatrophic consequences.”  Chief Justice Roberts, hardly a fan of abortion, but someone who seems to get stare decisis and who also fears for what’s left of the Court’s dwindling reputation, joined the three liberal justices in dissent saying that the “nature of the federal right infringed does not matter; it is the role of the Supreme court in our constitutional system that is at stake.”  Over the weekend California Governor Gavin Newsom took a shot at the conservative justices’ decision by tweeting if “SCOTUS is letting private citizens in Texas sue to stop abortion?!.... then we’ll let Californians sue those who put ghost guns and assault weapons on our streets. If TX can ban abortion and endanger lives, CA can ban deadly weapons of war and save lives.”  Newsom has a good point, sadly it’s one that the conservative majority and probably even the Court’s liberals would never endorse.

Viral Musings:  We’re back to masking in public places in New York State. Omicron is likely to become the dominant variant in Europe over the next few weeks and what happens there usually happens here too.  The situation in South Africa seems to be improving which probably means that Omicron was there earlier than was previously known. Omicron really is more contagious than Delta, the previous super spreader king, but the jury is still out on its lethality. For now the belief – well hope – is that it is less likely to result in serious illness and hospitalization but it’s still too early to be certain.  Also, it’s looking more and more like boosters are needed to fend off the variant and that prior infection isn’t protective.  And in what looks like an admission that the FG’s administration has a lot to hide about how it handled coronavirus, former advisor Peter Navarro is refusing to cooperate with the House Oversight Committee. No surprise that he says he’s just following orders.

US Death toll: 800,000

 

Family Values

Law and Disorder:  The Former Guy’s Teflon shield took a few more hits yesterday, to the extent that matters.  First, shortly after pulling out of the NYS Governor’s race, NY State’s Attorney General Tish James “requested” that the FG stop by on January 7 for a deposition under oath as part of her ongoing civil investigation into potential fraud at his real estate company. In all likelihood, the FG will take her to court to avoid showing up so don’t mark the date in your calendar just yet. Then, later in the day,  a three judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia unanimously rejected the FG’s claim that he had the right to prevent his January 6 related documents from being shared by the National Archives with the House’s January 6th Committee saying that he “has given this court no legal reason to cast aside President Biden's assessment of the Executive Branch interests at stake, or to create a separation of powers conflict that the Political Branches have avoided.”  In other words, elections have consequences, despite his big lie claims, the FG’s no longer the president and the guy who is, has chosen not to invoke executive privilege. Again, don’t expect to see those documents released just yet, as the Appeals Court also granted the FG’s legal team two weeks to appeal their decision to the Supreme Court and it’s fair to assume that they will because though most legal pundits don’t think he’ll win, in fact most don’t even think that SCOTUS will take the case, he did appoint three of those Justices and the wife of a fourth, Clarence Thomas was herself involved in those January 6^th shenanigans.  As to what, the FG is so desperate to hide, we got a sense of some of it from the thousands of communications that his last Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has already shared with the January 6^th Committee.  Those files include a Power Point presentation detailing the steps to be taken to overturn the 2020 election results, kind of a guide to how to end American Democracy.  They also include texts and emails from Meadows who unlike the FG is a prolific texter, about sending “alternate” electors to Congress, part of a strategy that was intended to facilitate the extension of the FG’s presidency for another four years, or maybe even longer. In one of those texts, Meadows professed “love” for the alternate elector plan. Meadows, who according to Politico, is currently in discussion with the National Archives about “fixing” his failure to “properly” turnover presidential  records that he was required to turnover to them pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, is still refusing to testify in front of the January 6^th Committee which plans to vote on citing him for criminal contempt of Congress on Monday night.  Worth noting that the administration that got into power by making Hillary Clinton’s emails an issue committed far worse infractions while trying to stage a coup, something that she never did. Speaking about Hillary, remember those absurd claims by the QAnon set about her and a number of other prominent Democrats abusing kids in the basement of a Washington DC Pizza Parlor, the so-called Pizzagate nonsense which was of course total and complete bunk.  Surprise, surprise, they were focused on the wrong party as it turns out that Josh Duggar, an outspoke conservative Republican who complained loudly about liberal values,  as in values that he didn’t share, and who was an Executive Director at the evangelical Family Research Council was the guy they should have been hounding.  Yesterday Duggar was found guilty of receiving and possessing some extraordinarily gruesome child pornography. For those not up on the Duggar’s, Josh previously admitted to molesting some young girls including a few of his sisters. His father Jim Bob who is running for a seat in the Arkansas State Senate broke his silence yesterday to say that he’s praying. No comments from the rather large number of former and current Republican officials including former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, father of current gubernatorial candidate/former press secretary Sarah, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Rick Santorum, Rick Perry and Sarah Palin who all gladly posed for pictures with Josh to get some of that all-important evangelical vote. As far as I can tell the Q set also has nothing to say.

Viral Musings:  Though a lot of the focus right now is on the Omicron variant, it’s the Delta strain that’s causing the current seasonal and holiday surge and almost all of the cases and deaths here in the US.  That’s truly sad because we know that the current crop of vaccines work on Delta and it’s largely the unvaccinated who are jamming up hospital ICUs and even dying.  One of those recent unvaccinated COVID casualties is Michigan’s William Hartmann, the Wayne County canvasser who tried to hold up the certification of Michigan’s presidential election results.  Hartmann who died from COVID this week had accused Democrats of needing mask and vaccine “panic” to “screw up” election results. Getting back to Omicron, the current view remains that the best defense is to get vaccinated and for vaccinated people to get boosted when they become eligible, six months after getting their second mRNA shot or two months after their J & J jab.  Yesterday, the CDC expanded that recommendation to the 16 to 17 year old set, a group that it previously did not cover. Another study out of test case country Israel where boosters were administered first, confirms that they really do extend protection by reducing  both illness and death dramatically. The Israel study focuses on Pfizer shots since that’s the vaccine that has been given to most Israelis but it’s fair to assume that the results pertain to Moderna and the other non mRNA vaccines.  One caveat, the Israel study took place before the Omicron variant was in circulation, so at least for now we’ll have to rely on the emerging lab studies that show that boosters increase protection against Omicron too.  

And:  It looks like Representative Lauren Boebert, who recently posed for one of those charming Christmas cards showing all four of her very young sons holding their Christmas gifts which naturally were automatic weapons, may be the next Republican to lose her committee assignments.  Not because of the holiday card which the Colorado Department of Children Services should be looking into but because of her anti-Muslim statements.  Also, Salon reports that left leaning watchdog group Accountable US has sent a letter to the House Oversight Committee asking them to look into questionable ties between certain Brazilian investors and the FG’s new social media company.  The assertion is that the FG may have been pitching his company to the Bolsonaro crowd back when he was still in office.              

7 Day average of new cases:  118,000

7 Day average of deaths:  1295

 

#ButHerEarbuds

Seasons Greetings: Facing the end of year rush and Rudolph’s pull, Congress moved one big step closer to raising the debt ceiling and passing the defense authorization act.  Getting the debt ceiling deal agreed to took some heavy lifting and creativity but knowing that being responsible for pushing the country into default is not the best way to win elections, Mitch McConnell signed off on a deal with Democrats that involved the Nancy Pelosi controlled House passing what is supposed to be a one time work around that will allow the Senate to raise the debt ceiling with the barest of majorities. Biden’s Build Back Better remains up in the air, though Senate Leader Schumer insists he’ll get it passed before Christmas break, not that anyone else thinks that’s likely to happen. While all the Congressional maneuvering was taking place President Biden was having a phone summit with Putin, trying to convince Vlad that he would suffer bigly if he moved to invade Ukraine over the holiday break or anytime thereafter.  Given Putin’s build up on his border with Ukraine an invasion is a real possibility, especially since he’s pulled off some Ukraine land grabs before.  Biden’s likely talking financial penalties not war but the stakes are high so the situation could get really messy and since mess and disarray seems to be something that some Republicans love, a few of them including no one’s favorite Senator Ted Cruz continue to stand in the way of the confirmation of most of Biden’s State Department, national security and Ambassadors because why would we want diplomats in place with peace in jeopardy? Cruz claims that he’s holding them all up over Biden’s decision to remove sanctions on the Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline project from Russia to Germany, but really he’s probably just doing it because he loves the attention, national security be damned.   On the international front, it’s not just Russia that’s causing problems, China is also acting up, saber rattling over Taiwan, the island they want back, and continuing to trample on the human rights of the Muslim Uyghurs.  Then there’s the problem of Peng Shuai, the female tennis player who has just about disappeared after alleging that she was sexually assaulted by a senior Chinese party official.  As a protest against all that human rights trampling the Biden administration announced that while our athletes will still be allowed to participate in the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, our diplomats won’t be in attendance.  Yesterday, Australia announced that they are following suit.  Suffice it to say, China’s President Xi is not pleased.

Reindeer:  On the domestic front, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who didn’t show up the first time he was called to testify in front of the House January 6^th Committee but then said that he would show up to avoid being cited for criminal contempt  has announced that he’s back to not showing up.  Meadows who whined something about changing his mind because the House Committee weren’t playing fair because they “went behind his back” by going after his phone records really changed his mind because the Former Guy is squeezing his cojones, to the extent he has any, over his book.  That’s the book where Meadows provided details about the FGs bout with COVID and how he knowingly exposed more than 500 people to the virus.  Apparently doing a tell all book is okay but testifying before Congress is a violation of executive privilege, at least according to Meadows.  For his part Roger Stone, another one that the committee has called in now says that he, like lawyers John Eastman and Jeffrey Clark, will plead the Fifth, an acknowledgement that they all have lots of criminal deeds to hide.  And why not pull that delaying tactic, the frequently red nosed Steve Bannon’s trial date has now been set for July, which while earlier than Bannon wanted, is still late enough to make it highly likely that he’ll skate until there is a new Congress, one controlled by either Kevin McCarthy, Gym Johnson or maybe even “Speaker” FG, if Matt Gaetz gets his way.

Cows:  One person who won’t be there for all that fun is California Congressman Devin Nunes who announced that he’ll be stepping aside at the end of the year to become the CEO of the FG’s new media company. Nunes made his announcement about a minute after it was revealed that the company and the SPAC (special purpose acquisition company)  that is facilitating it going public are being investigated by the SEC over conversations they may have had back when they weren’t supposed to be canoodling.  The SEC is also asking questions about the identify of the investors who are shoveling an additional $1 billion into the fledgling company, maybe looking into how many of them are relatives of the Saudi royal family?  In case you are wondering Nunes, who claims to be a dairy farmer, has no experience in managing a tech company but has sued a number of them as well as a cow, or a person pretending to be a cow.  Nunes’ decision to leave the House is odd given that he was up for the Chairmanship of the powerful Ways and Means Committee in 2022.  That said, he may have been concerned about winning reelection because his “safe” district was likely going to be redistricted and then there’s all that money that he was probably promised by the FG who always meets his financial obligations, well not really.  Speaking of redistricting, it looks like some additional Democratic leaning voters are going to be tossed into the NYS’s mostly Republican leaning Staten Island district which explains why moderate Democrat/veteran Max Rose who lost his one term seat to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020 announced that he’s running again.  Malliotakis who voted against confirming Joe Biden’s electoral win took heat from a lot of people in her party including the FG for voting for the bipartisan infrastructure bill.  She’s been trying to have it both ways, we’ll know soon enough if that strategy is working.  Also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the “controversy” about VP Kamala Harris and her earbuds.  Yes, her earbuds.  Politico, which was recently taken over by right leaning German publishing company Axel Springer, ran a “major” expose yesterday about how she shuns blue tooth in favor of wires.  Apparently Harris believes, correctly it turns out, that blue tooth buds are less secure.  To repeat, Harris who has endured countless stories about her staff turnover is now being criticized for her choice of ear buds.  Count me among those who think that this has a lot to do with her being a powerful woman, of color.         

Viral Musings:  Omicron is sprouting up everywhere but at least for now Delta remains the current problem especially here in the US where new cases are up again (7 day average just under 120,000) as are deaths (1700 plus yesterday). Preliminary indications are that the Omicron variant is less lethal than earlier ones, but since hospitalizations and death are lagging indicators it’s still too early to be sure whether that’s the case or wishful thinking.  As to vaccines, a small study out of South Africa indicates that the Pfizer vaccine, the one they examined, isn’t as effective at protecting against Omicron.  Pfizer acknowledges that but also say that two doses will still prevent a lot of disease while adding a booster does provide good protection against the new variant. The conclusion for now, get boosted ASAP because that third shot is more important than ever.

 

Godwin's Law on Steroids

Bias: It’s not your imagination, President Biden really is being trolled by the press. Sure he’s not perfect but its hard to miss how his successes get short shrift while his problems get amplified.  According to the Washington Post, data analytics completed by artificial intelligence company FiscalNote show that coverage of Biden is now worse than that received by the Former Guy.  And we’re not just talking about obvious right wing outlets like the New York Post, some of the worst trolling is coming from places like Politico and other mainstream sources that hide behind patinas of “fairness” and legitimacy. This matters because as Wapo’s Dana Milbank writes his “colleagues in the media are serving as accessories to the murder of democracy.” Think about the coverage of inflation and supply problems.  Yes they’re both real concerns but not totally of Biden’s making and in any case unemployment is way down, almost at pre-pandemic levels, and that much trumpeted shortage of turkeys has not materialized.  Yet relentlessly pushing those kind of stories has an undue influence on voters and as we move into an important election cycle we’re likely to experience first hand some really dire consequences due to the mainstream press and its both siderism.  For his part the Former Guy is doing his best to take advantage of situation by getting as many “friendly” candidates in place.  Over the weekend one of those “friendlies” David Perdue, the ex-Georgia Senator who lost his seat to Jon Ossoff announced plans to primary Brian Kemp, Georgia’s current governor. Kemp is reliably right wing and accomplished at voter suppression so this isn’t about policy but because he didn’t step in to overturn the results of the last election and for that “crime” the FG wants him ousted and is particularly keen to see Georgia “right” itself which is why he also gifted the state with Senate candidate/football guy Herschel Walker.  Whoever gets the Republican gubernatorial nod will then go up against Democratic darling Stacey Abrams and while she’s been highly successful at getting more voters registered, it will still be a tough election during what is likely to be a particularly horrendous mid-term cycle.  While we’re talking crimes, real ones rather than the “steal” that the FG keeps pushing, it’s worth noting that Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department official who is quite possibly guilty of a few, including pushing for Georgia’s presidential electors to be replaced by an FG friendly set, did not show up to testify, or even plead the Fifth this weekend, something about him suffering from a “credible” illness. 

Viral Musings:  The jury is still out on the Omicron variant.  Scientists now think that it picked up some of its mutations from a run of the mill cold virus and that those are the mutations that are making it more contagious.  There’s also a chance that those mutations are making it less lethal which would be a really good thing but if we’ve learned anything thus far positive news reports should be taken with a grain of salt until we get more convincing data.  While Delta remains the dominant strain, fears of Omicron are causing a lot of people to run out for jabs, over two million shots were administered last Thursday. That’s a good thing but not as good as it sounds as a large proportion of those getting shots are either getting boosters or are among the newly eligible 5 to 11 cohort.  Under-vaccinated parts of the country remain unvaccinated and the consequences there are deadly.  According to NPR people living in counties that went 60% or higher for the FG in 2020 had 2.7 times the death rates of those that went for Biden. Counties with an even higher share of the vote for Trump saw higher COVID-19 mortality rates. As to vaccination and science, Fox’s Lara Logan who once was a respected 60 Minutes journalist has an opinion about all that. Taking Godwin’s Law to the extreme she equated virus guru Dr. Fauci with the Nazi’s most heinous doctor Joseph Mengele who among other things tortured children and did those horrific twin studies that are too disgusting to detail.  She also suggested that COVID was no worse than the flu but the Mengele comment is the one getting all the attention as it should.  Though Fox management has had nothing to say about her disgusting utterances, even they know she went beyond the pale which could explain why she disappeared from their airwaves at least for now.    

People:  Also disappearing from the airwaves is now former CNN host Chris Cuomo who has been fired for violating ethics for helping his brother/NY Governor Andrew. It’s worth noting that while both of them are out, fish heir Tucker Carlson is still employed riling up hate and pushing white supremacy on a nightly basis. We also lost former Senator, war hero and presidential candidate Bob Dole this weekend.  Lots of tributes coming in for him for being an honorable, nice guy and a war veteran who suffered for his patriotism but keep in mind that he was the only one of the living GOP presidential candidates to endorse the FG and may look good now in comparison to the Republican’s current crop of clowns.    

     

Mary's Typhoid Uncle

Something Stinks:  Let’s start with the good news, last night Congress averted one of those unnecessary, stupid shutdowns by voting to fund the government at current levels through February.  In the House all Republicans with the exception of Adam Kinzinger, who appears to have grown increasingly untethered from his party possibly his way of positioning himself for his future political aspirations like a run for Illinois Governor, opposed the resolution.  The vote in the Senate was more bipartisan, but only after an agreement was reached to allow a show vote on defunding Biden’s “immoral” vaccine mandates to placate a few Republicans Senators who threatened to let the government shutdown unless the jabs were defunded.  Count me as one of those people who thinks  it defies logic to question the value of vaccine mandates in the face of a new highly contagious variant during a pandemic but then again what about the Republican Party and its push against science and vaccines makes any sense.  Also, count me as very concerned about what will happen  with these types of necessary housekeeping votes if, or more likely when, this crop of Republicans takes control of the House.  As to COVID, this was the week that we learned that the Former Guy tested positive before his September 2020 debate Biden.  That’s both shocking and not shocking at the same time.  Shocking because by hiding his test results, the FG put candidate Biden, everyone associated with the debate, everyone at the Justice Amy Coney Barrett White House shindig/super spreader event, more than a few elderly veterans and all of his staff at risk of getting sick at a time when vaccines weren’t not yet available and the few effective medicines we now have weren’t yet approved for use. We learned this horrifying tidbit from former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who helped cover up the FG’s COVID lie, only because he’s about to embark on a book tour, one that he surely hopes will result in him selling more than the pathetic few thousand that Chris Christie managed to unload despite his countless TV appearances. Then again nothing about the FG’s behavior should really be shocking as the story we were fed about his illness and the timeline that led up to his hospitalization was sketchy from the start. Speaking of sketchy, Sean Conley, the White House physician who helped the FG hide his disease is now in that category.  Sure patients are entitled to privacy but not when they’re both serving as president of the country and endangering the lives of others.  So much for medical and that military thing about not following unethical orders.  Speaking of ethical behavior, Justice Sotomayor has had it with her conservative colleagues’ march to overturn Roe v Wade.  During this week’s hearing on the Mississippi case that seeks to dismantle the fifty year precedent of the Roe abortion rights decision, she suggested that the Court won’t “survive the stench” of eliminating reproductive rights.  Her point being that following politics rather than adhering to precedent will kill the whole idea of an independent judiciary. We won’t know for sure how far the Court’s conservative majority plans to go until their decision is published next Spring but based on their questions and comments it’s fair to assume that the outcome will be fairly dreadful unless of course you think that its okay to force all pregnant women to stay pregnant until delivery at which time they can, as Amy Coney Barrett suggested just toss that newborn off on the stairs of a church or police station for adoption. The Conservative crowd appears to have a limited understanding of biology and also don’t seem to care about the impact that forcing mothers regardless of their age, health, health of the fetus, economic status and or whether the pregnancy was the result of rape or incest can have on their future mental and physical health and economic status. They also appear unconcerned that most of the members of their preferred political party aren’t all that interested in funding the kind of prenatal and child care programs that all those future mothers and babies need because who really worries about providing diapers, food, health care and an education to children. Enough said, you get the gist.

People News: On the political front, voting rights champion Stacey Abrams has announced what everyone kind of knew she was going to announce, that she plans to run again to become Governor of Georgia.  Her path to the Georgia Democratic nomination is probably a sure thing which contrasts her to all those candidates in New York where still another Democrat, Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi, has thrown his hat into the already very crowded Democratic field.  On the January 6^th committee front in an effort to avoid indictment for obstruction of Congress, former Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Clark now plans to testify on Saturday, however few believe he will do much more than plead the Fifth, an acknowledgement that he’s got lots to hide about how he tried to get then sitting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen fired so that he could take over the leadership of the Justice Department in order to abet the FG’s illegal coup.  Clark’s dance with contempt is probably not over yet as the members of the committee are unlikely to be all that happy if he refuses to answer any questions.  As to the FG, worth noting that he was so busy with his election overthrow project that he stopped taking security briefings before the Christmas Holidays when he decamped to Mar a Lago for a bit and then never started them up again even when he returned to the White House.  VP Pence, the guy he tried to get lynched did apparently keep reading those secret memos so at least one person, albeit one who was almost taken out and hung, did stay in the security loop.

Viral Musings:  Omicron is here in the US.  We still don’t know much more about its lethality, vaccine evading skills or contagiousness but we do know that it’s landed on our shores.  Not much of a surprise but still rather disconcerting.   President Biden says that “We’re going to fight this variant with science and speed, not chaos and confusion” which sounds good but who are we kidding, chaos and confusion is the American brand these days. Far too many Republican politicians are protesting vaccines while rooting for the virus to kill more of us not because they’re all as stupid as they sound but because they view an increase in virus spread and related deaths as something they can use to win elections and attack Biden’s competency.  And of course there are also a lot of people, like RFK Jr, the Kennedy scion who is just a loony, run of the mill anti-vaxxer.  In addition to pushing jabs, the Biden administration is pushing for more testing, for those boarding incoming international flights and also for those at home by having insurance companies pay for those do it yourself testing kits that cost more than they should when you can find them.  For now vaccines, boosters, masks and frequent testing are the solutions to managing the spread.  So mask up and get boosted if you haven’t already and stay home and test if you think you’ve been exposed or aren’t feeling up to snuff.  It’s likely to be a long winter.

Have a good weekend.

The Wizard of Oz?

Celebrity Shuffle:   Mehmet Oz, Oprah Winfrey’s favorite heart surgeon who is now better known for pushing quack cures and worthless diet supplements, announced that he is running for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey.  Oddly enough like former football star Hershel Walker who is running in Georgia, Oz isn’t even a resident of his “chosen” state, or at least wasn’t until moments before his announcement.  Though he used his in-laws’ address to submit a possibly fraudulent absentee Pennsylvania ballot during the last election, his wife’s website confirms that he resides in New Jersey. Oz who once pronounced that the FG was healthy enough to be president before being appointed to serve as a member of his presidential fitness council is likely to get the FG’s coveted endorsement now that the candidate he previously endorsed has withdrawn from the race, something to do with losing a child custody battle over allegations of spousal abuse.  It’s not all that clear that Pennsylvanians will line up to support Oz but should he go the distance in the primary and the general election, he’ll fit right in with those other medical superstars, like Senator/Eye Doctor Rand Paul, Congressman/Dentist Paul Gosar and one time White House physician/Congressman Ronny Jackson who yesterday called the feared Omicron variant a midterm election trick.  On the subject of unqualified Republicans serving in Congress, yesterday after another video emerged we learned that Colorado’s Lauren Boebert has been doing her anti-Muslim shtick for a while now.  That could explain why her not really an apology call to Ilhan Omar fell on deaf ears. Of course Georgia Congresswoman Margie Q has weighed in on the matter now too.  After Nancy Mace, the newbie Republican Congresswoman from South Carolina, criticized Boebert’s Islamophobia, calling her the “trash in the GOP conference,” Margie laid into her, calling her a pro-choice RINO.  Mace who is neither a RINO nor pro-choice did not back down from her criticism.  Though he still hasn’t had much to say about Boebert’s hate speech, GQP Leader McCarthy responded by telling both Mace and Margie to stop their public twitter fight. Of course that went nowhere with Margie, who came out of her tete a tete with McCarthy and immediately called for someone to primary Mace, promising that whoever did would get the FG’s endorsement. Worth noting Mace comes from a swing district so someone to her right might not come out on top in the general election, well maybe.  In other Republican news, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows now says that he will cooperate with the House January 6^th committee by providing them with some of what they’ve asked for and that he would answer some of their questions.  Only time will tell whether he’s stalling or if he plans to be forthcoming enough to avoid one of those contempt indictments. It’s fair to assume that the FG can’t be all that pleased with his cooperation but then again it’s not like he’s offered to pay any of Meadows legal bills.  We also learned yesterday that there is an ongoing federal probe into kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, something to do with her using money raised to fund her Defending the Republic election lie organization to pay her personal expenses.  Back in the semi-real world the Senate still has a lot to do on the funding and legislative front which likely explains why the wily Mitch McConnell and a number of conservative funded PACs have been putting the squeeze on West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, whose key vote makes him the most powerful man in the Senate.

Viral Musings: There’s not much more to say about the Omicron variant yet which probably explains why a lot of news reports seem hyper focused on the correct pronunciation of the Greek letter’s opening “O,” as if that’s the problem.  Although the World Health Organization has pushed back against the idea of blanket travel bans, they ominously (an easy to pronounce O word) warn that older people, as in people over 60 (ugh), and those with health issues should refrain from travel.  As to those travel bans that were implemented over the weekend, though they are politically expedient and temporarily soothing they probably don’t do much more than buy a week or so of time as the coronavirus is pretty stealthy and the Omicron variant has probably already arrived in most places.  Moreover, it turns out that though the South Africans were the first to detect Omicron, that’s mostly because they’re particularly good at genome sequencing.  It turns out that Omicron was already in the Netherlands even before the South Africa announcement. It’s starting to look like South Africa is being slammed for being the messenger, a policy that could cause them to go silent when they detect other strains.  On the anti-viral front an FDA panel narrowly approved Merck’s not so miraculous pill with some reservations over its less than impressive effectiveness and safety profile. And of course a spate of courts keep knocking down Biden’s federal vaccine mandates because why would we want to stop the viruses spread?   Now some good news, though NYS positivity is climbing particularly upstate, levels are low in NYC where were no reported COVID related deaths on Monday. 

Stay safe!