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?