Jerks and Morons

Filibuster Frustration: President Biden and the Democrats have hit a wall, not the fragmented structure that the FG built, but the Senate filibuster, an out of date rule that lets the Senate minority, one that currently represents only 43% of the country, to prevent even a discussion of any piece of legislation it opposes.  That’s a big problem because Mitch McConnell and his Republican coalition oppose most legislation that doesn’t involve cutting taxes or funding defense and most definitely oppose passing anything that  adequately protects voting rights, largely because they fear the consequences of making it easier for people who don’t  look like them to vote.  That’s particularly frustrating to Democrats who desperately want to see some form of voting rights legislation passed to combat the Republican party’s state by state efforts to make accessing the voting box more difficult, not just the laws that eliminate urban polling locations, vote by mail and early and Sunday voting, but also the even more undemocratic provisions that would allow Republican state legislators to override the outcomes of presidential elections, the thing that the FG tried very hard to do in 2020.  The problem is that even though all 50 Democratic Senators would vote yes for voting rights legislation, those 50 votes together with VP Harris’ tie breaker wouldn’t suffice because of the filibuster and at least two Democrats, Manchin and Sinema, remain opposed to its elimination even for protecting voting rights.  Biden who has been working behind the scenes to get Manchin on board has been taking a lot of heat from party progressives as well as quite a few center leaning realists for not pushing forward more aggressively so yesterday he and Harris went to Atlanta where they called for the filibuster to be kicked to the curb or at the very least watered down to facilitate the passage of voting rights legislation. For what it’s worth their speeches were good but maybe not good enough because it’s not clear that the target audience, Manchin, who erroneously claims that the filibuster is sacrosanct and been around forever, and to a lesser degree Sinema can be moved.  Worth noting, the last time voting legislation was up for a vote, twenty of the Republican now in the Senate supported it so their current opposition is even harder to swallow now all the more reason that Democrats need to channel some of their fury towards getting more Democratic Senators elected and maintaining their House majority rather than at Biden who can only do so much given the hand he has.  

Rounding a Corner?  As to that last election, the one that the FG continues to assert was stolen from him, Republican Senator Mike Rounds is in all kinds of trouble with the FG because he had the nerve to tell ABC that the "The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency.”  The FG responded by calling Rounds a “jerk” and “ineffective,” threatening never to support his reelection again.  Rounds, who probably felt comfortable saying the election was fair because he’s not up for reelection again until 2026 doubled down. That’s all well and good, but really what took him so long and does his willingness to speak truth indicate that others might as well? Probably not. Speaking of the 2020 election, we keep on learning more about the desperate efforts that were taken by pro FG groups to overturn election results.  Those efforts included groups in a number of states including Michigan and Arizona sending forged certificates of ascertainment to the National Archives that falsely showed the FG winning those states’ Electoral College votes.  That’s on top of learning that the FG’s lawyers met with Fani Willis, the Fulton County Georgia District Attorney who is considering whether or not to bring charges against the FG and the other members of his team who tried to pressure state officials to find enough extra votes to overturn Biden’s state victory. We’ve been disappointed enough times to be skeptical, but various legal pundits say that meetings with a target’s lawyers typically take place at the end of an investigation when a decision is imminent.  On the January 6 front, the Committee has debunked right wing claims that that the FBI had a “secret” informant name Ray Epps “instigating” the crowds on that dreadful day.  Epps unlike quite a few people, including Congressman Jim Jordan who says he won’t, willingly cooperated and testified before the January 6 committee where he very credibly denied that he was an undercover FBI informant.  As to future testimony, yesterday it was reported that the committee has asked a number of the FG’s speech writers to come in for a visit and more importantly they appear to be circling former VP Pence, who is really upset about reports that former members of his staff have been cooperating with the committee because he so wants to be president and he cares more about that than preventing another January 6.  

Viral Musings: Yesterday during a Senate hearing where Republicans laid into everything that the White House and the CDC have been doing on the virus front, Dr. Fauci slammed back forcefully. The Virus Guru came armed, not with guns but with slides of  Senator Rand Paul’s fund raising emails, the ones that showed how the pathetic Paul targets Fauci, using the pandemic to raise money to fill his campaign coffers. Fauci also made it clear that he holds Paul personally responsible for a lot of the death threats targeting him and his family. Fauci’s frustration and ire didn’t just target Paul, later he was caught by a live mic calling Kansas Republican Senator Roger Marshall a “moron” after Marshall attacked him for failing to disclose his personal financials; the problem with Marshall’s attack is that it was all grandstanding as Fauci’s financial information is publicly available for all to see.  As to the administration and the virus, it’s widely agreed that they have a messaging problem and that they’ve been behind on getting testing to the masses.  The failures are largely due to the unanticipated magnitude of the highly contagious Omicron wave which has been overwhelming and the fact that the CDC has muddled its messaging about masks, tests, and the length of quarantine periods, always playing catch-up with a mutating virus and confronting a country made up of too many people who will always believe that vaccines and other mitigation efforts are stupid and a lot more weary people who just want the CDC to be perfect, or at the very least better, messengers.  On the Omicron front, the data is in and it really is less lethal, particularly for the vaccinated but even for the unvaccinated though it’s the latter group that is much more likely to end up in the hospital or worse.  Unfortunately, despite Omicron’s lower lethality, the sheer volume of patients is overwhelming hospitals, displacing people with other health care needs and exhausting health care workers, particularly those in unvaccinated, lower service regions of the country. On a more positive note, it looks like New York City and other places that were among the earliest to be slammed have hit their peaks with new cases and positivity levels, though still depressingly high, beginning a downward trajectory.  Well maybe.