One Good Outcome

The Hate Train:  On Saturday while the hostage situation was playing out at Temple Beth Shalom in Colleyville, Texas the Former Guy was outside Phoenix, Arizona holding his first rally of this midterm year.  He was surrounded by his usual coterie of conspiracy nuts, haters and far right wing politicians, the types of characters who make up more and more of the Republican Party.  With the usual paid actors from Blacks for Trump, a group reported to be led by an ardent anti-Semite, standing just behind the speakers’ podium, the Former Guy falsely asserted that the left is now rationing lifesaving therapeutics based on race, cheating those hordes of unvaccinated white people from the monoclonals that should be theirs.  Of course he also pushed his “election was stolen” by people like wink, wink George Soros mantra, calling office holders who agree with his lie “smart” and “tough” and those who don’t “horrible” and “weak.”   To that end a number of those “smart” Arizona politicians running to replace the “horrible” ones were also in attendance.  Among those was Kelli Ward, chair of the Arizona GOP who called for the imprisonment of the Maricopa County election officials, their crime accurately counting votes.  Also in attendance was state legislator Jake Hoffman, one of those who signed and is proud he did, the possibly very illegal “alternative” electoral college certifications that are now being investigated by the January 6^th committee and maybe even the Justice Department. Though it would be nice to be able to dismiss these loons as fringe players with no clout, the reality is that they the way things are going, they could be in charge of a lot of swing states soon enough.  Speaking of people who are now in charge, look to Virginia where the new Republican Governor, Glenn Youngkin is already doing what he promised to do on the campaign trail.  Yesterday, on Martin Luther King Day he banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory in the state’s schools, not that it really ever was taught there but, who are we kidding, he and his supporters don’t want any history that might be just a bit too uncomfortable for any of the people, who might still have white robes in their closets, taught to their young ones.  He also banned mask mandates in the state’s public schools because with Omicron everywhere why would anyone want to mitigate its impact?  Worth nothing Younkin’s kids go to a private school that mandates masks and a number of school districts have already announced that they’ll keep their mask mandates which is why, taking a page from the Ron DeSantis playbook, the new Lt Governor said that Younkin is considering defunding school districts that don’t obey his edict.  As to Ron DeSantis, apparently he and the Former Guy aren’t on the best of terms these days.  The FG who fears that the Florida Governor might actually be more popular with Republican voters has been squawking about DeSantis, calling him gutless for failing to admit that he’s gotten his COVID booster shot. For his part DeSantis says that he now regrets that he didn’t strike back more forcefully at the FG’s COVID mitigation efforts, the tepid ones that a lot of us hardly noticed. To add to the clamor, it’s being suggested that Mitch McConnell is all in on the tiff between the FG and DeSantis. On the Florida politician front, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz’ problems appear to be mounting.  Yesterday, CBS reported that after being given immunity his ex-girlfriend testified in front of the grand jury looking into his “minor” offenses last week.  Maybe Gaetz’ Teflon coat is wearing thin? Worth noting, Gaetz was one of DeSantis’ closest campaign allies during and before his campaign for governor.

Politics Unusual: Senate Leader Chuck Schumer plans to bring up voters’ rights legislation today.  That’s nice but the effort is expected to go nowhere as Senators Manchin and Sinema, who support the legislation, or at least some form of it, don’t support doing anything to change the filibuster that Mitch McConnell plans to deploy.  Absent anything unexpected, the legislation will go down in flames, the press will blame Biden for not being able to force his two so-called moderates to get on board and then will run another of their endless articles about Biden’s sinking ratings while progressives express dissatisfaction with his performance.  In other political news, last night the twitterverse was buzzing about the possibility of a Supreme Court Justice announcing his retirement soon.  In all likelihood the Justice in question is Breyer, who really should step down before the midterms while Democrats still controls the Senate. Keeping that control is another reason that progressives shouldn’t push either Sinema or Manchin to leave the Democratic caucus.  By the way, though he won’t, Clarence Thomas should step aside too, or at the very least recuse himself from any and all decisions concerning the FG given that his wife Virginia, an active supporter of the FG and all things right wing like the march on the Capitol, reportedly signed a letter calling for Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney to be booted from the Republican Party.

Viral Musings:  Last week Pfizer said that it will have an Omicron booster, one that also targets earlier COVID strains, ready sometime in March. Good news because though getting the current booster remains important for those who haven’t, for most of us a fourth shot of the current formulation doesn’t appear to do much, at least that’s the preliminary conclusion of a study of health care workers done in Israel.  The CDC which has gotten slammed for their messaging wants us to know that they’re doing their best, that making fast decisions in a rapidly changing environment isn’t their strong suit and that they’re trying really hard to keep up with COVID in all of its iterations. That’s frustrating but their candor is appreciated. The good news out of the northeast is that Omicron cases, positivity rates and hospitalizations are declining.  That bodes well for the rest of the country though not as well as it should given that large swaths of the heartland remain unvaccinated. Nationwide the daily death count remains above 2000 and with deaths and hospitalizations lagging indicators both are likely to remain high for a while to come.

International News:  Novak Djokovic is out of the Australian Open and now back in Serbia and unless rules change he will also be barred from playing in the French Open.  It turns out that being unvaccinated and lying on your visa application ultimately do have consequences.  In far more critical news, Putin may or may not be on the verge of glomming on to another chunk of Ukraine and the attention deprived despot in North Korea keeps shooting off missiles. Also attention deprived but through no fault of its own, is Tonga which has been devastated by volcanic eruptions and a follow on tsunami.