Ammo Not Uber

 #StandWithUkraine:  On Sunday, mincing no words, Senator Mitt Romney called Vladimir Putin a “small, evil, feral eyed man.”  Going one huge step further, Senator Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, suggested that Putin was deranged, tweeting “I wish I could share more, but for now I can say its pretty obvious to many that something is off with #Putin.  He has always been a killer, but his problem now is different & significant.”  So that’s where we are this morning, as the war between an evil, deranged world leader rattling his nukes while sitting socially distanced in his ice bunker and a much younger heroic and telegenic newcomer out and about in a flak jacket with fewer weapons and no nukes hits the five day mark.  Anyone who tells you that they know for sure how this is going to end is lying but one thing is for certain Ukraine’s Zelensky’s whose countrymen and women are outperforming and whose “I need ammunition not a ride” response to offers of help in evacuating is trending is looking quite remarkable and more impressive every day.  Sometimes a country elects a former TV star/comic/Dancing With the Stars winner to the presidency and gets a man for all seasons and sometimes they get an egotistical mango maniac.  As to the former guy, he and his last Secretary of State Mike Pompeo still believe that Putin is a genius, but they’re now expressing some support for Ukraine, while bashing Biden of course, as are many, though not all members of their party. Among those still in Putin’s camp are Arizona’s FG supporting state senator Wendy Rogers who while not calling for repeated audits of the last election was busy calling Zelensky a “globalist puppet for George Soros and the Clintons," because who doesn’t like to throw a little Clinton bashing in with anti-Semitic tropes? Rogers like Margie Q spoke at neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes’ white nationalists’ America First Political Action PAC held at the Orlando Marriott (#WTF Marriott) this weekend because of course they both did.  In case you think their views are of concern to the rest of their party, consider how few not named Mitt, Liz or Adam condemned their attendance and that Arizona Governor Doug Ducey said that he’d rather have a white nationalist in his state senate than a Democrat.  By the way if you are looking for books not to read, former Attorney General William Barr’s book hawking roadshow begins this week. About all you need to know is that Barr, who auditioned for the AG spot by writing a memo endorsing the imperial presidency now says that the FG has shown that he has “neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed” and that the GOP needs to move on from him.  A little late for that call don’t you think?

Court Time:  President Biden formally announced Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson as his nominee to fill the Supreme Court spot being vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer. That’s not surprising, Jackson who was always the leading candidate clerked for Breyer. Because she’s not his first choice, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham who voted for Jackson when she was confirmed for her current seat on the DC Court of Appeals whined that the “radical left has won again.”  To be clear, Jackson is not a radical but she is eminently qualified for the court, and actually has far more relevant experience than most of the other justices had when they were nominated.  Its too early to know if any Republicans will vote for her, the likely “crossovers” are Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski who, like Graham, voted for her earlier confirmation but Murkowski is in the middle of a primary and Collins still has some pearls that need twisting, so who knows.  Curiously, Mitt Romney said nice things about Jackson this weekend but he didn’t vote for her last time so there’s that.  Switching from the highly competent to the truly bizarre, Kimberly Guilfoyle freaked out  during her “voluntary” virtual meeting with the January 6^th committee and now may get a subpoena compelling her to return or else, not that those subpoenas have accomplished much lately.  

Viral Musings:  We’ve moved into the endemic phase of COVID.  Don’t feel bad if you don’t know what that means, no one does.  The good news is that the 7 day new case count is down to 65K, though that dreadful death number remains high at around 1800.  The CDC says that healthy people living in the 72% if the country with low or lowish COVID levels, low hospitalization levels and lots of hospital capacity don’t need to wear masks indoors unless they want to but keep in mind that the focus on hospital capacity only means that there would be room at the inn if you need it, not that people aren’t still getting sick.  That of course means that the triply vaccinated neurotic among us in the lowest case count areas will still mask up while those in the high case count areas who never wore masks will continue to go without.    

One More Thing:  There are lots of organizations raising money for Ukraine including two of my favorites: Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen (wck.org) and the International Rescue Committee (rescue.org).  Pick one you like and respect and considering helping out.      

 

 

Boys Must Be Boys

Sudetenland Redux:  Last night Putin began a wild scale military attack across most areas of Ukraine including its capital Kyiv and Black Sea port city Odessa in an unprecedented assault that has already resulted in death and suffering and most certainly will lead to more economic turmoil and oil market disruptions almost everywhere. So much for the view that Biden and the US intelligence community were exaggerating Putin’s intentions, that the Russian leader “only” wanted to liberate the Donbas, the eastern part of Ukraine that his surrogates already controlled. Of course, the Former Guy asserts that his BFF Putin would never have attacked had the 2020 election not been stolen from him because, naturally, everything is about him. He called Putin “smart,” “savvy,” and a genius for sending military forces into Ukraine, adding “Putin is playing Biden like a drum.”  Keeping with that theme, Mike Pompeo, his slimmed down but still mean spirited last Secretary of State/presidential wannabee, who appears to have lost any last shreds of decency along with his corpulence, lauded Putin, calling him “talented,” “savvy” and a “capable statesman,” with lots of “gifts,” someone to be respected for knowing how to use power.  Note the repetition of the word “savvy,” it’s almost as if he and the Former Guy are using talking points provided by Putin’s PR department or maybe from Fox’s Tucker Carlson who, continuing in his role as the captain of Putin’s cheerleading squad, told his audience that there’s no reason that the US should assist Ukraine and that it is not “un-American” to support Putin.  That said, not everyone in the Republican Party is team Putin, Utah Senator Mitt Romney who back when he ran for president was ridiculed for his position that Putin and Russia were a problem that could not be “reset” or ignored went out of his way to point out that he was both right all along and prescient, tweeting that both Barack Obama and the Former Guy share the blame for underestimating Putin’s megalomania and avarice.  Like Romney, Senators Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham expressed their support for Ukraine but also made sure to shade Biden for not doing enough to sanction Putin out of existence.  Neither of them had much to say about the Former Guy’s effort to weaken NATO nor the reality that Biden had to spend a good part of his first year in office getting the NATO allies to both believe that we were on their team and to act in unison before any harsh sanctions could be effectively implemented. As to Putin’s justification, in addition to his position that Ukraine should be his because he wants it, he’s also justifying his attack by telling his people that the “territory” has to be de-Nazified.  For his part Ukraine President Zelensky who is Jewish called Putin out for acting like Hitler and it’s hard to miss that grabbing Ukraine to liberate its “Russian” citizens does look a lot like Hitler seizing the Sudetenland before he then moved on to Poland, the beginning of WWII. The bottom line, Ukrainians are screwed,  there are no easy solutions, it’s not clear that Putin cares about the impact sanctions, even harsh ones, will have, and though Putin is likely to find ruling the  increasingly westernized population of Ukraine very challenging, in the short run he is going to get what he wants. It’s all so unbearably sad, dangerous and destabilizing.

Back in New York:  Yesterday Carey Dunn and Marc Pomeranz, two of the senior prosecutors investigating the Former Guy’s questionable financial practices resigned over what are believed to be differences with Manhattan’s new District Attorney Alvin Bragg about whether to move forward with the case against the FG.  Though the reasons for their departure remain murky, the fact that they departed leaves the impression that Bragg is either gun shy about the risks of proceeding with such a high profile, high risk case or because absent flipping a high quality witness he doesn’t believe that there’s enough there to succeed. To put it mildly that’s a bummer though it doesn’t mean that the Former Guy and his family are completely out of the NY woods as NYS Attorney General Tish James is still proceeding with her civil case where the burden of proof is easier to meet. And there’s still Georgia, Washington DC and E Jean Carroll who is trying really hard to get his DNA in her pursuit of some justice over his calling her a liar for her calling him a rapist.  On the January 6^th front, daughter Ivanka is supposedly in discussion about sitting down for an interview as is Rudy Giuliani, again.  That said, don’t count on either showing up or if they do shedding much light. 

Culture Wars: Having already made abortions virtually impossible to obtain in his state, Texas Governor Greg Abbott is now seeking to outdo Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on the LGTBQ front.  Yesterday he issued an order directing state agencies to investigate parents who facilitate gender affirming treatment to their transgender children saying that such care constitutes child abuse.  Forget the state’s failing power grid or that Texas ranks 45^th among the US states in providing access to health care, Abbott’s found the enemy and it’s parents trying to help their kids deal with their sexual identity.  Maybe he’s taking a page from Putin’s book, during his rambling speech in which he justified invading Ukraine, Putin compared gender nonconformity and the push for trans rights to “new strains” of a “pandemic” much like the coronavirus.  Hard to miss that the right’s talking points overlap so much with the Russian dictator.

 

Russia, Russia, Russia Again

Stalin Redux: As Presidents Days go yesterday was fairly dreadful.  Vladimir Putin went ahead and started his much anticipated invasion of Ukraine.  For now he has “only” recognized the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk, eastern regions of Ukraine with large Russian separatist populations that he is now referring to as People’s Republics.  He’s sent in troops to “protect” them from the Ukrainian forces he claims are attacking them but aren’t.  It’s clear that this is only his starting point.  We know that because he’s not hiding his intention as he also delivered a speech in which he questioned Ukraine’s right to exist as an independent nation saying everyone, at least everyone he listens to, to the extent the COVID isolated Stalinesque autocrat listens to anyone, believes that all of Ukraine rightfully belongs to Russia. Putin’s long game is to return Eastern Europe to where it was before the break-up of the Soviet Union and the loss of its sphere of influence, Ukraine is just his latest move, and a big one at that. In response, President Biden who had cancelled plans to go to Delaware for the weekend to meet with his security advisors imposed a few new sanctions last night with more expected today. Still it’s not clear how effective those sanctions will be and how far he and our allies will go especially since some of them are spooked about losing access to Russian gas. Kudos to Germany who this morning took steps to halt the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline, that’s big and won’t make Putin happy .  And of course the blame game has begun. Though many on both sides of the aisle have praised President Biden’s intense attempts to find a diplomatic solution and some at Fox get that Putin’s aggressive behavior is a threat to democracy and the post-World War II world order, a number on the right are saying that Putin’s predatory actions are Biden’s fault because that’s what they do.  Apparently they’ve conveniently forgotten that the Former Guy wanted out of NATO, wanted to reduce US forces in Europe, hid and possibly destroyed the translations of his private calls and meetings with Putin and tried to hold Ukraine hostage to get dirt on Hunter Biden. We’re in for a bumpy ride which will include shaky markets, more inflation, and higher energy costs but Ukraine faces far worse  like large battle field losses, jailing and torturing of “dissidents” as in anyone  who is not pro-Putin and years of oppression and dictatorship which isn’t to say that Putin is going to have an easy time of it, though he can beat the Ukrainians on the battle field he probably can’t win over their hearts and minds.  

Not so Grand:  While the Ukraine situation was the big story of the day, the GOP, no longer a serious party and far from grand, celebrated Presidents Day with a tweet that showed a collage of images of past Republican presidents including Lincoln, Nixon(!) and the Former Guy, wishing them a happy Presidents Day. The tweet also included a masked photo of Biden with the words “NOT YOU” in red under his picture.  As to the Former Guy, his new Truth Social “twitter” copycat platform launched in the Apple App store.  The launch process was full of bugs, it doesn’t appear that the platform is ready for use but signing up does send your personal data to the FG for his fundraising purposes. One time Congressman, current CEO of the Truth Social company Devin Nunes says no worry, he’ll have the platform working by the end of March assuming he hasn’t been fired by them as in addition to wonky technology the company’s new logo appears to infringe on one already in use by a British company which is now looking at its legal options.  In other FG news, on Friday US District Court Judge Amit Mehta rejected the FG’s claim that he has “absolute immunity” from legal liability for inciting the January 6 riot because his public statements contesting the election fell within his presidential responsibilities.  The Judge found the FG’s legal argument “misleading and wrong as a matter of law,” ruling there was sufficient evidence that his speech at a rally prior to the attack could constitute a “plausible conspiracy,” meaning that cases against him and some of his cohorts can move forward. It’s hard to know if any of these cases will ultimately knock the FG out of action, but his legal bills are definitely growing, or at least those paying his bills like the RNC are taking a hit.

The Peanut Gallery: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who is seen as the heir apparent to the Republican nomination for the presidency if the Former Guy should decide not to run in 2024 is going all in on the culture wars.  He has thrown his support behind what is being called the “don’t say gay” bill which among other things bans teachers from encouraging conversations about LGBTQ topics in the classroom and would also require that schools alert parents if their kids are gay.  What’s next, state sponsored conversion therapy and higher suicide rates?  Of course it’s not just Florida, in Michigan three Republican men seeking their party’s nomination to run for State Attorney General questioned the 1965 landmark Griswold v Connecticut decision that stuck down Connecticut’s ban on the sale of contraception.  By establishing the right to privacy, Griswold paved the way for Roe v Wade.  The three Republican candidates indicated that they thought that the Griswold case was wrongly decided and trampled on states’ rights.  We’ve gotten used to the attack on Roe and abortion rights, but contraception, yikes.  In other koo koo for cocoa puff news, right wing pundit Candace Owens wants us to forget about Russia and that whole Ukraine thing because in her  view we should be preparing to attack Canada, something about Justin Trudeau “Castro” and his “oppression” of those unvaccinated truckers. Owens has a book coming out about the dangers of vaccines, of course she does.  In Wisconsin, Republicans are still fighting over the last election with an “increasingly vocal” segment of the party getting behind a scheme to decertify the results of the 2020 election to reinstall the FG. And remember Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii who ran for president.  She’s still around and has just been added to the speakers list for the upcoming CPAC convention.

Viral Musings:  The 7 day average of cases in the US is at 85K, with deaths finally under 2000.  Masks keep coming off but the even more contagious BA 2 subvariant’s predominance is growing so use caution in crowds and indoor areas particularly in higher COVID areas.  Britain’s Boris Johnson says that the pandemic is over but apparently the COVID positive Queen who has now cancelled her online engagements due to her “mild” symptoms which probably aren’t all that mild since she’s 95 and hasn’t been in the best of health lately didn’t get that message. By the way, remember when the real experts said that ivermectin also known as horse paste was useless at curing or preventing COVID, the studies are out and yes it is useless.       

 

The Mad Hatter

Jabberwocky:  Yesterday  NYS Judge Arthur Engoron ruled that the Former Guy, Junior and Ivanka had to abide by NYS Attorney General Tish James’ subpoenas and show up to answer questions about their company’s practice of inflating asset values to lenders while minimizing them for tax purposes.  He gave the trio two weeks to provide the documents that James’ office has requested and three weeks to show up for their “interviews.”  Among other things, the FGs lawyers argued that since the Mazars accounting firm had severed tied with the FG Organization and declared 10 years of their financial documents unreliable Tish James’ investigation was now moot.  The judge found that argument “preposterous” and “audacious,” calling its twisted logic reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, George Orwell’s 1984 and my favorite, Kellyanne Conway’s Alternative Facts.  Junior and Ivanka’s lawyers have already said that Tweedle Dee and the Duchess plan to appeal and in all likelihood so will their kingpin dad. In case you’re wondering, son Eric wasn’t affected by yesterday’s decision only because he’s already sat for an interview where he repeatedly plead the Fifth. To the extent that they ever show up, it’s highly likely that the FG, Junior and Ivanka will do the same even though the FG has been known to say that only the guilty take the Fifth. Obviously the optics of a one time president and likely presidential candidate hiding behind the Fifth Amendment is bad not that optics have ever been a problem for the FG, however, taking the Fifth in the Tish James civil case could impact the outcome of the criminal case being pursued in NYC.

Curiouser and Curiouser:  Also citing the Mazars situation, Congresswoman Carol Maloney, Chair of the House Oversight Committee,  and Congressman Gerald Connolly, Chair of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, are now urging the General Services Administration to terminate the lease covering the Old Post Office Building, the space occupied by the FG’s Washington DC Hotel. Maloney and Connolly’s position is that the financial information provided to the GSA during the competition for the lease was inaccurate and thus the lease should never have been awarded to them. The FG Organization has reached a deal with an outside investment group to sell the lease for $375 million so any action by the GSA to revoke it could seriously crimp their plans to raise the cash needed to pay off a lot of the debt that the business has coming due, debt that will be difficult to refinance especially given the Mazars resignation.  

Off With Their Heads: Despite his assertions that he was pulling back his forces, yesterday it became clearer than ever that Vladimir Putin has not withdrawn any troops from the Ukraine border.  In fact, as anticipated by the Biden administration he instead staged what is widely seen as a false flag operation, bombing a kindergarten in eastern Ukraine and blaming it on Ukrainian forces. He also has been screwing around with Ukraine’s technology infrastructure, knocking out banking and government related internet access. The US strategy continues to be to shed as much light on Putin’s insanity while also sending soldiers to neighboring NATO countries and providing equipment to Ukraine. To that end Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke at the UN yesterday, making it clear that unlike during the run up to the Iraq war when one of his predecessors, Colin Powell, was there to drum up support for a war, this time the US wants help maintaining the peace.  Unfortunately, Putin doesn’t appear to be all that into peace, and expectations remain that his plans to invade Ukraine haven’t changed.  In other international news of far less import, Russian skater Kamila Valieva failed to medal yesterday.  Though it’s still not clear what the Olympic Committee will do about the Team competition medals where the Russians, largely due to Valieva’s performance, came in first they won’t have to worry about how to handle the medal ceremony for the women’s competition. As it turns out, Valieva tested positive for three different drugs and though two of them are not banned, in all likelihood the intent of the cocktail was to improve her stamina, making it easier for her to perform the quad jumps that so few of her competitors can pull off. Given her age it’s fair to assume that she didn’t know that she was being drugged, but her positive test results and the fact that Russia consistently produces and then tosses aside very young wunderkind skaters says a lot about their philosophy and competitive figure skating in general none of it good. Figure skater Gracie Gold who for a brief moment in time before her body started to mature was supposed to be America’s next Olympic gold medal winner, has a piece in New York magazine that addresses the pressures put on too young female skaters, Russia’s practice of tossing them aside like old broken dolls when their bodies start to mature, and the impact that has on all the competitors.  Very sad.   

Viral Musings:  Though still above 100,000, virus levels are way down in the US.  Of course there was a time when we thought that 100,000 was a huge number.  Unfortunately, deaths remain stubbornly high, more than 3000 Americans died yesterday from COVID.  Though the official total US death count is 930k, excess deaths through the pandemic is higher, at 1 million. The CDC is expected to release new masking recommendations shortly as much a response to political winds as to science.  As to that science, we probably need to keep an eye on the Omicron BA 2 subvariant as reports are that it spreads even faster than original Omicron and is more virulent.  That’s the last thing that I wanted to write, but it is what it is.               

 

Borscht

Accounting 101: Too many years ago I sat through far too many accounting courses and though I remember little of what I learned, I do recall some inventory acronyms:  there’s LIFO (Last in First Out),  FIFO (First in First Out) and my personal favorite LAFO (Let an Accountant Figure it Out).  It turns out that the Former Guy and his accounting firm, Mazars, didn’t employ any of those methods, instead they went with GIGO (Garbage in Garbage Out).  At least that’s what Mazars more or less asserts in the letter they sent to the Former Guy’s business last week.  Saying that they are now aware that the FG Company manipulated its financial picture to its advantage, they want everyone, including all relevant legal authorities, the company’s lenders and their other clients, to the extent they still have any, to know that the last ten years of financial statements that they produced for the FG aren’t worth the paper they were printed on.  Also, citing potential conflicts of interest, possibly because they are now testifying about all the ways they say they were deluded or delusional, they also say that they can no longer work for the FG meaning that the FG’s company, the FG and Melania will have to find some other firm to do their personal tax returns.  We learned about Mazar’s assertions because their Dear John letter was attached to a document that NY Attorney General Tish James filed to justify her Ivanka and Don Jr subpoenas. Also, as a number of legal nerds noted, based on the Bates number at the bottom of the Mazars filing it appears that the accountants have provided the AG’s office with about 525,000 pages of information.  Citing some standard CYA language/Accounting speak in the Mazars letter, the FG’s spokesperson as well as a really freaked out son Eric responded by saying that the company’s years of financial filings, like everything the FG does, were all perfect and though they’re disappointed about Mazars betrayal, they will get over it.  The reality, Mazars dumping the FG and his business is a very bigly deal.  Accounting firms rarely walk from their clients, if the FG’s business was public its stock would be bouncing off the basement right about now. It’s fair to assume that the FG is now in violation of quite a few loan covenants, giving his lenders, primarily Deutsche Bank, the right to accelerate and/or change the terms of his outstanding debt.  Moreover with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt coming due, the already difficult task of securing rollover financing has gotten much harder if not impossible. Melania is going to have to sell a lot of white hats to cover what’s coming due.

On the Docket:  Of course right wing media isn’t all that concerned about the Mazars mess as they remain focused on Special Counsel Durham’s newest assertion.  In this one, Durham claims that Michael Sussmann the lawyer that’s been indicted for lying about his Clinton connections was working with tech experts to spy on the FG’s Tower and White House.  Putting aside that the basis for the Sussmann indictment may not hold up because Durham conveniently forgot to provide some potentially exculpatory  information to Sussman and his lawyers, this newest assertion appears rather flimsy especially since some of the alleged spying on the White House, to the extent it really happened, took place during the Obama administration.  Anyway, this story is all over the Fox universe but has gained little more than a mention anywhere else. In other news, the judge presiding over the Sarah Palin v NY Times case announced yesterday that he plans to dismiss her charges against the paper regardless of what the jury decides because he’s found no malice on the part of the NY Times, just an unfortunate mistake by a too harried editor.  He’s allowing the jury to continue deliberating because he knows that Palin and her lawyers are likely to appeal and wants to be able to forward their verdict, whatever it may be, on to the next court.   

Bombs and Rockets:  Yesterday President Zelensky joked that the Russian invasion would take place on Wednesday.  The once upon a time comic’s humor was received about as well as would be expected which isn’t to say that Putin won’t be invading tomorrow.  As to that possible invasion, the wily Putin is giving mixed signals.  On the one hand he’s amassed more attack helicopters within range of Kyiv, on the other he’s pulled back some troops and his Foreign Minister Lavrov is reported to have told him that attacking isn’t such a good idea so it’s anybody’s guess as to what will come next.  Speaking of Russians, the 15 year old wunderkind skater who will be skating today blames the performance drug in her blood sample on her grandfather, perhaps his heart medicine getting into her borscht?  Lastly, would it surprise anyone to learn that a whole bunch of foreign alt-right Facebook denizens, including some from the US, Brazil and Australia, amplified by right wing media, were likely responsible for making the Canada trucker mess worse than it would have been?

 

Hearts and Hip Hop

Super Weekend:  The Super Bowl game was surprisingly close, Meadow and AJ are still among the living, millennials are in nostalgia heaven over the Compton tribute halftime show where the one white star Eminem took a knee even though all the performers had been warned not to by NBC.  Predictably many of the same people upset that President Biden’s Supreme Court pick will be a Black woman, are outraged over the show, with Turning Point’s Charlie Kirk calling it “sexual anarchy” and not in a complimentary way and Sean Spicer, who fashions himself an expert due to his breakout, well really his breakdown performance on Dancing With the Stars wanting to know what the “message” was supposed to be. Elsewhere in North America, it appears that the bridges to Canada have reopened though the disgruntled drivers remain disgruntled about the impact that vaccine mandates are having on their ability to diehard. The Americans among them are heading south, something about staging a protest at the Coachella music festival before or after they take their trucks to Washington DC. The Olympic gurus have decided to let Russian darling Kamila Valieva continue competing while they reach a final decision about what to do about those performance drugs in her system BUT they’ve also decided that if she medals, and absent a catastrophic performance on her part she will, the women’s figure skating award ceremony, like the team figure skating award ceremony will remain on hold until they reach a final solution.  Not fair to any of the other skaters but no one seems all that concerned about that. Who but everyone would have guessed that the same Olympic poohbahs that picked China for this year’s competition would come up with that solution. Weird decision but if it keeps Putin from launching his on again, off again, probably on again invasion into Ukraine maybe it’s worth it.  As to the Ukraine situation, it continues to fester.  Putin of course says that we are over reacting to his huge troop build up along the Russian Ukraine border, that his troops just need to practice camping out in the winter mud and anyway, he’s entitled to Ukraine if he wants it. Lacking many options, the Biden administration appears to have concluded that shedding as much light as they can on Russia’s every move is their best way to go, making it more difficult for Vlad to get away with something sneaky, like claiming he has to attack because the Ukrainians were mean first.  Most westerners have been told by their governments to come home now while they can. To help, Poland has opened its border to fleeing Americans and Israel has added around thirty flights to get their large population of dual citizens home.  Ukraine President Zelensky, the leader who if the Russians get their way won’t be running his country for much longer, keeps trying to push chill pills, telling his country men and women that they have little to worry about while at the same time pushing Western countries to supply more arms and the like.

The Docket:  Rudy Giuliani is playing footsie with the January 6^th Committee.  He is either about to testify, or is teasing that he will, with Rudy it’s hard to tell but his options may be limited since as indicated by his recent desperate performance on the Masked Singer, he’s got bigly legal bills and appears to be running short on cash with no financial help coming from the Former Guy who has at least so far has iced him out. As to the Former Guy, he appears to be raking in lots of cash, selling overpriced tchotchkes, picture books and the like while raking in appearance fees and charging those seeking his sometimes helpful sometimes not endorsements for use of his Mar a Lago facilities. Though he and Melania have both promised to send some of their profits on to a charity or two, so far there’s no indication that they’ve done so or will. No surprise that Melania is a big less skilled at grifting than her husband.  She got called out over the weekend for her failure to abide by Florida laws, something about needing to file appropriate paperwork when you claim a tea party is for a charity.  Of course it’s Florida so she’ll only suffer consequences if Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decides it’s in his best interests for her to suffer.  Here in NY all eyes are on the Sarah Palin vs NY Times case, the unvaccinated COVID diner who sees Russia from her balcony is suing the Times for linking her to the Gabby Giffords shooting even though they subsequently apologized for their unintentional error. The experts say that the NY Times will prevail but that Palin will probably appeal to the Supreme Court.  We should know more soon as the jury is now deliberating.   

Viral Musings:   Judging by the unmasked crowds at the Super Bowl, you’d think that the virus was all gone.  Spoiler alert, its fading but not gone. California’s positivity rate is hovering around 8% though here in NYS it’s below 3%, even lower in NYC.  Countrywide new cases are down overall but the daily death count remains above 2000 and low vaccinated areas continue to suffer not that many of them would admit it.  On Friday, Pfizer said that it’s not ready to seek approval for its 6 month to under five years old shot.  Their dilemma is that though the low dose they’re planning to administer to the little kids is safe, in the older ones in the targeted group it doesn’t appear to prevent disease.  They expect that the disease prevention will kick in only after a third dose, and have decided to hold off with their application until they are ready to share that data. That probably means April. However, there is some good news on the monoclonal antibody front as the FDA has now cleared Eli Lily’s new one for use against Omicron.  

 

Tailgating

#ButHerEmails:  In addition to his endless and quite effective harping on Hillary Clinton’s “acid washed” email server, the FG’s repertoire included a toilet tirade, a complaint about how new technology was awful because it required so much more flushing to clear the bowl.  Well, now we may know why the FG’s toilet trips so frustrated him, it turns out that his problem may have had less to do with his gut wrenching diet or newer water efficient technology and more to do with his habit of flushing documents, maybe even some of those missing translations of his chats with Putin.  That little flush detritus comes from the NY Times’ Maggie Haberman who has a book coming out in October. Haberman, a former NY Post reporter, whose frequently chummy relationship with the FG goes way back also reports that he is still talking to bestie Kim Jung un which could explain why the little dictator has ramped up his missile activity.  For his part the FG claims that Haberman’s book is “mostly fictitious” and that her flushing assertion is “categorically untrue,” but Bloomberg’s well respected political reporter Jennifer Jacobs says her sources confirm it’s veracity.  Putting aside whether Maggie should have been more forthcoming about the FG’s flushing habits sooner instead of holding them back to sell books, the fact that he’s been destroying documents is both disturbing and illegal as is the report that some of the boxes that were found at Mar a Lago but are now back in the hands of the National Archives include documents marked top secret.  Moreover, former staff members report that the FG showed an unusual amount of care about at least one of those boxes as it was boarded on Air Force One and then hoarded at Mar a Lago. The National Archives has now asked the Department of Justice to investigate the FG’s handling of White House records.  Worth noting, removing classified documents is a real crime, Clinton era national security advisor Sandy Berger who was caught removing some was fined $50,000, had to perform 100 hours of community service and lost both his security clearance and law license.  Don’t get me wrong, the last thing we need is the FG doing community service but come on, its far past time for him to be punished for something. One more thing on the flushing front, though virtually every one of Haberman’s NY Times colleagues tweet promoted her book yesterday and defended her holding back worthwhile factoids to amp sales, the articles about the FG’s document destruction continue to remain below the paper’s fold, quite different than the way the paper treated Hillary’s emails which were given headline status, continuously.  The FG didn’t just destroy documents, it also appears that many critical minutes of his phone records from January 6th are nowhere to be found. That’s likely because he used a cell phone, not necessarily his, maybe even an untraceable burner that he borrowed from one of his colleagues. Among the calls that we know definitely took place but are missing from the logs are the ones to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville and GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy.  And those are the calls we know about only because the people involved acknowledged them, it’s the others that remain hidden in the ether.

Human Resources:  Shortly after she arrived in Congress, the press trumpeted South Carolina’s first term Congresswoman South Carolina’s Nancy Mace as an up and comer, a new more rational kind of Republican and sometimes she uttered words that made her sound reasonable, she even criticized the FG now and again but more often than not she’d revert to praising him.  Well yesterday she learned that her failure to be 100% supportive has cost her his endorsement.  Her response to losing out on his endorsement: yesterday she traveled to NYC, stood outside of his eponymous tower, and talked about her early and ongoing support for him and all his policies and edicts. Fairly pathetic but not as pathetic as North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn, a diehard FG fan along the lines of Lauren Boebert and Margie Q, is the young wheel chair bound Congressman who has lied about virtually everything in his past, including saying that he’d been about to be admitted to the US Naval Academy before his injury even though he had already been rejected.  Cawthorn is now facing blowback from the bipartisan North Carolina State Board of Elections that asserts it can disqualify him from running for reelection over his role in the January 6^th insurrection. Not sure how far this will go, but it’s worth watching.

World Affairs:  The war drums keep beating on the Russian/Ukraine border.  Yesterday President Biden once again told Americans in Ukraine that its time for them to leave just in case bombs start flying.  In addition, though it might seem trivial, Putin has pulled his super yacht, the Graceful, from a German port where it was being further jazzed up, likely fearing that any sanctions imposed if/when he invades Ukraine could result in his bigly toy being confiscated. On the not so graceful front the International Olympic Committee is as usual finding it difficult to do the right thing, and has not yet, if ever, sanctioned the Russian wunderkind skater for having traces of a banned drug in her blood.  Should she be punished and her team removed from the medal podium, then Canada, which placed fourth in the figure skating team competition would get the Bronze medal behind the US and Japan.  That would be good news for Canada but probably not enough good news to get them past their current trucking crisis.  Though most of Canada’s truckers, like most Canadians are vaccinated, a small but boisterous and quite effective group of anti-vax truckers are blocking major border bridges in protest over requirements that truckers crossing the border must be vaccinated.  The truckers are of course getting lots of support from the some of the usual US suspects, they’ve even been comparing vaccine mandates to Nazi measures because genocide and vaccinations are so similar? Giving new meaning to tailgating, they are threatening to disrupt traffic around the Super Bowl before traveling on to Washington DC.  So just another reason why some of those things that you’ve ordered will be arriving late if at all and certainly no help to dampening inflation.

Viral Musings:  Masks keep coming off though many in the medical community question the scientific basis for tossing them away as a lot of people are still turning up COVID positive and some of them are actually getting sick.  Count Prince Charles, MSNBC’s Nicole Wallace and CBS’s Gayle King among the newly positive.  Also, though she is now on hiatus working on the production of a movie based on her Spiro Agnew Bag Man book, Rachel Maddow spent last week broadcasting from home as a result of direct contact with someone who was infected.  We’ve known for some time that the J & J vaccine was less effective than the mRNA shots but we didn’t know how much less effective it was but now we do.  According to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the shot was only 52.9% effective at providing moderate to severe-critical protection against the Alpha, Beta and Lambda coronavirus variants.  That said, for those few people allergic to the mRNA shots and those in remote places, J & J remains the only option.  

914k US deaths, 3000 plus yesterday.          

Rip Torn

Argo Revisited:  There’s a lot of shredding happening at the Olympics, not that many are watching, but the news this week has been less about the slopes and more about the FG and his habit of ripping paper into itsy bitsy, unretrievable pieces. We shouldn’t be surprised about the FG’s failure to adhere to presidential record keeping laws as some of his paper maceration took place in front of the cameras and its been suspected for a while now that the translator’s notes from at least one of his meetings with his buddy Vladimir Putin, the leader who may or may not be about to annex Ukraine, didn’t survive long enough to make it into the official files. We also shouldn’t be surprised that cartons of files, including those love letters from Kim Jong un and Barack Obama’s welcome to the White House note were shipped, along with at least one as yet unidentified piece of White House furniture, maybe the mini Resolute desk, to Mar a Lago as we saw a bunch of his minions carrying large boxes and bags on to Air Force One right before his last departure.  No reports yet about the fine China or silverware but it’s fair to assume that some of it made the journey to the once upon a time and hopefully never again winter “White House.” The consequences from all this “criming,” probably nothing because though the FG was clearly breaking the law, no one who can do anything about it cares enough to do so.

Politics As Usual:  The boxes and furniture are back in Washington as are most members of Congress with things there proceeding in their usual way. Yesterday, GOP Congressman Hal Rogers, from Kentucky of course, poked Ohio Democratic  Congresswoman/Chair of the Black Caucus Joyce Beatty and told her to “kiss my ass” after she asked him to put on a mask. He apologized later but only for the language, not for the unwanted touching, and only after his actions went viral.  For his part Mitch McConnell and a handful of other Republican Senators want us to believe that they’re truly upset about the RNC’s censuring of Representatives Kinzinger and Cheney, or at the very least upset about the suggestion that the January 6^th insurrection was just run of the mill “legitimate political discourse.”   Mitch’s exact words “It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to another” sound nice, but don’t be fooled.  What Mitch really cares about is that the RNC memo distraction could hurt his chances in the swing states that he needs to win back, like Georgia and Arizona, or hold, like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, in order to regain Senate leadership.  House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy who remains fearful of offending the Margie Q,  FG loving wing of his caucus is going a different route than Mitch.  Yesterday he was filmed running away, yes literally running, from reporters seeking his comments. Most of Congress is so gerrymandered and partisan that there’s little upside but lots of downside in him going on the record about the RNC memo and why would he bother, he doesn’t need to especially since he has party flunkies like Elise Stefanik, the Congresswoman who assumed Liz Cheney’s leadership position, willing to do so for him. When asked about the RNC memo, Stefanik said that the RNC had every right to do what it did.  Of course RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel agrees, she’s spent the last few days whining that her memo was misunderstood and that its words are being twisted by the left wing media, who to be fair have been having a field day with it. As to gerrymandering, the FG’s SCOTUS appointees see no problem in Alabama redrawing its state lines in a manner clearly intended to disenfranchise Black voters.  Their view is that there’s not enough time to fix the map now or maybe ever.  Notably Chief Justice Roberts, who is responsible for the Shelby County v Holder decision that got us into this pickle in the first place actually joined the Liberal side of the court in their dissent.    

Viral Musings:  The masks are coming off, not necessarily because it’s really time to unmask in indoor settings but because a lot of Governors fear that the growing sentiment against and exhaustion with mask mandates could result in election losses. New York’s Governor Hochul is expected to drop her indoor mask mandate today, although it’s not clear whether the easing will apply to schools.  It’s expected that her change will not apply to transit where masks will still be required and it’s highly likely that theaters will conclude that requiring masks is the only way to keep filling seats. As to the virus, it doesn’t seem to care about policy. Yesterday around 200,000 new cases were recorded in the US with 3356 deaths.  I am old enough to remember when both those statistics would have caused people to wipe their groceries, hoard toilet paper and lock themselves in their closets.  Though he’s not a virus, Florida’s Governor DeSantis who continues to be seen as the heir apparent to the FG’s legacy, is dangerous.  He doesn’t seem all that concerned about Nazis but does fear LGBTQ people.  He has expressed his support for a state bill that would prohibit the discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state’s schools. Also, though he says he is very concerned about voter fraud, he seems only mildly irked about the Republican apparatchiks who’ve been caught “helping” elderly Floridians change their party registration from Democrat to Republican, something that will prevent them from voting in their primary of choice and will also likely depress Democratic voter turnout in a state that has notoriously close elections.  

Human Resources:  It’s expected that Deborah Lipstadt will finally be confirmed as Biden’s Special Envoy on Anti-Semitism this week.  Her confirmation had been delayed six months because Senator Ron Johnson was punishing her for calling one of his racist statement’s  racist. That’s the one where he said that he would have feared for his live if the insurrectionists on January 6^th had been Black Lives Matter protesters but since they were just a mob of violent, mostly white guys he felt safe. President Biden has lost his first prominent appointee to scandal. Geneticist Eric Lander who was his top science advisor was forced to resign for bullying and demeaning subordinates. Bad timing since he was supposed to lead Biden’s anti-cancer effort.  

  

Ordinary Discourse?

The New Legitimacy: On Friday, as expected the RNC censured Representatives Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, slamming them for their roles on the January 6^th Committee, saying they are participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” Immediately after the NY Times accurately reported on the content of the RNC’s statement and the characterization of the violent insurrectionists as just ordinary Joes and Janes talking politics, RNC head Ronna Romney McDaniel, who long ago stopped using her RINO tainted middle name, slapped back, accusing the NY Times of lying about the “legitimate discourse” characterization.  It’s not clear if she was just attempting to gaslight, taking a page from her exalted leader the FG, or whether she really failed to read her own organization’s remarks in their entirety, but whatever, it didn’t go over as she intended.  Pushback was immediate, not just from the NY Times, but from the Twitter verse and Democrats, who were gleeful to have a new talking point to add to their campaign ads, and also from a few Republicans, a group that included McDaniel’s uncle/Utah Senator Mitt Romney and the other usual suspects like Alaska’s Senator Lisa Murkowski,  Maryland’s Governors Hogan and Arkansas’ Asa Hutchinson, neither of whom are running for reelection because of their states’ term limits, and former Governor Chris Christie, the presidential wannabee currently shilling for ABC.  As to Murkowski, over the weekend she received a very public, as in live on CNN, endorsement from Joe Manchin.  Manchin endorsed Susan Collins in 2020 so his across the aisle nod wasn’t a surprise and anyway its very unlikely that a Democrat could win in Alaska. Also, Murkowski who is likely to vote for Joe Biden’s SCOTUS nominee, needs all the help she can get as the FG who has endorsed her primary opponent has targeted her for extinction.    

Mother Approved? Also on Friday, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Florida former Vice President Pence finally said what he should have said more than a year ago, that the FG’s assertions that he had the right to overturn the election were wrong, adding that “the presidency belongs to the American people and the American people alone” and that there was no idea more “un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president." The responses to Pence’s remarks were also as expected, the Federalist Society audience, up the three frighteningly conservative Supreme Court Justices that the morally flawed but who really cared FG delivered, greeted Pence’s speech with applause, the mainstream press complimented him as if finally talking truth was a heroic act and most Democrats and left leaning media wanted to know what took him so long. Naturally, the FG issued a statement slamming Pence and his on again off again BFF Steve Bannon called Pence a “stone-cold coward” for saying the FG was wrong about a vice president’s ability to overturn the election.  In one respect, Bannon is right, given how long it took him to say what he should have said last year, Pence is a coward.  The big question now is whether the response to the RNC’s characterization of the violent insurrectionists as ordinary people engaged in run of the mill political discourse combined with Pence’s speech mark the turning point back to sanity for the Republican Party. Well, forget about it, as already the avidly pro FG David Bossie who is distressed that the RNC “only” censured Kinzinger and Cheney rather than kicked them out altogether is looking to unseat Ronna McDaniel and given how she blew the messaging on the Kinzinger/Cheney censure he might succeed in pushing her out.  Getting back to SCOTUS, one of the FGs newbies, Justice Gorsuch, spoke behind doors at the Federalist meeting, apparently he owes them for getting him on the Court.  Also, via some recently uncovered communication between Ginni Thomas, Clarence’s wife, and a Ron DeSantis aide, we learned that Justice Thomas communicates regularly, or so she said in her note, with the Florida Governor.  So much for the Court not acting politically.  Also worth noting, the FG who is not known for spreading largesse, sent $1 million of his PAC money to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows conservative non-profit group, a gift that could explain why Meadows stopped cooperating with the January 6^th Committee.

Gerry Who:  It turns out that when they apply themselves, Democrats are good at gerrymandering too, so even though population shifts have resulted in red states gaining House seats at the expense of blue ones, Democrats are likely to pick up a few seats as a result of redistricting. Also a number of state courts, including one in North Carolina, have thrown out some brazen attempts by Republicans to completely eliminate Democratic districts, particularly those made up of people of color.  Don’t get too excited, the political pundit class and the oddsmakers still expect that Republicans will retake the House during the 2022 midterms because apparently the nation really needs people like Gym Jordan, and Margie Q chairing committees. As to redistricting, New York is one of the states where Republicans are expected to come up short a few seats. One of those is the Staten Island seat that moderate Democrat Max Rose lost to Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2020. The district which will be gaining some “blue” areas is now expected to be ripe for a Democratic pick up in 2022.  Rose, a veteran whose moderate politics make him reasonably attractive to some traditional Staten Islanders has already announced that he’s running but he may face a challenger from the left as former Mayor Bill de Blasio appears to be testing the waters to see how his left leaning politics and charm, well maybe not his charm, would work in the newly constructed district.  Poor Bill, his presidential run was an embarrassment, his gubernatorial run fizzled fast so now he’s on to Staten Island, the former strong hold of Rudy “Colludy” Giuliani.

And More:  Putin and Xi are showing a unified front these days maybe because Xi would like to do to Taiwan what we all fear Vlad is about to do to Ukraine.  As to Vlad’s Ukraine plans, though diplomacy is still ongoing, things appear to be heating up on the border though its unlikely that Vlad will invade during the Olympics as that would be rude to Xi, even ruder than the public snooze he took while attending an Olympic event.  Spotify remains committed to Joe Rogan because $100 million is a lot of dough but around 100 of his episodes have been taken down, not just because of Rogan’s promulgation of anti-vax information but also because of his frequent use of the “N” word and maybe even because of some of his more misogynistic comments. Omicron continues to wain though at 2500, US daily deaths remain high. Sadly, fueled by low vaccination rates, total US deaths now exceed 900,000 and are still heading up.  We should hear more about the vaccine for the very young set shortly but the data may be confusing as the two dose regimen may not be adequately protective for older members of the young group.                     

   

Skating on Thin Ice

Hate Update:  Whoopi Goldberg’s Holocaust screw up and resulting two week suspension from The View has received a lot of attention but the hate story that should be front and center concerns the bomb threats that targeted and disrupted life at more than a dozen historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) earlier this week.  It’s probably no coincidence that those threats took place at the beginning of February, African American History Month. The FBI reports that they’ve tracked the threats to six technically proficient minors.  The good news is that no bombs were found, but how disgusting is it that those minors, probably teens on the cusp of adulthood, harbor so much hate that they think that targeting Black colleges, or any college, is okay. Hopefully at some point we’ll learn more about the offenders, but don’t be surprised if members of the right wing hate squad rise to their defense, describing them as just a bunch of misdirected practical jokers, a group of Kyle Rittenhouse’s sans guns.  While its too early to know if those minors will face anything more than a hand slap for their actions, a Black ex-Felon in Tennessee was recently sentenced to six years in jail for trying to register to vote, something ex-Felons can’t do in her state.  If that seems harsh, its because it is, people are rarely imprisoned for voting related crimes, at least white people rarely are. Then there’s the outrage about President Biden’s as yet unnamed Supreme Court pick. The usual group of Republican and right wing pundits continue to throw shade at her even though they don’t know who she will be. Louisiana’s Republican Senator John Kennedy, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a media go to guy because of his catchy down home homilies said that he wants “a nominee who knows a law book from a J Crew catalog” and one who is not going to try to rewrite the Constitution every other Thursday to try to advance a woke agenda.”  The “woke agenda” comment is a typical Republican talking point but the J Crew comment is not, it is a not so subtle reference to Michele Obama, the kind of smart and articulate Black woman that Kennedy finds threatening and intolerable, especially on the Court.  Lastly, don’t even get me started about what’s going on at the NFL, but whatever it is it sounds very racist. By the way has anyone seen Colin Kaepernick throw a football lately?

Election Shenanigans:  We keep learning more about the FG’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In addition to trying to get the Department of Justice, the US Military and the Department of Home Land Security to confiscate voting machines, his team also tried to get the National Security Agency involved. To that end some of his supporters circulated a memo that called for him to enlist the NSA in order to obtain the electronic data compiled by the agency to find “proof” of election fraud. In addition, apparently he also tried to convince the Michigan and Pennsylvania Republican lawmakers that he called to the Oval Office for steak, fries and champagne right after the election to get law enforcement officials in their states to grab some of their voting machines. We thought he had “just” been trying to get them to prevent the certification of Biden’s electors, now we know the plan also involved the machines and that both the machine plan and the electoral college switcheroo started way earlier than previously reported.  As to the House investigation into January 6, Jeffrey Clark, the former DOJ Civil Division attorney who promised to help the FG overturn the election if only he would first appoint him as acting Attorney General, finally showed up in person to testify.  By most accounts he didn’t say much, he mostly took the Fifth in contrast to Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes, the one eyed Yale law school grad who’s been indicted for seditious conspiracy.  He testified remotely from his prison cell for about six hours. Though he too plead the Fifth a bunch of times, he also did a lot of talking.  So far former VP Pence has not been invited to speak to the January 6^th Committee though the Committee has requested that the National Archives share some of his records.  It’s not clear whether the Committee will call Pence in but the former VP is scheduled to speak about constitutional authority and the rule of law this weekend  in Salt Lake City at the RNC’s winter meeting. That should be interesting, well maybe? As to the RNC, apparently though they won’t be kicking Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger out of the Republican House conference, they do plan to vote on a statement, one that is being characterized as unprecedented, censuring them for cooperating with the “socialist” enemy by participating on the January 6^th Committee because not kowtowing to the Former Guy has consequences.  The January 6^th Committee has also subpoenaed Arizona GOP head Kelli Ward’s phone records. Ward who was one of Arizona’s faux electors also tried to get officials to stop counting ballots on election day, especially the ones from Biden strongholds. When not disrupting elections and pressing a right wing agenda, she is an osteopath so she is asserting privilege, saying that handing over those phone records would violate her patients’ rights.  How convenient.

Media Madness:  You’d be excused for missing that there’s a program on Fox TV called The Masked Singer. Though I’ve been known to watch a junk show now and again, I’ve missed this one but from what I hear it involves celebrities in head to toe, identity concealing costumes singing in front of a panel of judges who then try to guess who they are. It turns out that one of this season’s “celebrities” was none other than Rudy “Colludy” Giuliani who, following in the footsteps of Sarah Palin who appeared in a prior year, must really be desperate for some cash. Nothing like watching entertainment TV helping a wannabe insurrectionist launder his reputation. On the subject of reputation, CNN head Jeff Zucker is now out of a job. Something to do with him failing to disclose his long term personal relationship with CNN’s Chief Marketing Officer Allison Gollust who still has her job but may not for much longer. Zucker failed to mention their long term relationship to lawyers at Cravath, Swaine & Moore and then when he did claimed that it had just started up during COVID, an assertion that a number of people in the know quickly knocked down as a bigly lie.  Cravath is helping CNN prepare for its dispute with former star Chris Cuomo who is trying to force CNN to ante up some if not all of the money he lost when he was fired for helping his brother former NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo.  Worth noting, though Andrew Cuomo is most definitely no longer Governor, he is not going to be prosecuted for any of the alleged harassment that caused him to step down because it turns out that though he might be a creep he didn’t break any laws.

And….:  Biden authorized a raid on Syria that took out the leader of ISIS early yesterday and at least so far the Russians have not invaded Ukraine though they do appear to be cozying up to China where the Winter Olympics have officially started without a lot of diplomat in attendance because of their treatment of their Uyghur minority.  Though COVID in the US is on the decline, there were 3022 US Covid related deaths yesterday so it’s a bit too early to declare victory.                        

                      

Whoops

Not on My Bingo Card: The confirmation of his first Supreme Court nominee hit a big speed bump yesterday after it was revealed that New Mexico’s 49 year old Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan had suffered a stroke.  The Senator’s office reports that he is expected to make a full recovery and will be back to the Senate floor soon.  Hopefully for Lujan, his office is right and his recovery will be speedy and smooth but given that the Democrats need all fifty members of their coalition to get anything done, his health crisis is the kind of setback that Biden can ill afford.  With all the octagenarians floating around the Senate, who ever thought that one of the younger ones would be the one to face such a crisis? Meantime, the Former Guy, the septagenarian who, despite his diet of hamburglers and Diet Coke, goes on ticking like one of those Everready bunnies remains up to all of his old tricks. In addition to dangling pardons in front of the many “tourists” who invaded the Capitol as part of the infamous January 6^th coup attempt, he’s also alerted his diehard fans to remain on high alert in case he needs them to take to the street to “protest” any of those government lawyers if or when they actually manage to indict him for one or more of his “alleged” crimes.  Responding to concerns that those protestors/riotors will target her, Atlanta District Attorney Fani Willis has asked the FBI to “conduct a security-risk assessment of her courthouse and an adjacent government center,” a more than reasonable request given that her investigation into the FG’s attempt to get Georgia officials to “find” the 11,000 additional votes he needed to claim a Georgia victory and her two grand juries present bigly risks for the FG.  The House January 6^th committee also appears to be rubbing the FG the wrong way more than usual because despite the reticence of certain prominent hold outs like the as yet unindicted Mark Meadows to cooperate, a number of former White House denizens, including a few of the most senior members of former VP Mike Pence’s staff, have testified. Among the things that the Committee and the rest of us now know via the NY Times is that the FG was directly involved in the efforts to get one or more departments of the US government to confiscate voting machines, the ones that kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, pillow man Mike Lindell and the other members of the FG’s loon squad claimed were manipulated by Hugo Chavez, China and Italy to flip votes to Joe Biden. The craziest thing about this scheme and another thing not on my Bingo card is that Rudy Giuliani of all people apparently was the voice of reason.  He apparently persuaded the FG that having “his” military grab the machines from swing state election authorities would have a really bad and very illegal thing to do.  Of course, we shouldn’t give Rudy too much credit, after putting the kibosh on calling out the military, he followed up on the FG’s request that he call upon Homeland Security to go get those machines. Homeland Security leadership refused, saying that voting machine theft fell outside of their zip code, similarly before he resigned Attorney General Barr refused a request to have the Department of Justice do the same.  As to Rudy, let’s not give him too much credit as he was actively trying to overturn the election, it’s just that his plans did not involve martial law. One more thing on the legal front, NYS Attorney General Tish James has subpoenaed the Federal government’s Trump DC hotel records.  She wants to know whether the FG and his family lied about their company’s financial position when they were competing for the lease that they ultimately obtained from the GSA (General Services Administration).  By the way, Ivanka was the point person for the negotiation of the DC hotel project and one of the things being examined is whether she failed to mention her option to buy her NY apartment from her father’s company for $8 million, property that was valued at over $20 million on the company’s financial statements.

Hate Update: Over the weekend a group of neo-Nazis paraded, swastikas and all, at a shopping plaza and on a highway overpass near Orlando, Florida.  The Republican heads of Florida’s legislature, Republican Senator Rick Scott and Democratic Congresswoman/Senate candidate Val Demings all responded quickly, with condemnations but not Governor DeSantis. Initially he remained silent though his spokesperson did not. She suggested via tweet that the Nazis weren’t really Nazis, that they were more likely just Democrats pretending to be Nazis to make DeSantis look bad. DeSantis did finally say something but he was far more focused on those Democrats who criticized him for not saying something sooner than the neo-Nazis, because after all maybe there are nice people on both sides?  By the way, Senator Rubio who is up for reelection this year appears to have spent his weekend hidden under a rock. What does it say about the state of affairs when politicians can’t bring themselves to denounce neo-Nazis and the like? That should be a slam dunk. Whoopi Goldberg also fell down the Nazi rabbit hole this week.  She got herself into all kinds of trouble for saying on The View that the “Holocaust isn’t about race” and then doubling down on her remarks. By focusing on color, Whoopi missed that in the eyes of Nazis Jews are members of an inferior race and that’s what mattered during the Holocaust and judging by that parade in Orlando still matters. Ironically, the remarks that got her into trouble were made during a discussion of the banning of Art Spiegelman’s Maus books which begin with the following Adolph Hitler quote “The Jews are undoubtably a race, but they are not human.” Later Whoopi issued an apology.  She repeated her apology on yesterday’s “clean-up” show which also featured Anti-Defamation League leader Jonathan Greenblatt.  This morning ABC suspended Whoopi for two weeks.  Count me among those who think that though her initial comments were bad and needed to be retracted, her apology was genuine and that her suspension is an overreach.  We’d all be better off if DeSantis was the one kicked to the curb but sadly he’s still viewed as a Republican heir apparent should the FG step aside.

Viral Musings:  The Pfizer BioNTech COVID vaccine for those 6 months to five years of age is now expected to be approved for emergency use by early next month. The Moderna shots, like the Pfizer ones before them, are now fully authorized.  Today’s NY Times reports that despite the widespread availability of vaccines,  the US has a higher COVID death rate than other wealthy countries.  That disparity is attributed to our lower vaccine rates and our lower uptake of booster shots. It looks like giving air time to vaccine skeptics and fearmongers has consequences, something that Fox and Spotify and the other mostly right wing outlets who keep doing so should care about but apparently don’t.