Blue and Yellow

State of the World:  It took the horrifying war in Ukraine to get Congress to act with a degree of unanimity that hasn’t been seen for a long time. Members from both sides of the aisle stood and applauded early on during last night’s State of the Union address, showing solidarity with embattled Ukraine, President Zelensky who was not there and his ambassador who was.  Of course once President Biden moved from Putin’s despicable war to domestic issues, things got back to normal, leaving Republicans sitting stone faced during the rest of the speech, except when Biden called for not defunding the police.  Worth noting the stoneface routine is standard behavior these days for the out of office party but not for the antsy Margie Q and Lauren Boebert who couldn’t sit still; the white supremacist and her like-minded juvenile delinquent BFF remained in full disruptive mode for most of the evening, shouting and tweeting, because that’s what they do. By the way, though GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy has expressed dismay and twisted a borrowed pearl or two over Margie Q and Arizona’s Paul Gosar participation at last weekend’s white supremacist conference, that’s all he’s done because he needs them to vote for him for Speaker should the Republicans retake the House after the midterms.  Also he knows his party well enough to know that far too many of its members believe that endorsing white supremacism is a good thing. 

#StandWithUkraine:  On the Ukraine front things continue to worsen.  On the one hand we’ve been told that Putin’s Russian forces are underperforming, that they’re running out of food and fuel and that some of them are showing signs of discontent over being asked to kill their cousins, on the other hand he has quantity on his side and more than enough of his soldiers appear willing to commit fratricide by effectively using their lethal weaponry against civilian targets. The US and NATO have the military power to stop Putin’s unending line of troop carriers and missiles from making it into the heart of Ukraine, unfortunately Putin has got nukes and is doing a good job of seeming crazy enough to use them rendering our superior air strength useless. As to Putin’s assertion that he’s denazifying Ukraine, yesterday Russian forces struck outside of Kyiv around the Holocaust memorial at Babyn Yar where thirty thousand Jews were killed by the Nazis in a two day massacre during WW II, because isn’t that what denazifiers do?  The impressive and articulate President Zelensky bemoaned “What is the point of saying ‘never again’ for 80 years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?” Hard to dispute him or to not feel his frustration and anger as the nuclear constrained West watches mass murder in slow motion.  There are reports this morning that Zelensky has asked the Chinese, those experts in ethnic cleansing and repression, to help Putin find an offramp.  Great if that works but don’t count on it.  Also, it’s “nice” that all those oligarchs concerned about the safety of their yachts and their travel plans are doing the same, but that’s probably not going to do much either.

Midterm Madness:  Yesterday was primary day in Texas.  It looks like Governor Greg Abbott will be facing off against perennial candidate Beto O’Rourke in November.  Ken Paxton, the state’s indicted attorney general who like the former guy still hasn’t suffered any consequences for his “alleged” crimes, faces a run off against fellow Republican/FG fan George P Bush, son of Jeb. The Democrat’s sole remaining anti-abortion congressperson Henry Cuellar faces a run off from progressive, or at least more progressive than him, Jennifer Cisneros. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who by the way did condemn Representatives Margie Q and Gosar for attending the white supremacist jamboree, is currently having a tiff with Florida Senator Rick Scott. Scott who the Former Guy would like to see take over “Old Crow” Mitch’s leadership role.  Scott is on Mitch’s sh-t list for circulating a policy statement that among other things calls for everyone, including those who earn little, to pay taxes.  It’s not that Mitch doesn’t want to shift more of the tax burden to lower and middle income people, it’s just that he doesn’t want to see that or anything else in writing. Getting back to Texas Governor Abbott, yesterday, as promised, he began implementing his campaign against parents of transgender children by having his forces suspend and launch an investigation into an employee of the state’s Department of children services for committing the crime of providing gender affirming medical care to her transgender teen.  Abbott knows that culture wars are the way to go.   

Viral Musings:  Notably, yesterday’s State of the Union affair was mask optional, a bit unnerving given that as the recently recovered Queen Elizabeth now knows COVID is still out there and many of the attendees, including President Biden, fall into her high risk geriatric category.  Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin was absent because he’s COVID positive, currently experiencing flu like symptoms.  He’s not alone, two other Democrats disclosed that they also flunked their mandatory pre-speech COVID tests. Then there’s Florida Senator Marco Rubio who didn’t attend the speech because he was “too busy” to go for the required swab.  Really, is he that afraid of Q tips, concerned that his Florida base would be upset if he took the test or does he have COVID?  On the vaccine front, Pfizer reports that two shots of its vaccine for the 5 to 11 year old set doesn’t do much to prevent them from getting the virus though it doesn’t have any bad side effects and crucially does prevent hospitalizations. The daily average virus case count is around 61k with deaths just above 1900.