Killer Tomatoes 🌻🌻🌻

Food For Thought:  Well it turns out that the Former Guy is afraid of fruit and maybe even vegetables since his biggest fear seems to be focused on that both sides culinary delight the tomato. He’s also very afraid of getting hit by a banana or a pineapple, and to be fair, who would want to be hit by a pineapple?  He revealed his intense fear under oath in a delayed deposition that he finally sat for as part of a 2015 lawsuit brought by a group of activists who allege that Keith Schiller, who was then chief of security of the FG Organization before going on to become White House Twitter guru, hit one of them on the head when they were protesting outside of his Manhattan headquarters.  In the course of the deposition the FG pretty much admits that he’s all in on anyone demonstrating against him getting roughed up or worse, no surprise since he called for demonstrators to be hurt several times during his campaign rallies.  It’s also no wonder that his lawyers fight so hard to keep him away from depositions.  Laugh all you want about flying tomatoes, but the way things are going, the FG could be the Republican candidate for president again in 2024 and may more or less control at least one house of government after the midterms.  If you think that concern is irrational, check out the thoughts of retired federal judge J. Michael Luttig.  Luttig, a very conservative judge who was appointed by George HW Bush, warns that the Republicans “are already a long way toward recapturing the White House in 2024 whether the FG or another Republican candidates wins the election or not.”  In an opinion piece published by CNN Luttig breaks down what he calls the “Republican blueprint” to steal the 2024 election, the cornerstone of which he refers to as the Supreme Court’s embrace of the “independent state legislature” doctrine, a legalized version of one time Trade Advisor Peter Navarro’s “Green Bay Sweep,” the plan he hoped to use to turn the 2020 election into a FG victory.  Luttig calls the last election a dry run for the next and that the party’s actual objective is “to execute successfully in 2024 the very same plan they failed in executing in 2020” and to overturn the 2024 election if the FG or his anointed successor loses. While most attention continues to be focused on the FG and his House and Senate endorsements of candidates who agree that the last election was rigged, we should also be focusing on the local elections in places like Arizona and Michigan where the FG and his followers are trying to get as many far right loonies into positions where they will then be able to control the levers of state and local elections, in other words he wants fewer Brad Raffenspergers and more QAnon types who really would be willing to find him or “his” party the votes they need to overturn legitimate election results.  It’s no coincidence that Florida’s Governor DeSantis, who hopes to be president one day just signed a bill dedicated to pursuing voter fraud and other election crimes, and call me crazy but I don’t think that DeSantis’ focus is Republicans in the Villages voting their dead mothers’ ballots.  By the way, though DeSantis’ long game is winning elections, his current Disney solution probably won’t stand the test of time as Minnie and Mickey’s lawyers have made it clear that eliminating their Reedy Creek Improvement District really will saddle local counties with at least a billion dollars of Disney’s debt.  The rating agencies aren’t happy.

Did Someone Say Video? There is one Republican that the party seems willing to sacrifice.  No it’s not Margie Q of Jewish Space Laser and Marshall law fame, it’s North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn, the orgy accuser.  All of his infractions, recent and not so recent, appear to be mysteriously surfacing right now either because he’s their sacrificial lamb or because that orgy thing touched a nerve, or both.  On top of getting caught trying to bring an armed gun on to a plane for the second time, and all those speeding without a license infractions, Cawthorn is now being accused of insider trading and of having an inappropriate relationship with a male member of his staff, one that involves both financial and other “Improprieties.”  By the way, the aide in question lives with him and accompanied Cawthorn on his honeymoon, which could explain why Cawthorn’s marriage didn’t even last a year. Anyway the most recent accusation which went viral yesterday involves a truly icky video, because as we’ve learned by now, there are almost always tapes and the most uptight politicians usually have the most to hide. 

Tweet, Tweet

🌻🌻🌻:  Lots of death and destruction but not enough for Vladimir Putin who, unhappy about the progress of his invasion now has his “Baghdad Bobs” threatening to use nukes and talking openly about invading and destabilizing Moldova, the small EU friendly country that sits on Ukraine’s southwestern border with Romania to “liberate” the Russian speaking people of its Transnistria region.  Little about that disturbs Kentucky Senator Rand Paul who yesterday, while questioning Secretary of State Blinken during his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, suggested that Russia’s reason for invading Ukraine and slaughtering all those Ukrainians could be admirable ones.  Paul said “you could argue the countries they (the Russians) have attacked were part of Russia,” so if they want them back who are we to question them? The visibly disgusted Blinken retorted that it was the “fundamental right” of countries that bordered Russia to decide their own fate. Remember that neighbor who bashed Paul in a dispute over sloppy gardening, his attack becomes a bit more understandable every day.  As to countries deciding their own destinies, one of Putin’s reasons for invading Ukraine was to prevent the expansion of NATO membership. While Ukraine won’t be joining anytime soon, it looks more and more likely that two NATO holdouts, Sweden and Finland, will, largely because they now want to be covered by NATO’s “all for one and one for all” Article 5 collective defense provision. Also, Putin is now cutting off gas supplies to Poland and Bulgaria because he’s not all that happy with their support for Ukraine either.  

Homefront: Kevin McCarthy, who has proven that he’ll do anything to remain on track to become the Speaker of the House, continues to watch his career goals circle the drain.  Newly released tapes and texts from that trove that he shared with the January 6^th committee before he stopped cooperating with them reveal that Kevin knew the Former Guy was attempting a coup and that he feared that some of the members of his Republican caucus including panhandle putz Matt Gaetz and Alabama’s Mo Brooks were acting and speaking in a manner that made them a menace to others and to democracy.  Those revelations have now earned Kevin the wrath of the way too influential Tucker Carlson who last night called him a “puppet of the Democratic Party” and no “better than an MSNBC contributor.”  He went on to warn that McCarthy or "one of his highly liberal allies" would likely become Speaker of the House if conservatives didn't "get their act together right away."  Ironically, the “liberal ally” the fish stick scion appears to be referring to is none other than NY Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who many think is the source of the leaked tapes. Tucker is scheduled to speak at the conservative Family Leader Council this summer in Iowa, something that Republicans aspiring to become president routinely do.  Scary right?  By the way Kevin isn’t the only in trouble right now.  North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn who alienated many of his Republican colleagues when he suggested that they were into orgies, got caught trying to board a commercial flight with a gun …. again.  Yes, like speeding without a license, Cawthorn is a multiple gun offender.  He’s got a contentious primary coming up and it’s looking more and more likely that he will not be his party’s choice to represent his district in the midterms.  Getting back to Kevin’s trove of texts, in addition to revealing that he knew that the FG was all in on couping, they also reveal just how disgusted Mitch McConnell was with the FG, that former Energy Secretary/Texas Governor Rick Perry was all in on helping with the coup, that aide Jason Miller was the one who suggested claiming that the MAGA guys and gals attacking the Capitol were Antifa activists in drag and that Margie Q who last week testified that she knew nothing about those calls for the FG to impose martial law, texted about it although, in her defense she called it Marshall Law.  

Viral Musings:  Add Vice President Kamala Harris to the COVID positive list, a group that now also includes Senators Ron Wyden and Chris Murphy.  The VP reports that she’s asymptomatic and that she only learned of her positive status from a routine test.  She is now taking Pfizer’s Paxlovid, the anti-viral that is now widely available and that you too should consider in the event you end up in the positive category, assuming of course your doctor signs off and that you don’t have any pre-existing condition that would make it a bad choice for you.  According the CDC, more than half of Americans show signs of a previous COVID infection, including three out of every four children. The CDC found that signs of past infection rose dramatically between December and February, when the more contagious Omicron variant surged through the country.  Additionally, the CDC estimates that these days there were three infections for every reported one so those numbers indicating that positivity in NYS is up to 9.30%, take that with a grain of salt, it’s far higher.  The good news is that hospitalizations remain relatively low, the bad news is that they are rising, up 9%  countrywide during the past week.  So maybe wear a mask on planes and in elevators and other congested areas even if mask wearing isn’t mandated.

Twitter:  Even if you aren’t a user, you will probably be affected by what’s been going on at Twitter.  In summary, Elon Musk, of Tesla and SpaceX fame who is worth about $274 billion, is buying the company for $44 billion, with plans to take it private and loosen up it’s tweet moderation rules.  It’s widely expected that Musk will invite the FG back onto Twitter, giving him back the microphone he lost when he was kicked off after the insurrection.  The FG asserts that he won’t go back on Twitter because he’s committed to his new platform Truth Social, of course last week during a rally in Georgia, the FG couldn’t even remember Truth Social’s name so there’s that.  Anyway, the FG probably is contractually obligated to Truth Social, but it’s not clear that Truth Social will continue to exist if the Elon Musk deal makes it to closing.  As to making it to closing, its worth noting that Musk leveraged his Tesla stock to pay for the acquisition and that as a result Tesla has lost value.  Some business reporters have suggested that if Tesla stock continues to sink, Musk’s Twitter purchase might not go through.  That would depress the right who is psyched about being able to go back on Twitter to spread COVID and election misinformation and would also distress former Twitter head Jack Dorsey who stands to gain $1 billion but would make the left happy.  Only time will tell.  Just a few months ago Elon promised to spend some of his money on solving world hunger, if things don’t work out with Twitter he could go back to making the world a better place.  Well probably not.  

 

Oui Oui  🌻🌻🌻

Vive La France:  So it turns out that having Vlad Putin as one of your backers, at least in France, isn’t a good thing.  Over the weekend centrist French President Emmanuel Macron won a second term beating right wing candidate Marine Le Pen by a wide margin, 58.5% to 41.5% and Le Pen actually conceded.  The pundit class, who had pushed the narrative that the election would be very close and was possibly even ripe for an upset is now bemoaning that the xenophobic Le Pen broke through 40% mostly because they need to whine about something.  Sure it’s depressing that 40% of France voted for Le Pen given her history of Russian canoodling, anti-Semitism and anti-immigrant rhetoric but who are we to criticize? Worth noting,  Macron’s victory makes him the first French president to win reelection in twenty years, especially impressive given that going into the election his approval level was down around 40% after dipping into the 30s, kind of like the guy currently serving as our president.  In other important international news, the war in Ukraine rages on, particularly in the south and east and the stories out of besieged Mariupol are beyond horrifying.  Though President Biden didn’t visit, both Secretary of State Blinken and Defense Secretary Austin did make the trek to Kyiv to meet with President Zelenskyy where they promised more military aid.  In addition, Blinken announced that the US would be reestablishing a diplomatic presence in the country.

Home Front: Back in the USA, politicians continue to do their thing.  The Former Guy wants us to know that he never really trusted GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy anyway so the fact that Kevin spoke against him after January 6^th doesn’t really bother him that much.  We really don’t know whether the FG will back the squirrely Kevin for Speaker if or when the Republicans take back the House as a result of the midterms and neither does Kevin.  That level of uncertainty is a problem, not because any of us gives a rat’s patootie about Kevin, but because last week’s leak of Kevin’s admission that the FG was out of control and needed to go leaves Kevin even more reliant on pleasing the FG than he already was, hardly a good thing for our democracy. By the way, Kevin’s says he only said those things to placate Liz Cheney.  In case you are wondering who leaked those tapes of Kevin badmouthing the FG, it wasn’t Liz who insists that she didn’t even know that those conversations were being taped.  Right now the smart money is on the very ambitious, FG loving NYS Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who ascended into Cheney’s pumps after the Wyoming Congresswoman was ousted from Republican party leadership for being righteous, well righteous about condemning the FG ‘s coup activities. While most of last week’s focus was on Kevin and his momentary candor, it was also revealed, or maybe the better word is confirmed, that Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, Ohio’s Gym Jordan, Texas’ Louis Gohmert, and Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry were all involved in meetings and calls with the White House on Insurrection Day.  That tidbit comes from a deposition provided by former Chief of Staff/election fraudster Mark Meadows’ aide Cassidy Hutchinson who also mentioned that others including Freedom Caucus members Margie Q, Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Alabama’s Mo Brooks participated in some of those calls or meetings.  By the way, don’t expect much to come from last week’s Margie Q hearing, the one in Georgia that is supposed to determine whether or not an insurrectionist like her can serve in Congress.  Sure she repeatedly lied on the witness stand, but she won’t be punished. She’s already out fundraising on her “persecution,” even throwing around some of the overthrow the government terminology that she claimed to know nothing about.  While her district is expected to vote her back in in the fall, North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn may actually be facing an uphill battle.  Over the weekend some pictures of him in women’s lingerie hit the twitterverse.  His right wing, religious supporters can overlook lies, orgy assertions, his divorce from his Russian honeypot and the many times he’s been stopped for speeding without a license, but going to a frat party in drag, probably the most innocent thing he’s ever done, that might be their tipping point.   

Midterm Madness:  Democrats in Utah have decided to endorse the candidacy of conservative Evan McMullin.  The former CIA operations officer is running as an independent, challenging Republican Senator Mike Lee who is up for reelection.  Democrats have decided supporting McMullin makes more sense that endorsing a Democrat since no Democrat can win a Utah statewide election.  McMullin, who challenged the FG during the last presidential election won’t say who he will caucus with but does say that he will vote independently. While we still don’t know who all the Senatorial candidates will be we do know which states are the ones to watch.  Pennsylvania, Ohio and North Carolina all have open seats due to Republican retirements.  Republicans are targeting newbies Mark Kelly in Arizona and Raphael Warnock in Georgia.  New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan and Nevada’s Catherine Cortez Masto are also considered vulnerable as is Wisconsin’s crazy as a fox Republican Ron Johnson.  Also, there’s the autocracy of Florida where Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings of Orlando is challenging Republican Marco Rubio. As to Georgia, over the weekend the Republican gubernatorial debate went a bit off the rails as challenger/former Senator David Perdue attacked onetime FG mini me Governor Brian Kemp for failing to overturn the results of the last election.  Perdue who was ousted from the Senate Jon Ossoff insists that his loss, like the FG’s, was due to all that massive election fraud that wasn’t and that it’s all Kemp’s fault. Worth noting there was a time that Perdue was considered a rather normal politician.  No longer. Who ever wins the Republican primary will face off against Democrat Stacey Abrams who is spending her time registering more Democrats.     

 

Alligator Alley

Lordy There are Tapes: The political prognosticators expect the Republicans to take over the House after the fall election because the party in power usually loses seats in the midterms, the Democratic majority is too slim to withstand the loss of even a few seats, President Biden‘s favorability rating is in the toilet and inflation. GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy will do anything to make that takeover happen because becoming Speaker of the House is his raison d’etre. That obsession explains why Kevin refuses to condemn Margie Q, or any of the other Nazi canoodlers in his caucus or even Matt Gaetz, his resident pedophile. However, anyone paying attention to the events after January 6^th also knows that Kevin, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, did condemn the Former Guy for a brief shining moment after the insurrection.  Of course that was before Kevin showed up at Mar a Lago, posed with the FG and released the thumbs up picture that went far towards resuscitating the mango maniac’s political future.  Still it’s not really all that surprising to learn that during that brief interlude when Kevin had a conscience and was shaken by the events of January 6^th he was ready to abandon the FG and that he had a call with his leadership group, which then included Representative Liz Cheney, to let them know that he was planning to tell the FG to step down or be found guilty during what he then expected would be an inevitable impeachment trial.  To be clear Kevin didn’t expect the FG to listen to him but he really did believe he’d be found guilty because at that time Mitch McConnell was planning to let his Senators vote their consciences and thought that 17 of them would find the gumption to vote the FG out.  Of course, that was then and this is now, Mitch changed his tune and most of those Senators didn’t vote the FG guilty.  Having sold his soul to the devil, Kevin would now like to rewrite history so yesterday after the NY Times released details of his January conversation with his leadership contingent, Kevin called their report of the details of that conversation false news. Unfortunately for him, someone, maybe Liz Cheney though she denies it, shared a tape of the conversation with Rachel Maddow and now it’s out there for all to hear and to be clear, Kevin did want to throw the FG under the bus, but now he doesn’t because he wants to be Speaker more and so it goes unless of course the easily pissed off FG, decides he doesn’t want Kevin to become Speaker, then maybe we will end up with Speaker Gym Johnson or worse, if there is such a thing.  As to the FG getting pissed off, listen to his interview with Celebrity Apprentice winner Piers Morgan if you want to see how angry he gets with anyone who has the temerity to say that he really did lose the last election. Margie Q is also angry, or maybe just nervous.  Today she’s due to testify in court about what she did on January 6th in a hearing that may or may not determine whether or not she will be allowed to run for reelection, something about violating a post-Civil War era law that prohibits insurrectionists from serving in Congress.  Also, FG Junior is due to sit down with the January 6^th committee as if he’d ever say anything detrimental to his dad.    

The Sunshine State?  Though Florida’s legislature, two Senators and Governor are all Republicans, about half its residents vote Democrat in its statewide races, as evidenced by the 2008 fight over hanging chads and Governor DeSantis’ historically narrow win in 2018.  Given that, you’d think that Governor DeSantis who is up for reelection this cycle would be reaching out to both sides of the aisle, but instead he’s acting out big time and at least for now the frighteningly effective  president wannabee appears to be getting away with it.  Yesterday, the very gerrymandered Florida legislature voted on legislation which, when it goes into effect next year, assuming it actually ever does, would strip Disney of its special governing status.  That legislation, DeSantis’ retribution to  Disney for speaking out against his “Don’t Say Gay” legislation was written carefully enough to specifically target Disney leaving the status of other corporations with special benefits intact but it ignored the tax hit that the central Florida counties will now incur or the $1 billion to maybe as much as $2 billion of Disney debt that will transfer over to the government. In DeSantis’ Florida race, like sexuality, is also an issue that can’t be discussed.  It turns out that those math textbooks that his minions have cancelled did not teach critical race theory, though at least one of them had a word problem that centered around the incidence of sickle cell anemia, a subject that DeSantis apparently thinks would send his state’s delicate youth and their parents into a spiral of self-hating despair. And because gerrymandering is so effective, yesterday the Florida legislature eliminated the state’s two usually Black seats, passing a new map that would create 20 seats that favor Republicans and just eight that tilt toward Democrats, astonishing for a state that typically splits its statewide election votes almost evenly.  Don’t get me wrong, as evidenced by the fight going on in the NYS courts about NY’s congressional map right now, Democrats gerrymander too but turning a 50/50 state into a 70/30 state is extreme and not how democracies are supposed to work.  Floridians rise up and do something because if you don’t we could end up with DeSantis running amok over all of us.

🌻🌻🌻Speaking of running amok, Vladimir Putin isn’t just killing and hiding the dead bodies of thousands of Ukrainians, he’s also killing his own.  Before taking it down, a Kremlin friendly website posted Russian war dead and MIAs at 13,400 and 7000 respectively.  It’s not clear if those figures include the at least 116 dead sailors and more than 100 MIA from the sinking of the Moskva. Who knows how he’s explaining those losses to his populace, certainly the Ukrainians in Mariupol who are under siege and are likely to be starved to death or worse over the next few days have more critical things to worry about.  As to Putin he seems to be suffering from an affliction of some sort.  He appeared in a video this week, clutching a table with his right hand while his leg shook uncontrollably.  Sadly even an unwell Putin is dangerous. Elsewhere in Russia, two plants, one producing chemicals the other producing missiles went up in flames yesterday.  Accidents, sabotage or coincidence? Well forget about coincidence because as Leroy Jethro Gibbs says, there is no such thing.  In other international news, the French election takes place this weekend. Polls project Emanuel Macron, who’d previously been neck and neck with his opponent the too Putin friendly Marianne Le Pen winning convincingly now, for whatever that’s worth.  The consequences of an upset would be seriously damaging for the US and NATO’s efforts to help Ukraine so no one will breathe easy until the results are in.           

 

 

Sneezy and Dopey 🌻🌻🌻

Primarily:  When not golfing the Former Guy spends his time at Mar a Lago stewing about the last election and trying to play kingmaker in the upcoming ones. The NY Times likens his malicious election meddling to an updated version of the Apprentice.  To that end he has been auditioning a steady stream of candidate wannabees, dolling out endorsements and an occasional check for a piddling $5000 to those who flatter him the most with the most important criteria being that they assert that the last election was rigged.  Of course no one who voted to impeach him need apply.  Sometimes those he endorses are already on track to win their state primaries, other times they’re not and may never be.  We will know soon enough whether those endorsement translate into victories as primary season kicks off next month.  First up will be Ohio where hillbilly guy JD Vance is hoping to overtake Josh Mandel who at least until he didn’t get the FG’s endorsement was leading in most of the local polls. The Ohio primary takes place on May 3. Though he has to make it through a primary too, the expectation is that Congressman Tim Ryan will be the Democratic challenger for the Ohio Senate seat and though Ohio leans heavily red, Ryan shouldn’t be counted out as Ohio’s other Senator is Democrat Sherrod Brown who was recently reelected.  The Pennsylvania primary where the FG endorsed New Jerseyan/TV star Dr Oz over the more main stream Republican candidate Connecticut “resident” David McCormick who is married to Dina Powell, a former member of his administration, takes place on May 17.  Polling at 14% each, right now Oz and McCormick are in a dead heat though the majority of Pennsylvania’s Republican voters are still undecided.  On the Democratic side, populist Lieutenant Governor Fetterman is leading centrist Congressman Conor Lamb by a wide margin.  However, there too a lot of voters are undecided and the field contains a few other candidates.  The FG has also endorsed Ted Budd’s Senate run in North Carolina for the seat being vacated by the retiring Republican Richard Burr.  The NC primary takes place on May 17, and there the FG’s endorsement seems to be working as Budd now looks to be in the lead. NC’s likely Democratic candidate is Cheri Beasley, the former Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court.  Then there’s Georgia, where ex-football player/alleged wife abuser Hershel Walker, the FG’s Senate candidate of choice, will most certainly move on to face incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock in November in a contest that will be depressingly close and could result in Walker making it to the Senate.  The big race to watch in Georgia is for the Governor spot.  Incumbent Brian Kemp is facing off against former Senator David Perdue who Jon Ossoff edged out in 2020.  The FG has endorsed Perdue, not because Kemp didn’t support everything he did as president, but because Kemp really pissed him off by refusing to upend the results of the 2020 election.  Perdue, who was photographed this week alongside some of those “both sides” folks with his hand forming the white supremacist symbol cemented his FG support by refusing to acknowledge Biden’s victory or even that he lost to Ossoff.  Perdue doesn’t expect to win the first round, he’s just praying that Kemp won’t get the 50% he needs to avoid a runoff where he hopes to consolidate enough votes to emerge victorious.  Right now that outcome seems unlikely as Kemp is polling in the 51 to 52% range.  The Democrat’s candidate of choice is Stacey Abrams. For the record the Wyoming and Alaska primaries where the FG has endorsed Liz Cheney and Lisa Murkowski’s Republican opponents do not take place until August.

Never Ending Story:  Getting back to Georgia and the 2020 election, yesterday Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis broke her silence, revealing that she’s still hard at work investigating the FG’s attempt to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to find those 11,780 votes.  Apparently she has interviewed around 50 witnesses and plans to subpoena 30 more in May as soon as her special Grand Jury is up and running.  By the way Raffensperger is also running for reelection without the FG’s endorsement, of course.  And because at least for some people the 2020 election isn’t over, the NY Times reports that many of the usual characters including lawyer John Eastman who is still trying to keep thousands of pages of his correspondence away from the probing eyes of the January 6^th committee, are still trying to get the 2020 election decertified because of course.  Though most Disney stories end happily, the one going on in Florida might not.  Governor DeSantis’ battle with Disney continues to rage.  He says it’s about their delayed dismay about his “don’t say gay” law  but it’s probably more about the fact that Disney has cut off contributions to his campaign fund.  Anyway, he really is moving ahead with plans to strip the company of its special status even though doing so could cost residents of a few central Florida counties $2200 per household.  Speaking of hurting constituents and economies, it appears that Texas Governor Abbot who for a while was double and triple checking all trucks crossing the Mexico border for contraband and illegal immigrants, has managed to decrease the US GDP by around $9 billion.  Remember when the Republican party was good for business?

Viral Musings:  So no more mandatory masking on planes, not because it’s the right thing from a health perspective but because one of those seriously underqualified, Federal district judges, 33 year old Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who Mitch McConnell and the FG rushed through at the end of 2020 says that mandating them is against the public health law, at least the law as she interprets it, and anyway as far as she’s concerned  we don’t need them because in her Dopey opinion they don’t work.  Again, they do work.  As to her decision, besides the fact that she’s wrong, it’s also a bit political that she ruled before hearing arguments from the CDC’s side.  By the way, Mizelle is from Florida and is a member of the Federalist Society who previously clerked for Clarence Thomas, of course. Her husband worked for Homeland Security during the FG administration.  The mask mandate was likely going to expire in May but was being kept in place this month because the nonpartisan virus is surging again. Worth noting that a week or so after airplane mask mandates were lifted in Europe, there were lots of flight cancellations.  Something to do with coronavirus related staff shortages.  Wonder how that happened?  Anyway, the good news is that air circulation is good on planes so if you wear a quality mask during your flight and you should you will probably be okay unless of course the person sitting right next to you or right in front of you is Sneezy.  The CDC is expected to appeal the decision mostly because we may need those masks again during the next pandemic.

 

Roasted Nuts!?

🌻🌻🌻: Apparently those assertions that Putin was refocusing his efforts on southern and eastern Ukraine aren’t entirely correct.  Overnight his forces bombed Lviv killing more civilians possibly in retaliation for the embarrassing loss of his Moskva battleship but also because as shown by the bodies piled up in Mariupol and Bucha, killing and torturing civilians, like incinerating, is what genocidal maniacs do and yes, taking a page from Hitler’s playbook, he is also reportedly incinerating bodies to hide his war crimes. Though they seem to be ”only” wounded some of the volunteers working with Chef Jose Andreas World Central Kitchen in Kharkiv were also victims of one of Putin’s bombing runs this weekend.  In other news, over the weekend President Zelenskyy said that he would love it if President Biden stopped by for a visit so it wouldn’t be a stretch to assume that someone senior from the US, perhaps even Joe, will do a very quick fly by during the week.    

Insurrectionist Party:  Another week and another piece of news about how some more elected Republicans tried their best to undo the results of the last presidential election.  The politicians in question this time are Utah Senator Mike Lee and Texas Congressman Chip Roy. On November 7, in a series of texts to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, someone who really did commit election fraud, Lee offered his "unequivocal support” for Meadows “to exhaust every legal and constitutional remedy at your disposal to restore Americans faith in our elections while Roy wrote "We need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend." Lee also lobbied for Meadows to help get kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, who he called a “straight shooter” in to see the Former Guy because she had a strategy to keep the election in play, moving more states into the FG column. Lee didn’t stop at pushing for Powell to gain access, once her insanity became obvious, even to him, he began pushing for the now discredited John Eastman to take her place as a way to keep the coup going. By the time January had rolled around, Lee and Roy both backed off and after the insurrection at the Capitol they did vote to certify the election results but by then the damage had been done.  Worth noting that, Utah’s other Senator Mitt Romney who probably suspected that his colleague was up to no good, has not endorsed Lee’s reelection run, he hasn’t endorsed any of his Republican opponents or Evan McMullin, the former CIA Agent, conservative running as an independent either but not endorsing your state colleague is highly unusual.  On the subject of endorsements, fresh off of his endorsement of quacky Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Former Guy has endorsed Hillbilly guy JD Vance.  Vance, whose campaign is being largely financed by tech billionaire Peter Theil, used to be an FG critic before he saw the space lasers. About the best thing to say about Vance who is also on the record saying that no one really cares about Ukraine, is that he doesn’t appear to have a history of violence against women, which distinguishes him from the Republican Party’s leading candidates in Missouri, Nebraska and Georgia where former Governor Eric Greitens, Corporate CEO Charles Herbster and former football hero Herschel Walker, all credibly accused, may end up as the party’s 2022 candidates.   Though Missouri’s Greitens, who was ousted from the Governor’s mansion for tying up and blackmailing his former girlfriend among other things, hasn’t yet received one of those coveted FG endorsement, Walker and Herbster have.  Though we still have to get through the midterms, the 2024 presidential race is also in the news.  Last week we were gifted with another indication that the FG is planning to run when the RNC announced that it had unanimously voted to require GOP presidential candidates to commit to abstain from presidential debates sanctioned by the Commission on Presidential Debates, the non-partisan group that has been sponsoring the process for decades. Quite a few of the Republican presidential wannabees are actually good debaters but one notable one, the Former Guy, is really bad at it so the RNC’s move is not a surprise and could be undone if the FG opts not to run.                   

Culture Wars:  We continue to reach new levels of crazy as the right moves forward with its plans to make sure that the country’s children are “protected” from learning about anything that might  make them, or more likely their parents, uncomfortable.  Florida, where Disney is now the enemy, has determined that 41% of its textbooks are impermissible because they contain references to Critical Race Theory (spoiler alert they don’t) and/or the “unsolicited addition of Social Emotional Learning in mathematics.” Maybe the image of a Black conductor in one of those trains going 55 mph before it passes the one going 65 mph would make the textbook disqualifying?  Perhaps the solution is to just stop teaching math or anything else for that matter because who needs to learn useful skills anyway?   Florida isn’t just going after textbooks and Disney, last week presidential wannabee Governor DeSantis signed into law a new restrictive abortion law which prohibits abortions after 15 weeks with limited exceptions related to saving the mother’s life.  The law does not allow for exemptions in cases where pregnancies were caused by rape, incest or human trafficking. Back in the old days, as in last year, such a law would have been deemed unconstitutional but with the expectation that SCOTUS will toss Roe v Wade out the window sometime in June when it rules on Mississippi’s Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, DeSantis, like a bunch of his Republican gubernatorial cronies is going all in on cutting back or even eliminating reproductive rights, because why not?  Then there’s Tucker Carlson, the guru of the right, in addition to lamenting over all that bad press that his man crush Vladimir Putin has been getting, something to do with his Ukraine genocide, Tucker has been spending some of his spare time producing “documentaries” about such topics as the impact of declining levels of testosterone on culture.  But nothing to worry about, he has a solution for that, he’s now advocating that men “explore testicle tanning” as a solution to their problems.  Really, I am not making that up and the sad thing is that a significant number of his viewers, perhaps many of those who chugged horse paste and avoided getting their COVID vaccines, will probably take him up on the suggestion.

Viral Musings:  On the COVID front, though disease levels are down from their highs, well down to the extent counts are accurate given the use of unreported home tests, much of the country is experiencing an upswing, again, due to the highly contagious BA2 strain.  NBC reports that NYC officials are considering following Philadelphia’s lead, bringing back face mask requirements in high-risk settings and places where social distancing is not possible.  In addition according to the city's latest available data, the “positivity rate is at more than 10% in five neighborhoods -- four of them are in Manhattan: Financial District (10006), Lincoln Square, Lenox Hill/Upper East Side, Financial District (10004), and Greenpoint.”  The good news is that NYC is highly vaccinated, anti-viral meds are available and most cases are not leading to hospitalizations but still hospitalization levels are rising, well above 1000 statewide again. New York has the hospital capacity to handle COVID spikelets, but in parts of the country with hospital beds are scarcer and higher percentages of the population are unvaccinated BA2 and its offspring may not be so benign.  

 

Battleship

🌻🌻🌻 On January 20, David Axe a writer for Fortune Magazine wrote an article about Russia’s superiority in the Black Sea, pointing out that its big Moskva flagship would be a problem for Ukraine because she had previously proven that she was the Timex of the seas and could take a licking and keep on ticking.  Well, that article didn’t age well.  Yesterday Ukrainian missiles sunk the Moskva.  Russia’s response was that there had been an accidental explosion aboard the Moskva and that she had sunk while being towed to shore, because apparently admitting to naval ineptitude was better than admitting that the ship had been done in by Ukrainian missile fire.  Russia also asserted that all 500 aboard had been saved.  They weren’t all saved, in fact a lot of them went down with the ship, just another thing that Putin and his minions will lie about but eventually have to explain when the sailors fail to make it home. While the sinking  of Putin’s battleship was good news for Ukraine, the situation in the east, particularly in Mariupol remains dire and is likely to worsen as Putin’s stated May 9 deadline approaches.  The vile Vlad has got to be seething about how badly his Ukraine “misadventure” is going.  We know that because in addition to rape and pillage, he’s now moved on to shaking nukes at Finland and Sweden, two NATO hold outs who now look likely to join because having seen what’s going on in Ukraine, they want to be covered by NATO’s Article 5 “all for one” clause, the provision that the Former Guy choked on when he was forced by his aides to say he would abide by it when he really wanted to disband NATO altogether.  Of course, the Former Guy has rewritten that history, though he still won’t condemn Putin’s genocidal behavior, he now says that NATO is holding up so well because he “forced” its member countries to ante up more in dues. The issue was not about dues but how much each country spent on defense and the FG wasn’t the first American president to press the members to spend more.  Now thanks to Putin’s Ukraine invasion, that number really is rising especially since Germany is now building up its military, something most in the region thought that they’d never want to see happen again for reasons obvious to everyone but the historically ignorant Former Guy.

January 6th Forever:  Speaking of the FG, a number of his former aides and associates are finally showing up for their testimony to the House January 6th Committee.  Yesterday, Stephen Miller, the FG’s White House devil, who previously argued that it was inappropriate for the committee to obtain his phone records because he was still part of his parents’ family plan, arguing it would be an invasion of their privacy, spent 8 hours being grilled.  Would it surprise anyone to know that things got a “little chippy” and that Stevie was “at times a difficult witness?” Earlier in the week, two FG White House lawyers, former WH counsel Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin testified.  The FG alleged that he authorized their cooperation which likely means that he couldn’t stop them from cooperating because they care about their law licenses. It’s been previously reported that Cipollone pushed back against the FG’s election lies and his attempts to overturn the election.  It appears that the testimony is winding down with reports that the Committee will be holding televised hearings by early June, finally.  On the election fraud front, officials in North Carolina have taken former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows off their state’s voting rolls.  While investigating the likelihood that he committed voter fraud in 2020 when he claimed a trailer he didn’t live in was his North Carolina residence, they uncovered that he’d voted in Virginia in 2021.  Unlike the double voters from Florida’s Villages, he hasn’t suffered any consequences for his 2020 vote, but maybe he will soon. Though it’s likely the consequences for him like theirs, but unlike the Black Texas woman who was sentenced to 5 years in jail for voting when she thought she could but couldn’t, will involve a hand slap and/or a fine.  Speaking of outrageous behavior, look no further than Tennessee, where Republican State Senator Frank Niceley, cited Adolf Hitler as a role model for the homeless because he had gone from “living on the streets for two years……practicing his oratory, and his body language, and how to connect with citizens and then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books,” something having to do with genocide?  Yes, Niceley really said that and that’s really his name.  Then again a large number of his Republican colleagues in the House, including the one who initially sponsored the bill, voted against naming a Florida courthouse after the state’s first Black Supreme Court judge “legal legend” Joseph Hatchett, after Georgia Republican Andrew Clyde riled them up about a Hatchett opinion that banned school prayer, even though Hatchett’s decision was consistent with prevailing, or at least prevailing until now, Supreme Court precedent.  Worth noting both of Florida’s Senators had joined with all the colleagues in the Senate to support the naming of the court house, and the naming will probably go through on through an as yet to be scheduled future House vote, one that doesn’t require a three quarters majority.

Viral Musings: BA 2 is making its rounds with a vengeance.  Keep that in mind while otherwise enjoying your holiday festivities!

Happy Passover (no matzah icon on my PC) and Happy 🐰 🐰      

 

 
Subway Serious 🌻🌻🌻

Subway Madness:  Well yesterday was definitely a weird one.  New York State’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor Brian Benjamin, who was handpicked for the job by NY Governor Kathy Hochul, was arrested for campaign finance violations and then resigned, South Dakota’s Republican Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was impeached for leaving a fatal 2020 car crash, inflation  continues to spike to record levels and then there was that subway “incident” in New York City. Benjamin became lieutenant governor as a result of Andrew Cuomo’s fall from grace.  His demise could impact New York’s upcoming gubernatorial election, a big problem given that Democratic Governor Hochul’s likely Republican opponent is Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin, an ardent Former Guy loyalist, who voted against certifying Biden’s election victory, isn’t much of a believer in virus mitigation and supports the overturning of Roe v Wade.  As to South Dakota’s Ravnsborg, he claims that his impeachment is in retaliation for his investigations into some of presidential wannabee Governor Kristi Noem’s shenanigans and he might be right but then again he really should have stepped down back in 2020 when instead of fessing up to vehicular homicide he initially oddly claimed that he had only killed a bespectacled deer. The inflation spike is a problem for a lot of reasons.  Obviously no one likes paying more for anything, especially gas and food but inflation, even when it’s fueled by a once in a century (okay, I know that’s wishful thinking) pandemic and a genocidal war are usually blamed on the people in charge and right now that means the Biden administration and with the midterms on the horizon that could portend a change in Washington DC leadership.  Of course that’s only a problem if you think that turning the reins of the House and Senate to Kevin McCarthy and Mitch McConnell, who is already on record saying that of course he wouldn’t confirm a Supreme Court justice or probably any judges once back in charge, is a frightening thing. And don’t assume that the Republicans would definitely vote Kevin into the speakership, it’s even odds that they’ll pick someone like Jim Jordan or maybe even the Former Guy because you don’t have to be a member of the House to become Speaker.  As pro-autocracy as the current contingent of Republicans is, those voted in during the midterms are likely to be loonier, think more faux bible thumping, white supremacists Margie Qs and Lauren Boeberts and fewer Adam Kinzingers and Liz Cheney’s. Leaving that dystopic future to the side for now, I’ll move to the biggest event of the day, the subway shooting.  It was horrible but so was the fear amplifying press coverage.  Yes New York City has been experiencing a crime wave, but despite the NY Post’s daily drum beat, the wave has been more about property crimes, homicides are actually trending down right now. Of course crime of all sorts is bad and yesterday was awful, but this is New York City.  We’ve survived the financial crisis of the 1970s, the really high crime rate of the 1980s, the losses of 9.11, Super Storm Sandy and the pandemic.  We will survive this too because as the last, albeit tarnished, Governor liked to say, we are #NewYorkStrong

Ukraine:  Sadly, thinks are expected to get worse in Ukraine with Putin digging in, trying to extract some sort of victory before May 9, the day that Russia celebrates their WWII victory of the Nazis, the real ones as opposed to the faux ones he asserts are being led by President Zelenskyy. Yesterday, Putin claimed he had been “left with no choice but to launch the invasion” to protect Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine adding that the Ukrainians were the ones committing genocide against Russians. Not to be out done on the disinformation front, the Former Guy asserted that he is “the most honest human being guy perhaps that God had ever created.”  No wonder the two get along so well.   

                 

Operational Control!  🌻🌻🌻

World Chess Board: As evidenced by the number of world leaders who have recently visited, things are looking up in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, unfortunately the immediate future for southern and eastern Ukraine remains bleak.  Having failed, or at least failed thus far, to “liberate” all of Ukraine, Putin is refocusing his efforts on the east and south, looking to General Aleksandr Dvornikov to coordinate and head up his invasion forces.  Dvornikov, the evil mastermind behind last week’s missile attack on Ukraine’s Kramatorsk railway in which at least 57 people including children were killed with an additional 107 injured, previously led Russia’s air war in Syria where he was responsible for massive obliteration under the theory that if you can’t win hearts and minds then you might as well bomb the citizenry and the infrastructure to smithereens or worse.  Nothing’s off the table for him.  Getting back to the traveling squads, Britain’s Boris Johnson who is trying awfully hard to get the British press to focus on how he’s supporting Ukraine rather than his COVID shutdown parties visited President Zelenskyy over the weekend, hot on the heels of  European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, and Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer.  According to a White House spokesperson, President Biden has no plans to visit, not that anyone would reveal any plans if he did.  It’s also highly likely that France’s Emanuel Macron is a bit too busy to hit the Ukraine trail.  After a too close for comfort first election round where he’s ahead by just under 5 points, he now faces a runoff against the very right wing, xenophobic Marine Le Pen.  By the way, Pen is still paying off loans for a previous election from one of her benefactors, someone name Vladimir Putin.  The France run off will take place on April 24. CPAC (Conservative PAC) is scheduled to hold it’s May conference in Hungary, and when they get there, no doubt with Tucker Carlson by their side, they’ll find that another right wing hero, Viktor Orban is still in power; he comfortably won reelection last week, another sign that right wing autocrats have a future in Europe despite what’s happening in Ukraine.  On the other side of the chessboard, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, previously known for his cricket playing skills, was voted out of office this weekend, something to do with mismanagement of foreign policy and the economy. The anti-American Khan of course blames the US for his loss because why not.

Family Affair:  Speaking of elections, it turns out that the Former Guy’s elder son, Junior was, as expected, all in on overturning the results of the last presidential election, even before the votes were fully counted and the election was called. Junior texted then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on November 5, to tell him that "we have operational control" to ensure that the FG gets a second term because we have Republican majorities in the US Senate and swing state legislatures. He laid out ideas for keeping his father in power by subverting the Electoral College process:  "It's very simple," Junior texted to Meadows, "We have multiple paths We control them all." Junior’s attorney Alan Futerfas, doesn’t deny that Junior sent the incriminating text, rather he says that Junior may have just been forwarding something someone else had sent him, which is probably true given that no one believes that Junior has the brain power to have come up with any such strategy on his own.  Still the text is telling because it confirms what we already know, that the Former Guy and his kraken advisors knew that he had lost the election but were doing their best to reverse the election results.  Reports are that the January 6th committee has proof that the Former Guy committed criminal acts not that we should expect him to face any consequences.  Anyway, he’s been busy, fresh off endorsing Sarah Palin’s run for the House, the FG has now endorsed Mehmet Oz.  That endorsement is a major disappointment for Dina Powell, his one-time deputy National Security advisor/friend of Javanka who has made several trips to Mar a Lago in an attempt to secure an endorsement for her current husband former CEO of the Bridgewater hedge fund David McCormick who is also running to be Pennsylvania’s Republican candidate for the Senate. During one of her visits, she is said to have slammed Oz for being a Muslim, a low blow and unnecessary as there are lots of things wrong with Oz, but his religion should not be the issue. To the extent the polls are to believed, Oz and McCormick are neck and neck so the FG endorsement could push Oz over the top, at least over the Republican top.  It’s not clear that he’d do as well against the Democrat’s candidate, quite possibly current Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who is leading the other Democratic candidates in an increasingly divisive party race.  Turning back to relative grift, despite their earlier misgivings and the advice of their experts not to toss funds Jared Kushner’s way, something about his total lack of investment skills,  Saudi Arabia’s wealth fund has committed $2 billion to Jared Kushner’s investment start-up.  Turns out that supporting bone choppers has its benefits.  Meantime back in the real world, Hunter Biden is still being investigated for his questionable business contacts and decisions and for profiting off of his name.   

Viral Musings:  More politicians in Washington and NYC and probably everywhere else are turning up COVID positive, especially those who attended the Grid Iron super spreader dinner.  In NYC it’s Mayor Adams who turned up positive, hardly a surprise given how he’s been out and about a lot.  As a NY resident he immediately qualified and started taking some of those anti-viral drugs available free to all New York City residents with a doctor’s prescription.  Keep that in mind if you are a vulnerable New Yorker with a positive test result.  President Biden continues to test negative despite the number of people in his orbit who’ve turned up with positive test results.  Perhaps in recognition of that the White House Communications office admitted it may be just a matter of time before he or the VP turn up positive. Clearly, we’ve moved into the COVID normalization part of the pandemic.

Bye-Bye Roe:  A woman in Texas was arrested late last week after she was reported by a local hospital for seeking medical attention for complications from a self-induced abortion.  After a huge public outcry and lots of press attention the local prosecutor dropped the charges against her, saying that the anti-abortion Texas bounty law doesn’t have a provision for charging women in her position. How likely is it that someone in Texas or one of the other restrictive abortion law copycat states is busy amending that law to make sure that next time around the charges will stick?  Be afraid, very afraid.   

Justice Jackson!  🌻🌻🌻

Making History: Yesterday Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination to serve on the Supreme Court was officially confirmed.  She’ll join the court in June after Justice Stephen Breyer officially retires. There were no surprises during the final vote, the expected 53 Senators, all the Democrats plus Republican Senators Collins, Murkowski and Romney, voted for her with the remaining 47, all Republicans, voting no.  One of those Republicans, Rand Paul, slow walked his vote, showing up thirty minutes late in what his understandably aggrieved Kentucky neighbor would likely describe as a characteristically typical and intentional act to aggravate. He like the increasingly churlish Lindsey Graham conveniently “forgot” their ties which meant that they couldn’t vote on the Senate floor and instead had to cast their votes from the Senate cloakroom, another sign of their disdain for the first African American woman to join the Court.  Keeping with that theme, all of the Republicans except Romney quickly existed the Senate floor after the vote was finalized while the Senators and staff who remained stood to deliver a standing ovation to mark the momentous day.  Susan Collins at least had a good excuse for leaving quickly, the sniffly Maine Senator scooted out to take a COVID test, it turns out that she like a significant number of other Washington DC politicians including the so far asymptomatic Speaker Nancy Pelosi, AG Merrick Garland, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo,  DC Mayor Muriel Bowser, Congressmen Adam Schiff and Joachim Castro, VP Harris’ communication director Jamal Simmons and President Biden’s sister/advisor Valerie Biden Owens are all COVID positive. COVID is not gone, in fact it appears that the highly contagious BA 2 variant is doing its thing, spreading like wild fire. Most if not all of the infected Washington politicos should be fine as they are vaccinated and boosted but for those who aren’t?   

Culture Wars:  Unfortunately soon to be Justice Jackson’s ascension to the Supreme Court won’t change the court’s balance.  Given the conservative tilt of the Court, the right’s ongoing assault on reproductive rights is likely to culminate in the overturning of Roe v Wade in a few months when the Court will likely overturn the Roe precedent by letting stand a Mississippi abortion law that restricts abortions after 15 weeks.  That expectation has emboldened other states to go further, we’ve already seen the impact of the Texas bounty law that incentivizes abortion opponents to turn in anyone who helps a woman obtain an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy.  A number of women impacted by the Texas law, which the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has refused to stay, have been traveling to neighboring Oklahoma for abortions but that option is about to go away as the Oklahoma legislature just passed legislation that would make performing ANY abortion except to save the life of a woman in a medical emergency a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $100,000.  Oklahoma’s Governor says he will sign that legislation which is due to go into effect in August.  And it’s not just abortion, the right is also going after LGBTQ rights with a vengeance, convincing its base that the left is trying to “groom” their kids into “turning” gay or changing sexes. That’s the message that the scarily popular white supremacist rally attending Margie Q was advancing when she called Senators Murkowski, Collins and Romney pro-pedophile for voting for Ketanji Jackson.  A hypocritical message from a party that continues to back Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz and that is now pushing to get rid of laws that prevent tween girls from getting married. It’s no coincidence that Republicans in Margie Q’s home state’s legislature are now advancing one of those “don’t say gay” bills. It’s hard to ignore that the right is on a tear, it’s not a stretch to believe that it’s only a matter of time before they go after the rest of us for our “sins,” real or imagined.  And sadly their culture war appears to resonate with voters who miss the bigger picture, while instead believing that “woke’ teachers really are spending their days trying to “turn” their girls into boys and visa versa. I am not sure what Furries are but the same culture warriors are afraid of them taking over too. Something to do with their litter boxes, maybe?

Ukraine:  Yesterday the United Nations suspended Russia from the UN Human Rights Council, the body that generally spends most of its time condemning Israel. Ironically, most of the countries who voted against Russia’s suspension almost always vote to condemn Israel for almost anything, real or imagined.  Pardon me if I am venting, but two more Israelis were murdered in a terrorist shooting yesterday in Tel Aviv while fifteen were injured, that’s two on top of the 11 killed in terrorist attacks there since late March. I must have missed the UN condemnations.  Getting back to Russia, Vlad’s kingdom was suspended for its horrific behavior in Ukraine, not that the suspension has had much of an effect on the vile one or his willing military accomplices. This morning, Russia bombed a train station in eastern Ukraine, killing dozens of Ukrainian civilians who were attempting to flee the area in anticipation of further Russian attacks, rapes and bullets to their heads.  Russia may be retreating and Ukraine may be “winning” but if this is victory it still sucks.

And: In a recent interview with the Washington Post, the Former Guy continued to spread election lies, blamed Speaker Pelosi for the January 6th violence at the Capitol and said that if he had it to do all over again he would have marched with the insurgents, likely a lie too because when was the last time he walked more than ten yards?  In an Axios interview Mitch McConnell tried to explain to Jonathan Swan how he could call the Former Guy out for abetting the January 6^th insurrection while also saying that he would support him if he was the nominee of his party in 2024.  As if we don’t know why.  It’s also reported that the Justice Department is now investigating how those 15 boxes of government files, some of which contained highly confidential, top secret government papers, made there way to Mar a Lago.  On the NY front state Attorney General Tish James has asked a judge to hold the Former Guy in contempt and to start fining him $10,000 per day for failing to turn over documents that she subpoenaed and Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who has come under fire for not going forward with his investigation into the FG insists that he still is.  All of that is nice but so far all of it amounts to a hill of beans. One more thing, a strange story about some maybe Pakistani men pretending to be DHS agents while providing US Secret Service agents, including one protecting FLOTUS Jill Biden, with free apartments and rifles bounced off the very full news cycle yesterday.  Rachel Maddow is back next week, we may have to wait for her to reappear to get the details.  

 

Bucha, Bucha, Bucha

🌻🌻🌻: Bucha is located near the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, something most of us didn’t know until this week.  Now we know and tragically, the town will forever be associated with the shocking pictures of its dead residents, tortured and bound by Russian troops before being shot to death.  Those pictures are so horrific that many media outlets have chosen to intentionally blur them to avoid stressing out viewers, a disservice to all and an insult to those who died as their brutal murders should stress us out, serving as a warning that those things that should fall into the “never again” category keep happening again and again. Of course, after President Zelenskyy gave another one of his moving speeches, again to the United Nations, Russia’s representative responded disingenuously claiming that the scenes out of Bucha were staged, “criminal provocations by Ukrainian soldiers and radicals,” those imaginary Nazi hordes that the Russians went to Ukraine to fight. Only the criminal part of his statement was right. It’s not just the Russians, a number, mostly on the American right have also been pushing the crisis actor theme, with a few on Twitter alleging that the bodies had to be fake citing their “neat” spacing on satellite pictures.  Utter nonsense of course, but then a lot of the same people remain under the influence of the last president, the one who not so long ago referred to Putin as a genius for invading Ukraine in the first place.

The Supremes: Also utter nonsense was Senator Tom Cotton’s assertion yesterday that Judge Ketanji Jackson who is expected to be confirmed to the Supreme Court within days would have defended Nazi warm criminals if only she had been given the chance.  Yes, Senator Cotton went there but we shouldn’t be surprised as many of his colleagues have spent the past few weeks branding Jackson as a pedophile. Keeping with that theme, Q queen Margie three names slammed Senators Lisa Murkowski, Mitt Romney and Susan Collins as “pro-pedophile” after the three Republicans announced that they would be supporting Jackson’s nomination. That Collins who dismissed Margie Q’s statement as “ludicrous and typical” supported Jackson wasn’t surprising, she tends to give presidents a lot of leeway on their court nominations and since she was recently reelected she faces no pushback at home unlike Murkowski who is up for reelection this year in a pro-former guy state.  While Murkowski’s decision to support Jackson wasn’t surprising, it’s was a harder one for her to make as the Former Guy is actively supporting her primary opponent as retribution for her impeachment vote. Romney’s is somewhat surprising because he didn’t support Judge Jackson during her earlier confirmation, but good for him for deciding to come down on the right side of history again. It’s not clear why so many Republican senators believe that they have to double down on their vote against Jackson by also attacking her character on made up culture issues but it’s the path they’ve chosen.  After all, did you have Republicans attacking Disney and telling voters to not take their kids to the “happiest place on earth” on your 2022 Bingo card?

Politics Unusual:  Lisa Murkowski isn’t the only politician being targeted by the Former Guy.  He’s doing his best to unseat as many of those “traitors” who voted against him.  One of those politicians,  Michigan Congressman Fred Upton announced yesterday that he’s throwing in the towel and will not be running for reelection.  Upton was respected on both sides of the aisle and sadly his departure leaves another opening for another loony candidate to slip in, someone along the lines of Sarah Palin, who announced that she’s running for the seat vacated by the death of Alaska’s sole Congressman Don Young.  Of course, the Former Guy immediately endorsed her and between his endorsement and her name recognition she stands a good chance of winning in the very crowded special election.  Worth remembering that after Palin won reelection as Governor she stepped down because she wasn’t all that interested in doing the job. No one, except maybe Sarah, thinks that being a member of Congress is more exciting than running a state.  Or then again, maybe she’s just into it because she wants to see if she can get more attention than Margie Q and anyway her plans to become a media star have fizzled.  Speaking of things that have fizzled, Truth Social, the Former Guy’s wannabee Twitter company appears to be circling the drain.  The social platform is still not very functional and has lost its internal counsel and two of its senior technology professionals, not that they were all that competent at their jobs.  Even the Former Guy hasn’t been posting on Truth Social, a problem for the company’s investors but maybe not a problem for him because with Elon Musk now having bought his way onto Twitter’s board it may be just a matter of time before the FG is allowed back onto Twitter. That would be just in time for the midterms and only two years before what may be his next presidential run.  By the way FG Junior has posted on Truth Social but daughter Ivanka has not but, maybe she was too busy preparing for her testimony before the January 6^th committee.  She testified, without being subpoenaed to do so, for eight hours yesterday and though we don’t know what she said, reports are that she did not take the Fifth.

Viral Musings:  Wastewater doesn’t lie and it’s telling us what we kind of already know, that the BA 2 variant is all over the Northeast and just as what happens in Europe eventually happens here, what happens in the Northeast moves to the heartland. NYS positivity has moved up to 3.43%, far from historical highs but still moving in the wrong direction especially when you consider that official positivity rates mean less these days as more people find out that they’re positive through unreported home tests than ever before  Also, state hospitalizations which had been trending downward inched up a bit yesterday, though its too early to know if that’s a trend or a one day blip. If you are eligible, consider following President Biden and VP Harris’ example by getting boosted again now unless you had a very recent case of omicron. According to CDC Director Walensky  "If you've had omicron disease in the last two or three months, that really did boost your immune system quite well,” and you can “wait another two to four months” before getting a second booster. As to that booster, speaking from personal experience, if you had a reaction last time, you shouldn’t be surprised if you have one again with the 4^th shot.  Not fun.  As to the next shot, the one we will all probably be advised to get in the fall, FDA advisors have started to discuss what formulation will be best, a new one or more of the same.        

       

The Mouse That Roared

Ukraine 🌻🌻🌻:  The Ukraine war that Putin insists is “only” a special military operation to rout out imaginary Nazis continues.  The current view is that Putin is living in some kind of groupthink bubble, that those around him are telling him what he wants to hear and that he doesn’t know what’s really happening on the ground.  That may or may not be true and it’s correct that his “military operation” is not going according to plan but as our Viet Nam, Afghanistan and Iraq experiences have proven, an unsuccessful war with disconnected leaders is still a war and his continues to destroy lives and infrastructure.  It’s probably premature to count Russia out or to assume that Vlad is totally clueless to what’s going on given that someone in Russian leadership has “convinced” Syria’s Bashar Assad to send in some of his hardened fighters.  One thing of note is that the Russian’s have given the ultimate hot potato, the Chernobyl nuclear site, back to Ukraine.  Apparently having inexperienced troops dig trenches in radioactive waste laden mud wasn’t such a good idea, especially for those doing the digging assuming of course that irradiating your own wasn’t in the Putin playbook.

Laptop Update:  Back at home, the investigations continue, not just into all things Former Guy but also into Hunter Biden and his infamous laptop.  On the Hunter front, it’s not clear that his business endeavors were illegal, he’s hardly the first son to monetize his name, but they were definitely slimy and he definitely suffers from a lot of personal demons. What’s particularly odd right now is that while so much of what Attorney General Garland is or is not doing with regard to the investigation of the January 6^th insurrection remains opaque, we’re getting so many details about the investigation into Hunter, not just from the right but from the Washington Post and the NY Times. It’s hard not to believe that the Hunter dump is coming from sources associated with David Weiss, the FG appointed US Attorney for Delaware who President Biden left in place so that no one could accuse him of trying to quash the investigation into his son. Anyway, the troubled Hunter is far from an angel but it doesn’t appear that anything he did involved his father.  Still that’s not going to stop the slime from getting tossed around, we’ve already seen the Former Guy publicly request help from Vile Vlad, help that has Russian media appears to be more than willing to provide to their “partner,” truth be dammed.  As to family ties, son in law Jared, who is a lot smoother than Hunter, but who has clearly monetized his family ties testified in front of the January 6th Committee yesterday for about six hours.  His testimony was characterized as “valuable” whatever that means.  Getting back to Merrick Garland, the quiet AG does appear to be widening the January 6th investigation, now looking into the efforts to obstruct the Electoral College certification and the push by some FG allies to promote slates of fake electors.  His prosecutors are also asking about the planning for those “nice tourist” rallies that preceded the assault on the Capitol, the ones that culminated in the storming of the Capitol.  Maybe they should call Ginni Thomas, she seems to know a lot of people or at the very least has an impressive rolodex?

Viral Musings:  The US 7 day average of new cases is about 30,000 with daily deaths “down” to 690.  Count CIA Director William Burns among the newly infected.  Somehow or other, he is another person that is not considered a close Biden contact.  For his part Biden got his second booster, a good thing given how out and about he’s been these days and how many of his people have turned up positive.  By the way one of those infected people, Press Secretary Jen Psaki has still not returned to the podium.  Though it’s not done yet, it looks like a deal is close on more coronavirus funding. Senator Mitt Romney, who still hasn’t revealed how he’ll be voting on Judge Jackson’s confirmation, is leading the Republican negotiating team.  As to Judge Jackson, no surprise that the incredibly hypocritical Lindsey Graham who voted for her previous confirmations will be a “no.” Also, not surprising that no Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting for her, forcing the committee’s Democrats to go through an extra step to get her vote to the Senate floor. 

Other News:  Florida Governor DeSantis is fighting with Disney, threatening to take away the company’s 55 year old special Orlando area self-governing status because Minnie and Mickey came out, albeit too late to matter, against his “don’t say gay” law.  In other news US District Court Judge Mark Walker has struck down Florida’s restrictive newest election law, saying that “Florida has a grotesque history of racial discrimination.” He ruled that the state can’t make any major changes to election regulations for the next 10 years unless a judge clears them first.  Of course, Florida is appealing.  In New York, an upstate Republican judge threw out the state’s newest voting map yesterday, the one that results in more Democratic leaning districts than the state had before it lost a House seat as a result of the census, but that ruling is not expected to stand.