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.