Mandalorian? 

Mixed Messaging:  President Biden held his own during this weekend’s scarily crowded White House Correspondents Dinner where full vaccination and negative COVID tests were required for admission, something Biden noted while pointing to the fully vaccinated Fox Network hosts in attendance.  He also called the Former Guy’s four years in office a plague, and that was before he even mentioned the coronavirus pandemic.  He laughed at all of Trevor Noah’s jokes, even the ones that poked fun at him, not a bad performance for a guy who right wing pundits continue to insist is curled up in the WH basement suffering from advanced dementia.  As to dementia, the Former Guy’s mental condition was on full display this weekend too.  At a rally for Charles Herbster, who despite or maybe because he has been accused of sexually assaulting several women, is the Republican party’s leading candidate to become Nebraska’s next US Senator, the FG again riffed about the “person, woman, man, camera TV” cognitive test he passed with scores higher than anyone before him ever had. He then went on to list all the other candidates he’s endorsed for the Senate, getting his Pennsylvania endorsement of the quacky Dr Oz right but hitting a bigly memory hole when he got to Ohio where he conflated his preferred candidate, hillbilly guy JD Vance’s name with that of sycophantic perennial candidate, Josh Mandel creating a new guy named JD Mandel. And Twitter being Twitter, at least until the Elon Must takeover goes through, it turns out that there really is a JD Mandel who immediately responded by announcing his candidacy, encouraging all to submit write-in votes for him while thanking the FG for his valuable endorsement. As to Fox, we’ve known for a long time that it is Team FG, but now we’ve got the receipts in the form of 82 texts between Sean Hannity and former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.  Those texts show Hannity both giving advice and asking for directions as to what he should be doing to snatch the FG’s victory from those jaws of defeat. Hannity stands by his communication, his excuse: he’s not a hard news journalist, just an opinion guy who gets to say and do what he wants. Whatever you think of that excuse, it doesn’t work for Maria Bartiromo.  The Fox Business host, is supposed to adhere to some standards as she is on the “news” side of the network. However, no surprise that the Meadows text trove reveal that the one time Money Honey provided Meadows with the questions she planned to and did ask the FG during the “hard hitting” post-election interview she conducted with him on November 29, 2021.  Worth noting, news side or not, Bartiromo has been one of the biggest boosters of the election fraud myth.

🌻🌻🌻 Count Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov as another one who is into the promotion of nefarious myths.  Over the weekend this decade’s winner of the Bagdad Bob award once again called Ukraine a hotbed of Naziism saying that just because President Zelenskyy is Jewish doesn’t negate his country’s Nazi elements.  He went on to assert that Hitler also “had Jewish origins…the greatest antisemites are precisely the Jews.”  Israel responded about as one would expect, calling the Russia’s Ambassador to Israel in to deliver an apology, for Lavrov’s “unforgiveable, scandalous statement, a terrible historical mistaken.” Somehow I doubt that apology will be forthcoming.  We’re closing in on May 9, the date that Putin has inked in on his calendar to celebrate Ukraine’s liberation so the next week is likely to be very interesting, at least for those who find war crimes intriguing.  At least Nancy Pelosi and her small Congressional delegation will be long home by then.  The Speaker and her crew managed to pull off a secret trip this weekend as did New York’s Cardinal Dolan, who snuck in with his own traveling squad.  

Viral Musings: Moderna announced that’s its vaccine for children six and under will be available for formal review at the FDA’s June meeting. Pfizer’s will also be on the agenda.  Moderna also expects to have “large amounts” of an Omicron COVID booster ready for fall’s virus season.  Daily US Covid deaths are around 330 right now, way lower than they had been but the number to focus on is hospitalizations.  They are now trending upward because though, as a result of vaccinations, boosters, anti-viral medicine and prior infection, most people will make it through COVID without needing to be hospitalized, with so many turning up COVID positive, math dictates, even in anti-arithmetic Florida, that a significant number will make it into the hospital or worse and once again the group that is getting the sickest includes those above 65, especially those who haven’t gotten their boosters.