Never Say Orgy

Primary Colors: As of this morning Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate remains a too close to call toss-up between the Former Guy endorsed/TV doctor/New Jersey resident Mehmet Oz and the Connecticut resident/hedge fund investor David McCormick, the rich guy with a cadre of the FG’s former aides on his campaign payroll.  Though she may never concede as she didn’t concede her loss to Democratic Congresswoman Dean in 2020, right wing commentator Kathy Barnette who had been surging in the polls in the run up to primary day is out of the running. Assuming she sticks by a statement she made earlier in the week she will not be endorsing either Oz or McCormick because she “has no intention of supporting globalists.” On the Democratic side, Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who voted via special absentee ballot from his hospital room before having a pacemaker with a defibrillator implanted easily won the Democratic primary over the more moderate Congressman Conor Lamb. Fetterman’s wife Gisele, a fixture on the campaign trail, delivered his thank you speech. Should former cardiac surgeon Dr Oz eke out a victory, his debates with Fetterman could prove interesting, in any case it’s fair to assume that the Republicans will try to make Fetterman’s health as well as his sartorial choices an issue. Pennsylvania’s Democratic Attorney General Josh Shapiro who like Fetterman was off the campaign trail yesterday nursing “minor” COVID symptoms, will face off in November against Republican Doug Mastriano, who easily won the Republican gubernatorial primary. Mastriano who received a late endorsement by the FG remains one of the most ardent pushers of the 2020 election lie and has promised that if he wins in November his secretary of state will revamp the state’s election procedures, code for he’ll do what he can to insure that only Republicans, especially Republican presidential candidates, win in Pennsylvania going forward.  If that’s sounds ominous, it’s because it is. At least for now, the relatively popular Shapiro is more likely to win in November and the hope is that Fetterman will benefit from his coattails but Pennsylvania being so swingy anything can happen. In other election news, North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn who had gotten a last minute endorsement from the FG lost his primary, evidence that when Republican leadership wants to kill off one of their own, especially one who accuses them of participating in drug fueled orgies, they can. The FG endorsed Republican Ted Budd, another election denier, won North Carolina’s Senate primary and will face Democrat/Former Chief Justice Cheri Beasley in the general election. Further proving that the FG’s endorsements while helpful don’t necessarily make victory a sure thing, Idaho’s Republican Governor Brad Little won his primary over his challenger, the FG endorsed Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, another election lie proponent who is best known outside of Idaho for imposing a ban on mask mandates when Little was traveling out of state.  For the record, Little had never imposed a statewide mask mandate, McGeachin had just been engaging in right wing theatrics.  To no one’s surprise Kentucky Senator Rand Paul easily won his primary apparently because Kentucky has a fondness for really awful Senators. He will face Democratic challenger Charles Booker in November.  One more thing, it’s hard to figure out what exactly is going on in New York State but it looks like the state’s redistricting plans which were supposed to bolster Democratic representation have really gone off the rails so much so that two of the House’s most senior Democratic members, Carolyn Maloney and Jerry Nadler, will be facing off for the same redrawn district while the unemployed former Mayor Bill De Blasio is once again teasing that he’ll be running in another one.    

Legalities: Late yesterday the NY Times reported that the Department of Justice has requested that the House January 6^th committee provide it with transcripts of some, or maybe all, of the interviews that it has conducted as part of its own investigation into all things related to the January 6^th insurrection.  While that’s good news and could mean that the DOJ has moved beyond going after individual insurrectionists and is actually investigating coup planners further up the food chain, the request is a month old and so far the January 6^th committee has not shared any of those transcripts, perhaps over concerns that the DOJ might decide to prevent them from including some of what they plan to share with all of us during the upcoming public hearings which are scheduled to take place in June. In other legal news, the  DOJ has updated its earlier indictment of the FG’s billionaire friend Thomas Barrack with an expanded one that provides additional information about how he “allegedly” exploited his proximity to the FG to make secret deals with the United Arab Emirates.  And remember John Durham, the special prosecutor that former Attorney General Bill Barr appointed to “prove” that the predication for the investigation into the possibility that the FG and his cronies were playing footsie with the Russians was a Hillary Clinton hit job, his case against cybersecurity lawyer Michael Sussmann is now being tried in a Washington DC court. Durham alleges that Sussmann lied to the FBI in 2016 when he brought them his suspicions about possible cyber connections between the FG’s servers and the Kremlin linked Alfa Bank. To be clear the case is about whether or not Sussmann lied.  Sussmann denies that he did and though the FG, Fox and the right insist otherwise, the FBI did not base it’s decision to investigate the FG on those odd Alfa bank communications.  Next up Hunter’s laptop?

Viral Musings:  New York City has raised its COVID alert to high and is urging, but not mandating, indoor masking.  There were more than 130,000 new US COVID cases reported yesterday.  Hospitalizations are rising too but not as fast, at least not so far, something that new COVID coordinate Dr Ashish Jha attributes to widespread, well widespread in most but not all places, vaccination levels and the availability of anti-viral medicines such as Paxlovid.  As to Paxlovid, while the five day regimen generally works, there are more reports of people experiencing rebounds a week or so after they finish taking their pills.  Those reports are anecdotal but count vaccine expert Dr Peter Hotez who is still a believer in Paxlovid’s benefits, as one of those relapse anecdotes. Last night he tweeted that he’s once again experiencing symptoms albeit minor ones.  The government is again providing free COVID tests to anyone who wants them (https://www.covid.gov/tests) and yesterday the FDA approved boosters for the 5 to 11 year old set.

🌻🌻🌻 Sweden and Finland have formally applied for NATO membership though at least for now Turkey appears to be against their membership, opposition that probably won’t carry the day.  Vlad, who according to unreliable news sources like the NY Post had some kind of abdominal surgery a few days ago, can’t be happy about the Finns and Swedes ignoring his threats. One of his justifications for going to war against Ukraine was to prevent it from joining NATO.  His other reason had to do with all those alleged Ukrainian neo-Nazis which is sadly ironic given our problems with white supremacists, you know those advocates of the replacement theory like the Buffalo shooter and Tucker Carlson.  As to our white supremacist problem, President Biden called the problem out while he delivered another one of his touching memorial speeches in Buffalo, but Tucker and most of the Republican hierarchy assure us that we’re all getting upset about nothing. The problem isn’t white supremacists with guns but rather it’s a combination of hysterical liberals. video gaming and mental illness.  Worth noting, there’s lots of video gaming in Japan but few guns, so few gun murders and sadly though there’s mental illness everywhere, places without wide spread gun ownership don’t experience frequent mass shootings.