Whos' That Girl?  🌻🌻🌻

Girl Interrupted:  Cassidy Hutchinson was a rising star, a New Jersey girl who unlike the many Ivy league lawyers who remain unwilling or too deluded by the FG aura to speak truth to power, attended Christopher Newport University, a public college in Virginia.  Despite her relatively young age, the 26 year old has an impressive resume, assuming that you buy that interning for Senator Ted Cruz and Minority Whip Steve Scalise are good things.  After those stints she went on to serve as staff assistant at the Office of Legislative affairs before being promoted to special assistant and then executive assistant to former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who brought her along to almost all of his meetings, empowering her to serve as his intermediary. For a long time she was another member of the FG cult, but apparently somewhere along the line, possibly around the time that the FG flung a ketchup filled plate against the wall in fury over former Attorney General Bill Barr’s public assertion that the 2020 election had not been fraud ridden, she stopped slugging Jell-O shooters and saw the light.  Yesterday Hutchinson relayed some of the more notable low points of her White House experience.  Among other things, we learned that on January 6 Mark Meadows doom scrolled through his phone, the modern day equivalent of fiddling while Rome burned.  Hutchinson reports that Meadows was frozen, unwilling to do anything to try to convince the increasingly crazed FG to put a halt to the events of insurrection day, even unconcerned that the life of his good buddy Gym Johnson might be in jeopardy.  Among the disturbing snippets that she relayed was that the FG, upset that his crowd wasn’t sufficiently large, wanted the protective “mags” (magnetometers) removed so that his supporters, some of whom were carrying AR 15s and an array of other dangerous weapons, could join in on the day’s “festivities” because after all he had nothing to fear from those armed goons given that their targets were his enemies including the likes of VP Pence, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer rather than him. She also testified that the FG was so furious that the Secret Service wouldn’t allow him to accompany the increasingly dangerous crowd from his speech at the Ellipse to the Capitol that she was told that he tried to physically accost the agent driving his SUV chariot to get him to follow his expletive ridden demands. After her Committee appearance the press reported that “unnamed sources” at the Secret Service acknowledged that the FG was desperate to get to the Capitol but disputed her claim about him grabbing one by the clavicle. A few things about that denial are notable: first the official spokesperson for the Service says that the Service is cooperating with investigators and second, the agents in question, Tony Ornato and Robert Engel, are known to be FG loyalists who supported his big lie. In fact at one point Ornato actually moved from the Service to become a member of the  White House staff, rejoining the Service only after the FG’s loss became undeniable.  Moreover Alyssa Farah, the CNN correspondent who worked in Communications for the FG White House, says she believes Hutchinson’s account in part because Ornato “disputed” parts of her Committee testimony that painted the FG in a bad light as well.  Reportedly Ornato and Engel now say that they want to present their version of the “truth” under oath but then again just a week or so ago Ginni Thomas, who once said the same sent a lawyer’s letter to the Committee asserting that on further reflection she sees no reason to cooperate with the Committee so who’s to say if the questionably loyal Agents will really show and tell.  In any case the details regarding the ride represent only a small portion of what Hutchinson had to say and other than the FG going with his usual “he hardly knew her” and that from what he did know she was “bad news,” just some of the frantic “Truths,” he sent out yesterday, most who worked with Hutchinson find her highly credible. A few other things about yesterday’s hearing, former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who was frequently cited for his efforts to shut the FG down, looks increasingly weak for not testifying himself especially given Hutchinson’s bravery.  And the biggest bombshell of the day was provided by Committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney’s in her closing remarks when she relayed that one or more, with the emphasis on more, of those who’ve cooperated with the Committee report that they were warned to keep quiet with messages from as at least one still unnamed FG loyalist who represented that he or she was acting at “his” direction to tell them that “staying” on Team FG would keep them in good standing with the Mango Maniac but that straying from the cult would have consequences.  The last time Liz dropped a bombshell it was about members of Congress seeking pardons, something that Hutchinson says Meadows did too.  Liz later delivered the pardon details so it’s fair to assume we’ll be hearing more about the FG and his team’s efforts to engage in witness tampering. Tune in in July.

Primarily Politics:  Yesterday was a mixed bag, some of the FG’s endorsed candidates won and others did not.  In New York, where he didn’t endorse anyone Congressman Lee Zeldin won the Republican nod over Rudy spawn Andrew and will face off against Governor Kathy Houchul who together with former Congressman Antonio Delgado easily won the Democratic nominations for Governor and Lieutenant Governor respectively. Delgado’s easy victory is notable because despite progressive darling AOC’s endorsement of her preferred left wing candidate, New York State while mostly blue remains relatively moderate, especially outside of the confines of NYC and Buffalo.   In Colorado MAGA gunslinger Lauren Boebert beat off her competitors and in all likelihood will be back in Congress next term.     

And:  The FDA recommended that the next COVID boosters, hopefully available in the Fall, be formulated to attack one or the other of the Omicron variants.  The question now is which variants will be targeted, whether it will be the older Omicrons or the newest B4 and B5 ones that are now dominating, as well as how long it will take to get the new shot to market.  On the international front, it looks like Putin’s efforts to keep NATO membership at its current size hasn’t worked as planned.  Yesterday hold out NATO member Turkey signed off on Sweden and Finland joining the alliance and so they will.     

 

Pardon the Interruption 🌻🌻🌻

January 6^th Update:  Despite their earlier statement that they were taking a break until July, yesterday afternoon the House Committee announced that it will be holding a surprise hearing today at 1 PM eastern time in order to present “recently obtained evidence and receive witness testimony.”  They didn’t announce the name of the witness so the Twitterverse went bonkers, bandying around an assortment of possibilities including Mark Meadows, Mike Pence, Pat Cipollone and even Melania. As it turned out, none of those suggestions are correct though former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows name was closest. The newly scheduled witness is Cassidy Hutchinson, Mark Meadows’ former top aide, not a household name but one that will be shortly.  Given her proximity to the former Chief of Staff, Cassidy was in the room when and where a lot of things related to the January 6 insurrection happened. Her live appearance will make her the first member of the inner White House staff to appear in person rather than on videotape.  Notably, Hutchinson replaced her FG friendly lawyer with a new one earlier this month. It’s not totally clear why the Committee decided to slip her testimony in during what was supposed to be a break in the action; some possibilities are that they were concerned about her safety, that she was being pressured by FG friendly forces to stop talking and/or that they wanted to get out ahead of her being called to testify in front of the Georgia grand jury investigating the FG’s infamous find me 11,780 more votes call or possibly even another grand jury.  The sudden scheduling of Hutchinson’s testimony wasn’t the only “coup” thing that happened yesterday. Kraken lawyer John Eastman revealed that Federal Agents armed with a search order seized his cell phone out of his grimy hands, forcing him to sneer for its face recognition feature so that they could easily access its contents while he was leaving a New Mexico restaurant last week on the same day that they raided former Justice Department Environmental lawyer/Attorney General wannabee/Coup planner John Clark’s house.  Given Eastman and Clarks recent run ins, It’s not a stretch to assume that Merrick Garland’s DOJ is no longer sitting on its hands.    

The Supremes:  Remember that whole separation of church and state thing that you learned about in civics classes, well forget about it and we’re not just talking about banning abortions now we’re talking prayer during public school related activities.  The right wing religious forces that now control the Supreme Court played Jenga with the bricks on the bottom of that “wall” yesterday, ruling 6-3 that it was okay for a high school football coach to kneel and pray with his team on the field after games, saying that his prayer huddle was protected by the Constitution.  The Court’s right wing majority seemed to intentionally miss that the Coach’s prayers might have a coercive effect on his student athletes, particularly those jockeying for better treatment, afraid that failing to join him would hurt their chances of getting a coveted starting spots and/or making them feel alienated from their teammates.  Of course the prayers in question weren’t Moslem, Wiccan, Jewish or to the Festivus god but were Christian and it’s not a stretch to assume that had they been otherwise the case never would have even made it to the Court.  Anyway, the Court’s not done yet, their still expected to dismantle some environmental protections as well as the whole government regulatory process before they go off to summer camp.

And: Today’s another primary day where will get to see if the FG supported crazies increase their power.  Among those to watch are Illinois Congresswoman Mary Miller who with the FG smiling by her side celebrated the end of Roe by saying it was “the historic victory for white life.” Miller tried to walk back her comment saying she had misspoken but since she once tried to walk back a comment celebrating Hitler’s accomplishments it’s hard to believe that she didn’t mean what she said. As a result of redistricting MAGA Miller is running against her colleague, the more “mainstream” Republican Congressman Rodney Davis.  Also being challenged in her Rifle, Colorado primary is Lauren Boebert, the gun loving restauranteur who seems to have successfully debunked or at the very least pushed aside assertions that she had multiple abortions.  Lastly, though we keep on hearing that the Russians are running out of resources, they seem to be causing a lot of death and destruction with what they still have.  Yesterday, taking a page from Hamas they bombed a busy Ukraine shopping center in Kremenchuk, killing at least 18 civilians with more still missing and even more injured.  In addition, perhaps in a diversionary move, Russian authorities paraded imprisoned basketball player Britney Griner in front of the camera while scheduling a show trial hearing date for her alleged “crime” of possessing vape cartridges with traces of hashish oil.  Sadly for Griner, it’s likely that she’s in for the long haul unless US authorities manage to trade her for a Russian player.    

We're All Handmaidens Now 🌻🌻🌻

The DSA: Welcome to the Divided States of America, or Gilead, pick your poison.  Unless you spent the weekend hiding under a rock, you know that by a 6 to 3 vote in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization the Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade, plunging the country back into that swell and nifty time fifty years ago when women, regardless of their age or the circumstances of their pregnancy, who weren’t lucky enough to be living in or have the means to travel to certain states or out of the country were forced to go to term with unwanted and/or unsafe pregnancies.  Bottom line: hangers are back in vogue and in far too many places women’s lives and futures are now jeopardy.  The Court’s decision, written by Justice Alito contained just about all of the horrible text previewed in the leaked draft released a few weeks ago. His science was outdated and wrong, his citations reached back to the days when witches were publicly burned and, significantly, he rejected that idea that the writers of the US Constitution, those white male slave owners, ever intended to grant us a right to privacy.  As to privacy, while Alito wants us to believe that the majority opinion only eliminates abortion rights, in a concurring opinion Justice Clarence/Ginni Thomas wrote that in “future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell,” and by that he means contraception, same sex sexual activity and marriage. Notably the Thomas duo have no interest in applying their reactionary views to Loving v Virginia, the case that legalized interracial marriage because that would infringe upon them and they wouldn’t want that.  That said they don’t seem to care that Dobbs will likely impact the poor and disenfranchised, many of them women of color who lack the funds to travel to the welcoming arms of Canada, France or even Mexico, the most. Chief Justice Roberts who voted with the majority would have preferred to thread the needle, upholding Mississippi’s 15 week abortion ban while leaving the rest of Roe v Wade, and the somewhat more restrictive Casey v Planned Parenthood in place but he no longer controls the court so his views are no longer worth much, except of course that it’s his opinion in Shelby v Holder, the ruling that dismantled voting rights that helped turn the country into a hellscape governed by a minority’s fundamentalists views.  Not that he is solely responsible, every single person who couldn’t find it within themselves to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or who went for Ralph Nader over Al Gore in 2000 shares some responsibility too because votes matter and staying home or voting for a third party presidential candidate in a fit of pique has consequences.

The State of Play: As to those consequences, abortion is now illegal or heavily restricted in at least 11 states and likely to be so in at least 11 more with restrictive laws that though not yet in effect probably will be shortly.  Also worth noting that in a few more states abortion rights dangle by a thread, held in place only through the efforts of Democratic governors fending off Republican legislatures. A few incongruities worth noting, though very red, for now, abortion remains legal in Montana because the state’s constitution guarantees a right to privacy, and a few Republican Governors including Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker, New Hampshire’s Chris Sununu, Maryland’s Larry Hogan and Vermont’s Phil Scott regardless of their personal views have stated that they have no plans to seek to outlaw abortion.  Then again there’s Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the mendacious former FG Press Secretary, who is expected to become the next Governor of Arkansas, she actually said that due to the marvelous Dobbs decision kids in the womb will be as safe as they are in schools and of course she didn’t get the irony.  And don’t get me started on Senator Susan Collins, who insists that she’s very distressed because she only voted for Justice “I Love Beer” Kavanaugh because he assured her that he would never override precedent.  Who is she kidding, she voted for him because Mitch McConnell sent boatloads of campaign funding and lord knows what else her way. As to Mitch, he stated what we all fear, that next on his agenda is a national ban on abortion, a view shared by former VP Pence, of course.

Vote, Vote, Vote: There may be a few things that President Biden can do on the fringes, like ensure that women in the military retain their reproductive rights, keep abortifacient drugs available, and maybe even support Native American’s interested in opening their lands to abortion providers but despite all those calls out there for enlarging the court, eliminating the filibuster to pass reproductive rights legislation, or even impeaching one or more of the newbie Justices who lied during their confirmation hearings, the most enduring and realistic solution to this current quagmire is to vote, vote and vote.  Tomorrow primaries will be held in New York, Oklahoma, Colorado and Illinois.  In New York most of the attention will be on the gubernatorial race.  Given the state’s screwed up redistricting process, House primaries won’t take place until late August.  On the Democratic side pro-choice Governor Hochuli, who stepped up to the plate after Andrew Cuomo was forced out, is expected to win her primary.  On the Republican side, the FG supporting Long Island Congressman Lee Zeldin, who is the state party’s preferred candidate, is likely to win though as odd as it sounds Andrew Giuliani, Rudy’s son, whose most notable experience is that he was the FG’s paid golfing buddy, is actually in second place. With the exception of one outlier, investor Harry Wilson, all of the Republicans running are anti-abortion and mostly if not totally believe that the FG won the last election.  The FG who spent his weekend bragging about how he engineered the overturning of Roe with his SCOTUS picks, while privately ruminating that the Dobbs decision could doom the Republican party’s chances to retake the White House, hasn’t endorsed anyone because though Zeldin is Team FG all the way, the FG probably needs to maintain Rudy’s loyalty.  As to the FG’s need to keep his people quiet, his plans don’t seem to be working, not that any of that seems to matter when it comes to him and his Teflon shield.  There will be more January 6^th Committee hearings in July, including some with information that is just now coming to light. 

And: With the help of 14 Republicans who bucked House party leadership, gun reform legislation passed through the House last week by a vote of 234 to 193 and was signed in to law by President Biden over the weekend.  The Republicans voting yes were a mix of those leaving office, voting their consciences or just fed up with the killing.  They included: Michigan’ s Fred Upton and Peter Meijer; Ohio’s Steve Chabot,  Anthony Gonzalez, Mike Turner and David Joyce; Wyoming’s Liz Cheney; New York’s Chris Jacobs and John Katko; Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick; Illinois’ Adam Kinzinger; Uvalde Texas’ Tony Gonzales; Florida’s Maria Elvira Salazar; and South Carolina’s Tom Rice.  By the way though it was nice to see Liz aboard this train she kind of ruined it by announcing how happy she was about the Dobbs decision.  As to SCOTUS, they’re not done, this week they are expected to send pollution control back to the dark ages.

Vote like your and your children’s lives depend on it because they do.

 

 

Coup Coup Train 🌻🌻🌻

January 6 Hearings:  Yesterday was all about the Former Guy’s efforts to get the Department of Justice on board his coup coup train. In his words, the FG just needed Jeffrey Rosen, the acting Attorney General who had stepped into Bill Barr’s position on his departure and one of yesterday’s in person testifiers to “issue a statement calling the election results into question,” and "leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen,” a direct quote provided by Rosen’s second, then acting deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, another one of yesterday’s testifiers, who took contemporaneous notes during the meetings where the FG tried to cajole and threaten them into cooperating with his plan.  Unfortunately for the FG, though Rosen and the remaining leaders at the DOJ, including Steven Engel, then the Assistant DA for the Office of Legal Counsel, who also testified yesterday, were all Republican appointees they had no interest in getting on the coup train.  They pushed back at his persistent attempts which involved countless calls and weekend meetings to get them to cooperate or step aside and let quisling environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark whose knowledge of election law was non-existent but whose willingness to coup was abundant assume the acting Attorney General so that he could issue that statement calling the validity of the election into question.  The intent of that missive was to smooth the way for bogus swing state electors to make their way into the official count.  The coup was only avoided because Rosen and his team, including just about every other one of the senior attorneys at the DOJ said, or whined in the words of Jared Kushner, that they would quit if the FG put Clark into the top spot pointing out that their mass exit would be a grande problemo for the FG.  By the way, we also saw some tape of former AG Barr, who insists that he had to do go against DOJ policy and investigate the fraud that wasn’t because if he hadn’t the violence on and after January 6^th would have been worse.  That Barr, he has a ready excuse for all his transgressions.  There will be more hearings in early July, the reason for the delay is that the Committee keeps finding more incriminating information to go through.  

The Quisling: As to Jeffrey Clark, who Eric Hershmann, the hold no punches, one time White House lawyer who also had served as one of the FG’s impeachment lawyers told to shut up and hire himself a lawyer because he was going to need one, he really does needs one.  On Wednesday, Federal investigators showed up at his suburban Virginia house with a search warrant, making him stand outside in his pajamas while they used electronic sniffing dogs to help find his cell phones and other devices and still he appeared on Fox last night to complain about that “Stasi like treatment.”  Further, it appears that Clark didn’t write his fraudulent election statement on his own, he had help from kraken lawyer John Eastman’s acolyte, Ken Klukowski, who was planted at the DOJ in December 2020. It was Klukowski who drafted the letter that urged Georgia state officials to take actions that would question the results of the election in the state as well as pressure VP  Pence to overturn the election.  The bottom line, the coup wasn’t a spur of the moment thing, it was planned and put into operation way before the not so spontaneous January 6 insurrection, and significantly the ties between all of the plotting parties are becoming more and more evident.    

Pardon Me:  As Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney told us during the first hearing, a gaggle of House members really did ask for pardons.  Yesterday at the end of the hearing we learned that the “pardon me please” crowd included: Alabama’s Mo Brooks, Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz,  Arizona’s Andy Biggs, Texas’ Louie Gohmert,  Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry and Georgia’s Margie Q.  Gaetz’s request was particularly specific, the alleged sex trafficker curiously, or maybe not so curiously, asked to be pardoned way before insurrection day from “the beginning of time for any and all things.” At the end of the day, as far as we know, none of them got one of those golden tickets, even Perry who introduced Clark to the FG, possibly because granting them pardons would have required each of them to state what they were being pardoned for, and that would have likely implicated the FG.  Also not receiving pardons were some Republican officials in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada and Georgia, who were visited by and/or received DOJ subpoenas this week, something having to do with the faux elector scam that the FG and John Eastman were pushing as part of their coup.  That’s especially notable because it reveals that Merrick Garland’s DOJ actually is on the case.

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Yesterday with 15 Republicans joining all the Democrats/Independents the Senate passed its gun legislation.  The legislation now goes to the House where it will likely pass despite the efforts of GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy who together with his second in command gunshot survivor Steve Scalise, is whipping his crowd to vote it down. Naturally, the FG who for one brief moment back when he was in office expressed a willingness to do something about guns, has also come out against the legislation.  Unfortunately, though the passage of any gun reform, even a package that’s less inclusive than it should have been, is something to celebrate, the gun news yesterday was depressing because in a 6-3 opinion  written by Ginni’s husband Clarence Thomas, the Supreme Court overturned a 100 plus year old New York law that had made it extremely difficult for New Yorkers to get permits to carry guns outside their homes, ruling for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual's right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense because isn’t that what we need in New York and everywhere else, more people running around with “legal” guns?  In a concurring opinion “I Love Beer” Kavanaugh said states can still impose requirements on people seeking licenses to carry firearms including fingerprinting, background checks, mental health checks and firearms training classes so at least there’s that.  In addition, by a similar 6-3 conservative dominated vote SCOTUS ruled that “Miranda” rights” are not really “rights” at all, holding that the Miranda rule is merely a “prophylactic” means to avoiding rights violations. As a result, if the police “forget” to read you your Miranda rights, tough noogies, you can’t sue under the federal civil rights statute so remember to remain silent, not so easy as both Jeff Clark and Peter Navarro have demonstrated, repeatedly, and they’re lawyers.

 

Ginger Mint  🌻🌻🌻

January 6^th:  Those of us paying attention, as in those of us not watching only Fox or its mini me imitators or only reading Rupert Murdoch owned newspapers, have known the general outlines of the FG’s coup attempt for a while but still the details emerging from the televised hearings continue to be astounding in a sick and depressing way.  Yesterday’s hearing featured Arizona’s Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his chief operating officer Gabriel Sterling, former longtime Georgia election worker Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman who had stepped up to be an election worker to fill in for COVID related staff shortages. Raffensperger, Sterling and Bowers all relayed how they honored their oath to the “divinely inspired?” US Constitution by standing up to pressure from the FG, his team of malevolent manipulators and an assortment of Republican politicians, details made more credible by the tape of the FG’s conversation with Raffensperger, the one where the FG repeatedly implores and then insists that Raffensperger find 11,780 votes or else while also maligning Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby as “professional vote stealers and hustlers” while falsely asserting that a ginger mint passed between the two was really a thumb drive chock full of faux Biden votes. The tape of the FG begging for votes never grows old, and Raffensperger who at the end of the day is just another Republican official all in on voter suppression, is to be commended for having the foresight to tape and then share the call. In addition to revealing the FG’s desperation and his willingness to do anything to snatch victory from defeat, Raffensperger’s tape and testimony demonstrate that he really is an election nerd, there wasn’t a vote that he couldn’t account for, no way thousands off zombie voters or cartons of bamboo printed Chinese votes were getting into the official tally on his watch.  The even more uptight divinely inspired Bowers, another life-long Republican who had voted for Trump, relayed how the FG, Rudy Giuliani and kraken lawyer Jenna Ellis who is now working for Doug Mastriano, Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial candidate another January 6 insurrectionist, asked him to convene the Arizona legislature to investigate their unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, to “set in motion a strategy to replace chosen electors” with a more friendly set. Of course, despite his assertions that he had scads of proof to back up the claims of fraud Rudy never produced any.

Home Invasion: In addition to providing some incriminating details about how an array of Republican characters including Arizona Congressman Andy Biggs, Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson and RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel were either in on the scheming or well aware of it, the day’s testimony addressed the personal consequences, none of them good, of being targeted by the leader of the free world.  Most notably, Shaye Moss and her mother Ruby have seen their lives turned upside down, they had to leave their home for weeks and Shaye appears to still be suffering from FG induced PTSD. Though the mother daughter team has suffered the most, they’re not the only ones.  The house of Raffensperger’s widowed daughter-in-law’s was broken into and Bower’s dying daughter’s last days were made even worse by the FG’s fanatical followers.  The FG must be getting a wee bit nervous about the hearings, we know that because he’s now on record criticizing GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, accusing him of abject stupidity for his decision to keep his team of offensive Republicans off the committee, a stupid decision that the FG probably supported back when it was made.  Also reports are the FG has found his preferred patsy, and it’s not daughter Ivanka but Kraken lawyer John Eastman who he hopes to make his designated fall guy. And one more thing, it turns out that there are more tapes, the image obsessed FG was being followed by a British documentary team, selected by son in law Jared, of course,  during the last six weeks of his election campaign through and including insurrection day.  Yesterday, Alex Holder, that documentarian, revealed that he had complied with a subpoena, has provided his tapes to the Committee and will be meeting with them shortly.

Guns and More:  While the hearing dominated yesterday’s news cycle everywhere except on right wing media that is, a number of other notable things happened.  On the same day that we learned that the police response to the Uvalde school shooting was even more incompetent than initially reported, the Senate agreed on gun “safety” legislation.  Though it’s far short of adequate it’s something and it does address the “boyfriend” loophole, even Republican leader Mitch McConnell has signed on. All 50 Democrats are on board as are Republicans Cornyn, Tillis, Collins, Graham,  Cassidy, Blunt, Burr, Romney, Portman, Moore-Capito,  Ernst, Murkowski, and Young.  Murkowski is facing a tough primary battle against an FG endorsed candidate so her participation, ordinarily not surprising, is notable here. On the subject of primaries, Katie Britt, the candidate that the FG endorsed after he un-endorsed Alabama Congressman Mo Brooks won her primary runoff.  He’ll count that in his win column, but she’d been the favorite all along since she was also supported by the Republican establishment including the state’s retiring Senator Shelby and leader Mitch.  In Georgia, two of the FG’s candidates lost runoffs, albeit to candidates who also align with his way of thinking.  In New Mexico, where a group of Republican county officials had initially refused to certify primary results because they didn’t feel like doing so and because votes had been tabulated using Dominion voting machines, the votes were finally certified after a judge ordered the County crazies to do, over the objection of one hold out, an official who is currently facing charges for his participation in the insurrection.. That this was even an issue is likely a harbinger of bad things to come.  That said, the Dominion Voting machine company had a good day yesterday as a Delaware judge ruled that their defamation case against Fox can move forward.    

And:  While we’re still waiting for SCOTUS to eliminate reproductive rights and loosen gun ownership restrictions yesterday they took a chunk out of church and state separation by ruling that Maine can not bar church related schools from a tuition program.

 

Logrolling 🌻🌻🌻

Juneteenth: Yesterday was Juneteenth, the new Federal holiday that celebrates the day in 1865, when Union troops arrived in Galveston Bay, Texas and announced to the more than 250,000 enslaved Black people in the state that they had been freed. It’s being celebrated today because of that rule about not celebrating Federal holidays over the weekend.  Most of us didn’t learn about the significance of the date in primary school because it wasn’t taught back in the day but now we know and it’s more than fair to say that the day that marks the end of the scourge of slavery in the US is well worth celebrating.  Then again given the pushback against teaching anything that might make children and their parents “uncomfortable,” teachers probably aren’t or soon won’t be allowed to explain the holiday’s purpose in a growing number of places. It’s particularly ironic that enslaved Texans were the last to be told that they had been freed because the way things are going in the Lone Star state equality under the law may well be just another one of those quaint ideas whose time has passed.  Over the weekend, in addition to declaring in its platform that President Biden had not been legitimately elected, calling for students to be taught that life begins at conception, and pushing for a vote on succession from the union, the Texas Republican party labeled homosexuality an “abnormal lifestyle choice.”  That last provision, another quaint artifact of the not so distant past, probably shouldn’t have been all that surprising, least of all to the Log Cabin Republicans, the organization representing LGBT conservatives, as they were shut out of the convention. Apparently the Log Cabin set either never heard the text of “First They Came,” the poem, then song, that counts down all the targeted groups from socialists to trade unionists to Jews to just about everyone else unacceptable to the Nazis  and missed the inevitability that they too would be added to the “verboten” list by those obsessed by the Former Guy and everything he stands for.  That’s the Former Guy who spent part of his weekend at the Faith and Freedom Conference calling his former VP, you know the “pussy” “wimp” that he hoped to see dangle from a noose a ”human conveyor belt” for his role in moving the “fraudulent” election process forward. What irony, the FG speaking at a faith conference while the pious wimp had to stay away to avoid him and the religious set who would probably have booed him off the stage.      

Guns, Guns, Guns: As to booing, two other prominent Republicans were also recipients of Bronx cheers this weekend for not being adequately right wing and reactionary.  Texas Congressman Dan Crenshaw and Texas Senator John Cornyn, both got raspberries for supporting some gun restrictions.  Crenshaw, the Afghanistan war veteran who lost an eye in combat was attacked by an angry mob of right wingers including some Proud Boys, or as they call them in Texas, Republicans, who called him “eye patch McCain” a moniker assigned to him by none other than that white supremacist hero Tucker Carlson and Cornyn was booed from the stage for his leadership role working on the Senate’s gun legislation. Remember when former SNL guy/KK boyfriend had to apologize in response to all that faux outrage over his lame joke about Crenshaw’s eyepatch?  As to that legislation, it remains up in the air, stuck on funding for red flag laws and whether to close the "boyfriend loophole.”  Republican’s find the idea of preventing violent partners from obtaining guns particularly problematic maybe because they fear that would exclude so many of them from purchasing the weapon of their choice?  

And: COVID shots are now available for the tiny set, in most places other than Florida, the autocracy run by  Ron DeSantis who failed to order shots on a timely basis but did finally let some in his state order on their own.  There will be more January 6 Committee hearings this week, including one tomorrow at 12:45 eastern time. As of now, assuming no one goes into labor, Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger who having recently won his primary should feel free to speak his mind and one of his deputies, Gabe Sterling are expected to speak about how the FG and his team pressured them to find 11,780 more votes.  Lastly, keep your eyes on the Supreme Court, a whole bunch of rights are likely to go up in smoke soon, very soon.

Clear and Present Danger  🌻🌻🌻

January 6^th Hearings:  Yesterday’s show and tell featured J Michael Luttig, a former Appeals Court judge revered by the conservative set, and Greg Jacobs, a lawyer who had served as counsel to former VP Pence during his time in office.  The hearing started off slowly largely because Luttig’s plodding monotone made him almost as hard to listen to as that one-time savior who wasn’t Special Counsel Mueller.  Fortunately as time passed the hearing improved, largely because Jacobs’ easygoing, camera ready style compensated for Luttig’s not ready for prime time one and also because the content of Luttig’s ponderous utterances more than made up for his drone in a “holy sh-t” kind of way. For example, Luttig’s statement that the Former Guy and his supporters “remain a clear and present danger to American democracy” was chilling.  The hearing focused on the absurdity and unconstitutionality of the advice provided to the Former Guy by kraken lawyer John Eastman, who like Senator Ted Cruz, once clerked for Luttig. While Luttig’s testimony focused on the danger to democracy posed by John Eastman’s “stay in office” scheme, Jacobs who made it clear that he and Pence both concurred with Luttig’s conclusions also provided insight into Pence’s thoughts and actions as he dealt with the FG’s pressure campaign to overturn the election results, the pressure campaign that ultimately put Pence’s life in jeopardy so much so that at one point some of those “peaceful tourists,” who according to a Proud Boy informant really did intend to kill Pence got within forty feet of where he was hiding. As to that hiding place, Pence was there only because he refused efforts by the Secret Service, including possibly one or more whose motivations were questionable, to whisk him far away because he understood that leaving the Capitol would have achieved the FG’s goal of putting off the certification of the 2020 election results.  Getting back to Eastman, it turns out that he, like the FG and virtually everyone else in his orbit, knew that the phony elector scheme was illegal.  Eastman even understood that the scheme wouldn’t survive judicial review, although curiously he thought that he stood a chance of getting two Supreme Court Justices, likely Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, to agree with him. We also learned that Eastman inquired about securing one of those FG pardons, the ones that son in law Jared was so busy working on when the White House counsel team “whined” that they’d resign if the overturn the election shenanigans didn’t stop.  Eastman’s consciousness of guilt likely explains why he plead the fifth one hundred times during his Committee interview. Getting back to Clarence, the lone dissent in the Supreme Court's January order rejecting the FG's bid to withhold documents from the January 6 panel, we keep on learning more about wife Ginni’s efforts to overturn the election, none of it good. For example in addition to sending missives to more than thirty Arizona lawmakers encouraging them to participate in Eastman’s phony elector scheme, Ginni communicated directly with Eastman and also with former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, access that she wouldn’t have had were she not the spouse of a Supreme Court Justice. Yesterday, in response to all the attention she’s been getting, Ginni said that she’d love to come in and talk to the January 6^th Committee to explain how they are misconstruing the things she said and did, though it’s not clear that she really means to cooperate. For his part hubby Clarence who wants us all to believe that he and Ginni never talked about her insurrectionist actions, remains busy, probably polishing one or more  of the awful Supreme Court decision expected to be handed down shortly. Though its doubtful that he’ll spend much time focusing on Ginni’s actions, Attorney General Garland has formally asked the January 6^th Committee to send over all of its interview tapes and transcripts to help in the DOJ’s expanding investigations.  

Milk and Cookies:  After the events of January 6^th Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherill of New Jersey, a former Navy helicopter pilot and federal prosecutor, reported that she’d seen a number of her Republican colleagues giving reconnaissance tours of the Capitol in the run up to insurrection day. Well now, to the chagrin of Georgia Republican Congressman Barry Loudermilk, there’s video that shows she wasn’t imagining things.  Loudermilk who first denied that he’d given any tours, then said maybe he had but it was just one of those things that you do for nice constituents during a pandemic when the Capitol was closed to guests, is now insisting that those innocent guests who just happened to take lots of pictures with multiple cameras of staircases and hidden hallways in parts of the building not typically shown to tourists were just staircase and wall sconce enthusiasts and nothing more.  That’s a problem for him because at least one of those sconce obsessed tourists also shows up on an insurrection day video calling for the heads of Pelosi, Schumer, Nadler and AOC. Notably Sherill says that Loudermilk wasn’t the only Republican she saw giving “tours” so more videos could be forthcoming.  Though he apparently didn’t spend any milk and cookie time with his kids, it turns out that Herschel Walker, the former football player who is now the Republican’s candidate for the Georgia Senate seat currently held by Reverend Raphael Warnock has four children, three more than he previously acknowledged.  That’s especially significant because Walker, who polls show running neck and neck with Warnock, prides himself on being a huge critic of absentee dads. Of course he’s also claimed that he’s worked in local law enforcement and was employed by the FBI (he didn’t),  graduated top in his college class (he didn’t even graduate), founded a not for profit mental health program for veterans (it was a profit making enterprise that is now being investigated) and has hugely inflated his business success. In other words a perfect Republican candidate.

Viral Musings:  As early as next week children as young as 6 months old will be able to get COVID vaccines though in Florida their parents might find them hard to find.  Florida Governor Ron DeSantis who could very well be his party’s next presidential candidate should the FG finally implode, if Tesla’s Elon Musk has anything to say about it, says he is “affirmatively against providing the COVID vaccines to young kids.” As a result Florida is the only state that hasn’t ordered doses of the child sized vaccine. The shots will still be available but only at pharmacies and pediatrician offices meaning those most in need will probably not have access.  We shouldn’t be surprised about this given that DeSantis’ chosen state Surgeon General, who shares his views, also doesn’t believe that facemasks provide any protection for anything.         

 Drunk Rudy 🌻🌻🌻

January 6^th Chronicles  The House Committee canceled the hearing originally scheduled to take place today.  Their stated reason is that they need more time to prepare video segments but there’s probably more to the postponement, maybe they’re in the process of learning something even more damning than what they were planning to show?  Well at least that’s what I’d like to believe.  As of now the next hearing will take place tomorrow at 1 PM Eastern Time with two more hearings next week, on Tuesday and Thursday, both also at 1 PM.  As to the hearing that took place on Monday, Bill Stepien, the FG’s former campaign manager, was a no show, something to do with his wife going into labor, an excuse that is hard to question though some jaded tweeters suggested that maybe her delivery was conveniently induced because it’s not like the past few years haven’t given us worse. Stepien’s last minute cancellation resulted in a slight delay of the hearing as staff minions rushed to put together some of those aforementioned videotapes, these including snippets of his interviews.  Fortunately the Committee was still able to convey their planned message, that at the end of election day the FG was told by his experts that he’d likely lost the election, that his early lead was, as predicted, due to the “red mirage,” the counting of Republican heavy same day votes before Democratic heavy absentee ballots and that it would be wrong for him to declare victory before all the votes were counted because as time wore on his odds of victory were increasingly approaching the odds of winning a billion dollar MEGA millions lottery.  That’s the message that Stepien says he delivered as part of what he called “Team Normal,” a message that was contradicted by a rather inebriated Rudy Giuliani who told the FG what he wanted to hear, that he’d won, and anyone saying otherwise was ignoring all that obvious fraud that wasn’t. And who doesn’t think that the idea of the leader of the free world tossing his “normal” experts to take advice from Drunk Rudy and a group of Kraken lawyers was totally okay? As to that so called fraud that Rudy and the FG’s other crazies were and still are pushing, the Committee gifted us with a few more snippets of former Attorney General Bill Barr calling assertions of wide spread election fraud “rubbish,” “nonsense,” “bullshit,” “garbage,” “crazy” and the FG perhaps “delusional.” Barr who is on record saying that he’d vote for the FG again if he was the Republican’s 2024 candidate because he could never vote for the immoral Democratic agenda, may be the John Dean of this generation, seriously flawed, more devious and less introspective but perhaps equally damning of his former hero. As to Barr’s assertion that the FG might be delusional, don’t buy that for one minute.  The FG knew exactly what he was doing, he was, and still is, as evidenced by the lengthy diatribe he released after the hearing, restating election lies with the hope of convincing enough of the public to believe him under the theory that if you repeat a lie enough times it becomes the truth.  One more thing, don’t buy into Stepien’s assertion that he is at all Team Normal.  He remains either besotted with the FG or desperate for cash or both, we know that because when not coaching his wife’s delivery, he’s working on the campaign of the FG’s chosen candidate in the hopes of getting Liz Cheney voted out of Congress.  Speaking of money, the other big takeaway from Monday’s hearing concerned the huge amount that the FG has raised to fund his fight against all that non-existent election fraud.  The Committee asserts that the $250 million or so coming in largely from mom and pop donors isn’t going to a legitimate political fund but rather into the FG’s coffers to pay for other things, like his expenses which of course would be totally in character, after all his since closed charity once raised money to buy paintings of him to hang in his golf clubs, the ones that currently illegally display the presidential seal.  After the hearing was over, Committee member/California Representative Zoe Lofgren told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the Committee had evidence that Kim Guilfoyle, son Jr’s lap dancing fiancé, was paid $60,000 for her three minute speech to the insurrectionist crowd. More details have since emerged about that payment, apparently it didn’t come from the $250 million pool but through money funneled to right winger Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point Action organization by Publix heiress Julie Fancelli, another one of those people totally besotted by the FG and all the hateful things he stands for.

Midterm Madness:  There were a few more primaries yesterday.  Some of the FG’s candidates won and some didn’t and some of those who did might have won anyway, not that the FG will ever admit that.  In South Carolina Republican Congressman Tom Rice, one of the ten Republicans who voted for the FG’s impeachment was beaten by an FG endorsed “big lie” proponent but Congresswoman Nancy Mace who didn’t vote for impeachment but who has enraged the FG by occasionally criticizing him survived despite his endorsement of her opponent.  Mace was endorsed by the FG’s former UN Ambassador one time South Carolina Governor/presidential wannabee Niki Haley. In Nevada, a proponent of the big lie won the Republican nomination to run future state elections and another big lie pusher Paul Laxalt who was endorsed by both the FG and his nemesis Ron DeSantis won the Republican Senate nomination.  Laxalt will be running against incumbent Democratic Senator Catherine Cortez Masto in what is expected to be a very close election and a possible Republican pick up.  So if you are at all inclined consider contributing to Cortez Masto’s campaign, she like New Hampshire’s Maggie Hassan, is going to need all the help she can get.  On the subject of both midterms and wacky Republicans, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert is now getting some of the treatment that sunk North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn. Last night a group called “Fire Boebert” tweeted that the American Muckrakers PAC had uncovered that she had previously worked as an unlicensed escort for SugarDaddyMeet.com, that she’d met Ted Cruz while with a Koch family escort client and that she’d had two abortions during her escort service days. To be clear, there’s no suggestion that Ted Cruz had anything to do with her alleged pregnancies or abortions but he was so impressed after meeting her that he became an early contributor to her campaign, donating $126,000 and helping her raise more. It’s more than fair for Boebert to insist that her reproductive choices are hers and should be private but then again that’s a right that she’d like to strip away from everyone else. Anyway this morning Boebert who isn’t known for truth telling didn’t argue for privacy instead she responded by calling the reports “fake news” and saying that “Y’all need Jesus.” One more thing on the abortion rights front, yesterday a Boynton Beach synagogue  filed a lawsuit that argues that Florida’s new abortion law will do “irreparable harm” to Jews and others who don’t share the religious beliefs upon which the law is based.  Shalom Y’all.

Twinning in Idaho  🌻🌻🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Over the weekend, a bipartisan group of Senators led by Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, Texas Republican John Cornyn, Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis hammered out a framework for some gun legislation that has the support of ten Republicans, a group which, in addition to Cornyn and Tillis, includes Maine’s Susan Collins, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, Missouri’s Roy Blunt, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Ohio’s Rob Portman and Utah’s Mitt Romney. Worth noting, none of these “brave” Republicans are up for reelection this year and four of them, Portman, Toomey, Blunt and Burr are all retiring. The ever charming Mitch McConnell who Cornyn hopes to succeed when old Mitch goes the way of the Edsel, says that the proposal sounds nice but he remains noncommittal as to whether or not he’ll support it.  Democrats including Delaware’s Chris Coons, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, New Jerseys’ Cory Booker, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow as well as Maine’s Independent Senator Angus King have also indicated that they’re on board, as is Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden.  It’s expected that the rest of the Democratic contingent will sign on as well meaning that at this point the framework has the support of the sixty Senators needed for passage.  Worth noting that Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman/gun victim Gabby Giffords is up for reelection this year in gun friendly Arizona.  As to the framework, thought it’s far from perfect, most significantly it doesn’t ban assault rifles or raise the age requirement from 18 to 21 (or as I’d prefer to 99), but it does add extra scrutiny for gun buyers under the age of 21, provide grants to states to implement so-called red flag laws and provides new spending on mental health treatment and school security.  In addition it would close what’s known as the “boyfriend loophole” by broadening firearms restrictions on those who have abused their romantic partners. That “fix” had been left out of the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act because apparently pro-gun activists found the idea of extending protections to unmarried people untenable. Expect to hear critics from both sides of the aisle complain, with those on the right saying that none of this will work because the real problem is too many doors, not enough religion in school, abortion and race and those on the left saying that by failing to outlaw assault weapons and at the very least raising the age for their purchase it’s not going far enough. Those on the left aren’t wrong, it isn’t enough but it’s something and movement in the correct direction.  In any case, it’s not a done deal yet and won’t be until after the legislation is actually written, passed by both houses of Congress and then signed by President Biden.    

January 6th: The January 6^th Committee returns this morning with another hearing scheduled to start at 10 AM Eastern time.  Today’s focus will be on how the Former Guy’s baseless “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him led to the storming of the Capitol, and that attack’s objective, the stopping of the certification of Biden’s electoral college win. The FG who expressed his opinion about last Thursday’s hearing, including his observation that his daughter Ivanka didn’t know what she was talking about when she said that she believed former Attorney General Barr’s conclusion that the “big lie” was bull sh-t because she had “long since checked out” is likely to grow increasingly apopolectic during today’s hearing given the line up which includes his former campaign manager Bill Stepien; former election analyst for Fox NewsChris Stirewalt; Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsburg; former US attorney “BJay” Pak; and a former city commissioner of Philadelphia Al Schmidt.  Chris Stirewalt was the widely respected election analyst at Fox who lost his job for making the decision to project Biden the winner in Arizona, that projection complicated the FG’s plans to “prematurely” declare his victory. Stepien, who is not considered a friendly witness and who is currently running the campaign for Harriet Hageman, the Republican running against committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, is expected to testify about how the FG used the “big lie” to fraudulently fundraise. BJay Pak was the FG appointed US Attorney from the Northern District of Georgia who resigned rather than help him transform his Georiga loss into a win.  Al Schmidt was the only Republican overseeing the election in Philadelphia and Ben Ginsburg was largely responsible for helping George W Bush win the “chad” challenged Florida election and thus the presidency over Al Gore in 2000. Although they didn’t air the first one, Fox News will be broadcasting today’s hearing.  By the way, Thursday’s night’s hearing was watched by 20 million viewers, which is a lot, though by going without commercials for its contra-programming Fox did its best to make sure that none of it’s viewers channel surfed over to the hearing during breaks.

Politics Unusual:  Speaking of counter programming, the Republican party line, and it’s a good one is that the Democrats are wasting time addressing the coup because the real issue is inflation.  To be clear they’re  not wrong about inflation being a concerning problem, who doesn’t agree that high gas prices suck, but preserving Democracy is kind of important too. High gas prices could be the least of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ problems.  A few days ago his former top aide, Cassidy Hutchinson replaced her FG friendly lawyer with a new team, a likely indication of her willingness to cooperate fully with the Committee’s probe.  Then there’s Rudy Giuliani, he is in some more hot water as the Washington DC bar has brought ethics charges against him.  Son Andrew is also facing some pushback.  His bizarre run for the NYS Republican Gubernatorial nod doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and because he refuses to indicate whether or not he’s been vaccinated, to participate he will be required to zoom into a an upcoming debate taking place at a vax mandatory CBS studio.  On the Democracy front, 31 members of the Patriot Front, a white supremecist, anti Gay, Jew hating group including it’s leader, packed into a U-haul and showed up Coeur D'Alene, Idaho over the weekend.  They were all in identical bizzarre, threatening twinning attire wearing face coverings and carrying shields and their plan was to raise havoc at a gay pride event. The Patriot Front used to call itself the Unite the Right group.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because those were the “nice guys on both sides” carrying tiki torches who were responsible for the Charlottesville, Virginia rally where Heather Heyer was killed. 

And:  Move over Margie Q and Lauren Boebert, former VP candidate/anti vaxxer Sarah Palin who can see Russia from her balcony has moved one step further to securing the House seat left open by the death of Alaska Congressman Dan Young.  She came out on top in a multi party 48 candidate special election that also included a candidate named Santa Claus and will now face the three other leading canddates including independent Al Gross, who ran for the Senate in 2020, in a runoff.   

 

Be There, It Will Be Wild  🌻🌻🌻

Chaos and Carnage:  Last night’s January 6^th hearing was impressive, deserving high marks for presentation, organization, and content. Although much of what was shown wasn’t new, as promised, there was some damning new information and new disturbing video clips from the insurrection as well as shrewd use of videoclips from several of the Committee’s interviews of members of the FG’s team combined with live appearances from one of the members of the Capitol police who’d been bounced off the concrete by the “tourist” crowd and also by a documentarian who’d been imbedded with those charming Proud Boy insurrectionists, some of whom were not so coincidentally indicted for sedition earlier this week.  In addition, it’s probably not a stretch to believe that a few Republican members of Congress, the ones who are still calling the attack on the capitol building a benign “tourist outing” were less than pleased to hear Republican Vice Chair Liz Cheney, who together with Democratic Chair Bernie Thompson, ran last night’s performance, reveal that the Committee is aware that some of them asked the Former Guy about getting pardons before he finally fled back to his Mar a Lago rat hole. Funny thing about asking for a pardon is that it reveals that you knew you did something bad.  One of those members of Congress who wanted one is Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry who had tried to get his man at Justice, Jeff Clark, promoted to Acting Attorney General so that he could overturn the election results in several key states. He is already squawking loudly about the pardon accusation, an indication that it’s likely true.  Perry by the way, is one of those who refused to show for an interview.  As to those whose interview snippets were shared last night, suffice it to say that the oddly filtered Ivanka might no longer be her daddy’s favorite as her clip revealed that she believed what former Attorney General Bill Barr said in his shared clip, that he’d told her father that claims of widespread election fraud were “bull shit.” A clip of her husband’s interview was included as well and though Jared’s didn’t shed much new light on the events surrounding the insurrection, his slimily haughty statement that he believed that assertions by White House Counsel Pat Cipollone that he and his team would quit if the FG didn’t stop the coup were just more whining, and anyway he was too busy working up pardons for people like his own father to have time for any performative petulance.  Does anyone need more of a  confirmation that Jared really is an arrogant, self-serving POS?  A few more observations:  According to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, as suspected, it was VP Pence, the guy who the FG was okay seeing hung from the rafters, who called out the National Guard not the FG who really didn’t want to stop the “festivities;”  Liz Cheney, who will go down in history as having stood on principle to defend democracy, has probably sealed her fate, it’s more doubtful than ever that she’ll be able to win her primary in heavily FG friendly Wyoming; there’s definitely more brewing at the Department of Justice, we’ll just have to wait and see what and unfortunately that could take a lot of time; and it’s fair to assume that there will be more implicating Easter eggs dropped during subsequent hearings, with the next one scheduled to air on Monday morning.  Of course anyone watching Fox’s primetime line up missed all of this as they were saw only non-stop counterprogramming sans ads from the usual suspects.

And:  The news out of Michigan grows odder by the day.  Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, one of the right wing’s favorite targets, is up for reelection in the fall and though the Republicans would really like to send her packing, they seem to be having trouble retaining candidates of their own.  Several Republican gubernatorial wannabees were excluded from the primary ballot last week, something to do with widespread signature fraud on their nominating petitions.  Yesterday, Ryan Kelley, one of their remaining candidates was arrested on charges related to his participation in the January 6^th insurrection. Just an ordinary day in screwy swingy Michigan, and who’s to say if being arrested for participating in a violent coup will keep him from winning the primary?  And because New York isn’t immune from political insanity and the Republican party seems all in on supporting haters, House Republican Party leadership member Elise Stefanik, the third most senior member of the Republican’s House hierarchy, gifted one of her endorsements to Congressional wannabee/one time Gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino who praised Hitler last year for “inspiring his followers,” describing the fascist dictator as “the kind of leader we need today.”  Paladino has been trying to do some clean up saying that he didn’t really mean what he said but to be clear, it’s fair to assume that he did as it’s fully in character, he’s also has had some racist things to say about Michele Obama and once said that he hoped that her husband Barack “catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford.”   Now is as good a time as any to mention that the FG endorsed candidate for Senate in Arizona, Blake Masters, who believes that the FBI set up January 6^th  blames Black people for all gun violence, of course he does.   Lastly, don’t be surprised if SCOTUS, where a few Justices have been experiencing some threats of their own this week, releases the much awaited abortion and/or gun decisions today.  Though those threats against the Justices aren’t a good thing, apparently their lives are worth more than those of school children and the rest of us.  We know that because Congress, Republicans included, have rushed to provide them with more protections, things other than doors and mental health screenings.          

Summer Breeze 🌻🌻🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns:  While the team of Senators working on gun legislation continued trying to patch together something watered down enough to get the 60 votes needed to pass the Senate, Matthew McConaughy the actor and gun owner who grew up in Uvalde and who for a brief moment teased running for Texas Governor, gave a seriously impassioned and quite impressive speech from the White House press room, part of his effort to push for rational gun policy.  Kudos to him for trying.  However, if the accusation that he was just grandstanding from a member of the White House press contingent, from Newsmax this time, is indicative of the intransigence of the right and it probably is, his laudable effort will do nothing to move the gun obsessed who according to Republican Minority Whip Senator John Thune need their assault rifles for “legitimate reasons” like to “shoot prairie dogs.” Given Thune’s need for AR 15s to kill vermin, the Senate talks are focused only on addressing school safety, setting standards for safe gun storage, providing some federal support for mental health programs and incentives for states to create red flag laws to remove guns from potentially dangerous owners. The talks also included some possible expansions to federal background checks for younger people seeking to buy guns rather than limiting sales to them because don’t all teens need AR 15s?  Anyway, don’t count on all of this making it into the proposed legislation assuming that there is any.  

Midterm Madness:  There were a bunch of primaries yesterday and a notable recall referendum.  On the primary front, the results in California which holds “jungle” primaries rather than single party ones,  were probably the most newsworthy.  In the Los Angeles mayoralty election very, very rich real estate developer Rick Caruso who was a Republican, then an Independent, and now professes to be a Democrat edged out Democratic Congresswoman Karen Bass. Neither received 50% of the vote, setting them up for a runoff in November. By the way Caruso who was endorsed by those important social influencers Kim Kardashian and Snoop Dog spent around $40 million on his primary run, Bass reportedly spent less than $500,000.  In San Francisco, the apparently too prison sentencing reform minded District Attorney Chesa Boudin was recalled by voters who despite the city’s liberal leanings blamed him for the city’s recent crimewave which probably has more to do with pandemic related behavior than his policies but hey someone needed to take the heat.  By the way, Boudin whose parents were 60s radicals Kathy Boudin and David Gilbert knows a lot about growing up with incarcerated parents but maybe not enough about building support for policy change in a tough environment.  In Montana, which is gaining a House seat due to census related redistricting, Ryan Zinke, the former Montana Congressman, who before becoming the Former Guy’s first Secretary of the Interior, the cabinet position he lost over credible accusations of corruption, is locked in a still too close to call race against his even more right wing opponent. In South Dakota, voters rejected a proposition that would have required a 60% votes to pass any Medicaid expansion legislation, pushing back against Republicans, including Governor Kristi Noem who easily won her primary.  Kristi and her crowd are concerned that the electorate will vote for the expansion in the fall and as evidenced by her pandemic policies she’s not that into health care for all.  As to the will he or won’t he run again FG, the news for him was mixed as a number of those candidates he wanted to see sent packing over their votes for things he despises, like the January 6^th committee appear to have held their own against candidates he supported.

Must See TV: The first January 6^th Committee hearing is set to be televised tomorrow night but don’t try to find it on Fox “News” as the station won’t be airing it because that’s how they roll.  Instead Fox is sending it to their Siberia station, Fox Business, because almost no one watches it, especially at night.  In an effort to get their message across to the masses the January 6^th Committee has retained former president of ABC News, James Goldston, who also served as a producer for 20/20, Nightline and Good Morning America to help with their presentation. His work won’t be easy, there is so much to cover and still so much more emerging on a daily basis.  Yesterday, more of kraken lawyer John Eastman’s emails were released to the Committee and we also learned that a staffer for the FG’s presidential campaign instructed Republicans planning to cast electoral college votes for the FG in Georgia despite Biden’s win operate in “complete secrecy.” In an email obtained by The Washington Post the staffer appropriately named Robert Sinners, asked the faux electors for their “complete discretion in this process….Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result — a win in Georgia” for the FG.  Just another reason that the Fox poohbahs including Tucker and Hannity as well as Republican leadership want to sweep all of this under the carpet.

Viral Musings:  Count Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg among the infected, he along with at least 15 others who attended a Mackinac Island (Michigan) business conference last week have now tested positive. At least so far Governor Whitmer who was in attendance appears to be fine. On the vaccine front, it looks like we’re about to get another one as the Novavax vaccine is nearing final approval by the CDC.  That’s significant because the Novavax vaccine does not rely on mRNA technology and may prove palatable to those who fear the newer technology, well maybe. On the Monkeypox front, because of course there is now a Monkeypox front, the CDC is playing a masking advisory game again.  Earlier in the week they advised masking when traveling to countries with Monkeypox because though it’s mostly spread by physical contact it can also be airborne, but then removed the warning because “it caused confusion.”  Does any of this sound familiar? Blowing through the Jasmine in my mind.     

RIP Jim Seals

 

Spent Bullets 🌻🌻🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Mass shootings, defined to include sprees where four or more people not including the shooter are injured or killed, have averaged one or more per day this year.  Moreover as evidenced by this weekend’s “events” where an additional 17 were killed while 69 were injured, not a single week has passed without three or more mass shootings taking place.  It would be nice to believe that the Uvalde elementary school shooting, coming so close on the heels of the Buffalo race motivated supermarket rampage, will be the tipping point that leads to some national gun policy changes but given past experience, probably not.  That said, Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy, the Democrat’s gun control point man is trying, really hard to get something, anything done, though even he admits the most he’ll be able to get 60 Senators to sign on to will be something that includes red flag laws and some mental health and school safety funding but that does little to stop the easy purchase of AR 15s and the like.  Ironically, though Florida’s current Governor/ presidential wannabee/Republican culture warrior Ron DeSantis vetoed $35 million in financing for the Tampa Bay Rays planned spring training facility to punish them for using their social media platform to speak out against gun violence, Murphy pointed to the post Parkland gun legislation passed by Florida when DeSantis’ predecessor Senator Rick Scott, hardly a gun control snowflake, was governor as a good model to look at.  Anyway, with Republican leader Mitch McConnell still refusing to utter the words gun control and the likes of Ted Cruz out there citing door policies, don’t be surprised if the Senate’s current efforts once again end up in the trash alongside a bunch of Lauren Boebert’s spent bullet casings.  Speaking of Florida’s DeSantis, because going after the Rays wasn’t enough he also used his position to bully the Special Olympics into dropping its COVID vaccine mandate for participants in its USA games being held in Orlando this week by  threatening to fine the organization $27.5 million if they continued to require that athletes be vaxxed. Think about that, dropping mandates for some of the most vulnerable to push a personal political agenda. The sad thing is that DeSantis’ antics appear to be working, or at the very least seem to be impressing his targeted right wing base, for the second year running he edged out the Former Guy in the Conservative Western Conference Summit’s presidential straw poll. By the way, the FG is so concerned about DeSantis’s rise that NBC reports he is considering announcing his 2024 candidacy as early as this summer and that combined with the press’ ongoing criticism of all things Biden, and yes there has been a lot of that lately, should have us all shaking in our boots.

Must See TV:  The January 6^th Committee will be holding its first televised hearing on Thursday. This weekend on the talk show circuit, Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, the very conservative but somewhat principled Republican whose political elimination is the FG’s number one objective, called the January 6^th insurrection and the events leading up to it an “extremely broad” and “well organized” conspiracy that is ongoing.  Some of those events came into more focus over the weekend when we learned that former VP Pence’s team, including his chief of staff Marc Short, were so concerned about his safety that they alerted the Secret Service.  Getting that message across to the general public, including the majority of the country more focused on inflation, prices at the pump and the availability of infant formula will be a challenge particularly given that the FG dominated right with the support of its Fox enablers plans to “counter program” with assertions that the January 6^th committee is made up of a bunch of partisan hacks acting out.  Some of that was evident last week following the indictment and arrest of one time FG trade advisor Peter Navarro, who dug his own ditch by refusing to even show up to testify in front of the Committee asserting executive privilege that he didn’t have while spilling his guts repeatedly on Ari Melber’s MSNBC program. Maybe the non-lawyer who is representing himself is going for an insanity defense?  The right echo chamber, especially Louis Gohmert who moaned that “If you’re a Republican, you can’t even lie to Congress or lie to an FBI agent or they’re coming after you” was outraged by the way that Navarro was treated while the rest of us sighed in frustration upon learning that the FG’s last Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and his social media aide Dan Scavino will not be suffering any consequences for their refusal to play ball.

Midterm Politics:  Connecticut resident/Hedge fund manager David McCormick has conceded to New Jersey resident/TV Doctor Mehmet Oz whose endorsement by the FG helped him eke out a very slim victory to become the Republican’s candidate for Senate in the key Pennsylvania race.  Oz will face off against the Democrat’s candidate Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who admitted this weekend that he’d been warned about his ticking time bomb heart condition but had ignored earlier medical advice.  The question now for Pennsylvania voters is whether the populist Fetterman’s approach to his own health care makes him more relatable than the elitist TV doctor who isn’t really a local and who though he’s a real cardiac surgeon is also known for peddling false cures.  Building on his Pennsylvania “success” the FG has now endorsed Blake Masters, another election denier, who is running for the Republican Senate nomination in Arizona.  Masters, like hillbilly guy JD Vance, is backed by billionaire tech guy Peter Thiel, a married gay guy who doesn’t seem at all concerned that the people he supports would take away his rights because he’s too rich to be bothered.  Whoever wins the Republican primary in the very polarized state will face off against former astronaut Democratic Senator Mark Kelly.   

And:  While the focus was on Queen Elizabeth’s frailty and Prince Harry and Meghan, one notable thing about this weekend’s royal celebrations was the absence of two players:  disgraced son Prince Andrew and the Archbishop of Canterbury both of whom were sidelined by COVID. On the COVID front, Prime Minister Boris Johnson is facing a no-confidence vote today over his partying and the cover-up of said partying during the early strict quarantine days of the pandemic.  Officially the daily case count in the US is somewhere around 100,000 but since so many cases go unreported we really don’t know what it is.  Hospitalizations are up a bit but not, at least so far, at alarming levels and the 7 day death count is just under 300. Vaccines for the 5 and under set are expected to finally be approved at the end of the month.  And the war in Ukraine continues with no end in sight, very bad for Ukrainians and also bad for food and oil supplies.                    

Durham Bull 🌻🌻🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns: One woman was killed and two men injured in a shooting following the commencement ceremony for Morris Jeff High School in New Orleans yesterday.  In other words, it was a day ending in “d-a-y” in gun crazed United States where shooting deaths are so common that they have to be really big or involve lots of kids to get more than a mention. In other gun happy news, the Bulwark reports that Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate for Governor in Pennsylvania who bussed “anti-steal” insurrectionists to Washington on January 6^th and who was also involved in the fake electors scheme is a follower of a Charismatic Christian movement that extols the virtues of guns because that’s what Pennsylvania needs, a Governor all in on arming its citizenry.  Back in Uvalde, Texas, our newest Sandy Hook/Parkland, where funerals have begun for the 21 killed as well as the husband who died of a broken heart, officials continue to point fingers at each other assigning blame for the tragedy to anything but guns and anyone but themselves.  To that end, the local Police Department and the school district police force are no longer cooperating with the Texas Department of Public Safety's investigation into the Robb  massacre likely in part because they know that any state run investigation will assign all the blame to local officials in order to absolve Governor Abbott of any culpability.  That’s Abbott who recently signed legislation making it even easier than it already was to buy a gun in Texas while also dramatically reducing Mental Health funding.  In addition the excuse that the shooting was so lethal because a teacher failed to close a door has been debunked, a problem for Texas Senator Ted Cruz and many others on the right who insist that doors rather than restrictions on AR 15 sales would solve the problem.  Speaking of solutions, Ohio Senate candidate hillbilly Vance has some of his own.  He wants to ban porn and abortion because that rather than the proliferation of guns is the problem causing all of the country’s ills. In other wannabee Senator news, Pennsylvania still doesn’t have an official Republican candidate though, taking a page from the Former Guy, Mehmet Oz has declared himself the presumptive one even though votes are still being recounted, except for those votes that weren’t properly dated, they’re hung up in a court battle. Jumping states, Herschel Walker, the rather incoherent, admittedly multiple personality former football hero running in Georgia on the Republican ticket insists that he made the decision to run all by himself and that the FG is lying when he says that it was his decision.  And lastly, spurred on by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy a bipartisan group of Senators is working up gun reform legislation with the hope of getting something through the Senate.  Sure that could happen, but if history is a guide, don’t count on it, unless of course it chiefly focuses on doors and porn.

Legally Yours:  The jury hearing the Amber Heard v Johnny Depp case is about to enter its third day of trying to figure out who, if anyone, is telling the truth but it took the jury hearing Special Counsel John Durham’s case against lawyer Michael Sussmann just a few hours to conclude that the technology lawyer was not guilty of lying to the FBI about who he represented when he bought his concerns about the curious communications between Russia’s ALFA bank’s servers and those of the FG’s company to the FBI’s attention. That the jury acquitted Sussmann is not all that surprising, the evidence against him wasn’t conclusive and most court watchers expected he’d be found not guilty.  That said, the Fox echo chamber, including the NY Post, insists that Sussmann was only acquitted because the “biased” Washington DC jury was made up of “Hillary Clinton’s peers.” It’s not clear who, if anyone, John Durham who was appointed by one time AG Bill Barr to placate the FG, plans to target next. Sussmann  was thought to have been Durham’s top “catch,” and his best way of proving that the investigation into the FG’s questionable Russian connections had been ginned up by Hillary, George Soros and the like and with that not working out, he should really figure out a way to exit stage left, or in his case stage right but he probably won’t.

More Legalities: A New York Court has rejected the FG family’s latest efforts to ignore Attorney General Tish James’ subpoenas to testify in her civil case and reports are that Fulton County Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis’ investigation into the FG’s attempts to get Brad Raffensperger to “dig up” those fictional 11k votes is heating up.  The FG of course isn’t happy about any of this, he’s “truthed” a few irate messages over the past few days.  In one he attacked Willis calling her the “Radical Left Democrat 'Prosecutor' from Georgia, who is presiding over one of the most Crime Ridden and Corrupt places in the USA, Fulton County, has put together a Grand Jury to investigate an absolutely 'PERFECT' phone call to the Secretary of State” and in another he said “Our Legal System is CORRUPT, our Judges (and Justices!) are highly partisan, compromised or just plain scared, our Borders are OPEN, our Elections are Rigged, Inflation is RAMPANT, gas prices and food costs are “through the roof,” our Military “Leadership” is Woke, our Country is going to HELL, and Michael Sussmann is not guilty.”  A few more tidbits, House GQP Leader McCarthy has hired a criminal attorney and he, like the other Republican members of the House who’ve been “asked” to testify in front of the January 6^th committee is refusing to cooperate and former FG trade advisor Peter Navarro, who is representing himself because “lawyers are expensive,” revealed that he’s been subpoenaed by the Justice Department to appear in front of one of their Grand Juries but hasn’t decided yet whether or not he’ll comply. Navarro is claiming executive privilege even though he already spilled his guts on MSNBC.  Note to the rest of us, when you are subpoenaed you really do have to show up and if you are going to cite questionable privilege don’t tell Ari Melber everything you know on live TV.    

And:  Yes COVID is still out there, though maybe over its current peak in the New York area. The sneaky virus’ ubiquity explains why so many flights were cancelled over Memorial Day. Delta Airlines, one of those most affected, had to admit that their problem had to do with staff calling in sick from the virus rather than the usual blame recipient, weather.  It turns out that eliminating flight mask requirements really does have consequences for both crew and passengers.  A lot of back and forth about whether President Biden would or would not give Ukraine missiles that can hit Russian territory.  Reading through the fine print and murky language, it looks like he is giving Zelenskyy those missiles but they’re not to be shot into Russian territory but rather to be used within Ukraine territory perhaps especially in the Donbas where things aren’t going well for the local heroes.