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.