Orbanization  🌻🌻🌻

Legislative Coup:  For the past two years the constant complaint of the progressive wing of the Democratic party amplified by the media has been that Chuck Schumer is a weak leader, one lacking that evil genius Mitch McConnell’s skills at arm twisting, hard-nosed obstruction and court stacking and that West Virginia’s Joe Manchin is really a Republican pawn under the control of that wily Mitch.  Well, at least for now it looks like Senate Leader Chuck Schumer, who has actually gotten a boatload of judges confirmed, is better at back room negotiating than any of his critics realized.  Likewise, it turns out that West Virginia’s Joe Manchin who has voted for most of those judges is not quite the Republican pawn that the left has painted him out to be.  Yesterday, almost immediately after the Senate passed the long awaited Chips bill, the legislation that is supposed to make the US more competitive against Chinese rivals by providing subsidies for the production of semiconductor chips, by a bipartisan vote of 62–33, Schumer announced that he had the 50 votes he needs to proceed with a budget reconciliation bill and that critically Manchin and presumably or hopefully that other frequently called out Democrat Kyrsten Sinema are on board.  The reconciliation bill, no longer named Build Back Better but instead rechristened the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, because duh, including the word inflation in the title is key right now, includes $360 billion for climate related financing, $64 billion for health care to get drug costs down and extend Obamacare subsidies and raises the corporate minimum tax rate to 15% while also closing some of the carried interest loopholes that minimize tax liabilities of hedge funds. The reemergence of the reconciliation bill surprised many, including quite a few Democratic Senators who had no idea that it had been revived and given Manchin’s Lucy and the football antics probably wouldn’t have believed it had they been told, but no one was more surprised than Mitch McConnell who had conditioned his support of the Chips bill on the death of the reconciliation bill, particularly all that climate stuff because we know how he and his corporate cronies feel about doing anything about carbon emissions and the like. Of course, this being Washington, the Republicans being against anything that could reflect well on Biden and his team, and Manchin and Sinema being who they are, nothing is certain until both bills pass in both houses. To that end Speaker Pelosi will have to twist a few arms to get her progressives in line because the watered down reconciliation bill while significant doesn’t include their wish list. Of course not only won’t  GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s crowd help pass the reconciliation bill but because Mitch is pissed at being outplayed by Schumer, McCarthy is now whipping votes in opposition of the Chips bill that Mitch just helped pass because that’s what they do.  

Legally Yours:  We’ve been told for some time that we would know whether Attorney General Merrick Garland and his team at the Department of Justice were really investigating the Former Guy’s efforts to overturn the results of the election when we started to hear about who, if anyone, had been called to appear in front of one or more of his grand juries.  Well, it’s now confirmed that quite a few FG aides, including but not limited to Marc Short, Greg Jacobs and Cassidy Hutchinson, have been called in to testify and based on what one or more of them have told their contacts in the press, they’ve been asked questions about the FG’s involvement in the fake elector scheme. That doesn’t meant that the Justice Department has opened a criminal inquiry into the FG but according to several former US Attorneys it likely means that the DOJ believes that the fake elector scheme constitutes a crime and that they are investigating that crime and that the investigation is looking into the FG’s actions as part of that crime.  On that front, yesterday it was also reported that the DOJ has obtained a new search warrant for kraken lawyer John Eastman’s phone and that they’ve implemented filter procedure to make sure that they don’t inadvertently share any of his privileged conversations.  Not good for Eastman, and probably not all that good for the FG.  As to the FG, when not attending right wing conferences where he’s now pushing for immigrants to be housed in tent cities around the country because nothing could be better than creating festering refugee/internment camps he’s been ”truthing” like crazy on his social media platform.  Of course he continues to rant against the unfair treatment he’s been getting while also pushing his big election lie and threatening to sue CNN for calling out his lies as lies. The discovery for that suit which won’t happen would be fun.  The FG whose possible ridiculously premature announcement of another run for the presidency has the RNC so spooked that they’ve threatened to cut off paying his burgeoning legal expenses, will be a keynote speaker at next week’s Conservative PAC conference in Dallas where Hungary’s Viktor Orban will also be featured despite the fact that his recent speech in Romania where, following in the footsteps of such notables as Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, he spoke out against the mixing of races as well as the need to keep Europe white and Christian.  That speech, which given the source, shouldn’t have been all that surprising, disturbed a number of European leaders as well as one of Orban’s long time aides, who resigned in protest, but CPAC head Matt Schlapp isn’t at all bothered and has no plans to revoke Orban’s invitation and why would he given that in addition to the FG other scheduled speakers at the conference include like-minded folks like Ted Cruz, Sean Hannity, Jim Jordan, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, Lauren Boebert and a few more fascists and fascists in training.  Also, Orban is one of Tucker Carlson’s faves and no one goes against Tucker which is why despite the Wall Street Journal and the NY Post both publishing Rupert Murdoch approved anti-FG editorials Tucker and the night time crowd at Fox are still mostly Team FG.

And:  Biden is out of quarantine, something he attributed to vaccines, booster shots and Paxlovid rather than any claims of superior genetics or any of the stuff that the previous president, you know that svelte specimen of perfect health claimed was the reason for his “miraculous” recovery from his near death, albeit pre-vaccine experience with the virus.  Also, keep an eye out for news about WNBA player Britney Griner.  Yesterday, Secretary of State Blinken revealed that the US have proposed a deal to the Russians, one that probably involves swapping imprisoned Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout in exchange for Griner and the also imprisoned in Russia ex-Marine Paul Whelan.     

 

Thumbing Noses 🌻🌻🌻

Freak Circuit: Though the January 6^th hearings have dented the Former Guy’s allure, so far at least those dents are no more than dings and he and his adherents remain out and about at various and sundry “conservative” fetes uttering despicable but very click worthy remarks.    Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, who is somehow or other still out and about on the freak circuit despite all those allegations about his criminal predilection for teen girls took the stage to say that he doesn’t know what they’re worried about because all those women who advocate for abortion services are too fat and ugly to get pregnant, adding that they are built like “thumbs.”  When asked if he meant for those comments to be offensive, he doubled down and said yes.  Hillbilly guy JD Vance, the Republican nominee for the Ohio Senate seat being vacated by retiring Senator Rob Portman, said that people, especially women who would be better off procreating than seeking careers, should be willing to stay in unhappy marriages, even violent ones, perhaps because growing up in a violent, drug infused family was so good for him.  Then there’s Doug Mastriano, the Republican candidate/January 6^th insurrectionist running to be Pennsylvania’s next governor, he’s openly cultivating anti-Semitic followers, paying Gab, the far right wing, hate-filled social media platform fancied by people like the Tree of Life Synagogue shooter, to build his base. In case there’s any confusion about where Mastriano and Gab stand, Gab’s CEO made it clear that he’s not interested in any Jewish supporters, even right wing ones by saying “ We don't want people who are Jewish. We don't want people who are, you know, nonbelievers, agnostic, whatever. This is an explicitly Christian movement because this is an explicitly Christian country…Ben Shapiro is not welcome in the movement unless he repents and accepts Jesus Christ as his Lord and savior.” That’s a message that Georgia’s Margie Q who recently described herself as a Christian Nationalist can certainly live with.  In case you are wondering Christian Nationalism is a kissing cousin of National Socialism as in Naziism.  Then there’s Maryland, where the Republican Governor nominee Dan Cox, another 2020 election denier is so far to the right that the retiring, term limited out Governor Larry Hogan, also a Republican but a member of the almost extinct moderate Republican wing said that he won’t be voting for Cox in the general election. One more thing out of Pennsylvania, over the weekend Republican Congressman Glenn Thompson attended his gay son’s wedding, just three days after he cast his vote against the House bill protecting same sex and interracial marriage proving that it doesn’t matter what Republicans like Thompson believe in their hearts.  What does matter is that they are hypocrites, so desperate to cling to their seats that they’ll do anything to do so and if their votes hurt their own children or eliminate reproductive rights or have them teaming with White Supremacists or worse so be it.  By the way, the Former Guy is returning to Washington DC today to talk about law and order at an America First Policy Institute conference, one that will be attended by the usual coterie of Republicans and press enablers.  His planned appearance explains why Biden rasped out this dig yesterday” “You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-cop. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-democracy. You can’t be pro-insurrection and pro-American.”

Viral Musings:  Though President Biden’s voice is raspy and he pallor seems a bit pastier than usual, he seems to be doing fine. He should be out of COVID quarantine soon, around the same time that Delaware Senator Carper emerges from his COVID isolation but before Senators Manchin and Murkowski, who both revealed yesterday that they are also COVID positive, emerge from theirs, assuming that is that they, like most who are vaxxed and boosted, and as necessary take Paxlovid, come out relatively unscathed.  The Senators’ COVID status is particularly relevant right now because Leader Schumer, who also recently had COVID, has plans to bring several key pieces of legislation up for vote and needs all hands on deck to get anything passed.  By the way, if you think you haven’t had COVID by now, you either probably had it and didn’t realize that your mildly scratchy throat wasn’t allergies or are extraordinarily lucky with an immune system of remarkable fortitude. According to the Bloomberg Prognosis newsletter, the good news is that if you’ve had the BA 5 variant and have a healthy immune system you are unlikely to get it again and if you’ve had one of the earlier sub variants of Omicron and are vaccinated you are somewhere around 80% protected from getting the BA 5 subvariant. But as we’ve learned coronavirus mutates deviously, so don’t let your guard down entirely and get ready to line up for another COVID vaccine in the Fall. Of course, COVID isn’t the only virus making it into the headlines these days, the World Health Organization has now declared Monkeypox a global health emergency.  The US has 3400 verified cases, and though most of those cases are being identified mostly in adult males, two young children have been diagnosed and, more significantly, there are probably many undiagnosed cases out there. No need to panic at this point.  Monkeypox is rarely lethal, there is a vaccine and there is treatment.  The problem right now has more to do with getting vaccine supply to where it’s needed most combined with a lack of adequate testing supplies. Expect to see increased availability of both over the next few weeks. In the meantime, if you are a member of the most vulnerable population consider some behavior modification for now at least until you manage to get one of those coveted shots.  That’s not a popular recommendation but it is a practical one.

Legally Yours:  It looks like the Department of Justice really is focused on the Former Guy and his cronies’ attempts to usurp the Electoral College votes.  Yesterday it was reported that Marc Short, former VP Pence’s former chief of staff, who has already testified before the January 6^th Committee, spent a few hours in front of a Washington DC Grand Jury last week as did Pence’s White House lawyer Greg Jacobs.  In Georgia, where District Attorney Fani Willis is also looking into the FG’s attempts to steal the election, a judge ruled that she can’t be involved in the case against one of her state’s phony electors, Republican Lieutenant Governor candidate Burt Jones because she had headlined a campaign function for his Democratic opponent.  That’s the bad news, the good news is that she can continue with her case against the other 15 fake electors and can find someone else to pursue the case against Jones.  

Bread Crumbs:  it’s hard to really understand what’s happening in Ukraine as Putin continues to do what he does, make promises and then renege on them.  Late last week, he supposedly agreed to let Ukraine export grain through its Odesa port only to bomb the port after the agreement was “made.”  While we’ve all been focused on the cost of gas at the pump, the grain issue is a big one because Ukraine’s grain feeds a lot of the world, especially parts of Africa where people are already starving and also boiling because of the climate problem that some believe is just faux news but that the rest of us know isn’t.  

 

Trust the Dogs 🌻🌻🌻

January 6 Committee:  The only thing surprising about President Biden having COVID is that he remained negative for so long.  Given his travel schedule and his serial hugging habit, it was fair to wonder if he was benefiting from a new, as yet approved for the masses, miracle preventative.  Well it turns out he wasn’t and hopefully he, like most who’ve been appropriately vaccinated and boosted and, in his case, dosed with the Paxlovid anti-viral combo, will be fine.  Biden isn’t the only one in quarantine, having turned up positive a few days ago, January 6^th Committee Chair Bennie Thompson is COVID positive too which is why he introduced last night’s end of this season episode of How the FG Almost and May Still Destroy Democracy, from a remote location, probably his home, where he, like President Biden was recuperating in dress for success garb, proving that politicians really are different from the rest of us: we wear pajamas or athleisure during our recoveries and look haggard on zoom cameras while they wear jackets and starched shirts and look better than ever. As to the January 6^th hearing, once again we got to see how harrowing the day was, this time with a tick-tock revealing that as the Capitol police, members of Congress, and even the Secret Service protecting then VP Pence feared for their lives, the FG did nothing more than repeatedly call his best bud Rudy Giuliani while also dialing up some of his wannabee buddies, perhaps on some since acid washed phones of his Secret Service team because no calls appeared on the official White House logs.  Of course the Senators he targeted were the ones he thought he could convince to vote against signing off on the results of the election that he lost, not that he’s stopped trying to influence officials, earlier this week he called one in Wisconsin to try to get him to overturn that state’s 2020 results.  Having seen Josh Hawley’s fist in the air salute to the marauding crowds celebrated on Fox, it’s fair to assume that the FG didn’t bother calling the Missouri Senator because he knew he had him in his bag.  To the extent he watched last night’s hearing, Hawley who has been using that infamous air fist picture as a campaign funding tool probably didn’t enjoy the film clip showing him running for his life from the very hooligans and insurrectionists that he’d urged on just hours before   No worry for him though, he and his enablers probably spent the better part of last night trying to figure out a way to monetize his dash and given his base, while we laughed at it, he’ll probably succeed. As to the rest of the hearing, we heard from former Deputy National Security advisor Matthew Pottinger and former Communications Director Sarah Matthews, long time Republicans who made it clear that until the insurrection they’d been cheerful, dedicated members of the FG squad, proud of his policies and accomplishments, but that the events of January 6^th were a step too far, even for them, which is why both of them quit by the next day.  Through their testimony and clips of interviews with some others including former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and an unnamed security official we learned more about how it was left to VP Pence and perhaps Mother to take the actions necessary to get the violence at the Capitol stopped because the seething FG was too busy enjoying it while he binged watched TV.  We also received confirmation of Cassidy Hutchinson’s earlier testimony about the fracas in the FG’s limo that took place when the FG’s team refused to take him to the Capitol.  That’s the fight that several members of the FG’s Secret Service contingent alleged didn’t happen, not that they ever denied it under oath because it’s one thing to whisper denials into the ears of willing reporters and another thing to lie when there could be consequences.  As to consequences, a somewhat frustrated Attorney Merrick Garland wants it to be known that all those reports that he’s sitting on his hands doing nothing are not accurate, that no one, including a former and possibly future president, the one whose video outtakes show how hard he tried to not call off the marauding crowds, will get away with breaking the law.  Let’s hope Garland means it because this morning’s Axios features an article by Jonathan Swan detailing how the FG is already planning his next presidential term and that those plans include shutting down a few departments,  firing a huge number of civil servants while replacing them with his loyalists, a list that is currently being vetted and that his future cabinet would include the likes of Jeffrey Clark, the environmental lawyer who tried to take over the Department of Justice to cancel the results of the last election. And of course, folks like Stephen Miller, Mark Meadows and Kash Patel would feature prominently in his next administration.  So basically the nightmare scenario is that the FG wins reelection, pardons anyone who has been convicted and then staffs the government with loyalist cronies.  No wonder Steve Bannon isn’t sweating despite wearing five shirts in sweltering DC.

Major Knew:  Reports are that Biden’s since banished German Shephard Major was involved in eight biting incidents, with his targets being members of the Secret Service. We should have trusted his instincts.   It turns out that the situation at the Secret Service is even worse than initially reported.  The Secret Service which has been part of the Department of Homeland Security since the post 9.11 revamp of governmental security agencies is on the verge of implosion and probably should be because destroying texts at any time when law requires that all official communications be archived permanently but certainly after records were requested by several House Committees in the aftermath of an insurrection is a bigly, likely illegal no no which is why the text destruction is now being investigated as a possible crime.  As to the destruction, it’s worth noting that the Secret Service is the go to place for recovering “lost” information from electronic equipment which probably also means that they are very good at getting rid of what they, or at least a bunch of their agents, don’t want seen, ever.  It’s probably not a coincidence that James Murray, the former head of the Secret Service recently stepped down from his post to take a job with Snapchat or that the Inspector General responsible for Secret Service oversight who tried to belatedly position himself as “concerned” about those text deletions is an FG appointee with a  record of ignoring earlier complaints about bad behavior. The Secret Service text destruction story has legs and is likely to be addressed in one or more of the future episodes of How the FG Almost and May Still Destroy Democracy, now scheduled for September.

Legislative Update:  It takes two to tango, meaning that while Nancy Pelosi’s House frequently passes legislation, most of that legislation never makes it to the floor of the currently too evenly split Senate.  That said, the votes on some of what the House passed this week are very revealing:  209 House Republicans voted against abortion rights; 205 House Republicans voted against protecting interstate travel for reproductive care; 195 Republicans voted against protecting access to contraceptives and 157 Republicans voted against marriage equality.  Of those bills, only the one protecting marriage equality stands a chance in the Senate although so far only five of the ten Republican Senators required to get to the needed sixty have said that they’ll vote to protect same sex and interracial marriage, the two components of the bill. One of the Republicans on board is Ohio’s retiring Senator Rob Portman who has signed on as a co-sponsor of the marriage protection legislation, largely because the issue is personal to him, he has a gay son.  How sad is it that we have to rely on Senators being personally affected by an issue to get their support.  Also, how said is it that none of them will admit to being similarly affected by anything related to reproductive rights even though we know that they are, they just don’t want to admit it.  

 

Immunity 🌻🌻🌻

Fist Bumps:  President Biden is back from his Middle East visit but instead of delving into the reasons for the visit, like securing oil supply during a war, working on regional peace and dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and capabilities, the press spent the weekend focused on whether Biden greeting Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salaam/bone cutter with a fist bump was too friendly, adequately disrespectful or just a sign of times COVID.  That discourse just about sums up the reaction to everything Biden does, good or bad, his actions get disparaged and dissected by the press which seems desperate to see the Former Guy or an equally outrageous guy on center stage because of ratings, by the left most of whom would have preferred that someone else had been the Democratic nominee for president in 2020 and who don’t get that it takes more than 50 Senators to get much done, especially when two of those Senators are centrists with their own agendas, and by the right who, spurred on by the Fox, OANN and Newsmax media echo chamber, are growing further extreme.  And by extreme think abortion politics and guns.  On the gun front, the news out of Uvalde is gut wrenching, 376 law enforcement officials, couldn’t take down one shooter and still Republican politicians insist that getting rid of AR 15s and the like, or at the very least restricting their ownership, wouldn’t do much to prevent future mass shootings but that arming kindergarten teachers and doing something about doors would. Because so much that’s bad these days emanates from Texas it shouldn’t surprise anyone that Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of those more focused on door policies than the lives of elementary school children, has moved on from trashing reproductive rights to questioning the legality of same sex marriage, saying that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling, the landmark decision that extended marriage rights to all, was wrongly decided because in his view decisions about who can and cannot get married belong to the states.  If that states’ rights argument sounds familiar it’s because it should, it’s part of the argument that the right used to dismantle reproductive rights, which is why it’s particularly ironic, or devious, take your pick that having killed access to abortion and dismantled reproductive health care in so many places, the right is now focusing on how to eliminate abortion federally, as in everywhere in the country, because that states’ rights argument only works for them when they want it to, the rest of the time, not so much. They’re beginning by focusing on ways to make it more difficult, maybe even illegal, for women to leave their states to obtain abortions elsewhere but also intend to push for abortion banning legislation should the Republicans ever have the House and Senate votes to do so.  As to those travel bans, they sound farfetched but then again, it wasn’t that long ago that the idea of states being able ban all abortions no matter the reason also sounded too dystopian to happen.  When not focused on fist bumps, the press, at least the mainstream press, has been covering stories about women suffering, coming close to death, unable to get appropriate treatment for miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies, not that any of that concerns politicians on the right several of whom believe that there is no such thing as an ectopic pregnancy, that all miscarriages are the fault of the mother and that children should be forced to carry babies to term. Maternal mortality in the US already ranks poorly when compared to developed countries, by next year that ranking will be even worse.  

 

January 6:  The next episode of this summer’s hit mini-series is scheduled for this Thursday during prime time.  Featured stars of the evening will include Matthew Pottinger, a former national security aide to the FG and one time Wall Street Journal reporter who is respected on both sides of the political divide and Sarah Matthews who served as deputy press secretary in the FG’s administration.  Both resigned just hours after the January 6 insurrection.  It’s expected that Matthews will verify much of what we learned from Cassidy Hutchinson while Pottinger will testify about the struggle to get the Capitol Hill onslaught under control despite the FG’s preference to let it rage on.  The hearing will mostly focus on that latter part, the FG’s failure to do anything to stop the insurrection.  In other related news, the increasingly despicable Steve Bannon was in court yesterday where juror selection began for his contempt of Congress trial.  In addition we learned that Fulton County DA Fani Willis sent out another subpoena last month, this one to Republican Congressman Jody Hice, one of those who attended a December 2020 meeting in the White House where strategies to overturn the election were discussed.  Also, via Rachel Maddow, we learned about a memo that Attorney General Garland distributed at the DOJ about six or so weeks ago.  That memo reminded his staff about that DOJ policy that no political indictments should take place in the run up to elections and that anything related to a presidential candidate had to be approved by leadership.  That’s not really a new policy, had it been followed, Hillary Clinton probably would be in her second term in office but still it rankles given the times, the FG’s crimes and his not so private statements that running again will immunize him from legal liability.       

Viral Musings:  Yes, it’s not your imagination, the BA 5 Omicron subvariant is here, there and everywhere.  Though most infected people, especially those vaccinated and boosted twice, are doing fine the sheer volume of the new cases is still having an impact, and some people are getting very sick, which is why hospitalizations are climbing again and when hospitalizations rise, deaths can follow. Virus Guru Fauci who had the virus and a rebound case not too ago revealed yesterday that he plans to retire by the end of Biden’s current term, not all that surprising given his age and how taxing his job has been, not to mention all the death threats he receives on a daily basis.  Monkeypox is out there too, don’t panic but do run any mysterious rashes or symptoms by your doctor, though it’s not clear that most of them are experienced enough with the virus to know it when they see it.  In any case, while the Monkeypox vaccine is still in short supply, it does exist and it works even for those who already have symptoms as long as it’s given soon enough so keep that in mind in the unlikely, well at least so far unlikely and let’s hope it stays that way, case that you are infected.                    

 

Permanent Deletions 🌻🌻🌻

Disappearing Texts: So who had Ivana Trump falling down a staircase and dying on their July BINGO card?  Apparently not the NY Post which was in such a hurry to get the sad news on its website that it mixed up its Ivana’s and Ivanka’s making it seem like mother and daughter had tumbled down the stairs together.  That version of the story which has since disappeared from the rag’s website isn’t the only thing that has vaporized.  As first reported in The Intercept and then confirmed by CNN, Homeland Security’s Inspector General has notified the House and Senate Committees responsible for Secret Service oversight as well as the January 6^th Committee that the Secret Service won’t be able to provide copies of requested texts from January 5^th and 6^th because, shortly after they were requested, those messages were deleted as part of a “device replacement program.”  The Inspector General and the Secret Service are now engaging in a rather public pissing match over the timing and legitimacy of those deletions.  It's not a stretch to believe that those deleted texts likely included communications that a certain former occupant of the Oval Office or one of his supplicants had with his then Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato, the once and future Secret Service agent who flipped from the Secret Service to work for the Former Guy before returning to the Service as its Deputy Assistant Director of Training and that some of the texts may also have referenced the sketchy plan to get VP Pence as far away from the Capitol as possible during the insurrection  to make it logistically impossible for him to certify the 2020 Electoral College results.  While most of yesterday’s Secret Service news was focused on the text deletion story, CNN posted another significant one that confirmed Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about the unseemly heated exchange that the Former Guy had with his security team after they refused to drive him to the Capitol on insurrection day.  That confirmation came in the form of testimony provided by a Washington DC policeman who witnessed the fracas, the one that FG loyalist Tony Ornato denies ever took place even though it apparently did.  Am I the only one who wonders why Ornato is still at the Secret Service? Worth noting, in a recent interview with New York Magazine, the FG insinuated that he’s already made the decision to run again, but hasn’t decided when to make his formal announcement and how he can time it to best interfere with the investigations into his misdeeds.  He must be getting nervous, in part because next week’s January 6^th hearing is likely to include more from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and also more details regarding the former White House Staffer who he tried to intimidate and also because of Georgia and maybe even because of what maybe, just maybe is going on at the sleepy Department of Justice.   

Post Roe World:  Rather than admit that the idea of a 10 year old girl being forced to carry her rapists child to term was horrific, the anti-abortion crowd attacked the veracity of the her story and that she had to travel from Ohio to Indiana to get her pregnancy terminated.  Fox of course led the way but even its more “respectable” cousin the Wall Street Journal jumped on the bandwagon, publishing an editorial that asserted the story had to be contrived because it was “too good” for the pro reproductive rights side, the “side” that represents the majority of the country. Well, despite the initial, and quite inaccurate assertion by Ohio’s Attorney General Dave Yost that the rape story was bunk because he’d have known if it was true,  it’s true.  On Tuesday the young girl’s rapist was arrested in Columbus, Ohio.  Of course, the story doesn’t end there, Yost has pivoted to focusing on the fact that the rapist is in the country illegally because that’s a narrative he can run with. Not to be outdone, Indiana’s Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita is threatening to strip the doctor who provided the abortion services of her medical license.  His assertion is that she failed to file the documentation required whenever an abortion is performed on a minor in Indiana and is thus not entitled to continue practicing medicine in his ruby red state.  Spoiler alert, the doctor in question did file the requisite documentation on a timely basis.  No doubt Rokita who should slink back into a hole somewhere won’t but instead will come up with something new to further endanger the life of the OB GYN. In other medical news, the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology announced yesterday that it will hold a virtual certification exam in the fall instead of requiring test takers to travel to its home base in Texas (!) due to concerns for prospective OB GYNs physical safety. Sure, tell me again how awful it was that Justice Kavanaugh opted to leave before having his dessert at that DC steak restaurant because of the peaceful demonstrators outside that he couldn’t even hear.

And:  President Biden is in the middle of a Middle East tour that includes stops in Israel and Saudi Arabia.  In Saudi Arabia he’s trying to reset the relationship in order to deal with real world issues like high gas prices triggered by Russia’s aggression and the increasingly tragic war in Ukraine and the Iran nuclear problem that’s only gotten worse since the Former Guy walked from the Obama era nuclear deal that wasn’t perfect but was something better than the nothing we currently have.  Reality sucks and this time reality means dealing with a bone cutter. Domestically, Joe Manchin continues his Lucy and the football shenanigans, once again refusing to sign on to any legislation that deals with climate change or more taxes for the wealthy.  He should be paying royalties to the estate of Charles Schulz.

Unhinged 🌻🌻🌻

January 6:  Yesterday’s hearing was chock full of information that was both shocking and not shocking.  Shocking because the Former Guy, then the President of the USA knew he’d lost the 2020 election but was so unwilling to accept his loss that he really did try to pull off a coup and if it took a bloody civil war triggered by a militia composed of Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Three Percenters to do so, so much the better.  Not shocking because though we learn more gruesome details about the FG’s coup attempt and how his not so innocent tweeting and pre-meditated speechifying inspired his followers to invade the Capitol on January 6^th every time the Committee holds a hearing, the general outline of his bad acts has been apparent for some time.  Not that those bad acts have stopped, the FG is on the campaign trail right now, and when not tripping off to Alaska and other parts of red America to advocate for more Margie Q types and Sarah Palins, he also continues to obstruct, or at least he’s trying to.  Yesterday’s hearing ended with another one of those “tune in next time” teasers when Vice Chair Liz Cheney revealed that the FG remains all in on witness intimidation.  Specifically she reported that he “tried to call” a witness presumably to encourage that person to keep his or her lips sealed.  That witness who has not yet appeared in one of the public hearings didn’t take the call but immediately contacted his or her lawyer who contacted the committee who contacted Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice. As to the rest of the hearing, we learned more about the wacked out December 18, 2020 meeting at the White House, the one when a group that included kraken lawyer Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn and former Overstock CED Patrick Byrne who in case you’ve forgotten was once a paramour of Russian red sparrow Maria Butina, pushed their conspiracies about fraud as well as their overturn the election schemes on a very receptive FG who liked what he heard so much that he either appointed or tried to appoint Sidney Powell as a Special Counsel while White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who had dashed to the White House a la OJ Simpson in his pre-murder Hertz commercial tried to quash.  And because presenting details of that wackadoodle meeting wasn’t enough for one Committee hearing, we also heard from a former Oath Keeper and one of those delusional FG supporters who, under the influence of all of the FG’s tweets, the ones that those nice folks at Twitter knew were seriously problematic, participated in the Capitol invasion on insurrection day but would have left the scene way earlier if only the FG had tweet directed the crowd to vamoose.  Tune in next week for more in the continuing and perhaps unending saga about the end of Democracy.  By the way, that Twitter acquisition by Elon Musk is currently off track while the parties sue each other.

Other Legalities:  Though we still haven’t heard anything more from one time Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who is either in witness protection on ice in the Mar a Lago Diet Coke fridge, Steve Bannon is talking or at least trying to. In order to get himself out from under those problematic criminal contempt charges for defying his House subpoena, he has now offered to testify in public saying that suddenly he can because the FG has waived the executive privilege that he never could offer him and that curiously enough the FG’s lawyers say that he never did.  Bannon’s last minute offer doesn’t appear to be going over well with US District Court Judge Carl Nichols who is hearing his case.  Nichols has refused to push off Bannon’s contempt trial which is scheduled to begin next week.  Judge Nichols decision cannot be music to one-time aide Peter Navarro’s ears because it doesn’t bode well for his similar claim of executive privilege that isn’t. Meantime another judge, this one in Fulton County, Georgia has ordered Senator Lindsey Graham to testify in front of the special grand jury investigating all those efforts to throw out Democratic votes while finding more Republican ones. Its fair to assume that Graham will continue to fight his subpoena because of course and anyway he could just spend the rest of the year on Congressionally sponsored foreign trips.

ButHerEmails:   While the January 6 Committee and the Fulton County DA continue to do their thing looking into the FG’s insurrectionist acts, President Biden hasn’t been having an easy time either.  It’s hard to open a paper or turn into a news program without hearing about his dismal popularity, his doddering old age or how progressives in his party are ready to put him out to pasture and that’s the so-called mainstream media.  Add in Hunter’s laptop and then you’ve got the right wing as well.  Also, apparently each and every awful decision issued by the Supreme Court is Biden’s fault too, especially the recent Roe overturning Dobbs decision.  It’s not clear why Democrats eat their own, but they do, and it’s also not clear why the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and MSNBC endlessly run these types of stories but they do to.  Perhaps they miss the ratings hike that FG stories deliver? Or maybe they just love doing that #ButHerEmails thing over and over again?  Anyway, it’s worth noting that Biden wasn’t really the Democrats first choice last time but he won the nomination and then the election anyway and that the immediate problem is the midterms, the next presidential election is still over two years away.  As to those midterms, candidates like Georgia’s Herschel Walker, his multiple personalities, and his strange utterances, aren’t doing much to help the Republican’s quest to retake the Senate.  That’s got to be a concern for Mitch McConnell, not that it’s stopping him from doing his thing which currently means that he’s threatening to withhold support from the bipartisan US-China competitiveness bill if Democrats move forward with a separate unrelated spending bill and of course remains opposed to things like lowering the cost of insulin because apparently there are no diabetics in red states?    

         

BoJo No More 🌻🌻🌻

January 6:  Mark your calendar, the House Committee is set to televise another hearing on Tuesday, July 12 at 10 AM Eastern Time.  Though the Committee has not yet announced who will be featured, it’s likely that we will hear from Sarah Matthews who served as Deputy Press Secretary in the Former Guy’s Communication department and possibly even from former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone who, with the assist of a subpoena, has finally agreed to testify before the Committee.  Matthews who resigned the FG White House in response to the events of January 6, at the time saying that she was “deeply disturbed” by what she saw on insurrection day and that “our nation needs a peaceful transition of power” isn’t likely to say much that we haven’t heard before but is expected to confirm Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony. Cipollone isn’t expected to testify live, however it’s likely that we will see him on video as his meeting with the Committee will be taped.  Cipollone is a big get, the Committee has been seeking his cooperation for some time.  He isn’t expected to answer all of the Committee’s questions as he’s likely to resist revealing details of some, if not all of his conversations with the FG, but he can’t or at least shouldn’t be able to exert executive privilege over things he said to others.  For example he should be able to talk about that moment on January 6 when he told Hutchinson to keep the FG away from the Capitol or "we're going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen." Congressman Jamie Raskin is expected to lead the questioning during Tuesday’s hearing and everything else aside, he’s always worth listening to.  By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, we haven’t heard anything from Mark Meadows in quite a while, not even any tweets though Mick Mulvaney who was ousted from the Chief of Staff spot to make way for Meadows has been quite vocal of late, saying that he finds Hutchinson very believable and that he thinks that history will remember Meadows as the worst Chief of Staff ever, which is pretty funny given the source.  As to Meadow’s silence, maybe that’s because of the $1 million that the FG funneled to his non-profit following January 6 or maybe it’s because he’s in witness protection having quiet conversations with the DOJ, well probably not. On the topic of Communications Departments, President Biden’s Communication Director Kate Bedingfield will be exiting shortly. Her stated reason is that after three years of working with Biden on his campaign and then in the White House she wants some family time but it’s likely that her departure is part of the Biden Administration efforts to reboot it’s communication efforts.  Given all of the press lately about how some very vocal Democrats, including actress Debra Messing who reportedly takes full credit for getting Biden elected, are upset that he isn’t doing more to save the country from the horrible decisions on things like abortion, guns and the environment that the Supreme Court he inherited keep issuing, a reboot is probably necessary.  Also, Messing needs to check her ego but that’s neither here nor there.

Georgia on My Mind:  In other legal news, things continue to heat up in Fulton County, Georgia where the special grand jury empaneled by local District Attorney Fani Willis has issued subpoenas to an assortment of the FG’s kraken legal team including Rudy Giuliani, John Eastman, Jenna Ellis and Cleta Mitchell all of whom are believed to have knowledge of the FG’s attempts to tamper with the election process in several battleground states including Georgia. Willis didn’t stop there, she also subpoenaed Senator Lindsey Graham who she’d like to question, under oath of course, about his two phone calls to Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger where he urged Raffensperger and his staff to reexamine “certain absentee ballots” cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for the FG. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that Graham, who is the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is challenging the subpoena. Don’t expect instant gratification from Willis’ Grand Jury, first of all it can’t indict, instead, its recommendations would have to go to one of her ordinary grand juries for their action and secondly she says that if she isn’t finished with her work well before the midterms she’ll put a brake on things until after the election. Also, she says that she hasn’t ruled out the possibility of subpoenaing the FG, a bold statement given all the threats and hate mail she gets from his fan base, awful missives and calls along the lines of what Congressman Adam Kinzinger, another recipient, recently released.  Speaking of targeted individuals, yesterday the NY Times revealed that both former FBI Director James Comey and former Acting Director Andrew McCabe were the subjects of what are supposed to be “rare and random” invasive, extreme IRS audits.  It’s hard to believe that there was anything random or coincidental about their “Nixonian” selections, particularly given how much the FG despises both of them.  Neither man knew about the other’s audit until the NY Times ferreted the information out  By the way, Comey ended up getting a few hundred dollars back though it cost him around $5000 in accountant’s fees to respond to all of the IRS’s demands.  McCabe ended up owing what he characterized as an inconsequential amount and though he didn’t specify how much he paid his accountants it’s fair to assume that they came out ahead.

Viral Musings:  With the very contagious and troubling Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants out and about everywhere, the FDA announced yesterday that it is authorizing licensed pharmacists to dispense Pfizer’s Paxlovid anti-viral to infected individuals without first requiring them to obtain doctor’s or nurse practitioner’s prescription. It’s not clear that all that partying during the early days of the COVID lockdowns was the straw that broke the camel’s back because when it comes to the UK’s now outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson there are so many straws, including the recent revelation that he met by himself with Russian oligarch, Alexander Lebedev who is also an ex-KGB officer not that there is such a thing as an ex-KGB officer, but this morning BoJo as he is called across the pond finally announced his resignation. 

Fireworks 🌻🌻🌻,

Independence Day: Well if you ignore the mass shooting in Highland Park Illinois, the reports that the Former Guy is giving serious thought to announcing another run for the presidency, that a raped pregnant ten year had to flee her state to obtain an abortion, and all those flight cancellations, the holiday weekend was fun.  We still don’t know much about the Highland shooter’s motives, but given his social media postings which include at least one picture of him at an FG rally, it’s fair to say that he shouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near an automatic weapon but then again who should be?  As to the FG, Maggie Haberman, the NY Times reporter, who doubles as his unabashed whisperer, reported on Friday that he’s giving serious consideration to announcing a 2024 run for the presidency as early as this month.  Announcing a presidential run before the midterm elections cycle would be highly unusual but then again if we’ve learned anything about the FG, it’s that he is highly unusual in a despicable kind of way.  According to Maggie and her NYTimes cronies, the FG wants to get his announcement out now because he’s convinced that doing so will kneecap the ambitions of his potential rivals, most notably his more polished mini-me Florida’s Ron DeSantis, while also making it more difficult for him to be prosecuted for his criminal activity, like his attempted coup and the fomenting of violence on January 6. For some reason that escapes me, CNN featured South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, one of the FG’s most dedicated fans, as their featured guest on Sunday’s State of the Union.  Noem, who objects to Obamacare’s  Medicaid expansion because providing health care to the needy and those with unwanted pregnancies is so not her thing, fashions herself, both literally and figuratively, as the FG’s next VP or if he opts out of running as our next Republican presidential candidate.  Think of Noem as a Sarah Palin without the view of Russia from her window.  She did her best to avoid admitting what we all know, that if the aforementioned pregnant 10 year old was her daughter she’d get her an abortion ASAP, abortion politics be damned.  She did that by repeatedly pivoting to prices at the pump and sadly, Dana Bash, this weekend’s host was only partially successful at cutting her off. While CNN was serving as Noem’s mouthpiece, Liz Cheney, the embattled Wyoming Congresswoman who is also considering a run for the presidency revealed on ABC’s morning program that for what it’s worth, the January 6^th Committee could make several criminal referrals of the FG to the Department of Justice. She said that while also expressing confidence in the veracity of all of former Mark Meadows’ one-time aide, Cassidy Hutchinson’s, bombshell testimony, including the part about the fracas in the presidential chariot. Liz deserves our appreciation for her willingness to speak out against the FG but let’s not forget that as she keeps saying, she’s also ardently anti-choice and it’s not clear that pregnant ten year-olds would do any better if she was running the country.

Viral Musings: Sure the volume of air travel is up to pre-pandemic levels but the largely unspoken elephant in the room is that a good number of last weekend’s cancellations had to do with staff shortages triggered by the elimination of the virus protecting mask mandate. It’s hard to keep an airline fully staffed when pilots and flight attendants keep calling in sick.  Virus experts including Robert (Bob) Wachter, Chair of Internal Medicine at the University of California San Francisco, and Eric Topol of the Scripps Institute warn that BA.5, the Omicron variant that is on its way to dominating is the worst variant so far, more infectious than prior ones and, even more able to evade the protections of both prior infection and current vaccines which explains why virus levels and hospitalizations, though not as high as they were at their peaks, do remain stubbornly stuck at too high levels. Their recommendation, and don’t shoot the messenger for this, is to continue wearing masks indoors and in crowded outdoor venues and to avoid indoor eating because you can get COVID more than once, BA.5 COVID is particularly gnarly, and because long COVID is really worth avoiding. Wachter recommends getting the current booster now if you haven’t already, as well as the newer more targeted one again when it becomes available, probably in the Fall if we’re lucky.           

Who Needs Clean Air Anyway?  🌻🌻🌻

Deconstruction: Reportedly the Koch Brothers don’t give a hoot about abortion or LGBTQ rights, in fact in 2015 David Koch described himself as a libertarian who believes people should be left alone to do what they want.  However, somewhere along the line the self-described libertarian Kochs figured out that the best way to push their corporate agenda was to team up with the religious right because while pushing for the privilege to trash the environment to enhance your billionaire status might not be the kind of populist cause that wide swaths of the country find appealing, fighting against abortion and the right of those socially “offensive” LGBTQ folks to live their best lives is rather energizing for those on the religious right. So here we are in 2022, and through the combined efforts of industrialists like the Kochs who care nothing about the environment but do love making boatloads of money and those on the religious right who fervently believe, or at the very least pretend to believe, that life begins the very moment a sperm touches an egg and who also find the idea of LGBTQ people living in their midst untenable, a large portion of the country lost reproductive rights this week, the EPA lost much of it ability to clean up the environment, and the right to privacy is teetering. Remember when Steve Bannon said he wanted to deconstruct the administrative state, making it impossible for the EPA to clean up the environment is only the beginning, the Court’s decision will also make it more difficult for the government to do a lot of other things we need it to do.  And as if all that isn’t enough yesterday afternoon the Supreme Court, loaded with all those justices that the Kochs and their cronies bought previewed what’s next by announcing that it would take on Moore v Harper, a North Carolina redistricting case. That case is hugely significant because should the conservative majority on the Court rule as they are likely to rule, they’ll sign off on some variation of the “Independent State Legislature theory,” giving state legislators the exclusive right to regulate elections, putting them above the law even if their state constitutions say that state courts should get the final say.  To put it simply, if local politicians in those states so gerrymandered that despite being populated by equal amounts of Democrats, Republicans and Independents their legislative bodies are 70 percent Republican decide that they don’t like the results of an election where for example some Democrat like Biden won over some Republican like the FG, all they’ll have to do is override the results, basically what they tried to do in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia in 2020, only unlike then next time it could be legal. Happy Fourth of July everyone.   

What to Do?  President Biden who spent most of the week overseas focused on dealing with the war in Ukraine and celebrating Turkey’s sign off on admitting Finland and Sweden into NATO finally criticized SCOTUS and came out in support of eliminating the Senate filibuster in order to pass reproductive rights legislation.  While that sounds good it’s probably not going to do much since Senator Manchin, who despite his personal views on abortion, says he’ll support narrowly drafted Roe preserving legislation, and Senator Sinema who is pro-choice are still opposed to tossing the filibuster aside. Their view is that further weakening the filibuster will just make things worse if and when the Republicans retake the Senate, making anything that is passed now subject to be overturned at some date in the not too distant future, not a reach since Republican leader Mitch McConnell says that were he to regain control he would introduce legislation banning all abortions everywhere in the US, and if all he needed was 51 votes, he probably could do it.  Of course McConnell who likes to brag about how he got his Justices on the Court at the expense of fair play slammed Biden for criticizing the Court calling his comment dangerous. By the way the Democrats’ tenuous  control of the Senate is even more tenuous right now as Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, who is retiring at the end of this term, is hospitalized, recovering from surgery for a broken hip.  That said, there is some potential good news out there.  It looks like Georgia’s Senator Warnock, who at one point was tied in the polls with Republican challenger Herschel Walker, is now leading by 10 points while Pennsylvania’s John Fetterman is leading Mehmet Oz by 9 points.  Sure it’s early, but it looks like voters are waking up to Walker’s and Oz’s oddities while also pushing back at the recent abortion decision.

January 6 Committee:  The right wing knives are out for former Mark Meadows aide Cassidy Hutchinson, not all that surprising given what she had to say about the FG and insurrection day at the White House.  While the overblown controversy about whether the FG did or didn’t grab his Secret Service Agent’s clavicle has dominated the news, the reality is that no one, including Mark Meadows has discounted anything else that Hutchinson said, and certainly no one has done so under oath.  As to Meadows, according to the NYTimes it appears that before Hutchinson’s earlier March 7 deposition, an intermediary for the former Chief of Staff “contacted her to say that her former boss valued her loyalty,” wink, wink, nudge, nudge.  As to loyalty it also appears that the FG, his PAC and another one run by CPAC Chair Matt Schlapp whose wife Mercedes worked in Communications for the FG White House, has been paying the legal fees of somewhere around ten former FG staffers, another neat yet mob-like way to get people to keep their mouths shut.  And all that is in addition to the $1 million that the FG’s PAC funneled to Mark Meadows not too long ago.  Hmmm.  One person who has clearly gotten the stay loyal message is the very pardoned former Lt. General Michael Flynn who plead the Fifth even when he was asked under oath if he thought that the January 6^th violence was justified and again when he was asked if he believed in the peaceful transfer of power in the USA.  Of course, if SCOTUS signs off on that whole Independent State Legislature thing, peaceful transfer of power could be a bigly problem going forward.   

And:  It turns out that Monkeypox is a thing. The government is now providing vaccines to certain health care workers and members of the most vulnerable populations which for now includes those who’ve been exposed and gay and bisexual men who have had sex with multiple and/or anonymous partners over the past two weeks. With around 80 cases diagnosed in NYC and more undiagnosed cases likely out there, the city has already run out of its initial 1000 shot supply although it is expected to receive 6000 more doses very soon. That said, don’t panic and don’t try to get one of those coveted appointment slots unless you are in the vulnerable population.   

Enjoy the holiday.