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.