Lordy, There are Pictures 🌻🌻🌻

Holiday Happenings: Well it’s supposed to be a quiet end of summer week except it’s not because when was the last time in the days of the Former Guy that we really had a quiet news week?  Cutting to the chase, late last night, minutes before a midnight deadline, the Department of Justice filed a motion arguing against the FG’s legal team’s too late to be relevant request to have a special master appointed to review the documents that it had removed from Mar a Lago.  Taking a we’ve had it with the FG and his shenanigans approach the DOJ memo was detailed, longer than usual and especially revealing, it even included some pictures of a few of the top secret documents that the FG had hiding at his winter abode, just the outer folders rather than the actual contents because the DOJ, unlike the FG thinks that keeping secrets away from prying eyes is a good thing.  It pointed out in excruciating detail how the Federal Archives librarians, the folks that the MAGAs now want burned in effigy, had first tried asking pretty please nicely for the FG to return the purloined papers before progressing to calling in Federal agents to “seize” them from Mar a Lago in the so-called “raid.” Among the facts included in that detail was that some of the files, super-duper secret and some less so, were found in the FG’s personal office, that one of his lawyers who is now knee deep in trouble and needing of a lawyer of her own now actually signed a letter saying that all of the documents had been turned over when lots more had intentionally been withheld, and that the boxes of documents were shifted from Mar a Lago room to room in an effort to make them “disappear,” a strategy all too like a Times Square shell game, the one where the quick handed cup shifter’s buddy runs around picking pockets while the mark tries to figure out which cup is housing the rock.  Only this time the DOJ wasn’t playing mark or victim.  A few more things worth noting before moving on, the CIA has lost more of its human assets than usual over the past few years maybe due to the mishandling of secret stuff by a certain FG, a woman is being investigated for lying about being a Rothschild heiress while  infiltrating Mar a Lago, mingling with guests including the FG and Lindsey Graham, and Tony Ornato, the Secret Service Assistant Director who at one point was on the FG’s staff and who according to one time FG aide Cassidy Hutchinson told her about the FG’s freak out on January 6^th put in his retirement papers yesterday.     

The Whole Re-Truth: The FG who has finally found himself a real lawyer, Christopher Kise who is a former Florida Solicitor General and associate of Ron DeSantis, to represent him in the stolen documents case, must have seen this coming.  He spent his day frenetically “truthing” and “re-truthing” on his financially teetering imitation Twitter social media platform.  Those missives included quite a few from the Q set, you know the criminally crazy crowd who want to see the US government overthrown so that all the Democrats who they claim are pedophiles can be replaced with right wing anarchists who really are.  Among those re-truths was as least one calling for the demise of the current POTUS and Speaker of the House. Notably, Google won’t allow the Truth Social app on its app store, something to do with the company’s failure to adequately moderate content, in other words Google, unlike Apple, isn’t comfortable with calls to decapitate Biden and Pelosi.  We’ll have to wait a bit to see how the FG’s supplicants and frighteningly large fan base react to the DOJs latest filing but it’s fair to assume that Senator Lindsey Graham who over the weekend suggested and by suggested think threatened that there would be riots in the streets if the FG was indicted for his crime will have something truly awful to say. Of course the FG also “truth-ed” out Lindsey’s threat.  It’s not clear if any of the stories reported earlier in the week about the FG’s stolen stash including some dirt on French President Macron’s love life are true, not that anyone would care because who doesn’t think that Macron has a love life worth noting, but  given the garbage coming from Lindsey, it’s fair to speculate that the FG has some really good stuff on him because how else to explain the depths of Lindsey’s depravity?  And of course, the right wing press is going all in on Hillary’s emails and Hunter’s laptop right now.  As to that laptop, because of it the FG wants the 2020 election called in his favor or at the very least he wants a mulligan.

And:  Lots of other things happening like President Biden continuing to call out the MAGA party for what it’s doing to democracy,  the death of former USSR leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the lack of any drinking or even bathing acceptable water in Jackson, Mississippi because of all those infrastructure weeks that never happened and the failure of that state’s government to take care of it’s own but it’s a holiday week so I’ll quit now.

 

Truth, Justice and the American Way? 🌻🌻🌻

Fascist Much:  Coming off a summer of legislative wins and with primary season now in the rear window, President Biden is on the campaign trail rallying for Democratic candidates.  Yesterday he slammed “semi-fascism” in the Republican Party, an understatement given that the MAGA dominated GOP, with its continued adoration of the Former Guy, affinity for Putin, embrace of Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, advocacy of oppressive social policies and support of candidates who reject the results of the 2020 election while promising to overturn future ones that don’t go their way moved way past the “semi” part quite a while ago. Take a hard look at Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the current GOP heir apparent, missing that George Orwell’s 1984 was never intended to be an Idiot’s Guide to Fascism, he’s added banning “opposition” as in mainstream reporters from his campaign events to his repertoire, what’s next a Ministry of Truth? On the subject of “truth,” it turns out that the problems at the FG’s Truth Social continue to mount. The media platform is still being investigated by the SEC over its SPAC shenanigans and yesterday Fox Business reported it missed $1.6 million in payments to RightForge, its internet hosting vendor. Truth Social last made a payment to RightForge in March, since then bupkus. Additionally, the US Patent and Trademark Office has refused the FG’s application for a trademark for the Truth Social name, something about there being at least two other companies with similar monikers. You’d think that the FG and his team would have done a bit more homework before settling on a name but then again business acumen is hardly one of the former steak hawker’s strong points.

Student Loans:  On the policy front, earlier this week the Biden administration announced its long awaited student loan forgiveness plan.  Essentially, the plan involves the forgiving of up to $20,000 in federal student loans to individuals who earn less than $125,000 per year or heads of households earning less than $250,000.  In addition the plan caps monthly payments on undergraduate federal loans to 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income and extends the “coronavirus” pause on student loan repayments through the end of the year. Those on the left are very upset that Biden’s forgiveness plan isn’t way more encompassing and those on the right are calling it out as a Communist conspiracy that will lead to hyper-inflation.  Ironically, ignoring that their mango god has declared bankruptcy multiple times and now is stiffing another one of his vendors, the Republican position is that paying ones debts on time is right up there with mom and apple pie. They also say that forgiving student loans is unfair to truck drivers and others who haven’t gone to college as well as to those who’ve paid their loans off. To that end the Biden administration took to Twitter last night, blasting out the names of those GOP lawmakers who while loudly bashing the student loan cancellation program personally benefited from having their COVID related Paycheck Protection Program loans forgiven in amounts far greater than $20,000.  Among others that list includes Vern Buchanan with a whopping $2.3 million forgiven,  Margie Q with $183k and Matt Gaetz with $482k. As to those inflation fears, while some respected economists have expressed concerns that the loan forgiveness plan will feed inflation just as it appears to be abating, Goldman Sachs’ economists, hardly a bunch of socialists, have concluded that it won’t amount to much, saying the headlines are bigger than the macroeconomic impact.  Morgan Stanley and Bank of America agree with Goldman’s assessment, calling the loan forgiveness plan nothing more than meh. My view for what it’s worth is that if both the left and right are unhappy, then maybe Biden found the right “sweet” spot. As to the Republican party’s outrage over loan forgiveness, maybe some of it is driven by an attempt to divert attention from what the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board calls the party’s “abortion problem” and how eviscerating reproductive rights has been driving Democratic voter turnout and could well be the deciding factor in turning what was supposed to be a very red midterm wave into a pink or even blue one.   

Legally Yours:  Pursuant to an order of the Judge who approved the warrant to search Mar a Lago, a redacted  version of the warrant affidavit will be released later today. It’s not clear that the affidavit will reveal much as its fair to assume that the DOJ redacted as much as it could get away with.  Also on the legal front, Fulton County DA Fani Willis remains hard at work.  Add former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who seems to be in hiding these days, to the list of FG associates that she’s now subpoenaed. Though Senator Lindsey Graham got a reprieve from his subpoena last weekend after a Federal Appeals Court judge put a hold on his testifying, that reprieve is likely to be temporary as his case has been expedited.  The current expectation is that despite his protests, he will be compelled to show up, probably in September.  Also, though we haven’t heard much about it lately the case against panhandle putz Matt Gaetz who recently won his primary because Florida is after all Florida is still out there and reports are it is progressing, though the conclusion, if any comes to pass, may be an episode in next year’s season of Maga Maniacs Run Amok.

Viral Musings:  Add FLOTUS Jill Biden to the list of those whose turned COVID positive after being COVID negative.  She doesn’t appear to be having any symptoms but is back in quarantine pending  some more negative results.  As to Paxlovid, a recent Israeli study shows that while it does excel at keeping those over 65 alive and out of the hospital, it doesn’t do much if anything for those in the 44 to 64 age group. Notably, almost all of the people in the Israel study were vaccinated unlike tennis player Novak Djokovic who still isn’t and as a result will not be allowed into the US to play at the US Open.  

 

 

Levis 🌻🌻🌻

Primarily Yours:  New York State dominated the primary news yesterday. Due to the results of the 2020 census, the Empire state lost one House seat and was put in the position of having to redraw its district lines to accommodate the shrinkage in its House delegation.  After state courts ruled that the state’s initial efforts at redistricting were gerrymandered to favor Democrats the lines had to be redrawn again. As a result of the delayed finalization of the new district lines, the state’s primary process was bifurcated, with yesterday’s House races separated from the gubernatorial and local contests that were held back in June. In New York City, the upper west side district held by septuagenarian House Judiciary Committee chair Jerry Nadler was more or less merged with the seat held by septuagenarian House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney.  Aided by endorsements from the NY Times, and Senators Schumer and Warren, yesterday Nadler easily emerged victorious, beating the well-liked and respected Maloney and perennial challenger Suraj Patel who’d positioned himself as the new blood option. In a newly drawn lower Manhattan/northwest Brooklyn district former prosecutor/Levi Strauss heir Dan Goldman who had represented House Democrats in the first of the Former Guy’s two impeachment trials narrowly beat out a crowded field that included a few progressive favorites including Representative Mondaire Jones who as a result of the domino effect of the state’s redistricting had given up on running in a newly drawn version of his prior district in order to avoid going head to head with DSCC chair Sean Patrick Maloney, another one of the candidates impacted by the shifting sands. For his part Sean Patrick Maloney, no relative of Carolyn Maloney, easily fended off a challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez endorsed progressive Alessandra Biaggi to clinch his primary.  On the Republican side, running in the Buffalo suburbs with the endorsement of NYS Congresswoman/third in House Republican leadership Elise Stefanik, Carl Paladino best known for complimenting Adolf Hitler, yes that Hitler, and for a disgusting comment about Michele Obama that involved gorillas in Zimbabwe, was narrowly beaten by his Republican challenger and will hopefully go back into the hold that he crept out of, though not soon enough for me. And lastly, well at least for New York, in an election that was not a primary but instead was a special election to fill the seat vacated by former Democratic Congressman Antonio Delgado who left the House to become Lieutenant Governor,  Democrat Pat Ryan beat the better known Republican candidate Marc Molinaro. Those results are notable because their swing district which includes Dutchess and Ulster counties is considered a bell weather, one that Republicans thought that they could retake, well at least they thought so before the Supreme Court overturned Roe.  Ryan shrewdly made the Dobbs “handmaiden” decision an issue and even though Molinaro is relatively moderate, Ryan’s strategy worked.  Of course this being New York, the district that Ryan just won has also been redrawn and both he and Molinaro will be running in November in different districts. Then there’s Florida, the place where New Yorker’s go to kvetch.  Former Governor one time Republican Charlie Crist won the Democratic primary over pot advocate/Agricultural Secretary Nikki Fried.  Crist will face off against current Governor/culture warrior/presidential wannabee Ron DeSantis in November, in a race that at least right now appears to be DeSanti’s to lose.   On the Senate side Congresswoman Val Demings easily won her Democratic primary, to be honest I didn’t even realize that she had an opponent.  Demings will face off against Marco Rubio in November and though she appears to be slightly ahead in the polls right now, she’s facing an uphill battle because in Florida polls are notoriously wrong.  

Oh, Those Files:  It’s hard to keep track of what’s going on in the saga related to those files that the Former Guy took with him to Mar a Lago and that’s the point.  Though it’s clear that the FG was up to no good and that taking the files was a bigly violation of a whole bunch of laws, the FG and his team of kraken wannabee lawyers are doing their best, and by best think worst, to muddy the waters.  Their story and the FG’s defense has gone from denying that there were any purloined files to admitting there were but saying that nothing in the files was confidential to an admission that there probably was secret stuff but that the FG had declassified all of it before leaving office, and that anyway the FBI’s “raid” was mean and unprecedented so there.  While the FG, his lawyers and a good number of his media friends continue to try to make the story about how he’s a victim of Biden, the DOJ and those thugs in the FBI who they now want to defund, more and more keeps coming out about how the DOJ treated the FG with kid gloves, giving him multiple opportunities to turn in the purloined files some of which were found hidden in his closet (near that orange makeup?), and that they only resorted to sending in the FBI once it became clear that the FG who actually got involved in sorting through some of his stolen stuff, wasn’t cooperating and that some of what he took was putting the country’s security, including the sources and methods of obtaining that information, at risk.  As to those kraken lawyer wannabees, one of their most recent filings with the courts was so flawed that a put upon judge kicked it back for a mulligan and the other filing, the one that seeks to get the exhibits to the Mar a Lago warrant released isn’t expected to result in anything more than a highly redacted sheaf of papers that will leave out much, if not all of what the FG is hoping to see.  Frankly, the bigger question is why hasn’t the FBI searched the closets and safes in Trump Tower and Bedminster, or even Ivana’s grave?     

Viral Musings:  Get ready to roll up your sleeves again soon. Both Pfizer and Moderna have applied for Emergency Use Authorizations for their revamped COVID boosters, bivalent ones that protect against original COVID and the BA 4 and 5 variants.     

The Devil Went Down To Georgia 🌻🌻🌻

Primarily Yours:  So Liz Cheney was trounced in her primary.  Not a surprise but depressing, not because Cheney’s positions on most issues are anything to celebrate, after all she voted with the Former Guy 93% of the time and is a staunch opponent of reproductive rights who celebrated the Roe overturning Dodd decision, but because while most of her Republican colleagues continue to support the autocratic FG, dismiss his coup attempt as a big nothing, and are proponents of the big lie, she’s been standing up for democracy. Cheney says she’s committed to making sure that the FG doesn’t make it back to the White House, and she should be applauded for that, but let’s stop talking about her ever becoming president. Also, please ignore Andrew Yang, his new Forward party is hardly forward, he won’t even endorse reproductive rights because he believes it’s too divisive to discuss.  Enough said. In that other much watched primary in Alaska, it will take days if not weeks for all the results to trickle in from far regions of the state but as of now it appears that Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, another one of the FG’s targets, has edged out her FG supported opponent Kelly Tshibaka.  Together with the race’s third and fourth place finishers including one Democrat who received an anemic 6.2% of the vote, both will advance to the November election. Though much has been written about Sarah Palin garnering enough votes to make it to the November election, so far the first place finisher in her Congressional primary appears to be a Democrat, Alaska native Mary Peltolta.  We’ll have to wait a few weeks for the rest of the results, included the completion of the ranked choice voting calculation, to learn which of the Alaska Congressional candidates won the simultaneously run special election to fill the open House seat vacated by the expiration of Congressman of Don Young until the end of the term.  

Not Over Yet:  Primary season is winding down but it’s not over yet.  Next week Florida Agricultural Secretary Nikki Fried will face off against Charlie Crist who before he was a Democrat was a Republican Governor of Florida.  The two are polling neck in neck in the battle to determine who will face off against presidential wannabee/current governor/culture warrior Ron DeSantis. Though she has a few opponents, Orlando Congresswoman Val Demings is expected to win her primary for the Democratic Senate nomination to run against Republican incumbent Marco Rubio.  Demings is currently polling a few points ahead of Rubio, but polls in Florida are historically unreliable so take that with a grain of salt.  Lastly, Tuesday will be primary day in New York, again. This time voters will be weighing in only on Congressional seats, many of which were recently redistricted as a result of a court order that threw out earlier configurations.  Unfortunately, no matter the outcome, a few competent experienced Democratic Representatives will be falling by the wayside.   

Legal Morass:  Where to begin, there’s so much to cover that it’s hard to get to all of it.  The Teflon FG’s legal woes continue to mount, not that any of them have dented his appeal to his supporters who grow more ardent and militant whenever more damnable facts about his criming and couping surface.  Anyway, here goes.  In NYC later today Allen Weisselberg the former long term CFO of the FG family business is expected to plead guilty to 15 felonies, admitting that he conspired with the FG company to “carry out a scheme to avoid paying taxes on lavish corporate benefits.”  However though his guilty plea is notable and according to many wishful folks in the business and legal peanut gallery might actually take down the FG organization, Weisselberg will not be implicating the FG, though reports are that he will be obligated to testify in the case against the FG’s company.  He’s expected to be sentenced to six months of prison time but is likely to be out in three months or so.  Moving on to Georgia, though Rudy Colludy Giuliani tried to convince a judge that he couldn’t make it to Atlanta, something about his recent stent surgery precluding air travel, an excuse that the judge did not buy at all because of all those other travel options like buses, Ubers, and midnight trains to Georgia, Giuliani made it to the Fulton County court room yesterday where he spent six hours in local District Attorney Fani Willis’s Grand Jury.  We don’t know what he did or didn’t say but since he was recently told that he is one of the targets of her investigation into the FG’s vote finding/stealing scheme, he likely pleaded the Fifth endlessly.  So far Senator Lindsey Graham has not shown up to testify in Fulton County about that time that he called Georgia officials asking them to toss out a few or more Democratic votes as he’s still fighting his subpoena.  He’s been losing in court but he’s appealing, still trying to weasel out of appearing. Likewise, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp is also trying to avoid an appearance but Willis remains determined to get everyone on the record under oath so stay posted. And because the election tampering story has multiple legs, earlier this week the Washington Post reported that the FG’s kraken lawyers including Sidney Powell and Lin Wood hired a forensic data firm named SullivanStrickler to access county election systems in at least three states, including Michigan, Colorado and George, charging and receiving an upfront retainer fee for each job which in one case was $26,000.  Tampering with election machines is a bigly crime and these guys most definitely did some tampering. Shifting back to Washington, remember all of those complaints about Attorney General Merrick Garland sitting on his hands, well forget about them.  In addition to going after all those purloined super-secret documents as well as a few passports at Mar a Lago, last night it was reported that the DOJ has subpoenaed all of the House’s January 6^th committee’s documents for their own investigation. By the way, national intelligence analysts are now in the process of doing a risk assessment to figure out just how much our national security was compromised by the FG’s document theft.  As to the Mar a Lago search, the FG and his team of abettors in Congress and the right wing media are insisting that the DOJ immediately release the warrant affidavit essentially because they want to expose which “rats” told on the FG so that they can then publicly skewer them or worse. Today, Judge Bruce Reinhart who signed off on the original warrant and who has been getting lots of those “or worse” death threats is holding a hearing on the affidavit’s release.  Worth noting, during the Spring, the FBI interviewed former White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and former senior WH counsel Patrick Philbin who apparently were aware of and concerned about the FG’s “irregular” handling of documents, and by irregular think criminal.  Among other things they are believed to have told the FBI that the FG resisted turning over his purloined cache because he insisted that since he’d been president everything in those boxes were his, so there!  Though its not clear if he really meant it, yesterday while defending the FBI and kind of throwing AG Garland to the right wing wolves, former VP Pence said that he’d consider testifying in front of the January 6^th Committee if asked really nicely.  Lastly, no one should really be surprised to learn that the FG has been having a hard time hiring experienced white collar crime lawyers.  To be clear, he has lots of lawyers with experience in traffic court who are more than willing to show up on TV, spinning stories and espousing fantastical legal theories but even he knows he needs some real ones for serious cases.

Viral Musings:  The CDC is reorganizing itself, and not a moment too soon given all the new and old viruses that keep on emerging.  Their goal is to be less stodgy and more nimble and communicative going forward.  That’s great and much needed but why does it seem like a certain percentage of the country still won’t listen to anything they have to say? The UK has approved a new bivalent COVID booster by Moderna.  The shot targets original COVID as well as the earlier variant of Omicron that was circulating in January.  We’ll be getting a new bivalent booster too but ours, which has not been approved yet, is expected to target original COVID plus Omicron variants BA 4 and BA 5.        

 

What the Flocka? 🌻🌻🌻

Espionage: To no one’s surprise, the Former Guy is doing his usual thing.  He has gone from denying that he took any secret documents to Mar a Lago to saying he did but so what and anyway that guy Barack Hussein Obama, you know the foreign born Black guy, took gazllions of documents home to Chicago and why isn’t that being investigated while also throwing in references to Hillary and Hunter as one does when deflecting.  Of course the FG is lying about everything.  He most certainly squirreled away lots of documents into Mar a Lago cubby holes and maybe one or two dead drop spots and some of those documents were so top secret that they were supposed to only be read in a SCIF, the Cone of Silence facility that we learned about in one of the earliest episodes of the FG Chronicles. As to that accusation against Obama, officials at the National Archives were so ticked off by it that they released a statement making it clear that Obama had done no such thing. For her part, Hillary who was right about everything just laughed. The FG’s current excuse is that he needed to take the documents so that he could work from home and that back when he was president he had given a standing order that anything he took for home study would be immediately declassified, ergo he had lots at Mar a Lago that was at some point super top secret but nothing there was secret anymore. Putting aside that it’s hardly believable that he “worked” from home as he barely worked when he was in the White House, that declassification order is bull, at least that’s what a number of people who would have known about it including former national secruity advisor John Bolton said this weekend. Of course, the FG’s enablers, a group that includes some in Congress and the Senate, a few Governors, former aides, the right wing media and his two of his three sons but curiously not his oldest daughter nor son in law are going with a combination of the FG is being unfairly persecuted, those documents are rightfully his and the real problem is Attorney General Merrick Garland who is till sore about being cheated out of a Supreme Court seat as well as the FBI which by the way should be defunded.  To drive that message home, someone on the FG’s team released an unredacted version of the warrant to search his premises, one that included the names of several FBI agents so that his fans could know who to attack once they dispense with the judge who signed the warrant.  That judge’s synagogue canceled in person services on Saturday over credible concerns that it was about to have a Tree of Life moment.  A few other things mentioned this weekend:  the FG placed a mob boss call to Merrick Garland’s office, one in which he implied Gotti style that he would call his ardent followers off if Garland would stop going after him; the video from the Mar a Lago security cameras, which is now in the DOJ’s hands, shows the boxes of purloined documents being shuffled in and out of the secure room that the FG’s team had agreed to keep them in; and one of the FG’s lawyers signed a statement in June that claimed that all documents marked as classified and held in boxes in storage at Mar a Lago had been given back even though they hadn’t been, that lawyer is now in bigly trouble or should be.  Lastly, with the warrant released, the FG and his enablers are now demanding that its accompanying affadavit be released as well.  That’s the document that includes the justification for the warrant, details that are typically not released at this point in an investigation and that would also likely include names of more officials, including those “rats,” that the FG would like to see buried alongside his first wife or in the NJ Meadowlands. By the way, things appear to be heating up in NYC and Fulton County too.  On Friday a New York judge ruled that the case against the FG’s company and his erstwhile CFO Alan Weisselberg can proceed and the FG has hired a new criminal attorney to represent him in the “find me more votes” Fulton County case.  That new lawyer is Drew Findling who is known online as #BillionDollarLawyer for representing a star-studded list of hip hop clients, including Cardi B, Migos, Waka Flocka Flame, and Gucci Mane.  

Primarily Yours:  Tomorrow is judgement day for two on the FG’s enemies list.  Absent a miracle, in Wyoming Liz Cheney is expected to lose to her primary opponent, one time friend, Harriet Hageman who has been endorsed by the FG.  Current polls show Hageman out in front with 52% of the vote to Cheney’s 30%.  In Alaska, keep an eye on Senator Lisa Murkowski who is being challenged by FG supported candidate Kelly Tshibaka.  In Alaska  candidates from all parties now run on the same ballot meaning that even if Murkowski doesn’t come in first, she’s expected to make it to the November ballot where as a result of ranked choice voting she’s stands a good, though not certain chance of holding her seat.  Super spreader/former Governor/one time VP Candidate Sarah Palin is also on the Alaska ballot.  She’s running for the House seat vacated as a result of the death of Republican Don Young. The machinations of that race are hard to explain. First the candidates have to get through a special election which will determine who fills Young’s seat through the end of the year.  According to election guru Nate Silver, the Democratic candidate Mary Peltola is polling in first place with Palin battling it out for second with her remaining Republican rival Nick Begich.  If Palin comes in second, there’s a chance the Democrat could end up the special election winner due to ranked choice voting because there are many Republicans in Alaska who dislike Palin.  However, if Begich comes in second, the expectation is that he’ll beat out Democrat Peltola. Then they get to do it all over again in November.

Legislative Action:  As expected the Inflation Reduction Act, the new climate and health legislation, passed through the House with all Democrats voting for it including those on the left who wanted more and Maine’s outlier Democrat Jared Golden, who frequently votes with the Republicans, on board. All Republicans voted no.  As previously noted, out of pocket insulin expenditures will only be capped for Medicare recipients as 43 Senate Republicans refused to extend that benefit to those with private insurance.  However, Senate Leader Chuck Schumer says don’t give up hope on that just yet.  He plans to bring insulin caps back up in September, hoping that putting Republican Senators in a “burn pit” position before the November election moves a few more votes into the pro cap crowd.

 

Nukes on Your Bingo Card  🌻🌻🌻

Secrets With Omelets: Even Merrick Garland has a tipping point.  Yesterday, while a MAGA inspired maniac who had targeted the FBI’s Cincinnati office was being chased down, the usually reticent Attorney General took to the podium.  His concise to the point message was that before sending a team of FBI agents to Mar a Lago, with the warrant that he had personally approved, to scour the premises for purloined documents the DOJ had pursued less invasive means, including a subpoena, and had only resorted to a physical search after direct requests and the subpoena had been rebuffed.  In addition, he pointed out that out of respect to the FG, or really out of respect for his prior office because who’s he kidding, the FBI had been discrete, that the only reason that the search went public was because of the FG’s bombastic statements about it.  Additionally, he noted that that the FG’s lawyers were present during the search and that the FG had been provided a copy of the warrant as well as other relevant paperwork but that the FG had chosen to do his inflammatory kvetch routine instead of share them with the press.  Then before leaving the podium, Garland announced that the DOJ was taking the unusual step of asking the court to unseal the warrant and its exhibits because of “substantial public interest,” adding of course, that the FG would have the right to argue against the release.  Basically Garland called the FG’s bluff.  After the Garland presser various media outlets reported that someone in the FG’s inner circle had been one of the FBI’s sources, in other words as the FG has long feared, there really is at least one “rat” on the inside; that the physical search was motivated over believable concerns that documents detailing nuclear secrets (to quote Robin, holy moly Batman) were being held at Mar a Lago, the club which probably has more foreign agents per capita, on staff and among its members, than any other location in the world; and that the FBI had earlier subpoenaed Mar a Lago’s security camera tapes.  All that damning information could explain why, according to whisperer Maggie Haberman, some in the FG’s universe had been out advising a number of ‘his” politicians and other supporters to chill for a while lest they end up with more mud on their already soiled faces. Late last night, while continuing to describe the FBI search as an “unAmerican, unwarranted and unnecessary raid and break in” the FG said that he will not oppose the release of the warrant and its exhibits, not because he wants to see any of it out in the open but because he’d been backed into a corner and anyway, regardless of what’s revealed, his base will still believe him over those Biden’s henchman, because that’s what they do. It’s possible that the warrant and its exhibits could be released as early as this afternoon.  As to that Cincinnati maniac, his name was Ricky Shiffer, he was killed during a standoff with authorities but not before we learned that he was triggered by the FG’s inflammatory statements about the “raid,” that he was a regular poster on Truth Social, that he may  actually have been “truthing” during his flight from law enforcement, and that he’d been among the insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6^th.  How long before the FG and the rest of MAGA elevate him to hero status?  Or have they already?   

Price Tags: Former national security advisor John Bolton and the FG did not part as friends which explains why the FG cut off his security protection, the protection that he had extended beyond normal for all of his kids and former Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.  Fortunately for Bolton, President Biden, no fan of Bolton’s hawkish views, did re-up Bolton’s security protection because it turns out that the Iranians really meant it when they said that they would get even for the targeted assassination of their former terror chief Qasem Soleimani.  On Wednesday the DOJ announced criminal  charges against a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for allegedly trying to orchestrate Bolton’s assassination. Bolton’s response was that he was offended that the price on his head was only $300,000, but who’s he kidding, he’s probably not sleeping comfortably these days and he’d probably still vote for the FG if he’s the Republican’s 2024 candidate. 

Viral Musings:  We’ve moved into the next phase of COVID management.  The coronavirus Is still out there everywhere but if you’re not already, get used to it.  The CDC announced that schools and other institutions no longer need to screen apparently healthy students and employees as a matter of course. They’ve dropped the “six foot” social distancing standard, which as far as I can tell was dropped long ago. The quarantine rule for unvaccinated people is gone too. The focus now is on highly vulnerable populations and how to protect them, not on the vast majority of people who at this point are thought to have some immunity against the virus, through vaccination, boosting and/or prior infection, and are unlikely to become severely ill.  To be clear, you are still supposed to get tested if you have symptoms, you are still supposed to quarantine if you test positive, unvaccinated folks are still supposed to mask and test after being exposed, and it’s still recommended that you mask in high virus locales, especially when in doors.  Of course, all of this could change if, when the next more virulent variant emerges so don’t ditch your testing kits or mask supplies and get ready for another booster in the fall.

Drano 🌻🌻🌻

Circling the Drain:  On Tuesday, Maggie Haberman, the Former Guy whisperer from the NY Times tweeted two pictures of various FG toilet bowl clogged with torn up notes, including one scrap with third in Republican leadership Elise Stefanik’s name written boldly in his trademark Sharpie scrawl.  Those loo tweets confirmed one of Maggie’s earlier scoops, that during his presidency the FG used toilets to “disappear” notes and other documents that he didn’t want saved for posterity. Putting aside the weirdness of someone in his entourage photographing his clogged latrines, the bigly story is that not everything the FG wanted destroyed made it to the sewers beneath his various residences and other accommodations. We know that for sure because while Maggie was tweeting her privy pics, the FBI was at Mar a Lago scouring the premises for those items and documents, including some highly confidential top secret ones, that he hadn’t managed to flush. The agents who coordinated their activities with the Secret Service contingent in residence were armed with a judicially approved warrant, and it’s more than fair to assume that their “visit” had Attorney General Merrick Garland and the FG appointed FBI Director Christopher Wray’s seal of approval.  That said, immediately after the FG tweeted out that the FBI had “raided” his precious Mar a Lago, his fans, including quite a few high placed politicians such as GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and even the former VP who he tried to eliminate, took to the Twitter-verse and the air waves to condemn the search as an atrocious and unprecedented invasion of his personal privacy, proof that no one was safe under the Biden led “communist” regime because, obviously, if the FG is into stealing and hiding government documents, even ones that could jeopardize national security should they fall into the hands of and/or be sold to the likes of Vlad and his cronies, it’s not like anyone should object, especially any of those people who threw tantrums over Hillary Clinton’s emails. McCarthy also threatened to set up a committee to investigate and possibly even impeach Merrick Garland assuming the Republicans win the House and the likes of Margie Q and “guns, guns, guns” Boebert called for the FBI to be defunded.  Worth noting, we only learned of the FBI search because the FG who was in NY preparing for his sit down with NY Attorney General Tish James told us about it, the FBI still has said nothing.  The FG, of course hasn’t seen fit to also share the warrant which would show the legal justification of the search because why would he want to do that?  The FBI and the DOJ will probably have to say something soon, because the FG has whipped his fans into a frenzy and their calls for civil war and the taking up of arms, and a lot of them are armed with things like AR 15s, are getting out of hand.  And because we are firmly in bizarro world, two Andrews, Yang and Cuomo have now weighed in, criticizing the FBI and DOJ and the FG is fundraising off the “raid” that wasn’t a raid and threatening to announce his 2024 run for the presidency imminently. By the way, President Biden has had a really good few weeks but sadly, his notable accomplishments including the passage of the veteran burn pit legislation, the imminent passage of the health and climate act, the almost unanimous approval of Finland and Sweden joining NATO and the elimination of al-Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri are now being pushed to the side, muted by all things FG and those right wing threats and diatribes. 

Legally Yours:  In other legal news, because with the FG and his crowd there is always more legal news, yesterday Pennsylvania Republican Congressman Scott Perry, who was knee deep in the coup attempt and who introduced Environmental lawyer/Attorney General wannabee Jeffrey Clark to the FG, revealed that a team of FBI agents presumably not the same set who searched Mar a Lago, “seized” his cell phone.  Also, the DC Court of Appeals ruled that the IRS should turn the FG’s tax returns over to the House Ways and Means Committee.  Of course the FG is expected to appeal that ruling and his stalling tactics could work because if the next Congress is ruled by Kevin Q, the Ways and Means request will immediately swirl the drain. On the primary front, more FG endorsed candidates/election deniers won Republican nominations yesterday making the upcoming mid-terms that much more critical for those quaint souls who believe that elections should be determined by voters rather than partisan Governors and secretaries of states. Notably one of those deniers, Pennsylvania Gubernatorial candidate/January 6^th insurrectionist Doug Mastriano finally showed up to testify virtually in front of the House January 6 panel but never answered any questions because his lawyer protested the legality of the process and cut off his appearance at the start.  In Michigan, Matthew DePerno, the FG backed Republican nominee for Attorney General was named by police investigators as a participant in a scheme to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment as part of one of those wacko efforts to prove 2020 election fraud that wasn’t.  The current Michigan Attorney General Democrat Dana Nessel who is running for reelection is now seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate DePerno because as he’s now her opponent for the office she’s conflicted.

        

Lemonade 🌻🌻🌻

Legislative Update:  While the usual crowd of Republican crazies including a cast of presidential wannabees, extreme MAGAs, a Nazi policy espousing foreign leader and the FG himself spoke at the latest in an endless stream of CPAC’s conventions, Senate Democrats legislated.  They finally passed their much awaited, and sometimes feared dead, reconciliation bill.  Instead of the large Build Back Better “wish list” one that they’d bandied about earlier in the year, this bill, shrewdly renamed the Inflation Reduction Act, is scaled back, focused on the environment and health care with some offsetting tax reform provisions.   On the environment front, the bill includes $300 billion for energy and climate reform.  On the health care front it allows the federal government to negotiate the price Medicare pays for certain expensive drugs while also putting an annual cap of $2000 on Medicare beneficiaries’ out of pocket drug expenditures and a $35 per month cap on their insulin costs. It also extends the Affordable Care health care subsidies through 2025. The bill originally extended the $35 insulin cap to include those with private insurance but because the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that doing so would violate the incomprehensible rules of reconciliation, that extension needed 60 votes, rather than 50, to be included. Seven Republicans including Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Susan Collins of Maine, Josh Hawley of Missouri, Cindy Hyde Smith of Mississippi, John Kennedy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Dan Sullivan of Alaska voted to include the insulin provision in the bill but 43 others including three doctors, Roger Marshall of Kansas, John Barrasso of Wyoming and the always obstructive Rand Paul of Kentucky, who really should have known better and the maybe not so terrific as he wants us to believe Mitt Romney, who for the record also opposed the Veteran burn pit health care legislation, voted against doing so. One of the Senate naysayers was Iowa’s Joni Ernst, who talked about the importance of capping insulin prices during her 2020 reelection campaign. Looks like Ernst believes that towing the party line is more important than helping her constituents.  Worth noting, the average price for a unit of  insulin in the US is $98.70 versus $6.94 in Australia, $9.08 in France, $11.00 in Germany, $12.00 in Canada $14.4 in Japan.

Offsets:  On the pay for side, the bill creates a 15% minimum tax for corporations making $1 billion or more in income, a provision that is expected to bring in $300 million in revenues, and since Arizona Senator Sinema wouldn’t support getting rid of the carried interest provision, it now includes a 1% excise tax on corporate stock buybacks, a provision that, at least according to those who compute these things, will actually raise more revenue than closing the carried interest loophole.  The bill now moves to the House where Nancy’s crowd is expected to easily pass it, not because they’re pleased that it fails to address all the things they want, but because they, at least enough of them, are pragmatic enough to know that something is better than nothing and it represents a much needed win going into the mid-terms.  And to be fair, the Act is a big win for President Biden, Senate Leader Schumer and the Democratic contingent. Say what you want about Kyrsten Sinema and her moderate colleague Joe Manchin, and many progressives have, but the timing of their cooperation and probably even their efforts to trim the bill, together with the Supreme Court abortion ruling, may help save the Democrats’ hide in the midterms, well maybe. The environment matters and that $35 cap on insulin is a big deal for those who’ll benefit and for those with impacted family members.  Republicans who will take full credit for anything their states and districts get from the bill are already out on Twitter and the airwaves calling it inflationary and socialist but maybe, just maybe their opposition to extending the insulin savings provision will come back to bite them because that opposition, like their opposition to the burn pit legislation that ultimately passed, is kind of hard to defend.  But then again, who knows anymore.

Abortion Politics: Speaking of things that bite, while it’s great that Kansas voters refused to allow their state to strip reproductive rights from its constitution, legislators in Indiana just voted for a super restrictive abortion law.  A few corporations including pharma giant Eli Lilly responded by saying that because they expect the law will make it harder to recruit skilled professionals they’ll now be growing their business in friendlier locales. That’s great, but where was Lilly before the legislation was passed?  Speaking of unfriendly locales, Florida’s Governor DeSantis continues to spin out of control.  Last week he suspended Hillsborough County’s twice elected state attorney Andrew Warren,  after he said that he wouldn’t enforce the state's 15-week abortion ban and condemned laws criminalizing gender-affirming health care. DeSantis isn’t the only Florida politician who’s off the rails.  Over the weekend, speaking at the CPAC convention Senator Marco Rubio, who is facing Central Florida Democratic Congresswoman Val Demings in the midterms, blamed George Soros and all those evil globalists for all of the country’s ills.  To be clear, by Soros and globalists he’s obviously dog whistling Jews, a hateful bigoted position to take anywhere but particularly odd given Florida’s demographic make-up.  But then again, Florida’s other Senator Rick Scott wants to cut both Medicare and Social Security so who knows?

Viral Musings:  Joe Biden is back.  Two negative COVID tests in a row and he’s ready to roll despite all those calls, amplified by the likes of the NY Times’ Maureen Dowd and some in his own party for him to throw in the towel and say that he’s not going to run in 2024. You’d think that they’d wait until after the midterms to go there but Democrats tend to eat their own and the NY Times was all in on the #ButHerEmails parade so apparently not. That said, a few clever folks have turned the MAGA Go Brandon FU slam around recharacterizing into a Dark Brandon meme, depicting a heroic, sunglass donning Biden action figure, as a way to celebrate his recent multiple legislative victories because when you’ve got lemons, might as well make lemonade.  As to viruses, while COVID is here there and everywhere collaborating with the weather gods to maximize flight cancellations, the focus is now also on Monkeypox and polio. According to Bloomberg, it’s worth noting that though its effectiveness wanes over time, those who received a smallpox vaccine before 1972 when vaccinations were stopped due to the eradication of the disease, still have some protection against the worst effects of Monkeypox and everyone, except of course the original anti vax crowd and too young to be vaccinated yet babies have received polio vaccines.                  

Not in Our Kansas!  🌻🌻🌻

Primarily Yours:  Kansas has spoken and it turns out that even in a very red state, one that the Former Guy won by 15 points in 2020, voters, particularly women but also the men who get it, care about maintaining reproductive rights. Despite a huge effort by the anti-abortion forces, including a $3 million expenditure by the Catholic church, the results weren’t even close, the pro-choice side prevailed with 59% of the vote.  According to the NY Times the results in Kansas “suggest” that voters in 4 out of 5 states would vote like Dorothy and Toto, rejecting initiatives that seek to eliminate their right to abortion. The question now is whether a sufficient number of those voters will prioritize reproductive rights enough to also vote against anti-abortion candidates when they aren’t voting in a single issue referendum.  If they do, Democrats stand a good chance of maintaining control of the Senate, perhaps even increasing their majority because virtually all of the Republican candidates for the Senate in the key swing states are anti-abortion. If voters don’t prioritize reproductive rights, the right to abortion will be in jeopardy everywhere as most if not all of those anti-abortion candidates are on record saying that if they make it to the Senate they’ll vote to impose a federal abortion ban. That anti-abortion contingent now includes Blake Masters, the tech billionaire Peter Thiel funded, FG endorsed candidate, who won the Republican contest to face off against Arizona’s pro-choice incumbent Democratic Senator/former astronaut Mark Kelly.  Masters isn’t just anti-choice he’s also on record questioning the legality of contraception (yup, contraception), labeling newest Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson a “pedophile apologist” and calling for the imprisonment of virus guru Fauci.  In other Arizona news, Republicans voted an all insurrectionist slate for state offices including far right Oath Keeper Mark Finchem as their candidate for Secretary of State and election denier, FG fan Kari Lake as their gubernatorial candidate.  Lake will face off against current Secretary of State and now the Democratic nominee for Governor Katie Hobbs.  Arizona’s electorate is just about evenly split between registered Republicans, Democrats and independents. Those Democrats and a critical mass of independents are going to have to do some very heavy lifting to keep the leadership of the state out of dangerously insane, insurrection friendly hands.  Michigan is another state where Republicans continue to move further and further to the right.  Their candidate for Governor who will face off against Democrat incumbent Gretchen Whitmer is Tudor Dixon, a former conservative commentator, who was endorsed by the FG and is backed by former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her billionaire family.  Tudor is another one so opposed to abortion that she rejects it even in cases of rape or incest.  

Batty Signals: Conspiracy theorist and far right radio host Alex Jones missed the bat signal, the one about destroying incriminating texts and emails.  Two days ago, the attorney representing one of the Sandy Hook Elementary School parents suing Jones for his false assertion that the massacre had never happened and other equally horrific lies having to do with kids as crisis actors, revealed that Jones’ lawyers had accidentally sent him a whole bunch of Jones’s phone records, including his texts.  In addition to revealing that Jones had committed perjury, those texts likely include some conversations that Jones who was knee deep in coup activities had with members of the FG insurrectionist squad on and around January 6^th 2020 which is why they are now being sought by the January 6^th committee. As to that bat signal, apparently it was received by some of the FGs former appointees at the Defense Department, including acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller, former chief of staff Kash Patel and former Secretary of the Army Ryan McCarthy because they, unlike Alex Jones but like those at Homeland Security and the Secret Service, conveniently wiped their phones clean of incriminating communications prior to exiting government.  All that wiping is now being investigated to determine whether or not it was just an ordinary parting activity or whether it was done for some more nefarious reasons.   

Reconciling:  It looks like the Democrats reconciliation package is one very important step closer to passage.  Last night, Arizona’s unpredictable centrist Senator Kyrsten Sinema who had been the remaining Democratic hold out signed off on a bill that no longer eliminates the carried interest provision that hedge funds love so much and that narrows the 15% minimum tax on corporations but instead includes an 1% excise tax on stock buy backs.  At her insistence, the bill now also includes additional drought funding for the Southwest, a shrewd request for a Senator from Arizona.  The bill now awaits final sign off from the Senate Parliamentarian.      

And:  Hungary’s Viktor Orban, the proud Christian nationalist who rants against racial mixing and same sex marriage was greeted with cheers when he spoke at this week’s Conservative PAC (CPAC) convention. His speech followed his faux state visit with the Former Guy at Bedminster Golf Club.  Orban is big on touting his pro-family views in contrast to the thrice married FG who buried a former wife at his golf course to get the tax benefit associated with burial sites.  As to the FG’s spawn, two of them, Ivanka and Jr, finally showed up to testify in the NYS civil probe into their family’s business practices.  They, unlike their younger brother Eric, did not plead the Fifth but it’s fair to assume that their memories were conveniently sketchy.  Their father who is just sketchy, is due to testify shortly.  Also due to testify as part of the DOJ investigation into the false elector scheme and whatever else they’re looking at are former FG White House Counsel Pat Cipollone and his second in command. The Senate voted almost unanimously to sign off on the admission of Finland and Sweden into NATO.  The two outliers were fist bumper Josh Hawley who as noted by his fellow Republican Senator Cotton previously voted for the admission of Montenegro and North Macedonia and Rand Paul.  Hawley voted no, Paul voted present.  If things don’t work out for the two here they can always jet off to visit Vladimir Putin, another one who vehemently opposes all things NATO.  As to Russia, the bad news is that yesterday basketball player Britney Griner was sentenced to serve 9 years in prison for having vape cartridges in her suitcase.  The potentially good news is that this morning Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow is ready to discuss a prisoner swap for her and former Marine Paul Whelan.    

 

Pseudo 🌻🌻🌻

Tee Shots: Over the weekend the Former Guy’s Bedminster club, Ivana’s final “resting” place,  hosted a golf tournament sponsored by LIV the new Saudi funded golf tour that has been throwing wads of moolah at professional golfers to lure them away from the dominant PGA Tour.  In the face of criticism by 9.11 families who for obvious reasons are upset about his association with the Saudi sponsored tour, the FG who clearly is in it for the money and who remains pissed at the PGA for pulling their tournaments from his clubs responded by saying that canoodling with the Saudis is fine because “nobody has gotten to the bottom of 9.11,” that is nobody but everybody but him.  In contrast President Biden who suffered days of withering criticism when he greeted Saudi heir apparent Mohammed bin Salaam with a fist bump during his recent visit to Saudi Arabia, the country where the Former Guy embraced a shining orb on his first official presidential trip, approved what turned out to be a successful drone assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the evil Egyptian doctor and until this weekend the leader of al Qaeda who is thought to have been the mastermind behind Osama bin Laden’s World Trade Center attack. Of course politics being what they are, last night Fox’s hatemonger in chief Tucker Carlson shrugged off Biden’s success as a nothing burger because though the Fox owning Murdoch family has soured on the FG they are still all in on Tucker. In other international news, Speaker Pelosi is off in Asia, and likely to be touching down in Taiwan shortly on a trip that she was supposed to have taken earlier but was postponed due to her bout with COVID. The Chinese who as a matter of policy hate it when anyone even utters the word Taiwan, are outraged or at least faux outraged, odd because they had said nothing about her prior plans. At least they’ve backed off from suggestions that they’d shoot her out of the sky during or after her trip. By the way, though US officials do try hard not to offend the Chinese over Taiwan, Newt Gingrich did travel there back when he was Speaker so Pelosi’s trip is not without precedent.  Of course that was before the Russian’s attacked Ukraine, a strategy that China’s Xi would like to apply to Taiwan.

Politics as Usual: For some reason that escapes me and more significantly that also escapes most veterans as well as Jon Stewart, last week a number of Senate Republicans decided that holding up the passage of burn pit veteran health funding legislation was the best way to punish their Democratic colleagues, most notably Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin, for finally agreeing, well maybe agreeing, on a reconciliation package. Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey, who is retiring this year, is so committed to trashing the bill that he appeared on several news programs over the weekend where in addition to falsely asserting that his opposition was about some nefarious language that was recently added to the legislation even though there is no such recently added language also attacked Jon Stewart calling him a “pseudo-celebrity.”  Stewart, a real celebrity and also a long term and very shrewd advocate for veteran health, struck back by also appearing on all the news shows and to put it mildly, you don’t want to get in Stewart’s way when he’s on a tear.  It looks like Stewart will emerge the victor in this battle as the legislation will be brought back up for a vote this week and is expected to pass as is. As to the Democrats reconciliation package, the blue crowd is now biting their nails, waiting to see if Arizona’s mercurial Senator Kyrsten Sinema will sign off on the package, especially the carried interest tax provision. Stay tuned.

Disappearing Ink:  The saga of the missing texts has legs.  It’s not just those Secret Service agents,  FG era acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli’s emails and texts are also are missing for the period leading up to the January 6^th insurrection. Adding to the intrigue, it appears that Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari, who has known about the missing communications for longer than he previously admitted, denied a request by some at Homeland Security to have their widely respected and skilled colleagues in cyber work on recovering the missing emails back when the problem was first discovered. Cuffari is one of the many Inspectors General that the FG put in place back when he decided that he didn’t really like the whole idea of career IGs doing their jobs well, especially if that meant that they would investigate misdeeds that took place under his watch.  To borrow an expression from the Bard, something is rotten in the state of Denmark or else everyone in Homeland is really incompetent or both.   

Primarily Yours:  Today’s another primary day. Most of the activity is on the Republican side of the aisle where a whole bunch of MAGA election deniers are running against each other.  Last night the FG endorsed “ERIC” in the Missouri Senate race, leaving two Erics, the one-time disgraced Governor/misogynist Eric Greitans and one of the other leading Republicans Attorney General Eric Schmidt to each claim that they’d received his coveted nod. Of course the double endorsement allows the FG to claim victory as long as one of the two wins.  In Arizona, where most of the candidates refuse to acknowledge that Biden is president a Pence supported candidate is running for governor against a truly loony FG supported one.  In addition, in all likelihood Blake Masters, the candidate who has both the FG’s support and tech billionaire Peter Thiel’s financial backing is likely to be teed up to run against Democratic Senator/astronaut Mark Kelly.  Abortion rights is on the ballot in Kansas where Republicans are hoping that a primary dominated with Republican races, and therefore few Democratic voters, will make it easier for them to start the process of stripping reproductive rights from the state’s constitution.           

Viral Musings: If Biden turning COVID negative in just five days seemed too good to be true, it’s because it was. He like about 5% of those taking the Paxlovid antiviral has rebounded back into the positive zone.  The good news is that he doesn’t appear to have any symptoms, the bad news is that he’s back in quarantine awaiting another negative test, something that can take a while to get.  While COVID remains the disease to be most concerned about contracting, two others are worth noting.  Monkeypox is now a public health emergency in NY and California.  The number of documented cases in the US is somewhere around 5200 with most, though not all, of those cases still among gay men.  And because COVID and Monkeypox aren’t enough to keep the neurotic up at night, which these days is more of us than any care to admit, with one case of polio detected in New York State’s Rockland County and bacteria found in the area’s sewer system, the state Health Department is reminding everyone who isn’t, to get vaccinated ASAP.  At least for now COVID remains the disease to watch out for as so far no one in the US has died from the treatable and mostly preventable though painful monkeypox and we are all, at least we should all be, vaccinated for polio.                         

             ,