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.