What, Me Worry? 🌻🌻🌻

Stormy Days: Ian, or Ira as I mistakenly called the lethal hurricane on Wednesday, left a path of destruction through Florida, even taking out Lee County’s Sanibel Island causeway that I helped fund back in the day.  Ian/Ira is now headed to the Carolinas and Virginia where he’s likely to cause more flooding and wind damage. Fortunately for Florida’s residents President Biden who is expected to visit late next week but who isn’t likely to toss any rolls of Bounty or Brawny, didn’t try to extract any concessions in exchange for the huge amount of aid needed to get Florida back into shape. It’s also good for Florida that Biden didn’t follow the example of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, once a member of Congress, or Senator Marco Rubio, both of whom voted against funding aid for New York and New Jersey after super storm Sandy.  Two of Florida’s more well-known residents survived the hurricane intact and appear to also be riding out their personal storms.  The first, the Former Guy, received another gift from his pocket judge Aileen Cannon who yesterday overrode some decisions made by Judge Dearie, the FG team selected Special Master she appointed to oversee the process of sorting and classifying the documents that the FG took with him to Mar a Lago.  As a result of another of Cannon’s absurdly one-sided rulings, the FG and his team will not be required to sign off on a detailed inventory of the purloined documents at this time. That requirement would have backed the FG’s team into admitting that none of the documents had been planted by nefarious FBI agents and, naturally, that’s not an admission that the FG wants to make in court because doing so could crimp his ability to continue to assert to his co-conspirators at Fox and other like-minded right-wing outlets that he’s the victim of an FBI set-up. Judge Cannon also extended the deadlines that Dearie had imposed on the FG’s team, a significant win for the FG who, with little in the way of legitimate legal ground to stand on, is all in on stall and delay. The other Teflon garbed Floridian is Congressman Matt Gaetz.  Late last week several media outlets reported that he will not face any charges related to his alleged dalliances with minors, not because those encounters didn’t take place, they probably did, but because the chief witness against him, his former bestie Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg isn’t considered credible enough for court. Gaetz who is likely to easily win reelection to Congress in November even if he’s indicted, is on the record saying that should Republicans win back the House, he plans to join some of his other wacko colleagues’ efforts to impeach Biden, no reason given beyond that it would be a fun thing to do.  One of those wacko colleagues is Margie Q, her name was in the press yesterday too as it was revealed that her estranged, or maybe just strange, husband has filed for divorce.  Margie wants everyone to respect her privacy, because apparently unlike all the Parkland Florida students she’s gone after, she’s entitled to some.

Love and Marriage: Back in Washington DC, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, wife of Clarence, the only Justice who dissented when the Supreme Court rejected the FG’s bid to withhold White House documents concerning January 6, finally testified in front of the January 6 Committee.  Though we don’t yet know everything that Ginni did or didn’t say, we do know that she went on record saying that she still believes, all evidence to the contrary, that the 2020 election was stolen.  She began her testimony by assuring everyone that she never talks to Clarence about her political activities, that he knew nothing about her questionable texts, the ones where she tried to have the election results overturned, until he read about them in the paper. Few believe that but as long as true love Clarence keeps their conversations under wraps who can prove otherwise?  We know he will stay quiet because doing otherwise would mean that he’d have to recuse from future decisions, and we know he has no plans to do that. To maintain the Court’s credibility, he probably should recuse anyway, but then again, it’s not like the Court has much credibility these days so there’s that. Regarding the Court’s reputation, Justice Sam Alito, the author of the infamous Roe overturning Dodd decision is offended that fellow Justice Elena Kagan called the Court’s legitimacy into question when she said that “The thing that builds up reservoirs of public confidence is the Court acting like a Court and not acting like an extension of the political process.” Alito who threw out 50 years of precedent to push his own personal political agenda calling out Kagan for stating the obvious is about all you need to know about the Court’s current lack of legitimacy.  Worth noting we still don’t know who leaked the Dodd draft.

Russia, Russia, Russia: Having held his sham elections, Putin is expected to annex large sections of Ukraine today.  Some, though not all of those disputed areas are currently under Russian control. Putin’s rationale, not that anything he does these days is rational, is that by annexing parts of Ukraine he can now say that any attack by Zelenskyy’s Ukrainian forces with or without the help of NATO on those areas is now an attack on Mother Russia, something that in his twisted mind would justify him retaliating with weapons of mass destruction, like chemicals or nukes. Something is also up with the Nord Stream pipelines which are leaking gas, likely the result of undersea sabotage.  The Russians blame the US something that the US is on the record denying, and almost everyone else blames the Russians who might be looking to create an excuse to do something nefarious as payback. Not to worry though because the FG who was impeached for holding aid to Ukraine hostage in exchange for dirt on Hunter Biden announced on Truth Social that he’s ready to head up a mediation team.  So bottom line, worry because there is lots to worry about.        

  

 Storm Clouds 🌻🌻🌻

Ira and Georgia: Today’s January 6^th committee televised hearing has been cancelled due to Hurricane Ira which, at this point, looks like it will be a devastating Category 4 storm when it slams into Southwest Florida around Port Charlotte and Fort Myers early this afternoon.  The damage from Ira will be immediate and no doubt hard to experience and watch as it will cause a lot of suffering.  Also hard to watch is a different kind storm, the political and economic one hitting Europe right now where Italy just chose Georgia Meloni, a Mussolini loving fascist as their new leader.  It should go without saying that the last time Italy fully embraced Fascism, things didn’t turn out well there or for the rest of Europe, not to mention for the millions who fell outside of Fascist approved ethnicities. Sadly, Italy’s move to the far right isn’t isolated, in Sweden a party originally founded by neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists represents the second-largest group in parliament. In Hungary and Poland, the far right is already in power.  France’s ultra-nationalist Marine Le Pen has been knocking at the door of that country’s leadership for some time and in Spain the far right has been gaining ground. Also worth noting, Meloni is a protégé of Steve Bannon, like that other known autocrat, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, she has spoken at CPAC and of course Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s leader, along with quite a few of his like-minded US cronies, has fully embraced her electoral victory because who doesn’t like white nationalists? Things aren’t all that rosy in the UK either, they appear to be in an economic morass which makes our current fight against inflation look like child’s play.  Liz Truss, the UK’s new Prime Minister is not expected to go the distance.

 

Pardon Me: Getting back to the January 6^th Committee, while we won’t be hearing from them today, their meeting is likely to be rescheduled shortly.  At that point, we should expect to hear more details about those plans to get several states to overturn their election results, including who at the White House was most involved in that effort. To that end, it looks like Mark Meadows, was the hub for a lot of communication, or at the very least, he’s looking more and more like the designated fall guy.  Also, it’s probably not all that surprising that there’s video tape of the Former Guy’s long-time associate Roger Stone, calling for a quick move to violence because having been pardoned once he figured he could get pardoned again if need be.  On the legal front, last week a trio of less well-known FG lawyers were seen hanging outside of a DC Grand Jury, which seemed somewhat intriguing, even raising some hope that something big was about to happen.  It turns out that they were there to try to block the testimony of Eric Hershmann, the one-time FG legal advisor, whose candor in front of the January 6^th committee was a bit too revealing for their tastes. Apparently, the fact that Hershmann told the FG that he shouldn’t be taking government documents to Mar a Lago, and the FG’s decision to take them anyway is something that the FG’s team doesn’t want revealed in court because it’s evidence that he knew he was committing a bigly no no.  On the subject of FG lawyers, yesterday it was reported that Chris Kise, his newest one who he, or at least one of his political action funds, paid a $3 million retainer, has been sidelined and is no longer taking the lead in the Mar a Lago purloined documents case that he was hired to head up, leading many to surmise that Kise is unwilling to prevaricate on the FG’s behalf.  One positive note, yesterday Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell announced his backing for the bipartisan electoral count reform bill that also has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. That makes it highly likely that the bill which was written to prevent, or at least try to prevent another January 6, will pass through the Senate with at least 60 votes, though one of those votes will not come from Ted Cruz who is on record opposing it because of course.  A similar bill already passed through the House, though there are some differences, it’s expected that they will be worked out and that the bill will be signed into law. The bill’s passage will be a good thing, but it won’t address the problem of states refusing to validate election results, a problem that will fester and grow if states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and others vote election deniers into Secretary of State positions.  

 

Mind Melds 🌻🌻🌻

Dynasty?  Welcome to Autumn, the Former Guy is still acting out, wielding his sledgehammer at our democracy but at least his week was worse than most, if not all, of ours.  Though she got off to a delayed start likely because her planned starting time overlapped with President Biden’s Putin slamming United Nations speech, NYS Attorney General Letitia James’ presentation was worth the wait.  She announced that’s she suing the FG, his company and the three of his adult children not named Tiffany for fraudulently and misstating the values of numerous properties bigly to obtain favorable loans and tax benefits. One example of that fraudulent behavior includes claiming that his NYC triplex, the one in his namesake tower that he claims has 68 floors even though it only has 58, measured 30,000 square feet when it is “only” 11,000 square feet while asserting its value was $327 million at a time when only one other apartment in the city had sold for $100 million, that apartment in a super modern skyscraper with sleek finishes but no gaudy gilded toilets and the like. Other examples include substantially over valuing another name emblazed NYC apartment building by ignoring that a significant number of its apartments were rent stabilized, including never to be collected club membership fees as well as never zoned and thus never to be built luxury homes in NY and Scotland in valuations, vastly overstating the value of several commercial properties in NY and Florida and fully counting cash in the accounts of partnerships in which he only held small minority interests.  Though real estate folks are famous for puffing up values, the scope of the FG’s inflation appears unprecedented. Though it’s unlikely that James will get everything she’s wants and may end up settling out of court, she’s seeking $250 million in damages and is trying to bar the FG, Junior, Eric and Ivanka from serving as an officer of a company in NY and from doing business in the state. She’s also asked federal prosecutors in NYC and the IRS to investigate the family for federal crimes.  Naturally,  the FG responded by slamming James, her political ambitions, and calling her out as racist.  At the very least he’s not wrong about her political ambitions but the racist part, that’s a bit of a self-own.  Equally predictable, former Attorney General Barr, that paragon of nothing good, said it wasn’t fair for James to go after the FG’s kids, because at 44, 40 and 38, no one should expect them to know anything even though two of them supposedly ran the family business for four years and the other negotiated a few of the family’s leases including one for his DC hotel, not to mention her closed fashion line and failed jewelry business.  

ButHerEmails: Moving on to the purloined document caper, the FG took a bigly hit in that case this week too on two fronts.  Three 11^th Circuit judges, two that he appointed, rebuked his pocket Judge Aileen Cannon’s widely questioned ruling, the one where she granted him almost everything he asked for.  They basically eviscerating her faulty and obviously biased judgment. She responded by amending her decision which might make impeded the FG’s teams ability to appeal to a higher court.The bottom line is that the DOJ and only the DOJ, not the Special Master or the FG’s legal team, can now go review the 100 classified documents taken from Mar a Lago.  Those are the documents that the FG told Fox’s Sean Hannity that he declassified by mind meld or Samantha nose twitch or something like that and that the FBI found when they were really there to scour his premises for Hillary Clinton’s emails.  The 11^th Circuit judges weren’t up to date on the #ButHerEmails claim but said that they didn’t believe the documents found at Mar a Lago had been declassified and that it wouldn’t matter if they had been because they still wouldn’t be the FG’s to keep or show to others at Mar a Lago, as a guest on MSNBC suggested he had. If that show and tell assertion is true, we’ll probably hear more about it shortly because that would be bigly big.  And because Judge Dearie, who the FG’s team thought would lean their way but isn’t, is not much for suffering fools, late yesterday he asked the FG’s lawyers to provide him with a list of the documents that had been at Mar a Lago so he can determine what was “planted” by the FBI during their “raid,” basically saying that we know nothing was planted so if you are going to make that claim, put it in writing.  That’s something the FG’s lawyers won’t do just like they have failed to put anything about the FG’s assertion that he declassified documents by nose twitch or otherwise,  in writing because they’d prefer to keep their law licenses and probably don’t look all that fetching in orange jumpsuits.  Speaking of jumpsuits and lawyers, Sidney Powell of kraken fame failed to show up for a subpoenaed appearance in front of Fani Willis’ Fulton County Georgia Grand Jury yesterday.  #LockHerUp time?  

Overseas:  Things aren’t going well in either Iran or Russia. In Iran protesters have been engaging in anti-government demonstrations over the death of a 22 year-old Kurdish Iranian woman, Mahsa Amini who died while being held for a violation of the country’s ultraconservative dress code, reports are that she was taken into custody and beaten for failing to adequately cover her hair. In Russia, despite Putin’s assertion that everyone is fully supportive of his war against Ukraine “aggression,” they’re not, especially the men who’ve just been called up to fight. There have been demonstrations in the street, something that like in Iran comes with dire consequences in Russia and planes and roads out of the Russia are filled with men fleeing the country to avoid Putin’s draft.  That Putin is calling up untrained troops to fill his ranks is a sign of how bad things are going in his war with Ukraine. There was a time when Russia sending overwhelming numbers of troops to fight and die in wars was effective but nowadays it takes more than volume to overtake well trained technologically armed opponents so his strategy isn’t expected to end well for the drafted, their families or him.

And: The House just passed its version of legislation intended to make it more difficult to overturn the results of an election.  The legislation passed 229 to 203 with the support of only nine Republicans, all of whom are either retiring at the end of this term or who have lost their primaries to members of the FG’s fan club. That’s sad and doesn’t bode well for the next Congress if the GOP wins back the House. The Senate is working on a bi-partisan though narrower piece of legislation so something might pass by year end.  

Shanah Tovah

Wishing all a Happy, Healthy, and Sweet New Year  

  

News at 10:30 🌻🌻🌻

Ukraine: President Biden is in NYC today to speak at the annual meeting of the United Nations where it’s expected that he’ll call upon members to keep supporting Ukraine.  In contrast, Vladimir Putin whose invasion of Ukraine isn’t going according to plan will not be in attendance.  Instead, despite Russia’s battlefield setbacks and the sanctions that are making life in Russia more difficult, he remains all in on expanding his fiefdom.  He’s calling up more troops, planning sham referendums in and the annexing of the significant parts of Ukraine he still controls and saber rattling with nuclear weapon as one does when their “quick” war isn’t going according to plan.  So basically, despite the remarkable successes of Ukraine’s forces, this war rages on and more ominously if the increasingly desperate Putin really plays his nuclear card, things are about to get much worse which is saying a lot, none of it good, given the atrocities he’s already committed, not to mention all those Russian oligarchs who keep falling out of windows or off boats.

Home Court:  Back at home, Putin’s one time and maybe forever BFF, the Former Guy who allegedly took some other country’s nuclear secrets with him to Mar a Lago, continues to wage his war in the courts. Yesterday, his lawyers, the ones he’s hired to represent him in his purloined documents case as opposed to the dozens he’s hired for all the other cases against him, hit a speed bump when Judge Raymond Dearie, their choice for Special Master, made it clear that he wasn’t buying what they were selling.  Specifically, Judge Dearie told the FG’s team that they “couldn’t have their cake and eat it too,” meaning that they couldn’t hide behind the myth that the FG had declassified classified documents without actually saying he had, something that none of his lawyers have been willing to say in court or in writing because doing so would be perjurious.  To that end Judge Dearie added "If the government gives me prima facie evidence that this is classified, and you decide not to advance a claim of declassification ... as far as I'm concerned that's the end of it," in other words absent any such assertion that they were no longer classified he would assume that documents marked classified were just that. Dearie went on to tell the FG’s lawyers that with regard to those classified documents, if he can make recommendations to Judge Cannon, the Florida judge who appears to reside in the FG’s pocket, without exposing himself or any of them to that material, he’s going to do it, hardly what they wanted to hear.  Dearie also called for everyone to act fast, something that further distressed the FG’s team because one of the points of this ridiculous exercise is to delay as much as possible.  Worth noting that according to Axios, the FG and his lawyers chose Judge Dearie because they believed he would lean their way because back when he served on the FISA Court, he approved search warrants in the Carter Page investigation relying on FBI statements that turned out to be false and incomplete. The FG’s team belief was that as a result of that experience Dearie had become a “a deep skeptic of the FBI” and would perform his Special Master role with that “jaundiced perspective.”  At least so far it appears that he’s not the jaundiced guy they hoped he would be.  Just to add to the confusion, the DOJ is still appealing parts of “pocket judge” Cannon’s decision and both they and the FG’s team filed briefs to the 11^th Circuit on that yesterday.

More Legalities: In other legal news, NYS Attorney General sent out a notice last night that she’ll be making a major announcement this morning at 10:30 AM.  Though she didn’t disclose the topic and it could relate to something else, the pundit class expects that she plans to say something big about the civil case against the FG Organization.  Notably last week she rejected a settlement offer that the FG’s lawyers proposed.  Stay tuned.  Also, because there’s always more, former Elle Magazine columnist E Jean Carroll who is already suing the FG for calling her a liar over her assertion that he had raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman fitting room years back now plans to take advantage of a New York law that goes into effect on November 24.  That new law gives adult sexual assault victims a one-time opportunity to file civil lawsuits, even if the statutes of limitations has long expired.  Carroll still has the dress that she was wearing the day the alleged rape took place and as former President Clinton knows, old dresses can be very revealing.   

Performative Hijinks:  Everyone sues so Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis is now being sued by lawyers representing the asylum-seeking migrants that he flew from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The suit asserts that DeSantis’ scheme, which cost Florida’s taxpayers about $615,000 or $12,000 per person, was both “fraudulent and discriminatory” and likely also violated Florida law.  It’s not clear how much DeSantis cares about legalities since all he’s really doing is pandering to anti-immigrant voters and seeking publicity but it’s worth noting that after FlightAware reported that another presumably DeSantis funded charter flight from Texas was expected to land in Biden’s home state of Delaware that trip was cancelled. Adding to the absurdity, word is that the FG is quite annoyed that DeSantis has stolen his thunder.

Viral Musings: Much has been written about Biden saying that the coronavirus pandemic is over and Republicans in Congress are using his statement to weaponize their fight against funding vaccines and the like but the President is not entirely wrong nor is he entirely right.  COVID is still killing just under 500 Americans daily.  However, most though not all of the recently deceased are either unvaccinated or under boosted by choice because you can’t fix stupid or they fall into highly vulnerable categories due to age or prior illness.  His point which is shared by a number of experts is that we now have effective shots, tests and anti-viral treatments so at least until another more evasive or lethal variant shows up life is just about back to normal. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t still take precautions especially if you are a member of a vulnerable group or just don’t have the time to be sick and out of pocket for a week or more but things are much better than they were and this may well be the new normal, at least for now.

 

Air DeSantis 🌻🌻🌻

Heil Who: On Saturday night while the media continued their non-stop coverage of the ceremonies surrounding the death of the matriarch of one dysfunctional family, the head of another one who is very alive and who aspires to return to his perch atop the country whose presidents are viewed as leaders of the free world was the keynote speaker at a political rally in Youngstown, Ohio where about 6000 obsessed fans hailed him with a one finger salute eerily reminiscent of one from the middle of the last century. The use of the salute wasn’t an outlier, the crowd at a rally in Pennsylvania for far-right gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, himself a January 6^th rioter who continues to dog whistle slime at his Jewish Democratic opponent Josh Shapiro, also urged his crowd, many of whom complied, to use that salute.  No disrespect to the Queen but those salutes, what they stand for and the FG’s recent statement to conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt threatening widespread violence if he’s indicted for any of his crimes should be getting far more attention.

Obstruction, Obstruction: The Queen’s funeral has also sucked some of the air out of coverage of the case of the Mar a Lago purloined documents.  It’s bad that the FG took thousands of government documents to his very insecure winter home, worse that somewhere around 100 of those files were marked highly confidential but maybe worst of all that one of the judges that he appointed continues to kowtow to him proving that Chief Justice Roberts’ assertion that there’s no such things as FG judges is beyond wrong.  Last week, that Judge, Aileen Cannon, ruled in the FG’s favor, granting him executive privilege he no longer has, saying that even out of office he’s entitled to special treatment and doubling down by suggesting that there’s no reason to believe that those secret documents are really secret anymore in part because why should anyone not named the FG but especially the FBI be believed.  On Thursday, over the protests of the Department of Judge Cannon, gave the FG and his team most of what they requested.  She appointed one of their choices, US District Judge Raymond Dearie who the DOJ also signed off on to serve as Special Master to review all of the 11,000 documents that the FG had with him at Mar a Lago with instructions to try to complete his task by November 30, though she did concede that the 100 or so that the DOJ claims are super-secret should be prioritized.  She also said that the FG’s lawyers should be allowed to dispute the findings about which of the documents are personal or are covered by that executive privilege that he doesn’t have, a bit of a problem since: the FG’s lawyers don’t have security clearances, at least so far;  two of them may now be witnesses in any case related to the document theft over their representations that the FG had returned all of those documents when he hadn’t; and a third, Chris Kise, to whom the FG or one of his slush funds recently paid a $3 million retainer is registered as a foreign agent representing Venezuela’s Maduro regime, something that should disqualify him from obtaining a high end security clearance.  As to payments, a subject near and dear to the FG who hates parting with cash, Judge Cannon did throw one dagger his way, she ruled that contrary to his request that he and the DOJ share the costs of the Special Master, he’ll have to foot the whole bill.  Can Special Masters insist on being paid upfront?  As to the substance of her ruling, on Friday the DOJ filed a motion for a partial stay pending appeal, saying in far more polite words that though they believe Judge Cannon is off her rocker, stupid and incredibly biased and that there is no need for a Special Master but that to speed things up at this time they are seeking only to stay the portions of her order that are causing the most serious and immediate harm.  Essentially, they asked that the 100 most secret documents be immediately exempted from her ruling.  Legal experts say that even though the 11^th Circuit is made up of conservative FG appointed judges the court should rule in the DOJ’s favor, but haven’t we heard that before?  Anyway, the FG has gotten what he really wants, a delay in the process, because even if the judges move fast, whatever gets done, it won’t be fast enough.      

Yearning to be Free:  Just about everyone agrees that our immigration system is broken and has been for a long time, across several administrations both Republican and Democratic.  Congress can’t come to terms with how to deal with the large number of people, many  suffering from poverty and/or political oppression, who want to come here. It is a problem, but then again we are a nation of immigrants and many of our ancestors only arrived legally because back when they came ashore there were either no laws prohibiting their arrival.  Anyway, instead of trying to come up with solutions, isn’t it a whole lot more fun to use desperate people fleeing difficult circumstances, especially brown people, as pawns in election years? That apparently is the conclusion of Texas Governor Abbott and Florida Governor DeSantis, both presidential wannabees seeking to throw as much mud at the current administration, blue state and cities and anyone who gets in their way even if it means scooping refugees including families with babies off the streets and shoving them into buses and planes with promises of jobs and housing only to deposit them at the doors, naturally without any advance notice, of places like Martha’s Vineyard, NYC, Chicago, Washington DC and VP Harris’ door.   It is particularly ironic that the 50 carted off to Martha’s Vineyard this last week mostly left the political turmoil, socio-economic instability and ongoing humanitarian crisis of the very same Venezuela Maduro regime that the FG’s lawyer Chris Kise represents.  One of the weirder things about the Vineyard transport is how it took place, those individuals crossed into the US in Texas but were flown at Florida taxpayer’s expense to the Vineyard by Governor DeSantis who apparently forgot to consider that his antics might piss off some of his South Florida constituents who are themselves from Venezuela.  Also particularly bizarre is that two of the loudest voices on the subject belong to Senators Ted Cruz aka Rafael Edward Cruz and Marco Rubio, both of whom were born to Cuban parents fleeing Communism. Though I am far from an expert on this subject, I like NYC Mayor Adams’ suggestion that we allow those seeking refugee status to legally seek work especially since we are pretty much at full employment, especially for the jobs that they would initially be seeking.   

  

Biscuits Anyone 🌻🌻🌻

The Crossfire: Remember John Durham, the US Attorney appointed by former Attorney General Barr to prove that Crossfire Hurricane, the FBI investigation into all the Former Guy’s alleged Russian antics, was just a Clinton/Obama plot intended to derail the FG’s presidential ambitions, his investigation appears to have ended with a whimper because though components of the somewhat salacious Steele dossier of yesteryear weren’t for real the investigation into the FG’s Russian related activities was legitimate.  That’s a real bummer for the FG and his echo chamber which likely explains why Hunter Biden’s unseemly life and his laptop remain in the news.  Well only partially, the FG and his crowd really need the counter programming for a lot of reasons, none of it good, not that any of the bad stuff has stuck to the Teflon guy, yet. On Tuesday, we learned that the FBI took away pillow guy Mike Lindell’s phone while he was waiting for takeout at a Hardee’s restaurant. Lindell is characteristically apoplectic over the loss of what he claimed was his only electronic device but the folks at Hardee’s appear gleeful, they used the unexpected publicity to brag about the deliciousness of their biscuits.  Though Lindell didn’t discuss those epicurean delights he did say that before they ran off with his phone the FBI agents asked him about the Dominion voting machines used in Colorado's elections and Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colorado who’s been accused of tampering with those machines in order to obtain some data “proving” that they’d been controlled by the very dead Hugo Chavez, you know the ghost who threw the 2020 election to Joe Biden. It’s not just Lindell, yesterday it was reported that former FG Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who hasn’t been seem much lately, has met with the DOJ and has provided them with lots of his emails and other communications. The FG has a lot of reasons to be concerned about what Meadows did or didn’t share; we know that because the notoriously stingy FG had his political action committee contributed $1 million to Meadows’s conservative non-profit organization earlier this year and that’s not chump change. Also, two of the cracker jack lawyers representing the FG over those purloined supersecret documents are now in trouble for representing in writing that all of the boxes housing those purloined papers had been turned over when they hadn’t been, meaning that they can now be asked to testify against him and the DOJ has receipts for that as yesterday they revealed that they’ve got months of videotape from Mar a Lago showing those boxes and some of their contents moving from insecure place to insecure place, which likely explains how some of them ended up in the FG’s personal office alongside his passports.  And for good measure, lawyers for Jeffrey Clark, the FG environmental lawyer who wanted so much to become his Attorney General and who also had his phone seized revealed that he is being investigated by the DOJ for several felonies including for making false statements, conspiracy and obstruction.  

Politics Unusual: On Tuesday President Biden celebrated the passage and signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, which despite its catchy name is really a climate bill.  While he was celebrating, new inflation figures were released indicating that inflation remains stubbornly high.  That nugget of economic data should have been a real buzzkill and a gift to the Republicans but elsewhere in the Capitol, South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham decided to step to the podium to announce his plan to introduce federal abortion legislation. You might remember that the “official” Republican position and part of the justification for the overturning of Roe v Wade with Dobbs, is that the regulation of abortion is “better” left to the states. By saying that his proposed legislation would “only” ban abortion after 15 weeks, Graham tried to make it sound like a compromise, one intended to counter what he characterized as killer Democrats who want abortion legal up until nine months.  Bachelor Lindsey is not all that familiar with how any of that birthing stuff works. What Graham tried hard to obfuscate is that his proposed legislation would permit states to impose further restrictions so that states banning all abortions could continue to do so. His intent is to impose severe restrictions on abortions in states where they are currently available.  Apparently, Lindsey thought that he could back some of those much coveted suburban moms with the 15 weeks thing as long as no one pointed out any of his bill’s other nefarious details. Unfortunately for Lindsey, his strategy didn’t fool any outspoken Democrats nor did it go over all that well with Republican party leadership especially those up for reelection who’ve been wiping anti-abortion positions from their websites. The enthusiastically anti-abortion set views his proposal as too lenient, the pragmatic set just wants to do anything to win back the Senate and had been hoping to continue to hide behind their disingenuous states’ rights position and Republican outliers Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have been working with a few of their Democratic colleagues on enshrining the provisions of Roe into law.  A few Republicans have gone so far as to suggest that Lindsey Graham must be in Biden’s pocket.  Spoiler alert, he’s not and hopefully his strategy of convincing wavering voters won’t work.   

Primarily Yours:  This cycle’s primaries are finally behind us.  New Hampshire Republicans may have extended a lifeline to Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan by picking the extremely rightwing election denier Don Bolduc as their candidate.  But just a reminder, though Senate race polls in a lot of the swing states, and a few that aren’t supposed to be all that swingy appear to be leaning blue right now, don’t get cocky as a lot of those undecideds will likely vote Republican. So stay focused and involved!    

And:  Early news this morning is that it looks like the country and Biden have dodged another bullet, there won’t be a national freight railroad strike.

 

Catch Me if You Can 🌻🌻🌻

Goodfellas’ Golfing: Late Sunday, Twitter was full of pictures of the Former Guy stepping off a plane at Dulles Airport.  He was wearing golf attire including golf shoes rather than his usual traveling duds, leaving some tweeters to wishfully ponder whether he was being frog marched off to jail with others suggesting he was on his way to one of those unexplained Walter Reed visits.  On Monday his spokesperson said that the FG was in town for ”many meetings” and to play a round at his DC area golf course though it was hardly golf weather.  Later in the day he was seen walking on that golf course with a group of eight or so men, all white of course,  some in golf attire some in denim, a golf course no no, but only one carrying just a single golf club.  It’s not clear what that meeting was about.  Due diligence for the sale of the club? Checking out hiding locations for some more purloined document boxes like the boxes that were mysteriously moved from Mar a Lago to Bedminster for the season?  Scouting out burial sites for his current spouse?  Or more likely a “secret” meeting with his growing team of lawyers as it was also revealed yesterday by the NY Times that over the week the Justice Department issued somewhere around 40 subpoenas to the FG’s aides, current and former, including one to Bernie Kerik, the convicted felon who served as Police Commissioner back when Rudy Giuliani was the Mayor of NYC and who was one of those planning January 6^th activities at the Willard Hotel the night before the attack on the Capitol.  Additionally the phones of two of the FG’s top advisors, Boris Epshteyn who’s been coordinating his legal efforts, and Mike Roman, a campaign strategist who was the director of his 2020 campaign’s election day operations, were taken. It appears that the DOJ and the no longer hands off Attorney General Merrick Garland are investigating the January 6^th insurrection conspiracy and the false electors scheme all while the National Archives and its purloined document case continues to percolate and then there’s also those inquiries into all that post-election leadership PAC funding, the slush fund where about $100 million is hanging out.  As to the purloined documents case, the Teflon FG’s stalling tactics appear to be working.  Over the weekend his lawyers told Judge Aileen Cannon, the all too FG friendly judge holding up the review of all those super-secret documents, nuclear and otherwise, that they don’t want anyone looking at anything or assessing the possible damage to national security until a special master is in place because according to them those documents aren’t secret anymore anyway and/or the FG needed them for his book writing research, as if.  They also rejected both of the DOJ’s very qualified special master suggestions, of course they did, while the DOJ, which still doesn’t believe that one is needed but appears to be trying to move things forward, said that they could live with one of those proposed by the FG’s team, former Judge Raymond Dearie, a Reagan era appointee, who has FISA court experience, while rejecting the other a prominent politically connected Florida lawyer, Paul Huck.  As to Judge Cannon, she still needs to rule on the DOJ and FG team responses.  Worth noting, the FG unsuccessfully tried to get Cannon appointed to one of his cases once before, the one where he sued Hillary Clinton and a gaggle of other Democrats alleging that they tried to rig the 2016 presidential election with the Russia scandal.  Last week, the judge who ended up overseeing that case threw it out, issuing a scathing opinion where he slammed the FG for “seeking to flaunt a two-hundred-page political manifesto outlining his grievances against those that have opposed him,” and those were the judge’s kinder words.

Book Reports:  As to books, two notable ones are out or on the verge of coming out.  Remember Geoffrey Berman, appointed by the FG, he served as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York until he was fired late in the administration for refusing to do some of those nefarious things that then Attorney General William Barr wanted him to do.  Berman reports in his book, Holding The Line, that he was asked to prosecute a number of high powered Democrats, including John Kerry as payback for the prosecutions of FG’s allies like Republican Congressman Chris Collins and his one-time lawyer/protege now enemy Michael Cohen.  Berman said that he was limited by ethics rules from going public sooner, that he’d had his book vetted by the DOJ before he could have it published and that he’s relieved to be getting his story out now.  He’s also very pleased that the Senate Judiciary Committee plans to look into his assertions because he wants it known just how much the FG’s administration, including Barr who appears to be trying to white wash his reputation these days by calling out the FG’s document stealing,  tried to inappropriately meddle into affairs where they had no business doing so. The other book due out in early October is Confidence Man by FG whisperer Maggie Haberman, who always seems to know more than she should which she then mostly sits on until it most benefits her and her employers, reveals that the FG early on made it clear that he was aware that he’d lost the election but that as 2020 turned to 2021 and Joe Biden’s inauguration approached, he went into full denial mode, telling his aides that "I'm just not going to leave….We're never leaving….How can you leave when you won an election.” 

Mediacracy:  Something’s up at CNN where new management under CEO Chris Licht appear to be trying to turn itself into Fox light in an effort to goose sagging ratings. Brian Stelter who covered media with his program Reliable Sources is out as is veteran White House reporter John Harwood.  Stelter was frequently over the top but his program was also often worth watching and Harwood was one of those willing to call out crazy when he saw it.  The skinny is that both were apparently too critical of the Republican party’s rightward shift and related antics for the new management team.  Those who remain seem a bit nervous these days about their job security, how else to explain Jake Tapper saying it would be “clever” for President Biden to invite the FG to ride along with him on Air Force One to Queen Elizabeth’s funeral or morning host Brianna Keilar’s over the top criticism of the fact that there were Marines standing behind Biden during his Philadelphia speech, a common president thing.  That’s the speech where Biden called out MAGA’s as neo fascists.  Though Tapper is probably safe, he’s too good at bending with the prevailing wind to be in jeopardy, keep an eye on both Keilar who seems to be flailing as well as the outspoken Jim Acosta who has no filter.

Primarily Yours:  It’s hard to believe it but today is another primary day, the last for this season.  Elections are being held in New Hampshire, Delaware and Rhode Island.  In New Hampshire Republicans are choosing between a right wing election denier Don Bolduc and the more usual conservative Chuck Morse to see who will get to challenge Democratic incumbent Senator Maggie Hassan.  Mitch McConnell and his team view Hassan, who squeaked through her last election, as vulnerable enough to give them a chance for a seat pick up unless of course Bolduc ends up being their candidate, than she becomes less vulnerable while his chances of returning to Senate Leadership dwindle.   

Frankly Mr Shankly 🌻🌻🌻

RIP Queen Elizabeth: To quote the jangle pop band The Smiths, the Queen is Dead and now it’s newly anointed King Charles the Third’s turn to “appear on the cover of the Daily Mail dressed in his mother’s veil.” Okay, just a bit too cute or too soon or both, but we did fight that Revolutionary War for a reason.  As expected, yesterday all our living presidents, current and former, sent expressions of condolence to the Royal family and the people of  the United Kingdom, our greatest ally. It should surprise no one that the Former Guy posted his lengthy message on his flailing Truth Social platform, and to be fair he probably meant all the nice things he said, after all he really is into the concept of royalty and would love to reign supreme for the rest of his life.  Though the passing of the 96 year old Queen was the dominant story of the day, a few other notable things happened here in the USA.  On the Mar a Lago purloined documents front, late yesterday in what is being called an artfully written FU notice, the Department of Justice filed a forceful response to the all too FG friendly Florida Judge Aileen Cannon, contesting her decision to give unusually deferential treatment to the Former Guy. That was the ruling where she said that the FG was entitled to have a special master review all of the documents that the FBI had removed from his premises, even the super-secret ones which according to the Washington Post include the nuclear secrets of at least one foreign government, maybe foes North Korea or Iran or maybe ally Israel, because it wasn’t fair for him to have his stellar reputation tarnished.  The DOJ essentially threatened to embarrass Judge Cannon in front of her higher court peers over her absurdly construed ruling which just about everyone outside of the FG’s orbit, including former Attorney General Barr has characterized as poorly thought out, wrong and stupid.  The DOJ said that at least for now that they can live with a special master but not for any of the documents marked with secret and confidential warnings and certainly not for any of the nuclear secrets, though they didn’t specifically mention the nuclear items because referencing them in a public filing even if they were hanging out at the very unsecured Mar a Lago for spies and anyone else who paid the $200,000 initiation fee to see would be a violation of super-secret protocol and espionage laws.  The DOJ also told the Judge that by putting the FBI’s investigation on hold, her ill thought out decision was making it impossible for the FBI to protect our national security interests.  It’s not clear that the Judge cares all that much about putting the whole country’s security at risk because of that whole FG reputation thing but she did respond quickly.  Last night she asked the FG’s team to respond ASAP to the DOJ’s comments so we should know soon enough if she’s going to let the DOJ and FBI proceed with their investigation or whether she really is all in on auditioning for a Supreme Court appointment in the FG’s next administration.

More Legalities: In other legal news through subpoenas sent to several talkative recipients, we learned that there is a Federal grand jury looking into the FG’s Save America leadership PAC, the fundraising juggernaut that was created to help him overturn the results of the 2020 election.  On the subject of far from Kosher money raising and spending activities, scuzzy Steve Bannon was back in court yesterday, this time in New York City where he was charged with money laundering, conspiracy and fraud related to an online scheme to raise money for the construction of the FG’s infamous Mexico border wall. Bannon, who of course asserts that he is the subject of one of those witch hunts, and his partner in fraud had promised donors that all the money raised would go to the Wall but somehow or other a whole bunch of it ended up in their personal bank accounts where it was used to fund some very personal expenses, funny how that happens.  Anyway even though the FG pardoned Bannon for his illicit wall funding activities before leaving DC, that pardon only covered Federal crimes, not state crimes and since the case against Bannon never went to court, under New York law double jeopardy does not attach so unlike Paul Manafort who could not be prosecuted in New York once the FG pardoned him because he had already been tried in a Federal Court, Bannon can be prosecuted.  Worth noting, the Chief Executive of Bannon’s We Build the Wall campaign has already plead guilty to wire fraud and tax charges.

Roe Roe Roe Your Vote: Yesterday despite the nefarious efforts of Republicans on the Michigan Board of Canvassers to reject a petition signed by far more than the requisite number of voters over a technical spacing problem, the State Supreme Court order that a proposal enshrining the right to an abortion in the state’s constitution be added to the November ballot.  Michigan is far bluer than very red Kansas so it’s highly likely that the proposal will pass and also quite likely that its very presence on the ballot will drive voter turnout among pro-choice voters who might have otherwise stayed home in an ordinary mid-term year, exactly what those Republicans were trying to prevent.  Michigan’s Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer is up for reelection, her opponent FG endorsed Tudor Dixon who is ardently anti-abortion and isn’t sure who won the 2020 election is already trailing her in the polls by about +/- 10% with independent voters leaning towards Whitmer in part because of their view on reproductive rights.  As to polls in general, it’s important to keep in mind that they are often off by a lot and that a lot of the undecideds end up voting red so stay focused and help where you can, in races up and down the ballot, state and federal.    

Viral Musings:  The new bivalent COVID booster is out and available. The shot protects against original COVID as well as the BA 4 and 5 Omicron variants.  Pfizer’s is approved for everyone over 12 and Moderna’s is approved for everyone over 18.  The CDC and virus guru Fauci say that we should start thinking of COVID booster shots the way we think about flu shots, in other words something to do annually. So unless you had COVID within the past three months or received an ordinary (monovalent) COVID booster less than two months ago, consider getting the shot sooner rather than later.  Otherwise, subject to the advice of your doctor, wait until your three months for a recent COVID case or two months for a recent booster is up and then get the new jab. 

 

The Senate 🌻🌻🌻

More Teflon:  Labor Day is behind us and Election Day is only two months away so my plan was to focus on the upcoming Senate races today but I’d be remiss if I didn’t first mention that the Former Guy via  Judge Aileen Cannon, one of the woefully unqualified Federalist Society/Mitch McConnell ones that was appointed after the results of the 2020 election were already in was granted a bigly gift over the weekend.  That gift came in the form of an opinion that misstated facts and, according to many legal pundits even some on the right side of the aisle, engaged in significant misinterpretation of precedent and overreach in order to grant the Teflon FG some rights he isn’t entitled to while stalling the review of the voluminous amount of documents including all those “empty” folders with ominous super-secret labels taken during the search of Mar a Lago.  Judge Cannon did that by ruling that a special master should be appointed to review the “seized property” for "potentially privileged” material subject to claims of attorney-client and/or executive privilege and that in the meantime, the government would have to “temporarily" stop reviewing and using the materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master's review or a further court order.  Basically, she granted the FG executive privilege that he is no longer entitled to because he, despite his delusional claims, is no longer President and by calling for the appointment of a special master, one that in addition to having to be agreed to by both the DOJ and the FG team must have, due to the nature of the so-called “seized” materials,  security clearance.  And of course the FG, who was in Philadelphia over the weekend rallying for Republican Governor candidate Doug Mastriano and Senate candidate Dr Oz, while bashing the current President for calling MAGA lunatics neo-fascists, the Democratic Party, and every “RINO” who doesn’t agree with him, has got to be thrilled that he’s once again pulled a red rabbit out of his hat. Worth noting Mastriano really is an extremist, one who in addition to being Hitler friendly and supported by the Q set, marched on the Capitol on January 6.  Mastriano is also an election denier and those are his good points while Dr Oz who once tried to portray himself as a middle of the road guy who just liked to hawk faux medical cures on the side has gone completely to the dark side and has been caught on tape saying that all abortions should be banned from inception and of course, he’s also taken to making fun of his opponent, John Fetterman’s stroke because that’s what heart surgeon’s do?

The Senate:  Now getting to the upcoming midterms, polling seems to indicate that, while hardly a given,  Democrats stand a decent chance of holding on to the Senate, and maybe, just maybe of gaining a seat or two. The Wall Street Journal notes that the Democrats ability to hold the Senate may be largely due to the overturning of Roe but it’s also probably helped by Biden’s recent legislative wins, Republicans squandering campaign money, the FG effect and Republican threats to cut health care and Social Security.   Unfortunately it remains likely, though not a done deal, that aided by gerrymandering the Republicans will win over the House. If the Republicans take over the House it will probably be via a squeaker rather than a huge red wave but that squeaker would leave politicians like Jim Jordan heading key committees and loons like Margie Q, Lauren Boebert and Matthew Gaetz wielding lots of disruptive power as they seek to do things like impeach Biden and Attorney General Garland, interrogate soon to be retired virus guru Fauci and hang Hunter Biden while also refusing to do key things like raising the debt limit and funding the government.  That makes holding the Senate even more important to if you are so inclined and think that protecting Reproductive Rights and democracy s essential here are the folks to support.  

Democratic incumbents deemed vulnerable and targeted by Republican Party:

State                                 Democratic Incumbent               Republican Challenger

Arizona                             Mark Kelly                                    Blake Masters  

Georgia                             Raphael Warnock                         Herschel Walker

Nevada                              Catherine Cortez-Masto              Adam Laxalt

New Hampshire               Maggie Hassan                             (TBD primary Sept 13)

Colorado                          Michael Bennet                             Joe O’Dea

Democrats challenging Incumbent Republicans:

State                   Challenger                                      Republican Incumbent 

Florida                Val Demings                                    Marco Rubio  

Iowa                   Mike Franken                                 Chuck Grassley

Kentucky            Charles Booker                              Rand Paul

Wisconsin           Mandela Barnes                             Ron Johnson        

Open Seats:

State                   Democrat                                       Republican       

North Carolina   Cheri Beasley                                 Ted Budd (seat vacated by Richard Burr)  

Ohio                   Tim Ryan                                        JD Vance (seat vacated by Rob Portman)

Pennsylvania     John Fetterman                               Mehmet Oz (seat vacated by Pat Toomey)

Also, in Utah Independent Evan McMullin is challenging Mike Lee, a key FG supporter who tried to overturn the 2020 election.  Let me know if you think I’ve missed anyone.