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.