Elephants 🌻🌻🌻

Debate Night:  There were quite a few debates last night but the one generating the most talk was between Republican Mehmet Oz and Democrat/Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman.  Fetterman, still recovering from his stroke, struggled, not surprising both because he’s still having speech processing problems and because he’s never been a particularly good debater.  Oz, on the other hand is an experienced, smooth talking TV performer and that showed.  So the question for Pennsylvania voters is whether they want a polished Former Guy endorsed and endorsing grifter who thinks that “local political leaders” should have a say in abortion decisions and who lied about the “miracle cures” he hawked on his TV show or a verbally challenged everyman.  We will know in November what they decide and whether the same crowd who think that Georgia Senate wannabee Hershel Walker who will never recover from his deficiencies is okay are unwilling to vote for a candidate who is only temporarily disabled.  As to the other debates, like the one between New York ‘s Governor Hochul and LI Congressman Lee Zeldin,  Michigan’s Governor Whitmer and the Betsy DeVos supported/election denying/abortion opponent Tudor Dixon and Colorado Senator Michael Bennet and Joe O’Dea who is supported by Mitch McConnell but not the Former Guy, they were predictable and probably won’t change any minds to the extent that debates ever do.   On the subject of politicians doing what they do, some members of the Democrats Progressive Caucus stepped deeply into what Speaker Pelosi politely calls doo-doo but the rest of us call sh-t by releasing a letter calling for President Biden to engage in direct talks with Vladimir Putin to “end the Ukraine war,” as if at this point a chat with old Vlad that didn’t involve Ukraine President Zelenskyy agreeing to turn over most if not all of his county would solve the Ukraine crisis.  Don’t get me wrong, peace is good but so’s a dose of reality. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the Progressive Caucus, almost immediately retracted the letter, saying “the letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting” whatever that means. Jayapal who was instrumental in helping Biden get lots of his legislation passed this year is generally better than this but her unforced error, and it was a big one, is likely to cost her a future party leadership role and may also add to the Democrats woes in the midterms.  As to Vlad, he’s had his minions calling around to world leaders and telling them and the UN that the Ukrainians are preparing to use a dirty bomb, leading many in authority to believe that he’s planning to just that, possibly in a manner that would allow him to claim that it was Zelenskyy not him.  That false flag wouldn’t pass muster, military experts would see right through it, but it certainly would be highly destructive.

Mainstreaming Hate:  Kanye appears to still be in a manic state, not that his mental illness justifies his anti-Semitism, it just amplifies it.  As to that bigotry, Adidas finally pulled the plug on Kanye’s Yeezy line, a decision that will cost them about $250 million and that knocked Kanye off Forbes’ billionaires list, reducing his net worth from $1.5 billion, an amount that included the present value of the lucrative collaboration, to $400 million.  Following Adidas’s announcement, The Gap, which had earlier ended its deal with Kanye, said that it was no longer selling leftover inventory of Kanye sweatshirts in its stores or on its website.  Adidas and Gap join Vogue Magazine, Balenciaga, talent agency CAA and Johnny Depp’s lawyer Camille Vasquez who he’d recently hired to help him sue Adidas, all of whom have now said sayonara to the one-time billionaire. In addition, Hollywood producer MRC announced that they wouldn’t proceed with a much-anticipated Kanye West documentary.  Their statement included one paragraph worth repeating over and over for what it said so well: “Kanye is a producer and sampler of music. Last week he sampled and remixed a classic tune that has charted for over 3000 years – the lie that Jews are evil and conspire to control the world for their own gain. This song was performed acapella in the time of the Pharaohs, Babylon and Rome, went acoustic with The Spanish Inquisition and Russia’s Pale of Settlement, and Hitler took the song electric. Kanye has now helped mainstream it in the modern era.”

Legally Yours: On the legal front, at least for the moment Senator Lindsey Graham doesn’t have to testify in Georgia.  On Monday, hubby of insurrectionist/election denier Ginni, Justice Clarence Thomas, who should have recused himself from having anything to do with the FG’s efforts to “find” more Georgia votes, temporarily stayed the subpoena for Graham to testify.  Thomas did that in his capacity as the overseer of the 11^th Circuit.  The question now is whether the Supreme Court will uphold the lower Appeals Court ruling that Graham does have to testify or whether they will overturn that decision. Most legal pundits say that the lower court decision deliver by the way by three conservative judges was spot on but then again Graham is represented by one-time White House Counsel Don McGahn and three of the SCOTUS Justices owe him their positions and two of the others are Thomas and Alito.  In the never-ending saga of will the FG ever suffer consequences for any of the crap he’s done, the Department of Justice is seeking to compel McGahn’s replacement Pat Cipollone and his deputy Patrick Philbin to testify in front of a grand jury about their conversations with the Former Guy concerning the events surrounding January 6^th.  In addition, the DOJ is considering granting partial immunity to Kash Patel, the FG aide and ally who had been planted in the Defense Department as the chief of staff to the acting Secretary of Defense, part of the FG’s efforts to get his cronies into powerful positions to help with his coup, but then when that failed was appointed as his emissary to the National Archives, to come clean about the transfer of the documents that were illegally taken to Mar a Lago.  To date Patel has pleaded the fifth, but once given immunity he won’t be able to do that without suffering some consequences.  Well maybe.

Viral Musings:  President Biden got his bivalent booster this week while making the point that the best way to spare yourself from suffering from a nasty bout of COVID, one that could land you in the hospital or worse, is to keep your COVID protection up to date and to take Paxlovid if appropriate.  That’s a point that Baylor College of Medicine Dr Peter Hotez, one of the notable virus experts agrees with, particularly for the vulnerable which he says includes those over 50 and children (shots not Paxlovid), particularly given the unusually high incidence of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) floating around this season.  Hotez is also advocating getting a flu shot since the current concern based on what happened in the southern hemisphere is that we are about to have a tough flu season that combined with the “alphabet stew” of omicron COVID strains popping up in Europe and starting to show up here could be particularly harrowing. And anyway, what’s another jab or two?