Whoop Di Doo 🌻 🌻 🌻

Campaign 2024:  Nikki Haley formally launched her presidential bid yesterday with a big whoop di doo in Charleston, South Carolina.  Her launch began with an invocation delivered by right wing televangelist Pastor John Hagee whose record includes saying that the Holocaust was part of God’s plan to drive European Jews to Palestine, calling Hurricane Katrina God’s punishment for New Orleans’ Gay Pride parade, and referring to the Catholic Church as the great whore. Back when he was a candidate for the presidency, John McCain rejected Hagee’s endorsement, but not only did Haley feature him at her marquis event, she said that he was who she wanted to be when she grows up. Dispel those thoughts about Haley being a breath of fresh air, she’s not, instead she’s another one trying to prove her creds to the fundamentalists in her party, an alternative to both the morally flawed Trump who too many of them still love despite his sins and Mike “pure as the driven snow” Pence who has been traveling that lane for some time. The 51-year-old Haley, who is pretty much a permanent politician went on to say that “in the America I see, the permanent politician will finally retire, we’ll have term limits for Congress and mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old” a cutoff date that not so coincidentally would impact not just Joe Biden but her one time boss Donald Trump. By launching early, Haley is getting more press time that she deserves.  It’s hard to believe that she has a chance this cycle or any cycle, her campaign is more about improving her chances at being someone else’s running mate than anything else and she’s probably not the only politician from South Carolina with that in mind, Senator Tim Scott is expected to toss his hat in the ring at some point.  

 

House Matters:  It looks like Panhandle Matt Gaetz is getting off scot free, the Department of Justice won’t be bringing any sex trafficking charges against him, not because they believe he’s innocent but because they don’t believe that they can win in court since the chief witness against Gaetz, would be convicted Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, his alleged partner in underage sex capades.  Given all Greenberg’s crimes, prosecutors don’t believe that his testimony would be enough for them to get a Gaetz conviction and unfortunately for them, but great news for Gaetz, they can’t convince anyone else to corroborate Greenberg’s story. George of many names Santos is hoping that he will be equally lucky which may be why he's now saying that he plans to run for reelection.  Even if Santos manages to stay in Congress until the end of his term, he’s not going to make it to a second term, NY Republicans want him to go away and he’d be an easy target Democrats,  but saying that he’s running  allows him to legally raise campaign funds and since he’s already raised more than you are supposed to without declaring, he may have concluded that saying he’s running is the thing to do. However, if he is running and probably even if he’s not, he once again needs a treasurer as according to the FEC his current one has resigned. Crime a day Santos also appears to have been involved in another fraud case, in 2017 he was interviewed as part of an investigation into a Washington state credit card skimming and identify theft scheme with curious ties to one of his Florida addresses.  Naturally, he suffered no consequences for that either.

 

Smith Time:  Special Counsel Jack Smith has been methodically going about his job.  Not only has he subpoenaed former VP, expected presidential candidate Mike Pence, but he’s subpoenaed former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows at the end of January and is trying to invoke the crime-fraud exception to force testimony from some of Trump’s lawyers.  Pence, who refused to testify before the House January 6^th Committee is challenging Smith’s subpoena, claiming that since that as VP he served as President of the Senate for the certification of the Electoral College votes on January 6^th, he is protected from legal scrutiny of his official duties by the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause intended to shield members of Congress over their statements and actions related to their legislative responsibilities. To be clear, as VP he was not a member of Congress so that argument is unlikely to fly in the courts but making it is an effective stalling tactic that he believes will win him MAGA points with some of those voters who would rather see him hung than cooperating with Smith, not that any of them would support him anyway.

 

And:  Today’s the day that parts of the Fulton County special grand jury report are due to be released.  No indictments are expected yet (sigh), just parts of the report. The respected Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center which has served as a source of COVID related data for the past three years will be ceasing operations on March 10, a sign that though COVID is still out there, the disease has moved from pandemic to manageable endemic status.  That’ s good news but doesn’t mean that getting COVID has no consequences beyond a few days of bedrest and quarantine as the 7-day average COVID death rate remains around 350, nothing to sneeze at. The good news is that despite fears that China’s opening-up would spur new variants, it hasn’t.  The bad news is that the US remains the world’s variant hotspot, so some caution remains warranted. Also warranted is concern about the debt ceiling.  The CBO says that unless Congress acts the US will default on its obligations sometime between July and September, that’s a little more breathing room than previously indicated but hardly a reason to stop worrying.