Rolling Sevens 🌻 🌻 🌻

Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun, Gun: We’re on a roll, 87 days into the year and already there have been 130 mass shootings and, no surprise, far too many of the Republican politicians who could do something about gun proliferation still refuse to acknowledge that the common denominator for the resulting carnage isn’t a dramatic increase in trans people, or the reading of Judy Blume books, or Critical Race Theory, or wokeness or anti-Christian hatred, or too many doors, or unarmed teachers, it’s the proliferation of guns.  Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett came right out and said, we’re never going to fix “horrible, horrible” gun violence because criminals are going to be criminals, at least that’s what his “daddy” told him he learned from his fight with the Japanese during WWII, that if “somebody wants to take you out and doesn’t mind losing their life, there’s not a whole heck of a lot you can do about it.”  Burchett, who doesn’t worry about school shootings all that much because he home schools/indoctrinates his kids, is apparently unaware that we stopped fighting the Japanese a long time ago and that Japan doesn’t have school shootings because they mostly ban guns.  Then there’s Nashville Congressman Ogles, the one who falsely claimed to be an economist, an officer of the law, and an expert in sex trafficking, despite the killing of seven, six innocents and the shooter, at the Covenant School in his district, he doesn’t regret his Christmas card, the one showing his wife and kids hugging automatic weapons, because why should he? Naturally, Missouri Senator/fist bumper Josh Hawley blamed the Nashville shooting on anti-Christian hatred because it took place in a Presbyterian school, as opposed to a public school, synagogue or mosque as if that never happens and Ohio’s JD Vance blamed it on the extreme left for giving into trans ideology and allowing the use of all those awful pronouns because this time around as opposed to all the other times, the shooter identified as a transperson.  Keeping with that theme, Margie Q, took to Twitter to call for a “Trans Day of Vengeance,” something that even Elon Musk who’s been known to indulge in anti-trans humor thought was over the top, her Congressional Twitter account has been suspended for 7 days, but not to worry, she still has access to her personal account. Weirdly enough, or maybe an indication that she still has political aspirations, Liz Cheney took to Twitter to endorse NBC’s Jenna Bush Hager’s comment that instead of focusing on banning books we should focus on making kids safe by “stopping the horrific gun violence in our schools.” Then again Cheney used to be part of the guns for everyone problem and her father and Hager’s father allowed the Clinton era legislation banning assault weapons to expire.  Have her views really changed?  Who knows but credit to Bush Hager, her views probably have. 

Indictment Watch:  Another week, so far no indictments and, despite Trump’s claims, it’s unlikely that there will be any by week’s end which isn’t to say that there hasn’t been some card shuffling.  Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg called in another witness to testify in front of his grand jury,  His newest testifier wasn’t a new witness, it was the National Enquirer’s “catch and kill” David Pecker who knows a thing or two about Trump paying off talkative porn stars.  Pecker may have been brought back in to corroborate convicted felon/former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s testimony, with Cohen’s testimony needing bolstering because he went to jail for lying about…..Trump’s crimes. Also, some progress on the Special Counsel Jack Smith front where federal district judge James Boasberg has ordered former VP Pence to testify in front of the grand jury about Trump’s conversations with him, the ones in which the mango maniac tried to get the fly landing field to undo the results of the last presidential election. No indication yet whether or not Flypaper Pence intends to appeal to the Supreme Court or whether Trump plans to do the same. I suspect you share my frustration with just how slow this whole Judicial process continues to be.  The clock is ticking and if things don’t accelerate, we’ll once again be back to one of those pre-election freeze periods.  As to freezes and the like, one person who really needs to speed up her proceedings is Fulton County DA Fani Willis.  It's highly likely that Georgia’s Republican Governor Brian Kemp will sign legislation allowing the removal of local DAs for not doing their jobs well or in the case of Willis for doing her job too well shortly and though that legislation won’t go into effect for a while, it could and probably is intended to impact Willis’ ability to do and keep her job.  

Mulligans:  Bibi Netanyahu has put his plans to rein in the independence of Israel’s Judiciary on hold for now, not because he wanted to but because of all those pro-Democracy demonstrations and also perhaps because of pressure from Washington, Israel’s Defense forces and a very nervous tech industry.  The debt ceiling clock is still ticking, louder than ever.  Speaker for the moment McCarthy sent President Biden a letter urging him to start “robust negotiations” but still hasn’t responded to Biden’s budget with the budget proposal that Congress is supposed to provide.  This standoff isn’t going in a positive direction.  Also not going anywhere good, is Twitter.  Elon Musk told his remaining employees that if he doesn’t fire them first and they stay on best behavior, and by best behavior maybe he means if they help him find the miscreant who leaked some crucial parts of Twitter’s proprietary code into the techno verse, they’ll qualify for a stock and option plan that values the company at $20 billion, less than half of the $44 billion that he paid for his broken toy.  Musk asserts that the still shrinking value shouldn’t concern employees because he's confident he can get the valuation up to $250 billion in no time at all.  Despite his Mensa membership, most analysts aren’t convinced of that, in fact they believe that Twitter’s current value is less than $10 billion and that even that is a stretch.  Chief Twit Musk plans to roll out his blue check redo on April 1, a fitting day for another cockamamie plan that isn’t likely to raise revenues or bring back fleeing advertisers.  Nothing much has changed at Fox where Sean Hannity just interviewed his best bud Trump. That may or may not change soon, Dominion Voting Machines is seeking to call most of Fox’s line up to testify in its lawsuit against Fox.  In addition to most of the anchors, that list includes board member Paul Ryan and Rupert Murdoch.  Also, fired Fox producer Abbey Grossberg who is suing the media company wants to Mulligan the deposition she previous gave about the network’s coverage of Dominion, saying that her testimony was heavily coached by Fox’s lawyers and not all that accurate.