Subsequent Moviefilm Remix 🌻 🌻 🌻

A Tale of Two Durhams: On Monday, Special Counsel/US Attorney Durham finally issued his much-awaited report and depending on where you stand it was either the nothing burger I previously mentioned or explosive.  Contrary to a report by the respected FBI Inspector General Michael Horowitz that concluded that the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s Russian connections was legitimate, Durham’s 700-page diatribe, which included no major revelations accused the “sloppy” FBI of confirmation bias for opening the investigation. The FBI investigation ultimately resulted in convictions, guilty pleas and/or indictments for a slew of characters including Paul Manafort, George Papadopoulos, Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, Alex van der Swann, Rick Gates, a bunch of Russian internet trolls and spy Konstantin Kilimnik while Durham only managed to nab one low level lawyer for doctoring an email while failing to get convictions in the two cases he brought to court and his chief assistant resigned years ago in protest so it’s hard to see his report as much more than political posturing. That said, Trump seized upon its conclusions, saying they proved once and for all that he’d been the victim of a witch hunt, the most dastardly one in history, and his usual echo chamber, led by Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz said the report justifies their view that the FBI should be defunded.  And of course, Trump still adores Vladimir Putin and refuses to support Ukraine and sadly is still the Republican’s leading candidate for president, albeit one who it turns out is not polling ahead of Biden but at least according to this week’s Reuters/IPSO poll is trailing him by six points, witch hunt or not.

Election News:  Yesterday, in what was seen as a significant upset, Democrat Donna Deegan comfortably beat her Republican opponent to become the mayor of Jacksonville Florida.  Deegan, a former TV anchor, whose victory flipped the office from red to blue had lots of name recognition which helped but still her victory is considered a slap in the face to Ron DeSantis and an indication that Democrats may not be dead in Florida.  In Pennsylvania, Democrats held on to their one seat house majority, meaning that abortion rights will stay safe in the state at least for now.  Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of North Carolina where the heavily gerrymandered state general assembly, controlled by a Republican supermajority voted to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of restrictive abortion legislation. One of those who voted to override the veto was former Democratic assemblywoman Tricia Cotham who flipped to being a Republican not long after winning her election where she’d run as a pro-choice Democrat.  Her flip gave the Republicans the seat they needed for their super majority. In Kentucky, Attorney General Daniel Cameron who is African American was endorsed by Trump and was also supported by Mitch McConnell beat out Kelly Craft, the former Trump appointed UN Ambassador who was endorsed by Ron DeSantis, to win the Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in the fall. Cameron checks all the Republican boxes on policy: he’s anti-abortion, pro-gun and against vaccine mandates. As Attorney General he was responsible for the decision not to prosecute the two police officers who shot Breonna Taylor, a decision which won’t help him with African American voters who might otherwise support him.  Beshear is popular but being a Democratic Governor in a Republican state isn’t easy so winning again, while not impossible, will be an uphill battle for him.  Switching countries for a minute, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan is headed to a runoff against his main rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Worth noting Twitter’s Elon Musk conceded to Erdogan’s requests to censor certain tweets in the run up to the election, because apparently the Twit is only into free speech that he likes, and he does have a preference for autocrats like Erdogan.   

People News:  Rudy Giuliani is once again front and center in the news and this time it has nothing to do with hair dye but does have a lot to do with accusations of sexual harassment and assault with presidential pardon selling thrown into the mix. The accusations are being made by Noelle Dunphy who Rudy hired in 2019 for a job that she says sometimes required that she wear skimpy American flag attire, or less, while helping the frequently inebriated, Viagra dosed former America’s Mayor do various and sundry distasteful things, some of which she managed to tape him requesting.  Though she doesn’t have tapes of their conversations about the presidential pardons that she says he was marketing at a price of $2 million apiece, proceeds to be shared with Trump, she says that one of those pardon conversations was witnessed by Lev Parnas, the Ukrainian American businessman who was a figure in Trump’s first impeachment trial and who was subsequently sentenced to serve 20 months in prison. Rudy of course denies everything but anyone who saw him in Borat Subsequent Moviefilm would be excused for believing otherwise.  On the subject of unbelievable but true, an intruder broke into National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s house.  He was shown the exit by Sullivan, who then reported the scary trespass to his crackerjack Secret Service protection squad who apparently missed the whole thing.  Fortunately, Sullivan wasn’t hurt but what’s with the Secret Service?  In other #WTF news, a bat wielding deranged guy made it into a local office belonging to Virginia Representative Gerry Connally.  The Democratic Congressman wasn’t there but two of his staff members were attacked and ended up in the hospital.  Both appear to be okay but still.  Talking about battiness, Representative Lauren Boebert, the former owner of a Hooter’s style gun restaurant served her sex offender husband with divorce papers this week, something to do with irreconcilable differences. Naturally, he was holding a gun and a beer when he was served with those papers.  And lastly, led by California Democratic Congressman Robert Garcia, Democrats are forcing a vote on a privileged resolution calling for the expulsion of George of many names Santos.  Republicans, even those in NY State who are on record saying that Santos should resign, are unlikely to vote for the resolution because Kevin needs his vote but still it will be fun to watch them try to justify keeping Santos on board while the oxymoronic House Ethics panel reviews his crimes.

Tick Tock:  President Biden is truncating his travel plans to focus on the debt ceiling crisis.  He’s still going to the G7 summit in Hiroshima but won’t be stopping off in either Australia or Papua New Guinea.  As to the debt ceiling, reports are that some progress has been made and Mitch McConnell who is trying to distance himself from the situation but probably really isn’t says that defaulting is not an option, but it’s not resolved yet and June 1 is around the corner.