Mind Infestation 🌻 🌻 🌻

Back to Abnormal: With the debt ceiling in the rear-view mirror, at least until after the 2024 election, Congress is back to doing its thing.  For Republican House members, particularly those in the party’s insurrection wing, that means ramping up investigations into the “Biden Crime Family,” and the FBI and acting on threats to impeach Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas and Attorney General Garland. Don’t expect Speaker Kevin to rein in his wacko wing, he tested their patience and used up most, if not all, of his goodwill making concessions to Biden to get the debt ceiling raised. As payback, he’ll let his crazies, specifically Gym Jordan and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, move forward with their misguided investigations in the hopes that in exchange they won’t exercise their one vote right to topple him from his perch.  For Comer that means threatening to hold FBI Director Wray in contempt over his refusal to handover “evidence” that Biden, back when he was Vice President, accepted a $5 million bribe from some Ukrainians.  The “evidence” involves an allegation made back when Trump was president, one that Trump’s DOJ thought didn’t have merit.  It was one of those things brought to their attention by Rudy Giuliani back when he was pushing the narrative that Biden and Clintons were facilitating Ukrainian corruption, part of his effort to distract from the issues that led to Trump’s first impeachment trial.  Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley who has teamed up with Comer to investigate the bribe allegation admitted on Fox that he has no reason to believe it’s true but that to him truth isn’t the point. Director Wray has agreed to show Comer and Ranking Oversight Member Jamie Raskin a copy of the disputed “evidence” redacted to cover up sources but will not leave them with a copy.  Democrat Raskin is okay with that but Comer not so much.  Expect more fireworks.

Red Run: The Republican presidential wannabees are off and running, at least a bunch of them are, a few more are expected to formally enter the race this week.  During his Iowa charm offensive, Florida’s Ron DeSantis doubled down on his promise to rid the country of the “woke mind virus” while also patting himself on the back for refusing to give into “Fauci-ism dystopia” during the COVID epidemic. No point in commenting on the mind virus stuff, it exists only in the minds of Republican candidates pushing culture war issues, but as Trump has pointed out, DeSantis actually did follow Fauci’s recommendations early in the pandemic and initially facilitated vaccine distribution, but he doesn’t like to talk about that given the anti-vaccine views of the voters he’s trying to lure away from Trump.  Additionally, though DeSantis asserts that Florida had a better COVID outcome than all those blue states that followed tighter rules, it didn’t.  Statistics show that even adjusting for age, Florida fared worse than comparable states largely because those states did a better job getting vaccines to more of their residents.  Notably DeSantis, who many members of the Republican donor class still support because they continue to hope that he’s the one who can take down Trump, doesn’t have as much support among small money donors which doesn’t bode well for him long term.  DeSantis wasn’t the only Republican making news this weekend.  Vivek Ramaswamy, the tech entrepreneur, told ABC’s Martha Raddatz that it’s time for Ukraine to make major concessions to Russia to end the war.  Taking a page from Neville Chamberlain, the British Prime Minister who gave up Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland to Germany in the hopes of stopping Hitler, and we know how that turned out, he’s all-in on Ukraine ceding all of its disputed territory to Russia.  He wants the US to pivot from supporting Ukraine to disrupting Russia’s relationship with China. Apparently, he’s not all that concerned that pushing Ukraine to cede its land might send the message to China that no one would mind if they invaded Taiwan. Ramaswamy may just be auditioning for the VP slot.  His anti-woke positions match those of DeSantis and his pro-Russia one’s mesh well with Trump who says he’ll end the Ukraine “conflict” on day one of his next administration because Putin is his guy.  Apparently, Trump is still in love with North Korea’s Kim Jong un as well, he sent him congratulations to celebrate North Korea’s appointment to the executive board of the World Health Organization, a sentiment that didn’t go over well with South Korea or some of the other Republican candidates, including DeSantis, Nikki Haley and VP Pence who is no longer being investigated by the DOJ over the documents he accidentally took with him when he left Washington since he really didn’t mean to take them and unlike Trump sent them all back when he found them. Though the focus was on Trump’s remarks, why is the WHO appointing North Korea to its board? Nikki Haley got some press time this weekend too, participating in another one of CNN’s townhalls. Don’t know if anyone was watching because few watch CNN anymore, but her positions and her performance are more normal than Trump’s, granted that’s a low bar. She’s trying to appeal to independents while not offending Trump’s base, so basically, she’s tying herself in knots over issues like abortion while being supportive of Ukraine. All the candidates are just waiting for Trump to be taken down by one or more of the government attorneys investigating his crimes.  To that end, Jack Smith’s Grand Jury will be back in session this week.  Could indictments be coming soon or are we being punked again.

And:  It appears that DeSantis is still luring migrants in Texas on to private jets, dumping them in blue states without first notifying anyone that they are coming. The latest group were promised jobs and accommodations but then dumped in Sacramento where local churches and authorities fortunately stepped up to feed and house them.   If you haven’t yet, check out Tim Alberta’s scathing The Atlantic article about CNN under CEO Chris Licht. Time to crack out that head of lettuce as Licht’s remaining days at CNN are probably numbered.  If we’re lucky so are Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert’s.  Boebert, who slammed the debt ceiling legislation, promising to vote against it, didn’t vote because she failed to get to the House chamber in time. That’s odd, but not the weirdest thing we learned about her this week; her mother has claimed for years that Boebert’s biological father was retired professional wrestler Stan Lane but a definitive DNA test proved again last week that he is most definitely not her dad. Lane graciously wished Boebert well in her continued search.   Maybe time for an episode of Finding Her Roots or an Ancestry.com search?