It's Not Me, It's You  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Leather Anniversary:  Tomorrow is the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, Republicans like Margie Q and her Orange leader are commemorating the day as a tragedy when nice Trump supporting tourist were thwarted in their justified attempt to take over the Capitol to return the Oval Office to its “rightful” occupant while others, mostly Democrats, led by President Biden, plan to remind Americans that people died because Trump tried, and is still trying to end democracy as we know it.  Margie Q’s plans to hold a rally to bemoan what could have been on January 6^th have been put on hold for now only because the managers of the venue she reserved in Kissimmee, Florida were alerted that her planned book signing was just a cover for an insurrection anniversary party but she’s relentless so don’t count her out yet.  As to Trump, despite the press focus on Haley and DeSantis, his MAGAfication and control of the Republican Party remains tighter than ever.  He now has 100 endorsements from members of Congress, including ones from Steve Scalise and Tom Emmer both of whose runs for Speaker he successfully blocked.  By comparison DeSantis has only five House endorsements and Haley has one.  Trump has the endorsement of 19 Senators with at least two more expected before the Iowa caucuses, DeSantis and Haley have none. Republican Representative Elise Stefanik who is making as much hay as she can out of college presidents Gay and Magill’s resignations mostly because she’s competing to become Trump’s VP partner or at the very least one of his cabinet members has pulled an endorsement for an Ohio Congressional hopeful because he once said some not nice things about Trump.  While House Republicans are trying to impeach President Biden for loaning his errant son a few thousand dollars to help him buy a truck, none of them seem to care that Trump’s businesses racked up $7.8 million from 20 foreign governments, with China, Saudi Arabia and Qatar paying the most during his four-year presidential stint because he’s their Orange god and apparently everything he did and does is cooler than cool even if some of that money was followed almost immediately in the case of Qatar by a change in US policy.  Shifting back to DeSantis and Haley, last night during their CNN hosted townhalls both stuck with the Republican/NRA gun playbook blaming yesterday’s Iowa school shooting on mental health rather than too easy access to guns and DeSantis stood firm on his six week abortion ban, calling Trump, who stacked the Supreme Court with three more anti-abortion judges as too wishy washy on the issue, a criticism that Trump will take to the bank as he tries to woo back suburban housewives.    

Bizarro World:  The cases against Trump mostly remain quiet at least on the surface, though Trump’s team has asked for Special Counsel Jack Smith to be held in contempt for submitting filings while appeals are taking place because of course.  At least for now, SCOTUS is laying low, but despite their preference to keep their collective heads in the sand, they’ll have to weigh in soon, probably on Colorado, because Trump has asked them to and because the number of states trying to remove Trump from the ballot is growing with Oregon expected to be the next to join the list. To complicate matters a number of Democratic members of Congress want Justice Clarence Thomas to recuse from the Colorado case and presumably from any other insurrection cases because his wife Ginni and acknowledged best friend and confidant was insurrection adjacent. While the SCOTUS crowd continues to twiddle thumbs about the 14^th Amendment and elections, focusing instead on the legality of the abortion pill, the DC Appeals court is set to hear oral arguments on Trump’s immunity and double indemnity challenges on January 9. It really isn’t an understatement to say that democracy as we know it is in jeopardy.  Biden keeps trying to tell us that so Trump, the branding king who wants to be the country’s King of Kings, is now attacking Biden and the Democrats for being the ones trying to take democracy down.    

Fog:  COVID is spiking again. The variant is new again but probably because the virus isn’t as novel to our immune systems as it was when the virus first hit, it isn’t as deadly which isn’t to say that people aren’t dying, become some are.  Remember hydroxychloroquine, the horse dewormer/anti-Malaria drug that did nothing for COVID despite Trump’s assertion that it was worth trying, according to researchers in France 17,000 people in six countries, including the US, died from its heart arrhythmia causing side effect and that number is probably an underestimate. We shouldn’t dismiss the impact of scientific ignorance, because Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo the Harvard MD who should know better and who Governor Ron DeSantis appointed and continues to support, is calling for the banning of COVID mRNA based vaccines, contending that the shots could contaminate recipients’ DNA, a claim that has been debunked by the real experts but that will probably cause a number of vaccine averse people to avoid getting vaccinated. What could go wrong?  For those hoping to learn more icky details about sex deviant Jeffrey Epstein, forget about it, though the document dumps aren’t over yet,  so far there’s just been a lot of what we already knew. Lastly, ISIS has taken responsibility for the suicide bombings in Iran that caused around 80 deaths. So, despite Iran’s initial finger pointing, it wasn’t the US and it wasn’t Israel. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow