What's Going On? ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Primaries Galore:  Over the weekend Nikki Haley earned the endorsement of Republican Senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins and also won her first primary, earning all of Washington DC’s 19 delegates.  Nice for her but pretty much meaningless as Murkowski and Collins have been Republican outliers for quite a while and because Trump notched two more victories, winning all 51 of Missouri’s delegates and all 32 of Idaho’s.  Trump currently has 244 delegates to Haley’s 43, Ron DeSanti’s 9 and Vivek Ramaswamy’s 3.  After tomorrow’s 17 Super Tuesday primaries, Trump’s already large lead will become insurmountable.  President Biden, who continues to lag Trump in the general election polls because he’s just an addled insurrection dictator wannabee while 3- and one-half year older Biden is old currently has 206 delegates with 2 delegates allocated to the unaffiliated category. Like Trump his total is expected to grow significantly tomorrow when 854 Republican and 1420 Democratic delegates will be up for grabs, not enough for either Trump who needs a total of 1215 Republican delegates or for Biden who needs a total of 1968 Democratic delegates to officially lock up their respective nominations but close enough for the nominating race to be over.  Haley who committed to endorse the Republican candidate for president at the start of her run, in order to appear on the debate stage, is now hedging, refusing to commit to endorsing Trump, but she’s flip flopped before so it’s anyone’s guess what she’ll ultimately do.  She’s also thrown shade on suggestions that she’d run on the bipartisan No Labels ticket, adding that she couldn’t run with a Democrat as her VP partner.  That’s revealing because if she couldn’t run with a Democratic partner, it’s probably a stretch to think that she’ll find her way to endorsing Biden over Trump despite all her comments about Trump being unfit to serve.  In other political news, Trump who has formally endorsed Lauren Boebert’s reelection to Congress, hasn’t officially weighed in on who should become the Republican’s Senate leader once Mitch McConnell steps down, but he’s suggested that the very right leaning Montana Senator Steve Daines who is currently heading the Republican’s Senate campaign should enter the race currently dominated by the Three Johns, Thune, Barrasso and Cornyn.  South Dakota’s Thune who is currently McConnell’s second, didn’t endorse Trump until last week, so at least for now, despite his heir apparent position he’s not Trump’s favorite.  For the record RFK Jr, the former Democrat who is now an independent,  has weighed in too, he’s throwing his support to Kentucky’s Rand Paul who among other things shares many of his wacko views on vaccines.  Spoiler alert, Rand Paul is not going to be the next Republican Senate leader nor will RFK Jr be our next president, but nepo junior may be the cycle’s election spoiler.  One more thing,  in case you missed it Trump once again referred to Obama, rather than Biden as the Democrat he’s competing against, and he also called his wife Mercedes.  Maybe those hundreds of millions of dollars he needs to post with the courts is getting to him or maybe he’s impaired or, most likely, both.           

Legal Morass:  The Supreme Court which, in its infinite wisdom or maybe just because of its bias, won’t be ruling on the presidential immunity issue anytime soon but is expected to drop its 14^th Amendment opinion today. Few, if anyone, believes that they’ll take Trump off the ballot, but it will be interesting to see how they justify their decision to let him stay.  Earlier, it had been suggested that SCOTUS would soften the blow of the 14^th Amendment ruling by simultaneously ruling that Trump wasn’t a king and thus wasn’t immune from prosecution for either January 6 or any of his other crimes but given their “what’s the hurry” approach to the immunity issue, that’s not going to happen. Because of the lackadaisical approach to the “king/immunity” decision, the January 6 election interference trial remains on hold.  In Florida, Judge “loose” Cannon is now considering Special Counsel Jack Smith’s request to start the purloined documents trial in July but she, influenced by Trump’s lawyer’s request to push the trial off as far as possible, seems less than enthused about setting that date. For his part Special Jack says that the 60-day DOJ election run-up quiet period only pertains to indictments not trials, so he’ll start his trials as soon as permitted regardless of the upcoming November election.  The judge overseeing the Fulton County RICO case said on Friday that he’ll decide as to whether or not DA Fani Willis should be disqualified for her canoodling within the next two weeks because really, what’s the rush when democracy is at stake? The New York election interference/hush money case is scheduled to begin at the end of March.  And of course, Trump is still trying to get rid of those super bigly penalty payments he is supposed to put up with the courts in order to pursue his appeals of the New York fraud case and the E Jean Caroll case. At the moment Trump doesn’t have the funds to handover the full amount which means that absent a court ruling that he doesn’t have to he will have to dump some assets or get a Saudi, Russian or billionaire friend to hand over some cash or maybe overpay for Mar a Lago.  Perhaps son in law Jared can step up, after all he has that $2 billion Saudi commitment, little of which has been invested in anything productive to date.

Blastocyst Update:  Alabama’s legislature has passed new legislation that provides civil and criminal immunity to anyone offering IVF treatments in the state, but the bill does not change how the state classifies embryos so the Alabama Supreme Court ruling about those embryos being children still stands. In theory, the bill will allow IVF treatments to resume in Alabama, but will it? And what are patients and medical facilities supposed to do with all the extra blastocysts.  There’s probably an opportunity here for anyone with access to lots of cryogenic freezers assuming they can afford the liability insurance.   Trump who probably cares little about abortion, is now leaning in on a 15-week ban, that’s one week shorter than the 16 he previously was contemplating.  Clearly, he’s trying to find the “sweet spot” and by sweet, his concern isn’t about blastocysts or women’s reproductive options or even their health but is all about those suburban soccer moms and soccer mom wannabee voters. Last week Walgreens and CVS announced that they will start stocking mifepristone, making it available by prescription, but only in states where abortion remains legal.  They will not distribute the drug by mail. This is good news at least for those in states where abortion hasn’t been banned but not good news for those women most in need and it could be a short-lived victory as SCOTUS is due to weigh in on the continued availability of mifepristone, maybe in June.    

Fog:  There’s little to say about what’s going on in Gaza beyond Oy. What a mess.  The hostages are still hostages, Gaza is in a state of disarray.  Last week’s aid distribution disaster was just that a disaster.  It’s hard to tell what is going on in the ceasefire talks but the best I can tell is that many of the same stumbling blocks remain with Israel saying yes to a six week deal with the release of all, which probably means some hostages, in exchange for a large multiple of Hamas “fighters,” and Hamas either rejecting the deal, insisting on a permanent ceasefire or demanding more of their “fighters.” Biden wants a deal locked down before his Thursday night State of the Union speech and before Ramadan begins on March 11 which together with politics likely explains why VP Harris is now forcefully calling for a ceasefire. Sadly, Hamas, winning the PR war, appears willing to sacrifice more Gazans if that’s what it takes to remain in power so that they can break future ceasefires and rebuild their tunnels because this is a never-ending cycle. Netanyahu will be gone at some point but Hamas not so much. So, as I said at the beginning Oy.  The depressing state of affairs is probably why so many people, including me, have fallen down the Royal Rabbit Hole because it’s so much more fun to wonder about what’s really going on across the pond than to focus on out of control domestic and world events.  So, what do you think?  Is Princess Kate really recovering from abdominal surgery or did her Brazilian butt lift go awry (yes that’s one of the sillier rumors)? Did the Royal cousin’s handsome husband/one time hostage negotiator really commit suicide or did Prince William off him in a jealous rage over Kate? Why did William cancel his attendance at his godfather’s memorial service and what caused those bruises on his neck? Is everything, including King Charle’s illness, really just Meghan and Harry’s fault?  And so on. All ridiculous to ponder but given what’s going on elsewhere a distraction albeit an odd one.   

 

#BringThemAllHomeNow