Claw Backs and Redactions 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🕎

The E Files: The recently passed Epstein Files Transparency Act set last Friday as the day that the files were to be released. To no one’s surprise the Department of Justice is slow walking the file release.  Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, the frontman for the administration’s Epstein debacle, excused the failure to release all of the files, asserting that the “exhaustive” review process being undertaken by the DOJ which he says is necessary to redact sensitive information about victims and their families and anything else that might impede future prosecutions is enormously time consuming. Notably the “future prosecution” category is mostly a catchall for redacting anything the DOJ doesn’t want seen more than anything else although no one should doubt that AG Bondi will try to indict anyone not named Trump if she can manage to do so especially if that person’s name is Clinton. As expected, there were a boatload of fully redacted pages. Curiously, though Chief of Staff Susie Wiles said in the recently released Vanity Fair article that there was very little about former President Clinton in the Epstein files but lots of stuff related to Trump, the initial file dump included pictures of Bill Clinton on the Epstein plane and in a hot tub but few with Trump though at least sixteen files that did include pictures of Trump were quickly wiped from the DOJ website before being reposted after their mysterious (nefarious?) deletion was noted by several very attentive members of the press who’d managed to take screen shots of the files before they were deleted.  The DOJ’s excuse for the claw back was some gobbledygook about their obligation to protect the young women (girls?) who were in some of those pictures.  How is it that Trump was in pictures with girls when the Trump party line is that Trump never hung with any of Epstein’s young “friends?” Also, how is it that some of the other released files revealed the faces of some of the victims who were supposed to be protected? So, to summarize, the DOJ is trickling out the files, heavily redacting lots of them, screening out as much as they manage to catch that depicts Trump, sloppily revealing the faces of victims, all while frontloading anything that depicts other prominent people and celebrities, preferably Democrats, especially those named Clinton. Democrat Ro Khanna and Republican Thomas Massie, the Representatives who pushed hardest for the legislation mandating the file release are now threatening to take some form of legal action, not easy given that Trump controls Justice but politically problematic given that the midterms are now less than a year away.  

Midterm Mania:  As to those upcoming midterms, upstate NY Republican Elise Stefanik will not be running for reelection, nor will she be running for NYS Governor.  Stefanik initially portrayed herself as a moderate and was viewed as the future of the Republican Party.  She quickly morphed, responding to Trump’s rise by aligning herself with him and all things MAGA. A Harvard graduate, she was instrumental in Trump’s attack on “elitist” “woke” institutions of higher education, fully riding the anti anti-Semitism wave, a popular position to take in New York state, especially for a Republican hoping to win statewide office. She was literally hours away from being confirmed to serve as Trump’s UN Ambassador when her nomination was pulled because Trump feared her absence from the House would jeopardize his and Speaker Johnson’s ability to pass his “big ugly bill.” After another Trump acolyte, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, announced his plans to challenge her for the Republican nomination for Governor, Trump once again pulled the rug out from under Stefanik, saying that because he loved them both, he couldn’t endorse either. Stefanik was likely to win the nomination even without Trump’s endorsement but with polls indicating that she’d likely lose against NY Governor Kathy Hochul she decided that an expensive, bruising primary, followed by an even more expensive and likely fruitless general election wasn’t worth the trouble. Without shedding a tear, Trump endorsed Blakeman over the weekend.  Stefanik isn’t the only MAGA not seeking reelection.  Though her announcement didn’t get much press, one term Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis isn’t running for reelection either.  Like Stefanik she says that she wants to spend more time with her family, code for get me out of here, I’ve had enough of this 💩hit show.  Loomis will likely be replaced by another MAGA type because it’s Wyoming. On the Democratic side, though Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ primary challenger, a Democratic Socialist who’d supported Mayor-elect Mamdani has dropped out of the race he was in for a minute, another Mamdani supporter, the onetime NYC Mayoral candidate former city Comptroller Brad Lander is challenging Democratic Congressman Dan Goldman. Lander, like Goldman is Jewish, but is hoping to capitalize on the anti-Israel positions he shares with Mamdani. He’s got Mamdani’s endorsement and as evidenced by the fund-raising text that I received and then reported as spam, Mamdani is already raising money for him.  That will fly among many in Goldman’s left leaning district but not with everyone which explains why Lander sidestepped questions about Israel in a local news interview, insisting that he was challenging Goldman for failing to pushback adequately against Trump, a bogus assertion given that Goldman is one of Trump’s most frequent and articulate critics and also served as counsel to the then Democratic led Judiciary Committee for the first Trump impeachment. Lander desperately needs a job, all politics is local, and lots of it is depressingly weird.

Viral Musings:   Keeping with the depressingly weird theme, Health Secretary RFK had planned to announce plans to ditch the long-term CDC vaccine schedule recommended for children last Friday, replacing it with the one used by Denmark.  Though Denmark recommends a lot of vaccines, the country doesn’t routinely vaccinate healthy children against RSV, rotavirus, varicella (chicken pox), hepatitis B (at birth), hepatitis A, influenza, or meningococcal disease.  Denmark’s decisions are not based on concerns about vaccine safety or effectiveness; the country doesn’t buy into the vaccines cause autism mishigas (insanity).  Instead, their recommendations are based on a cost effectiveness analysis.  The Danes have concluded that since they have universal health care access, they can quickly and effectively treat sick children, sparing them death or long-term harm. To state the obvious, we don’t have universal coverage and don’t have the capacity to treat what would likely be an influx of sick kids were we to jettison our vaccine schedule. That’s a situation likely to get worse given that the Obamacare subsidies have expired and $1 trillion has been cut from our medical system.  At least for now RFK’s plans, like his plans to revise dietary recommendations to push more of the fats we’ve been told to avoid, have been put on hold but he’s got a brain hole and is persistent so don’t be surprised if they reappear soon.  Perhaps over a holiday weekend or when Trump is distracting the country with a war.     

More 💩:  As to wars, we keep inching closer to a full-fledged one with Venezuela.  Trump, his Department of War, and his Coast Guard, spent the weekend interdicting ships carrying Venezuelan oil. Trump’s trying to pressure Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro into stepping aside, alleging that he’s a dictator who illegally ignored the results of a legitimate election to maintain power. Trump’s right about Maduro, he’s a creep and he did steal the election, but who is he kidding, if anything Trump respects the whole election stealing thing. Secretary of State Rubio whose thought to be a primary mover behind the Venezuela strategy wants regime change, Trump mostly wants oil because that whole democracy thing isn’t as important to him.  Over the weekend, we also bombed ISIS targets in Syria in response to the ISIS’s killing of three Americans. No breakthrough on the Russia-Ukraine talks in part because Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are in over their heads but mostly because Putin wants more Ukrainian land and has no plans to cede an inch of what he already has.

Even More 💩: One day before it was due to air Bari Weiss, the increasingly controversial new head of news at CBS, put the kibosh on a teed up, ready to go already teased on its website 60 Minutes investigative segment centering on allegations of abuses at the El Salvador detention center where the Trump administration sent hundreds of Venezuelan migrants last March. Weiss contends that her decision was because more editing was needed, among other things she didn’t like that the migrants were called migrants rather than illegal immigrants. For the record that not so liberal rag the NY Post called them migrants in its story about the last-minute “pull” decision. Weiss also felt someone like junior Goebbels Stephen Miller should appear to contest the allegations made in the segment.  Following usual practice, 60 Minutes had contacted the administration before finalizing the segment, but they hadn’t offered up Miller maybe because the contents were spot on and it’s easier to scream fake news if you wait until after a segment airs.  Anyway, it’s hard to miss that CBS’s parent company Paramount is trying to upend Netflix’s win, or win for now, in the battle to take over Warner Brothers Discovery and is hoping to get Trump to support its efforts.  And lastly, though fighting anti-Semitism is supposed to the reason that Trump has extorted a bunch of universities, it’s causing a lot of fights among his supporters. Steve Bannon, Candace Owens, and Tucker Carlson are fully in on blaming Jews for everything. Ben Shapiro is outraged about it as is Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom have very personal reasons for finding racial and religious hatred to be a bad thing.  Then there’s VP/Presidential wannabee JD Vance.  He finally said something mean back to the people making racist comments about his wife Usha, a practicing Hindu of Indian heritage, but then added that free speech, even hateful racist remarks are cool as long as we all recognize that the US is and was always meant to be a Christian nation. That whole Constitution thing, forget about it.