TGIF 3/22/24

I've got short good week/bad week lists for you, in this week that brought us the first day of spring and multiple cold, blustery, non-spring-like days.

It also brought us the start of the NCAA's March Madness madness, including anger over who got selected, and misery as brackets were busted by upsets. We also learned this week of a scandal in the circle of baseball's highest-paid player, and of a second cancer diagnosis in the highest echelon of the British royal family. 

We'll learn more about all of that in the coming days, I'm sure.  In the meantime, let's get to the lists.

The media - yet again - had a bad week.

The disappearance of a white male college student in Nashville garnered tons of breathless national news coverage, including the repeated airing of videos from the night he disappeared. You would have thought each of us - even me, sitting some 850 miles away - was part of his story, part of the search, part of his life. We were not. We are not. We shouldn't be.

Why was his story so important that it commanded so much of the limited national news time? Is it because it fits the narrative of out-of-control crime in our country? I guess it did, at least until this morning, when his body was found - and no foul play was suspected. 

But wait - there's more! News is breaking that NBC has hired Ronna 'I'm So MAGA I Changed My Name' McDaniel, the former head of the Trump National Committee, as a political commentator. 

McDaniel is expected to contribute to both NBC and MSNBC. Her first appearance will be on Sunday on “Meet the Press,” where she will give her first interview since stepping down from the RNC.

I hope you all laughed as hard as I did at "McDaniel is expected to contribute..." Honestly, I couldn't imagine how they could make Meet the Press worse, but a Kristin Welker/Ronna McDaniel interview is certainly a great way to start. Here's what network bigwig Carrie Budoff Brown had to say about the hire. 

It couldn’t be a more important moment to have a voice like Ronna’s on the team. 

And here's Ronna's voice, so you know what you have to look forward to. 

House Republicans - yet again - had a bad week.

Rep. James Comer (R-MAGA Camp), chair of the House Oversight Committee, is now saying that the best way to hold the Biden Crime Family accountable is through criminal referrals, and that he's got more than enough evidence to do that. This comes after Lev Parnas, former Rudy "Too Broke" Giuliani BFF, said he was sent to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine, and found none. 

Parnas also accused the GOP of doing Russia's bidding, and he named names, including Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Putin); you may remember he once famously spent our nation's birthday in Moscow. And after, of course, other witnesses have gone through some stuff.

But wait - there's more! Rep. Marjorie Taylor Flamethrower Greene (R-You Kidding Me?) has filed a motion to oust Speaker Rep. Mike Johnson (R-ighteous Indignation). She did that as the House passed the remaining bills to avoid a government shutdown by a vote of 286 - 134; 101 Republicans voted for the package, while 112 of them voted against it. It's "more of a warning" to Johnson, she said. 

I do not wish to inflict pain on our conference and throw the House in chaos, but this is basically a warning and it’s time for us to go through the process, take our time and find a new speaker of the house that will stand with Republicans and our Republican majority instead of standing with the Democrats.

Green doesn't recognize 47% of her own caucus, and apparently Johnson isn't supposed to recognize them either.

Voters in my neck of the woods had a good week. Now, I know that can be said pretty much any time people can vote, but I'm talking about an unusual situation here. Village officials made a decision that would make it much harder for a local business owner to sell his business and retire. Villagers were highly disappointed in the actions of the officials, enough so that another businessman started a write-in campaign against the mayor - and he won.

This is a big deal for the little village where it happened, but it's a big-picture story, too. It shows the power of engagement, the power of fighting for something you believe in, and yes, the power of voting. Hopefully, this will resonate with people who think no one listens, or who think that one or ten or 302 votes don't matter - because they do. 

TGIF, everyone. 

Wondering on Wednesday 2/28/24

Ready... set... wonder!

Ronna McDaniel is stepping down as chair of the RNC after the Super Tuesday primaries in March. I wonder if she’ll have to get permission from her family to go back to using her maiden name, which she used before Donald Trump frowned on having anyone named Romney involved in the party leadership.

Sen. Mitch McConnell announced he’ll step down as leader of the Republicans in the Senate after the November election, but will serve out the remainder of this term. I sort of wonder if he announced this so he won’t have to endorse Donald Trump? I also wonder if he’s got the courage to do the right thing and pass on making that endorsement.

Michigan Dems held a primary yesterday, and over 100,000 Dems -13% of the total - voted 'Uncommitted,' while 81% voted for President Biden. I was not surprised that Biden did the right thing after the results were announced.

In his statement late Tuesday evening, Biden thanked “every Michigander who made their voice heard today,” noting that “exercising the right to vote and participating in our democracy is what makes America great.”

A couple of things on this one. As I noted previously, I wonder why we all don't have the chance to actively vote for nobody, whether it's ‘uncommitted' or 'none of these candidates,' as they can in Nevada. Second, I wonder why the media can't help tripping over themselves trying to cement a connection between a protest vote in a February primary and the presidential election (checks calendar) over 250 days away. And then I laughed and laughed at the stupidity of my wondering.

I support the protest vote, and the protest; I often wonder if we are doing enough to pressure Israel to at least ensure that sufficient humanitarian aid is reaching the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who are guilty of nothing other than living in Gaza. And if you want to make the argument that "Hamas was elected, so everyone in Gaza must support them," I can't help wondering how you handled the whiplash of going from being an Obama Democrat to a MAGA Republican to a Biden Democrat over the last three elections... I'd love to hear about that, if you're willing to talk about it.

The Supreme Court announced it will hear arguments in April on whether or not a US president has complete immunity - up to and including going as far as having SEAL Team 6 murder a political opponent - or if he's just like any other American thug, and subject to our criminal justice system.  By delaying arguments for five weeks, they're playing into his hands, I think, and that's frustrating. I wonder why there isn't a way for the Supremes to act more expediently when the case is both critically important and significantly time-constrained, unless they're acting exactly as fast as they want to, in which case we might have to wonder about other things, right?

Donald Trump has said he’s unable to come up with the full bond amount in his NY business fraud case. He maintains he can come up with $100M, but getting to the full amount ($355M not counting the daily interest accruals) is impossible, without having to sell off properties.  And I wonder which he’d pick -  Trump Tower, with its 30,000 square-foot penthouse? 40 Wall Street? 

But wait – I wonder if he even can sell any of the NY properties? Would that count as "doing business' in NY, which is prohibited under Judge Arthur Engoron’s decision? And if he has to go elsewhere, would he pick Bedminster, where the buyer would get not only a golf course but also Ivana Trump's burial site? Trump Winery in Virginia?  Or – gasp – Mar-a-Lago, which is worth $27M (accountant valuation), $517M (Trump loan application), or ONE BILLION DOLLARS (Trump's personal opinion)?  There’s just so much wondering on this one. 

And speaking of the Engoron decision, in case you’re wondering, the GoFundMe set up to allow Americans to help their billionaire best friend pay the judgment has raised more than $1.28M from some 22K donors. 

What's on your wondering mind tonight?

Quick Takes(v59): GOP Pride, Swallowed (Again)

Remember last week when it was reported that former president Donald Trump had ordered the 'official' Republicans - the RNC, the NRCC and the NRSC- to stop using his name and likeness in their communications?

According to an article in Politico, The Donald was "furious that his name has been bandied about by organizations that help Republicans who voted to impeach him - without his permission." However, an advisor made clear,

...Trump remains committed to the Republican Party and electing America First conservatives, but that doesn't give anyone - friend or foe - permission to use his likeness without explicit approval.

Well, the RNC responded, telling Trump's lawyer that it

 has every right to refer to public figures as it engages in core, First Amendment-protected political speech. 

Not only that, but the attorney said that Trump had 'reaffirmed' with Ronna McDaniel that it was OK for the RNC to use his name to raise money - which the organization did on Sunday, in an email urging supporters to "DEFEND President Trump's America First policies."

Then, we learn from the WaPo that the RNC will hold an event at Mar-a-Lago next month when it brings big donors to Florida, instead of at a hotel as originally scheduled. Trump will speak at the dinner, while others, including Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis (he came in second in the CPAC straw poll), and former Secretary of BS Mike Pompeo will speak at the hotel.

The RNC will pay to rent the club and for the meals; that's typical for events like this. It's almost required to get Trump to appear. When he was president, the chances of getting his participating increased if the event was at one of his properties, where he'd make money off his supporters while accepting their adoration.

According to HuffPo, "That type of self-serving arrangement had become somewhat standard the Trump era, with his properties collecting some $10.5 million from various political and campaign funds.

 Grifters gotta grift, you know.

But what - there's more! Late last night,  Former Guy sent a direct message to his supporters. In it, slammed the Rs for supporting people who don't support him - the RINOS, he called them (adding an S to the acronym) - and asking that his real supporters send money to him, not to the RNC. He used that same tactic to raise millions for his alleged legal defense fund.

As one Twitter user noted, "this whole suicide pact could not be more explicit."

It's hard to imagine that the RNC could debase themselves any more than this - paying Trump for the privilege of having him bash their members, and then standing back and standing by as he tries to gut their fundraising efforts - but I suspect they'll find a way. They always do.

Sunday School 10/11/20 Extra Credit

For Extra Credit this week, I offer Margaret Brennan's conversation with Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, on Face the Nation. McDaniel's one of the whopping mess of Republicans with COVID-19, is recovering at home, and feeling better, she said.

Highlights from their discussion:

She's not seeing in the RNC numbers that there's been a drop in the president's numbers because of his not being on the campaign trail - in fact, she said, they've seen an increase in his numbers, and suggested that stems from voters being frustrated "by the corrupt debate commission" for canceling the 2nd debate. And when Brennan reminded her that there are Republicans on the Commission for Presidential Debates, she said they are not 'non-partisan Republicans. Those Republicans have been very critical of this president." And, comically, she accused them of not following the science! 

In response to Brennan's question about the economy being Trump's "most resonant message" but he's tied with Biden in Michigan on who'd handle the economy, and why the message seemed not to be working,  she continued talking about the debate, about the Supreme Court, blah blah blah, and finally said the president "is doing better on" the economy; that the PPP loans are "what saved this economy." 

There was a point where Brennan tried - really tried to get McDaniel to answer a simple question: is the president going to resume holding in-person fundraisers. Here's how that went:

RMcD: Margaret. You have a candidate for president right now-- doing an absolute personal power grab. No, Joe Biden is running on the biggest power grab in history, and you guys want to talk about fund-raising protocols? He is saying he's going to stack--

 MB: I want to ask what the President's doing in the next few days, because you are twenty-three days from an election.

RMcD: He's going to say he's going to stack the Supreme Court, get rid of the filibuster and he's being given a free pass. This should be all the media is focused on. I understand you don't like Donald Trump. I understand we don't like Republicans.

MB: Actually, he-- you said the President--

RMcD: We have a Democrat running on the biggest power grab, the absolute biggest power grab in the history of our country and reshaping the United States of America--

 MB: Okay, so--

RMcD: --and not answering the question. That's all we should be talking about.

MB: Okay, so I think you--

RMcD:  That's all we should be talking about.

MB: I think you answered the question of yes assuming-- resuming in-person fund-raisers for the President.

RMcD: No, we--

MB: But let me ask you about--

RMcD: Who cares?

MB:  --voting.

RMcD: Who cares if we have fund-raisers when you have a candidate running to upend--

MB: Because it's the President. I want to know what he's doing. Let's--

RMcD: But he's going to upend checks and balances in the third branch of government. Why are we not--

MB:  Well, he's going to hold rallies in the next few days.

RMcD:  --talking about this non-stop? No, this is Joe Biden who's going to upend checks and balances, get rid of the checks and balances that are fundamental to our Constitution and won't answer if he's going to stack the Supreme Court.

MB: Well, let's-- let's talk about--

RMcD: This is all the media should be focusing on.

That was fun, right?  It's pretty clear that McDaniel should not be booked on any of the shows, because she has no intention of answering questions. Brennan should have cut the interview off - they all should do that -respectfully, of course.

Another guest? Leonard Schleifer, the head of Regeneron, the company that made the experimental antibody cocktail the president took as part of his COVID-19 treatment. Brennan asked Schleifer whether his drug cures COVID and makes you immune (the president has said both of those things).

So the President's case is a case of one, and that's what we call a case report. And it is evidence of what's happening, but it's kind of the weakest evidence that you can get. Although, there are some very interesting aspects of his case, such as he was elderly, he had some risk factors, and that he did not have his own immune system in gear when he was sick and he got treated with our immune system in a vial, if you will. But the real evidence has to come about how good a drug is and what it will do on average has to come from these larger clinical trials, these randomized clinical trials, which are the gold standard. And those are ongoing. We've got some preliminary evidence that we've talked with the FDA, and we're going for an emergency use authorization because we think it's appropriate at this time. But, yes, the President's case is a case report, perhaps the most analyzed case report ever-- but it's just low down on the evidence scale that we really need.

He said the drug does create immunity, and that immunity is "probably going to last you for months." And, as to the president saying he wants the drug to be free for everyone, Schleifer said they had talked about that, earlier this year,

...before we actually had any data from randomized trials. They went ahead and said, listen, you start manufacturing the product, we will commit to buy it from you. Stop manufacturing the other products that you're working on or move them elsewhere. And let us make sure that if it does work, it'll be available. And what the government said--

That's a $450M contract for Regeneron, and Brennan wondered how much supply that will buy.

Well, they bought from us several hundred thousand, maybe around three hundred thousand doses, which they are going to make it for free. What I think that the administration has been working recently-- I saw an announcement with-- with AstraZeneca. Look, we need-- Regeneron can't do this alone. We need the entire industry. And I'm so proud the industry has risen. We have companies like Lilly, great companies. We're partners with Roche, one of the best companies in this whole field. Amgen is involved. AstraZeneca is involved. Black-Scholes is involved. We all have to step up-- if we're going to provide enough of this.

Brennan pointed out that, last Friday alone, we saw nearly 60,000 new cases, and in Regeneron's FDA application for emergency use authorization, the company said they had 50,000 doses - less than a current one-day supply - and she wondered how the drug is going to be distributed.

Schleifer said it's going to be the government, the FDA, ethical experts, and so on, trying to determine how to get it go the people "who most need it, who would most benefit from it." He mentioned the elderly, those at high risk - and said "we have to figure out how to ration this."

He also said that it's possible his company's drug could be used as a prophylactic, perhaps to household members of people infected with the virus, or maybe to folks with the critical underlying conditions - those with diabetes, asthma, maybe pregnant women - but that some of that is still awaiting evidence. 

He left it with a great analogy, that they're building the plane and flying it at the same time. If that's not a great way of looking at life during this pandemic, I'm not sure what is.

See you around the virtual campus. Don't be late for class, and remember, you're still supposed to be wearing your mask. 

In Case You Missed It (v54)

Grab your cuppa - here's your recap of last week's posts, in case you missed anything. 

Sunday School had me listening in on the MTP classroom for the second week in a row, and during my time there I learned that Ronna McDaniel not only wears a mask (although I couldn't find any pictures of her doing so - and there's at least one of the president wearing one, so she's pretty good at hiding), but that she had some extra N-95s hanging around that she and her family donated. And, that she's apparently unaware of what stimulus bills have been passed, and blissfully unaware of the president's lack of deal-making finesse.

Let's show the best of America. The president's willing to work with everyone. Why aren't Democrats passing a fourth stimulus bill? Why aren't they helping small businesses? Why aren't they working with this president? 

And, I learned from Peter Strzok (the real reason I dropped in) that the gang working on the FBI's Russia investigations had multiple arguments about whether the investigations were the right thing to do, but "conclusively, the concerns we had about Russia were merited and it was the appropriate thing to do to look into them." Strzok also pointed out that, given the facts, Trump "is surrounded by people who have a pervasive pattern of conduct with the Russians." And, he said, 

It is not without exaggeration that there is no president in modern history who has the same broad and deep connections to any foreign intel service, let alone a hostile government like Russia.

For last week's Sunday School Extra Credit we learned that "the fog of war" is the new mantra the White House Spin Doctors have cooked up to explain the president's mishandling of the pandemic. Here's a summary of just a piece of the conversation between Chris Wallace and Trump senior campaign advisor Steve Cortes.

He said what he means is that "it's very clear that the president, early on during the fog of biological war" (and I can't stop seeing an image of a guy with orange hair fighting off a fog of Agent Orange, or worse, a fog of sexually transmitted diseases - his own personal Vietnam, you'll recall), Trump decided to "reassure the American people. That he was going to be the kind of leader who convinces people that we can persevere through this epidemiological Pearl Harbor" and that meant he had to lie to us. (Cortes didn't actually say that last part, I did.) All of that added up to what he called "a record of superb management actually of the virus."

I'm in a fog just recalling the interview...

The first of two Sidebars last week spun off the Extra Credit post. Jake Tapper, bless his heart, attempted to interview Peter Navarro on CNN's SOTU. I didn't cover that - I can't deal with Navarro - but I did feature Tapper's remarks about China and Disney and the NBA and America's right to make a profit even in the face of that country's human rights violations. American first, and all. 

This summer two Uighur organizations lodged a complaint against the government of China at the International Criminal Court accusing the Chinese government of genocide, torture and crimes against humanity.

This is the government to whom the NBA is bowing and president Trump is giving approval and Disney is openly thanking.

After a horrible genocide, the Holocaust, the world came together and pledged never again, never again. The NBA, President Trump and the Walt Disney Company, they're making those words meaningless.

For our Email of the Week  I highlighted some snail mail my brother-in-law shared with me.  He gets all kinds of mail from the Republicans, not sure why, and passes them on to me in case I need to get riled up. The latest was from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the truth-telling former White House Press Secretary, right?  The email was all about getting word to the president about how important my BIL's voice was on a Stop Fake News petition, since he's, you know, a special patriot.

I for one, can't sit idly by any longer as the Democrats and their medial allies try to tear down our president, our Republican Party and our values with malicious smears and pervasive lies. Your name was forwarded to me as a strong pro-America patriot, so I am counting on you to join me. 

I was moved, I tell you. I was moved.  Moved enough to share, in the second Sidebar of the week, how much it appeared the Republicans were asking that the media no longer cover the president, after I removed a dozen or so words from her petition.

I'm not a Republican - heck, right now I'm not a registered anything, truth be told - but I've got to tell you, I'm practically giddy seeing Republicans all up in arms about the lies and the attacks (in which they've been complicit, as we all know - and they know, too).  

I mean, Trump has attacked them, and lied about them, and he's also attacked and lied about: 

And then I included over 50 bullets of the attacked and lied to and lied about. The Rs have a strong case here, they really do. 

For your TGIF, I was all over the map, starting with Trump buying votes in Florida by sending billions and billions of aid to Puerto Rico to help them recover from Hurricane Maria - you know, the one where he threw paper towels to suffering Americans?  And yes, this is vote-buying in Florida, because that's where so many Puerto Ricans went in 2017 when they ran out of paper towels. And of course, who could ignore this comment from the president?

I have to say, in a very nice way, a very respectful way - I'm the best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico. Nobody even close.

There were also thoughts on the beleaguered folks at the CDC, and about the Big 10 deciding after all that, since they can rapid-test all of their players every day, they might as well rake in some money and play football after all, and  on the administration's fear of mask fraud.

As I was finishing Friday's post, news was breaking that Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg - the #NotoriousRBG - had died. And that's what led to yesterday's post about consistency and hypocrisy. For your reading pleasure, I highlighted comments made by 15 current Republican senators about the importance of waiting to fill a vacant SCOTUS  seat during the last year of a president's term. We know where they stood when they were the ones who wanted the people to speak, and I'm pretty sure I know where they stand now that they are the ones who don't want to wait for the people to speak.  

For example, here's what Sen. Ted Cruz, himself apparently a potential justice candidate in Trump's eyes, had to say back in 2016 when Justice Scalia died. 

It has been 80 years since a Supreme Court vacancy was nominated and confirmed in an election year. There is a long tradition that you don’t do this in an election year... In an election year, we have a long tradition that a lame-duck president doesn't get to jam a Supreme Court nominee through on the very end. 

But long traditions, like long memories of someone calling your wife ugly and your father a presidential assassin, don't mean a thing when it comes to a SCOTUS swing, do they? 

I'll be back later with your Sunday School.

Sunday School 9/13/20

For today's Sunday School, I bit the bullet and hung out with Chuck Todd in the Meet the Press classroom. 

Now, I know it's not like me to devote time to MTP two weeks in a row, but he's got Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party Chair , and he's also got author (and former FBI guy) Peter Strzok, so I couldn't pass it up. 

Todd wasted no time with McDaniel, asking right off the bat whether we should view the president's comment about "not wanting to create a panic" through the lens of him not being "a president who shies away from trying to incite panic," and that he didn't want anyone to panic "because he's worried the virus hurts him politically."

McDaniel disagreed that he "took political calculations," a comment that's truly laughable, since every waking moment of his life is spent making political calculations. She referred to the China travel ban, and the Task Force (which we all watched Trump ignore or argue with on TV for weeks on end). She didn't mention him not letting the cruise ships dock, or his petty behavior towards blue state governors and the like, nor did she refer to his oft-repeated lies about the coronavirus being nothing, being a blip, going away, cases down to zero, harmless like the flu, and so on. But, she said,

... I think history will look back on him well as how he handled this pandemic. 

Excuse me, waiter, "I'll have what she's having." 

McDaniel said that 20/20 hindsight is perfect, and also pointed to changes in the science, and even that she "went and donated some masks to a local hospital, some N95 masks that I had at my home." And when Todd asked about the "direct correlation between the president not encouraging mask wearing and the fact that fewer Republicans wear masks than Independents or Democrats," she said

I don't think this is politically dividing at all. I wear masks. My kids wear masks. My husband wears a mask. This isn't a Republican or Democrat things, whether you wear a mask.

The fact that I can't find an image of her actually wearing one probably doesn't mean anything, right? And she insisted that the president is "willing to work with every governor, Democrat and Republican," except for when he said they weren't sucking up enough, or when he said he didn't want anyone talking to some of them (Washington's Jay Inslee comes to mind).  She also said we have so many cases because we do more testing, blah blah blah. And, she said,

the president has led us through uncertain times with a Democrat party who's politicizing a time of crisis when usually people come together.

Um, here's the president not politicizing the coronavirus: "Liberate Minnesota!" "Liberate Michigan!" "Liberate Virginia..." And, McDaniel said "I don't know anything about that" when Todd asked about reports of HHS manipulation CDC recommendations and reports, but "Nancy Pelosi has called it the Trump virus" and that's the same, or something. And, truly the pinnacle of hypocrisy in this interview, here's her final comment.

Let's show the best of America. The president's willing to work with everyone. Why aren't Democrats passing a fourth stimulus bill? Why aren't they helping small businesses. Why aren't they working with this president? 

I'm not sure how she missed that the president signed the fourth stimulus bill back in April or that the House passed the Heroes Act on May 15th. I can only surmised that must have been when she was busy donating those N95 masks she had lying around her house.