Month: November 2021

Some potential good news on the new variant:

The first South African doctor to alert the authorities about patients with the omicron variant has told The Telegraph that the symptoms of the new variant are unusual but mild.

Dr Angelique Coetzee said she was first alerted to the possibility of a new variant when patients in her busy private practice in the capital Pretoria started to come in earlier this month with Covid-19 symptoms that did not make immediate sense.

They included young people of different backgrounds and ethnicities with intense fatigue and a six-year-old child with a very high pulse rate, she said. None suffered from a loss of taste or smell.

“Their symptoms were so different and so mild from those I had treated before,” said Dr Coetzee, a GP for 33 years who chairs the South African Medical Association alongside running her practice.

On November 18, when four family members all tested positive for Covid-19 with complete exhaustion, she informed the country’s vaccine advisory committee.

“We had one very interesting case, a kid, about six years old, with a temperature and a very high pulse rate, and I wondered if I should admit her. But when I followed up two days later, she was so much better,” Dr Coetzee says.

Dr Coetzee, who was briefing other African medical associations on Saturday, made clear her patients were all healthy and she was worried the new variant could still hit older people – with co-morbidities such as diabetes or heart disease – much harder.

“What we have to worry about now is that when older, unvaccinated people are infected with the new variant, and if they are not vaccinated, we are going to see many people with a severe [form of the] disease,” she said.

South African demographics are very different from those in the UK. Only about six per cent of the population are over the age of 65. This means that older individuals who are more vulnerable to the virus may take some time to present.

We know very little and have almost nothing to go on. But if it turns out that Omicron is more easily transmissible but presents with much milder symptoms, it may end up being a good thing.

However, here is a note of caution from one of South Africa’s top scientists:

We know that getting a rapid understanding of disease severity with #Omicron (particularly in vaccinated individuals and re-infections) is absolutely critical, but it’s just too early for reliable data

Observations from clinicians on the ground are always important, and we lean heavily on them, but we need to be cautious about jumping on early reports that all cases with this variant are mild

The resurgence in cases in Gauteng is really very recent, off a low base – here you can see the test positivity rates over the first three weeks of November

WEEKLY TESTING SUMMARY This report summarises national laboratory testing for SARS-CoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, in South Africa. This report is based on data collected up to 20 November 2021 (week 46 of 2021). Key highlights: In week 46 the testing rate was highest in Gauteng (413 per 100,000 persons) and lowest in Limpopo (58 

Most of the early spread was amongst younger people, with outbreaks in universities likely being amplification events. You can see the age patterns in the figures in the excellent weekly🧵from @tomtom_m

On the testing side, the @nicd_sa has released their testing report for the same week to 20Nov21. Report here: https://t.co/yn11Phc5rI. National PTP was 2.3% in the week, up from 1.1% the previous, but still low. pic.twitter.com/dl8jgC0Kue

— Tom Moultrie (@tom-moultrie.bsky.social) (@tomtom_m) November 24, 2021

So with this, and the time lag for infections to progress to severe disease and hospitalisation, we would only expect to see the impact on hospitalisations in the next few weeks

We have robust surveillance systems in place with @nicd_sa @HealthZA to monitor hospitalisations and to link to PCR and sequencing data, so we are well placed to answer the key questions over the coming days and weeks

Originally tweeted by Richard Lessells (@rjlessells) on November 27, 2021.

Still … fingers crossed.

Oh my. There seems to be some trouble in far-right wingnut conspiracy theory paradise:

Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn has embraced his position as a hero to QAnon conspiracy theorists. He took the QAnon oath, sold QAnon T-shirts, and even auctioned off a QAnon quilt. He appeared at a QAnon convention and signed books with a QAnon slogan. Some QAnon followers even believe that Flynn is “Q,” the mysterious figure behind QAnon.

But a recording released late Saturday night by a one-time Flynn ally suggests that the retired three-star general privately believes QAnon to be “total nonsense.”ADVERTISING

On Saturday night, pro-Trump lawyer and QAnon booster Lin Wood released a recording of what purports to be a phone call between Wood and Flynn on Telegram. The audio’s publication comes amid a right-wing civil war pitting Wood against one-time allies like Flynn and other figures involved in the 2020 attempt to overturn the election.

In the call, Wood complains to Flynn that his QAnon supporters had attacked Wood online. But Flynn attempts to disown QAnon, claiming it’s a “disinformation campaign” created by the CIA.

“I think it’s a disinformation campaign,” Flynn said on the call. “I think it’s a disinformation campaign that the CIA created. That’s what I believe. Now, I don’t know that for a fact, but that’s what I think it is. I think it’s a disinformation campaign.”

Later in the recording, Flynn called QAnon “total nonsense.”

“I find it total nonsense,” Flynn said. “And I think it’s a disinformation campaign created by the left.”

Flynn could not be reached for comment.

In the call, Flynn promises to send Wood an article about QAnon’s failure to come true. Based on text messages from Flynn that Wood also published on his Telegram account, the article Flynn referenced on the call was a Nov. 2 article by white supremacist radio host Hal Turner that endorsed the idea of mass violence.

In the blog post that Flynn apparently cited, Turner ridicules QAnon believers who traveled to Dallas believing the John F. Kennedy Jr. would appear. Turner wrote that Trump supporters would repeatedly look like fools “until something like a mass slaughter happens,” writing that the JFK Jr. debacle was caused because people were “too cowardly to stand up, pick up guns, and go kill the people” Turner falsely claimed stole the election.

Flynn’s private disavowal of QAnon would mark a blow to the conspiracy theory movement, which claims the world is run by a cabal of cannibal-pedophiles that can only be defeated by Trumpworld stars like Flynn. In May, Flynn was feted as a hero at a QAnon convention in Dallas, where he endorsed the idea of a Myanmar-style coup in the United States.

[…]

It’s not clear when the call between Wood and Flynn took place, though it appears to have come sometime in early November since Flynn mentioned Turner’s article. The Daily Beast couldn’t verify the audio’s authenticity, but Wood regularly records phone calls with his allies and reporters. Last week, Wood published a recording of a call with former Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne, a one-time Wood ally involved in the attempt to overturn the election. Byrne, who is caught on the call criticizing Powell, confirmed that recording’s authenticity in his own Telegram post.

Wood is also in a fracas over his handling of the Kyle Rittenhouse case before he was replaced. There’s a lot of money at stake.

Wood is nuts, but Flynn is too. He may just be a standard liar when it comes to Q, but his paranoid insistence that it’s a CIA plot keeps him fully in the fold of conspiracy nuts.

I know these people are fringe and all. But keep in mind that Flynn was Trump’s national security adviser and was pardoned by Trump. This guy is a MAGA made man and Trump has never disavowed him.

Update —

Some of the audio of the supposed conversation between Flynn and Lin discussing the Q movement. https://t.co/DiR6gnQ8fC pic.twitter.com/PalhMMZcgQ

— 2024 𝕂𝕒𝕣𝕞𝕒 🌻🌻 (@2022_Karma) November 28, 2021

It appears that vaccine inequality isn’t the concern in fighting OMICRON that people are saying it is. There is apparently no shortage of vaccines in at least some of the African countries where OMICRON is assumed to be flourishing:

.@ScottGottliebMD says that 5 of the 8 countries in Southern Africa affected by the Biden travel ban have recently told @pfizer to halt their delivery of vaccines since national stockpiles are full. $PFE That suggests a distribution problem and hesitation issue. #COVID19

Originally tweeted by Margaret Brennan (@margbrennan) on November 28, 2021.

This is hopeful:

On FTN, @ScottGottliebMD says: “If you talk to people in vaccine circles, people who are working on a vaccine, they have a pretty good degree of confidence that a boosted vaccine — so, three full doses of vaccine — is going to be fairly protective against this new variant.”

“The other critical question,” says Gottlieb, is whether “someone who has immunity from prior infection from Delta also has good protection against this new variant.”

That, plus boosters, “could be a pretty good backstop from this becoming really epidemic in the United States.”

Originally tweeted by Will Saletan (@saletan) on November 28, 2021.

Oh, and by the way:

Public health officials have been struggling to persuade eligible Americans to get their COVID-19 booster shots. New research could help them make the case that the extra dose will provide substantially more protection — even if they’ve also recovered from a coronavirus infection.

A small study that’s among the first to track people’s protective antibodies over time found that those who were immunized against COVID-19 with two doses of an mRNA vaccine and received a booster shot about eight months later saw their levels of neutralizing antibodies skyrocket.

Among this group of 33 fully vaccinated and boosted people, the median level of these antibodies was 23 times higher one week after the booster shot than it had been just before the tune-up dose.

What’s more, their median post-booster antibody level was three times higher than was typical for another group of people whose antibodies were measured a few weeks after getting their second dose of vaccine, when they’re close to their peak. And it was 53 times higher than that of a group of 76 unvaccinated people who had recovered from COVID-19 just two to six weeks earlier.

Even compared to a group of 73 people who had weathered a bout with COVID-19and went on to get two doses of an mRNA vaccine, the boosted group’s median antibody level was 68% higher.

Study leader Alexis Demonbreun, a cell biologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said the data demonstrate that no matter how well protected a vaccinated person may think she is, getting a booster shot is likely to increase her neutralizing antibodies — and with it, her immunity — considerably. And because scientists expect large antibody responses to create more durable immunity, the protection afforded by the booster should last longer than the initial two-shot regimen did.

“If I was going to Vegas, I’d bet on the booster rather than getting the virus to protect me,” Demonbreun said.

The study was posted on MedRxiv, a website where researchers share preliminary findings.

This sounds like good news. If you get boosted.

But this is going to be with us one way or another:

Amid growing fears over a new super-mutated COVID-19 variant that looks to be quickly spreading across the world, Dr. Anthony Fauci said over the weekend that Americans are “going to have to start living” with the virus as “we’re not going to eradicate” it.

Nearly two years into an ongoing pandemic that’s killed millions worldwide and over 750,000 in the U.S., global markets were spooked last week after coronavirus cases dramatically surged in South Africa. The spike has been blamed on the Omicron variant and has prompted the United States to place travel restrictions on eight African countries.ADVERTISING

At the same time, however, the new virus strain has already been detected in several European countries and Hong Kong, sparking concern among health officials that Omicron is not only highly transmissible but could evade current COVID-19 vaccines. Making the Sunday show rounds, Fauci warned that “we really need to be prepared” for increased Omicron transmission.

Explaining on NBC’s Meet the Press that Omicron has “32 or more variants in that very important spike protein of the virus,” the nation’s top infectious disease expert said the mutations “strongly suggest that it’s going to have an advantage in transmissibility and that it might evade immune protection” from monoclonal antibody treatment or even vaccines.

“So it’s not necessarily that that’s going to happen, but it’s a strong indication that we really need to be prepared for that,” the chief White House medical adviser added.

Yet, while raising the possibility that this latest variant may be resistant to current COVID-19 vaccines and treatments, Fauci said the emergence of “troublesome” Omicron should sound the alarm for unvaccinated people to finally get their shots.

“It may not be as good in protecting against initial infection, but it has a very important impact on diminishing the likelihood that you’re going to get a severe outcome from it,” he stated on Meet the Press. “So this is a clarion call as far as I’m concerned of saying let’s put aside all of these differences that we have and say, ‘If you’re not vaccinated, get vaccinated. If you’re fully vaccinated, get boosted, and get the children vaccinated also.’ We now have time.”

The underlying message throughout these most recent appearances by Fauci, however, is that the nation is going to have to eventually come to terms with the fact that COVID-19 is now endemic and will never truly go away.ADVERTISING

“We certainly are not going to eradicate it. We’ve only eradicated one virus, and that’s smallpox. Elimination means there’s none of it in the country, like we have now with polio and with measles,” Fauci told NBC News anchor Chuck Todd. “I don’t think we’re going to be there with this. But what I do think we will be able to do is get a level of control that’s low enough that it doesn’t interfere with our function, it doesn’t have a major impact on society and what we do. It’s not going to go away.”

He added: “The lower we get it, the better off we’ll be. And you get it that low when you get the overwhelming majority of the population vaccinated and boosted. So, like I’ve said multiple times, Chuck, it’s in with our own grasp of how we’re going to be able to live with the virus. The lower we get it, the lower the dynamics of virus in the community, the lower the risk to everyone, including vaccinated people.”

He delivered a similar message during a lengthy sit-down interview on CBS News’ Face the Nation, telling anchor Margaret Brennan that the goal is to get new cases down to an acceptable level so that the U.S. would be able to “live with COVID.”

Acknowledging that he’s said in the past that he’d like to see America get to under 10,000 daily infections, Fauci declared that the current national level of 80,000 new daily cases is “unacceptable” before asserting that the virus is here to stay.

“I mean, we’ve heard people say, understandably, they’re trying to look for a metric to give to the public that we’re going to have to start living with COVID,” he proclaimed. “I believe that’s the case because I don’t think we’re going to eradicate it. We’ve only eradicated one infection of mankind, and that’s smallpox.”

Fauci concluded: “I don’t think we’re even going to eliminate it. The way you’ve eliminated polio from the United States, you’ve eliminated malaria, which was, you know, decades and decades ago. We had malaria right here in Washington, D.C. We’ve eliminated measles because we have a very, very, very intensive vaccine campaign that did that. So we’re looking at control.”

This is just sad:

“Anybody who spins lies and threatens and all that theater that goes on … the Rand Pauls and all that other nonsense. That’s noise, Margaret, that’s noise.”

— Dr. Fauci on Republican lawmakers' threats to investigate him over COVID response. pic.twitter.com/3I4kFnYwKp

— The Recount (@therecount) November 28, 2021

Meanwhile, in Bizarroworld:

Former WH Physician, retired Admiral, and current Congressman Ronny Jackson says the covid variants are being fabricated to rig the 2022 elections. pic.twitter.com/vHuDxB9C29

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 28, 2021

This pandemic couldn’t have come at a worse time. The country was already divided among anti-science conspiracy theorists, MAGA true believers and everyone else. At a time when collective action is absolutely necessary to fight a common foe, 2e are hopelessly held captive by people who are delusional, cynical or dumb.

I can’t see how we’ll ever get a handle on climate change.

The Washington Post Editorial Board says what we are all thinking:

Remember the promise of normalcy by July Fourth? How can it be that now — after Thanksgiving, after so much sacrifice and waiting, after the arrival of vaccines, after months of sweaty masks, distancing and isolation — that another wave of pandemic infection is upon us? In Europe, lockdowns are returning. In some hot spots such as Minnesota and Michigan, hospital wards are again overflowing. A worrying new variant is raising alarms. What happened?

World health authorities are calling the new COVID-19 variant omicron because, I guess, omigod seemed like poor marketing.

Things are better now than in the first pandemic wave, the Board is quick to point out. Existing vaccines may prove effective against the new strain (TBD), face masks are (nearly) everywhere, hospital systems have recovered from the worst, and — no solace for the 800,000 U.S. dead — the economy has largely recovered.

But the pandemic is the unwelcome guest who won’t leave. The delta variant, for reasons still unclear, surges at different places over time. A few months ago, it was rampaging in Florida and the South; now it is in the Upper Midwest. Delta’s behavior is hard to figure. It can set off a precipitous surge, then decline almost as suddenly, as happened in India. Or it can zoom up to a plateau, and stay there, as in Britain. “It is not fitting into a neat bow-tied package of seasonality and predictability,” says epidemiologist Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota.

[…]

In the United States, the pandemic is being fueled by the unvaccinated: 47 million adults and 12 million eligible teenagers. New daily cases nationwide have been on the upswing for three weeks. Michigan, which had as few as 102 new daily cases at one point in the summer, now has a seven-day average of more than 7,000. At Spectrum Health, a system of 14 hospitals and other health-care facilities in western Michigan, 86 percent of the hospitalized covid patients and 90 percent of those in intensive care units are unvaccinated, many with underlying conditions as well.

Just don’t celebrate the deaths of the obstreperous unvaccinated, okay? New York Times:

“They were making comments that he should have died, that he deserved to die,” said [Nick Bledsoe’s] father, Hal Bledsoe. “It hurt.”

These and many other losses fill a host of websites that claim to be educational, but are fueled by schadenfreude at the deaths of the unvaccinated whose social media posts included Trump memes and conservative conspiracy theories. An exhortation on one such site reads: “Everyone listed on this site helped spread Covid-19 misinformation and then paid the price for their views. Share to stop others from making the same mistake.”

It happens time and time again:

The stories are often remarkably similar: Anti-government memes and posts dismissing the coronavirus or vaccines give way to announcements about feeling sick and testing positive for the virus. Then there are often requests for prayers. Sometimes there are selfies taken while hooked up to breathing machines and fearful updates about imminent intubation. Most end with loved ones sharing R.I.P. posts. Many include links to GoFundMe campaigns created to defray funeral costs.

A lot of the beliefs about vaccines and microchips and Ivermectin, etc., are lunatic ones. Pointing that out is fine. Countering disinformation with accurate information. But recognize it is a lead-a-horse effort.

She believes Dr. Fauci is the Prince of Darkness, I heard about a “Do your research” relative. It’s worrisome. But the last thing to wish for or celebrate is someone’s death from their own delusions. There is enough cruelty to go around right now.

With Stephen Sondheim’s passing, remembrances and celebrations of his life will roll on for however long it takes for our attention to turn eleswhere. One of his lesser-known shows, Assassins, first produced in 1990, has come and gone before, sometimes dodging historical events that made marketing it problematic. Constance Grady at Vox provides a review of the revival by the Classic Stage Company.

I’ve never seen the show, but the commentary sparked some thoughts that have little to do with Sondheim. Wikipedia summarizes:

Using the framing device of an all-American, yet sinister, carnival game, the semi-revue portrays a group of historical figures who attempted (successfully or not) to assassinate Presidents of the United States, and explores what their presence in American history says about the ideals of their life and country. The score is written to reflect both popular music of the various depicted eras and a broader tradition of “patriotic” American music.

A gun salesman (The Proprietor) and a narrator (The Balladeer) offer contrasting views of American history, Grady writes:

While the Balladeer allows to the audience that “every now and then the country goes a little wrong” and that a madman or two, or nine, might happen to come along with a gun, he assures us that we have nothing to worry about in the long run. “Doesn’t stop the story,” he croons. “Story’s pretty strong.”

Which story do you think is stronger, Assassins asks, the Balladeer’s song or the Proprietor’s? The story that tells you this is a country where dreams come true or the story that tells you if your dream has failed, you are owed retribution? Is there really a difference?

Those two contending views are at loggerheads in ways the country has yet to resolve. These things take decades, and it is not clear how far into the cycle we are today.

Kelsey and Chris Waits moved to Hastings, Minnesota to pursue their American Dream. The town along the Mississippi River seemed the right size, just far away from Minneapolis to be idyllic: “All around are nice houses, nice cars, nice shopping.”

Kelsey ran for school board to work for kids who had trouble learning but whose parents could not home school like she did her oldest child, Abby.

Then came Covid, the animosity, the controversy, and her youngest, assigned male at birth, asking to be called Kit after a Kit Kittredge American Girl doll the child wanted for a fourth birthday present.

Their American Dream runs downhill from there. Personal attacks, accusations of child abuse, etc. The typical backlash against difference by those threatened by it whether the difference is racial, ethnic, religious or having to do with non-binary sexual anything:

So the Waits are moving from the dream house they designed, the one where Kelsey spent hours hand painting murals. They are seeking more privacy, and they believe safety, in a new address that has not been publicized.

Conservative men have convinced themselves they are under attack for being men. Sarah Jones writes about Republican senator Josh Hawley’s favorite, new wedge issue at New York Magazine:

Society is changing in ways that directly challenge the norms that are so precious to Hawley and his ilk. Americans are more likely than ever to identify as LGBT, a trend at odds with the traditional rigidity around men’s and women’s roles. Forty-two percent of American adults say they personally know a trans person, according to a recent Pew poll. Though the Pew poll also found that 56 percent believe that a person’s sex as assigned at birth determines their gender, it also found “that younger people tended to be more likely to know a trans person and comfortable with gender-neutral pronouns,” the 19th reported. That prospect will disturb conservatives like Hawley, who opposes basic equality for trans people, most notably in the guise of protecting cis women. The consequences of Me Too linger, inducing the feeling among some that men will be disproportionately punished for minor transgressions. The rising cost of living further threatens the male breadwinner and renders him impotent before forces he cannot control. Hawley believes men will turn to pornography — another old conservative foe — and neglect his responsibilities to his family, if indeed he marries at all.

Difference. It is a more fearsome foe than communism. Society in the eyes of people like Hawley is zero-sum. Equality means some are not be superior to others. Equality for you comes at my expense, or something like that.

And if my dream fails, am I am owed retribution? If I don’t get my country my way, we go to insurrection. Or we go to guns. Whatever seems more inappropriate.

There were shootings at malls on Black Friday. Maybe you noticed.

I'm from Long Island so I can say with absolute confidence these Proud Boys are the softest white supremacists on this side of the Mississippi. They'll be the first to get loud and the first to file a lawsuit when their shoes get scuffed. https://t.co/qB2hkCdmuw

— Fifty Shades of Whey (@davenewworld_2) November 28, 2021

I’m reminded of an Esquire article in the wake of the John Lennon murder in 1980. In “Letter from an ANGRY Reader” (now found most often on gun enthusiast sites), Chip Elliot wrote, “The United States is becoming more European…but it is a Europe of a different century … Think of it in terms of a vast panorama, a huge cross section much like the—world Balzac,, Hugo, and Dumas described. Think about Dickens. Read Weber’s The City. Read Pirenne’s The Economic and Social History of Medieval Europe. None of this is new. What is new is that we’re experiencing it. What was new was the social structure in America of the past three or four decades, which has collapsed.”

They were times when people “wore swords and pistols whenever they went anywhere.”

Elliot’s California Dreaming was shattered not by discrimination but by street violence. His family armed itself and abandoned its Venice, California home for the Midwest. Like Kelsey and Chris Waits.

How’s that working out for them, I wonder. Because America today seems less like the world of Balzac, Hugo, and Dumas, and more like that of The Road Warrior. People I know are dreaming now about walking away to escape it. But walk away to where?

There’s no need to drag out the tiresome “projection” trope again but I’m sure you’ll see it anyway:

Jon Rocha was settling in to watch the new “Ghostbusters” with his young daughter at the movies last week when he got the news: Former President Donald Trump had endorsed his bid for state representative in Michigan.

“I was checking my phone to make sure it was on silent, and all of a sudden I got a notification that I was tagged in a tweet” about the endorsement, Rocha said. He was unaware that Trump’s backing was coming. “Imagine going through an entire movie with your phone blowing up.”

It’s unusual for a former president to endorse in races so deep down the ballot, especially nearly nine months before the Republican primary. But Trump has backed seven candidates for state House or Senate seats in Michigan, an electoral battleground that he lost narrowly to Joe Biden last year — more than anywhere else. Most of the endorsements, including Rocha’s, were announced in recent weeks. All of the candidates have one thing in common: They’ve made election administration and investigating last year’s vote central to their platforms.

Trump’s focus on the state illuminates just how driven he is to exact revenge on those who haven’t supported his baseless claim that the last election was stolen from him. It’s also a play to install allies who could be helpful should he run for president again in 2024 and find himself locked in another close race. The Republican-controlled Legislature spent eight months investigating the results of the 2020 presidential election and found no reason to doubt their legitimacy. GOP leaders have also refused to accede to Trump’s demands for a ballot review like the one Republicans authorized in Arizona, which found no proof of fraud and concluded that Biden defeated Trump in the state by even more votes than the certified tally showed.

“Michigan needs a new legislature,” Trump wrote in his Nov. 15 endorsement of Rachelle Smit for state representative. “The cowards there now are too spineless to investigate Election Fraud.”

Trump also has endorsed candidates for attorney general and secretary of state, a key position in charge of election administration, as well as GOP primary challengers to two Michigan members of Congress who voted to impeach him in January after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to block Biden’s victory. All of his picks have questioned the legitimacy of the 2020 election results.

He hasn’t yet endorsed in Michigan’s crowded Republican primary for governor, but he has met with contenders eager for his blessing.

“President Trump is committed to saving America and saving Michigan by endorsing and supporting candidates up and down the ballot who will fight for his America First agenda,” Taylor Budowich, a Trump spokesperson, said in a statement to NBC News.

But Trump has made it clear that denying the results of the 2020 presidential election is central to his support, if not his agenda.

“There are so many great Trump people in Michigan,” he wrote in his endorsement of Rocha. “I love Michigan. It has some of the best people, and some of the worst elected officials.”

Some Republicans aren’t happy but do they count?

But there also have been signs of enduring loyalty to Trump. Meshawn Maddock, who later became a co-chair of the state party, helped organize buses to Washington in January and spoke briefly at a rally there before the riot at the Capitol. Her husband, state Rep. Matt Maddock, scored Trump’s endorsement for his re-election bid this month.

“The Trump train is coming and I wouldn’t want to be in the way,” Maddock said in an email, adding two arm-flexing emojis to underscore his message.

Jeff Timmer, a former Michigan GOP chair who has soured on the party and backed Biden last year, said Trump’s focus on the state is the result of his going “so far down this rabbit hole” about 2020.

“What started off as talking points about the election being rigged has become the sole gospel in his mind,” Timmer said. “He actually believes the election was stolen from him in Detroit and that he actually did win Michigan. That might be propelling a lot of this attention.”

Biden’s 3-point victory over Trump in Michigan — a 154,000-vote win — has been affirmed by court rulings, state canvassers and risk-limiting audits, which examine samples of the overall vote to confirm whether the outcome is correct. A number of claims that had circulated about the vote were debunked in the McBroom report, outraging Trump, who issued multiple statements.

If you read Trump’s statements everyday its obvious that he’s completely off his rocker. By that I mean even more off his rocker than he was before. Who better to make president than an obsessive 78 year old narcissist.

There’s more at the link. It’s a very thorough look at the fact that they are setting 2024 up for a real shitshow.

How cute:

Just a few days after Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE called KEVIN MCCARTHY “weak” and said he needed to earn her vote to become speaker, the Republican lawmaker from Georgia took a different tone toward the GOP leader Friday night. “I just got off a good call with @GOPLeader,” she tweeted. “We spent time talking about solving problems not only in the conference, but for our country. I like what he has planned ahead.”

A few points this morning on MTG’s latest missive and McCarthy’s long-term bid for speaker:

1) This isn’t the end of this saga. It appears that MTG is just beginning to understand the depth of her power over McCarthy, who has been angling for years to become speaker. She has DONALD TRUMP’S ear and the following of about a dozen House rabble-rousers. She’s clearly starting to see that any time she doesn’t like something McCarthy does, all she has to do is call foul and lord his speakership dreams over his head. It’s going to be a very, very long year ahead for the House GOP leader.

2) What did McCarthy say to her? MTG had been pushing for McCarthy to strip committee assignments from Republicans who voted for the bipartisan infrastructure deal and/or to impeach Trump. That’s something McCarthy has declined to do (for now) — not least because that could lead to a serious math problem: If he turned on his moderate members and they bailed on his speakership effort, that could very well end his shot at the gavel. Yet MTG said, “I like what he has planned.” We’re curious what that is.

3) Trump is the wild card. For months, McCarthy has banked on his relationship with Trump to save him from the GOP conference’s fringe flank and help him win the gavel when the moment comes. It’s one of several reasons he visited Mar-a-Lago so quickly after January 6 despite his stated belief that Trump was personally responsible for the attack on the Capitol that left several people dead. If Trump gets behind him — or so the McCarthy calculation goes — members like MTG won’t be a problem. We’ll see.

There is a very good possibility that Marge (or an emissary) are in touch with Trump on this. Trump doesn’t trust his Kevin and is known to play off his people against each other. But either way, this gives Marge power. Not good.

DEADLINE: If Trump runs again, what do you think reporters should keep in mind in covering him just given what happened on January 6?

JONATHAN KARL: I think it’ll be one of the greatest, maybe the greatest challenge ever facing campaign reporters. How do you cover a candidate who is effectively anti-democratic? How do you cover a candidate who is running both against whoever the Democratic candidate is but also running against the very democratic system that makes all of this possible? I think it’s tremendously challenging, because you know that — especially now, more than ever — that he is just saying things that are not true, that are designed to misinform, that are designed to erode credibility and belief in our electoral system. And it’s actually dangerous.

So how do you cover a debate? How do you cover a speech? How do you sit down for long live interviews with him as a candidate? I think these are really difficult questions because he is obviously not a typical candidate. He’s never been a typical candidate, but now he has been demonstrated to be a candidate that is trying to destroy the very system that makes this election possible. And yet we cover campaigns. That’s what we do. It is a very difficult, precarious situation, and I don’t know how it is going to play out, to be honest.

I wish I were confident that the media had learned any lessons from the last go-round but I’m afraid they did not. Right now they are spending vast amounts of time on a “reckoning” over the Steele Dossier which was a minuscule part of the Russia scandal but is now being seen, even by people who know better, as some sort of proof that it was all a hoax. They are doing this to “virtue signal” their credibility but it’s well on its way to turning Trump’s sleazy behavior (remember, he lied and said he had no deals going in Russia when we know he did.) into some kind of hit job by the Democrats.

So, I have my doubts that a new Trump campaign will be covered better. But you can bet we’ll be hearing lots and lots about Biden’s health, Kamala’s spending on cooking pots and the like. You know, in order to be fair n’ balanced. Remember they live on the belief that if they are getting hit by both right and left it means they’re doing their job right. And that is a fallacy.

Yes, shamelessness is their super power, but they are really gilding the lily these days.

While Americans are struggling to pay more than EVER for the holidays, Kamala Harris is out buying a $375 pot. https://t.co/ob3TxnRPFw

— GOP (@GOP) November 27, 2021

As @atrupar tweeted, “The initiation fee for Mar-a-Lago is $200,000. The RNC spent more than $100,000 to have a banquet there earlier this year.” And every Thanksgiving President Trump served a dinner there for his paying customers. But sure, this is a real scandal.

Meanwhile:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1464568254437986306

https://twitter.com/waltshaub/status/1464612575371571200

Yeah:

As a White House adviser in the Trump administration, Jared Kushner took a special interest in the petroleum-rich monarchies of the Persian Gulf.

He formed a personal friendship with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He helped forge ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and backed Emirati rulers in a feud with Qatar. Since the electoral defeat of his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. Kushner has stayed active in the region through a nonprofit organization he established.

Now, in a move that has raised eyebrows among diplomats, investors and ethics watchdogs, Mr. Kushner is trying to raise money from the Persian Gulf states for a new investment firm he has founded. So far, he is having only mixed success.

Qatar, whose leaders saw Mr. Kushner as an opponent in the administration, declined to invest in his firm, a person familiar with those conversations said. So did the main Emirati sovereign wealth funds; Emirati rulers saw Mr. Kushner as an ally but questioned his track record in business, according to a person with knowledge of the discussions.

But the Saudis are more interested, according to four people briefed on their continuing negotiations. The kingdom’s $450 billion Public Investment Fund is negotiating with Mr. Kushner over what could prove to be a sizable investment in his new firm, two of those people said.

In a brief phone call, Mr. Kushner declined to discuss his new firm, Affinity Partners, and it is not clear which other investors he has spoken to so far inside or outside the United States. According to a person familiar with the firm’s plans, Mr. Kushner hopes to raise an amount in the low billions of dollars by early next year.

But his inquiries to Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds have raised questions about the ethics — or at least the optics — of seeking to raise large sums from officials he had dealt with on behalf of the U.S. government as recently as January, especially given the possibility of Mr. Trump running for president in 2024.

Mr. Kushner’s business experience is largely limited to the time he spent running his family’s real estate company. His best-known deal was the purchase of 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, for $1.8 billion in 2007, which became a financial albatross when the recession hit soon after. He was also the owner and publisher of The New York Observer for a decade, until his father-in-law became president.

During the Trump administration, Mr. Kushner developed a particularly close rapport with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. He played a leading role in the White House in defending Prince Mohammed after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that he had directed the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi columnist for The Washington Post, who had criticized of the kingdom’s rulers.

The Abraham Accords were evidently nothing more than a negotiating tool for Kushner and Mnuchin. And who knows what else they’re promising? The way things are going there’s an excellent chance Trump will be back in the White House in just three more years.

I do hope that Steve and Jared have considered cutting Daddy in on the deal, though. He doesn’t like it when he doesn’t get a taste.