HOW REPUBLICANS CAN GAIN TOTAL CONTROL ON 5NOVEMBER2024.

I regularly make fun of Republicans. That Trump quote from People magazine, for example, was false. As you must know, the 2022 term is gaslighting. I'm honestly trying to do Republicans a favor today. For my nostalgic posting, I revert to 16April2011, almost a dozen years ago:

SIMPLE SOLUTIONS FOR REPUBLICANS

Remember, this was about now, 12 years ago when then President Barack Obama's prospects for re-election did not appear bright, and as late at Labor Day in 2011 his approval rating plunged to a new low. To quote Brookings (which is a liberal think tank):

Economic growth was mediocre, unemployment remained stubbornly high, and the public’s confidence in the future was waning. The president seemed unable to find a credible narrative to explain his plans; worse, he seemed to have lost the connection with the people that had fueled his remarkable victory in 2008.

Democrats:

Characterized opponent Mitt Romney as a heartless plutocrat, and his running mate was Rep. Paul Ryan.

They easily had Senate control with 53 Democrats (plus two Independents who voted with them), and lost only 8 House seats.
Latino votes rose significantly for Obama and Democrats.
A crack was that Obama, who had 52% of the Independent votes in 2008, only got 45%.

The Tea Party, extreme Republicans, were a party problem.
But Independents gave Democrats the margin of victory.
Well, Obama won with 332 electoral votes, 206 for Romney.

But 5November24 can be a different story for Republicans. For one, only 10 of 33 Senate seats up for re-election are Republican seats. The other 23 are Democrats, or Independents voting Democratic.

About the House, get organized and do a few meaningful things. Sure, there are only 217 Republicans and 213 Democrats, but don't look like fools on opening day. An interesting point is that there are today 5 vacancies, which will still need to be filled through the normal election process. The odds on all five becoming Democratic are nil.

So what did Republicans do today? They failed to install Kevin McCarthy as their speaker on the first two ballots. Not getting this done on Day 1 has happened before...but that was a century ago. So what next? Who knows. A terrible start to what can still be a remarkable 2024. But maybe someone not so sycophantically pro-Trump might be what the party needs today as speaker.

In the Senate, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell will join President Joe Biden in Kentucky on January 5 to together show partisan cooperation about the national economy. Good strategy for Republicans to appear to be cooperative in the Senate, and let the House neutralize anything of import...if they can.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicio...

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for...

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These a...

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