Skip to main content

YOU WIN SOME, YOU LOSE SOME

Today was mostly a good day for Donald Trump.  Although this was expected, the Supreme Court today voted to allow Trump to run for president, a 9-0 vote against the Colorado verdict, and a 5-4 majority preventing other states from removing him from the primary ballot.  Turns out that important as this ruling is, all those states threatening keep Trump from qualifying are Democratic states where Biden would have gotten all the electoral votes anyway.  No battleground state was involved.

Frankly, I think this move at this time means that SCOTUS will now act in timely enough fashion to determine that he is not immune to criminal prosecution for his attempted coup on 6January2021.  At least either the Georgia (which televises everything) or DC trial will begin before the summer is over.  Actual judgement by November 5 would be nice, but not necessary.  We will know about the fate of Georgia district attorney Fani Willis by the middle of this month. 

Yesterday Nikki Haley finally beat Donald Trump in a Republican primary, 63% to 33%.  Sure, this was DC with only 19 delegates, but Trump has to be agitated.  The winning itself was actually expected.  The danger Haley poses to Trump is that if she continues to remain in opposition until November 5, that will seal his doom.
But now that the Supreme Court has officially approved a Trump candidacy, and he will totally crush Haley on Super Tuesday tomorrow, what could possibly keep her in the race?  Here is a video wondering if there a future path for her.  I think she will quit after tomorrow.  But then, what will she do?  She is the one most important individual in the world who can affect what happens on November 5, even is she is not on the ballot!  She controls the never-Trump votes, and this margin of difference will determine who wins the battleground states.

In the Honolulu local paper this morning were two half-page articles.  One headlining that the majority of Biden 2020 voters now say he's too old, while the other says that a chunk of GOP primary voters say they would not vote for Trump as a nominee.  The upshot is that, come November 5, those Democrat voters will still vote for Biden, because Trump is also kind of old, but more so, because Joe is comfortably safe, while Donald poses a huge danger to their future.

I bet you didn't know the Republican delegate count heading into Super Tuesday?
  • Trump  244
  • Haley  43
  • DeSantis  9
  • Ramaswamy  3
  • 1215 delegates needed to win the Republican Convention on July 18 in Milwaukee.
  • Super Tuesday  865
While much of the above looks good for Donald Trump, one negative is that ex-Trump CFO, Allen Weisselberg, today pleaded guilty to perjury in a Manhattan court.  He will be sentenced to five months in jail, his second stint behind bars afte 100 days last year in an unrelated tax fraud case.  Every verdict about Trump's personal life so far has gone against him, costing him a lot of money, with interest accruing each day.  Not a great record for someone who says he is the greatest business leader in the world.

Looks like the Biden-Harris ticket has found a role for Kamala.  More and more she will become the point-person to enter controversial fields.  For example, this weekend she spoke rather provocatively that the U.S. should express more outrage about what Israel is doing to the Gaza Strip.  The partnership can now advertise discriminatingly in certain areas about what Biden is doing here and there.  A message learned from what happened in Michigan.

Did I tell you I'm going around the world in two weeks?  I will say more in the coming days.  There are places in the world I would never visit today.  Russia for one, and more so, Haiti.  There were two massive prison breaks, where 3600 inmates escaped, leading to gang run riots in Port-au-Prince.  These gangs want to oust Prime Minister Ariel Henry.  Kidnapping and other violent crime is rampant, and gangs are better armed than the police force.

Last night the University of Oklahoma women's softball team finally lost, ending a 71-game winning streak.  Extra innings to Louisiana Lafayette, 7-5.  The previous record was 47 games by the Arizona Wildcats in 1996-7.  Oklahoma is now 18-1 for the season.
71 games are monumental, but the University Miami men's tennis team had a 137-game winning streak from 1957 to 1964.  Something about tennis, I guess, but next is the BYU-Hawaii women's tennis team with 130 wins from 2002 to 2005.  The University of Oklahoma's men's gymnastics with 121 from 2015 to 2019, Connecticut women's basketball of 111 from 2014 to 2017, and Penn State women's volleyball of 109 from 2007 to 2010.  In the major sports, UCLA men's basketball streak of 88 from 1971 to 1974 and Oklahoma football of 47 from 1953 to 1957.

I've recently been inserting at the end of my blogs films or series from Netflix.  Well, Time magazine touted The Tourist, a BBC series of six episodes.  Rotten Tomatoes:  Season One 97/65 and Season Two 95/67.  Has to do with a mysterious Irishman who wakes up in an Australian hospital with amnesia.  Indicates this is a low-risk, high-reward viewing experience full of twists and turns.  Then, Time refers you to another article on best shows to binge on in Netflix.

- 

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

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 suspicious and troublesome.  This strain has also been spreading in

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 several months.  This is caused by stress more than anythi

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 are held every five years, and there have only been