Much of today brings back memories.  Let me start with the possible  return of COVID-19 , which served as the theme of my Thursday postings for years.  According to the CDC, there has a been a spike in COVID-19 cases of 18% this past week, and 24% hike in hospital admissions. From  Worldometer,  173 Americans died of COVID this past week and 277 in the previous week.  Of course, last year 550/week died from the flu, and this rate tends to jump in the winter, so flu deaths today are considerably higher than from COVID.  And few take the seasonal flu seriously. This alarms professionals like  Ashish Jha . More people tend to die 21 to 28 days after cases begin to increase. 60% of Americans did not get boosted. And look at how politics can make a difference. About that New Orleans terrorist attack by 42-year old  Shamsud-Din Bahar Jabbar , he was inspired by ISIS, but probably acted alone.  Donald Trump was wrong again, blaming Jabbar as an...

Biggest news of the day?   The House of Representatives voted to oust Keven McCarthy as Speaker of the House, 216-210 .  Never happened before in our history.   So what's next? At the beginning of his speakership, McCarthy filed into the record (kept secret) a list of names in priority order to the House Clerk to act in the case of his vacancy.   The person highest on the list shall act as Speaker pro tempore.   The first task will presumably be to vote on a permanent speaker.  But not necessarily.  There is no legal time frame for anything. Could McCarthy run again? Sure. Probably won't win a normal vote, so could well work out a deal with Democrats. But he has said  enough , and won't run again. Could Democrat Hakeem Jeffries run? Sure. But he won't get that position. Could Matt Gaetz become the next speaker.  Nope. Why?  Republicans are not idiotic as Gaetz. The second big newsworthy item is that no one won the Pow...

 Donald Trump again, but first, a few newsworthy developments: Mega Millions  selected a winner last night for $1.55 billion, from Florida.  Until last night, there were 31 straight Tues-Fri failed drawings.  Victor can get $783.3 million if the lump sum option is selected. Now, the jackpot   resets to a lousy $20 million .  Abortion-rights advocates in Ohio prevailed , the #2 reason why Democrats will win in a landslide on 5November2024.  From the  New York Times  this morning: More and more of these will begin to appear, but just revealed was a  secret memo  from a Trump lawyer providing details of faking key state electoral votes  to overturn his 2020 election loss. That headline look familiar?  On to The Donald, for these indictments remind me of  Watergate half a century ago , which was  televised and became a huge hit .   Three out of four homes in the USA watched .  I did.   N...