CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS

The drama of the NFL’s divisional-round playoff games – punctuated by three walk-off field goals and an overtime touchdown – will be next-to-impossible to live up to this weekend, as we get ready to see who will play in the Super Bowl LVI, on February 13th.

Today’s first game features the Cincinnati Bengals @ Kansas City Chiefs, 2:00, ET, CBS; Chiefs by 4.

The nightcap has the San Francisco ’49ers @ Los Angeles Rams, 5:30, ET, FOX; Rams by 9.

The menu for today will include –

• Chili from Red Robin;
• Sharp Cheddar cheese w/horseradish with plain crackers;
• Celery sticks;
• Sliced Roost Beef [deli cut];
• Sliced Swiss cheese;
• Sliced tomatoes;
• Tubs of horseradish;
• Chips [Lays];
• Sweet pickles;
• Mustard potato salad;
• Frozen fruit bars;
• Vanilla bean ice cream;
• Blueberry pie [made by my wife ~ uncontested as the greatest piemaker on Planet Earth].

Let’s hope power is restored for the folks in the East.

THE ORANGE TRAITOR

His speech stretched on past an hour.

The rally site was a county seat roughly 35 miles north of Houston.

Boy Orange took his carnival act of Insurrection Absolution to Texas last night; and continued to reveal to those of us living within the corridors of sanity that he is comfortable subsisting in the land of snakes.

He called on his supporters to mount large protests !!! in Atlanta and New York if prosecutors in those cities, who are investigating him, his family and his businesses, take action against him.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, this triple-wide Orange Despot announced that if elected to a new term in ’24, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted !!!!!!!!!!!! for attacking the Capitol on 1/6 of last year.

Trump’s comments at last night’s rally marked the first time he dangled pardons, an escalation of his broader effort to downplay the deadly events of 1/6.

“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” Trump said near the end of the lengthy campaign rally, “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”

A complete psychopath tinted in Orange make-up!!!

Maybe it’s just the old Lobsterman, but doesn’t this latest circus act from last night seem like the newest admission(s) of guilt which closes yet another circle of evidence and committing another act of illegal obstruction??!

GRIFTERS GOTA GRIFT!!!

Have you ??! registered yet…

https://americanfreedomtour.com/virtual-events

Ouch!

“The former guy” and his family have been hitting the road, with BOTH the Orange Despot and junior expected to attend a for-profit speaking event in Houston later today.

Get this…before a free political rally just outside the city; tickets for the American Freedom Tour range from $9 for satellite room viewing; $25 for a general admission seat; or, are you ready??! – $3,995 for a meeting and photo with the younger Trump and other perks [rumor has it: frozen steaks, bottled water and admission to Trump University].

Ain’t America a great country?

Major Re’Trump’lican committees are promoting Trump’s private business interests, and Trump has repeatedly used his political action committee to promote his private products!!!

Plus, don’t forget, as I type away this morning, building a political war chest of more than $110 million.

Step right up, boys and girls…

Listen, it gets better, this cabal of felony cretins have even convinced Melanie to get involved; she has sold digital images of a painting of her eyes for about $180 each, with payments that had to be submitted to her website in the form of a cryptocurrency called Solana; she has also offered for sale a hat she wore on a state visit to France, a painting of her wearing the hat, and a digital image of the same, for a minimum bid that she originally pegged at $250,000.

I should quickly add, that the above price fell, recently, as many of you probably know, due to the value of Solana cratering!

Kids, the Big Lie sells!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What’s that saying?…something along the lines of there’s one born every minute of every day.

P. T. Barnum would have loved this circus!

TICK, TOCK…

With much of Ukraine’s military concentrated in the East – where war/conflict with Russian-backed separatists has raged for eight years – there’s now new developments to the North that are of serious concern.

Analysts and Ukraine’s own generals say it would be next to impossible for Ukraine to muster the forces necessary to defend its northern border.

Russia has deployed tanks and artillery, fighter jets and helicopters, advanced rocket systems and troops by the thousands across Belarus, augmenting a fighting force that ALREADY envelopes Ukraine like a horseshoe on three sides.

Vlad “The Bad” says the troops have been deployed for “military exercises” scheduled to commence next month – a weathered and tattered excuse that Putin has ALWAYS seemed comfortable hauling from his bag of verbal tricks.

Over the last couple of days, we’ve watched video of new troops, armor and equipment pouring into Belarus, hourly; with reports from within Belarus showing local officials flanked by Belarusian women in traditional dress, greeting Russian commanders/troops with loaves of bread and salt, a traditional welcome.

The authoritarian leader of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko, is perhaps closer to Moscow than any other post-Soviet head of state; he had in the past largely avoided picking sides in the conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

That changed dramatically after presidential elections in August 2020, when the Russian intelligence services were forced to come to his rescue amid an outbreak of sprawling protests against his rule.

Readiness for such madness does NOT exist!!!!!!!!!!!!

UNDERSTANDING DIPLOMACY

If anything, history has shown us few amongst us do – understand diplomacy.

More times than NOT, it calls for expanding seats at the table.

With Russian tanks and troops menacing Eastern Europe, our 46th president has expanded the seats on his ‘war council,’ adding Poland, Italy and the European Union to the familiar lineup of Britain, France and Germany.

Biden, it now appears, has/is going out of his way to involve allies in every step of the current Ukraine crisis; remember, he got a couple of noisy ear-fills from the Europeans earlier this year after France was kept “in the attic” about the new defense alliance with Australia, plus, the supposed lack of direct communication with Europeans over the quick Afghan withdrawal.

The Biden administration’s emphasis on unity !!! appears intended to frustrate Putin’s desire to use the crisis to fracture NATO…the everlasting insanity of the totalitarian mind.

The US also called for the United Nations Security Council to hold an open meeting this coming Monday to discuss “Russia’s threatening behavior against Ukraine.”

With Germany suddenly playing coy ALL of a sudden this week, it bears watching; they chose to become a member of NATO – an attack on one is considered an attack on ALL.

And, while Ukraine may NOT be a member of NATO, it is an independent European nation.

When a thug authoritarian/dictator begins grabbing nations under the justification it feels threatened, he begins smelling the air at a new next door NATO nation, and, you guessed it, feeling threatened again.

SALTWATER GARGLING for MITCH?

As Grandma used to tell yours truly on more than one occasion, “you need to get the salt and I’ll get the water.”

The preferred method, when dinosaurs walked down Main Street, for reducing swelling in the throat and loosening up any mucus buildup, was gargling a couple of times a day with saltwater.

I suspect Mitch McConnell may checking his medicine cabinet, and kitchen shelving, as I type away this morning.

With the surprise reporting of the pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer yesterday, Mitch may, I repeat, may, be headed for extra B-12 shots before the end of this week.

Obstruction is the name of the game with McConnell, the current Attorney General can affirm that distinction.

Holding a bare 50-seat majority [with Kammy’s vote making 51] that is under severe threat in November’s Midterms, Dems, immediately, acknowledged the need to act fast, particularly since an illness or death of one of their members could deprive them of their numerical advantage and greatly complicate efforts to fill the seat.

Democrats could confirm a successor to Breyer without any Republican support under Senate rules that shield a Supreme Court nomination from a filibuster, but they must remain firmly united to do so.

McConnell‘s political calculation(s) will be interesting, and why the old Lobsterman loves the Circus on the Potomac – it NEVER leaves town!!!

Let’s remember, before voting began in South Carolina, during the ’20 primaries, Joey was spilling oil, after losing Iowa and New Hampshire, and in serious trouble.

It was then that Biden promised black voters: “I’m looking forward to making sure there’s a Black woman on the Supreme Court, to make sure we in fact get every representation.”

I’d feel a lot better if someone, anyone, could rationally walk me through why the focus on any nominee has to center on race and/or sex, instead of experience and credentials.

THE WORD ACCORDING to JEROME

After trading higher most of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed more than 600 points following the Fed’s policy announcement.

It cut some of its losses to settle at 34,168.09, down 129.64 points, or about 0.4 percent.

The Federal Reserve signaled that interest hikes are indeed around the corner yesterday afternoon.

Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said that the central bank was ready to raise rates at its March 15-16th meeting and could continue to lift them faster ?!!? than it did during the past decade.

Powell left the door open to raising rates at consecutive policy meetings, which are held roughly every six weeks; something the Fed has NOT done since 2006.

Powell’s remarks led investors in interest-rate futures markets to fully anticipate a March rate increase of at least one-quarter percentage point and a nearly 70% chance of a second-rate increase by the Fed’s meeting after that in early May.

I’ll close on this note: Inflation has become a major concern for voters and a thorny political barrier for Biden as he tries to pass his legislative agenda…ah, yes, and now we have the Ides of March ready to appear on the horizon.

A PILLOW FULL of CRAP

Dominion Voting Systems said this week in a court filing that there was NO “realistic possibility” that it would settle its $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit with MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and the Deplorables’ lawyers Rudy “Ghoul Man” Giuliani and Sidney Powell.

Here a duck, there a duck, everywhere a quack, quack, quack.

The company made its position clear in a late filing this past Monday night as part of the company’s lawsuits against the trio for pushing an array of conspiracy theories about the election-technology company’s role in the ’20 election.

A backhoe does NOT begin to eliminate this much excrement…from such species.

STAGGERING STATS…once again

New cases of the Omicron variant are still climbing in less-vaccinated regions, and World Health Organization (WHO) leaders warn that the global surge and the world’s wide vaccine gap could set the stage for another dangerous variant.

Serious challenges exist in every country about reaching the most vulnerable unvaccinated communities.

More than three billion people !!! have NOT received their first dose yet, according to the reporting out of the WHO.

New daily cases remain at record highs globally, averaging about 3.3 million – an increase of more than 25% over two weeks and a staggering rise compared with a rate of about 600,000 a day in early December.

Cases have continued to rise in Latin America, the Middle East, Asia…with Omicron dramatically spreading in Eastern/Central Europe, where vaccination rates are lagging.

Stating the obvious, the potential consequences of the vaccine gap have been underscored by Omicron, which was first identified in southern Africa.

More specifically, low vaccination coverage creates conditions for widespread virus circulation !!! and with that the possibility of new variants emerging.

h/t: Johns Hopkins University.

SERIOUS SMOKE SIGNALS today??!

The Federal Reserve will release its policy statement at 2 pm, ET, this afternoon. Most of the focus is likely to center on Chairman Jerome Powell’s news conference at 2:30.

At the conclusion of their two-day policy meeting, the expectation by the $$$ folks is that officials are set to keep interest rates near zero.

We’ll see…

As mentioned before, in this blog, the Fed are likely to signal they are in preparation to raise rates in mid-March.

Powell is likely to be peppered by the media on his inflation outlook, which could shape how many times the Fed lifts rates. 

A couple of generations ago, it was known as “maneuvering to keep price gains under control amid a burst of inflation.”

Today, these types of moments fall under the description of “keeping consumer and business demand in check” – which promises to make it a closely watched event on Wall Street.