Politics

Ex-governor of New York Andrew Cuomo has been named on a criminal complaint for “forcible touching the sexual or intimate parts for the purpose of degrading or abusing another person.” How the mighty fall. This time last year Cuomo was riding high on popularity nationwide as the go-to pandemic politician. There were whispers of him replacing Joe Biden on the ticket for president. All the major news networks fawned over him and helped him win an Emmy award for his “effective use of television during the pandemic.”  Cuomo and his giant ego later remarked that the Emmy board members forgot to mention his “sense of humor, charisma, good looks or charm.

How’s the ice cream in Rome? Joe Biden is about to find out. Word is he is excited about the gelato, which is A-OK, since it may distract him from the fact that he has nothing to report when he gets there. The president — I mean, Joe Biden — was supposed to reestablish “normality” to an office so badly bruised by the mad tweeter — no, make that “ex-tweeter” — who came before. “Normality” was one big selling point. The other was Biden’s vaunted foreign policy experience. Reality check one: was Joe Biden’s performance at that town hall with Anderson Cooper last week an exhibition of “normality”? Or was it yet another disagreeable instance of elder abuse, parading a man suffering from senile dementia before the cameras?

Last weekend brought some minor internet drama courtesy of Amanda Moore, a progressive activist who outed herself as having spent the past year “infiltrating” right-wing groups. On Twitter, she posted pictures that she'd taken with various luminaries of Trumpworld such as General Michael Flynn, MyPillow founder Mike Lindell and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. She also claimed to have been given a counterfeit vaccination card from a member of a QAnon conspiracy group and to have worn a wire the whole time, recording the details of her meetings and chance encounters held under false pretenses. “We were literally at the same events,” she crowed at a photojournalist who sent a somewhat vulgar tweet mocking her.

Cockburn lost a game of darts with Amber Athey at the weekend, so he got the distinct pleasure of trekking over to the Virginia Highlands Park in Arlington on Tuesday, to watch a cavalcade of Virginia Democrats — and President Joe Biden — stump for Terry McAuliffe, one week ahead of Election Day. (Amber, meanwhile, was indoors at a Loudoun County school board meeting, which you can read about here.) He joined a single-file line of Democrats at just after 5 p.m. that stretched the full width of the park. At its head, a group of Youngkin supporters were gathered on a verge, wielding signs that read “LET’S GO BRANDON,” “Virginia runs on Youngkin” and “More like Terry McAwful.

During the 2020 election, Joe Biden positioned himself as the Democrat who could win the working class from President Donald Trump. "Joe from Scranton," as the media affectionately calls him, was bringing normalcy back to the White House. But Joe from Scranton is a fiction and a fake. Trump may love a good show  — "stay tuned!" — but it is Biden who oversees the most inauthentic administration, one that is shockingly divorced from the lives of everyday Americans. The country is currently facing a massive breakdown in the global supply chain, leading to shortages of goods and increased prices for consumers. My local grocery store boasted large gaps on food shelves Thursday morning. A friend of mine was unable to buy a simple coffee from Starbucks.

Could a helping hand from a considerate royal help Nancy Pelosi in her time of need? Right now the House Speaker is stressed. Can you blame her? The $3.5 trillion spending boondoggle, which the left claims we need desperately in order to save our doomed planet and also fund their pet projects, is still gridlocked. Thanks to Pelosi’s skills as a “master legislator,” this monstrosity of a spending bill is tied to the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill. At one point Nancy tried to back off her all-or-nothing posturing, but it was too late. The far-left Squad had already started parroting her “in tandem” talking points. On top of all of this, Pelosi’s subjects in the mainstream media have become unruly lately.

Is it more worrying that President Biden might not be in charge, or that he actually is in charge? Nobody has the power to force a president to undergo the indignities that Biden went through on Thursday night’s CNN town hall. As with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, either someone convinced him to do it or he insisted on doing it. Either way, you could not watch him, clenching his fists as though holding a Zimmer frame while Anderson Cooper spoon-fed him a prompt, without feeling that we are heading nowhere good. On the same day that Donald Trump evoked the ghosts of Soviet propaganda by launching a social-media app called Truth — the Russian translation is Pravda — Joe Biden attempted a Brezhnev-era theatrical of his own.

Last week, the State Department learned that twice this summer China had tested a new hypersonic missile weapon with nuclear capabilities. According to the Financial Times, the rocket employed a “fractional orbital bombardment” that also had the guidance ability to “glide” around the earth in orbit. The test reportedly stunned the Biden administration, and comes on the heels of a string of embarrassing global events for the US, including the fall of Afghanistan and Russia opting not to raise natural gas supplies to Europe after the completion of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Secretary of State Tony Blinken reacted with a series of “deeply concerned” letters. The State Department had once again been caught flat-footed. But fear not: Blinken has his priorities straight.

Is Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe really “losing it”? Last week, McAuliffe snapped at a tracker who asked him if he really believes that parents shouldn't have a say in their children's education, demanding to know if the tracker is vaccinated and questioning why he wasn't wearing a mask. It was a bizarre exchange and suggested the stress of the campaign may be getting to McAuliffe. His Republican challenger, Glenn Youngkin, responded to this revealing moment during a radio interview with Larry O'Connor and me on WMAL last week. “Terry is really starting to lose it,” Youngkin said. “I mean, he really is. He's desperate. He knows that he has absolutely fallen behind in this race. We have huge momentum.

The Biden administration announced Tuesday that Rachel Levine, the assistant secretary of health, will be sworn in as a four-star admiral in the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. Levine will not only be the first openly transgender four-star officer in the uniformed services — according to the Biden administration, Levine will also be the "first female four-star admiral" of the health corps. Allow Cockburn to be the first to congratulate Ms Levine — sorry, Admiral Levine! — on this historic achievement. How inspiring that Rachel, formerly known as Richard, only had to identify as female for about 15 percent of her life before becoming one of the most successful women in the world.

Delaware used to be Cale Boggs country, almost as much as Massachusetts belonged to the Kennedys. Boggs served as governor, congressman and twice as Delaware senator, so in late 1972, when he was seeking a third term, the race looked sewed up. But as summer turned to fall, his 28-point lead evaporated. Voters started paying attention to Boggs’s rival, a Democrat youngster with fire in his belly and a spring in his step. Anti-Boggs ads said his best days were behind him. According to his fresh-faced opponent, Boggs was a ‘helluva nice guy’ but, after decades in power, he had ‘lost that twinkle in his eyes’. On election day, Boggs lost by a margin of 3,000 votes. The people of Delaware sent to Washington a 30-year-old thruster named Joe Biden.