Effete Northeastern types usually don’t pick fights with guys from Kentucky, but (nearly) lifelong D.C. insider Mitch McConnell doesn’t fit the bill as a sufficiently intimidating country bumpkin, and so Governor Phil Murphy today continued to work over the terminally overwraught-looking senate majority leader.

Walking “off the bridge of the ship,” McConnell “sent the senate home for a long weekend without taking any action to renew federal

unemployment benefits that have now expired for millions of families here in New Jersey,” Murphy complained, ringing the bell of his favorite unimposing federal target as an historic national election cycle intensifies against the backdrop of a country in COVID-19 agony.

“Millions of families are literally left hanging [while McConnell sent the senate home] for a long weekend,” the New Jersey governor griped.

“It’s the ultimate irresponsible action and dereliction of duty,” Murphy said of the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, urging him to address the needs of “families facing an economic meltdown on your watch.”

Murphy called McConnelll’s behavior “despicable,” before he turned to the overnight numbers and reported an additional 699 positive COVID-19 cases in New Jersey, bringing the statewide total since March 4th to 181,660 since the beginning of the scourge.

It’s not all totally irredeemably grim.

“New Jersey remains among ten states nationwide with the lowest number of active cases per capita,” Murphy said. “The positivity rate is 215%, not as quite as good as it’s been, but it’s pretty good. We remain among the five lowest states with the lowest daily percent positivity.”

The governor didn’t reserve his ire for McConnell alone.

“Anyone who walks around who refuses to wear a mask, host an indoor house party, or who overstuffs a boat, is directly contributing to these increases,” the governor railed.

The ‘boat’ reference seemed to particularly rankle the governor, who unleashed a rare show of seething derision into his pronunciation of the one-syllable word, perhaps indicative of his frustration over a single knuckleheaded maritime incident, or maybe tired of the word itself, going back to when he quoted the late tough guy New Jersey actor Roy Scheider who said in Jaws, “We’re going to need a bigger boat.”

That reference occurred some time ago.