Storm Clouds 🌻🌻🌻

Ira and Georgia: Today’s January 6^th committee televised hearing has been cancelled due to Hurricane Ira which, at this point, looks like it will be a devastating Category 4 storm when it slams into Southwest Florida around Port Charlotte and Fort Myers early this afternoon.  The damage from Ira will be immediate and no doubt hard to experience and watch as it will cause a lot of suffering.  Also hard to watch is a different kind storm, the political and economic one hitting Europe right now where Italy just chose Georgia Meloni, a Mussolini loving fascist as their new leader.  It should go without saying that the last time Italy fully embraced Fascism, things didn’t turn out well there or for the rest of Europe, not to mention for the millions who fell outside of Fascist approved ethnicities. Sadly, Italy’s move to the far right isn’t isolated, in Sweden a party originally founded by neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists represents the second-largest group in parliament. In Hungary and Poland, the far right is already in power.  France’s ultra-nationalist Marine Le Pen has been knocking at the door of that country’s leadership for some time and in Spain the far right has been gaining ground. Also worth noting, Meloni is a protégé of Steve Bannon, like that other known autocrat, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, she has spoken at CPAC and of course Matt Schlapp, CPAC’s leader, along with quite a few of his like-minded US cronies, has fully embraced her electoral victory because who doesn’t like white nationalists? Things aren’t all that rosy in the UK either, they appear to be in an economic morass which makes our current fight against inflation look like child’s play.  Liz Truss, the UK’s new Prime Minister is not expected to go the distance.

 

Pardon Me: Getting back to the January 6^th Committee, while we won’t be hearing from them today, their meeting is likely to be rescheduled shortly.  At that point, we should expect to hear more details about those plans to get several states to overturn their election results, including who at the White House was most involved in that effort. To that end, it looks like Mark Meadows, was the hub for a lot of communication, or at the very least, he’s looking more and more like the designated fall guy.  Also, it’s probably not all that surprising that there’s video tape of the Former Guy’s long-time associate Roger Stone, calling for a quick move to violence because having been pardoned once he figured he could get pardoned again if need be.  On the legal front, last week a trio of less well-known FG lawyers were seen hanging outside of a DC Grand Jury, which seemed somewhat intriguing, even raising some hope that something big was about to happen.  It turns out that they were there to try to block the testimony of Eric Hershmann, the one-time FG legal advisor, whose candor in front of the January 6^th committee was a bit too revealing for their tastes. Apparently, the fact that Hershmann told the FG that he shouldn’t be taking government documents to Mar a Lago, and the FG’s decision to take them anyway is something that the FG’s team doesn’t want revealed in court because it’s evidence that he knew he was committing a bigly no no.  On the subject of FG lawyers, yesterday it was reported that Chris Kise, his newest one who he, or at least one of his political action funds, paid a $3 million retainer, has been sidelined and is no longer taking the lead in the Mar a Lago purloined documents case that he was hired to head up, leading many to surmise that Kise is unwilling to prevaricate on the FG’s behalf.  One positive note, yesterday Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell announced his backing for the bipartisan electoral count reform bill that also has the backing of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. That makes it highly likely that the bill which was written to prevent, or at least try to prevent another January 6, will pass through the Senate with at least 60 votes, though one of those votes will not come from Ted Cruz who is on record opposing it because of course.  A similar bill already passed through the House, though there are some differences, it’s expected that they will be worked out and that the bill will be signed into law. The bill’s passage will be a good thing, but it won’t address the problem of states refusing to validate election results, a problem that will fester and grow if states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania and others vote election deniers into Secretary of State positions.