Cucumbers and Onions  🌻🌻🌻

The Onion?  Thursday’s January 6^th committee hearing was both more of the same and revelatory.  We’ve known the basics of what happened on and around insurrection day for a while, that the Former Guy urged on his supporters to march on the Capitol with lies about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, part of his plan to disrupt the transfer of power to President Biden, and that he then stood by while his supporters including some Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, became increasingly violent. What Thursday’s hearing did was fill in more details because January 6^th is like an onion, with lots of layers and the details, like the damage to democracy and the deaths and injuries that resulted are enough to make one cry. The most upsetting new detail that we learned on Thursday concerned how much the FBI and Secret Service knew about the impending onslaught and how they, especially too many in the Secret Service, either didn’t take the reports about the armed protesters headed to Washington seriously or more likely didn’t care because of their own political leanings and fealty to the Former Guy.  We also learned that Speaker Nancy Pelosi really is a bad ass, while the Capitol was under siege, she was cool as a cucumber.  The video of her unwrapping and snacking on a beef jerky stick while calmly and respectfully speaking with VP Pence and trying to get National Guard troops to the Capitol was amazing as was the substance of their call:  Pelosi was both concerned about the cleaning up of the “poo” left by the raiders and the safety of Pence who she politely entreated to keep his location secret from the sitting president of the US who she and, as it turned out, he feared was out to get him. As to that Former Guy we also learned some more about what he knew, and, to be clear, despite his claims to the contrary, he knew about the mobs, the violence, their weaponry, the danger to Congress and Pence and didn’t care because those marauders were his guys and anyway they weren’t out to get him; that’s called consciousness of guilt and should but probably won’t matter because nothing seems to matter with him. Also, as we kind of knew because he kept saying it publicly, and tried doing it on election night before the results were in, he planned to declare victory no matter the outcome.  It also seems not to matter to Republicans that a number of them including second in GOP party leadership Congressman Steve Scalise was with Pelosi when she asked several Governors and the Defense Department to send in the National Guard.  Scalise is one of those who continues to claim that Pelosi’s “inaction” made January 6^th worse.  On the subject of inaction, let’s not ignore acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, the credit he previously got for pushing back at the FG’s efforts to overturn the election, forget about it, on January 6^th he acted like a deer in the headlights, failing to do anything useful when he was asked to step up. Lastly, who had the FG’s one time body man, Johnny McEntee, who John Kelly deemed such a security risk that he had him fired from the White House but who the FG subsequently rehired and promoted to director of WH Presidential Personnel, writing orders for the immediate withdrawal of US troops from Somalia and Afghanistan. Putting aside the substance of those orders and that the FG wanted them out ASAP because he knew he’d lost, such orders aren’t typically written by personnel geeks with gambling problems, they’re what national security experts are for.  

Oldest Hate: Well, the hate goes on.  Kanye continues to get far more attention than he deserves.  Yesterday he blamed “Jewish Zionists” for news stories about Kim Kardashian and Pete Davidson having sex in front of a fireplace. He’s been obsessed by Kim’s Pete affair for a while, but really, who knew that in addition to “controlling the media” Jews were also responsible for fireplace canoodling?  Fireplaces aside, count me as one who didn’t know until yesterday that Pete’s Fireman father, a 9 11 hero, was Jewish, just another thing that must really drive Ye crazier than he already is. The FG pushed more hate yesterday too.  He took to his Truth Social platform to warn Jews that they’d better “get their act together” and appreciate what he’s done for Israel “before it is too late.”  Nothing but everything to see there. What’s next, calling his mobs out to reenact Kristallnacht?  As to Truth Social, it’s being investigated by the SEC, over the weekend more details came out about what may have spurred that investigation.  Will Wilkerson, one of the FG’s Media and Technology Group’s first employees, has told the SEC that the company violated securities laws related to what SPACs (special acquisition companies) are allowed to do and that the FG pressured executives to hand over some of their shares to Melania, maybe to comply with her post-nap?  He has supplied the SEC with a “cache of internal documents” that he says support his allegations. Among those documents are emails that also reference how sons Eric and Junior wanted to be gifted shares in the company as well, maybe because if brother-in-law Jared was getting a commitment of $2 billion from the Saudis, didn’t they deserve some Truth Social shares?  Anyway, all that is probably for naught as Truth Social is unlikely to make it to its first birthday.  That said, except for the financial morass and the SEC investigation, the FG probably won’t care as it’s highly likely that he’ll be back on Twitter by then, especially if Elon Musk completes his purchase.  Musk has already said he wants the FG back on.  By the way, Musk who tried to halt Ukraine’s access to some of broadband Starlink resources has now said that he’ll continue to “subsidize” what they’ve bought from him. Maybe his threats to cut the country off didn’t go over as well with his fans on Twitter as they did with Vlad?   

Midterm Madness:  The political pundits and pollsters now report that things are once again looking up for Republicans, that because of economic concerns, those coveted soccer moms are leaning red despite the elimination of reproductive rights or candidates like Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker who waved a false police badge to prove that he was part of law enforcement, he’s not, during his one and only debate with Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock and despite video of Pennsylvania/NJ’s Mehmet Oz talking about drinking urine and  poking his sister’s head with a needle, the needle assault when he was a kid, and attacking his opponent John Fetterman about the state of his stroke recovery.  On the subject of Fetterman, who was recently endorsed by the Philadelphia Inquirer, if you have the time, listen to podcaster/tech guru Kara Swisher’s interview of Fetterman on her new podcast “On with Kara Swisher.” Swisher who had a stroke ten years ago discusses her recovery experience with Fetterman. Both sound fine and Fetterman had no problem answering questions or engaging in small talk.