Gruesome  🌻 🌻 🌻

Horrific: How do you like 2023 so far?  To date there have been more mass shootings than days, and it’s not because we have more mentally disturbed people than other countries, it’s because our “crazies” can easily get guns even when they live in states where access is restricted.  As a nation we have a gun obsession and enough who matter think that’s okay even if the rest of us don’t. Then there’s last week’s lethal beat down of 29-year-old Tyre Nichols by five policemen during a Memphis, Tennessee traffic stop.  Everything about that event is incomprehensible; the video of Nichols being beaten to death is soul killing and unwatchable.  Think about it, the police were wearing body cameras and still thought that beating the sh-t out of Nichols was somehow something they could get away with doing.  And as if that isn’t enough, yesterday a masked man wearing a skull and bones emblazoned sweatshirt threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Bloomfield, New Jersey.  Any chance we return to some modicum of normalcy by the time February rolls in on Wednesday?  Probably not.  

🤡 🤡 🤡 : Meantime, it’s more of the same in Washington. George “many names” Santos is still a member of Congress. Trump is still running for president, second or third term, pick your poison.  Jim “Gym” Jordan is still pushing lies, laptop investigations and false equivalencies and that problem with the debt ceiling still looms.  Of course, since it’s a day ending with the letters D A Y, there’s more to report about Santos’ problems.  That’s Santos who gave his first House speech on the Holocaust on Holocaust Remembrance Day because, of course, his Brazilian born grandparents were Polish Jew ish survivors.  The Justice Department has asked the Federal Election Commission to hold off on any enforcement action against Santos, an indication that DOJ is now on the case, running a “parallel criminal probe” into Santos’ very dicey financials. To that end, reporters from Mother Jones magazine tried contacting many of Santo’s largest donors only to discover that most of them don’t live at the addresses connected to their donations, primarily because they don’t exist or at the very least their names were made-up to cover the names of those who actually footed Santos’ campaign bills, his dinners and his Hermes shopping sprees.  That’s a bigly problem for Santos whose only answer so far to any questions about his financials has been that he, who single handedly trounced Harvard and Yale in those Baruch volleyball matches while making-up for drag shows had no time left for financial paperwork?  As to Congressional committees, it’s not just Jim Jordan who’ll be bringing his crazy to both the House Judiciary and the Oversight Committees, he’ll be joined on Oversight by a cast of election deniers and anti-vaxxers including Margie Q and Lauren Boebert.  Of course, Margie Q has also been awarded a seat on the subcommittee looking into all things coronavirus because who doesn’t think that Margie who is on record saying that if a pair of underwear, really thick ones, high quality cotton, can’t protect you from a fart, then how will a mask protect you from COVID” is the right person to do a deep dive into all things virus.  Speaker McCarthy, who remains speaker for now in part because he’s still got Santos’s vote, will be meeting with President Biden on Wednesday to talk about the debt ceiling.  So at least they’re talking.

Campaign Trail:  Trump traveled to both New Hampshire and South Carolina this weekend and while his crowds were not all that impressive, people still showed up to hear him.  Though Trump appears to be trailing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a poll of Republican New Hampshire voters, not that surprising given that New Hampshire Republicans are a bit more skeptical than those in many other states, he is more than holding his own nationwide.  Morning Consult shows him at 49%, trailed by DeSantis with 30%, Mike Pence with 7%, Nikki Haley with 3% with the rest of the field including Liz Cheney, Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, Kristi Noem, Mike Pompeo, Tim Scott, and Glenn Younkin barely registering.  Notably Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin who was supposed to be the Republican’s next great thing trails “Someone Else.”  On the Senate side, the race to replace California’s octogenarian, soon to be nonagenarian Senator Diane Feinstein who still hasn’t disclosed her retirement plans gained another Democratic combatant after Congressman Adam Schiff announced his candidacy. In Arizona, losing gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake who still hasn’t conceded her loss and why would she since there is so much money to be made with grievance, is hinting at plans to run for the Senate seat currently occupied by former Democrat, current Independent Kyrsten Sinema.  With Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego already running, the Arizona Senate race is shaping up to be a three-way mess.

Tank You 🌻 🌻 🌻

🌻 🌻 🌻: I once toured Yad la Shiryon Latrun which in addition to serving as Israel’s memorial for fallen armored corps soldiers, houses a tank museum with a diverse collection of armored carriers, some made in Israel others from the former Soviet Union, the US, Britain, Germany, and France. Some of the tanks made it to Israel as leftovers from wars in Algeria and Korea and others, including the Russian ones and at least one Nazi tank, were captured by Israel during one of its wars in part because the Egyptians or Syrians operating them were poorly trained on the equipment. At some point in the future Ukraine could have a tank museum with a collection as diverse, or maybe even more diverse than Israel’s but only if the Ukrainians, who to their credit appear to be quick learners, are able to get up to speed on how to operate the tanks that are enroute because the US Abrams, the German Leopards, and the UK Challengers are all different, they don’t even use the same type of fuel.  The risk is that those tanks end up destroyed or in a museum outside of Moscow. The hoped for reward is that they help Ukraine beat back the Russians. Notably, the US Abrams tanks aren’t expected to make it into Ukraine’s arsenal anytime soon, but President Biden’s decision to send them was what it took to get Germany to agree to allow its Leopards, some of which are in Poland, to be sent to Ukraine now.  Putin’s response to the tank decisions was to immediately ramp up attacks on Ukrainian civilians. Trump responded too, not with bombs but by echoing Putin’s talking points. He posted “FIRST COME THE TANKS, THEN COME THE NUKES, adding that ending the Russia-Ukraine war would be easy while also saying that the war never would have happened were he president.  By easy he means that he’d abandon Ukraine and by “never would have happened” he means, he would have handed the keys to Kiev to Putin on day one had he made it to a second term. By the way, Trump is still making most of his statements via Truth Social, but word is that he’s about to abandon his social media company and start posting on his reactivated Twitter account and Facebook where his frozen account has also been reactivated. If he starts tweeting again, Trump won’t be “liked” by Nick Fuentes, at least not right away.  The white supremacist who got his account back almost immediately was suspended for tweeting offensive things. Who but everyone would have guessed he’d do that?   

Not Funny:  George “many names” Santos is another one with a history of posting interesting things on social media. Yesterday, New York Patch published a story with screenshots, about some offensive Hitler jokes that Santos previously posted on his Facebook page, because according to Santos Jew ish people are allowed to joke about Hitler. The Hitler humor is offensive but not illegal, but Santos’ recent Federal Election Commission filing probably is and may be the biggest misstep he’s taken so far, which is saying a lot since it’s not like he’s been walking the straight and narrow.  In addition to failing to identify the true source of somewhere between $500,000 and $750,000 he earlier claimed he had contributed to his campaign, the newly filed forms include the electronic signature of Thomas Datwyler, a veteran Republican campaign finance treasurer who wants it known that he is not and has never been Santos’ treasurer.  So far, no comment from McCarthy who still desperately needs Santos’ vote on just about everything, well everything except the Fair Tax Plan, the legislation that the Freedom Caucus and their friends would like passed so that they can eliminate the IRS, replacing income taxes with a 30% sales tax. Even Kevin knows that the regressive Fair Tax Plan would impose much higher taxes on everyone in his base except for those in the highest tax brackets. The Fair Tax Plan isn’t going to pass but it’s one of those things Kevin promised he’d let his crowd vote on to secure his speakership so it could come up for a floor vote, one that will fail with or without Santos, while giving Democrats some really good talking points alongside those they already have about how the Republicans are holding Medicare and Social Security hostage in exchange for raising the debt ceiling.  The thing about talking points is that they don’t have to be completely accurate, they just need to scare voters and cutting Medicare and Social Security while raising taxes is bigly scary.

Which Witch Hunt?  Also scary is yesterday’s NY Times story about John Durham, Bill Barr and their investigation into what Trump calls the Russian “witch hunt.”  Durham, the US Attorney who was supposed to expose that the witch hunt was a witch hunt never did, he also didn’t produce that report that Trump and his echo chamber promised would be coming out in time to help him win the 2020 election.  However, that wasn’t because Durham, who was once well respected but apparently bonded with Barr over their shared heritage and moved to the dark side, didn’t try to uncover a deep state plot, it’s because there was nothing to uncover. The NY Times reports that Durham and Barr’s desperate efforts involved trying to harangue their Italian and British counterparts into coming forward with incriminating dirt about the Russian investigation that didn’t exist.  Ironically, the Italians did come forward with something, they passed on some dirt about some Trump financial finagling but somehow or other neither Durham nor Barr opted to pursue that criminal tidbit. What the dastardly duo did do was try to use some questionable Russian intelligence to further their position that the Russian investigation was a witch hunt which is especially ironic since that’s what they were trying to pin on FBI Director Comey and Hillary Clinton, among others. 

Pillow Talk: Barr and Durham aren’t the only two who have bonded.  Apparently, Kevin is totally into Margie Q these days, that’s Margie who sees herself as Trump’s next Vice President.  Another interesting pair is Harmeet Dhillon and Pillow Man Mike Lindell.  Both are challenging Ronna Romney McDaniel to become Republican National Committee Chair.  Ronna still has an edge over her competitors, but the two challengers have now teamed up so who knows what’s going to happen.  It’s fun to dismiss Mr Pillow because, well obviously, but some people do like him or at least appreciate his disruptive nature and his crappy pillows.  Harmeet Dhillon, who has the support of quite a few on the right, got an endorsement from Ron DeSantis, of anti-African American AP History fame, yesterday so while she remains an underdog anything could happen and she does have a point about Ronna, who is viewed as Trump’s puppet, not having a successful track record.                      

 

Everyone Does It? 🌻 🌻 🌻

🤡 🤡 🤡 Everywhere:  It’s becoming increasingly clear that despite his and their denials Kevin McCarthy really did promise the wackos, insurrectionists, and election deniers everything to secure his speakership.  Yesterday Kevin fulfilled some of those promises.  He announced his appointments to the newly created Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Government.  The subcommittee, the love child of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s Communist hunting Un-American Activities Committee and Nixon’s CREEP will be chaired by Jim “Gym” Jordan and will include Republicans Darrell Issa, Thomas Massie, Chris Stewart, Elise Stefanik, Mike Johnson, Chip Roy, Kelly Armstrong, Greg Stuebe, Dan Bishop, Kat Cammack and Harriet Hageman, a group like those in the bar scene from the original Star Wars but more malevolent.  McCarthy also added some hardliners to the Rules Committee including two Freedom Caucus members, Ralph Norman and Chip Roy, who were among the holdouts who tried to block his Speakership, and Thomas Massie who Axios describes as a staunchly anti-establishment renegade.  The Rules Committee matters because its members determine what legislation makes it to the floor for a vote. To round out his day McCarthy rejected Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries’ reappointment of both Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell to the House Intelligence Committee. That’s not a surprise, but still it’s small minded and retaliatory, a nod to Trump who hates “little pencil neck” Schiff for leading the first impeachment trial and payback for Margie Q and Paul Gosar losing their committee assignments, by a bi-partisan vote, during Nancy’s reign not because of their opinions or policy views but because they threatened the lives of some of their Democratic colleagues.  McCarthy also says that he plans to kick Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee purportedly to punish her for the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic remarks she made back during the last Congress.  I’m no fan of Omar’s but it’s hard to believe that McCarthy really cares about any of that, this is just more retaliation. Unfortunately for Kevin, getting rid of Omar won’t be as easy as kicking Schiff and Swalwell off Intel which is a select committee since Speaker’s only get to reject the other party’s appointments to select committees, to kick Omar off of Foreign Affairs he’ll have to go for a full floor vote and already two Republicans, Nancy Mace and Victoria Spartz, say they oppose kicking Omar off Foreign Affairs, not because they share her views but on principle. Since Greg Steube, the Republican who fell off his roof, remains sidelined in Florida with a fractured pelvis and punctured lung, Kevin can’t afford many more vote defections which is one more reason that Congressman of many names Santos, remains in the House.  That said, even Kevin appears to be losing patience with Santos, yesterday he said that he’ll kick him to the curb if the House Ethics Committee concludes that he did anything illegal.  As to Santos, he once claimed that he was mugged on Fifth Avenue and stripped of his shoes in front of Trump Tower by some white guys and that no one came to his assistance, poor thing.  That’s not the kind of thing that will get him ejected but one thing that might is his finance shenanigans.  To that end, yesterday he amended a campaign filing, deleting the claim that he loaned his campaign $500,000 but failing to explain where those funds came from.  One other weird thing, not about Santos but about that other Floridian Matt Gaetz, yesterday Twitter was a flutter with some more allegations against him, something about his office in disarray over an alleged affair with a male staffer as well as some more underage dalliances.  That could be just malicious gossip but sometimes, just sometimes where there’s smoke there’s fire.  Well maybe.  As dalliances, CPAC’s Matt Schlapp still hasn’t denied his unwanted groping of a Herschel Walker campaign aide but his wife, Mercedes, and at least one member of his staff have gone on the offensive against the trying to remain anonymous accuser, posting the guy’s name on Twitter, accusing him of being a miscreant with lots of personal problems.

Check Your Files:  It turns out that presidents and vice presidents leaving office with confidential files is a thing.  Yesterday, despite an earlier televised assertion that he was too perfect to have ever taken any confidential files home with him, former VP Pence did. Pence’s documents were found stashed in a box that had been kept in storage while the homeless Pence was shopping for a new post VP  house.  His document situation appears to be more akin to President Biden’s than Trump’s as his cache of purloined papers is small and, upon discovery, he did what you are supposed to do, handing the documents over to the authorities.  Nevertheless, Pence’s discovery complicates the document dilemma for AG Garland and all the Republicans who’ve been attacking Biden which probably explains why Fox’s Sean Hannity reverted to Hillary Clinton and her “acid washed” emails last night. Note to all former living presidents and vice presidents, check your files ASAP.  Garland is now in the unenviable position of having to decide what to do about Pence’s documents, whether Mike’s screw up warrants another Special Counsel or whether Pence can go Dutch with Biden, or whether the situation can be handled by an ordinary member of Garland’s squad at least until Pence declares his candidacy. Moreover, though Pence’s situation and Biden’s both appear, at least so far, to be vastly different than Trump’s, the “everyone does it” defense might complicate Jack Smith’s decision on whether to recommend prosecuting Trump for his greater malfeasance. None of this matters in Fulton County, Georgia where things appear to be reaching their boiling point.  Yesterday, District Attorney Fani Willis, the prosecutor investigating Trump and his Kraken cronies for criminal interference in the Georgia 2020 presidential election told a judge that decisions on whether and whom to charge “are Imminent.”

Law Enforcement?  On Monday, Charles McGonigal, a former top counter-intelligence agent who was based in the FBI’s NY office was accused of taking money from a former Albanian intelligence employee and from a representative of sanctioned Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.  McGonigal retired from the FBI in 2018 but was around during the 2016 election, was knee deep in the investigation into things Russian, and is accused of receiving the Albanian bribes while he was still on the FBI payroll.  This whole situation is durian level stinky. Putting aside the bribe taking and the post FBI work he did for Deripaska, someone that the convicted then pardoned Paul Manafort was in bed with, there have been rumors for some time that Trump and Giuliani had friends with benefits in the New York office of the FBI and that former FBI Director Comey held his election influencing press conference about Hilary Clinton’s emails over concerns that some agents in the NY FBI were about to start leaking.  This could be nothing or it could be a bigger story than illegal payments or any of those juicy whispers about the Matts, Gaetz and Schlapp.              

Year of the Rabbit 🐇 🐰 🐇 🐰 🌻 🌻 🌻

Mulligan Stew: Over the weekend Trump posted on Truth Social that he’d won the Senior Club Championship at his Palm Beach golf course, calling his victory proof that he has the strength and stamina to WIN and GOVERN. He also left the safety of Florida to travel to North Carolina to serve as the keynote speaker at the funeral of “Diamond” Lynette Hardaway, half of his diehard fan duo, stars of the internet and right-wing media, Diamond and Silk.  Diamond, an outspoken anti-vaxxer is believed to have died from COVID complications, although anti-vaxxers including Margie Q are now suggesting that she died from the “deadly” COVID vaccine largely because when you don’t like the facts, change them. That alternative fact scenario worked for Trump the first time he ran for president and almost worked the second time, so maybe time for another mulligan?  That’s the million-dollar question for 2024.  Though much has been written about how damaged Trump is and how he’s about to be indicted for various and sundry crimes, he is still out there despite the decision by at least one federal judge in Florida to fine him and his lawyers almost $1 million for one of his frivolous, lie filled lawsuits. Pocket change for Trump, but maybe not for his lawyers.  Sure, there are many Republicans likely to run against him, a list headed by Florida’s autocratic Governor Ron DeSantis, but also including former South Carolina Governor/UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, former CIA Head/Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former VP Mike Pence,  Virginia Governor Youngkin, Texas Governor Greg Abbott, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, South Dakota Governor Kirsti Noem. Unfortunately, that list of wannabees, and no doubt I’ve missed a few, is part of Trump’s superpower, the more challengers, the higher the likelihood that he’ll pull off enough primary victories, albeit by pluralities rather than majorities, to end up the Republican candidate again.

Sloppy Joes: It’s likely that President Biden is running again too.  Ending 2022 with a series of legislative victories and historically good midterm election results, he’d been planning to announce his reelection bid this month, before the February 7 State of the Union address.  His announcement has been delayed by the drip, drip, thud of classified documents that keep popping up around his former office and Delaware home.  Six more of those documents were found this weekend by the FBI who he had invited in to do their thing.  To be clear, Biden has been cooperating fully with federal investigators but the optics stink, inviting comparisons to Trump’s much larger and intentional document grab and though the legal punditry crowd insist that Biden won’t be prosecuted because sloppiness and carelessness aren’t a crime, it’s not clear that the masses, particularly the Republican masses get the difference. To the extent Biden does run, it’s unlikely that he’ll will face much of a challenge, if any, in the Democratic primaries which isn’t to say that there aren’t a group of Democrats who’d be happy to jump in if he bows out.  Document snafus aside, the big news out of the Biden camp this weekend is that his Chief of Staff Ron Klain will be decamping after the State of the Union address.  No controversy there, Klain plans have been known for some time.  Klain is expected to be replaced by Jeffrey Zients, the respected Coronavirus Response Coordinator who in addition to being a successful businessman,  previously served in the Obama White House.  Special kudos to one of my readers, who gave me the heads up on the Zients appointment before the press got the story.  My first official scooplet.

Volcano Cake: Electioneering aside, the biggest story to watch relates to the debt ceiling.  The clock is ticking, and though financial catastrophe is in sight, a solution isn’t as Kevin McCarthy seems determined to hold on to his speakership even if financial Armageddon beckons.  He also seems determined to hold on to Congressman of many names George Santos, even if that means being subjected to countless late night TV comedic routines and SNL skits.  Santos’ legend of lies continues to grow but one indication that he has no plans to decamp until he’s firmly booted out the door is that he’s started tweeting out policy positions as if anyone cares about his policy positions.  Santos isn’t the only one feeling the heat. This weekend the Sundance Film Festival surprised attendees with a surprise addition to the schedule, screening “Justice,” a documentary about the sexual assault allegations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh that looks into how poorly the assault claims were investigated by the FBI and Trump White House. The film focuses on the allegations made by Deborah Ramirez, who’d accused Kavanaugh of accosting her during their undergraduate Yale days. The documentary includes a previously unheard audio recording of Matt Stier, another Yale colleague, that corroborates Ramirez’ accusation while also suggesting that Kavanaugh had accosted at least one other woman in a similarly gross manner.  The filmmaker says that since the screening, he’s received additional tips and to the extent that he and his team can validate them, he might amend his film.  All this has got to be awkward for Kavanaugh who remains hell bent on dismantling reproductive rights and other “unnecessary” rights.  Not that the Supreme Court has been having much of a good week. Last week, Justice Roberts announced the results, or lack thereof, of the internal investigation into the infamous Dobb’s opinion leak. So far bupkis, which leads those on the left to assume that the guilty party was from the right and those on the right to assume the guilty party was from the left.  Curiously, though clerks and other staff members were required to sign affidavits under penalty of perjury, the Justices who were also spoken to were not. Worth remembering, is that there already is an accusation out there that Alito and his wife shared an earlier reproductive rights crushing opinion with an interested party.

Rabbit Redux:  Virginia Senator Tim Kaine announced that he will seek reelection in 2024, good news because that makes it more likely that Democrats will hold his seat.  Arizona Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego is likely to announce that he’ll be challenging independent Kyrsten Sinema who spent last week in Davos hobnobbing with the financial glitterati and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin who hasn’t yet announced whether he’ll be seeking reelection.  As annoying as Manchin can be, Democrats need him to run and stay blue because it’s unlikely that any other Democrat could win in reliably red WV.

Happy Chinese New Year.  Off to a rough start but hopefully, it improves from here.

 

Knowing When to Leave 🌻 🌻 🌻

Promises, Promises: The word is that Kevin McCarthy made a lot of promises to the most extreme members of his own caucus to secure his speakership.  Of course, the party line is that he didn’t and that there were no “secret” side agreements but the assignments to some of the most important House committees tell another story.  Arizona’s Paul Gosar, Georgia’s Margie Q, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, and Ohio’s Jim Jordan, who also will also be serving as the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, have all been rewarded with seats on the House Oversight Committee. That’s a huge step up for Gosar and Margie Q who had both been removed from committee assignments during Nancy Pelosi’s reign, Gosar for threatening the life of Democratic Congresswoman AOC and Margie Q for her anti-Semitic rants.  Both also spoke at a conference hosted by white nationalist Nick Fuentes’s America First PAC, an event so toxic that even most right-wing Republicans generally avoid it.  Fuentes is the charming chap that Kanye brought to Mar a Lago for his “Guess who’s Coming to Dinner” date with Trump. Margie Q also secured a spot on the Homeland Security Committee, particularly galling given that Homeland was created in response to the events of 9.11, and she’s a 9.11 denier who questions that there’s proof that a plane ever struck the Pentagon. For his part, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry was so committed to blocking Joe Biden’s ascent to the presidency that he is under DOJ investigation for being the matchmaker who arranged the shidduch between Trump and DOJ environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark who Trump then installed for a New York minute as Attorney General as part of his attempted coup. A few of the so-called normies, a group of Republicans who aren’t as nuts as the others but probably aren’t all that normal either, are starting to grouse a bit about being pushed aside.  That group includes 71-year-old Florida Congressman Vern Buchanan who thought he was next in line to chair the Ways and Means Committee but instead lost out to 42-year-old Jason Smith of Missouri, one of McCarthy’s pets.  Buchanan, who had previously said he’d resign if he didn’t get the chairmanship spot is not a happy camper.  He was overheard yelling at McCarthy “you f-cked me, I know it was you, you whipped against me.”  It’s not clear that Buchanan will resign but if he does, that will shrink McCarthy’s House margin down to three, or maybe even two as another Republican, Florida’s Greg Steube, fell off a roof yesterday, is currently hospitalized and, at least for now, can’t make it for any now mandatory in person voting.  And though no one is suggesting that either of them is going anywhere, apparently Margie Q and Boebert remain on the outs, they’ve been overheard fighting in the House Ladies Room.  

Birds of a Feather: Then there’s George Santos, who probably wouldn’t mind it if Buchanan left or if Stuebe remained hospitalized because every time Kevin loses a vote Santos’ gains job security.  The many named fabulist didn’t get any plum committee assignments, but he did manage to secure two appointments to lesser committees; he’ll be sitting on the Small Business Committee and the Science, Space and Technology Committee, totally appropriate since he’s good at fraud and on record claiming to have invented carbon capture technology. We keep learning more about George, none of it good.  Using his Anthony Devolder identity, Santos scammed a disabled veteran and his dog out of $3,000 raised through GoFundMe.  The money was to be used to pay for the removal of a large tumor on the dog’s abdomen but instead disappeared down the Santos money hole.  That story ended with the untreated dog dying.  Less sad and not illegal but crazy and hypocritical given his party’s stance on such things, using still another nom de guerre, Santos performed under the name of Kitara in drag shows in Brazil.  Also, it turns out that George Anthony Kitara Devolder Santos’ mother who he first claimed died during 9.11 before then saying that she died later as the result of harm caused by the attack, well she wasn’t even in NYC on 9.11.  As far as we know she is still dead, but immigration records indicate that she was in Brazil on 9.11. 

Switching Places: About the only thing positive that you can say about Santos at this point is that at least so far, he’s not as dangerous as Solomon Pena, the defeated Republican candidate arrested in New Mexico for shooting and plotting to shoot a handful of the Democrats who he held responsible for his loss. Santos, et al, is also not as dangerous as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the presidential wannabee, who could be the Republican Party’s next nominee if its members ever get over their Trump infatuation.  In addition to re-upping his fight with Disney, this week DeSantis doubled down on his dangerous anti-COVID vaccine rhetoric and now he’s asking state universities for the number and ages of their transgender students who sought the schools’ help with hormone therapy or sex reassignment surgery. That’s not questioning the appropriate age for transgender children to start puberty blockers, that’s going after adults old enough to vote and join the Army for making personal health decisions because what better way to own the libs and appeal to the religious right than to be seen as an anti-trans champion? DeSantis isn’t just going after LGBTQ folks, he’s also quadrupling down on dissing African American history.  His administration has rejected an African American Advanced Placement Studies course on the grounds that it violates Florida’s Stope W.O.K.E Act.  Regarding that other Florida man, Trump, he outperformed DeSantis by 17 points in a recent Morning Consult Poll of potential Republican candidates.  That performance is partially attributable to DeSantis’ charm deficit.  A bigly problem that DeSantis is working on because how bad do you have to be to lose out to a guy who is on record saying that he grabs crotches and couldn’t possibly have assaulted E Jean Carroll, the former Elle Magazine columnist who is currently suing him, because she was too ugly to rape.  That statement is now coming back to haunt Trump because during a deposition taken for the case, he identified a 1990s era picture of Carroll as a picture of wife number two, blondette Marla Maples. To be fair, the two looked alike back in the day. So maybe E Jean was his type after all? On the subject of crotch grabs, the still anonymous Herschel Walker staffer who accused CPAC head Matt Schlapp of grabbing his is now suing Schlapp and his wife Mercedes for $9 million.  Though we still don’t know the staffer’s name, the Schlapps do and they’ve been making the rounds saying not so nice things about him that will probably come back to bite.    

April Showers, Then What? 🌻 🌻 🌻

Paper Pushers: There was a lot of talk about President Biden’s document discoveries this weekend and to be fair, the fact that Biden was document sloppy is an issue, a far smaller one than Trump’s which involves way more documents and seems more intentional, but still an issue, hopefully, but probably not, mostly a distraction, one that new Special Counsel Robert Hur, not to be confused with that other Trump focused Special Counsel Jack Smith, will address and report back on someday.  For now, ignore the finger pointing, the false equivalency claims and the calls for Biden to release Delaware House visitor logs that are coming from Republicans and their echo chamber.  They know logs don’t exist because presidents and the Secret Service Agents protecting them, including their favorite Florida man don’t keep visitor logs for their private homes.  Anyway, Biden’s home isn’t a frequently visited country club and Trump wouldn’t even release the logs for the White House when he was asked.  Let’s allow Hur to do his job, hope that Biden’s lawyers don’t find more documents under his bed, or in Hunter’s laptop which we will be hearing lots more about shortly and move on to what really matters, the impending debt ceiling crisis.  

Fiscal Derangement: Only two countries have debt ceilings, the US and Denmark, with ours put in place in 1917 to streamline debt issuance during WW I.  To say that our debt ceiling has outlived its usefulness, is an understatement.  It’s now a cudgel used by members of the Freedom Caucus and other deficit hawk Republicans to get cuts in social and safety net spending.  Naturally, those concerns about deficits peak during Democratic administrations only to get sidelined when there’s a Republican in the White House when tax cuts for the rich take precedence. Late last week, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellin announced that the US will reach the current $31.4 trillion debt ceiling this Thursday but that she’ll be able to take the usual “special measures” to delay any payment defaults until sometime this Spring.  That a debt ceiling would need to be raised this year isn’t surprising, but that we’re hitting it this soon in the year is, the expectation had been that we had until August. Ordinarily, after some performative handwringing and speechifying, a debt ceiling vote would take place, almost all the Democrats and some Republicans would vote to raise it and Congress would move on but nothing’s normal right now because Kevin McCarthy obtained his Speakership by promising the Freedom Caucus and those to the right of them that he’d hold raising the debt ceiling hostage in exchange for cuts in Social Security, health care and the like. Since a lot of Republican representatives and their constituents either don’t understand or don’t care to understand that raising the debt ceiling is about paying for items already bought, not about budgeting future expenditures we’re about to have an impasse that could soon turn into a full-fledged financial crisis. The last time, the country faced a debt ceiling impasse was in 2011 when Obama was president and Republican’s controlled the House.  Standard & Poor’s grew so concerned that they took the unprecedented step of downgrading the US debt rating.  It took the economy a while to recover, but at least the US didn’t default on any Treasuries.  The fear is that this time, given his slim majority McCarthy will prioritize holding on to his speakership over maintaining economic order.  McCarthy says that he has already started conversations with Biden about making budget cuts but Biden is not going to commit to any cuts in the items that McCarthy’s hostage takers want cut. There is a discharge petition process that could be used by Democrats to force the debt ceiling issue to the floor of the House without McCarthy’s signoff but it’s a complicated and time consuming and might be hard to pull off.  That lion that comes in at the beginning of March, she may be around for the whole season, the lamb not so much.

The Ripley Saga: George Anthony Devolder Santos, pick your choice of names, is still a member of Congress largely because Kevin McCarthy, who has known for some time that Santos is a fraud and also knows that he really should kick Santos to the curb, won’t until he absolutely has no other choice because he desperately needs his vote, so the Santos saga continues to have legs, really hairy ones.  Since Friday, we’ve learned that Santos claimed having two knee replacements due to injuries from all that volleyball playing for Baruch College’s championship volleyball team, where he “slayed” Harvard and Yale.  Putting aside that Baruch isn’t in the same division as those Ivy league schools, Santos never attended Baruch or any other college.  Also, there’s now a video of Santos attending a 2019 LGBTQ event where he introduced himself as Anthony Devolder, a founding member of United for Trump, whatever that was,  because who doesn’t use different names at different venues?  Of more concern for Santos and McCarthy, more information about Santos’ sketchy financial doings continue to surface, including that he knew that Harbor City, a company he actually worked for, was likely a Ponzi scheme.  Santos admitted that he didn’t understand how Harbor City made its money but had no problem assuring a 20% return to at least one mark who he lured into investing his life savings.  Naturally, there is also a Russian link to Santos’ campaign funding as he received contributions from cousins of Viktor Vekselberg, a sanctioned Russian energy oligarch whose name surfaced back when the focus was on Trump’s Russian connections. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Santos’ days in Congress are numbered, the question is how big is that number. 

And:  The Trump organization was fined $1.6 million for the tax fraud that it committed, the crimes that sent Allen Weisselberg to Rikers for a few months, proving once again that for Trump, who has been spending his days at Mar a Lago posting on Truth Social and considering running mates, crime pays.  While both Truth Social and Twitter still exist, though Twitter has been auctioning off furniture and abandoning offices, it looks like Parler, one of the right-wing Twitter wannabees is now circling the drain.  Parler is the company that Kanye was going to buy before his anti-Semitic rantings lost him his lucrative clothing and shoe contracts.  Sadly, China which previously acknowledged only 5,272 or so COVID deaths is now admitting to 60,000 and even that number which continues to grow is likely vastly understated.  The death toll is also growing in Ukraine because though we keep hearing that Putin’s long-term prospects are poor, his forces remain depressingly lethal.          

 

The Corvette Papers 🌻 🌻 🌻

Everyone Does It? Last week as the Republicans did their clown thing on the House floor, all the Democrats had to do to look good was sit still and stay united and they did that well with California Representative Katie Porter even interjecting some humor into the process by reading a book titled “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F-ck.” Fun while it lasted but now reality has set in.  Though his hold may be tenuous, Kevin McCarthy is Speaker and his insurrectionist crowd of nihilists are now running the House, chairing committees and beginning to do all the things they threatened they would do, like voting to further limit abortion rights, defunding the IRS, putting teeth to their very real threat to hold up raising the debt ceiling absent any offsetting cuts in Medicare, Social Security and the like and investigating everything from Justice Department “bias,” to Anthony Fauci and the Biden family.  Unfortunately, President Biden has now given them something legitimate to scream about as it turns out that he, like Trump, mishandled government documents some of which were marked confidential. What’s with these guys? Didn’t anyone learn from the Email Lady’s mistakes? Yesterday we learned that there weren’t just a dozen documents stuffed into a box in a closet at Washington’s Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, there were also a few more in Biden’s Delaware garage near his Corvette and one in his home office.  Biden appears to be fully cooperating with investigators, his purloined cache is small and since he appears to have turned over everything his lawyers have found to the National Archives, he hasn’t been subjected to a Trump-like raid, still the optics suck bigly which explains why Attorney General Merrick Garland announced yesterday that he’s appointed another Special Counsel.  The newest Special guy is Robert Hur, a Gibson Dunn partner with lots of Republican cred. He served as the US Attorney for the District of Maryland in the Trump administration, previously worked for Chris Wray and clerked for Justice William Rehnquist.  Hur’s assignment is far smaller than that of Jack Smith, the Special Counsel looking into Trump’s misdeeds, so hopefully he’ll complete his task quickly, reporting back that Biden’s document mess was unintentional and not nefarious, at least that’s what is hoped, but still it’s just so stupid and frustrating and will feed the Republican grievance machine, and to be fair it should even if Biden’s screw up pales in comparison with Trump’s coup attempt and attempted cover-up. As to Trump, instead of just saying, see I told you so, everyone steals documents, he spent his day attacking his Special Counsel Jack Smith, calling him a terrorist and a Trump hater while also going after his “conflicted” wife.  Naturally.  He also continued to slime Fulton County election worker Ruby Freeman and Elaine Chao because, of course.

Santos Saga:  George Santos is still running loose through the halls of Congress with his newest aide, Steve Bannon henchman Vish Burra running interference and if Republican leaders Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise and fellow New Yorker Elise Stefanik can pull it off he’ll remain there for his full term because a vote is a vote and they wouldn’t care if he were Jeffrey Dahmer or the Idaho killer, they need his.  Unfortunately for Santos, a growing number of his New York Republican colleagues want him out. They’re concerned that his continued presence ruins their “brand,” jeopardizing their chances of winning reelection, especially in the swing districts they picked up in November which explains why Nassau County Republican leadership held a press conference on Wednesday where they called for Santos to resign.  Six members of NYS’s Republican House contingent, including Representatives Anthony D’Esposito, Nick LaLota, Nick Langworthy, Brandon Williams, Mike Lawler and Mark Molinaro are now also on record telling him to vamoose ASAP.  Meantime the Santos myth keeps growing.  The NY Times published his resume which isn’t just embellished but so chock full of lies that it’s hard to find anything that’s true.  For example, he didn’t graduate Baruch College with a 3.89 GPA largely because he never attended Baruch.  He didn’t double his group’s revenues at Goldman Sachs because he never worked there.  Also, despite his questionable claim to Nassau County’s Republican leader that he’s a great athlete, he wasn’t a star player on Baruch College’s volleyball team, because, again, he did not attend Baruch.  The NY Times has uncovered a few things related to his questionable finances that may be real.  They report that details about how he likely violated campaign finance laws to fund his campaign.  Also, the Washington Post reports that despite Santos’ assertion that he was long gone from Harbor City Capitol, one of the firms he really did work for, he continued receiving compensation from them for longer than he admitted, a problem because Harbor City turned out to be nothing but a Ponzi scheme. While lying about spiking the ball on court is tacky, breaking finance laws could be the thing that lands him in a court of law, well maybe. On the subject of bad acts, Santos isn’t the only Republican having a bad week.  CNN has confirmed and added details to the Daily Beast bombshell about Matt Schlapp’s “alleged” predatory sexual behavior.  The victim of Schlapp’s unwanted crotch grab still hasn’t come forward publicly but says that he’ll come out of hiding if Schlapp tries to deny his accusations which could explain why though Schlapp’s wife, former Trump communications team member, Mercedes and his organization, the American Conservative Union, have defended him, Schlapp has not spoken out in his own defense. 

2024 Beckons:  Katie Porter hasn’t just been reading “F you” books on the House floor, she’s now announced that she’s running for Diane Feinstein’s Senate seat, news to the almost 90-year-old Feinstein who hasn’t confirmed that she’s not running for reelection in 2024 even though everyone knows she won’t be running again.  Porter won’t be alone, Barbara Lee, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus told her caucus colleagues that she plans to compete for the seat as well and it’s highly likely that Adam Schiff will also throw his hat into the ring.  The race among Democrats could get even more complicated if Feinstein steps down before the end of her term as Governor Gavin Newsom is on record saying that he plans to appoint a Black woman to fill her seat if it opens before the election, giving that person, Lee maybe, a leg up in any subsequent primary.  Here in New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has announced that she’ll be seeking reelection when her term is up in 2024 and in red state Nebraska, Republican Governor Pillen announced that he’s appointing former Governor Pete Ricketts to serve out the rest of Republican Senator Ben Sasse’s term.  Sasse is stepping down to become the president of the University of Florida. Ricketts says that he’s in it for the long term and plans to seek a full term, something that pleases Mitch McConnell because Ricketts is his kind of reliable Conservative.  And that other Florida guy, Trump, he’s hitting the campaign circuit starting with a trip to South Carolina.      

 

 

Tit for Tat 🌻 🌻 🌻

Chaos Caucus:  The Republicans are officially in charge of the House and things are going about as expected. Only one Republican, Texas’s Tony Gonzales joined with all the Democrats in voting against the Republican’s governing “rules” package, an indication that the so-called Republican moderates either don’t exist or are too intimidated by fears of retaliation to vote their consciences, a fair concern given that a few including Texas’ Dan Crenshaw have already lost coveted committee chairmanships for talking out of school. Worth noting, the deals that Speaker Kevin cut on the side are top secret and no one who isn’t in the in crowd knows exactly what he promised.  To much fanfare the Republicans held a largely ceremonial vote to eliminate the $80 billion allocated by the Inflation Reduction Act to the IRS for the hiring of 87,000 new employees.  The Republican’s ran on a mantra that those 87,000 were all “agents” and that the sole purpose of their hiring was to intrusively investigate each, and every law-abiding taxpayer.  The funding isn’t a one-shot expenditure, rather it’s to be spent over ten years and more than pays for itself by increasing tax revenues.  Moreover, 50,000 of the hires are to replace retiring employees, the other 37,000 are for areas like customer service and IT, with the IT workers focused on keeping the IRS website functioning so that when taxpayers need assistance or access to information, they can get it without having to endure endless waits. Of course, some of the hires will conduct audits and presumably some of those audited will be rich Republican donors with complex filings which is probably why the Republican contingent made good their promise to “defund” the hiring with such urgency.  Anyway, the vote to eliminate the ”agents,” which according to the CBO would add $114 billion to the deficit, was pointless since neither the Democratic led Senate nor Biden will signoff.  

Weaponization: Of more significance, Republicans also announced plans to create a Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government to be chaired by Ohio’s Gym Jordan.  The subcommittee will be tasked with launching a “wide-ranging investigation into federal law enforcement and national security agencies” to get to the bottom of the “concerted effort by the government to silence and punish conservatives” including protesters at school board meetings and Trump, of course.  Basically, the subcommittee will be Benghazi on steroids, echoes of the House Un-American Activities of the 1950s, the pre-Civil Rights, Stepford Wife era that the religious right yearns to bring back.  Naturally, Gym is requesting and will likely get as least as much funding as was allocated to the January 6^th Committee. As of last night, Democratic leadership said that unlike their Republican brethren who made the mistake of not accepting positions on the January 6^th Committee, except of course for “RINOs” Cheney and KInzinger, they will accept positions on the any of the investigatory committees that the Republicans set up, probably not what Gym and his crowd wanted to hear.   Speaking of committees, McCarthy also plans to carry through with his threat to take Democrats Adam Schiff, Ilhan Omar and Eric Swalwell off theirs, retaliation for the Dems have punished Georgia’s Margie Q and Arizona’s Paul Gosar for their unapologetically ugly behavior.  Tit for tat beats adult governing every time.

Twinning? So it turns out that like Trump, President Biden also took some classified briefing documents at the end of his vice presidency.  In November his lawyers found a few while packing up his former office at the Penn Biden Center.  That’s where the similarity ends.  Biden’s cache included 12 documents only some of which were top secret.  Trump’s included 160 documents, sixty of which were top secret.  Biden’s lawyers immediately contacted the National Archives to turn them over, Trump refused to turn his over even after they were subpoenaed.  Merrick Garland who could do without this wrinkle,  has assigned one of the few remaining Trump era US Attorney’s to oversee the investigation into Biden’s documents but that won’t stop rightwing media and the Republican echo chamber from doing what they do.  No doubt Gym Jordan will add this to his long list of things to be investigated.  As to ethics and the like, McCarthy says that they’ll talk to George Santos in private about his lapses, a list that now includes having one of his staff members solicit campaign contributions while pretending to work for McCarthy.  By the way, did you know that Santos was one of the first people to contract COVID, that he was hospitalized and almost died because it was right after he had the brain tumor he didn’t have. Unlikely, but his COVID brush with death is now part of his legend and who are we to question it?   Also, who are we to question why Alan Weisselberg got off with a sentence of only 5 months, albeit to be served at Rikers, for the financial finagling he did while serving as the Trump Organization.  Trump is still in Florida, playing golf and posting hate messages on Truth Social but he may have some court time coming his way in Atlanta.  Fani Willis’ special grand jury has completed its report, it’s likely that she will now convene a regular grand jury to issue indictments, not that any of us should hold our breaths waiting because at least so far, that’s proven to be pointless.  Also, still in Florida for now is Jair Bolsonaro, the election denying former President of Brazil.  He apparently spent a few days in the hospital, something to do with the old injuries he suffered when someone stabbed him back in the day.  He’s out but his days in Florida could be numbered as he may have to go home to face the music in Brazil.          

Magic Number  🌻 🌻 🌻

Sour Fifteen: California Republican Kevin McCarthy is now Speaker of the House.  It took fifteen rounds of voting and a late Friday night session that bled into the early hours of Saturday for him to get there.  The final vote count was 216 for McCarthy, 212 for his Democratic opponent Hakeem Jeffries, and six presents from the Never Kevin contingent, including Arizona’s Andy Biggs and Eli Crane, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, Florida’s Matt Gaetz, Virginia’s Bob Good and Montana’s Matt Rosendale. The Republican party line is that the lengthy process, which included threats, strongarming, one very public almost fisticuff and several pleading calls from Trump was normal, but there was nothing normal about it. Essentially, McCarthy gave away everything to win and as evidenced by the fourteenth round of voting that he thought would be the clincher but wasn’t, even that almost didn’t result in a victory. Among those capitulations, Kevin agreed to allowing single members to call a snap vote on ousting him from the Speaker position.  He also committed to tying spending cuts for things like Medicare and Social Security, Ukraine support, and COVID to debt ceiling increases, something that could be dire for the economy, not just at home but across the globe.  He also agreed to watering down ethics oversight, to putting more members of the crackpot filled Freedom caucus on key committees and to generously funding a committee to investigate the investigation of the January 6^th “tourist” invasion of the Capital, fitting given that the voting ran through that awful day’s anniversary.  As part of that “investigation,” the clown contingent led by Jim “Gym” Jordan will get authorization to request access to all the Justice Department’s case files, including those on open investigations, something that would be both inappropriate and ironic, given that Jordan and some of his other House colleagues refused to appear when they were subpoenaed. Naturally, Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, one of the biggest advocates of coup via alternative electors, the scheme that is currently being investigated by the Justice Department, Fulton County. and several state Attorneys General, said should he be lucky enough to get a spot on that investigatory committee, he wouldn’t recuse himself.  As Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz put it, McCarthy conceded so much that even he ran out of things to ask for. Sadly, Gaetz isn’t wrong, he also wasn’t wrong when he pointed out that the reason so many members of the Republican caucus, even the so-called moderates who really aren’t moderate, were supportive of McCarthy becoming Speaker is because they owe him bigly for all the money he raised for their campaigns. Among those voting for McCarthy was Long Island’s very own Mr. Ripley, George Santos the Jew-ish, bi-racial everyman who displayed a white power sign while voting,  adding KKK membership to his long resume of lies? After the vote, Santos and the rest of the House members were finally sworn in, a relief to those who had missed births of children, family funerals and constituent bake sales during the elongated process.  Next up is voting on the rules package. In theory, the Republican moderates who aren’t moderates should voice some objections to items in the package, but who believes that’s going to happen? One bright light in an otherwise depressing night was Hakeem Jeffries alliterative speech which rhythmically ran through the alphabet from A to Z beginning with: “House Democrats will always put American values over Autocracy, Benevolence over Bigotry……to Zealous representations over Zero-sum confrontation.” Check it out online if you have the time.

Birds of a Feather: Last week while the House Republicans were going through their tortured machinations, one of Trump’s best buddies, former President of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro, who also hasn’t conceded his election loss, was caught on camera wandering aimlessly through a Florida Publix while the president who beat him, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva “Lula” was being sworn into office.  It quite fitting that he was roaming around Publix given that Publix heiress Julie Fancelli spent a few million dollars from her inheritance facilitating the January 6^th insurrection. Over the weekend, taking a page from the Trump/Fancelli playbook, thousands of Bolsonaro’s backers broke into and vandalized Brazil’s presidential office building, Congress, and Supreme Court and naturally Steve Bannon was in Brazil celebrating the festivities. Though  most world leaders and many members of Congress including Ripley/Santos have condemned the Brazil violence, so far, it’s been crickets from Trump.  Not surprising of course since birds of a feather do their thing.  Also not all that surprising, it turns out that Matt Schlapp the right wing head of CPAC, the organization that’s all in on autocratic, homophobic, family first leaders and pundits like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Fox’s Tucker Carlson, is accused of engaging in sexual predation because of course.  Roger Sollenberger, the Daily Beast reporter who uncovered Herschel Walker’s practice of paying for abortions,  revealed that Schlapp was accused of a “sustained and unwanted and unsolicited” sexual assault of a male Herschel Walker aide in October. The aide, a married straight guy, reported the assault allegation almost immediately to the Walker campaign which took the detailed and quite credible accusation seriously.  Schlapp whose wife, Mercedes, served as in the Trump administration’s communications office, spent most of the weekend hiding out from reporters though he did manage to tweet his congratulations along with a picture of himself with Kevin McCarthy to the newly anointed Speaker.  Taking a page from the Trump playbook, the Schlapp controlled CPAC account tweeted that Schlapp is as pure as the driven snow and that the assault story, which notably has been confirmed by NBC news, is just more leftwing character assassination.  

Rinse, Repeat:   While we’re barely out of the 2022 election cycle, 2024 is already on the table.  On Friday, one of Michigan’s two Democratic Senators Debbie Stabenow announced that she will not be running for reelection in 2024.  Though the 2024 Senate cycle will be a tough one for Democrats, Michigan has a deep bench of qualified up and comers so there’s a good chance that the Democrats will retain her seat.  Additionally, a few Democrats including Representatives Adam Schiff and Katie Porter are lining up to replace 89-year-old Diane Feinstein under the assumption that her seat will be open in 2024, if not sooner.   

  

The Cuckoo's Nest 🌻 🌻 🌻

Republicans in Disarray:  Two days and six rounds of voting and GOP Leader for now Kevin McCarthy still doesn’t have the votes he needs to become Speaker even though Donald Trump took time away from further sliming and endangering Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman to finally weigh in on his behalf with an endorsement, albeit a lukewarm one, after the first day of voting.  Sure, McCarthy has only got the slimmest of majorities but Nancy Pelosi’s 2020 majority was no larger and yet she managed to win her speakership on the first vote, pass several groundbreaking pieces of legislation, fund the government, pass a budget and raise the debt limit while corralling her “socialist” Squad members on the left and her centrists, all while wearing heels. Oh, and the octogenarian wonder woman also dealt with the January 6^th attack on the Capitol fueled only by beef jerky sticks without missing a beat.  Kevin who is so hated by several of the election denying insurrectionists in his caucus, a few of whom with never vote for him and others who will but only after extracting more of those commitments that will turn the next two years into Benghazi on steroids while making his Speakership that much more impossible to manage, has been having a truly horrible, terrible, no good, very bad couple of days.  So far, he hasn’t been able to come up with the 218 majority, or a slightly lower number if a few members either don’t vote or vote present, that he needs to become Speaker.  Worth mentioning, the Democratic caucus despite its diversity of views and interests has held together with all 212, short one due to the post-election day death of Virginia Congressman Donald McEachin, voting in lockstep for Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries during all six rounds.  As a result of that solidarity, which Republicans cite an “evidence” of Democratic group think even though they wish they were so lucky, Jeffries has consistently garnered more votes than McCarthy whose totals have ranged from 203 during the first round of voting to 201 during the sixth round where 20 votes went to Florida Congressman Byron Donalds with one by Republican Congresswoman Victoria Spartz being a “present,” her way of telling Kevin to get his act in order before holding more of these stupid votes.   Don’t feel bad if you’ve never heard of Donalds, few have.  He’s just a place holder, thrown into the mix to torture McCarthy, chosen because he’s both Black and an admirer of Roger Stone, an irresistible thumbing of the nose from the white supremacist leaning insurrectionist crowd, with leaning doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.  It should surprise no one that Donalds has a history that rivals Herschel Walker and that other liar George Santos who has got to be appreciative of all the distraction from his crimes and lies.  Donalds once plead guilty to a felony charge as part of a bribery scheme to defraud a bank and his wife is on record saying that “gay people can avoid burning in hell by choosing to be straight.”  Nor should it surprise anyone that among the items that McCarthy has already put into his proposed rules package is one that waters down the power of the Office of Congressional Ethics, something that will make it more difficult to kick grifter Santos to the curb. 

What’s Next: With McCarthy’s Speakership holding on by a thread, the Republicans managed to avoid a seventh embarrassing vote last night by forcing an adjournment with a vote that skirted the rules after the harried Clerk allowed the inclusion of a few Republican votes that came in after the timeclock ran out.  The adjournment gave McCarthy and his team more time to negotiate with any possibly persuadable members of the “never” Kevin crowd. Early reports are that McCarthy has agreed to lower the “motion to vacate” threshold down to one vote meaning that just one member can call for him to step down, something that will make his Speakership or any other Republican’s Speakership untenable.  In addition, he has also promised key committee positions to some, if not all, of his problem children, positions that should irk the rest of the Republican caucus because those plums will be given out at their expense but so far at least they appear to be lemmings, going along for the ride.  It’s still not clear if McCarthy’s made enough headway to become Speaker, or maybe more appropriately Speaker for a minute.  It’s reported that his super PAC has cut a deal with the very rightwing Club for Growth, promising not to oppose their extreme candidates in primaries in exchange for them withdrawing their opposition to his Speakership, something that will likely lead to more crazies in the House but who cares about long term when the Speakership is so tantalizing close, it’s not like McCarthy has any principals.  What’s next if Kevin can’t pull it off on the next vote?  Probably one or more votes with Kevin still in the mix even though Republican gadfly/powerbroker Lauren Boebert insists that he step down ASAP and then someone new, perhaps Steve Scalise, the Louisiana Congressman who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage.” He seems nice, no?  If Scalise doesn’t pass muster, and despite his white supremacist leanings he might not because he too is considered part of the Republican establishment, who knows? We’re in unchartered territory.  This is real life, not an episode of West Wing so the possibility of a “moderate” Republican from outside becoming Speaker with the help of the Democrats or a group of those oft cited but who are we kidding rarer than a hen’s tooth “moderate” Republicans voting for Hakeem Jeffries is probably a pipedream though we all can dream.

Life Goes On: While the House remaining frozen with nothing getting done because absent a Speaker no one can be sworn into office, back in the real-world life goes on. President Biden went to Kentucky yesterday where with Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, Ohio’s Republican Governor Mike DeWine and Ohio’s up for reelection in 2024 Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown by his side he celebrated the desperately needed $2 billion that was just awarded from the funds made available by the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to the upgrading of the heavily trafficked and in much need of repair Brent Spence Bridge that connects Cincinnati, Ohio to Covington, Kentucky.  That’s the legislation that the clowns in the Republican House insurrection caucus voted against and that their hero Donald Trump never managed to pull off despite his countless infrastructure weeks.  Everywhere else, COVID continues to do its thing.  The newest dominant strain is called XBB.1.5, it’s more contagious and more immune invasive. Ashish Jha the White House’s current virus guru recommends that anyone who hasn’t had a recent infection or bivalent vaccine get the bivalent vaccine now.   

New Year, Still Crazy 🌻 🌻 🌻

Mutiny on the Bounty: All eyes, at least all political junkie eyes, are on the House of Representatives today watching to see if California Republican Kevin McCarthy manages to secure the 218 votes he needs to become Speaker.  McCarthy spent his holiday weekend promising his naysayers, mostly a group of far-right clowns and election deniers, just about everything they want in an effort to get them on board. Those promises include key committee assignments, a commitment to allow investigations into all things Biden even going the impeachment route, the ability to defund departments they don’t like, and of most concern to McCarthy, the right to vote him out of the Speakership at any time with five or fewer votes.  Those asserting that they’ll never vote for McCarthy include Andy Biggs of Arizona, Panhandle Putz/accused pedophile Matt Gaetz, Bob Good of Virginia, Ralph Norman of South Carolina, and Matt Rosendale of Montana.  Those who say they could be persuaded but only if they get all the concessions they demand include Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, Paul Gosar of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas, Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Harris of Maryland, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, and three newbies, Eli Crane of Arizona, Anna Paulina Luna of Florida and Andy Ogles of Tennessee. Notably Scott Perry’s name is all over the January 6 report as he’s the one who pushed Trump to fire acting Attorney General Rosen, replacing him with insurrectionist environmental lawyer Jeffrey Clark who was all in on the phony elector scheme.  Though it’s not clear what her position really is because she probably doesn’t know herself, Colorado’s Lauren Boebert also says that she’s a “no” but that’s probably more about competing for the spotlight with Margie Q, a Kevin supporter, than anything else.   McCarthy’s unenviable task is to thread the needle in a manner that pulls in all the “persuadable” crowd and peels off at least one of the “never Kevin” crowd and Boebert while not offending any of what passes for the “moderates” in his caucus.  As of now McCarthy doesn’t have a declared opponent other than Andy Biggs who knows he doesn’t have the votes to win but has thrown his name into the mix to disrupt the first and possibly subsequent rounds of voting.  That said, there are possible alternatives to McCarthy.  The NY Times cites Louisiana’s very conservative Steve Scalise the second in Republican leadership who remains all in on guns even though he almost died in a shooting and who once campaigned with KKK’s David Duke, Ohio’s thoroughly disruptive and obnoxious Jim “Gym” Jordan, North Carolina’s lesser-known Patrick McHenry, and Elise Stefanik who the NYT skewered this weekend in a story about her extreme ambition and hypocrisy. That so many Republicans contributed anonymously to the story about Stefanik is probably an indication that she’s viewed as a contender.  Lastly, since the Speaker doesn’t have to be a member of Congress, if all else fails, and enough of the so-called moderates rebel, an outsider could grab the spot but only if that person wins enough Republican and Democratic votes to take him or her over the top.  Names frequently mentioned include former Representatives Liz Cheney who is probably too polarizing to pull that already unlikely alternative off and the well-liked Fred Upton of Michigan who did not run for reelection. Some have even suggested Trump and or even another “surprise” awful alternative could emerge as a candidate.  It’s unlikely that a non-member of the House will end up as Speaker but then again, most of us never believed that Trump would end up as president. One vote McCarthy needs and will get is that of Long Island Congressman-elect George Santos, or whatever his name is this week.  Santos’ name went up over his office this weekend and he is still due to be sworn in even though his story continues to explode. Over the weekend a former boyfriend who lived with him while he was allegedly married to his Brazilian “90-day wife,” the woman who had a baby during their marriage, one that he’s never mentioned, revealed that he never went to work and scammed him out of money.  Also, now that they know where he is Brazilian authorities have reopened their check theft case against him, those are the checks that Santos admitted stealing before he called the Brazilian thing just more “fake news.”         

January 6:  The Committee spent the holiday releasing tons of transcripts and sending those they didn’t release back to places like the FBI and Department of Homeland Security where they’ll be secure, an attempt to protect those who agreed to testified in exchange for privacy.  Ordinarily, few if any of the transcripts would have been released to the public because doing so complicates the DOJ’s investigation but the Committee feared that the Republican led House, assuming they actually manage to vote in a Speaker, would selectively release information in a manner intended to cast doubt on the legitimacy of the whole investigation. There’s so much to say about what was released that it’s impossible to know what to say but the bottom line is that the Trump coup was long planned, and Trump knew what was happening at the Capitol on January 6 and also knew that he had the power to stop it, he just didn’t want to because those were his people, and they weren’t there to hurt him and he really wanted to stay president no matter what.  On a more humorous, twisted note, what Hope Hicks and Julie Radford, an aide to daughter Ivanka, found most upsetting about the Capitol invasion was that it would damage their future employment options.  Because at the end of the day, it was always about them not the country.  Also humorous, in an attempt to distance himself from the Republican Party’s failure to achieve that much predicted mid-term red wave that wasn’t, Trump posted on Truth Social that it “wasn’t his fault that the Republicans didn’t live up to the expectations….It was the ​’abortion issue,​’​ poorly handled by many Republicans, especially those that firmly insisted on No Exceptions, even in the case of Rape, Incest, or Life of the Mother, that lost large numbers of Voters​.”  He’s not wrong about how the Dobb’s abortion ruling affected the election but somehow or other he failed to mention that he’s the one who nominated the three Justices who provided the crucial votes overturning Roe.  As to the red wave predictions, the NY Times ran a story criticizing everyone, including Democratic leadership for believing the polls and poll averages, especially the ones like the too often cited Philipps poll, compiled by prep school students and others that were obviously skewed Republican.  They blame reliance on those polls as a reason that Democrats overspent to defend Senate candidates in places like New Hampshire and Colorado when money would have gone further in Wisconsin.

And:  A final good-bye to Barbara Walters or as Gilda Radner lovingly called the ground-breaking broadcaster Baba Wawa.  Also, good-bye to Pope Benedict. And only the best wishes to Buffalo Bills football player Damar Hamlin who suffered a cardiac arrest likely caused by a traumatic tackle during last’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals.  If ever there was a right moment to call for thoughts and prayers, it’s now and for him.  And while we’re at it send some to actor Jeremy Renner too, he appears to have gotten into a tussle with a snowplow and is now in critical condition.