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.