Headscarves 🌻 🌻 🌻

Hand Grenades: George Santos is still in Congress but has agreed to “temporarily” step down from his committee assignments while his problems are “worked out.”  In other words, Speaker for now Kevin McCarthy wants Santos to go hide under a rock, emerging only for floor votes on an as needed basis at least until he gets indicted when even Kevin will likely show him the door.  For his part, Santos doesn’t seem all that interested in hiding, last night he sat for an interview with OAN where he appeared a wee bit defensive.  He admitted that lying was a bad thing but said since he’s kind of sorry about his lies, by which he means that he’s very sorry about being caught, he isn’t interested in discussing them anymore. Sorry or not, Santos’ deceptions continue.  Yesterday, his new treasurer, Andrew Olson or someone using that name, signed and filed Santos’ most recent Federal Election Commission report.  The real or imagined Olson replaced Santos’ prior Treasurer Nancy Marks who resigned on January 25 even though her name was included on another FEC filing after that date.  Marks shouldn’t be confused with Thomas Datwyler, whose name appeared on still another Santos FEC filing even though he never worked for him. The way things are going, Santos is likely to win this months’ “who gets indicted first” contest though maybe, just maybe it could be close because things seem to have reached a boiling point in Fulton County where District Attorney Fani Willis has requested additional security for her team, protection needed due to the avalanche of hate that Trump’s is once again throwing her way and then there’s NYC where DA Alvin Bragg has a Grand Jury hearing testimony related to those porn star and playmate payments that we learned about during an early episode of Trump, Crime Kingpin. Getting back to Santos, by taking him off committees, McCarthy may have made it easier to get Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar off the Foreign Affairs Committee because one objection to booting Omar was the hypocrisy of doing so while allowing Santos to sit on his committees.  Republican Victoria Spartz, one of the Republicans who said that she planned to vote against unseating Omar is now okay with voting against Omar as long as Omar is allowed to appeal, and it’s only a matter of time before Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, another who said he wasn’t sure how he’d vote, agrees to the same.  Here’s a piece of trivia, before Ilhan Omar joined Congress, House members weren’t allowed to wear any kind of head covering while the House was in session due to a resolution passed in 1837.  That resolution was amended after Omar was elected to accommodate anyone wearing a religious head covering like a hijab or a yarmulke.  The rule still prohibits other types of hats so House Republicans, ever so compassionate, want Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin who has started chemo treatments for lymphoma to remove the Steven Van Zandt style bandana that he’s now wearing to cover his balding head.  One newbie Republicans sent ersatz hand grenades to all his colleagues, and no one blinked, but banning head scarves for people battling cancer, that’s okay which tells you all you need to know about Kevin and his crowd,

Tick Tock: Later today Kevin will be going to the White House for a little tete a tete with President Biden to discuss the debt ceiling.  The Republicans party line is that they need a commitment to dramatically cut spending in exchange for their vote to raise the ceiling.  Since they, or at least some of them, now realize that the idea of cutting Medicare and Social Security would likely cost them bigly in 2024, the new party line is that cuts will have to be made elsewhere, though where that elsewhere is appears to be a bit vague largely because while some are okay with cutting the next biggest line item, he defense budget, a whole bunch are not.  So now the talk is about doing things like shrinking the CDC into oblivion, getting rid of housing subsidies, slashing SNAP food stamps and the like.  None of that will be agreed to which likely explains why the wily Mitch McConnell is doing the turtle thing, staying as far away from the negotiations as he can.  The slog ahead isn’t going to be pretty.  The debt crisis looms. Also looming is the 2024 presidential election.  Trump has started attacking Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, asserting that DeSantis owes him for his support during his first run for the Governorship.  Trump is also lashing out at DeSantis for throwing shade at COVID vaccines, showing videos of him back when he celebrated the arrival of the vaccine in Florida.  DeSantis who so far hasn’t announced that he’s running even though everyone knows he is, slapped back, pointing out that unlike Trump, he won his reelection, by a landslide.  That’s a landslide that Floridians should really regret, given that DeSantis is using his position to wage a culture battle that will have a lasting impact on Florida’s educational institutions and ability to deal with future pandemics while doing little to deal with real life issues that should concern them, like housing and the affordability of flood insurance.  To one up DeSantis, Trump, who way back in the day cared little about LGBTQ issues, is now fully on the anti-transgender train.  Yesterday he released a video calling for Congress to pass a law banning gender-affirming care for minors nationwide.  His plan would punish medical professionals who provide such care by cutting them off from Medicare and Medicaid.  Additionally, he wants teachers or school officials who “suggest to a child that they could be trapped in the wrong body” to face severe consequences. Are teachers telling kids that they’re in the wrong body one of those “frequent” problems that needs legislation? It’s only a matter of time before Nikki Haley, who is expected to announce that she’s running for president on February 15, one ups him.  After all she’s already on record saying that transgender inclusion will kill women’s sports and has recently taken to tweeting her disapproval of Critical Race Theory.  

And: The Matt Schlapp crotch grab situation is taking on steam.  The accuser who still hasn’t gone public is now suing Caroline Wren, a top conservative operative for defaming him.  Wren who most recently ran losing campaigns for Arizona gubernatorial wannabee/loony tune Kari Lake and RNC chair aspirant Harmeet Dillon who lost to Ronna Romney McDaniel has been disclosing the Schlapp accuser’s names in tweets and claiming that he was fired from multiple jobs “for lying and unethical behavior” and for “being a habitual liar.” Really, does anyone in the Republican party thinks that being a habitual liar is a bad thing?