Double Trouble 🌻 🌻 🌻

Dumb and Dumber:  We are seriously into the stupid season.  How else to explain that while House Republicans are crapping all over themselves as they race to close down the government and topple Kevin McCarthy’s speakership, unable to reach consensus on any budget resolution, 46 of their Senate colleagues led by Medicare/Medicaid fraudster Rick Scott of Florida are focused on truly important stuff like the Senate dress code.  They have sent a letter to Senate Leader Chuck Schumer expressing horror at his decision to loosen it to accommodate Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman’s preference for shorts and hoodies. Naturally, their dismay is shared by West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrat who is threatening to become an Independent in part, or maybe entirely because he’s upset about efforts to move away from fossil fuels and hasn’t decided whether to run for reelection to the Senate largely because he's not sure that he can win again in his state but is also considering running for president on a possible No Labels ticket, a move that would likely ensure a Trump victory.  Republican fascination with all things Fetterman doesn’t stop at his attire, a number of them are convinced that Fetterman has been replaced by a body double, a conspiracy fueled by a combination of sheer idiocy and Fetterman’s post-stroke improving speech.  Fetterman, not one to be outdone in the humor department, is all in on the body double conspiracy and has been tweeting about it because why let a fundraising moment slip by. And of course, though they don’t appear able to pass a budget resolution, even one that will immediately be shot down by the Senate, House Republicans are all set to start their Biden impeachment hearings on September 28.

2024: The twice impeached one, who is likely to be the Republican’s 2024 candidate doesn’t plan to participate in the next Republican debate which is scheduled to take place on September 27.  Instead, he plans to make a competing speech to autoworkers in Detroit because though he’s hardly a man of the people, a number of them think he is.  The team managing his campaign is shrewd, confident that he’ll win the nomination, they’ve already started pivoting to the general election.  Last week, they managed to make Trump sound “flexible” on abortion despite his SCOTUS appointments and his 2016 statement that women should be imprisoned for ending pregnancies, so no surprise that now they’re planning to make him sound like an advocate for labor unions.  That’s a position wildly out of step with his Republican competitors, or at the very least opposite that of South Carolina Senator Tim Scott who citing Ronald Reagan treatment of air controllers, said of the autoworkers that as far as he’s concerned “if you strike, you’re fired.” While not all the Republican candidates want to see the striking workers fired, all of them blame Biden and his focus on moving the industry towards electric cars, because when a lot of your campaign money comes from the fossil fuel industry, that’s the position you take, or else.  Circling back to Tim Scott, he’s been the subject of some gossip and rumors too. Though no one is suggesting that he’s got a doppelganger, some on the right are going after his sexuality, pointing out that his “bachelor” status. Scott’s response to those implications is that he has a secret girlfriend, one that’s so secret that not even his staff has ever met her. Maybe she lives in Canada? Whatever, who cares?  The issue should be his very conservative positions, his multiple votes against Obamacare and his willingness to sign a federal abortion ban.   

Legal Morass:  According to ABC, Molly Michaels, one of Trump’s close aides told investigators that Trump repeatedly wrote to-do lists for her on documents from the White House that were marked classified. The good thing is that Trump was engaging in ecological behavior, the not so good thing is that he was doing it with war plans.  Of even more concern, at least for Trump, after he heard that the FBI wanted to interview Michaels as part of the investigation into his efforts to hide all those boxes of purloined documents, he told Michaels “You don’t know anything about the boxes.”  Just a little witness interference and intimidation among friends and subordinates.  Judging by her cooperation with Special Jack’s team, Trump’s message didn’t sit well with Michaels, but his magic appears to still be working with some including Rudy Giuliani who more than anyone should know better. Despite the fundraiser that Trump reluctantly held for him at his Bedminster club, Rudy is still short cash and not paying his lawyers so he’s now being sued for $1.4 million by Robert Costello of Davidoff Hutcher & Citron.  Costello has represented Rudy on a number of cases but so far has only received chump change in compensation.  Maybe he’s positioning himself to get a portion of the proceeds from the sale of Rudy’s upper east side apartment when and if it sells?  Moving on to another conspiracy theory, Trump’s echo chamber including the likes of Tucker Carlson have pointed fingers at one time Oath Keeper Ray Epps, claiming that the January 6^th participant was a government plant, their proof that Epps had not been indicted.  Well, Epps has now been charged and is expected to plead guilty. Otherwise, it’s been somewhat quiet on the legal front this week. Among other things, we’re still waiting to hear back from Judge Chutkan about Special Jack’s request to clamp down on Trump’s witness and jury intimidating speech.        

Not So Sweet Alabama: It’s seemed odd that Alabama officials defied the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Allen vs Milligan that ordered them to create a new state voting map, one that included a second Black majority, presumably Democratic district. We may now know more about that defiance from an article published in the Alabama Political Reporter (“APR”), none of it good.  According to APR, Alabama state officials have been led to believe by the likes of the Federal Society’s Leonard Leo and some other right-wing, dark money, in the know Supreme Court whisperers that Justice Kavanaugh who surprised most by voting with SCOTUS’s liberals and Chief Justice Roberts to mandate a new fairer Alabama map may now be ready to change his mind, allowing a version of the old racially gerrymandered Alabama map to stand. The Leo crowd’s assessment is based on Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion where he stated that there could come a time in the future when what was left of the Voting Rights Act wouldn’t be necessary.  Maybe Leo has had some conversations with SCOTUS insiders that lead him to believe that Kavanaugh believes that now, just a few months since the Allen opinion, that time has come?  Crazy but with this SCOTUS, possible.  The Court’s reputation, already severely tarnished, could be in for another hit at democracy’s expense.