Broken  ✡️✡️✡️

Pearl Harbor + 9.11: Kidnapping and murder of old people, babies, concert goers, tearing families from their homes.  Disgusting and deplorable. There are no words to describe what happened over the weekend, not that the absence of coherent thought has stopped many from weighing in, some trying to justify the carnage.  To be clear, there is no justification.  My heart is broken, I’ll leave it at that.

Politics Unusual:  There’s never a good time for a region of the world to unravel but right now is a particularly bad time.  We don’t have a Speaker of the House and due to one Senator’s idiocy and obstinacy our military is missing confirmed leaders when and where we need them most and due to another group of Senators making ambassador confirmations extraordinarily difficult, we don’t have confirmed ambassadors in either Israel or Egypt.  Alabama’s footballer Tommy Tuberville, the Senator holding up the military confirmations, says that despite the events in Israel and Gaza, he plans to continue to block military promotions.  The Senators blocking or stalling ambassador confirmations include Rand Paul, JD Vance and Ted Cruz. Their reasons differ, Paul’s issue has to do with getting more “documents” about the origins of coronavirus, the other two are just doing their usual obstreperous thing, but the results are the same.  As to the Speaker situation, acting Speaker Patrick McHenry is only a space filler with limited powers, so at least for now he’s not considered a member of the Gang of Eight, the group that gets crucial security briefings. Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has called for the Republicans “to get their act together” because being rudderless isn’t a good look nor at this time a good thing, was provided with an update this weekend, but no Speaker was with him.  Before the Hamas attack took place there were suggestions that former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was considering leaving Congress before the end of his term but that doesn’t appear to be happening.  In fact, there are reports that he’s trying to wiggle himself back into the Speaker spot.  That’s probably not going to happen but really, who knows for sure because at least so far, neither Trump endorsed Jim “Gym” Jordan nor Steve Scalise, who only appears more palatable because his alternative is the insurrectionist Gym guy, have the support they’ll need to become Speaker. When not blaming President Biden for the Gaza attack, the two Republican Speaker candidates spent the weekend working the phones trying to drum up support for their respective candidacies.  Their Housemates held their first group grope last night with the plan of coming-up with a consensus candidate in time to start open floor voting on Wednesday or maybe Thursday or with this crowd maybe never. Democrats remain united behind Hakeem Jeffries but united as they are, they don’t have the votes to take the Speakership.  The Democrats would only need a few of those so-called moderates from swing districts to help elect Jeffries, but that happening is a pipedream and, anyway, those are the same Republicans who are trying to get Kevin back, another thing that’s highly unlikely.

The Peanut Gallery:  Chief nut, Trump insists that the Hamas attack wouldn’t have happened on his watch and judging by Facebook, X and Threads, a large number of his fans agree.  RNC Chair Ronna Romney McDaniel said the Hamas attack was a “great opportunity for Republican candidates” because apparently all that death and heartache is okay if it’s good for Republicans? Virtually all of the Republican politicians who have weighed in, have blamed the attack on Biden’s decision to free up the $6 billion of Iranian assets frozen in South Korean accounts in exchange for the release of five American hostages even though that money is now unspent in Qatari hands. To the extent that Iran helped Hamas, and though the facts remain murky right now, they probably did, this weekend’s attack which not so coincidentally took place on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur war, was planned in advance of the hostage release, but blaming Biden makes for a good talking point and a potential vote generator. Because bad takes are a both sides thing, a number of prominent Democrats, mostly “Squad” members have also weighed in on the Hamas attack, holding Israel responsible.  Note to all, shifting blame for death, the kidnapping of children and Holocaust survivors and the killing of concert goers, many of whom were sympathetic to the plight of the Gazans, is bad, period.  Moving on to other nuts, RFK Jr has announced what everyone kind of knew he was going to announce.  He’s running for president as an independent.  He says he wants to disrupt the race and hopes that his polling will earn him a spot on the debate stage, not that it’s clear that there will be debates as who know if Trump will ever participate. Nepo-RFK’s family isn’t happy about his run.  Last night, four of them including former Maryland Lt Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, former Representative Joseph Kennedy II, Rory Kennedy ,and Kerry Kennedy issued a statement denouncing his run, calling it perilous for the country. Then there’s that other nut, George of many names Santos, who is still in Congress because Republicans need his vote. It turns out that the reason that the “real” source of the $500,000 or so that he claimed to have lent himself has been so difficult to track is because it doesn’t it exist.  As part of her plea deal, his former treasurer, revealed that the loan was fabricated, a fake book entry created to convince the National Republican Congressional Committee that he had raised enough funds to qualify for financial assistance from their special partnership program for promising candidates. Apparently being a liar and a scammer makes you a promising candidate if you have a certain amount of money on hand.  

And: On Friday, a NY appeals court judge declined to halt Trump’s civil fraud trial while he fights the pretrial ruling that stripped him of control of lots of his assets but did agree to leave the control of the assets in his hands during the appeal process. Unfortunately Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon continues to slow walk the Mar a Lago purloined documents case. She’s paused litigation as she considers a request from Trump to extend deadlines, as in to stall the case at least until after the election or preferably into the next century.

Am Yisrael Chai