Full With Tears  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Speaker Gym? The vote for Speaker of the House is scheduled to start taking place at noon.  Depending on who you read, insurrectionist, extremist Jim “Gym” Jordan’s charm campaign, and by charm think threats of retribution and the like, is working.  He has swayed a number of those holdouts who just yesterday asserted that they’d never ever vote for him. Among the flippers is House Armed Services Chair Mike Rogers.  Jordan has apparently convinced a number of gullible Republicans including Rogers that if elected Speaker he will allow funding for Israel and maybe even Ukraine to come to the floor for a vote. Naturally, Jordan’s team says that he hasn’t made any such promises.  Jordan has also told some that he has a plan to keep the government open through the Spring.  That’s another commitment that should be taken with a grain of salt because this is the same Gymbo who lies about just about everything, ignores subpoenas when they involve him, voted against certifying the 2020 election and is believed to have been one of Trump’s coup abettors. Then there’s those accusations about Gymbo intentionally ignoring the plight of his molested wrestlers.  He’s also the chair of the weaponization of government committee that’s targeting anyone named Biden. Despite all the gullible flippers, Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman reported this morning that Jordan’s not there yet, that he’s somewhere between 10 and 20 votes short with some holdouts planning to cast votes for Steve Scalise or Kevin McCarthy.  The question is are there enough serious people left in the Republican caucus to defeat Jordan’s bid or will they all do what Republicans tend to do, wimp out at the end, making Gym, warts and all, next in line for the presidency after Kamala Harris. That’s a horrifying, though possible outcome because most of the crazies who voted to oust McCarthy are now Team Jordan and the so-called sane Biden district Republicans tend to be lemmings.

Put a Gag on It: Yesterday Judge Tanya Chutkan who no longer gets to ride her bicycle to work because of all the threats made against her by Trump’s followers, ordered Trump to curb his rhetoric. She issued what’s being described as a limited gag order, threatening him with penalties if he doesn’t stop making public statements which implicitly encourage violence against public employees who are only doing their jobs.  So basically, Trump is supposed to stop attacking witnesses, the prosecutors or the court staff members involved in the federal case concerning his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. He’s still allowed to say whatever he wants about his Republican opponents and the current occupant of the White House but as far as she’s concerned his First Amendment free speech rights do not permit him “to launch a pretrial smear campaign” against the people involved in the case.  Chutkan isn’t the first Judge to try to gag Trump, New York’s Judge Engoron previously barred him from making statements about his court staff.  Naturally, Trump responded by smearing Chutkan and then posting, in all caps of course, “WILL APPEAL. THE GAG ORDER RULING. WITCH HUNT!”  The usual set of legal pundits including former Acting Solicitor General Neil Katyal and Mueller Counsel Andrew Weissmann say that Trump’s appeal won’t succeed and that defendants are generally prohibited from harassing court staff, their families, and witnesses.  They also added that typically criminal defendants aren’t insane enough to try. That said, nothing about Trump is usual, and it’s not clear what Chutkan will do when Trump violates the order as everyone expects he will.    

Fog of War:  President Biden is heading to Israel on Wednesday, assuming that security details can be worked out.  That will make the second warzone trip by Biden, a lot of hazardous travel for any president, especially one that’s supposed to be both senile and locked in his basement.  Spoiler alert, he is neither.  An Israeli friend/former colleague of mine described the Israeli reaction to Biden’s trip as “big appreciation.”  Sadly, the same friend told me this morning that he and his family were just informed that their cousin who went missing during the terrorist attack in southern Israel is dead.  In his grief-stricken English he said that the family is “full with tears,” a sentiment that far too many people in Israel and in Gaza too are feeling right about now.  Israeli officials report that Hamas has 199 hostages, Hamas reports that altogether they and some of their “friends” are holding 250 hostages and that they will release them, maybe those who hold dual citizenship, when “conditions are ripe,” code words for maybe never and maybe after they’re dead. As the day wore on yesterday, attempts by intermediaries in places like Qatar to negotiate the release of some hostages were reported.  Take all that with a grain of salt, no doubt attempts are being made, the problem is that Hamas isn’t a rational player nor are they reliable counterparts, you only have to look at who they abducted and what they did and do to know that.  As to Gaza, Egypt keeps saying that they will open their Rafah border crossing, but so far, they have not.  They’re blaming the delay on Israel and some of that may be fair but it’s also likely the delay reflects Egyptian unwillingness to deal with the hordes of Gazans who want out of Gaza. That’s not a new thing, historically Egypt hasn’t been all that interested in helping Gazans.  As to supplies, Secretary of State Blinken said last night that the US and Israel “have agreed to develop a plan that will enable humanitarian aid from donor nations and multilateral organizations to reach civilians in Gaza.”  That’s not so easy, as evidenced by reports by United Nations organizations who claimed and then mysteriously denied that Hamas authorities in Gaza have stolen fuel and medical supplies meant for refugees. Fog much?  

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