The Lettuce Wins Again  ✡️ 🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Iceberg Ahead:  Once again, the head of lettuce 🥬 🥬 has won, tossing rotten tomatoes 🍅 🍅 at Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise’ speaker aspirations. Naturally since it’s Trump’s party, the lettuce got some help from the mango maniac who while adding Hezbollah’s leaders to his smart list, an ignominious group that already includes such luminaries as Putin, Duterte, Xi and Kim Jong un, added fuel to concerns about Scalise’s health troubles not that Trump cares one whit about Scalise’s cancer fight.  Florida Representative Anna Paulina Luna who’d extracted commitments from Scalise in exchange for her support quickly reneged on their deal, shifting her allegiance to his competitor Jim “Gym” Jordan as did a number of others who took Trump’s Scalise health concerns as a not-so-subtle order.  Moreover, the jacketless Gymbo who publicly said he’d back Scalise and nominate him on the floor, privately told Scalise that in exchange he’d need a promise of support for his run if Scalise couldn’t garner the required 217 votes.  Scalise wasn’t interested in that deal and as the day wore on, facing the reality that McCarthy had faced and unwilling to make all the commitments McCarthy had made to the far right, he threw in the towel, dropping out of the race. What’s next?  With Scalise out of the way, Gym Jordan is trying to lock up votes and he will pick some up, but he’ll have a hard time finding 217 which isn’t to say that he won’t play hardball, twisting wrists, and using all of Trump’s resources as he tries. Should Jordan fail, and most pundits, excluding his fans at Fox and in the rest of the right-wing media, believe he will fall short too, House Republicans could:  try to find a consensus candidate;  could ask Democrats to help them temporarily add to the limited powers of the little bow tie guy, Speaker Pro Tempore Patrick McHenry; or could reach all the way across the aisle to seek a power sharing arrangement with Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and his crowd.  Don’t raise your expectations for inter-party cooperation, although some quiet low-level conversations between Democrats and Republicans are reported to be taking place and Hakeem has publicly said he’d welcome it, the likelihood of the “burn it all down” Republicans reaching a long-term deal with Hakeem and his crowd remains low, though the odds have grown just a smidge.  That said, agreeing to grant additional powers to McHenry, fueled by a bipartisan desire to get iron dome funding to Israel, is a real possibility. As to Trump saying that those nice Hezbollah guys are smart, he’s gotten lots of criticism from both sides of the aisle and from Israel. It would be nice to think that any of that mattered, but we’ve been down this road before and at least to date, nothing has managed to pierce his Teflon armor. Republicans are in disarray, the clock is ticking, Israel needs money, Ukraine needs money, and the US government will close on November 17 if another continuing resolution or budget isn’t passed.      

 

Friday the Thirteenth:  Former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal wants today to be a global day of rage and anger, calling for demonstrations to send a “message to Zionists (i.e., Jews) and to America.” Virtually, every Jewish house of worship, school and community has received messages warning them of the threat.  Police, in NYC and in communities across the country are ramping up protection, at Jewish facilities and in case of retaliatory attacks at Muslim ones too.  Though most synagogues plan to go ahead with services tonight, a number of schools, particularly those with pre-school programs are remaining closed today. Probably not a Kristallnacht, but it’s hard to miss the similar sentiment. Over in the Middle East, Israel appears determined to eliminate Hamas and has told 1.1 million Gazan civilians to leave their homes, not that they have anywhere to go as their other neighbor Egypt doesn’t seem all that interested in allowing them to pass through its border.  The consequences of last weekend’s attack are growing increasingly deadly with little end in sight.  Somewhere on earth two there’s a peaceful solution to this impending catastrophe, sadly here on earth one not so much.

 

Stay safe.