Low Hanging Fruit ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

The Fog of War:  In summary, so far around 80 of the 240 hostages believed to have been seized by Hamas on October 7 have been released, with one more now revealed to have died in Hamas custody. Of the 80, 61 are Israelis or dual citizens.  All but the one Russian/Israeli dual citizen are women or children.  The remaining released hostages are foreign workers, mostly from Thailand.  In exchange Israel has freed 180 Palestinian prisoners and has allowed truckloads of supplies to pass into Gaza.  To make the release happen both sides have also been participating in a ceasefire, which Hamas has broken three times.  US, Qatari and Egyptian officials, together with Israel and Hamas are working to extend the ceasefire pause in an attempt to get more of the hostages released. Those remaining hostages are believed to include approximately 100 Israeli citizens, the rest soldiers, though in Israel given that so much of the population participates in the military it’s not clear who Hamas considers a civilian and who they consider a soldier.  Both the soldier and citizen groups are thought to include US/Israeli dual citizens. In a sane world agreeing to release women, children and the elderly should be easy, like picking low hanging fruit, but nothing is easy here as Hamas seized them in the first place and now claims that they’re not sure where some of them, including the youngest child,  are being held saying some are with other terrorist groups.  Count me as one who doubts that Hamas leadership doesn’t know where those hostages are though it is possible that the other groups, like Islamic Jihad, might not be cooperating fully with Hamas.  Hardly surprising given that kidnappers, who seize and hold toddlers, murder, rape and dismember bodies aren’t the “best” people.  To the extent that it ever happens, the release of the Israeli soldiers, or those that Hamas and the other groups believe are soldiers is likely to take much longer and require a much higher “exchange ratio,” a horrible term to use in reference to people of any nationality but an apt one given the dire circumstances.  

What’s Next:  Over the next few days, absent a real ceasefire agreement it’s likely that the pause in fighting will give way to bombing, missiles and the like as Israel continues to try to eradicate Hamas and Hamas fights to remain in control, embedding in hospitals, schools, mosques, and other civilian areas, which will then lead to more civilian deaths.  Both Thomas Friedman and Bret Stephens have pieces in today’s NY Times which address Israel and Gaza, both are worth a read in their entirety.  Friedman’s view is that looking at the war as simply between Palestinians in Gaza and Israel is simplistic, that the better way to think about what’s happening in Gaza is that “there are really three wars going on a war between Israelis and the Palestinians exacerbated by a terrorist group, a war between Israeli and Palestinian societies over the future, and a war between Iran and its proxies and America and its allies.”  Friedman says that we should all “want Hamas defeated” and “as many Gazan civilians as possible spared.”  In his view, progress towards peace is then made when Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and what Friedman calls his “extremist” crowd are “booted;” all the hostages are returned; Iran is deterred; and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is “reinvigorated in partnership with moderate Arab states.” The three-war part is obvious, the replacement of Bibi is more than likely but the rest aspirational, not surprising because Friedman is an aspirational guy. In his piece, the more conservative Brett Stephens explains how the “from the river to the sea” mantra that is all the rage, including among some “progressives” who should but maybe are too ignorant to get or don’t care that it is a call for the annihilation of Israel and that in addition to embracing the “zero-sum politics of Palestinian resistance,” it encourages the “zero-sum policies of hard-core Israeli settlers and their supporters while abandoning the Palestinian people to their worst leaders.” Stephens’ position is that “the world, including Israel, has a common interest in an eventual Palestinian state that cares more about “building itself up than tearing its neighbors down” but that the “loudest professed champions of the Palestinian cause have advocated the precise opposite.”  He calls that “a recipe for smug self-satisfaction, but it’s also how to kill a Palestinian state.” 

The X Factor:  Elon Musk flew to Israel to put in some face time with Bibi and to visit the sites of the Hamas massacre.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Musk’s visit has more to do with X’s advertising revenues circling the drain than a genuine regret for his amplification on X (formerly Twitter) of anti-Semitic and white supremacist messages.  As to Bibi, he’s being criticized for spending time with Musk but what could he do?  Musk for all his many failings controls 50% of the satellites in orbit today.  He’s a player on the world stage who uses his Starlink satellites to intervene in wars, not just in Gaza but also in Ukraine, in ways that suit his whims.  He’s a loose cannon, but one that no leader, especially one involved in an existential war, can afford to ignore.  Also, absurd, though not as dangerous George of many names Santos is still in Congress, but his days may be numbered.  A vote on expelling him is expected to take place tomorrow.  Though it’s still not clear if the votes to kick Santos to the curb are really there, it sounds like Speaker Mike Johnson wants him out and during the course of a few conversations has suggested that it would be a good thing for him to step down gracefully.  Santos, who no one expects to do anything gracefully, has a scheduled a press conference for tomorrow.  Maybe he’ll resign, maybe he’ll read a list of all those crimes he’s accused his colleagues of committing. Tune in for details.  If Santos resigns or is expelled, NY law requires that Governor Hochul schedule a special election in ten days to be held within 70 to 80 days.  Special election candidates are selected by local party leaders so though lots of people have indicated an interest in running for the Santos seat, there won’t be a primary for the special election candidate, just for the 2024 general election.  On the subject of 2024, yesterday Nikki Haley received an endorsement from the powerful right wing Koch Brothers network.  That’s great for her and provides her with lots of resources, financial and on the ground but mostly it just launches her into the second position over DeSantis.  Trump remains the likely Republican candidate, warts, and all. Apparently one of those warts, was a serious loss of appetite after he lost the 2020 election.  At least that’s what Liz Cheney says that former Speaker McCarthy used as his excuse for running down to Mar a Lago after the January 6^th insurrection.  Apparently “my Kev” had to spoon feed mashed burgers and ketchup to the Mango Maniac because he was so upset about losing the election that he claims he didn’t lose.

 that he wasn’t eating.  

 

Better Watch Out ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

🤶 🎅:  Thanksgiving is now behind us, despite the protestors gluing their hands to the street, Santa made it to Macy’s and holiday trees are now selling like fried latkes all over my neighborhood.  Keeping with the spirit of the holiday season, well maybe not so much, Trump started his weekend by wishing ALL a good holiday, except for NY AG Letitia James, NY Judge Arthur Engoron, and his clerk Alison Greenfield who he slammed as racist, incompetent, and radical leftists and why not, those gag orders against him are, at least for now, on hold. Trump’s message was distinctly at odds with President Biden’s which called for Americans to come together and stop the rancor, that last part attacked by some on the right as divisive, mostly the same folks who thought that Trump’s message was totally fine. Maybe because he keeps picking up party endorsements and appears to be doing depressingly well in the polls, Trump is back to attacking health care and is once again promising to prioritize the elimination of Obamacare in his next (oy) administration.  That’s a campaign promise that Democrats are pretty excited about as running against the elimination of health insurance after a deadly pandemic is almost as good as running against abortion and contraception bans.   

Back to Abnormal: Congress is back in session this week.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer says he intends to prioritize budgeting legislation, including packages for aid for Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan.  Incapable of passing any budgets, the House plans to start its pre-Christmas session with a vote on whether or not to finally kick George of many names Santos to the curb.  Santos who says that he expects to be sent packing spent Friday slamming his House colleagues, attacking them as “felons galore” with “sheisty” backgrounds, who show up to votes inebriated, hardly a strategy likely to win him support except perhaps from those with the most serious skeletons in their closets. It’s hard to believe that Santos will survive but don’t count him out yet as Speaker Mike Johnson whose honeymoon period is on fumes really needs his vote. It doesn’t help that another member of the Republican majority,  Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson, no relation to Mike, will be departing soon to become the president of Ohio’s Youngstown State University.  What sets Bill Johnson and maybe George Santos apart from many of their colleagues is that they are likely to be out before their terms are up.  A record number of other Representatives and Senators plan to leave but are waiting until after the election.  In all six Senators including Carper, Cardin, Stabenow, Romney, and Manchin have announced that they won’t be running for reelection, with one, Indiana’s Braun opting to instead run for governor. Manchin may be still toying with the idea of a third party run for the presidency but that’s a reach.  The number departing the House is far greater, currently somewhere around 34.  Eleven of the House departees like Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, and Katie Porter who are competing to replace the late Dianne Feinstein are running for Senate seats. One, Minnesota’s Dean Phillips is running a very dark horse campaign to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee.  Like Indiana’s Mike Braun, Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger is running for governor to replace the term limited Glenn Youngkin, two others are running to become state attorney generals, and one more is running to become a big city mayor.  While Santos might call all of them sheisty, none appear to be leaving Congress because of skeletons but rather because they’re seeking other offices, aging out, unlikely to win reelection or in most cases, especially in the House, just tired of the shenanigans.  As to those shenanigans, Speaker Mike is expected to allow his clowns to move forward with their Biden impeachment because he needs to give them something.     

Fog of War:  Many hostages remain in terrorist hands, a multiple of the number that have been freed so far.  Another transfer is expected to take place today with the hope that further releases can be negotiated for the coming days. In all 40 Israelis, some holding double citizenships, have been released. With the exception of one male, an Israeli/Russian musical technician who was probably released to curry favor with Putin, all of the released Israelis are women and children.  One of the women, an 84 year old with a heart condition was immediately flown to intensive care. Forget about trying to understand why anyone, even a homicidal terrorist, thought that taking and then holding elderly women and young children was the thing to do. The other hostages, including a number of Thais, Philipinos and Polish workers and aides who were also released appear to be physically okay, emotionally not so much.  None of the hostages knew much about the ongoing efforts to free them and although some witnessed the murder of their love ones and friends on October 7, others including some of the orphaned children are learnig for the first time about their losses. Another exchange is scheduled to take place today. In addition, though Hamas hasn’t formally acknowledged it, as part of the terms of the exchange for what has so far been 117 Palestinians and many trucks of supplies, the International Red Cross is supposed to be allowed to visit the remaining Israeli hostages.  That would be a good thing, but, and it’s a big but, some of the hostages are held by other terrorist groups and it’s not clear if they’ll cooperate or if they are even acknoledging that they have any of the thirty or so Israeli captives that are unaccounted for.  It’s also not clear, when if ever, Hamas and any of the other groups will ever release the Israeli men or any Israeli soldiers. Here at home, the effects of October 7 continue to reverborate in ways that go beyond the gluing of hands to avenues to include the intimidation of Jewish students and teachers, taking over bridges, defacing libraries and the killing of a Jewish man in Los Angeles.  There’s been an escalating outbreak of anti-Semitism because it’s not just about Israel.  Also, in a despicable act of violence, three Palestinian/American college students were shot in Vermont over the holiday weekend.  Though the motive behind their shooting hasn’t been definitively established, it’s fair to assume that their shooting was an anti-Islamic hate crime. A suspect has been arrested so maybe we will know more later today.  

MeToo’s Failure:  This should be first but it’s so ugly that it is painful to write but here goes. As pointed out by the Washington Post and former Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, a number of the Israeli victims of October 7 weren’t just murdered, they were the victims of gang rape. That’s beyond despicable but what’s almost equally despicable is that many of those who are leaders in the MeToo movement including some “progressive” politicians and actresses who went public with the long term effects of their rapes are silent, refusing to acknowledge that Hamas committed those heinous crimes because that acknowledgement contradicts their narrative that only Palestinians can be vctims. Apparently in their view the raping by terrorists of innocent Israelis can’t be true and if it is, it doesn’t count?   #WTF    

   

 
More Please ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Thanksgiving 🦃 🦃:  There’s something to be grateful for today, well maybe.  Assuming the deal goes through, fifty of the hostages being held by Hamas will be returning home soon.  All of the to be released hostages, including the three who are Americans, are women or children. One of those Americans is a three-year-old child name Abigail who is now an orphan, the result of her parents being murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7. After what is supposed to be the first in a series of exchanges, somewhere around 189 hostages will remain in Hamas hands. That remaining total is down one because one of the hostages, an elderly woman named Hannah Katzier has died in captivity.  Naturally, her Hamas captives are blaming her death on Israeli procrastination rather the fact that they kidnapped her and held her for 45 days despite her obvious medical frailty.  In exchange for the release of the first of what is supposed to eventually be more of the hostages, Israel will release 150 Palestinians, all women and teenagers, and will pause military attacks while also letting in “humanitarian” aid.  Humanitarian in quotation marks because it’s hard to believe that some of that needed aid won’t end up back in terrorist hands because Hamas. Let’s all be thankful for the impending release and the pause in fighting, but let’s not forget that so many more remain in captivity and that given the players, the likelihood of the hostages, particularly the men and soldiers ever being released alive still remains remote.  #BringThemAllHomeAlive    

The X Files:  On the subject of difficult players, Elon Musk, who asserts that despite his repeated amplification of hateful and anti-Semitic tweets he is not at all hateful or anti-Semitic, is now following through on his threat to launch a thermonuclear defamation lawsuit at Media Matters, the left leaning media watchdog group that reported on X’s posting of hate messages near the advertisements of mainstream companies like IBM.  Musk holds Media Matters, rather than his actions and his company’s ad placements, responsible for X’s plummeting advertising revenues. He asserts that Media Matters made-up it’s accusations, an assertion that his CEO Linda Yaccorino, who recently hired her son tasking him with soliciting business from Republican-friendly digital advertising firms, doubled down on by calling Media Matters manipulative and misleading. Discovery for the lawsuit, to the extent it doesn’t explode first, should be interesting.  Then again Musk filed in Texas where the recently impeached but not convicted state Attorney General Ken Paxton is now investigating Media Matters for what he, in a display of loyalty to Musk, is calling its potentially fraudulent activity, so maybe there will be no discovery, just a ruling in Musk’s favor.  Yesterday, a few days after calling Musk out for his boosting of anti-Semitic tropes, the White House expanded its social media campaign to include posts on Threads, Facebook’s Twitter competitor.  They say that the timing was coincidental, that their plans to join Threads had been in the work for some time; they probably were but still the timing speaks volumes.  Trump’s Truth Social platform is circling the financial drain but with X making it clearer than ever where its loyalty lies, it’s only a matter of time before Trump returns full time to X as it assumes the Truth Social mantra.

Boomerang:  In other tech news, as of this morning tech superstar Sam Altman, who was fired from OpenAI on Friday and hired by Microsoft on Sunday has now be rehired by OpenAI, a story that even OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot would not have dared to write.  On the subject of stories that should not be real, but sadly are, the Federal Appeals Court for the 8^th District ruled on Monday that contrary to practice only the federal government, not private citizens, or civil rights groups, is allowed to sue under a key section of the Voting Rights Act.  That matters because the federal government, even when dominated by Democrats, doesn’t have the resources to initiate every lawsuit. The circuit court decision will be appealed and is likely headed to the Supreme Court where the conservative majority, especially Clarence Thomas whose last dissenting opinion left an opening for this voting rights killing opinion, has been mostly hostile to enforcing voting rights protections.  On the media front, Univision, the Spanish language television network, recently aired a Trump interview that treated the twice impeached, multiply indicted, sex offender, insurrectionist former president with kid gloves. The right says that the soft-ball treatment was warranted because Trump is as sweet as pecan pie, others, including some of Univision’s staff and Democratic leadership are outraged, attributing the tone of the interview to son-in-law Jared’s very close relationship with executives at Univision’s new parent company Grupo Televiso.  Democratic concern was further raised when Univision canceled previously purchased ads scheduled to run during the Trump interview in Nevada, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and Florida attributing the cancellation to a previously unannounced policy about opposition advertising in single-candidate interviews.  All this matters mucho because the Hispanic vote is so important.  Trump, with the help of the quiet, yet effective Kushner, is making the kind of inroads into the Hispanic vote in places that have the power to swing the 2024 election his way.  Como se dice OY in Espanol?

Happy Thanksgiving 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃 🦃

 

Insurrectionist ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

2024 Beckons: In addition to being twice impeached, multiply indicted, and ruled a rapist, Trump has now been declared an insurrectionist by a judge in Colorado. That judge found that Trump engaged in insurrection during the January 6 attack on the Capitol but rejected an effort to keep him off the Colorado primary ballot because she’s not sure that the 14^th Amendment’s provision barring insurrectionists from public office applies to the presidency.  That’s not a view shared by everyone.  Respected conservative Judge Michael Luttig and Harvard Law professor Lawrence Tribe both believe that the 14^th Amendment pertains to presidents because what’s the point of the Amendment if it allows insurrectionists to become dictators but unless and until the Supreme Court agrees with them, Trump will stay on the ballot everywhere which is a bigly problem because despite his obvious failings and criminality, he’s coasting towards the Republican nomination and if polls are right, could also win the 2024 election over that “much” older guy who isn’t much older.  As to the Republican nomination, Nikki Haley is gaining in the polls, but that just means that she’s passing DeSantis, not that she’s anywhere near Trump who is still way ahead. In New Hampshire Trump is at 46% while the “surging” Haley is at 18%.  Sure, Trump still faces lots of legal problems but at least so far none of them are impeding his run which isn’t to say that they aren’t still out there.  On Friday Judge Arthur Engoron rejected Trump’s Hail Mary bid for a mistrial in NY AG Tish James’ civil fraud against him rejecting Trump’s assertion that a mistrial was warranted because Engoron and his law clerk are “politically biased.” Also on Friday, Fulton County DA Fani Willis filed a motion requesting an early August start date for her RICO trial of Trump and his remaining co-defendants, or those co-defendants who still remain by the time August rolls around.  In addition, newbie Speaker for now Johnson announced on Friday that he’ll start releasing all 40,000 hours of the tapes of the January 6 onslaught on the Capitol.  It’s unclear why Trump and his allies think that sharing those tapes is a good thing, but they do. Then again, the released tapes will reveal a lot about how to navigate the nooks and crannies of the Capitol, information that would help any future insurrectionists so maybe that’s part of why Trump thinks that their release is a good thing because who doubts that he’d be all in on another attack if the election doesn’t go his way in 2024?  We already know that if he gets back into the Oval Office, he’ll upturn the country’s governance and alliances and jail, or at least try to jail, his opponents and so on.  

Fog of War:  Israel has released tapes documenting a 55-foot long, 10-foot-deep tunnel under the Gaza Al Shifa hospital. They also shared pictures of two hostages, one being wheeled through the hospital another being “escorted” by five men, three of them heavily armed, with the other two likely medical professionals. The timestamp on that video is the morning of October 7.  Neither of those hostages, one Thai, the other Nepalese have been seen since.  In addition, two addition bodies of Israelis kidnapped on October 7 have been found on the hospital grounds.  Nevertheless, Hamas insists that they have no tunnels and if they had any they wouldn’t be under hospitals or near other civilian locations because they would never have tunnels or keep them stocked with ammunition, rocket launchers and suicide vests or anything like that because they are really nice even if they are homicidal terrorists?  And those working at the hospital, they too allege that their facility, or a children’s cancer hospital, would never house terrorists. We keep hearing that Hamas and Israel are near reaching a deal to free some hostages but so far bupkis (nothing for the Yiddish impaired).  More politicians, mostly “progressive” Democrats, and a whole lot of demonstrators some with swastikas just in case we don’t get their message, many at the same time yelling for the end of Israel are calling for a ceasefire, the ceasefire part being a noble concept because who opposes the ceasing of war and the ending of carnage.  But then again, does anyone really believe that Hamas whose charter calls for the obliteration of Israel will stop shooting missiles, killing, and hiding behind their own?  That’s the dilemma, one that is growing increasingly unsolvable. And sadly, the anti-Semitic component, evidenced by those swastikas isn’t just a left thing, it lives and grows on the right which explains Tucker Carlson spewing his hate during a recent interview with Candace Owens.        

Unsocial Media:  Disney, Paramount, NBC Universal, Comcast, Lionsgate, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Apple have all joined IBM in cutting or freezing their advertising on Elon Musk’s X (Twitter) over X’s placement of anti-Semitic messages near their ads and over Musk’s retweet of a post claiming that Jews were all in on replacement theory, the anti-Semitic trope that says Jews want to replace white people with “unsavory immigrants” of color. Think Charlottesville and those charming chanting neo-Nazi tiki torch carriers as well as the aforementioned Tucker and Candace. as well as this weekend’s neo-Nazi march in Madison, Wisconsin.  NBC Universal’s action is particularly notable because X CEO, Linda Yaccorino was previously responsible for pumping up advertising revenue at the company.  Yaccorino, who should resign X but hasn’t, insists that X “has been clear about its work to fight anti-Semitism and discrimination.”  Clearly, she’s delusional or being paid a lot to lie.  My money is on the latter.  The sad thing is that all those companies should have long ago stopped advertising on X because hate’s been out of control there ever since Musk took over so don’t be surprised if they slink back on while we’re busy with our Turkeys 🦃 🦃.  As to Musk whose most recent Space X rocket took a little longer to crash and burn this weekend, if X had a board, it would have fired him by now. That said, over the weekend we learned that some boards aren’t all that rational and that some governance structures are weirder than others when Sam Altman who is viewed as the J Robert Oppenheimer of artificial intelligence was fired by the maybe too idealistic board of OpenAI.  The company’s President Greg Brockman almost immediately followed Altman out the door in solidarity.  AI, or alternative intelligence, is all the rage these days with some, including those on the board of OpenAI fearing it’s destructive potential and by destructive, think HAL rather than students employing AI to write term papers.  The board feared that the widely respected Altman lacked their concerns or something like that. Their mistake is that they axed him without giving a heads up to or getting any input from their big investors, most notably Microsoft which recently committed to investing $10 billion in the company largely because of Altman. The board action freaked Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella who spent the weekend trying to unwind Altman’s firing.  He didn’t succeed so instead has hired Altman and Boardman to do their thing under the Microsoft banner, it’s likely that a lot of OpenAI’s techy geniuses will follow them to their new digs. So, if you see volatility in the tech markets, that’s probably why. A diversion from my usual focus but an irresistible one.

And:  There will likely be a vote on expelling George Santos after the 🦃 holiday though the results of that vote are still not a given.  New Jersey’s newest Democratic Senatorial candidate is Governor Murphy’s wife Tammy Snyder Murphy, a former Republican who seems to be attracting lots of donors because she’s got more name recognition than the other candidate, Congressman Andy Kim.  They’re both vying to replace the ethically challenged Senator Menedez who is still in office and shows no signs of leaving.

RIP Rosalynn Carter  

#BringThemHomeNow

 

 
Botox for the Brain  ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

A Wrinkle in Time: The picture of George of many names Santos carrying a telltale orange Hermes bag was a dead giveaway that something was seriously wrong with his finances so the results of the House ethics report detailing how he used donor money to fund his designer habit and his Botox treatments, while outrageous, isn’t all that surprising. The Botox part is funny, well almost, but the bi-partisan committee’s conclusion that his fraud included using campaign coffers to reimburse himself for loans in amounts that dwarfed the actual size of the ones he made and that everything he said about himself, his background or anything else for that matter, was false, not so funny. Santos attacked the report as a “grave miscarriage of justice” but also announcing that he’s no longer running for reelection. The House which failed during its first attempt to expel him is expected to hold another expulsion vote after Thanksgiving.  While a growing number, including more Republicans, appear inclined to kick Santos to the curb, getting the required two-thirds to vote him out isn’t a slam dunk since Speaker for now Mike Johnson can’t afford to see his slimmest of majorities shrink so despite all Santos might actually make it to the end of his term.  Johnson, who managed to avoid a government shutdown with the passage of his laddered continuing funding resolution, passed by the Senate and signed by President Biden, still faces an uphill battle getting any longer-term spending bills passed.  On Wednesday he couldn’t even get a procedural vote for the Commerce, Justice, and Science appropriations bill passed because 19 of his hardliners rebelled over their fury that the continuing resolution didn’t slash government spending.  That’s a bright neon warning sign that the government will be facing more shutdown deadlines come January and that Johnson’s days, like Kevin’s before him, could be numbered.

Legal Morass:  Santos and Johnson weren’t the only ones whose day was marred by bad news. The Hunter Biden quagmire, the gift that keeps feeding Republicans’ Trump false equivalency defense took still another turn after it was revealed that Special Counsel Weiss is using a Los Angeles grand jury to seek more documents and testimony in the ongoing investigation into his business dealings. President Joe’s brother James was one of those subpoenaed. It’s not clear that Weiss has found more crimes or whether this is still about Hunter’s failure to pay taxes when owed.  Most likely Weiss is just trying to turn the screws on Hunter to force another plea but whatever it is, it’s ugly. Worth remembering that while Hunter is scuzzy, he is not and has never been a government official. Though neither Special Counsel Jack Smith nor Judge Arthur Engoron are facing any charges, neither of them is having a particularly good week either.  Both have had their Trump gag orders lifted while higher courts decide whether it’s constitutional to stifle Trump’s right to rage post and engage in slimy free speech.  As a result, Trump and his lawyers are back to sliming because why shouldn’t they be able to influence jury pools, intimidate witnesses and inflame the masses. How else will Trump win his cases and also be able to dismantle government, go after his enemies and upset world worder?  It also turns out that Andew Weissmann’s concerns about Judge loose Cannon are warranted.  She has put off setting any deadline for Trump’s lawyers to tell prosecutors which of the purloined documents they plan to use as part of their defense. The concern is that her failure to set a schedule will almost certainly delay the Mar a Lago stolen documents trial, making it even more likely that the easiest case to win against Trump won’t take place until after the 2024 election, if ever. On the Fani Willis Fulton County front, another one of those much-anticipated Trump trials that is unlikely to happen anytime soon, we know for sure that one of the defense counsels, Jonathan Miller who represents co-defendant/former election supervisor Misty Hampton, shared the proffer video snippets with ABC News.  He admitted as much to the judge overseeing the case who has now put the kibosh on anyone else doing the same.

Anti-Social Media: The creep who bashed Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul’s head has been found guilty by a jury but Elon Musk the creep who spread conspiracies theories about that brutal attack is still spreading conspiracy theories and hate on his X (Twitter) platform.  Yesterday, IBM pulled its $1 million ad campaign from X after realizing that its ads were appearing side by side with Nazi, anti-Semitic content, the same messages that Elon has been actively retweeting to his 160 million followers.  Those retweets by Elon assert that Jews push hatred against white people. I am not sure what exactly that means though I do that it’s intended to whip up hate, a conclusion that IBM executives appear to have reached as well.  X’s pretend CEO Linda Yaccorino who was hired to increase ad revenues and likely considered getting IBM’s ads a big accomplishment, is heavy into bullsh-ttery.  Her response is that X is doing all it can to fight anti-Semitism.  As if.  Sadly, its not just X, Tik Tok, the popular Chinese owned app that is as much a propaganda tool as a device for sharing dance moves and make-up techniques, has been promoting an Osama bin Laden letter where he justified his horrendous 9.11 World Trade Center, Pentagon and Pennsylvania plane crash killings/attack, blaming them on the US’s support for Israel. Don’t dismiss the evil of promoting that letter, CNN reports that a number of the young people who viewed it on Tik Tok now sympathize with bin Laden. As Sacha Baron Cohen so aptly put it to Tik Tok’s US management, “if you think back to October 7, the reason Hamas were able to behead young people and rape women is that they were fed images from when they were small kids that led them to hate.”  As if any of that isn’t sickening enough, last night the NY Post reported that a pro-Palestinian group with 121,000 Instagram followers has shared a map of New York City newsrooms, businesses, and landmark buildings calling for “direct action” to “globalize intifada” against what they clearly imply are Jewish influenced institutions.  If we’re not there already, we’re about one minute away from Hamas being labeled the heroes and their hostages, down one from the last total because another women’s body was found, being the evil doers. Maybe not even down one, since reports are that one of the hostages may have given birth.  If only a ceasefire could really end all this. Depressing spoiler alert, it won’t

#BringThemHomeNow  

 

Wings and Drumsticks ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Fight Club:  By a vote of 336 to 95 the House passed Speaker for now Mike Johnson’s laddered continuing budget resolution sending it on to the Senate which is expected to do the same shortly. Assuming the Senate vote goes as anticipated the government won’t run out of money on Friday and, more importantly to the members of the House and Senate, they will make it home for Thanksgiving 🦃.  That’s good for them and for anyone who thinks that keeping the government open is the way to go but as a result of Johnson’s ladder, there are now two funding deadlines, one on January 29 and the other on February 2. The irony here is that Johnson needed robust support from Democrats to pass the resolution; all but two of them voted for it while 93 Republicans opposed it. The two naysaying Democrats were Reps. Jake Auchincloss and Mike Quigley both upset that no funding for Ukraine and Israel was included in the resolution. The Republican naysayers included the usual members of the Freedom Caucus and the likeminded,  who want to defund, or at the very least slash the budget for most things. Relying on Democratic support to pass key funding resolutions is what got former Speaker Kevin McCarthy booted so while Johnson may have been given a 🦃 pass by his crowd, he may find himself joining McCarthy in the ousted Speaker pile come the New Year.  One indication that Kevin McCarthy was frustrated that Johnson succeeded where he failed was that he elbowed fellow Republican Tim Burchett in the kidneys when he passed him in a House corridor.  Burchett is one of the Republicans who voted McCarthy out of his job.  Naturally, McCarthy denied that the elbow stab was anything more than the result of an accidental jostle, but former Congressman Adam Kinzinger said that the jab was not an outlier for Kevin.  It appears that getting physical is a thing with Republicans these days as over in the Senate, yesterday Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, a former MMA fighter, tried to escalate his war of words with Teamsters president Sean O’Brien, who was testifying in front of a committee, into a physical altercation. The fight didn’t turn bloody only because Vermont’s crochety Bernie Sanders stepped in to break it up. Go Bernie! One more thing about budgets, Vivek Ramaswamy who is still running for president, doubled down on his promise to cut government staffing levels in half.  His solution to those inconvenient civil service employment rules, he’d fire everyone whose social security number ends in an odd number. Since his plan specifically excludes the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and the VA, he’d essentially be shutting down everything else.  But really who needs health care, social security, transportation, energy, education, pollution control, parks, and all those other things anyway?    

Trump Dump:  Trump’s campaign spokesman Steven Cheung defended his exalted leader’s use of Nazi era language, specifically his use of the word vermin to describe his “radical, communist” opponents.  Cheung said that “their (as in the critics) existence will be crushed” when Trump returns to the White House because what better way to counter accusations of fascist speech than by the use of more fascist speech. For his part Trump doubled down too, following up his much-criticized, deplorable Veteran’s Day vermin speech with a similarly worded post on Truth Social, the social media app that continues to bleed money.  In a filing with the SEC Truth Social’s parent company expressed concern about the platform’s financial condition and ability to continue operations while also reporting that they have drastically cut back staffing.  Truth Social following in the footsteps of Trump Steak, not shocking. Trump will probably do all he can to stall Truth Social’s ultimate demise and if we’ve learned anything by now, he’s a wizard at delay.  To that end Fulton County DA Fani Willis said that her much anticipated RICO trial would probably not be completed until sometime in 2025, well after the 2024 election takes place.  She revealed that depressing factoid during an interview where she also expressed her frustration about the leak of excerpts of the videoed proffers of plea deal recipients Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Scott Hall. Those videos, while very revealing about how Trump knew he’d lost the election and really was trying to stay in office despite that loss, could also be damaging to her case as the sections that were shared with the media appear to have been curated to influence other witnesses and/or potential jurors.  Willis made it clear that her office is not responsible for the leak. It is more than likely that the leaker was member of one or more of the defense teams as the full videos have been shared with them as part of discovery.  Willis is now seeking an emergency protection order to prevent other discovery material from becoming public. As to delays, Andrew Weissmann and his legal podcast partner Mary McCord are more concerned than ever that Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon intends to push off the start of the Mar a Lago purloined documents case.  Their view is that the press gave her too much credit last week when she left the May 2024 start date for the trial in place.  They believe that the rest of her ruling which delayed many of the pre-trial steps makes it clear that she plans to delay the trial start but that she’s planning to do so at the last minute which will also make it more difficult for prosecutors in Trump’s other trials, especially the one in Fulton County, to lock in start dates.

Fog, Smoke and Mirrors:  The Supreme Court says that going forward the Justices will behave ethically, well maybe.  SCOTUS released new guidelines but did not include any review or enforcement mechanisms for keeping the Justices on the straight and narrow. So maybe more smoke and mirrors or as Senator Sheldon Whitehouse put it just a “chink in the armor of their indifference.”  Yesterday somewhere around 290,000 marchers peacefully descended on Washington in support of Israel and to call for the return of the Hamas held hostages.  That was an impressively huge crowd but one that could have been even a bit larger had some attendees not been left stranded after some bus drivers refused to take them to their destination. As to the war, it continues, and people are dying.  Who could have anticipated that hiding military headquarters and tunnels under hospitals could lead to such dire consequences for far too many?  President Biden suggested that progress is being made in negotiating the release of some hostages, but we will only know for sure if those negotiations are for real when ALL the hostages are returned home safely. 

#BringThemHomeNow     

 
Chutes and Ladders ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Tick Tock:  If Congress fails to pass a continuing budget resolution, the government will shut down on Friday.  We’re facing this deadline because House Republicans haven’t been able to agree upon any of the 13 spending bills that make up the federal budget.  That’s not unusual, the inability to get individual spending bills through Congress on a timely basis is the reason both Republican and Democratic leadership so often go the continuing resolution route. However,  the failure to pass individual spending bills is the rationale that most of the Republicans who voted against former Speaker McCarthy used to justify ousting him. Newbie Speaker for now Mike Johnson has a plan to avoid the shutdown, one that also leaves him in place at least for the moment.  His plan involves splitting the continuing resolution into two parts, one that divides the 13 spending bills into two buckets.  The first bucket would extend the funding of the parts of government included in four of the spending bills through January 19, the second bucket would extend the funding for the rest of the government through February 2.  Sure, it would be far simpler to just go with a single continuing resolution, but Johnson is hoping that a little sleight of hand will give his caucus, or at least enough of them, the cover they need to vote to “cleanly” fund the government through the 🦃 🎄 holidays.  Like McCarthy before him, Johnson won’t get all of his outliers on board, but he hopes that he’ll get enough of them to cooperate and that with the help of some of Hakeem Jeffries’s Democrats and agreement of the Senate and White House, a shut down will be avoided, at least for now.  Neither of Johnson’s “packages” includes funding for Israel, Ukraine, or Taiwan.  The Senate is working on that and is expected to come up with a military aid package that also includes border security funding but does not cut the IRS because cutting the IRS, while good for Republican messaging, is stupid and in and of itself raises the deficit.            

Trump Dump:  Trump has been busy doing some messaging of his own.  Borrowing a term from Nazi era propaganda he’s taken to calling his political opponents out as vermin.  Those are the “radical leftists,” he plans to prosecute, persecute, and even hang if he returns to the Oval Office. One of the scariest things about his threatening, hate filled language is that it doesn’t outrage because we’ve come to expect it, but we should be horrified, really horrified, and offended too.  He even went after Paul Pelosi who is still recovering from having his head bashed in again this weekend.  Trump also plans to act against all undocumented immigrants and even some who hold legitimate papers. According to the NY Times, Trump’s favorite loyalist Stephen Miller’s Trump blessed newest anti-immigration strategy involves country wide raids, giant prison camps, massive deportations, the elimination of temporary protected status and birth right citizenship as well as the immediate end of the DACA program. He even plans to reevaluate the immigration papers provided to those Afghan allies who supported our troops. Trump is counting on “his” right wing judicial appointees, expecting that the new crop will uphold even the most heinous of his plans.  It’s fair to say that our immigration system is broken, but prison camps and mass deportation, we should be better than that.  On the subject of judges, one of Trump’s “crop” may not be one of his favorites for much longer.  Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon declined to delay the purloined documents case, which is scheduled to begin in March, at least for now, though she did push back certain deadlines. Trump’s defense attorneys are scheduled to start presenting their case in New York and now it isn’t just Trump who is going after “deranged” Judge Engoron.  New York Congresswoman/Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik has filed a judicial ethics complaint against Engoron, accusing the judge of using “weaponized lawfare” against Trump and calling for him to recuse himself.  Elise is trying so hard to jump to the top of Trump’s VP list. 

2024: South Carolina Senator Tim Scott insists that he doesn’t want to be on the VP list but he’s no longer running for president.  Late yesterday he surprised his staff and donors as well as Fox’s Trey Gowdy by announcing on the former Republican Representative’s Sunday Night in America program that he was suspending his campaign. Scott was polling around 2% so his decision to pull out makes sense.  He hasn’t endorsed anyone else, one sign that despite his protestations he might consider a VP spot if the front runner offered it to him. Trump, that front runner, is polling around 63% with the rest of the candidates trailing far behind with DeSantis at 15%, Haley at 8%, Ramaswamy at 7% and Christie at 3%.  While the twice impeached, multiply indicted front runner Trump was hate raging against Special Counsel Jack Smith and his family, President Biden commemorated Veterans Day and spent some quality time with the head of the United Autoworkers Union, celebrating the union’s recent deal.  Biden hasn’t received the UAW endorsement yet, but it would be surprising if he doesn’t get it at some point, especially since Trump’s contribution to the union’s fight was to visit a non-union shop, so keep an eye on that.  Also keep an eye on Minnesota squad member Ilhan Omar’s race.  She’s being primaried by fellow Democrat Don Samuels who she beat by only 2 points in 2020.  Her district, the home of many members of Minneapolis’ Jewish community and Somali immigrants is heavily Democratic, so the primary winner is a lock for the seat.  Samuels is hoping to win over voters upset about her continuous criticism of all things Israel as well as her outlier vote against sanctioning Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

#BringThemHomeNow

Photo Complicity? ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Fight Night:  The third Republican presidential debate has come and gone and even though it was aired on free TV relatively few bothered watching mostly because what’s the point since absent a Mar a Lago shattering meteor Trump will be the Republican’s 2024 candidate.  Those who did watch saw Nikki Haley, who according to those who rate these things, come out on top, Ron DeSantis continue to tread water, Chris Christie imply that women in New Jersey have abortions through the ninth month of pregnancy, the flailing proud pro-lifer Tim Scott prove he really has a girlfriend and Vivek Ramaswamy, who almost everyone semi-normal finds repulsive, get called scum by Haley, something to do with him criticizing her for her adult daughter being a Tik Tokker.  Trump who did not participate and who also confirmed that he’s not planning to participate in the next planned debate held a counter-programming event in Florida where Roseanne Barr, yup that Roseanne, was his warm-up act.  That’s Trump who continues to insist that Hungary borders Russia, surprising news to Hungarians as well as to their neighboring Slovakians, Romanians, Croatians, Austrians, Serbians, Ukrainians, and Slovenians.  As to the next debate, Vivek who attacked NBC’s Kristen Welker and Lester Holt, calling them perpetrators of misinformation and RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel for Tuesday’s elections losses, questioned why someone more appropriate like Tucker Carlson wasn’t moderating. Carlson won’t be moderating the next pointless debate but maybe Vivek be a wee bit happier since one of the moderators of the News Nation hosted event will be Megyn Kelly who has moved further to the dark side since Trump said she had blood coming out of her eyes.    

2024 Beckons:  Tuesday’s Democratic wins provided a moment of respite but, a few more polls indicate that Biden has a lot of work to do if he hopes to stay in the White House, very concerning to those of us who think that Trump’s plans to impose martial law and prosecute everyone who ever criticized him, especially his former cabinet members and staff including Generals Milley, Mattis, and Kelly.  Presidential politics aside, yesterday Democrats’ hope of holding the Senate took a hit, although not an unexpected one, after West Virginia’s Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced that he will not be seeking reelection.  His decision isn’t all that surprising since he trailed the popular Republican Governor Jim Justice who is widely expected to be the Republican’s Senate candidate by 13 points in an Emerson poll taken last week and no one least of all Manchin questions the validity of that poll.  Manchin who decried the partisan nature of politics during his “retirement” announcement may or may not be considering a no-labels run for president. Should he decide to run, he won’t win but he could help Trump which would be an odd move for a guy who loves coal but hates partisanship. My gut says Manchin won’t run but Trump broke my crystal ball and cracked my Ouija board.  Manchin’s departure puts added pressure on the Democrat’s other vulnerable Senators including Montana’s Jon Tester, Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, and Nevada’s Jackie Rosen, not to mention the mess in Arizona where the specter of a Kari Lake victory is truly frightening.  The Democrats also need to hold the seat being vacated by Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow.  Assuming she makes it through the primary and doesn’t fall victim to fallout of the Gaza-Israel war, a real possibility especially in Rashida Tlaib’s home state, Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin will likely be the Democratic candidate. Assuming Biden’s poll numbers don’t drag her down she’ll be a competitive candidate.  It’s too soon to know who she’ll be running against. The relatively large Republican field which already included former Congressman Mike Rogers now also includes former Congressman Peter Meijer who lost his House seat after he voted for Trump’s impeachment but now says he’d support him in 2024. No one should ever think that politics or politicians are either honorable or logical. By the way, Texas’ Ted Cruz and Florida’s Rick Scott are also up for reelection.  Neither is particularly popular, so Democratic pick-ups are possible, BUT how many times have Dems been burned by those two states?

Fog of War:  The war between Hamas and Israel continues though there may or may not be an agreement for some “pauses” in bombing to facilitate the movement of the wounded and key supplies.  The anti-Semitic attacks across the US also continue, some of them very close to home.  Last night’s Upper East Side news reported on a band of preppy looking youth painting swastikas on buildings in the East 80s neighborhood. One of the most disturbing stories published yesterday concerned the presence of photojournalists during Hamas’ October 7 attacks.  Honest Reporting, a media watchdog organization that focuses on anti-Israel bias noted that a few freelance photojournalists were too conveniently at the October 7 attack site on or about the same time that the Hamas murder, torture, and kidnapping spree was taking place, raising suspicions that they had advance notice and may even have been embedded with the terrorists. It doesn’t help that a picture of one of the photographers in question being kissed on the cheek by a Hamas leader has also resurfaced. The AP, CNN, NY Times, and Reuters, publishers of the pictures taken that day, all deny prior knowledge of the attacks, great but their prior knowledge isn’t being questioned.  The question is whether the photos they published were the “fruit” of someone else’s complicity. Despite their “don’t look at us” denials CNN and the AP have now cut off their relationship with Hassan Eslaiah, one of the freelancers.  He’s the one who previously posed with and was kissed by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.

And:  Ivanka Trump was picture perfect, really perfect, during her appearance in NY court on Wednesday.  Despite her flawed memory, she had a difficult time hiding how she took her job seriously and that she was proud of her ability to obtain the best possible financing for the Trump Org projects she worked on, sometimes even reaching out to hubby Jared for negotiating pointers. Of course, she had nothing to do with the Trump company’s financial reports or valuations because why would she and why is anyone even allowed to ask?  And, while the November 17 government funding deadline continues to loom, Speaker for the moment Johnson has made no progress.  Not surprising, but of concern.   

#BringThemHomeNow    

Blue Tuesday ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Yes Virginia, There is a Santa Claus:  It turns out that things aren’t all doom and gloom for Democrats and that the post-Dobbs, pro-choice spell remains intact.  Yesterday, Virginia voters turned Santa’s coat blue while putting the kibosh on the idea that Governor Glenn Youngkin was the Republican’s next best thing.  They did that by flipping control of the state’s house back to Democrats while also leaving control of the state senate in blue hands.  So much for Youngkin’s plans to launch a presidential bid after turning Virginia red. It turns out that voters still care about reproductive rights and didn’t buy Youngkin’s plan to ban all abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a “solution” that Republicans thought would solve their Dobb’s problem.  In Ohio where Trump beat Biden by eight points in 2020, voters resoundingly approved a ballot measure enshrining the right to abortion in the state constitution while also voting to legalize recreational use of marijuana. In Kentucky, Democratic Governor Andy Beshear who focused his campaign on reproductive rights and improvements to the local economy comfortably won a second term, defeating his Trump endorsed Republican rival by five points, nothing to sneeze at in a state where Trump beat Biden by fifteen points.  In Pennsylvania, voters cemented their state’s Supreme Court pro-choice majority by voting in another pro-choice Democratic judge and in New Jersey, contrary to expectations, Democrats expanded their legislative majorities.  Mississippi stayed red, sending Tate Reeves back to the Governor’s mansion, but that wasn’t all that surprising because while being Elvis’s second cousin helped a little, at the end of the day Mississippi is Mississippi.  Worth noting, Elvis’s losing cousin, Brandon Presley is anti-abortion.

 

Back in the House:  While the country was out voting, the House was too, not on a much-needed government funding resolution, but instead to censure Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib for her pro-Hamas rhetoric.  It turns out that her support of those “nice” Hamas terrorists, her continued insistence on the debunked story that it was Israel that totaled the Gaza Hospital parking lot rather than an errant Jihad missile and her assertion that the phrase “from the river to the sea” is just an aspirational cry rather than a call for the elimination of Israel didn’t go over all that well with the majority of the House, a majority that grew to include 22 of her Democratic colleagues. Worth noting, many of those who voted against censuring Tlaib did so over their support for free speech rather than their support for Tlaib’s statements.  The vote against Tlaib had been scheduled to take place today but was moved up to last night after its sponsor Republican Rick McCormick received some death threats from some of Tlaib’s fans, hardly a good look for her or much help for the Palestinians who are being used as shields by those “nice” Hamas guys including their leaders, some of whom are living in relative luxury in Qatar while Gaza gets pummeled. The Tlaib vote provided some temporary cover for newbie Speaker Mike Johnson who, like former Speaker McCarthy before him, is in the process of finding out that passing a budget through the Republican controlled House is even harder than getting out of a “divorce proof” covenant marriage. With only ten days remaining before the country runs out of money, Axios reports that Speaker for now Johnson is considering three options, none of them particularly attractive to his raucous caucus.  Those options include a multistep laddered approach that would involve funding parts of the government while allowing other parts to shut down whatever that means; another stopgap continuing resolution that would run through January with certain as yet unspecified “stipulations;” and just getting “jammed” by the Senate, which will probably eventually happen anyway since nothing passed by the House will fly in the Schumer controlled Senate or be signed by President Biden.  By the way Johnson who knows little about anything, is staffing up with experts and one of his recent hires in former Trump communications guy/Fox News executive Raj Shah, what could go wrong with that?

 

The Trials of Trump: Ivanka Trump is due to testify in the New York civil case against her Dad and brothers today.  Oddly enough a NY appeals court judge didn’t buy her assertion that she should be exempted from appearing because it’s a school week and it was her turn to car-pool. The steely Ivanka will probably engage in fewer theatrics than her father who, in addition to acting out and calling NY Judge Engoron and AG Tish James Trump hating political operatives, claimed that he was too busy to oversee or help with company asset valuations in 2021 because he was busy presidenting as in dealing with China and Russia and keeping the country safe. He may have been canoodling with BFFs Putin and Xi, getting tips on how to institute martial law and prosecute critics, but he was no longer president in 2021, something he acknowledged when asked by one of the prosecutors.  Trump’s charms are not working with Judge Engoron but do appear to be helping him with Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon who keeps chastising Jack Smith’s team for doing their job. Her most recent slap down came after Smith’s prosecutors pointed out that Trump’s lawyers were trying to get Washington DC’s Judge Chutkan to postpone her March insurrection trial because of conflicts with the Florida purloined documents trial while at the same time telling Cannon that she should postpone her trial to avoid conflicting with the Washington trial.  According to former Mueller prosecutor/pundit Andrew Weissmann, keeping judges up to date on the status of other cases is the norm but not to Cannon who is either very “stupid” or showing her bias or both.   

 

And:  The Republican presidential candidates are debating again tonight.  Ron, Nikki, Vivek, Chris and Tim but no Don.

 

#BringTheHostagesHomeNow

Stay Tuned for Tuesday ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Oy Vey:  Be afraid, very afraid.  According to a NY Times/Siena poll, the twice impeached, multiply indicted Trump now leads Biden in five of the battleground states including Michigan, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia with Biden still leading slightly in Wisconsin.  Despite Biden’s war zone trips, his rather hectic schedule, and his administration’s substantial legislative accomplishments poll results currently indicate that voters’ chief concern is Biden’s age which is weird, not because Biden isn’t old because he is, but because Trump who is only a few years behind him, keeps misidentifying foreign leaders, refers to Obama rather than Biden as his opponent and last week couldn’t remember what city he was in during a campaign rally.  In addition, despite all the handwringing about VP Kamala Harris she outperforms Biden as does a generic candidate.  As to Trump who yesterday slammed Iowa Governor Kim Reynold’s political future and her “extreme disloyalty” because she’s about to endorse “Ron DeSanctimonious,” his acolytes including Stephen Miller and Johnny McEntee are already working up a list of right-wing extremist lawyers, the types who wouldn’t feel constrained by the courts or the Constitution, for his next administration.  The list includes those to the right of the Federalist Society because Trump remains furious that Federalist Society lawyers like Don McGahan and Bill Barr who facilitated most of his autocratic tendencies wouldn’t support his coup attempt. Not that Trump’s plans should surprise any of us, he’s been very upfront about how retribution, along with pulling out of NATO, cozying up to Putin, and abandoning allies will be the themes of his next administration.

Dems in Disarray? Given the Republican’s House antics, most of this year it’s been the Republican party that’s been in disarray and to a certain extent it still is as newbie Speaker Johnson has little to no wiggle room given his small majority but now it’s not just the Republicans.  The House Democratic caucus is cracking over the Israel/Hamas war.  To that end, Axios reports that at least four House Democrats, all left wing “squad members, are facing serious primary threats next year.  That list includes Missouri’s Cori Bush, New York’s fire alarm puller Jamaal Bowman, Pennsylvania’s Summer Lee, and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar who came close to losing her primary in 2022.  Worth mentioning, Bush’s St Louis district is home to the largest Jewish community in Missouri.  Of the four, Bowman whose district also includes a substantial Jeiwsh population, is thought to be the one most at risk. Given the make-up of her Detroit area district, Rashida Tlaib who outraged many of her colleagues this weekend by accusing Biden of supporting genocide and by trying to justify the “from the river to the sea” chant as just a mere aspirational cry rather than a call for the obliteration of Israel, is probably not at risk though a number of her colleagues in Michigan where Democrats really need to hold on to the open Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Debbie Stabenow are far from happy with her right now.

Elections: It’s not just Stabenow’s Michigan seat, Biden’s weak poll showing could be a harbinger of what will happen in 2024 in a number of tight Senate races across the country, a sticky problem because Democrat’s are already likely to lose the Senate since they’ll probably lose West Virginia where Joe Manchin should he run for reelection will face off against popular Republican Governor Jim Justice in the Trump plus plus plus state.  The other concerning seats are in Ohio, Montana, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Arizona.  Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and Montana’s Jon Tester are relatively popular despite their states “red” status and should be able to hold their own but they would likely get dragged down by a Biden loss as could Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey who is likely to face Connecticut resident/hedge fund rich guy David McCormick, Dina Powell’s husband, who lost to Dr. Oz but is running again. Nevada’s Rosen is considered the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat, and a lot of Republican money is being spent to unseat her and no one really knows what will happen in Arizona where election denier/Trump lover Kari Lake is likely to be the Republican candidate, especially if Kyrsten Sinema muddies the water for the likely Democratic candidate Ruben Gallego by launching an independent run. We might know more about the impact of current events and Biden’s anemic polling after the results of tomorrow’s elections come in. Andy Beshear, the Democratic governor of Kentucky is up for reelection, he’s relatively popular but then again Kentucky is very red, and its two Senators are Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul.  In Mississippi, another reliably red state, the relatively unpopular Republican Governor Tate Reeves who has been involved in a number of scandals including the one where state welfare funds were misdirected to former football player Brett Favre for a volleyball stadium for his daughter is being challenged by Democrat Brandon Presley, a member of the extended Elvis family.  Presley whose positions on social issues including abortion rights are very red has generated a lot of buzz but at the end of the day it’s Mississippi so he’s unlikely to pull off a victory but still the race is worth watching if only to see how close he comes.  In Virginia, Republicans and Democrats are battling over control of both houses.  Republicans currently hold a four-seat majority in one house, Democrats hold a similar majority in the other. Glenn Youngkin, the commonwealth’s Governor, has been salivating over the possibility of turning Virginia red and taking away reproductive rights. If he pulls it off, he might even jump into the presidential race, positioning himself as the Republican who could take down Trump, well maybe.  In Pennsylvania, it’s about judges and the state’s supreme court and in the really bigly one, Ohio. which everyone will be watching very closely, voters will decide whether to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution.  Expectation is that Ohioans, red and blue,  care about their reproductive freedom.  If the state voters cast their ballots as expected, it will mean that women’s reproductive rights are still driving election outcomes, if they don’t it will mean that the spell cast by the overturning of Roe v Wade has broken.  

And:  Expect to hear lots of vitriol from Trump this week from his mouth and from his truth social twitching fingers.  He’ll be testifying today in his New York fraud case and while NY Judge Arthur Engoron has expanded his gag order to include Trump’s lawyers in an effort to get them to stop sliming his clerk, a federal appeals court temporarily lifted the limited gag order imposed by Judge Tanya Chutkan in Jack Smith’s 2020 election interference case.     

 

Calling Foul ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

GAAPing Holes:  The Trump position is that while sons Eric and Don Jr are astute and competent real estate professionals capable of taking over the management of the family business during Trump’s presidency, they know nothing about finance because math and numbers aren’t their strong points.  According to team Trump, it was the accountants with assistance from the lawyers who ginned up all the financial reports that were presented to lenders so neither Eric nor Don Jr can be held responsible for anything included in them, especially the hugely inflated valuations.  Tripling the size of their dad’s Trump Tower apartment or ignoring deed restrictions on places like Mar a Lago to inflate valuations, blame that on the guys with the calculators and eye shades, and anyway everyone does it so who cares? To the extent that they received and responded to correspondence about the valuations, neither Don Jr nor Eric, especially Eric, should be expected to remember any of it because they saw lots of emails and were too busy mixing cement and mowing grass to pay attention. Those standard “we relied on what you told us” letters that the accountants make everyone sign, forget about those too because who in their right mind would rely on anything a Trump, especially a Trump scion would sign?  Eric is expected to finish up his testimony today and Ivanka, who is still trying to get out of testifying because she’s Ivanka, is still on next week’s court schedule as is her father.  One sign that things aren’t going well for family Trump is that they targeted Judge Engoran’s clerk again yesterday, complaining that she was passing too many notes to the Judge.  Judge Engoran “exploded” at Trump’s legal team, calling them out for targeting her and for their misogyny. Enraging your judge at any time but especially when there’s no jury to influence is an unusual strategy unless of course you are really playing to the Trump fan base and hoping to use the Judge’s emotional responses against him in an appeal and we know there will be an appeal.  In other legal news, Special Counsel Jack Smith has just about had it with Judge Eileen “loose” Cannon and her complicity in helping Trump with his “overriding interest in delaying both trials at any cost,” by that they mean falling for the Trump team’s efforts to get both the Washington DC and Florida cases delayed so as neither interferes with the other and both don’t take place until after the 2024 election.  Unfortunately, Cannon is incredibly stupid and naïve or is a willing participant in Trump’s delay tactics or all three so it’s not clear that Smith’s admonishment will cause her to start acting as anything but a Trump toady.  Stall, appeal, and throw dirt, the Trump playbook and why not, it’s gotten him to where he is today.   

Playing Games: On the subject of twisted playbooks, Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville, the former football coach who resides in northern Florida rather than Alabama, is sticking to his guns.  He’s still obstructing military confirmations though he did “allow” the confirmation of Lt. General Christopher Mahoney into the second in command role for the Marine Corp but only because the General Eric Smith, commander of the Marines, had a heart attack last Sunday and is currently hospitalized.  It’s quite possible that General Smith’s cardiac event had a lot to do with the strains associated with doing two especially taxing jobs, serving as head of the Marine Corp while continuing to do his previous job because of Tuberville’s refusal to allow the confirmation of the officer who is due to replace him in his previous position. It’s reported that most, though not all, of the Republicans in the Senate are just as angry at Tuberville as their Democratic colleagues, which is nice but isn’t particularly helpful since most of their kvetching has been taking place behind close doors and not enough of them are willing to vote to amend the confirmation rules to override Tuberville’s obstruction.  Just a reminder that Tuberville is holding up the confirmation to protest the Pentagon’s decision to reimburse military personnel for travel related to abortion care, not for the abortions, just for the travel.  To that end, one of Tuberville’s staffers floated a memo yesterday calling for anti-abortion groups to primary any Republican senator who votes for an end run around his confirmation obstructions. Naturally, Tuberville denies that he authorized the memo, but his denial is only because his Republican “teammates” as he called them are now even more furious with him.

Hate on Campus: Yesterday, the House held a messaging vote on a resolution condemning anti-Semitism and the support of terrorist groups such as Hamas on college campuses.  It passed 396 to 23 with one Republican, Thomas Massie, and 22 Democrats voting against it.  The Democratic naysayers were  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Summer Lee, D-Pa., Jim McGovern, D-Mass., Delia Ramirez, D-Ill., Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., Maxine Waters, D-Calif., Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., Mark Takano, D-Calif., Jared Huffman, D-Calif., Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., Jonathan Jackson, D-Ill., Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., André Carson, D-Ind., Cori Bush, D-Mo., Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., and Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore. Republican Massie says his no vote was due to concerns over free speech.  Most of the Democrats who voted against the resolution, are from the same crowd that always votes against anything related to Israel.  Worth noting that NYer Richie Torres’ whose vote stood out to me as odd given his usual stance on all things Israel tweeted (Xed) last night that his vote was a bigly error, he “mistakenly voted against a resolution condemning campus antisemitism. As a visible and vocal advocate against antisemitism on college campuses, especially in the wake of October 7th, I have submitted a correction for the record. I have no use for pro-Hamas protestors, and I despise them with every fiber of my being.” A big oops but given his record a believable excuse.  Otherwise, as the Wall Street Journal, a paper I hate to cite, said earlier this week, the Democratic Party has an anti-Semitism problem, one that could cost them at the polls with both Jews and probably of more concern to them, in swing states like Michigan, with Muslims upset about Gaza. That’s not to say that the Republican Party doesn’t have an anti-Semitism problem too but as Lawfare’s Ben Wittes’ noted on Wednesday’s Bulwark Pod Cast, after going through the Ten Simple Questions” he listed on “How to Know if you are a Left Anti-Semite” in his must-read dogshirtdaily.com, the right’s anti-Semitism while just as virulent, comes from a different place. Bottom line, regardless of the reason, they both suck. Though the House vote was all about messaging, a number of prominent law firms are taking things one step further warning law school deans to crack down on anti-Semitism or see their students face consequences as their law firm “workplace communities have zero tolerance policies for any form of discrimination or harassment, much less the kind that has been taking place on some law school campuses.” It’s not just the hate, which in and of itself is bad enough, it’s the total lack of judgement.  As anyone who has ever worked for a large company with a diverse workforce and client base knows or at least should know, spewing hate isn’t just ugly is also incredibly stupid, assuming you care about your career trajectory.

And:  No one is getting kicked out of the House or sanctioned for their contemptible behavior or speech anytime soon.  So at least for now George Santos is the only one in real jeopardy, Margie Q and Rashida Tlaib can continue to say what they do. That reluctance to punish even odious speech and in Santos’ case actual crimes, could explain the bickering and mudslinging going on mostly on the Republican side right now where everyone is publicly and privately bashing Panhandle Putz Matt Gaetz, where Gaetz appears to have “outed” his Republican colleague Missouri Congressman Jason Smith, and where Margie Q is continuing to act out while others dump on her. As to that outing, true or not, no one should care but then again, newbie House Speaker Mike Johnson is on record supporting conversion therapy and calling homosexuality deviant and his wife’s recently taken down website equated LGBTQ+ relations with bestiality and incest so there’s that.                   

 

The Herpes of Hate ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Viral Hate: I started writing this blog a few months after Trump became president in reaction to what I thought or at least hoped was just a brief blip of profound stupidity that wouldn’t last long. Just an outlier on that much-promised bending arc of moral history.  Was I ever wrong.  Trump is still here and could actually win the next election and though he remains a big problem, he’s only part of what keeps me up at night.  Sure, Trump’s responsible for the unleashing of a lot of hate, who can forget his both sides reaction to the neo-Nazi tiki torch carrying Charlottesville marchers, his targeting of Hispanic judges and Black prosecutors, his reaction to the killing of George Floyd, or the effect on Chinese Americans of his calling COVID the China virus.  He made ethnic hate more acceptable, but these days he’s just part of the problem, because anti-Semitism, one of those hates that he refused to clamp down on has fully erupted.  Sadly, not surprising because as Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, the US Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism pointed out when she compared the hatred of Jews to the herpes virus,  “it never goes away,” it “thrives and comes out under several conditions: stress and hospitable conditions.” Apparently, we are living through those conditions, again.  Jews are once again an acceptable target, across the globe and here in the US, in colleges, cities and even in resort towns like Montauk where swastikas have been spray painted on local stores.  FBI Director Christopher Wray reports that anti-Semitic attacks are at record levels, that in the US 60% of religious based hate crimes are targeted against Jews who only make up 2.4% of the US population.  That’s a lot of targeting against a relatively small population and a lot of dangerous hate.  I really hate having to write about this, it’s too personal so it’s hard for me to separate my feelings from the subject, but how can I possibly stay silent?     

Back to Politics:  Newbie Speaker Mike Johnson, whose experience for his job wouldn’t fill a thimble, is now running the House.  He says he’s all in on sending funding to Israel but wants to forget about Ukraine and also wants to offset the Israel aid by cutting IRS staffing and funding. Not only is ignoring Putin’s attack on Ukraine unconscionable and shortsighted, assuming keeping Putin under control is of interest,  but tying aid to cuts in IRS spending is just stupid.  That’s because according to the Congressional Budget Office cutting the IRS budget increases the deficit while keeping it fully staffed increases revenues which in turn cuts the deficit.  Johnson has got to know that, but he’s playing politics.  Most, though not all of the Senate is not expected to go with Speaker Johnson’s plan.  Neither will Leader Chuck Schumer nor Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who do not want to leave Ukraine out to dry.  And Biden says he won’t sign an aid bill that doesn’t cover both countries so fireworks will likely ensue before an aid package passes.  In all likelihood the final package will include both Israel and Ukraine but getting it passed will require a coalition of House Republicans and Democrats because neither party will be able to do so on their own as the Democrats have a bunch of anti-Israel representatives, and the Republicans are unpredictable or maybe just predictably weird.   

Santos Who? Got to run this morning but not before mentioning my favorite story of the week.  Another lawyer has been drawn down by the George of many Santos mess. Derek Ross, a lawyer, who represented Tom Datwyler whose name appeared and then was removed from one of Santos’ financial filings had written a letter to the FEC saying that Datwyler had never served as Santos’ treasurer.  Well, it turns out that Datwyler, a well-known so-called professional Republican political accountant, actually did work as Santos’ shadow treasurer but tried to hide his role and set up his own lawyer to make a false statement to regulators. Not a good thing.  Don Jr is set to testify today in his dad’s NY fraud trial. More lying maybe or just pleading the fifth?