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