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