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