Farts and Fog ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️🌻

Trying Trump:  For a while yesterday, it appeared that the process of sitting a jury for Trump’s election NY interference/hush money trial had hit a snag, actually two snags, after one of the selected jurors bailed over concerns that too much information about her had been published and another was released for failing to mention that a family member had been involved in a corruption inquiry but the selection process quickly got back on track and by the end of the day twelve jurors plus one alternate had been seated.  Assuming no more of the seated jurors freaked out overnight and the five remaining alternates are selected today, the trial is a go for Monday.  Naturally, Trump who continues to act out remains upset about the process, particularly disturbed that his lawyers haven’t been allowed to eliminate every potential juror interviewed.  Prosecutors have asked presiding Judge Merchan to hold Trump in contempt for repeatedly sliming the expected witnesses in violation of his gag order.  Trump’s lawyers’ defense is that their client hasn’t technicality violated the gag order, that his nasty social media postings have just exposed the order’s “ambiguities.”  The Judge, who agreed that prosecutors could keep the names of their first three witnesses from Trump’s team at least through the weekend because of Trump’s alleged violations, is expected to rule on the contempt request early next week.  Were Trump anyone else, he’d be cooling his heels in NY’s Rikers Island jail by now but he’s not because despite the adage that “no one is above the law,” he is.  Mean time down in the Everglades, Judge loose Cannon rejected a request from Trump’s co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira that charges against them be dropped, or at least dropped now.  She ruled that their argument that they didn’t know the boxes they played hide the Afikomen with at Mar a Lago contained secret, purloined documents should instead be brought up as part of their defense, assuming of course, the purloined documents trial ever takes place.

The Swamp:  Speaker Mike Johnson is now working as an intern for Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries.  At least that’s MAGA Margie’s assertion and to be fair to Marge and her right wing pro-Russian colleagues, she’s not entirely wrong.  Yesterday the Republican dominated House Rules Committee passed a rule to allow four key foreign aid bills out of committee onto the House floor over the objection of Republican committee members Thomas Massie, Ralph Norman, and Chip Roy only because all the Democrats on the committee voted for it.  That’s highly unusual because members of one party do not typically support the other party’s rules.  The three foreign aid bills provide $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 for Israel and related humanitarian aid, and $8 billion for Taiwan and the Indo Pacific.  The fourth bill includes sanctions on Iran, calls for the seizure of frozen Russian assets, and includes a measure intended to force the sale of TikTok to a US entity. Assuming the bills make it through a floor test vote today, a vote on their final passage is expected on Saturday after which if all goes according to plan, they’ll be passed over to the Senate. The ultra MAGA right is so upset with Speaker Johnson that they’ve established a FART squad, more formally known as a Floor Action Response Team but really who doesn’t think that FART is an appropriate acronym, to ensure that he does nothing to change the operational rules, including the one vote motion to vacate provision, that they convinced Kevin McCarthy to agree to in exchange for his short-lived speakership. Interestingly, one of the reasons that Hakeem and his Democrats are willing to help Speaker Johnson out of the jam he’s in is they view him as a man of his word.  They don’t like him or his extreme right-wing positions but at least so far trust that, unlike Kevin McCarthy, he’ll honor his promises to them. That said, the only thing standing between Johnson and the exit door right now is that there doesn’t appear to be anyone else in the Republican caucus who wants and could win the Speakership job because given the Republican’s current one or two seat majority, managing those 🤡 🤡 is virtually impossible.  By the way, the Democrats are down a seat right now because New Jersey Congressman Donald Payne recently suffered a heart attack and has been in a coma for eleven days.

Politics:  A huge Kennedy family contingent led by Kerry Kennedy and including six of RFK Jr’s siblings, endorsed President Biden yesterday. RFK Jr’s running mate, who is doubling as his bank account, publicly expressed her “concern” over the Moderna COVID vaccine because that’s so RFK like.  One time Trump Attorney General Bill Barr, who jumped off Trump’s train after the last election and is on record saying that Trump committed most of the criminal actions, he committed now says that he’ll support the Republican presidential ticket, not that anyone should be surprised about that.  And just one day after Columbia University’s president testified on campus anti-Semitism before the House, she called upon the NYPD to help her disperse the 100 plus anti-Israel demonstrators who’d set up an encampment on the Columbia campus in violation of university rules.  One of the dispersed students, who was simultaneously suspended from Columbia’s associated school Barnard, is Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Congressman Ilan Omar.  No doubt we will be hearing a lot from Omar and the Squad about that.  Republican members of the Arizona House again blocked efforts to repeal Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban. That’s really bad for Arizona’s women and also probably bad for Trump and Senate hopeful/election denier Kari Lake who keeps trying to deny that she ever supported the 1864 ban even though there’s plenty of videos of her saying that she did.  The political ads write themselves.

Fog:  Last night, as expected and after notifying the US of their plans, Israel retaliated for last weekend’s 300 plus drone and missile attack with a “limited” military strike on a military base near Isfahan, Iran, maybe just Israel’s way of warning Iran that they can reach targets within Iran if and when they want to.  Iran says that they have no plans to respond which means things might go back to “normal” for now, normal meaning continued attacks on Israel from Iran’s Hezbollah surrogates in the North and Hamas in the South. 

#BringThemAllHomeNow