Strangers on a Train 🌻 🌻 🌻

Dinner for Schmucks: Trump’s dinner companion, Nick Fuentes is a 24 year old white supremacist who has achieved star status among the far right for using racial slurs when referring to Black people, calling homosexuality “disgusting,” asserting that the Republican Party is run by “Jews, atheists, and homosexuals,” saying it would be better if women couldn’t vote, comparing himself to Hitler while hoping for a total “Aryan victory,” claiming the First Amendment wasn’t written for Muslims and saying that Jim Crow is better for “them (presumably Black people),” us and in general.  Upon returning from their Thanksgiving break some prominent Republicans finally spoke out about his dinner with Trump and that other charmer Ye.  Some of them, like Senators Mitt Romney and Bill Cassidy, two who voted to impeach Trump, managed to directly criticize Trump, but most focused only on how inappropriate it was for Fuentes to be at Mar a Lago with a few like Senators John Thune and Tillis exonerating Trump while blaming Fuentes’ attendance on whomever it was who let him onto the premises, suggesting that person should be fired. For his part, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that there was no room in the Republican Party for antisemitism or white supremacy, adding anyone meeting people advocating that point of view are highly unlikely to ever be elected President of the United States, a particularly absurd remark given the host in question already was elected president with McConnell’s help.  Then there’s GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, fearful of offending Trump whose support he desperately needs to become Speaker, he lied, hoping  against hope that no one would notice. He said ”he didn’t think anybody should be spending any time with Nick Fuentes.” Fine, but then he added that Trump had come out “four times and condemned” Fuentes.  The problem with that is that Trump had not and still hasn’t condemned Fuentes though he did finally say that Fuentes views would not have been accepted if they’d been brought up at dinner, as if anyone believes that they weren’t.  All the pearl clutching about Fuentes aside, what matters is what the dinner episodes exposes, that the Republican party needs the support of far right haters in order to win national elections, and if that means kowtowing to the Fuentes of the country and giving in to the demands of politicians like Margie Q and Paul Gosar, two who have been featured speakers at Fuentes’ annual American First Political Action Conferences, meetings of the fringiest of the fringe haters, they’ll all do it because it’s not like they care about anything other than tax cuts and judges and anyway not so deep in their hearts, many of them share some if not all of Fuentes’ views.  Proof of that need to keep the right wing on their side is the outcome of yesterday’s Senate vote on codifying same-sex and interracial marriage.  The watered down bill that has many outs for religious institutions and others of “conscience” passed the Senate with 12 Republicans including Senators Roy Blunt, Richard Burr, Thom Tillis, Shelly Moore Capito, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Cynthia Lummis, Lisa Murkowski, Dan Sullivan, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney and Todd Young joining all of the Democrats except Raphael Warnock who was given a pass so he could continue to campaign.  Great that the bill passed, sad that most Republicans didn’t support it over fears of alienating those they need for primary and in some cases, general election wins.  Notably Mitch McConnell was a “no” vote even though his wife is Asian and Ben Sasse and Pat Toomey who are both leaving the Senate didn’t vote.      

Social Networking:  When speaking of hate think also of Elon Musk. It’s not just that he’s been doing weird and disruptive things to Twitter, the Chief Twit has also been hate-tweeting.  Over the past few days, he’s tweeted 88, the white supremacist code for Heil Hitler, used the Jewish Puppet master trope while posting a “wink” to anti-Semites by sharing the Pepe the Frog cartoon they commonly use, both in reference to Alexander Vindman whose family fled the former Soviet Union to escape anti-Semitism.  Musk also posted a picture of his bedside table adorned with two guns, attacked CNN, attributing a demonstrably false headline to the media giant and is pre-emptively picking a fight with Apple, who he fears is seriously considering banning Twitter from its App store, something that Apple has done to other purveyors of hate.  An Apple Twitter ban would be hugely damaging and could even kill Twitter even faster than Elon’s own efforts but would also incur the ire of a lot of Republican politicians, some of whom have already started squawking, which at this point could be the thing that’s holding Apple back.    

Midterm Madness:  The pollsters and pundits are still calling the Georgia Senate race between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker a toss-up.  That said, Democratic optimists are positively giddy about the record setting numbers of people who’ve already taken advantage of early voting, something that Democrats do far more than Republicans. That’s probably a good omen but remember what happened in Texas where similar reports were supposed to point to a good outcome for Beto O’Rourke but didn’t. Officials in Cochise County, Arizona have still not certified their election results and are now being sued.  Ironically, Cochise voters lean heavily Republican so excluding the county’s votes won’t change the outcome of statewide races but could affect some local races, even flipping one red House seat to blue. Arizona’s Attorney General race is headed to a recount, which is the reason that a court threw out a lawsuit by the RNC and Republican AG wannabee Abe Hamadeh, they didn’t rule on merits of the case, they just ruled that absent the results of the recount, the suit was premature.  And it’s not just Arizona, officials in Lucerne County, Pennsylvania also held up the certification of their votes on Monday but as the result of some “research” by one of those who initially voted against certification are expected to reconvene and certify today.  And there’s a special election on the horizon as Virginia Congressman Donald McEachin passed away from cancer this week.  McEachin was a Democrat and it’s likely that his seat will remain in Democratic hands, but it’s also likely that Republican Governor Youngkin won’t rush to schedule the special election needed to fill his seat because McEachin’s death gives Kevin McCarthy a little more wiggle room at a time when he needs as much as he can get.

Legal Morass:  The DOJ got a big win yesterday after a Federal jury in Washington found Oath Keeper founder and Yale Law School graduate Stewart Rhodes and Kelly Meggs, another member of the far-right organization, guilty of the rarely applied charge of seditious conspiracy in connection with the January 6 insurrection.  Three other Oath Keepers were found not guilty of the more serious seditious conspiracy charge but were found guilty of obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting. Also yesterday, Kellyanne Conway and former Secret Service Agent/one time Trump deputy chief of staff, Tony Ornato both testified in front of the House January 6^th Committee.  Ornato’s appearance was a repeat performance triggered by the testimony of White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson who testified about how Trump tried to force his way to join the Capitol Hill insurrectionists. Stephen Miller made an appearance in front of one of the DOJ’s grand juries and a South Carolina Supreme court order Trump’s last chief of staff Mark Meadows to show up and testify in front of Fani Willis’ Fulton County, Georgia grand jury, the one looking into Trump’s demand for 11,000 more votes.       

And:  Keep an eye on the trains.  If Congress doesn’t intervene quickly, a strike is likely.           

Snakes on a Plane 🌻 🌻 🌻

Dinner at Eight: The twice impeached head of the Republican party hosted a disgraced bigoted rap star and an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier for dinner at his winter home and all the leaders of the Republican Party played ostrich because the “only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing” and nothing says hate is okay louder than silence.  Once the Mar a Lago dinner went public, Trump did what he usually does, first he denied that the dinner took place, then he admitted it had while claiming that he didn’t know that his dinner companion, who was really just a guest of that other anti-Semite Kanye, was an infamous white supremacist, and then he said it was a great dinner because Nick Fuentes, the anti-Semitic guy, Holocaust denier, not to be confused with the other hater known as Ye, was a fan so how bad could he be?  Without acknowledging any of the hate speech that Kanye has been spouting, Trump went on to say that he hosted him and his “companion” because Kanye asked him to and only to “help” him as “he’s been decimated in his business and virtually everything else,” and anyway Kanye has “always been good to me.” For his part Kanye, relayed that he invited Trump to join his 2024 presidential run in the role of vice-president, a suggestion that Trump received about as well as expected and that resulted in Trump saying some nasty things about Kim K. Once upon a time, Republican leadership would have denounced this freak show, not because they were so enlightened but because saying hateful things out loud and hanging with Nazi wannabees and white supremacists in highly visible places wasn’t considered smart but that was then, this is now and John McCain is still dead, so GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy and Senate Leader Mitch McConnell had nothing to say, neither did Florida Governor/presidential wannabee Ron DeSantis or former VP Mike Pence.  A few prominent Republicans did speak out, including of course outliers Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.  Presidential aspirants Chris Christie and Arkansas’ outgoing Governor Asa Hutchinson did too while Mike Pompeo said something about being against hate while studiously avoiding any reference to Trump. David Friedman, Trump’s former ambassador to Israel forcefully condemned the visit tweeting “ Even a social visit from an antisemite like Kanye West and human scum like Nick Fuentes is unacceptable….throw those bums out, disavow them and relegate them to the dustbin of history where they belong.” All good, but he kind of ruined the thought by first referring to Trump as his friend. As to Kanye, last night the Wall Street Journal reported that Adidas had known he was he was a problem for some time, something about him sharing porn and wanting to name his album Hitler and had started to develop a plan to cut ties with him but ultimately didn’t because their relationship was too lucrative and money trumps all, at least until the reputational costs go through the roof.  To state the obvious, the White House weighed in on Trump’s Dinner at Eight too as did several Democrats. One of those Democrats, California Governor Gavin Newsom says that he told Biden that he has no plans to challenge him in 2024.

The Social Network:  On the subject of hate, things at Twitter are going as well as can be expected.  The site is still up and running, but the hate quotient is through the roof, and it seems as if almost every other tweet is from Elon Musk.  Musk, who is in the process of inviting back all the previously banned right-wing nut jobs and hate mongers, except for maybe Alex Jones, picked a fight with retired Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, the somber truthteller whose willingness to speak truth to power by testifying at Trump’s first impeachment trial cost him his military career.  Over the weekend, Musk called VIndman a “puppet & puppeteer,” questioning “who pulls his strings….?”  An odd accusation from Musk whose statements about the Ukraine war echo Putin’s so much that they seem to be written by Putin’s disinformation squad. Again, if you haven’t listened to Rachel Maddow’s ULTRA, you should because Putin appears to be taking a page or two from the Nazi propaganda playbook of the 1940s. By the way, I’ve made it off the waitlist and onto Post.News, one of the leading contenders to replace Twitter.  It’s a work in progress but getting better every day and at least so far free of hate.  Unlike Mastodon, another frequently cited Twitter alternative, it’s very easy to navigate and has that all important edit button.

Election:  The never-ending midterms are still on but at least Alaska’s elections have finally been called.  Democrat Mary Peltola won the state’s House seat, trouncing the still squawking Sarah Palin 54.9% to 45.1%, while Senator Lisa Murkowski beat out Trump endorsed Kelly Tshibaka 52.7% to 46.3%.  Both Peltola and Murkowski are moderates, the beneficiaries of a ranked voting system that seems to be doing what it is supposed to do, rooting out extremists. In another win for moderation, eight of the 11 Republicans elected to the Alaska Senate have formed a bipartisan majority coalition with all nine of the Senate’s Democrats, freezing out three right-wing Republicans. Maybe Alaska is on to something?  Things in Arizona aren’t going as smoothly.  Gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake will probably never concede her loss to Democrat Katie Hobbs even though outgoing Republican Governor Doug Ducey has publicly congratulated and welcome Hobbs into the Governors club.  A few Arizona counties are refusing to certify their election results, ironically those are counties where the Republican candidates won the most votes.  Also, Republican Attorney General candidate Abe Hamadeh, an election denier, and the RNC are suing Democratic candidate Kris Mayes.  Given that Mayes only won by 510 votes, the Attorney General race will go to a mandatory recount once all the state’s votes are certified, assuming they ever are. Of course, without those red county holdouts, Mayes margin of victory would likely increase.  And then there’s Georgia where the state’s Supreme Court let early voting take place this weekend.  The run-off between Herschel Walker and incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock has begun, due to culminate on December 6 election day.  As a result of the Court’s decision to let early voting take place over the Thanksgiving weekend, college students who might otherwise have missed out were able to cast their ballots in their home counties which is of course the reason that Republicans tried so hard to restrict holiday voting.  By the way, Herschel Walker claims his Texas home as his primary residence, probably a violation of Texas tax laws and some Georgia rules about candidate eligibility not that any of that will have any consequences for him.  Real Clear Politics, the same group that projected a large red wave in November show Walker leading Warnock by 1.4%. That may be because their averages include a lot of junk polls, or it might be that they are right. Oy. The general view is that the outcome will be determined by voter turnout, another reason that the Republicans weren’t all that happy about holiday weekend voting.

Tremors:  Something’s up in China where, spurred by resentment over the country’s failed zero-covid policy, broad based nationwide strikes have been taking place.   Protester have even been heard chanting  “Xi Jinping, step down.”  Quite remarkable given that protesting in China can lead to some very severe consequences. Similarly, protests in Iran continue led by fed up women and the men who get why they’re so upset.  And, of course, there is Ukraine where the situation remains treacherous and colder weather and its impact on both sides’ survival and battlefield success is on the immediate horizon.        

 

 

Turkeys!   🦃🌻 🦃🌻 🦃 🌻

Guns, Guns, Hate:  Overnight, six people were shot dead in a Virginia Walmart break room by a store employee who then shot himself because it was a day ending in D A Y and guns.  The Walmart shooting shouldn’t be confused with last weekend’s Colorado Springs Club Q shooting, the one that left 5 dead and many more injured, that a guest on Tucker Carlson’s show said was inevitable because, according to her, as long as LGBTQ people “engage in grooming and encourage gender affirming care,” that’s going to happen. The Colorado shooter who had a history of violent behavior shouldn’t have had any guns but did possibly because law enforcement in El Paso County where Colorado Springs is located aren’t all that into enforcing red flag laws something about the county having declared itself a “Second Amendment preservation county.” Because timing is everything, Georgia Senatorial candidate Herschel Walker’s campaign is now running an ad attacking transgender swimmers apparently because they’ve concluded that’s a message that will resonate with Georgia voters, shootings be damned.  That’s Herschel who blamed his Democratic opponent Senator Raphael Warnock for the cancellation of Archie Bunker and All in the Family, the TV program that ended in 1979, during one of his rallies which could explain why his Republican handlers no longer allow him to appear alone during televised interviews, instead pairing him off with other Senators like Lindsey Graham and/or Ted Cruz.  Not that it will matter, but yesterday the second woman whose abortion Walker encouraged and paid for held a news conference where she provided pictures of the two of them together and tape recordings of their phone conversations to refute his lie that he had no idea who she was.  A recent poll completed on behalf of AARP shows Warnock leading Walker 51% to 47% but if we’ve learned anything by now it’s that polls are often wrong.  That said the RNC seems to be really concerned about the outcome of the race and that the Georgia Appeals court upheld a lower court ruling allowing early voting on the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  They’ve appealed to the state’s Supreme Court because apparently if you can’t win legitimately, the next best option is to seek the Court’s help in suppressing Democratic turnout.  As to litigation, a lot of it is going on in Arizona right now.  Republican loser Kari Lake, who is being slammed by Tom Petty’s estate for using his “I Won’t Back Down” song at her rallies, has not conceded to Democratic Governor elect Katie Hobbs and is threatening to sue over Maricopa’s voting machines.  Not to be out done Republican Attorney General wannabe Abe Hamadeh is suing, claiming election mismanagement is the reason that he lost his race to Democrat candidate Kris Mayes.  That race, where Mayes’ margin of victory is only 510 votes, will be subjected to an automatic recount, but odds are that Mayes’ victory will withstand the recount or at least she expects that it will.

Legal Jeopardy:  Yesterday, not a moment too soon but maybe too late, the Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to shield his tax records from Congress.  Though those records are likely to be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee momentarily, they won’t be made public unless someone decides to go the leak route.  Moreover, with the control of the House about to turnover, it’s not clear that the Committee will have enough time to digest the piles they’re about to receive.  Last night MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell, who once worked for Senate giant Patrick Moynihan, said that the Senate, which will remain in Democratic hands next year, can and should request their own copies.  Let’s hope that he’s right and that they do.  While that ruling was coming down from SCOTUS, a representative from Mazars, Trump’s long-term accounting firm, was testifying in the Manhattan tax fraud case against his company.  The Mazars accountant revealed that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010. That Trump avoided paying taxes isn’t surprising, after all he once said that only idiots pay taxes, the question is how much of that avoidance was legitimate and how much was the result of fraud. In other legal news, Trump may be about to face another significant loss.  Yesterday, a federal appeals panel made up of three Republican appointed judges, signaled that it would throw out Florida Judge Aileen Cannon’s questionable appointment of the special master who she assigned to review the documents taken from Mar a Lago and an October 2023 date has been set for the NY Attorney General’s $250 million civil case against Trump, Ivanka, Junior, Eric, and his company .   

Wedding Blues:  Former Congressman/CIA Director/Secretary of State, the newly svelte Mike Pompeo who is doing all the things one does when one is readying himself for a Republican presidential run has identified the most-evil person in the world.  Not Vlad Putin, not Kim Jong un, but Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers. Time will tell if Pompeo or any of the other Republican presidential wannabes topple Trump, but one thing is for certain, the culture war will go on. Worth noting, Weingarten who is gay is married to a Rabbi making her the kind of person that a lot of right wingers and the people who are energized by their hate-filled rhetoric find offensive.  It’s fair to assume that she also believes in science and science education, kind of like Virus Guru Fauci, that other guy that the lunatic fringe also hates so much.  Yesterday Fauci made what is likely to be his last trip to the official government podium as he will be leaving government at year end.  He made one final push for everyone to get their COVID vaccines and boosters because COVID is not gone and what is looking to be a big flu season is here.   One more thing, you may have heard that Naomi Biden, the President’s granddaughter got married at the White House over the weekend.  Apparently, the press was not invited to the nuptials and a few of them are absolutely irate that that the bride sat for an interview and photo shoot with Vogue a few days before the wedding.  One of them, the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker equated the Bidens failure to tell her about the Vogue shoot to the lies that Trump told during his days in office and no surprise the NY Time’s Trump whisperer Maggie Haberman came to her defense.  Really? Get a grip.  Both-siderism run amok, again.

Happy 🦃  🦃 🦃      

 

Mr. Smith Goes To Washington 🌻🌻🌻 💙

Leaking as a Hobby:  Friday Attorney General Garland announced the appointment of Jack Smith as Special Counsel for the investigations into Trump’s Mar a Lago and some, though not all of the, January 6^th cases.  That’s big news but also important is the NY Times article about the goings on at the Supreme Court. The article, co-written by Jodi Kantor who is one of the investigative journalists who brought producer Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of sexual abuse to light, describes a multi-year effort by Robert Schenck, an evangelical minister and former anti-abortion activist and his non-profit organization to reach out to and influence conservative Supreme Court Justices including Samuel Alito.  Schenck claims that years before the Alito written, Roe overturning Dobbs’ decision was leaked another important reproductive rights decision, also written by Alito, was leaked to a donor, who then shared the information with Schenck, after the donor dined with Justice Alito and his wife.  That decision, Burwell v Hobby Lobby, ruled that “closely held corporations” and by closely held think companies that object to contraception because of their owners’ religious views, could deny birth control coverage to their employees despite the requirements of the then newly passed ACA (Obamacare legislation) which mandated that health insurance plans include birth control coverage.  Minister Schenck says that after the Dobbs opinion was leaked, he wrote to Chief Justice John Roberts telling him about the Hobby Lobby case leak but that he received no response.  That’s Justice Roberts who was so outraged by the Dobbs leak that he ordered an investigation into that “singular and egregious breach of trust.”  If the NY Times article is right, the Dobbs leak wasn’t singular.  Also, note that despite Roberts’ investigation, nothing about who leaked the Dobbs decision has been made public, nothing except accusations from the right that the leak “obviously” came from someone on the left.  The NY Times article has prompted a lot of outrage among the usual group of Senate Democrats including Judiciary Chair Dick Durban, Sheldon Whitehouse and Amy Klobuchar, none of them shrinking violets, so this story should have legs and it should because it looks like Justice Thomas isn’t the only one cannoodling with an interested influencer, not that any of this is all that surprising.

Mr. Smith:  It turns out that Jack Smith won’t be going to Washington just yet.  The newly appointed Special Counsel who is leaving his position at The Hague to assume his new role overseeing the investigation of our home-grown Mafioso plans to work remotely from the Netherlands because he recently broke a leg, the result of a bicycle accident. It turns out that in addition to having years of experience investigating corrupt public officials, Smith is also an accomplished triathlete.  Let’s hope that he’s better at taking down former presidents than avoiding potholes or trucks or whatever caused his break. Despite the break, the DOJ insists that Smith will be able to hit the ground running (presumably figuratively not literally) and that his appointment won’t delay the investigation and any possible indictment(s). Vocal critics on the left believe that Garland is just punting, allowing Trump and his recently announced run to influence and stall him suffering any consequence.  Those in the middle say appointing a Special Counsel makes sense due to politics as well as the volume of work  Garland oversees as Attorney General and some of those believe that the Smith appointment implies that an indictment, especially for the purloined documents case is very likely.  Those on the right, including Trump of course, see this as just an extension of the Democrat’s witch hunt. To date Trump has been venting about all this on his own social media site, Truth Social, but should he be so inclined he’s now welcome back on Twitter and though he says that he’s not inclined to take up Elon Musk’s invitation to return, it’s highly likely he will soon, especially since Truth Social’s future remains highly uncertain.  Though Trump’s not using Twitter, his buddy in hate, Kanye West is.  Ye, who was seen this weekend meeting with far-right white supremacist Nick Fuentes, is also talking about making another run at the presidency and teased hiring disgraced right winger Milos Yiannopoulos, best known for advocating for (yes for) pedophilia, as his 2024 campaign advisor. As to hate, it turns out that the man responsible for shooting and killing 5, while injuring an additional 25 individuals, some of them critically, at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub this weekend is the grandson of a MAGA Republican California state representative who supported the January 6^th insurrection equating it to the Revolutionary War. It turns out that there are consequences when a party and a family member spread hate.  Remind me again, when was the last time that a Drag Queen Story Hour resulted in a mass shooting? Like never.     

Midterm Madness:  The election is not over yet though the outcome in Alaska is starting to look more certain. Ranked voting calculations won’t be done until Wednesday but since she already has 48.7% of the vote, it’s pretty much a given that Democrat Mary Peltola will be returning to Congress for a full term, meaning Sarah Palin most certainly will not be.  On the Senate side with 43.3% of the vote, incumbent Lisa Murkowski has overtaken Trump endorsed Republican Kelly Tshibaka who has 42.7%.  That may seem close, but it really isn’t as the lion’s share of the voters for the third-place candidate, a Democrat, are likely to have picked Murkowski as their second choice. The Georgia Senate race is headed to a December 6^th runoff and thanks to the efforts of election whiz Mark Elias and his legal team, the early weekend voting that Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his squad tried to squelch is now back on the calendar.  Although Raffensperger stood up to Trump in 2020, he’s no hero, at his heart he is still all in on suppressing Democratic turnout. Then there’s GOP Leader, Speaker wannabee Kevin McCarthy, the man who now answers mostly to Margie Q.  McCarthy is now saying that he plans on taking committee assignments away from Democrats Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell and Ilhan Omar. Nothing like mending fences with the opposition in the hope of getting things done for the country. #Sigh

 

Vampires and Werewolves 🌻🌻🌻 💙

Passing the Baton:  The election isn’t over yet but two things are for certain, the Republicans have won enough seats to take over the House and Nancy Pelosi is winding down her illustrious career.  Not clear yet is the size of the Republican’s slim majority or whether Representative Lauren Boebert, Colorado’s right wing loony toon will be part of their caucus; she leads her Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by 551 votes, an amount slim enough to have triggered an automatic recount. Should Boebert end up winning and she probably will because recounts don’t generally shift more than a few votes, she’ll get to join her Republican colleagues in pursuing their MAGA-tized objectives. Those objectives don’t include passing any legislation remotely beneficial to their constituents like cutting drug costs or reducing all that crime and inflation they campaigned on but they do involve using their regained subpoena power to go scorched earth on Hunter Biden and his dad and laptop, the FBI, Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Justice Department and virus guru Fauci, among others.  In exchange for her support, GQP Leader McCarthy has promise Margie Q an investigation into the DOJ and Speaker Pelosi’s “mistreatment” of the January 6^th rioters, you know those nice tourists who wanted to hang Mike Pence, the one-time VP who admits to being a wee bit mad that Trump was okay with him being lynched but who has found it within his “Christian” heart to forgive him  while also saying that he’s not going to cooperate with the January 6^th Committee so if you want to know what he has to say go buy his book, as if.  As to Congress, think funding battles, debt ceiling crises and Benghazi on steroids for the next two years. You have to hand it to GQP leader McCarthy and his crowd, a majority of voters rejected extremism, so their strategy is to go all in on revenge and extremism.  Time will tell if that’s a winning plan.  Speaking of extremist, one of them, Arizona’s Governor race loser Kari Lake is refusing to concede her loss and threatening to hire the best Kraken lawyers to sue.

In With the New: Pelosi’s eloquent speech was written with the help of historian Jon Meacham but it’s fair to assume that she crafted the part where she said that she’d “enjoyed working with “three presidents:  George Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden,” not so subtlety skipping the president that the NY Post referred to as that Florida Man, all by herself.  Pelosi isn’t leaving Congress but does plan to step away from her party leadership position, passing the baton to New York’s Hakeem Jeffries who has been her leader in training for a while. You may remember Jeffries as the sharp staccato speaking interrogator from the first impeachment trial.  Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn who saved Joe Biden’s presidential run also plan to step aside from their leadership roles, though, like Nancy, neither is leaving the House.  Their replacements are expected to be Massachusetts’ Katherine Clark and California’s Pete Aguilar. Collectively, the new team will have an average age around thirty years younger than those they’re replacing.  California Democrat/Impeachment Manager Adam Schiff who had contemplated challenging Jeffries for the party leadership position is instead expected to seek 89-year-old Diane Feinstein’s California Senate seat once she steps aside or expires, whichever comes first.  Notably, Qevin McCarthy failed to attend Nancy Pelosi’s stepping down speech as he was otherwise occupied, having a tete-a-tete with the not so charming, vampiric Steve Miller. Qevin doesn’t appear to have said anything about Nancy’s announcement though, unsurprisingly, others in his leadership group have had lots of nasty things to say.  Not much of a shocker that Don Jr has already started to attack Hakeem Jeffries.  That said, former Republican Speakers Paul Ryan and John Boehner, neither of whom were able to control larger majorities than the one that the less skillful Qevin has inherited, have had gracious things to say as has Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell who while acknowledging their many differences, congratulated Pelosi on her “historic tenure and path-breaking career.”  Speaking of vampires, in a truly off the rails campaign speech Georgia Senatorial candidate Herschel Walker rambled on calling vampires “cool people” while also saying he prefers werewolves” because he’s recently found out that “a werewolf can kill a vampire” so he “doesn’t want to be a vampire anymore,” he wants to be a werewolf.  Just a reminder, Walker received more than 48% of the Georgia vote and Republicans are throwing everything they have behind him in the hope that he’ll beat incumbent Senator Raphael Warnock during their December runoff. Despite Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy’s assertion last weekend that the Republican party is not a cult, it is and it’s scary.  Also, note to Senator Cassidy, having to assert your party isn’t a cult is a sure admission that you fear it is.

A New Twitter?  It appears that Elon Musk really has broken Twitter. A significant number of the company’s remaining engineers were so put off by his statement that they’d have to confirm their willingness to do “hardcore work” or leave by 5 PM, that they left. Concerned that one or more of them might sabotage Twitter’s infrastructure he then locked down Twitter’s building telling all staff, the same people who he previously told that they could no longer work from home that they would have to go home until Monday. At the moment it appears that Twitter is still running but it’s slow and cranky and expectations are that it will crash and with no one left to fix it, it might not be brought back up.  That’s an inconvenience for people like me but the end of a lifeline for those who live in dangerous regimes or even places like Buffalo which is currently experiencing an extreme snow storm. If anyone reading this has any idea why spending $48 billion to buy an asset only to destroy it makes sense, please send your thoughts.  What’s next?  Kara Swisher, the former WSJ/NYTimes tech analyst turned podcaster recommends signing on to new social media company’s Post News beta waitlist.  If you are interested use my referral code: https://post.news/?r=YGtzZ    

 

Diaper Don is Back 🌻🌻🌻 💙

Ugh:  The twice impeached former president who lost the popular vote twice is back.  Last night Trump, I am reluctantly going back to calling him by his name, announced that he’s running for president during a more anemic than usual Mar a Lago speech filled with his usual boldfaced lies. To be clear, I didn’t watch because why would I subject myself to that pain but from what’s shown up in the news it appears that the crowd of attendees at his announcement fete included a mix of his typical hangers-on like Roger Stone together with a lot of Palm Beach blondette fillers, and some, but not all of his family members. Jared was there but Ivanka who says that she’s done with politics, presumably because she’s working on getting herself back on the Met Gala invitation list, was not.  Neither were Tiffany who was given a bye to go on her honeymoon and Don Jr who oddly enough had left Mar a Lago after Tiff’s wedding to go hunting and then had his return plans scuttled by a snowstorm, the icy stuff or so he says. Trump who is playing the underdog card that worked for him in 2016 says that this time around he’ll be working with a slimmed down campaign team to save money. Alternative facts lady, Kellyanne Conway is one of those still on the team that will be led by Florida operative Susie Wiles who is largely credited with turning Florida red, strategist Chris LaCivita, and former White House political aide Brian Jack.  A whole bunch of Republicans appear less than pleased that Trump has thrown his hat back in the arena, particularly upset by his timing and the impact that it might have on the upcoming Georgia Senate runoff between Raphael Warnock and Herschel Walker.  Never Trumper Mitt Romney likened Trump to an aging baseball player who keeps playing, a comment far nicer than many were thinking not that most of those won’t vote for Trump if he’s their party’s candidate.  Ron DeSantis who is either the Republican’s heir apparent or this cycle’s Jeb Bush and former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker rolled into one, is doing his best to ignore him not that Trump is returning the favor.  He’s already started in on  his potential rivals.  Getting back to that other Walker, Herschel, he has finally figured out that Trump and a few other Republican grifters, including Texas/Cancun Senator Ted Cruz, who he thought were raising money for his runoff race are just using him to fill their coffers.  They’re doing that by retaining 90% of what they claim to be raising on his behalf.  That’s a fairy astute observation for Herschel who this weekend told Georgia voters said that the “US needs more gas guzzling cars with good emissions.”  Sharp as a tack, no?  Many in Trump’s circle are convinced that Trump announced his run now to make it more difficult for the Merrick Garland DOJ to indict him for one or more of his crimes.  That’s not a legitimate legal argument, but it is a potent political one.  He’ll probably still be indicted but probably not until after the Georgia runoff. Fulton County DA Fani Willis is closing in on Trump and his cohorts too though she is also expected to wait until after the runoff. Some disappointing news on the legal front: Rudy Giuliani is off the hook for his Ukraine shenanigans.  Having failed to obtain guilty verdicts in other high profile foreign lobbying cases, the DOJ has decided not to pursue charges against Rudy. 

Still Counting:  The Republicans are closing in on taking over the House.  As of this morning, GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy and his squad are only one seat short of the 218 they need and are likely to have somewhere around 220 seats by the time the counting is complete.  Bolstered by the support of Margie Q who appears to have been bought off with promises of some Benghazi type hearings, McCarthy survived a leadership vote 188 to 31 yesterday.  That’s far short of the 218 votes he’ll need to become speaker during the leadership vote that will take place in January, so he has lots of promises/bribes to make between now and then. Reports are that McCarthy tried to “grow” his caucus over the weekend by approaching Texas’ anti-abortion Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar with an offer of a plumb committee assignment in exchange for him becoming a redcoat, Cuellar turned his emissary down. It looks like the Democrats campaign committee’s decision to support Cuellar when he was primaried from the left has paid off.  It’s fair to assume that Nancy and company have made similar offers to a Republican or two because all’s far in love, war, and politics. Things aren’t all hunky dory on the Republican Senate side either where a circular firing squad exercise is in process.  Florida Senator Rick Scott is challenging Mitch McConnell’s leadership and together with a group including Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham is pressing for the leadership vote to be put off until after the Georgia runoff. McConnell will probably retain his leadership but still the infighting is fun to watch.  On the Democratic side, Chuck Schumer will continue to be the Senate Majority Leader while on the House side everyone is waiting to see whether Nancy Pelosi wants to stay on as leader.  Though she hasn’t conceded and may never do so, Republican election denier Kari Lake who has already thrown her support to Trump for his reelection, lost her Arizona Governor race to Democrat Katie Hobbs.  Hobbs who was criticized for refusing to debate the telegenic but hugely deceptive Lake won her race with fewer votes than Senator Mark Kelly but by more than Biden did in 2020.  One wrinkle in the otherwise good Arizona news is that the Attorney General race remains too close to call with Trump endorsed Republican Abe Hamadeh, a 2020 election denier, closing in on Democrat Kris Mayes whose lead has shrunk to 771 votes. That race is expected to go to a recount.  Also don’t forget about Republican gun lover Lauren Boebert, though she still leads her opponent, her race where she was supposed to be shoe-in hasn’t been called yet. Alaska and Maine remain undecided too as their ranked voting computations haven’t yet been completed.       

Ukraine: Yesterday, a Russian missile landed in Poland killing two locals raising the specter that the Russians had triggered NATO’s all for one and one for all Article 5 collective defense provision. At this point the conclusion is that though the missile was Russian it likely originated in Ukraine, shot into the air while the Ukrainians were defending themselves from a huge incoming Russian missile strike. As to Putin and his Russian military, CNN reports that their withdrawal from the Ukrainian city of Kherson where they committed all kinds of atrocities was put off until after the midterms in part because Putin didn’t want to give Biden a “win.” Wonder what ole Vlad thinks about his buddy Trump’s announcement?

And the Winner Is? 🌻🌻🌻 💙💙💙

Still Counting:  Much to the chagrin of the usual set of election deniers who’d prefer that all elections be declared, for their candidates of course,  by midnight of election day, votes are still be counted.  In Alaska and Maine, House and Senate races won’t be settled until ranked voting calculations are completed and Georgians won’t know if their senator is one-time football player Herschel Walker who believes that “America is the best country in the United States” or incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock until next month’s runoff election is completed. About the only thing we know right now is that Democrats have retained control of the Senate and that the House, still more likely to go red than blue, remains up for grabs.  Despite the remaining uncertainty, fresh off the wedding of his younger daughter, the Former Guy still plans to announce his 2024 presidential run this week despite pressure from some leading Republicans and advisors to refrain from doing so at least until after the Georgia runoff.  Insiders report that when the FG wasn’t spinning on the Mar a Lago dance floor, “Truth” trashing Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine “Coco Chow,” turning the very white Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin’s name into another anti-Asian ethnic slur, labeling the election stolen, or unloading on Florida’s Ron Sanctimonious, he was signing off on placards and the invitation list for his Tuesday night announcement gala. No doubt that New York Representative Elise Stefanik is on the list as she’s already endorsed his run. The FG’s  lawyers were also busy this weekend, they filed a lawsuit seeking to block his testimony in front of the House January 6^th Committee, the testimony that he previously said he was eager to give. Former Chief of Staff John Kelly was also uncharacteristically loquacious this weekend, he told the NY Times that the FG repeatedly asked him to “get the IRS on” former FBI guys James Comey and Andrew McCabe both of whom were subsequently audited. Of course, the FG, who is still fighting to block the release of his own IRS filings, denies he would ever do such a thing.  Yeah, right.

The Senate:  Over the weekend, with the help of Nevada’s powerful Culinary Workers union, incumbent Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto eked out a narrow victory over her challenger Republican Adam Laxalt, the candidate whose family dislikes him so much that they supported Masto. Her victory, together with incumbent Senator Mark Kelly’s more comfortable win over his challenger Blake Masters, means that the Democrats will retain Senate control.  That doesn’t mean that the Warnock-Walker run-off election is any less critical.  A Warnock victory will mean that Democrats won’t have to enter into another power sharing agreement with Republican leader, or leader for the moment, Mitch McConnell, making it easier for Democrats to get their judges, including any possible SCOTUS seat, confirmed.  In addition, a 51-seat majority also takes veto power away from outlier Democratic Senators Manchin and Sinema both of whom, together with red state Democrat Jon Tester, are up for reelection in 2024, an election cycle that will be more difficult for Senate Democrats. As to McConnell, following the lead of the Former Guy some of his “colleagues” are calling for him to put off a leadership vote, part of their effort to shove him aside.  Ironically, one of those challenging him is Florida’s Rick Scott who still hasn’t accounted for over $100 million of the money he raised in his role as Republican Senate election chairman and who is also partially responsible for his party putting up so many poor-quality candidates.  One more thing, kudos to below the radar Michigan Senator Gary Peters who headed up the Democrats Senate campaign. He and President Biden are this cycle’s winners.     

The House:  Depending on who’s counting, Republicans are two or three seats away from obtaining the 218 seats they need to take control of the House.  MSNBC’s annoying Chiron projects that the Republicans will ultimately end up with 219 seats plus or minus 4, whatever that really means. Should the Republicans prevail, GOP leader Kevin McCarthy is likely to become Speaker, but even that’s not certain.  At least ten members of his caucus have said that they won’t vote for him, but it’s not clear who they would vote for and it’s also not clear that should he win, and he probably will, that his Speakership will last any longer than that now iconic British head of lettuce. Qevin will have to make promises to a lot of lunatics, including folks like Margie Q ,Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert should she survive, to get the leadership spot and that’s not going to turn out well for anyone. One sign of how hard the Republican contingent will be to manage is that by comparison with some of his colleagues, Gym Jordan is now seen as a rational one.  Ugh.  Should the Democrats pull off a miracle, it’s highly likely that Nancy Pelosi will remain Speaker because she’s likely the only one who has the chops to keep a 218-seat majority in order.  That’s not to say that Democrats don’t have outliers of their own to deal with, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and some of the other members of the leftist “squad” aren’t easy to manage nor are Texas’ anti-abortion Democrat Henry Cuellar and Maine’s studiously centrist Jared Golden, who still needs to prevail in a ranked choice “run-off,” but Pelosi’s a proven force of nature while McCarthy is a wet obsequious noodle. And one more wrinkle in this process, if history is any guide, one or more House members might not make it to January because death doesn’t take a holiday nor does the Justice Department, you know those guys who we keep hoping will indict the Former Guy, maybe this week even.     

Governors:  One Gubernatorial race still hasn’t been decided.  Arizona Democrat Katie Hobbs has a shrinking lead over election denier, FG style TV wackadoodle Kari Lake.  The question now is whether Hobbs’ lead, currently around 26,000 votes, will hold up given that outstanding ballots are expected to lean Republican.  At this point, Hobbs remains a slight favorite, but it’s too early to count Lake out and, in any case, Lake will squawk, challenge, and sue if she loses.  Surprisingly, at least one other election denier/insurrectionist has conceded.  Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano, who lost decidedly to Democrat Josh Shapiro, surprised many, including Shapiro who said that he didn’t really care if Mastriano conceded because voters decide elections not candidates, conceded yesterday.   While Democrats defended and picked up some governorships, they lost Nevada where Republican Sheriff Joe Lombardo beat Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak. And fortunately for small “d” democracy, Democrats prevailed over election denying Secretary of State candidates meaning that though voter suppression isn’t going away. and gerrymandering remains a bigly problem, voters who show up will stand a good chance of having their votes counted.  

And:  There’s a death watch going on at Twitter where Elon Musk continues to act erratically, most recently taking on a battle with Democratic Senator Ed Markey while also still cutting and losing staff.  The cryptocurrency market which I’ve never really understood is undergoing another meltdown, this one triggered by the bad behavior of someone named Sam Bankman-Fried better known as SBF who appears to be going for this year’s Elizabeth Holmes/Adam Neumann award. Also, things appear to be going south for Putin as well but he’s one that should never be counted out because, at least so far, he’s defied all reports of his imminent demise and anyway he’s uncannily good at forcing defenestrations.