Freaky Friday

 

Cheese & Kraken!  Right now Kenneth Chesebro is standing in front of a Fulton County judge as the clerk asks him if he knows exactly what his guilty plea entails.  He says he does.  That's three.  I just can't get enough of the phrase "co-defendant Donald John Trump."  I may get it as a ringtone.

Several hundred miles away Jim "Thank you sir please may I have another" Jordan decided to lose a third ballot for Speaker, so that happened.  I can't understand it.  People who voted against him and their wives are getting feedback like this:  "We're at war.  Israelis being killed.  And your dumb husband is acting like a fucking two-year-old?  He's a fucking war-mongering piece of shit...I'm putting all your information over the internet now...you will not be left alone because of your fucking faggot husband...you're going to be fucking molested like you can't ever imagine..."  It's outrageous until you remember that Democratic women get crap like this every single day.  Having an R after your name now affords as much protection as having PRESS on your shirt in Gaza.

Meanwhile Patrick McHenry has threatened to quit as Speaker pro tempore if they try to give him big-boy powers without an explicit vote, so there won't even be a pretend Speaker.  This means MTG could grab the gavel, shove it down her cleavage and make the Republicans who are fit enough chase her around the People's House.  Finally we'll have video to put alongside fistfights in the legislatures of other countries.  I don't see anyone benefiting from this except Steve Bannon, whose mission from the beginning has been the destruction of the "deep state" and the chaos from which a true dictator will emerge.  Is the white horse saddled?

Beau of the Fifth Column has an explanation.

For a look at what they're missing by stubbornly refusing to support him, Jim Jordan held a press conference at 8 am to say he has seen President Biden's request for $106 billion in emergency aid to Israel, Gaza and Ukraine, and he doesn't like it.  Then he treated them to a talk about how he once visited the Wright Brothers Museum in Dayton and how Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier and Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon and somehow this explains why he refuses to give up his hopeless quest to get 217 Republicans to vote for him.  This is a lot to take in before you've had coffee.  Also, "I think there were all kinds of problems with the 2020 election."  It's baffling why Democrats won't back him now.  He already sounds like Trump ranting about windmills, flies and Hannibal Lecter.

Yes, Trump.  He reluctantly obeyed Judge Engoron's order to delete the picture of the court clerk with Chuck Schumer, but somehow it wound up on his campaign website.  Oops!  The judge is furious and he's starting to use the J word:  jail.  But his thumbs have been busy:  "Massive information and 100% evidence will be made available during the Corrupt Trials started by our Political Opponent...Does anyone notice that the Election Rigging Biden Administration never goes after the Riggers, but only after those that want to catch and expose the Rigging dogs."  The "evidence" has been promised before, mostly by Mike Lindell, but people are seizing on "Riggers" as one letter away from a racist slur, even closer than "Peekaboo James."  I'm more intrigued by "Rigging dogs," one word away from the "running dogs" who used to feature in Chinese propaganda.  This is very high-level gibberish.  Or he's sweatily wondering who will flip next and fund-raising furiously despite owning the most expensive house on earth.

Another Republican is about to become an advocate of prison reform.  Joe Harding, who introduced Florida's "Don't Say Gay" law as a state representative, got four months in federal prison for money laundering, wire fraud and making false statements about a fraudulent covid relief loan.  He pleaded guilty to avoid a possible 35 years.  

Mark Robinson, who wants to be governor of North Carolina, never heard a conspiracy theory he didn't sign on to, from the JFK assassination to the moon landing to David Ickes's lizard people.  Turns out he also hates prominent women.  Someone combed through his Facebook posts and found stomach-turning attacks on Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Rep. Frederica Wilson, Hillary Clinton, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Beyonce and Taylor Swift.  

Largely unnoticed, sixteen Republicans have been indicted in Michigan as part of a fake-electors plot from the 2020 election.  One of them, James Renner, has had the charges dropped in return for agreeing to be a cooperating witness.  Watch this space.

After losing the third vote for Speaker, Jim Jordan suggested the balloting would continue through the weekend.  This was the final straw.  The Republicans gathered behind closed doors and voted 112-86 to prevent him from running again.  Nobody makes them work during football season and the baseball playoffs.

As people in Gaza await relief supplies which are tied up at the Egyptian border, many are reduced to drinking contaminated or salt water.  People in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana, are in similar straits because last summer's drought lowered the level of the Mississippi and allowed salt water from the Gulf to back up into the river.  One of their water treatment plants has been out of service since Hurricane Ida two years ago.  Needless to say, most residents are poor and Black.  The election of MAGA Jeff Landry as governor is guaranteed to help not at all.

This being Friday, traditional day of prayer and protests, there are demonstrations all over the Middle East over Israel's response to the Hamas attacks and impending ground invasion.  Yes, it's disproportionate -- what did Hamas expect?  Yes, sifting truth from lies continues to be a struggle -- the Al-Ahli Arabi Hospital was hit by the IDF, no, it was Palestine Islamic Jihad, no, the rocket landed in the parking lot, two hundred people died or maybe a dozen.  No, Biden has not seen the pictures of beheaded babies, nobody has seen them, is this another case of the "hundreds" of babies thrown out of incubators by Iraqi forces in Kuwait?  "Beheaded babies" sticks in the mind but what if it's a rumor?  Is there a good way to kill babies?  Why the hell are twenty trucks parked at the Egyptian border while more babies die?  With at least 22 journalists killed and others wounded, arrested or missing, the fog of war grows thicker.  And nobody is filtering the propaganda on X ne Twitter.  

 One happy note:  Hamas has released two American hostages, Judith Raanan and her daughter Natalie of Chicago.  A Hamas spokesman gave the credit to Qatari negotiators, but Joe Biden and Tony Blinken are entitled to a victory lap and a few hours off.