Pregnancy week! Oct 21^st

This title means that a lot is happening this week; some of it has happened in the few hours just before I began writing this. It begins with the announcement by Joe Biden that he won’t be running for President.  The Vice President made it clear that while he wouldn’t be running he wouldn’t be silent. Anyone who knows Joe Biden will not be at all surprised by that. Eventually I’ll bet he’ll support Hillary Clinton.

Tomorrow we have the next Benghazi Committee hearing: Trey Gowdy, the Chairperson will need a durable scraper to get the accumulated egg off his face. We have two Republican committee members coming forward of their own free will and telling the press that the committee’s purpose was primarily to tarnish Hillary Clinton’s reputation. Then there was the staffer who claims he was fired because he wasn’t digging up enough dirt on Clinton. Now we have Gowdy castigating Clinton for revealing a CIA source, Moussa Koussa, a Libyan. His name appeared in an email to Clinton from Sydney Blumenthal; then Trey Gowdy said that his name was among, “Some of the most protected information in the intelligence community.” Well, not really, because when the emails were released the name wasn’t redacted. Then Gowdy’s committee released the name themselves before recognizing their error and quickly removing it. This is the parade of clowns which govern our country!

Of Course there is the problem the Republicans have with selecting a Speaker of the House:  Paul Ryan former Republican Vice Presidential candidate on the Romney ticket said he would take the job, but only under certain conditions. He has made it clear that he doesn’t want the job, so if the conditions aren’t met he’s outta there! His conditions are straightforward: there will no longer be a “motion to vacate.” This is a procedure to bring the Speakership to a vote essentially holding the office captive if ever the speaker should temporarily displease enough members of his party. One of the tea party forty has already claimed that this is a “non-starter.” What other members think about that is not on the record. Ryan also wants approval from all of the Republican caucuses.  The Freedom Caucus consists of 40 staunch tea party members many of whom don’t trust Paul Ryan and they had their own candidate, Daniel Webster. Late this afternoon Ryan got a super-majority of that caucus to approve him but that’s not the 80 percent he requires. Maybe the Freedom Caucus will come to the 80 percent by the deadline of October 28^th. It turns out that according to the rules, the Speaker of the House need not be an elected member of Congress. (Although electing a non-member might be a problem.) There is just no end of fascinating complications in American politics.