2016 Oct 22nd
There is nothing new under the sun, or in this election.
Trump threatens to sue women accusing him of groping them. If he did that he
would have to testify under oath so I believe these women are quite safe.
Then his one really good gag at the Al Smith dinner, one
that even Senator/comedian Al Franken believed was good, the one where he
complains that Michelle Obama’s speech got applause but when Melania, his wife,
gave the same speech later, the unfair media wasn’t nice to her. That line was
plagiarized from a cartoon in Roll Call.
Then his transition team factotum, Governor Chris Christie,
is about to be indicted over the bridgegate scandal. Couple that with a high
level campaign official deciding to take some personal time off with just over
two weeks to go before the election.
Just less than a year ago, this was the detritus; it was for
October 21st 2015 You can see that what happened then has little relevance for
our concerns today. A year from now I’ll bet we’ll be saying the same thing
about today’s concerns…I hope!
Pregnancy week! Oct 21st
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 the 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 28th.
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.
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