How Jim Jordan Broke The Mold And Broke The Rethuglican Caucus. Interesting analysis from Josh Marshall:
The congressional party is controlled and run by the hard right minority variously called the Tea Party or Freedom Caucus. But they are a bit too hot for national public consumption. They also rely on the idea that their far right policy agenda has broad public support but is held back by a corrupt/bureaucratic establishment. For both of these reasons a system was developed in which this far right group runs the caucus, but from the background, while it is nominally run by a mainstreamish Republican leader. Under John Boehner, Paul Ryan or Kevin McCarthy this basic dynamic remained more or less the same. It works for everybody because the Freedom Party calls the shots while the party maintains broad electoral viability via figureheadish leadership.
If the Freedom Caucus took over caucus management directly they would quickly come face to face with not being able to pass their favored bills. If they did they would get shut down in the Senate or by the President. They would face directly that their favored legislation is simply not very popular. The system I described above may look like chaos. And from the perspective of effective government it is. But from a political perspective it serves every player’s needs in an effective and stable way.
Which is why the McHenry de facto speakership would have kept this scenario intact. However:
About 90 minutes after Jordan rolled out this plan it made first contact with the House GOP caucus and blew apart into a million pieces. As I write at roughly 2:30 on Thursday afternoon the plan is absolutely dead. At least for the moment there doesn’t seem to be any idea of a possible next step. It was probably doomed all along – see the main point of this post: the model exists for a reason. But Jordan and his lieutenants at least made the concept far too explicit. They made it crystal clear it made him de facto Speaker with no vote at all. And here we are.
Officials told HuffPost that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and his most senior advisers are overlooking widespread internal frustration. Some department staff said they feel as if Blinken and his team are uninterested in their own experts’ advice as they focus on supporting Israel’s expanding operation in Gaza, where the Palestinian militant group Hamas is based.
Two officials told HuffPost that diplomats are preparing what’s called a “dissent cable,” a document criticizing American policy that goes to the agency’s leaders through a protected internal channel.
Such cables are seen within the State Department as consequential statements of serious disagreement at key historical moments. The dissent channel was established amid deep internal conflict during the Vietnam War, and diplomats have since then used it to warn that the U.S. is making dangerous and self-defeating choices abroad.
On Wednesday, the U.S. mission to the United Nations ― a State office ― vetoed a U.N. resolution backed by many countries that condemned all violence against civilians, including by Hamas, and endorsed humanitarian aid for Gaza. State will also help administer the additional military aid for Israel and humanitarian assistance for Palestinians that Biden has authorized.
“There’s a sense within the workforce that the secretary doesn’t see it or doesn’t care,” a State Department official said, saying that the feeling extends to high-ranking figures at the agency. “And it’s almost certain he’s not aware of just how bad the workforce dynamics are. It’s really quite bad.”
The negativity is surfacing in a variety of ways. One official described peers as “depressed and angry about it all,” while another said some staff are experiencing “resignation.” That official recalled a colleague in tears during a meeting over their view “that U.S. policy statements emphasized support for Israel over the lives of Palestinians.”
RWNJ Dies In Botched Murder-Suicide Attempt. At least he accomplished the suicide part successfully:
A Republican activist who has been a reliable donor to Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — despite a racist tweet that put him on the outs with DeSantis’ predecessor, Rick Scott — shot a woman and then himself in the parking lot of a Palm Beach County restaurant, according to sheriff’s deputies. The activist, 72-year-old Steve Alembik, died. The woman, wounded in the back and arm, survived when she ran into the restaurant bleeding and was rushed to the hospital.
Over the past 20 years, Alembik, gave more than $200,000 in political contributions, mainly to Republicans, including thousands of dollars to both DeSantis and Donald Trump. The founder of a Boca Raton digital marketing company, the Democrat-turned-Republican earned notoriety in 2018 by referring to former President Barack Obama as a “f******* Muslim n*****” in a post on the social media platform X, then known as Twitter.
In other words, merely a reliable member of the Rethuglican Party base.
We Have A Brand New World’s Hottest Pepper! Pepper X, created by the mastermind behind the newly-dethroned World’s Hottest Pepper, Carolina Reaper. This guy is my kind of evil genius:
Chile-heads are, after all, an eccentric and passionate bunch, but even in comparison with the average person who enjoys eating whole habaneros, Smokin’ Ed Currie is an absolute iconoclast. He’s like an explorer who has long since ventured off the edge of the map and returned from an undiscovered country, bringing mystical artifacts along with him. Previously, that included the breeding of the world record-holding Carolina Reaper pepper. But rather than wait for someone to finally break his record for the hottest chile, Currie has just gone and done it himself, officially releasing Pepper X on the world and demolishing his record in the process. This week, the new chile was officially recognized as the Guinness Book of World Records new hottest chile in the world, bringing what Currie refers to as “immediate, brutal heat.”
“I was feeling the heat for three-and-a-half hours,” said Currie of the experience of first eating Pepper X. “Then the cramps came. Those cramps are horrible. I was laid out flat on a marble wall for approximately an hour in the rain, groaning in pain.”
This video should sate any desire you might have to try Pepper X. Inspirational phrase? “I’m in heat”:
What do you want to talk about?