By Bob Gaydos

    Reporting the most significant news of the day is always a combination of judgment and opinion, seasoned by experience. But, within the variables, one thing is certain: War trumps  everything.

      The terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel was so brutally vicious, claiming the lives of more than a thousand innocent civilians, including women and children, the elderly, people dragged out of their homes, young people at a festival, even babies and also resulting in the taking of hostages that it (1.) overshadowed the unprecedented shutting down of the House of Representatives because Republicans, the majority party, had removed their chosen Speaker and could not agree on a new one, putting in peril (2) funding for the government itself, (3) aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia and (4) aid to longtime ally Israel in its declared war against Hamas, which (5.) did not seem to trouble the small group of rightwing radical Republicans holding the government hostage, or their anointed leader, Donald Trump, who (6.) gave his blessing for new Speaker to Jim Jordan, the ineffectual Ohio congressman who aided and abetted Trump in the failed January 6 insurrection and whose only goal seems to be to shut down the government and, in the process, all the investigations and court proceedings against Trump, who (7.) took the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel as an occasion to compliment Hezbollah, another Islamic terrorist group with a target on Israel and (8.) to blame Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu for the success of the surprise attack, most likely as payback for the fact that Netanyahu (9.) was the first foreign leader to congratulate Joe Biden on his election as America’s president in 2020, something which Trump, Jordan and the rest of the MAGA crowd are still  (10.) trying to undo even as (11.) Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a member of one of America’s most celebrated political families, flip-flopped between conspiracy theories and strategies in his own ego-driven campaign for the 2024 presidential election, having (12.) announced that he is dropping his plan to run as a Democrat to run instead as an independent candidate, probably because he was gaining little traction among Democratic voters since his extreme views more closely resemble those of Trump supporters, (13.) a development which caused confusion among political prognosticators as to whether Kennedy as an independent candidate with a famous Democratic name  would take more voters from Trump or Biden, (14.) something which would be more of a worry for Democrats if RFK Jr. even vaguely resembled his late father politically and personally (he’s no Bobby Kennedy) and had also not recently been accused of anti-Semitism, but, again, was complicated by (15.) Kennedy’s unambiguous reaction to the Hamas attack on Israel: “This ignominious, unprovoked, and barbaric attack on Israel must be met with world condemnation and unequivocal support for the Jewish state’s right to self-defense. We must provide Israel with whatever it needs to defend itself — now.”

    War trumps everything.

rjgaydos@gmail.com