Calling Norma 🌻 🌻 🌻

Barbie’s Dream House:  Over the weekend the Washington Post detailed Trump’s post presidential life, comparing Mar a Lago to a sad Barbie Dream House, reporting that the sad sap Florida Man is now surrounded by sycophants without either the extensive trappings of the presidency or its guardrails, an explanation for how Kanye and his white supremacist/anti-Semitic friends made their way to his dining table. Trump’s gilded palace may be Barbie like, but he’s no Barbie, and despite his over inflated ego and those bizarre money laundering virtual trading cards, he’s also not a Ken, rather he’s more of a delusional yet dangerous Norma Desmond, one who may have less staff than he’d grown used to but who still has lots of adoring fans and many, many bottles of ketchup.  It’s fair to assume that some of that ketchup hit the walls last night because though it’s not clear that it means much, he can’t be pleased that the House January 6^th committee took the unprecedented step of recommending that the Department of Justice pursue charges against him for obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, conspiracy to defraud the US, inciting or assisting in an insurrection, conspiracy to make a false statement and anything else they come up with.  In other words, they want the DOJ to throw the book at him for his attempted stealing of the election by blocking the certification of electors, participating in the phony elector scheme, and inciting of the January 6 attack. The committee also referred kraken lawyer John Eastman and “certain other Trump associates” for criminal indictment, likely former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, America’s former mayor Rudy Giuliani, environmental lawyer/AG wannabee Jeffrey Clark and still another kraken lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro as well. The Committee also voted to refer Speaker-in-waiting Kevin McCarthy, Judiciary Chair-to-be Jim ”Gym” Jordan, Pennsylvania Congressman Scott Perry and Arizona’s Andy Biggs, another Speaker wannabee, to the House Ethics Committee for failing to comply with the committee’s subpoenas which is likely to result in not even a hand slap given that they’ll be running the House and subpoenaing various and sundry Democrats, people named Hunter, and virus guru Fauci come January.  During yesterday’s televised hearing the committee treated us to a few more video tidbits, including clips of Hope Hicks and Kellyanne Conway saying that they told Trump that he’d lost the election and that he ought to stop the violence at the Capitol, violence that the committee made clear had nothing to do with antifa, as those guys heeded warnings to stay away from Washington on January 6^th, and former advisor Michael Flynn very tellingly pleading the Fifth went asked about whether he believed in the peaceful transfer of power. The Committee who described Hope Hicks, favorite child Ivanka, one time press secretary now Fox darling Kayleigh McEnany, and former Secret Service agent Tony Ornato as less than forthcoming or worse and released a lengthy summary report which also detailed the vast array of weaponry that the insurrectionists had with them during their assault including tasers, pepper spray, batons, brass knuckles and knives. You know, the kind of stuff that innocent tourists always carry when visiting the seat of government. The committee also said that they believed the slow response of the Pentagon to the marauding crowds was about miscommunication, not complicity. A full report will be released later this week around the same time that the House Ways and Means Committee is expected to vote to release six years of Trump’s tax returns, another event that is likely to elicit more ketchup eruptions at the Dream House.   

Which Witch is Which? Naturally, Republicans responded to the Committees actions as expected.  VP Pence who Trump wanted hung for his disloyalty said that he hopes that AG Garland, and the DOJ leave poor Trump alone, he’s suffered enough while most of the rest of the Republican contingent called the Committee’s actions “absurdly partisan,” just more of that witch hunt thing though Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell strayed from the party line saying that “The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day” while adding that “beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations.” Aware that the House will soon be run by an unmanageable group of crazies Qs, two of whom Lauren Boebert and Margie Q are already publicly squabbling, McConnell has been busy on more important business, hashing out government funding legislation with Democratic Leader Schumer and anyway everyone knows that now that he’s gotten his Supreme Court Justices and has seen  Roe overturned, McConnell just wants Trump to ping pong between Mar a Lago and Bedminster preferably leaving his phone in Ivana’s tomb. One other thing about the wily Mitch, it turns out that he’s been spending quality time with Arizona Senator Krysten Sinema, guiding her through her conversion from Democrat to Independent and is working on convincing her that she’d do even better as a Republican.  For her part Sinema has filed paperwork to run for reelection in 2024 as an Independent, well at least for now.  On the subject of Arizona, last night a Judge threw out most, though not all of failed Gubernatorial candidate/Trump acolyte Kari Lake’s election fraud lawsuit ruling that seven of her assertions were nutzoid but saying that he wants to hear more about two of them leaving it to her legal team to prove their claim that ballot contractors in  Maricopa County stuffed extra ballots into the system and that the printer problem experienced there were intentional.  Democratic election lawyer Mark Elias says he’s confident that the judge is just crossing “t’s” and dotting “i’s” as Lake won’t be able to prove either of those false assertions not that she’ll ever stop screeching or fund raising, which is probably the point, after all she is a Trumpster.

Did Anyone Say Fraud? Right about now one of New York’s newest Congresspeople, Republican George Santos is probably relieved that Trump news dominated yesterday’s cycle because the article that the NY Times reported on his backstory is frigging alarming.  Santos upset Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman becoming the Congressman-elect from Long Island’s newly configured Third Congressional District, part of which was previously included the North Shore seat vacated by outgoing Democrat Tom Suozzi who lost to Governor Kathy Hochul in the Democratic gubernatorial primary.  It turns out that nothing that Santos has said about his past and included on his resume is true.  He did not attend NYU, he did not graduate from Baruch College, he did not work for Citigroup, nor did he work for Goldman Sachs.  His Florida registered business is now inactive and it’s not clear how the previously impoverished guy came up with the money to run a rather well funded campaign, not his first as he ran and lost against Suozzi in 2020. Moreover, the pet charity he said he founded never had tax-exempt status and the proceeds from the one traceable event he organized never made it to the group that was the supposed beneficiary. Moreover, he doesn’t live at the address he claimed on his election forms.  In a normal world the Republican Party would be distancing themselves from him, but Kevin McCarthy can’t afford to lose a single member of his caucus because he’s still short of the votes he needs to become Speaker, so he’d support Jeffrey Dahmer if that’s what it took to win.  To be clear there’s no evidence that Santos is a Dahmer though he appears to have committed check fraud in Brazil and was seen partying at the NYC Republican gala with Margie Q and a number of other white supremacists.  As to why these lies weren’t caught earlier through opposition research, Democrat Zimmerman says that his campaign was aware of some of them but couldn’t get the press or enough of the district’s voters to care.  For their part, the NY Times says they came across the deception after the election as part of a story on incoming newbie Congresspeople.  Stay posted, this story could have legs though maybe not as much traction as the continuing Twitter saga.  Chief Twit Elon Musk spent part of his weekend in Qatar where he was seen watching football with Jared Kushner and a group of Saudis, investors perhaps? When not hobnobbing and re-platforming some though not all the journalists he’d cut off,  Musk conducted a Twitter poll, asking users if he should step down from the company’s CEO position, something that some disgruntled Tesla board members and a lot of investors would like him to do over concerns that his focus on his newest plaything is destroying their equity value.  Twitter voters overwhelming agreed that Musk should step aside, so naturally the Twit has called for a Mulligan, asserting “bot” fraud, saying that only “blue check” holders should have been allowed to vote.  Gee, claiming election fraud, how novel.