Bizarro Secretary Pete? 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

Confirming Crazy: Pete Hegseth is an accused rapist, he’s a serial cheater on his third marriage, he’s got a drinking problem, he’s seriously mismanaged the funds of two small non-profit veterans organizations, he appears willing to deploy the US military against US citizens, he’s a Christian Nationalist, he questions whether women should serve in the military and he couldn’t answer questions about important international alliances yet he’s on a glide path to becoming the next Secretary of Defense. Hegseth was combative, evasive, and snide during yesterday’s Senate confirmation hearing but wowed Iowa Republican Joni Ernst, who could have derailed his confirmation but instead announced last night that despite her earlier reservations she’ll be voting for him.  Ernst, a veteran who has talked about her own experiences as a victim of sexual assault, refused to meet with Hegseth’s accuser and didn’t seem at all concerned about the FBI’s failure to meet with her either or their failure to return phone calls from at least one of his former wives because she’s way more focused on her 2026 reelection prospects and Trump and his team made it clear to her that those prospects would be jerked away if she didn’t stay on board the Hegseth train. By the way, Hegseth refused to meet with Democratic Senators because of course he did.   Confirmations for a few other of Trump’s nominees, including North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, former Congressman Doug Collins and one-time Democrat Tulsi Gabbard have been delayed a bit allegedly due to document issues but there’s no reason to believe that they, even Putin’s favorite Tulsi, won’t be confirmed as well because Trump, has mastered the art of intimidation and most, if not all, Republican Senators with the possible exception of Lisa Murkowski, live in fear of his retribution. The schedule for RFK Jr whose confirmation requires sign off from both the Senate Health and Finance Committees is still up in the air, perhaps because in addition to his other failings, RFK played fast and cute with his financial disclosure forms, failing to note that he’d earned in excess of $1 million from his anti-vaccine organizations. However, it’s way too early to count RFK out because Trump is determined to own the libs, even if that means making a lot of us sick again.       

Legal Morass: Not that it matters because come January 20, Trump will be back in the Oval Office serenaded in by Carrie Underwood, Kid Rock and his favorites of YMCA fame, The Village People, but the January 6 part of former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report was released on Monday night.  Smith believed that his case against Trump was rock solid and that had Trump not been reelected his prosecution would have succeeded unfortunately we’ll never know. In summary, Smith reported that Trump did not cooperate fully in the investigation and that, as we all saw firsthand, he used his influence and social media to intimidate witnesses.  Smith denied Trump’s claims that he’d pursued the charges against Trump for political reasons, saying that anyone who knows him knows that accusation to be “laughable.” He said that Trump knew his allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 were false. Smith is also confident that despite the Supreme Court’s Trump friendly immunity decision he would have been able to move forward with a successful prosecution.  Trump, of course, is furious that the report, or at least the January 6 related part of the report has been released but we’re the ones who are entitled to be livid because Trump is suffering no consequences for his actions and we’re about to be subjected to four, maybe even more, years of a worse version of him.  Naturally, because we live in a world of false equivalencies, David Weiss the Special Counsel who conducted the Hunter Biden investigation released his final report too.  Weiss slammed President Biden for pardoning his son and politicizing his prosecution. If venting makes Weiss feel better, great for him, but Hunter isn’t going to be our next president so he’s not the one that keeps me up at night.  One last wrinkle, the Arizona Attorney General has requested a copy of the Department of Justice’s full January 6 case file to help her with her ongoing prosecution of some of Trump’s co-conspirators.  Her request has the added benefit of helping to preserve files that Trump’s incoming regime might be inclined to destroy.

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥:  House Republicans are threatening to tie California relief to the debt ceiling, using it as a cudgel to get Democrats on board to their plans.  The 🤡 🤡 position is that those California “Marxists” brought the fires upon themselves, so they apparently deserve to live with the consequences. Funny, how tying up relief is rarely an issue when the victims live in red states like Florida. For her part, Georgia’s Margie Q wants to know why those incompetent California Democrats aren’t seeding clouds or otherwise using their Jewish Space lasers to force fire drenching rainstorms. The Supreme Court is due to issue its opinion on whether or not Tik Tok can continue to operate in the US as a Chinese owned entity. However, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg, among others, report that China is preparing for a sale forcing decision by exploring selling Tik Tok to Elon Musk.  Elon has already turned Xwitter into a vehicle for hate speech and bigotry so why not see if he can do more of the same with Tik Tok?  The Washinton Post continues to go up in smoke, Jennifer Rubin who was once their conservative commentator, but over the past few years has become a vocal anti-Trumper, has jumped ship.  She’s launching an online publication called The Contrarian with former ethics czar Walt Eisen. A long list of familiar writers and commentators including Andrew Weissmann, Andy Borowitz, Asha Rangappa, Barbara McQuade, George Conway, Harry Litman, John Dean, Jon Alter, Joyce Vance, Ruth Ben-Ghiat and Steve Vladek have already announced that they will be contributors.

Lots of talk about a ceasefire and partial hostage release deal being “finalized” whatever that means but still nothing concrete to report.

#BringThemAllHomeNow