Confirming Crazy 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥:  The California fires are still burning, the wind is still blowing, the death count is climbing but none of that has stopped the recriminations and blame game from taking off. Frustration from people who’ve watched their homes go up in flames is understandable but from the uninformed and frequently biased peanut gallery not so much, especially when a lot of the accusations are based on conspiracies rather than confirmed facts and a lot of it is because California is a largely blue state led by a charismatic Governor who Republicans love to diss. By the way Canadians, and Mexicans, two other groups Trump and his crowd throw shade at, have been helping to put out the fires.  Fueling political ones, Wyoming Senator John Barrasso who is third in Senate Republican leadership, more than suggested on Sunday that any aid sent to California would have strings attached because obviously all those fires are total the fault of liberals and have nothing to do with any of that climate change mishigas (insanity for the Yiddish impaired). Barrasso who is responsible for whipping confirmation votes for Trump’s appointees also explained away the need to push back director of national security nominee Tulsi Gabbard’s confirmation hearing by saying that her paperwork was lost somewhere in the Office of Government Ethics which is the like saying that your homework was eaten by your dog when you don’t even have a dog. On Friday, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee finally received a copy of the FBI’s Hegseth background check report.  Word is that Hegseth benefited from a “hold my beer” Brett Kavanaugh style lite review, one which intentionally omitted potentially harmful interviews. His hearing is scheduled to begin tomorrow. On Sunday, The Washington Post Editorial Board, or what’s left of it, ran through a list of Trump’s nominees, pointing out that though few if any of them would have been their choices and that many had little in the way of credible qualifications, four stood out as being beyond the pale. Their no-go list includes Gabbard, Hegseth, Health and Human Services nominee RFK Jr, and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) nominee Russel Vought. Vaccine opponent RFK’s failings are well known by now but Vought, who unfortunately will probably make it through confirmation, is a truly frightening character.  He served in Trump’s first administration, was the architect of the Project 2025 playbook and plans to defund projects that have already been funded by Congress, a violation of the Impoundment Control Act. That’s a realistic concern given that Vought held up funding to Ukraine during Trump’s last administration and then “defied” a congressional subpoena about doing so, an indication that he has no qualms about breaking the law to impose Trump and co-president Elon Musk’s will.  Turning back to Hegseth, even the rightwing National Review, is concerned about his qualifications and suitability, they are now calling him a dead man walking. Confirmation hearings begin this week, and if Republicans stick to form, most if not all of them will fall in line, confirming even the worst of the bunch.   

Make America Sick Again: Sticking to form, House Republicans are reverting back to their 2016 playbook.  Their plan is to fund the renewal and some expansion of Trump’s first term tax cuts, largely for the wealthy, by going after Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) and Medicaid funding while also seeking to cut back on SNAP (food stamps).  In 2016, 20 million people, got their health insurance coverage through Obamacare, that number is now up to 45 million with the largest share of this year’s increase coming from red states so theoretically those cuts shouldn’t fly but then again with Trump and Elon threatening any House and Senate members that don’t adhere to their party line, none of that will matter.  In addition, the work requirements that Republicans want to impose on those receiving health coverage through Medicaid haven’t done much when tried largely because most recipients who can work already do but when cutting taxes is your goal, imposing harm on the neediest isn’t really a problem and really why do people need to eat or preserve their health anyway?  Republicans many of whom have never bought into the health care as a right position may get a little help from the Supreme Court which has agreed to hear a case, from where else but Texas, where plaintiffs are seeking to eliminate provisions of the ACA that require full coverage of preventive health services. The Texans are particularly upset about the requirement that plans fully pay for things like cancer, hypertension and diabetes screenings, vaccines, contraceptives, and PrEP, the highly effective preventive treatment for HIV and AIDS.  The last two services are particularly concerning for the religious crowd who apparently believe that denying birth control and AIDS prevention drugs will eliminate all of what they consider to be immoral behavior.  On the subject of AIDS, RFK who doesn’t believe in germ theory also doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS so that’s another thing to look forward to, should he be confirmed. 

Legal News: Trump is officially a felon, one who only had his wrist slapped because his sentence was just an unconditional discharge.  Rudy Giuliani has been found in contempt of court for continuing to hide his assets from Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, not that he seems to care.  Special Prosecutor Jack Smith is officially a history burger at least until FBI Director to be Kash Patel seeks to prosecute him for treason.  Smith resigned at the end of last week leaving the fate of his two-part report in the hands of Attorney General Merrick Garland, SCOTUS and President Biden who could just release the entire report because didn’t the Supreme Court Justices already rule that presidents are kings, a ruling that should apply to presidents not named Trump too? Tik Tok could be on its way out as well. During last week’s oral arguments, SCOTUS didn’t appear receptive to arguments made by Tik Tok’s lawyers that the recently passed law that calls for its Chinese owners to sell it to a US entity was an unconstitutional violation of the company’s First Amendment rights.  Instead, the Justices appeared to agree with Congress that national security concerns trump First Amendment rights, ironic since Trump, having received bigly bucks from a major Tik Tok shareholder, is now okay with Tik Tok’s majority owner being controlled by the Chinese government.  Should SCOTUS, as expected, rule against Tik Tok, the APP won’t immediately disappear from the US, but it will or should be removed from APP stores; already downloaded versions will start to deteriorate since no updates will be passed on to users.  In any case, the expectation is that a new US based investor group will ultimately buy Tik Tok. The new investors will need to create their own addictive algorithm and, judging by the potential investors who’ve been mentioned, the new algorithm will likely be as lethal to users’ collective brains as the Chinese owned version.  On the subject of brain damage, it appears that Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg is now fully on board the Trump/Musk train.  Facebook will no longer be banning misinformation or hate and has thrown its DEI folks under the bus.  

#BringThemAllHomeNow