Déjà Vu All Over Again 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🕎

Guns, Guns, Hate: On Saturday, a shooter killed two and wounded nine others at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. For two of the survivors the shooting was one of those increasingly American déjà vu moments as each of them had earlier survived other school shootings. Late yesterday, authorities in Providence released the “person of interest” they had in custody, announcing that their investigation is moving in “another direction,” police talk for we zeroed in on the wrong guy and are now searching for the real and very dangerous shooter. So maybe not such a good time to be in or around the Brown campus or Providence or anywhere else if you happen to be Jewish because while we were digesting the Brown horror, a father and son terrorist team in Sydney Australia said hold my beer, we can top that and went on a shooting spree at Bondi Beach, killing fifteen people and hospitalizing 27 more who were celebrating the first night of Hanukkah. Among the dead are a ten-year old girl, an elderly Holocaust survivor and two rabbis.  Among the injured is an Israeli survivor of October 7, a human rights lawyer who had moved to Australia to work with the country’s Jewish Community on combatting anti-Semitism. Clearly, he’s needed in Australia where anti-Semitism and acts against Jews and Jewish institutions have surged since October 7. Australia’s total population is around 25.7 million of which somewhere around 117,000, or 0.4%, are Jewish.  So few people being the target of so much hatred should be shocking but sadly if history has taught us anything, it’s not and as Bret Stephens put it in today’s NY Times when globalization of the intifada is a rallying cry and leaders fail to pushback, murderous rampages like Bondi Beach happen. Because the events at Brown and Bondi Beach weren’t awful enough for any weekend especially one marked by what’s supposed to be the joyous Hanukkah holiday, last night we learned that actor/director all around nice guy Rob Reiner, first introduced to many of us as Archie Bunker’s son-in-law Meathead, and his wife Michele were stabbed to death at their Brentwood, California home. In their case, it wasn’t guns, anti-Semitism, or a random act of violent crime.  Instead, it’s reported that the likely murderer was the Reiner’s troubled adult son.  If only we could roll the clocks back and start the weekend over again.

More 💩:  It’s tiresome to hear again and again, but Trump who has his Department of Justice looking into how the 2020 election which he clearly lost was rigged was complaining about it again this weekend. This time he also added in the 2024 California results.  To state the obvious, he did not win in 2020, and he did not win California in 2024. Also, as if lying about election results, inflation, grocery prices, boats in the Caribbean, and his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein isn’t enough he’s now ranting again about snakes.  This time his assertion is that 28,000 people were killed by Peru’s “most venomous in the world snake.”  Between 2000 and 2015 only ten people died in Peru of snake bites and the most venomous snakes in the world reside in Australia not Peru. The snake thing, while trivial in the scheme of things is indicative of his instability and how much he lies, about everything, lots of which affects all of us much more than those Peruvian vipers. One of those things is health care.  His plan, the one he was going to release in two weeks, doesn’t exist.  Some Republicans are trying to come up with something, anything, that they can pass quickly but at this late date just about the only thing that would spare people from seeing their health insurance premiums skyrocket would be a clean extension of the Obamacare subsidies.  Funny thing about sending Congress home for months to avoid a vote on the Epstein files is that when time is needed to hammer out a compromise plan, there’s no time left to do so though oddly enough RFK and his anti-vax health fantasists have found the time to plan putting black box warnings on COVID vaccines, the ones that saved millions worldwide.  Anyway, the Trump administration has its priorities and apparently as they said last week going after antifa, an amorphous organization that doesn’t exist except in the mind of Trump’s FBI is apparently its focus.  Of course, the neat thing about an amorphous organization is that the FBI can label anyone it doesn’t like, as in anyone who loudly criticizes Trump or organizes a rally against his policies as antifa and so it’s fair to assume they will. The few remaining WW II veterans might want to weigh in on what being anti-fascist really means.  As to the DOJ, while Lindsey Halligan is still a faux US Attorney, the lesser-known Julianne Murray who until last week had been the faux US Attorney from Delaware has resigned her post. There’s a good chance that a few more of Trump’s unconfirmed “acting” US Attorneys will follow suit though they’d be wise to act fast because while Murray like Alina Habba before her is going to work elsewhere at the DOJ, it’s not clear how many more people AG Bondi can absorb into make-work jobs in her office.

         

 

Pillow Talk 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

Dumb and Dumber:  Yesterday, Mike Lindell the election denying pillow man announced that he is running for Governor of Minnesota. The field of Republicans lining up to challenge Democratic Governor Tim Walz who is running for a third term is large so Lindell might not end up as the Republican’s candidate but his entrance into the field says a lot about the 🤡 🚗 that the GOP has become.  Also, yesterday we learned that the Department of Justice had once again failed to convince a Virginia grand jury to indict NY Attorney General Letitia James.  AG James hasn’t committed mortgage fraud, but Trump is so down the retribution rabbit hole that his abettor AG Bondi keeps trying to placate him, wasting our tax dollars on frivolous indictment attempts. Bondi is also trying to force a confirmation vote for insurance lawyer/beauty queen Lindsey Halligan in order to legitimize her status as a Virginia US Attorney, but at least so far, that’s not going anywhere because as much as he’d like to please Trump, Senate Leader Thune continues to abide by the blue slip convention and neither of Virginia’s Democratic Senator are willing to provide a blue slip for Halligan. Thune is doing that because he knows that while Trump will be gone someday, Republicans will want that blue slip privilege if Democrats ever regain control of the Senate.  Because all of this wasn’t enough wheel spinning and stupidity for one day, last night Trump announcing he was pardoning Tina Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, who was found guilty of trying to breach the state’s voting systems to “prove” Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020.  Tina Peters, currently serving a nine-year jail term in a state facility, was found guilty of a state crime, so Trump’s pardon is performative, even he knows that, but much of his base, or what’s left of it doesn’t and those who do love that he’s trying. Clearly, given the state of the economy and the health insurance crisis Trump needs that base more than ever because as evidenced by recent election results and yesterday’s Indiana redistricting fail, his hold over Republican politicians is starting to crack. Despite his threats, which included promises to primary anyone who voted against the redistricting amplified by death and bomb threats from his crazies, the redistricting attempt which had already passed in the Indiana House failed in the Indiana Senate by a vote of 31 to 19 with 21 Republicans joining all ten Democrats in opposition. In theory the redistricting would have resulted in two additional red congressional seats leaving all nine of Indiana’s House seats in the hands of Republicans. When asked about the loss, Trump said he hadn’t really been involved in the debacle, odd given all the tweets proving otherwise, including one threatening to cut off federal funding for Indiana’s roads, National Guard bases, and other major projects if the redistricting plan didn’t pass.  Indiana is a very conservative state but as evidenced by former VP Mike Pence, every now and then conscience trumps conservatism.  Who knows, maybe a few of the state’s legislators aren’t happy that Trump was okay with their former governor being hung on January 6.  

Economics 101:  Fed Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announced a 25-basis point cut in the federal funds rate but also expressed concern about inflation saying that but for Trump’s tariffs, inflation, currently at 3%, would be closer to 2%.  Clearly that’s a message that the tariff loving Trump who is itching to replace Powell before the May end of his term as chair with someone like his oozing economic advisor Kevin Hassett didn’t like hearing. Trump also couldn’t have been happy with Powell saying that plans for future rate cuts should be put on hold for the immediate future. As to inflation, it’s not just about the cost of housing and groceries, health insurance costs, a component of core inflation is going up, up and away.  Yesterday, the Senate voted down several health insurance options although Republican Senators Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and Josh Hawley of Missouri all crossed the aisle to support Democrat’s preferred solution, the extension of the expiring Obamacare subsidies for three more years.  There are also around a dozen House Republicans who would vote for some form of a subsidy extension so while the subsidies will probably expire at year end maybe a lifeline is still possible, though probably not. Obamacare isn’t perfect but it continues to be hard to understand why so many Republicans think pushing people off insurance or providing them with only $2,000 to pay for their care or to buy useless plans is an acceptable alternative.  But then again, this House and Senate voted to cut Medicaid and other related health care programs by $1 trillion to fund tax cuts for the wealthiest and all that bailing out of farmers and bombing fishing/drug boats costs money too, not to mention the costs associated with increasing the department of Homeland Security’s fleet of planes or all those ads featuring ICE Barbie Noem.  On the health care front, measles is still out there.  South Carolina is experiencing an “accelerating” outbreak with the majority of the cases occurring among unvaccinated children and teenagers and we’re entering flu, COVID, and RSV season.  Though as reported in Bloomberg a study from the CDC notes that COVID vaccines reduced the risk of an emergency or urgent care visit by 76% for children aged 9 months to 4 years and by slightly more than one-half for those in the 5 to 17-year age bracket, RFK’s crowd continues to attack the COVID vaccine while also casting aspersions at the ones for flu and RSV.  What could go wrong this winter when swarms of sick people of all ages, many without health insurance show up at financially strained hospital emergency rooms assuming that is that they can find one that’s still open.

More 💩: ICE Barbie is either woefully ignorant or a bad liar or both.  Yesterday when asked during her Congressional testimony how many US Military veterans had been deported, she said that none had been.  Unfortunately for her Democrat Rhode Island Representative Seth Magaziner had the receipts in the form of a zoom call with a decorated veteran who’d been deported to Korea. A few other family members of deported vets were also in the audience.  The flustered Noem rushed out of her testimony claiming she had to leave early to attend another “important” meeting that everyone knew was cancelled.  It’s hard to figure out what exactly is going on with our “war” with Venezuela except that we’ve now moved on from only bombing drug boats to capturing ships full of oil, and a number of members of Congress are concerned that War/Beer Hegseth is destroying or planning to destroy the videos of the so-called double tap murders. That’s a concern that extends to the DOJ’s Epstein files, the ones that are due to be released soon.  Keeping with the theme of pedophilia and misogyny, the NY Times has a piece out about how the infamous Tate brothers, who’ve been credibly accused of violence against women of all ages were allowed to fly to the US from Romania where they were being held for their criminal activities. The NYT reports that son Barron was one of the people who pushed for their release.  The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. And lastly, as a parting shot Margie Q is trying to get enough Republicans on board for a motion to vacate the chair to unseat Speaker Mike Johnson.   

Happy Hanukkah.

 

 

 

Calling Warner Wolf 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

Trump Taj Mahal: Trump’s casinos have all gone belly-up but, apparently, he still likes gambling so he went to one in the Pennsylvania Poconos last night to brag about how well the economy is doing.  The rally was because his Chief of Staff-Ice Maiden Susie Wiles, who he called Susie Trump, told him that he needs to get back on the campaign trail or face more truly dreadful, for him, not the rest of us, election results. He stuck to the script on his teleprompter for a few minutes asserting that inflation and prices are way down. Then he went rogue, attacking and blaming “autopen” Biden for everything bad, trashing Black Somali immigrants, questioning why more Scandinavians don’t move here, calling those who criticize his international jaunts stupid, bragging about the zillions of dollars of tariffs he’s collected including the $12 billion he now plans to hand to the farmers who need to be bailed out because of those tariffs, and calling affordability concerns a hoax perpetrated by evil Democrats. There was also a nonsensical riff on school children needing fewer lead pencils, a variation on girls needing less dolls. Some in the crowd bought what he was selling, no surprise because why else would they have shown up, but as evidenced by the results of two more elections, one in Miami and the other in Georgia, fewer voters are buying his shtick. With 59% of the vote, Democrat Eileen Higgins was elected mayor of Miami. She is the first Democrat to win the city’s mayorship in 28 years. Her Republican opponent, Emilio González, was endorsed by both Trump and Ron DeSantis.  In the Athens area of Georgia, Democrat Eric Eisler eked out a victory in a special election for a state house seat. The retired Republican he replaced had previously won the seat with 60% of the vote. Maybe it was the news about those election results that spun Trump out of control, or maybe he is just in a permanent state of crazy, but last night after returning from Pennsylvania he posted a very lengthy and loonier than ever message on Truth Social in which he said no president has ever worked as hard as him, stopped as many wars, created the “Greatest Economy in the History of the Country,” and so on before launching into a diatribe about how healthy he is, how no one has taken and scored such high scores on as many medical and mental acuity tests as he has.  He then said that anyone who comments on his health, especially those NY Times reporters and editors who have are  “true Enemies of the People, and we should do something about it.”  Though he didn’t call for anyone at the NY Times to be shot at sunrise he did say the “horrible, biased, and untruthful” paper should cease publication. We don’t know if Dr Twitter is right about him taking medication for Alzheimer’s, but he sure seems to be exhibiting paranoia, one of the signs of the dreaded disease. And yes, he’s still president weighing in on media mergers and tossing Europe and Ukraine to the Russian bear.

Let’s Go to the Videotape: Last week Trump said that he’d be okay with the Pentagon releasing the tape of what is now known as the “double tap” incident, but what should more accurately be called evidence of the extrajudicial killing of two alleged drug runners who to the extent that they were running drugs were transporting cocaine rather than fentanyl to Suriname, a country near Venezuela, rather than the US. Having either forgotten about his earlier statement or just totally annoyed that everyone else hasn’t, he denied ever saying he’d have no problem releasing the full video,  lashing out at ABC News reporter Rachel Scott, another Black woman if anyone is counting, calling her “the most obnoxious,” and her assertion “fake news” after she asked whether his administration would commit to releasing the tape. Emboldened by Trump’s remarks, Secretary of War and Beer Pete Hegseth now insists that the Pentagon needs more time to evaluate the “double tap” tape to ensure that it doesn’t reveal anything about our super-secret strike capability, an odd assertion from a guy who shared top secret intel on a Signal chat with a journalist, some friends, and all the foreign adversaries listening in.  The boat video isn’t the only evidence haunting members of the Trump administration; there’s also the Fox News program where Hegseth went on and on about how members of the military should never follow illegal orders as well as a brief written by Attorney General Pam Bondi in which she echoes what the six “seditionist” Democratic lawmakers said about how military officers should not follow unlawful orders.  Awkward and likely a problem if she decides to move forward with the prosecution of any of the targeted Democrats. If she does move forward maybe she can get Alina Habba to help her out.  Habba resigned from her position as New Jersey’s faux Interim US Attorney and is now serving as Bondi’s senior advisor.  At least that’s what she’s doing for now, Bondi is still trying to get the decision that left her twiddling her thumbs in NJ overturned. As to Hegseth, he may be spending more time in Washington since House legislators have stuck a provision in the defense authorization legislation that cuts his travel budget until he releases the “double tap” tape which could mean that he’ll miss the opportunity to do pull ups with RFK and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy who want more exercise sites at airports, not more air traffic controllers, just more pull-up bars.  And who doesn’t want to sit next to a sweaty traveler, even one in Duffy mandated professional attire.  

More 💩: ProPublica reports that in 1993 Trump signed a mortgage for a “Bermuda style” home in Palm Beach, Florida, pledging that it would be his principal residence. Seven weeks later, he got another mortgage for a neighboring property, attesting that it too would be his principal residence. He’s never resided in either.  Both houses are used as rental properties.  Lisa Cook and Tish James would like to have a word. 😊  How is it that Trump is so frequently guilty of the “crimes” he accuses other of committing?     

 

 

Who's On First 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

Happy Birthday 🎂: The US Park Service provides free entrance to national parks on certain holidays. Going forward, Martin Luther King Day and Juneteenth, two holidays previously included on the list, will not be among those “free” days but Trump’s birthday will.  Currently only one other country, North Korea, celebrates the birthday of a living leader.  Keeping with that theme, last week Trump added his name to the US Institute for Peace, the independent not for profit organization whose mission is to build peace through non violent methods rather than through double-tap boat attacks and extrajudicial killings. Trump has been trying to wrest control of the organiation from it’s board for months but  has been stymied by the courts though it wouldn’t be a stretch to believe that the Supreme Court will ultimately decide that he can fire and replace it’s leadership because these days “his” Justices mostly let him do whatever he wants.  To that end, on Friday, SCOTUS agreed to decide the legality of Trump’s order to heavily restrict the right to birthright citizenship, the constitutional principle that individuals born on US soil are automatically United States citizens. When Trump issued the executive order telling government agencies not to recognize citizenship of children born in the US if neither parent is an American citizen or legal permanent resident main stream legal pundits scoffed at him, saying that there was no way that the courts would sign off and the lower courts haven’t but as we’ve since learned this SCOTUS habitually disappoints.  The Justices have repeatedly shown precedent doesn’t concern them so who knows what they’ll do.  Just the fact that four of them agreed to hear the case provides an indication that some of them are willing to toss birthright citizenship out the window.  Justice Kavanaugh has already said that race based immigration policing is okay, so why should we doubt that he and a critical number of his colleagues wouldn’t be willing to limit granting citizenship to newbies, especially brown and Black ones?

Pardon Me:  During his first term, Trump issued clemency through pardons and commutations to 327 people.  Not even one year into this term and he’s already granted more than 1600 get out of jail free cards to a diverse crowd that includes the January 6 insurrectionists, George of many names Santos, former Honduran leader Juan Orlando Hernández who played cocaine footsie with the Sinaloa Cartel leader El Chapo, and Binance’s crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao whose company funneled funds to sex traffickers and terrorists groups like Hamas.  All of these individuals thanked Trump profusely with many compensating him with “donations” to his “library” and/or ballroom project.  Last week, Trump surprised Speaker Johnson by granting Texas’ Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar one of those coveted pardons.  Cuellar thanked Trump profusely but then immediately registered to run again in his swing district as a Democrat.  It turns out that Cuellar’s decision to stick with the Democratic party caught Trump by surprise and not in a good way so over the weekend Trump bashed him on Truth Social for showing “such a lack of LOYALTY” promising not to be so nice “next time.”  So basically Cuellar, and his daughters who had written Trump flattering letters to get the pardon have pulled a fast one on the Mango Maniac at least for now.  That’s amusing but also provides evidence of what most of us have long believed, Trump’s pardons are transactional, most cost bigly bucks and even those that don’t come with expectations. The Cuellar “affair” also confirms what Real Estate buddy/negotiator Steve Witkoff advised Russian negotiators, that to influence Trump, slather him with praise and “make nice” phone calls.  The Cuellar pardon is small potatoes in the scheme of things, especially when compared to how much Trump has changed US policy in response to Russian cajoling (pee tape diplomacy?).  Last week Trump unveiled the US’s new National Security Strategy, which slams Europe for policies leading to “civilizational erasure” while recasting Russia as a good buddy,  No surprise that Russia is welcoming the new strategy calling it largely consistent with its vision, possibly because they helped write it?  Over the weekend, while attending the Doha Economic Forum in Qatar, first son Don Jr suggested that his father would walk away from Ukraine unless the “corrupt” country didn’t get with the Russia peace program. Very self owning for a Trump to highlight corruption but sadly, he may also he right.   

Cabinetry:  There are lots of rumors about which cabinet member Trump will defenestrate first.  Since so many of them are awful and incompetent, it’s a race to the bottom. There’s Pete Hegseth who spent the weekend doubling down on his assertion that killing “narco-terrorists” dangling from blown-up boats is okay while also asserting that due to fog of war and his early departure from the Situation Room, for a beer run maybe, he had nothing to do with those extrajudicial killings anyway. By the way, Congress is voting on the next defense authorization bill.  It doesn’t change the Department of Defense’s name to the Department of War but does remove IVF funding for military families because Speaker Johnson believes IVF is ungodly. Back to “who’s on first,” while growing, Hegseth’s death count pales in comparison to the number of deaths that RFK Jr will be responsible for once the policies passed by his Advisory Committee on Immunizations go into effect.  Last week ACIP said no to the decades long, live-saving policy of innoculating babies with the Hepatitis B vaccine before they leave the hospital.   Estimates are that by cutting down, almost eliminating, liver disease and liver cancer, the Hep B vaccine has saved the lives of 90,000 US children since 1991.  ACIP didn’t totally nix the vaccine, instead they said that babies could get it later during one of their follow-up visits.  The problem with that is that lots of babies, particularly from lower income families, including those who are being priced out of the insurance market, don’t make it to those follow-up visits and many others will see the policy change as just one more reason not to vaccinate their kids. Then there’s ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, Trump doesn’t really care that she’s responsible for “accidentlly” incarcerating and/or beating up citizens and sending migrants, largely those without criminal records, to deadly places  but apparently he’s grown weary of the stories about her not so secret affair and questionable business dealings, including the purchase of engineless planes from Spirit Airlines, with Corey Lewandowski, his one time campaign manager. For what its worth, a number of media outlets are reporting that she is likely to be replaced by Virginia’s outgoing Governor Glenn Youngkin in January. Also, we shouldn’t forget about Kash Patel.  Granted a momentary reprieve for capturing the guy who left bombs at the RNC and DNC on January 6, he’s now fending back accusations that he had the SWAT team inappropriately protecting his girlfriend serve as chauffeur for her inebriated friends. Nice that he cared enough about their safety to get them rides home, but isn’t that what UBER is for?  As to the RNC/DNC bomber, turns out that he may be a Trump supporting election skeptic.  If true, maybe he can get one of those Trump pardons.  If not true, it’s a great legal strategy by his lawyers to say he's one.

More 💩:  Fresh off receiving the first ever and totally made-up FIFA peace award and hosting his first awards event at the Kennedy, soon to be Trump, Center, Trump is expected to go back on the road this week to brag about how well the economy is doing.  His work is cut out for him and it’s far from clear that lying about the price of gas or all the marvelous things that tariffs are doing will help because people who shop for groceries know when things are costing more and also know when they or their friends have been laid off and their kids can’t find jobs. According to Fox 76% of voters view the economy negatively. That’s worse than the 67% who felt that way in July and the 70% who said the same at the end of Biden’s term.  Moreover 46% of the respondents to a recent Politico Poll said that the cost of thngs is worse than they can remember it being.  That includes 37% of those who voted for him in 2024.  In addition, despite his assertion that all things bad are Biden’s fault, 25% of his voters say Trump’s responsible for the current state of the economy.  So maybe calling affordability a “con job” is an early holidy gift for Democrats, one that that will fuel political ads for much of next year.  And turning back to that FIFA peace award “ceremony” putting aside how seriously weird it was, how nuts is it that Trump thinks it is a real prize. As they said in the Apollo 13 movie, “Houston, we have a problem.”  A bigly one.    

 

 

Who's Next? 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🚤

First They Came For:  In his famous poem Martin Niemoller warned “against apathy and silence in the face of injustice” by listing all of the groups that were demonized and then hauled off in the years leading up to the Holocaust while he failed to speak out. It’s fair to assume that Trump is unfamiliar with Niemoller’s writings because reading and history aren’t his things. It’s also fair to assume that if he were familiar with the poem he’d see it as a step-by-step instruction manual. With the help of junior Goebbels Stephen Miller, whose family knows all about what happened during the Holocaust, Trump’s been going after brown people and during the 2024 campaign he went after Ohio’s Haitians, accusing them of eating cats.  This week Trump’s moved on to demonizing Minnesota’s Somali immigrant population. It’s not clear if he’s targeted the Somalis because Minnesota Governor Walz has gotten under his skin, most recently by pushing him to release the results of his latest MRI, or whether it’s because he despises Somali born Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, or maybe it’s just because the Somalis are Black and Muslim without oil money to throw his way. Yes, there’s been recent news about some members of the Somali community engaging in benefits related corruption but, as evidenced by many of the pardons he keeps handing out like candy, corruption doesn’t seem to bother Trump when it’s committed by his supporters and people with open wallets so it’s more than likely it’s not the corruption but the that the Somalis are not white, not MAGA, and from one of those 💩hole countries he frequently rants about.  So don’t turn your eyes away, don’t be silent, anyone of us could be next. On a more conspiratorial note, also don’t miss that he’s got his team spinning stories about the not so normal string of “routine” MRIs that Governor Walz queried.  Noting that his hand is once again camouflaged, this time with make-up and flesh colored band-aids, Dr Twitter, who attended the Medical School of fanciful thinking with Dr Google posits that Trump could be getting monthly infusions of Leqembi, a drug used to treat early Alzheimer’s. It’s recommended that patients on the drug undergo multiple MRI scans. That could explain Trump’s increasingly irrational behavior and frequent nodding off during press conferences but then again, he’s long been irrational and hate-filled so there’s that. 🤷‍♀️

Cabinetry:  So, it turns out then when you pick a cabinet based on their fealty and how “hot” they look during Fox appearances, you get a cabinet full of unqualified incompetents with camera ready hair.  Trump is now playing whack-a-mole, trying to fend off accusations against Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, FBI Chief Kash Patel, ICE Barbie Kristi Noem, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Health Secretary RFK, to name a few.  Yesterday, a select group of Senators and Congresspeople saw the video of the September 2 sinking of the alleged “narco-terrorist” boat while also hearing from Admiral Bradley, the Naval officer who ran the operation, or at least ran it enough to be left holding Trump and Hegseth’s blame bag. Notably Bradley was the Admiral du jour because Hegseth forced his predecessor, Admiral Alvin Holsey to resign for pushing back against the boat attacks. Republican viewers of the video like Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton are going with the “it wasn’t so bad” because extra judicial killing of drug smugglers is okay even when it falls into war crime territory.  Democrats, not so much.  Connecticut Congressman Jim Hines says that the video, particularly the killing of the two hanging on to the shreds of their boat, was the worst thing he’s ever seen.  Hines and a number of others, mostly Democrats, want the video to be shown to everyone in Congress as well as all of us.  Trump says that he does too but then again, we still haven’t seen the Epstein files so take what he says with a grain of sea salt. Whether or not Hegseth ordered the killing of all the boat’s occupants or not, the whole operation as well as the killing of at least 87 other alleged drug smugglers on a total of 23 vessels may all be illegal because we are not at war and anyway if we are, the Department of Defense’s Law of War Manual forbids the killing of shipwrecked personnel or the targeting of enemy combatants who are unable to fight. The September 2 “double-tap” is only one of Hegseth’s problems.  Yesterday, the contents of the Pentagon’s Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins report on Hegseth’s inappropriate Signal chat, the one that The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg was accidentally invited into, was revealed. In short, Hegseth’s actions “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed US mission objectives and potential harm to US pilots” because he sent information identifying the quantity and strike times of manned US aircraft over hostile territory over an unapproved unsecure network. Naturally, Hegseth who refused to provide his phone or to otherwise cooperate with the IG’s investigation leaving the IG to rely on Jeffrey Goldberg’s transcripts of the Signal chat said that he was fully exonerated.  He wasn’t. That said he’s still Secretary of War and Beer and it’s not a stretch to believe that Acting IG Stebbins will soon be out of a job.

The Other 🦫s:  Kash Patel who has come under a lot of criticism of late for flying his girlfriend around and otherwise mismanaging the FBI may have earned himself a reprieve yesterday by announcing the arrest of the person believed to have left the pipe bombs outside of the RNC and DNC on January 6, 2021.  He used the opportunity to attack all things Biden by pointing out that his predecessor, the Trump appointed Chris Wray, had failed to accomplish what he had accomplished in less than one year.  He has a point but then again Wray was kind of busy investigating and arresting those who’d attacked the Capitol on that fateful day, the gun carrying, pole swinging, Auschwitz t-shirt wearing miscreants who have since been pardoned because they unlike the alleged bomber were only tourists. Also, as any watcher of Dateline can attest, sometimes it takes years to put all the incriminating details together.  Kind of interesting that Patel’s announcement came during what was otherwise a bad news week for Trump. Attorney General Bondi also participated in Patel’s press conference but then her day went downhill after a Virginia  Grand Jury failed to indict New York Attorney General Tish James, this time faux US Attorney Lindsey Halligan wasn’t involved.  It’s not clear if Bondi will try again though Trump will probably push her to because retribution. As to ICE Barbie Noem, who could have guessed, that her rushed efforts to hire 10,000 INS officials isn’t turning out all that well.  Apparently, her new recruits haven’t been adequately vetted, many can’t read, are unfit, including my favorite a 469-pound guy whose own doctor declared him unfit for physical activity, and a few have even been caught physically accosting their female team members.  And, despite his promise to Louisiana Senator Cassidy, the doctor who should have known better than to believe him, RFK Jr is about to disrupt vaccine schedules.  People will die but RFK is okay with that because he believes in raw milk, Vitamin A, ivermectin, and survival of the fittest.    

Other 💩:  There was some good news for Republicans on the redistricting trail.  Yesterday, the Supreme Court which appears ready to rule that racial gerrymandering is cool said that Texas can move forward using its new maps, the ones that have been drawn to disenfranchise Democrat voting people of color.  The perhaps not so good news for Texas is that if the results of this week’s Tennessee election are any indication, some of Texas’s previously safe Republican districts could now be ripe for flipping.  One district that Republicans hoped to win, the one currently represented by Democratic Congressman Henry Cuellar will likely remain in Democratic hands.  Cuellar and his wife had been indicted on bribery and   

Money laundering charges by Biden’s DOJ but is now the beneficiary of a Trump pardon. Cuellar thanked Trump but then immediately announced he was running for reelection as a Democrat something that makes Hakeem Jeffries happy but left the Mike Johnson just a wee bit aghast because he’d been counting on winning Cuellar’s district with a new candidate or with a “converted” to Republican Cuellar. Johnson has been facing lots of push back from members of his party including NY’s Elise Stefanik who has attacked his inept leadership.  Stefanik who is hoping to snag the Republican nomination to run against NY Governor Kathy Hochul has had a hard year.  First Trump pulled her UN Ambassador nomination away moments before her confirmation vote because he needed her to stay in the House to vote for his Big Ugly Bill, then while she was ramping up her run for Governor by attacking NY Mayor-elect Mamdani he bearhugged the “anti-Semitic” “socialist” (her words). She might now be positioning herself to take over Johnson’s spot, a consolation prize if her run for governor doesn’t work out. Stefanik isn’t Johnson’s only problem, a number of other Republican Congresswomen are not happy with him, something about him not being all that into promoting female colleagues who he’d prefer to see at home playing tradwives. South Carolina’s Nancy Mace who is not planning to run for reelection because she like Stefanik is running for governor is now threatening to join Margie Q by quitting in January. Then again, Mace is erratic so her plans may not be set in stone.                  

                              

 

 Boat Meet Bus 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡 🚤 🚌 

🤡 🤡:  Yesterday, after spending Monday night posting 160 messages on Truth Social including one by conspiracist Alex Jones that asserted Michele Obama controlled Joe Biden’s autopen during the waning days of his administration, Trump held one of his North Korean style news conferences.  He stuck with his usual lies, asserting that inflation and grocery prices were way down even though neither are while also taking credit for reducing drug prices by as much as 800%, mathematically impossible since that would imply that people are being paid to take their meds. He claimed that he has secured $18 trillion of new foreign investment in the US, a number that is two times higher than the also very exaggerated number claimed on his White House website. Keeping with the crazy, ICE Barbie Noem praised him for this year’s relatively minor hurricane season, expressing appreciation for his control over the weather gods. Could it be that Trump has gotten hold of a few of Margie Q’s Jewish Space Lasers? Trump, who announced on Monday that his most recent MRI, the one he took just for the heck of it, proved that he remains the healthiest man ever to occupy the Oval Office, nodded off when Secretary of State and lots of other things Rubio spoke; maybe it was all that overnight tweeting rather than the reality that while he’s still breathing, he is not the healthy guy he claims to be since super healthy guys don’t have cankles, cardiac insufficiency or MRI’s of their abdomens and vascular systems.

🚤 🚌 Trump did manage to stay awake when the subject turned to the “double tap” obliteration of the alleged narco-terrorist boat, the more than likely illegal act that intentionally killed two people who may or may not have been smuggling drugs. Trump claimed that he’d been totally unaware of the September 2 strike when it happened, theoretically possible given how much time he’s been spending on his ever-expanding East Wing ball room boondoggle, the project that his original architect appears to be distancing himself from. He’s sure that whatever his SSecretary of War and Peace Hegseth ordered was totally copacetic.  For his part Hegseth whose nameplate either intentionally or not so intentionally included two Nazi evoking S’s yesterday insists that the decision to double tap the boat wasn’t his, instead he shifted the blame on to Admiral Frank M Bradley, the mission commander who according to Hegseth was responsible for killing the two who’d been clinging to the hull of their blown-up boat. Hegseth who’d previously claimed that the Washington Post story that revealed the “double tap” killing was just more fake news, especially frustrating for him because he thought that banning mainstream media from the Pentagon would result in less real news, now acknowledges that the attack took place.  However, no surprise, he’s now distancing himself from it, saying he left the room after the initial attack, missing the “double” part altogether. Military law experts say that a second-strike targeting survivors would have been illegal under any circumstance, armed conflict or not, but especially in this case because the US isn’t even in a legitimate armed conflict. Admiral Bradley, who until following Hegseth’s order to obliterate people and being thrown under the bus, had a good reputation.  If he hasn’t already, he should retain a good lawyer, because at the very least he is going to be called to testify in front of Congress and at the very worst, he might be on his way to being this decade’s William Calley as in the guy who was left holding the bag for the Viet Nam era My Lai massacre. At least for now Hegseth despite his incompetence and distain for the rules of war isn’t going anywhere.  The same may or may not be true of the less camera-ready FBI Director Kash Patel who has a whole crowd of FBI guys leaking about his incompetence and missteps including his refusal to disembark from his plane, the one he uses to fly his girlfriend around, until someone snagged him an FBI jacket emblazoned with cool badges, when he was “investigating” the Charlie Kirk shooting.  By the way, Kirk’s widow Erika says she’s readying her JD Vance presidential endorsement so what if the presidential election isn’t until 2028.  As to Trump, he’s still threatening Senator/Astronaut Mark Kelly and the other five “seditious” Democrats who advised members of the military that they should question illegal orders, like the double tapping of boats, with the death penalty. Mark Kelly may not have Erika’s endorsement, but getting threatened by Trump is enhancing his standing as a potential 2028 Democratic party candidate.

Other 💩:  Despite all the hype, Republican Matt Van Epps was expected to win yesterday’s special election for the 7^th District Tennesee seat vacated by Republican Mark Green and he did.  He won comfortably, defeating his Democratic opponent Aftyn Behn by 9 points. However, though she lost, Behn’s performance was impressive.  Tennessee’s 7^th district is heavily gerrymandered, rendering it virtually impossible for a Democrat, especially one as progressive as Behn, to prevail.  By comparison, Trump won the district by around 21 points in 2024 so Republicans are concerned that Behn’s ability to keep Van Epps’ victory to single digits could be an omen of things to come during the midterms, even in seats previously considered safe. They can’t attribute Van Epps’ meh showing to it being an off year special election since turnout was relatively high.  More likely, voters just aren’t happy with the Republican Congress and with Trump, whose approval and disapproval ratings have sunk to 36% and 60% respectively.  It doesn’t help that he keeps calling affordability a faux issue because “it’s the economy stupid” is more than just a catch phrase.  The pendulum may be swinging, well maybe, because counting Trump out isn’t a good strategy, he still has the power to screw up elections. In other news, Republican’s still haven’t come up with a health care plan and probably won’t, news out of Russia and Ukraine remains dismal, RFK is well on his way to making it harder to get lifesaving vaccines, the drug running former Honduran President has been released from jaiil, and an appeals court has ruled that Alina Habba, like Lindsey Halligan, is an illegitimate US Attorney.  The pendulum can’t swing soon enough.   

 

 

Crimes at Sea 🤡 😱 ✡️🌻😱 🤡

🦃  🦃  🦃:  The Thanksgiving weekend got off to a tragic start after two West Virginia National Guard members were shot in Washington DC where they shouldn’t have been stationed in the first place.  Sadly, one of them, Sarah Beckstrom, was killed.  The other, Andrew Wolfe, remains in critical condition.  The perpetrator was an apparently unhinged Afghan immigrant who had recently been granted asylum in the US, a reward for helping US troops during the Afghan war.  The ambush and murder were horrifying, Trump and his administration’s reaction, was pretty bad too. They blamed Biden for the deadly incident, holding him responsible for granting the shooter asylum even though the decisions that led to his being granted asylum in the US spanned both Biden and Trump’s administrations. Citing no evidence, the seriously dolled-up ICE Barbie Kristi Noem said that the shooter had been “radicalized” in the US, presumably her way of adding antifa and all Democrats to her list of those responsible for his actions. She made her assertion while also acknowledging that she was the one who gave the final order sending one of those migrant planes to El Salvador in violation of a court order by what she called an “activist” judge because admitting illegal actions is one of those things cabinet members do when they know they’ll eventually be pardoned.  For his part Trump, who spent his Thanksgiving weekend golfing at Mar a Lago, guided perhaps by junior Goebbels Stephen Miller,  took full advantage of the tragic moment.  He announced via Truth Social that he is “permanently pausing migration” from all “Third World Countries,” and will be “removing anyone who is not a net asset to the US or is incapable of loving our Country.”  He also said that he would be “denaturalizing migrants who undermine domestic tranquility.” If he follows through, he will be cancelling green cards and stripping the citizenship from lots of non-white people because he certainly doesn’t plan to take anything away from the white families he just admitted from South Africa. Keeping with that theme, he also specifically targeted Somali immigrants, while calling Governor Tim Walz, whose state has a large Somali population, seriously r*tarded, a slur likely chosen because Governor Walz has a son with developmental issues and also maybe a self-own, much the way older dad Trump’s jumping on RFK’s autism-vaccine link wagon seems to be? Trump’s use of the r*tard slur was so offensive to one Republican legislator from Indiana whose daughter has Down’s Syndrome that he announced that he will be voting against Trump’s redistricting plans. Lastly, Trump also said that he would be cancelling all orders and pardons that Joe Biden made via autopen. He keeps harping on the autopen probably because he too uses it frequently. While Trump was sputtering hate, a not so sleepy Biden was seen out and about with his family, taking selfies with fans, giving at least one street musician a $20 and looking pretty good despite his prostate cancer and “frailties.”      

War Crimes: On the subject of pardons, Secretary of War and Beer Pete Hegseth is likely to need one. The Washington Post reports that he committed a war crime when he ordered the US Navy to “double tap” one of the first fishing vessels that the administration targeted for alleged drug smuggling.  “Double tapping” doesn’t refer to a creative sports maneuver or IPA beer, rather it refers to his ordering a second strike on a fishing vessel to kill the few survivors who weren’t killed by the first strike he’d ordered.  Going after survivors in the water to intentionally kill them is a war crime but then again Hegseth had given the order to kill everyone on board the supposedly “narco-terrorist” boats and that wasn’t kosher either.  It’s probably not a coincidence that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the commander overseeing the operations in the Caribbean announced his resignation the same day as Hegseth’s “kill them all” strike took place.  Another indication that even Hegseth has been told and now believes that his orders constituted war crimes is that the few survivors of some subsequent strikes were flown home to their native countries rather than subjected to a “double tap.”  A group of former US military lawyers (JAGs) issued a statement over the weekend saying that both the giving and execution of the “double tap” orders, if true, “would constitute war crimes, murder, or both.” The Washington Post story goes far to explaining the over-the-top outrage that Hegseth and Trump expressed over the video that Senator Mark Kelly and five other Democratic members of Congress posted last week. Their advising members of the military that they shouldn’t carry out illegal orders clearly hit a nerve with Hegseth and his boss who, according to Miles Taylor who served Trump during his first term before outing himself as an anti-Trumper, was told that orders along those lines are illegal.  In Trump 1.0 there were people who served as guard rails against such crimes, now Trump only has likeminded cheerleaders who egg him on. The war crimes allegation is getting lots of attention.  Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the committee’s top Democrat, said on Friday night that they had “directed inquiries” to the Defense Department.  A bi-partisan group from the House says that they plan to do the same. As to the war against drugs, first of all for the most part fentanyl comes into the US from Mexico and China rather than Caribbean nations, secondly if eliminating drug smuggling is such a priority for Trump, than why did he just pardon Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president who once bragged that he’d “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses” and who accepted bribes from the notorious El Chapo to allow cocaine shipments to pass through Honduras to the US. Hernández was serving a 45-year sentence but now will be going free because drug smuggling is only a problem when Trump says so.  And because Trump is so into pardons, he quietly added another one this weekend, commuting a recently convicted Long Island based Ponzi schemer.             

Fog of War:  All things Ukraine and Russia continue to get murkier.  Over the weekend, Andriy Yermak, President Zelenskyy’s top aide and peace negotiator resigned as a result of the corruption scandal now embroiling Ukraine politics.  That’s a loss for Zelenskyy and Ukraine at such a fraught time.  The peace negotiations with Russia continue, this weekend they took place in Florida.  Secretary of State, AID, and whatever Rubio reports that while there was progress, more needs to be done because it’s “complicated.” To that end, son in law Kushner and real estate guy/Putin admirer Witkoff are off to Moscow for further discussions with the Putin crowd.  According to the Wall Street Journal, to date those discussions have included how the two “investors,” Trump and some of their friends can personally benefit financially from throwing Ukraine under the bus because building more buildings, getting access to oil, and other business opportunities appear to have dominated a lot of their “negotiations” to date.  Keeping with that theme, Trump announced the closing of air space around Venezuela, an indication that his efforts to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro could involve US boots on the ground.  Maduro is not a good guy; he stole his last election though that’s typically not the kind of thing that Trump cares much about, after all he tried to steal one and his now jailed bestie Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro tried too.  What Trump does care about is getting control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves. Israel’s Netanyahu hasn’t stolen an election but been embroiled in what appears to be a never-ending corruption scandal and trial.  Over the weekend it was reported that he’s asked Israel’s President Isaac Herzog, rather than Trump who’d gladly give him one if he could, for a pardon. If Bibi agrees to leave politics for ever and ever, maybe not such a bad thing? In any case, Israeli trials drag on and on so even without a pardon, Bibi won’t be going to jail anytime soon.    

Viral Musings: Last week RFK Jr snuck in the appointment of Dr. Ralph Abraham to serve as the second in command of the CDC. As Louisiana’s surgeon general, Abraham ordered the state health department to stop promoting vaccinations and called COVID vaccines “dangerous.”  In addition, Politico reports that RFK is planning to overhaul the Vaccine Injury Compensation program, expanding coverage to include people with autism.  That would make it riskier for companies to develop vaccines in the US. Also, no progress on extending health insurance subsidies and now Trump denies that ever considered doing so even though he was supposed to announce a plan to extend them last week before he pulled his announcement.     

And:  Tomorrow is special election day in Tennessee for the House seat vacated by Republican Mark Green. It would be a stretch for the Democratic candidate Aftyn Behn to pull off an upset victory against her Trump endorsed Republican opponent Matt Van Epps but just closing a lot of the gap in what was a plus 20-point Trump district will be very telling and concerning for Speaker Mike Johnson, Trump, and their crowd.