Oligarchy of America 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

Confirming Chaos:  The confirmation hearings continue to amaze and not in a good way, watching them is like watching a slow moving trainwreck, you know the disaster is coming but there’s nothing that you can do to stop it. Pam Bondi, who Trump nominated after the outrage about his first-choice, teen rapist Matt Gaetz, proved too much for a handful of Republican Senators to bear, is in many ways scarier than Gaetz.  Having served two terms as Florida’s Attorney General her experience lends her a patina of respectability.  However. despite that appearance, it’s clear that she’s a Trump loyalist to her core and won’t stand in the way of his worst plans, no matter how outrageous and illegal. During her hearing, she refused to say that Trump had lost the 2020 election and, though she said there will be no enemies list in her Department of Justice, she also made light of the list that FBI nominee Kash Patel’s has repeatedly discussed and written about having as well as his statements that judges, lawyers, journalists, and members of Congress like Liz Cheney should be prosecuted for their investigations of Trump. She went so far as to assert that “she doesn’t believe that Patel has an enemies list” adding that he is the “right person at this time for the job.”  And Trump’s statements about this being his retribution term, she probably missed those too because selective hearing and memory is a thing among her crowd. She’ll be easily confirmed, as will all the other Trump nominees who appeared before Congress this week because Republicans don’t really care if the incoming Treasury Secretary doesn’t know what Medicaid is and believes that tariffs are awesome, or if the incoming Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and EPA Head Lee Zeldin want to “drill baby drill” and so on because if Trump wants them, then they must be okay? Marco Rubio, Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, is Trump’s most normal pick, he’ll easily pass muster with lots of Democrats voting for him, but odds are that if he ever asserts himself, he’ll be the first cabinet member that Trump fires.  He’d be wise to stay away from airplane toilets. Adding to the absurdity of the moment, yesterday Trump appointed Mel Gibson, Jon Voight, and Sylvester Stallone as his “special ambassadors to “a great but very troubled place, Hollywood, California” to be “his eyes and ears to the moviemaking town.” No doubt Trump’s Hollywood cronies are invited to next week’s hell freezing over inauguration, which will also be attended by his tech bro buddies, a crowd that now includes Shou Chew the head of Tik Tok in addition to Elon, Zuck and Bezos who will all be seated on a prominent dais.  The bros have all written bigly checks for their seats and have also eliminated all those DEI policies that Trump hates so much because who cares about grocery prices when you can eliminate wokeness whatever that is.  As to Tik Tok, it’s hard to tell what’s happening there.  The Supreme Court hasn’t issued its ruling yet and Trump as well as various politicians on both sides of the aisle, are now calling for it to be allowed to continue operating even if SCOTUS rules that the legislation that mandated it be sold or closed down is kosher.  The oligarchy is here. Biden is right.  

Politics Unusual: Lara Trump will not be the next Florida Senator.  Yesterday Governor DeSantis announced that he’s selected current Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody.  Moody is a charmer, she’s supported lawsuits to invalidate the Affordable Care Act, advocated against restoring voting rights to felons despite Florida voters approving that those rights be restored, and she joined in the Texas lawsuit that sought to contest the results of the 2020 election.  In other words, she’s perfect for her new role. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine still hasn’t announced who he’ll be picking to replace VP elect JD Vance but he’s being pressured by Trump to pick Vivek Ramaswamy, the one-time presidential candidate/current DOGE co-chair and what could be more perfect than Vivek in the Senate 🤮 🤢.  Until now it had been expected that the term limited DeWine would choose his Lt. Governor Jon Husted.  We should know later today if DeWine, a conservative who in the past has shown an independent streak but who recently made a pilgrimage to Mar a Lago and also met with Vivek, will be caving to Trump’s command. Proving that he jumps when Trump whistles, yesterday Speaker Mike Johnson announced that he’d taken the unprecedented and rather “shocking” step of ousting Congressman Mike Turner from continuing on as Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, replacing him with Arkansas’ Rick Crawford.  Turner’s sin, he’s been a traditional Republican hawk, meaning that he’s been supportive of the intelligence community and has stood up for Ukraine. As committee chair, he’d been a member of the Group of Eight, in on all of the key intelligence reports, including those revealing Russian efforts to influence US politics and bolster Trump. Demoting him while staffing intelligence roles with the likes of Tulsi Gabbard and replacing the heads of the FBI and CIA with his other flunkies, allows Trump to erase the past while creating a new “reality.” The House Intel move might sound like inside politics, but it’s not, it affects all of us, because it further ensures that Trump’s second term team will all walk to the beat of the same drummer or else. Not in the same league but also an indication of the types of people who hang with Trump, Rudy Giuliani has apparently struck a deal with Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, the election workers whose lives he ruined with his smears and lies.  He gets to keep his NY apartment and Florida condo as well as his World Series rings and though we don’t know what the two ladies got in return, it’s likely that they got some cash, hopefully boatloads of it. That’s good for them, but since Rudy claimed he was down to his last penny, it does beg the question of where that money is coming from?  

Fog:  Assuming the deal holds, a ceasefire will go into effect between Hamas and Israel and some of the live hostages that Hamas is holding will be released on Sunday in exchange for thousands more Israel held Hamas prisoners/terrorists. Under the six-week first phase of what’s supposed to be a three-stage deal, Hamas will release 33 Israeli hostages, including all women (soldiers and civilians), children, and men over 50. The remaining men and bodies of the dead are to be released in the later stages. Holding my breath in anticipation and trying to put aside my fears about the hostages due to be released later making it home alive.            

#BringThemAllHomeNow

 

 

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

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

 
Earth Wind & Fire 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥: Disastrous events bring out the best and worst in people so while firefighters are doing what they bravely do, putting their lives on the line, and while some ordinary people, many facing their own unimaginable losses, have been reaching out to help others and President Biden has promised lots of resources and funding, Trump, and a number of his MAGA adherents, are instead fueling the flames. Snidely calling Governor Newsom, “Newscum,” Trump attacked him on Truth Social for failing to sign a nonexistent “water restoration declaration” that he falsely claimed would have flowed more water towards Los Angeles.  He also asserted that the Governor’s protection of smelt fish and other components of the state’s ecosystem had led to a lack of water for fire management and lied about reservoirs not being filled to capacity before the fires broke out.  The reservoirs were full but were quickly drained, overwhelmed by the unprecedented need and the challenge of getting water to the flaming hills which also impacted fire hydrant functionality. Naturally, conspiracist Alex Jones also weighed in with an Xitter post, “liked” and amplified by Elon Musk, claiming that the fires were caused by globalists as in those of “us” with space lasers, seeking to destroy America as we know it. Also untrue, assertions that the inability to quickly extinguish the fires is due to DEI, that other scapegoat of the right. There’s more, but I think you get the picture, the worst people including the soon to be president acting out in the worst of ways. The likely reality is that the fires were caused by some combination of manmade or naturally occurring sparks stoked by a historically dry year, that last part likely due to global warming combined with a water system that hasn’t kept up with overdevelopment.  “Drill baby drill” Trump who doesn’t acknowledge the reality of climate change nor the dangers of relying on fossil fuels for energy won’t do anything to help fund the hugely expensive improvements to the infrastructure that are needed (remember all those infrastructure week that weren’t), nor would his benefactor/co-president Elon Musk sign off on any such expenditures because he’s too busy trying to shrink government or at least shrink the part of government that doesn’t subsidize his businesses.  As to Elon, yesterday he admitted that he and his DOGE team have concluded that they won’t be able to cut $2 trillion from the US budget so they are shrinking their savings target to $1 trillion, not that they will be able to achieve that either.     

Legally Yours:  Trump’s hush money/election interference case non-jail sentencing will go forward this morning.  Last night, five members of SCOTUS, the three liberal Justices together with Chief Judge John Roberts and occasional swinger Amy Coney Barrett rejected Trump’s lawyers’ argument that as president-elect he is entitled to full immunity from both prosecution and sentencing.  Justices Kavanaugh, Thomas, Gorsuch, and Alito, who Trump had a questionable sidebar with this week and who should have recused himself but of course didn’t, would have granted Trump’s request.  Shortly after the announcement of the SCOTUS decision, a Federal appeals court overturned Judge “loose” Cannon, ruling instead that the Justice Department can publicly release the entirety of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on Trump’s efforts to undo the results of the 2020 election as well as the section concerning his purloined Mar a Lago classified documents. For anyone keeping count that’s the third time that one of pocket judge Cannon’s pro-Trump rulings has been overturned. However, the Appeals Court left Cannon’s short stay in place which means that Trump and his legal team, most of whom will soon be joining him in the White House, have three more days to appeal to SCOTUS and since stalling until inauguration day is their strategy, they will appeal. Attorney General until January 20 Merrick Garland has already said that he will not be publicly releasing the Mar a Lago part of Jack Smith’s report because he believes that doing so would be unfair to co-defendants Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, not that the two have much to worry about since Trump’s DOJ will stop their prosecution and/or Trump will pardon them soon enough.  Garland does plan to release the classified documents part of the report to a few “key” members of Congress so there’s a chance it will eventually see the light of day, well maybe.  That’s especially important because it’s believed that the report includes information that proves that Trump’s FBI Director nominee Kash Patel lied when he said that Trump declassified documents that he did not really declassify.      

Day One: According to the NY Times, Trump’s minions, most notably Stephen Miller, are trying to identify a disease, preferably a really contagious and lethal one carried by migrants, to justify calling a national health emergency in order to justify Trump closing the border with Mexico.  The problem is that they have been unable to identify any. The irony here is that if RFK Jr, whose confirmation 17,000 US doctors have signed a letter opposing, is confirmed as Secretary of Health and Human Services and moves forward with his anti-vaccine plans, contagious disease will flourish on the US side of the border which could cause disease wary Mexican leadership to block us from crossing into their country.  As to all those undocumented migrants that Trump wants deported, quite a few of them will likely be needed in California to help with rebuilding destroyed areas not that Trump cares all that much about California.  Trump is also considering declaring a national economic emergency to justify imposing tariffs, another problem because the economy keeps humming along.  In other ridiculous news, son Don Jr is in Greenland, testing the waters for his dad’s land grab. It turns out that the “crowds” who greeted him warmly at the airport weren’t really fans, rather they were a few dozen mostly downtrodden types paid to show up and and provided with red MAGA hats to make them look like genuine Trumpers.

Please consider contributing to one of the many reputable charities accepting donations for California relief. 😊  

#BringThemAllHomeNowAndAlive

 

 
On Fire 🔥 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🔥 

🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥: Southern California, specifically Pacific Palisades and the surrounding, area is on fire, not figuratively but literally.  Check in with your west coast friends because they may need your help, or at the very least your commiserations.  In Washington DC, so far, it’s just snow, no fires not even figurative ones, though those are likely to come soon.  Congress completed the January 6 certification of the 2024 election results in a peaceful and timely manner.  There was no drama, no violent protests, no one was beaten over the head, and no one deposited a pile of 💩on Speaker Johnson’s desk because Vice President Harris, who presided over the certification, didn’t throw a tizzy fit and didn’t call for her supporters to storm the Capitol. Meantime, in a less well covered story, Republicans in North Carolina, with an assist from the state’s Republican dominated high court, are still trying to prevent state officials from certifying the victory of a Democratic judge who narrowly won her election to serve on the court. Sadly, that’s not an unusual approach for North Carolina’s Republicans. Even though North Carolina has a Democratic Governor and a closely split electorate, as the result of gerrymandering, both state houses are dominated by Republicans who used their dominant majority to redraw the state’s congressional map in a manner that heavily favors Republican House candidates.  That Republican favoring map resulted in the flipping of three North Carolina House seats to Republicans during the 2024 election.  Republican Mike Johnson is Speaker largely because of that finagling. That the same players are trying to block the seating of a Democratic Judge should surprise no one.  Nor should the fact that so little has been written about it because the MAGA party’s chief 🤡 continues to suck up so much of the news cycle with his promise to pardon the January rioters who beat the crap out of the Capitol police while trying to overturn the results of the last election and his assertions that he is going seize Greenland and the Panama Canal while turning Canada into our 51^st state and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Guff of America.  As to those hostile land grabs, maybe Trump’s serious, maybe he’s just engaging in threatening rhetoric in the hopes of negotiating favorable trade deals, or in the case of Greenland to obtain some valuable mineral rights, or maybe this is just his 2024 equivalent of “Mexico will pay for the wall” BS, or maybe he’s trying to one up Elon Musk who in addition to having just bought himself a US president is now trying to influence politics in the UK, Germany, and Canada.  Only time will tell.  Welcome to 2025.

Legally Yours:  Trump is still due to be sentenced on Friday in his hush money/election interference case despite the best efforts of his lawyers to have that sentencing put off, preferably forever.  So far two New York judges have ruled that the sentencing should take place as scheduled but it’s only Wednesday and Trump’s lawyers are appealing to higher courts.  His lawyers have also managed to stop, or stop for now, the release of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s report on his January 6 and stolen documents cases.  They did that with an assist from his pocket judge, Aileen Cannon, the gift that keeps on giving, who even though she previously dismissed the purloined documents case against Trump, is still doing everything she can do to make him love her.  What’s the over/under on how long it will take for Trump to appoint her to a higher court?   Trump and his lawyers are trying to run out the clock and we’d be naïve to think they won’t succeed.     

Dark Brandon:  Sleepy or not, President Biden is pulling no punches on his way out the door.  He’s sent money to Ukraine to bolster their defenses and he’s also been doing his best to protect the environment.  To that end, he’s invoked a decades’ old law to block drilling for oil in more than 625 million acres of US ocean, the largest region a president has ever protected using this authority. Trump, who wants to “drill, drill, drill” very erroneously claimed that Biden’s actions represent the banning of drilling in “the whole ocean” even though the area represents only about 2% of the oceans, is furious and has promised to undo Biden’s ruling upon taking office.  The problem for him is that the law that Biden applied does not include a provision for revoking a prior president’s ruling and so Congressional action might be required.  

#BringThemAllHomeNow

January 6 🤡 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤡  

Fruit or Flowers: It’s January 6, the four-year year anniversary of Trump’s attempt to violently overthrow the results of the 2020 election and unfortunately a lesson to all of us that persistence pays off because while he didn’t succeed in 2020, unless the snow blanketing Washington DC delays the process, Trump’s 2024 win will be certified today easing the way to his January 20 inauguration. That process was further greased on Friday when, with an assist from Trump who interrupted his Mar a Lago golf game to engage in persuasive dialing, Louisiana Republican Mike Johnson was once again elected Speaker of the House.  It took some wrangling and probably a combination of threats and promises to make that happen since initially three House Republicans voted for other candidates.  Ultimately two of them, South Carolina’s Ralph Norman and Texas’ Keith Self flipped their votes back to Johnson before a second round of voting had to take place leaving Kentucky’s Thomas Massie as the only holdout.  Massie’s problem with Johnson, which many in the Republican’s Freedom Caucus share, is that as Speaker he has relied on Democrats to pass spending bills. Massie is right that Johnson has relied on Democrats to pass bills to keep the government open and the debt paid, but it’s not like Johnson had or will have a choice because given the unruliness and nihilism of House Republicans, the large number of them who won’t vote for any funding package that doesn’t also slash spending for almost everything, and the Republican’s microscopic majority, Johnson like John Boehner, Paul Ryan, and Kevin McCarthy before him, has had to turn to Democrats for support and almost definitely will have to again because Trump’s plans include lots of border spending and tax cuts, most of which won’t be offset by corresponding cuts in expenditures despite the best efforts of Trump and his DOGE buddies Elon and Vivek.  Hakeem Jeffries, and his Democratic conference, a crowd that tends to act in lockstep, particularly when in the minority, aren’t going to sign off on entitlement cuts.

Commonalities:  While it looks more likely than not that the New Orleans attacker who had become an ISIS convert and the Las Vegas car bomber who apparently was a Trump fan weren’t in cahoots, they did have a lot in common despite their very different political philosophies. Both were disaffected men, one still in the military and another with military roots, whose mental states and lives were spiraling out of control. That seems to be a persistent and growing problem, one that will likely be exacerbated if Trump moves forward with his oft stated promise to pardon the 1400 who’ve been federally charged including the 900 who’ve already been convicted for their January 6^th related offenses.  Judging by many of Trump and his fans’ social media posts, particularly their really disturbing reactions to President Biden’s end of term medals list, Trump will follow through on those pardons party in retribution for Biden’s list and also because he always said he would.  He will be applauded on the right for doing so.  Over the New Years holiday Biden awarded 18 Medals of Freedom to a group that included former Secretary of State/Senator Hillary Clinton and billionaire liberal cause supporter and the right’s favorite punching bag, George Soros. among others.  Those medals followed his earlier awarding of twenty Presidential Citizens Medals to a group that included Trump nemesis Liz Cheney and her fellow January 6 committee chair Democratic Congressman Bennie Thomspon as well as former Knick/NJ Senator Bill Bradley.  Bradley’s medal wasn’t controversial except maybe to Celtics fans, but I had to throw it in because the Knicks were the best back when he was a member of their then championship teams.  As to some of the reactions to Biden’s medal awardees, a number of people on Xwitter dredged up the old disgusting Pizzagate conspiracy about Hillary being a leader of a child molestation ring while calling for her to be arrested or worse and John Barrasso, the current Republican Senator from Liz Cheney’s home state of Wyoming slammed Cheney saying that she “represents partisanship and divisiveness” and wasn’t deserving of either the medal or a preemptive pardon. That Barrasso, a “mainstream” Republican who is second in Republican Senate leadership is calling out Cheney, whose voting record was among the most conservative and most in line with Trump’s legislative wish list during her stint in the House, says a lot about how far the Republican party has sunk as its morphed into the MAGA party.  On the subject of hypocrisy,  North Dakota’s Republican Senator Kevin Cramer who has been one of the most vocal critics of Hunter Biden, is calling for compassion for his “mentally impaired” son who was recently sentenced to 28 years in prison for killing a police officer during a drug fueled car chase.  Last time I checked Hunter for all his failings never killed anyone but then again at this point in the Republican decline, no one should expect Cramer to get the irony nor for him to show any compassion for Hunter who he still thinks should be incarcerated for a long time or worse.   

Felonious Trump:  Over the holiday Trump posted on Truth Social that “Our Country is a disaster, a Laughingstock all over the world.”  That’s the country that the NY Times reported that by most metrics including falling crime rates, stock market performance and lower migrant crossings, is in better shape than any “bequeathed” to any president since 2001. How long will it take Trump to take credit for the state of the country that he’s inheriting? Or will he instead destroy it with his tariffs, over the top migrant round ups, health policies, and disruption of international alliances?  Most likely he’ll do both, a lot of damage and disruption with a lot of backslapping and hockey sticks in the air for the wonderful things he didn’t do but will take credit for.  And, judging by how so much of the press has normalized his behavior, they’ll go along with him. To that end over the weekend a respected political cartoonist joined with many of her former colleagues, including a number of Pulitzer Prize winners, by resigning from the Jeff Bezos owned Washington Post after the paper squashed her cartoon that depicted Bezos and a number of other tech leaders and Disney’s Mickey Mouse praying at Trump’s feet.  At least one judge doesn’t appear to be all that ready to normalize Trump, NY Judge Juan Merchan plans to move forward with the sentencing hearing for Trump’s hush money/election interference case on January 10.  He’s not going to sentence Trump to serve any time because what’s the point, but instead plans to sentence him to an unconditional discharge as it’s the "most viable solution to ensure finality and allow Defendant to pursue his appellate options."  Not satisfying but not a surprise.  On January 20, the President of the US will be a convicted felon.

Fog:  Over the weekend Saudi Arabian media published a list of the 34 hostages that are supposed to be released in a potential deal between Israel and Hamas, however Hamas said that they need time to determine who among them is alive. #BringThemAllHomeAlive!   

  

 

2025 🤡 ✡️🌻✡️🌻✡️ 🤡  

💣 🧨 💣 🧨 :  Welcome to 2025, the year that opened with two explosive events.  A physical and metaphorical beginning of the dumpster fire that’s to come over the next four years?  The first event took place in New Orleans when 42- year- old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, who contrary to Trump’s kneejerk social media assertion, was not an illegal immigrant who’d recently crossed into the US from Mexico but was instead a US born, Army veteran from Texas, drove a rented truck into a crowd killing at least 15 and injuring dozens more. According to at least one news reports, Jabbar was raised Christian but recently converted to Islam.  Judging by the ISIS flag found in his truck, if that report is true, his conversion involved the type of radicalism that often leads to terrorist acts.  While officials in New Orleans were dealing with the aftermath of Jabbar’s horrific attack and Louisiana Senator John Kennedy was making snidely inappropriate comments at a press conference he should have stayed away from, a Tesla cyber truck exploded outside of Trump’s Las Vegas hotel. Initially that explosion was met with some gallows humor and a few quick to social media memes but laughter subsided once it became apparent that the explosion wasn’t due to one of Musk’s temperamental batteries but was another terrorist event, this one resulting in the death of the truck’s driver likely another terrorist, as well as the injury of at least seven bystanders.  Several media outlets reported this morning that the Las Vegas driver was 37-year-old Matthew Livelsberger, an army veteran, who, assuming initial reports are true, served for a time at the same Army base as Jabbar, the New Orleans truck terrorist.  In another coincidence that may not be a coincidence (Gibbs Rule #39 There’s No Such Thing As A Coincidence), both Jabbar and Livelsberger were driving vehicles rented through Turo, a car sharing service. As to initial reports including those cited here, as President Biden pointed out in the press conference he held last night, we should all wait for the facts to be verified before jumping to any conclusions.  That message was likely directed at both Trump for his illegal immigrant comment and Fox News which actually took the unusual step of retracting their quick trigger news story that Jabbar was an illegal immigrant who had entered the country through the Texas-Mexico Eagle crossing two days ago, a faux report that Don Jr still has posted on his Truth Social account.  One more thing worth knowing, if you are a Tesla driver, Tesla tracks all of its cars so while it’s helpful to investigators that Musk’s company was able to remotely unlock the truck that exploded in Las Vegas and provide videos of all its stops at charging stations along its route, it’s kind of intrusive to know he can also track you.

House of 🤡 🤡: Though no one expects any explosions, the House Speaker election, which is scheduled to take place on Friday, could involve some fireworks.  Trump reluctantly endorsed current Speaker Mike Johnson over the weekend, not because he likes him very much, trusts him, or even wants him to return to the post but because there does not appear to be any other member of the Republican caucus who can garner enough votes to win the post, not that it’s certain that Johnson can.  With all 215 Democrats expected to be present and voting for Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, including Speaker Emeritus Pelosi who will be back from her hip surgery sojourn, Johnson needs 218 of the 219 Republicans to vote for him to retain his speakership. The Republicans are short one seat because Matt Gaetz, though he won reelection, has resigned, although he theoretically could show up to further muddy the waters.  One Republican, Kentucky’s Thomas Massie, has already said that he won’t be voting for Johnson and another Texas’ Chip Roy, a very outspoken critic of Johnson, may also jump ship unless he can extract something like Chairmanship of the Rules committee in exchange, and that’s not expected to happen.  A few other members of the most right-wing part of the Republican party are also on the fence and/or holding out for favors, though it’s not clear that any of them are really willing to cross king of retribution Trump, or 💰 💰 Musk who has already said that he’ll fund their opponents in 2026 if they don’t play ball.  If one of the holdouts votes present rather than for another candidate, Johnson could still squeak by. Expect chaos ahead if Roy or anyone else joins Massie and no one votes present. Adding to the mess, the debt ceiling has expired which means that the Treasury is “employing extraordinary measures” and relying on cash on hand to fund debt right now, just another reason that a capable Speaker is needed ASAP, not that Johnson is all that capable, but Hakeem Jeffries is and we know he will help bail Johnson and the country out, at least with regard to the debt ceiling.      

And: Before the New Years holiday, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Trump’s request for a new trial in the E Jean Caroll case.  That case is the one that resulted in the smaller of the two defamation judgments against him. The Court’s ruling makes ABC and Disney’s decision to kowtow to and pay off Trump that much more disconcerting. Also, Elon Musk who is currently residing at a $2000 per night Mar a Lago villa so that he can stay as close as possible to his minion Trump has changed his X handle to Kekius Maximus and his avatar to Pepe the Frog, the frog image is a white supremacist symbol, some suggest that the Kekius name also has a racist meaning.  Musk, the supporter of right-wing Nazi adjacent parties keeps telling us who he is and because he’s rich and threatening few who matter are willing to speak out against him and Trump doesn’t appear to care because 💰 and maybe because he agrees?   It’s going to be a long four years.

#BringThemAllHomeNow