Moses Mike and the Parting of the Red "C"

 

You know, Mike Johnson winning on the first ballot was something so not pre-determined (tho' Matt Gaetz from behind his awkward nose-contouring predicted it) that when it looked like he failed, some folks ran with the story, but he relied on a higher power, I think:

Trump. 

There was an undetermined "C" (the undecided caucus) that didn't want him, but he's Trump's guy. They "stashed the tellers" so the couple of holdouts that needed to be switched had time to be before gavel-bang.

Were they promised anything?

Ask Not for Whom the MAGA Bell Tolls

 

When Catturd et als on the Twitter are planning for Speaker Moses to step down or get stepped on, I guess I'm going to be pretty basic to the Asics about it--THE GURLS ARE FIIIIIIYYYIIYIIYITINGGGGG!!!! I am so glad I did my nails for this. Park me in the front row, let me see! I got my fan in my bag because this church is heated. God is GOAT and prayers are heeded. 

But no, actually this is really bad. Somehow, we have stupid little children at the wheel of the shortbus that is GOP-led Congress, because there is no adult running the show or at the wheel. Musk encouraging maximum returns to wealthy shareholders and fucking up plans for actually doing good things for people like funding cancer research and all that IS this administration's actual ethos. Trump the King, and his Regent, Elon, chose this kind of legislative ain;t shitness. Musk lies and tries to manipulate the process because he is a dumbass. This is real work that shouldn't be SPUN.

And they think somehow, some way, Democrats are supposed to get in line and save their pretend-mandate asses to preserve the economy, so Trump gets into office under ideal conditions that he absolutely did not create?

Huh!

Have you seen what happened to the stock market since Trump rang his little bell:

Seeing things in Pictures

 

While Elon Musk is channeling Fonzi, 

The withered husk of Trump

is a played out Ponzi. 

His expression wry, 

his head seems bare

as if worry at last has

worn off his hair.

TWGB: Occupied America

 

Trump seems to be closing in on the finish line by wallowing in increasingly "blood and soil" fascist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, so I want to point out that there is a kind of irony that he wants to pretend there is an "occupied America." This depends upon a Pizzagate-level bit of idiocy--that a whole town could be occupied by a gang and it wouldn't be front-page news. Just like there could supposedly be a rash of pet-murders and it wouldn't be a major thing if it were actually true. And just like the mayor of Springfield had to come out and debunk Trump/Vance lies, the mayor of Aurora had to do the same. 

"Occupation" is an interesting term. I can think of, for example, the Bundy ranch militia occupation, which had checkpoints and everything. But you know what I really think about? MAGA occupation of the public sphere in terroristic ways. Like way FEMA operations in North Carolina were recently disrupted by a local RW militia. One man has since been arrested. 

You want to know who has also been threatened? Meteorologists. That's insane. But they are getting threats for talking about climate change. As opposed to, I guess, talking about weather machines in the possession of Zionist Communist multi billionaires, or whatever the stupid conspiracy theory is today. 

You could well ask, as former President Obama thoughtfully asked--"When did this become okay?" This is certainly not how it used to be. We didn't, for example, think of a riot at the Capitol as Speaker Mike Johnson recently stupidly put it, part of the election process. Maybe we could have once counted on responsible adults calling out Italian satellites, Venezuelan voting machines, German servers, Chinese thermostats and the like as being deadass stupid. 

The GOP and Cheap Grace

 

Johnson: Clay Higgins is a dear friend of mine and a colleague from Louisiana, and a very frank and outspoken person. He's also a very principled man. I didn’t even see it but he tweeted something today about Haitians.

Reporter: He told them to get out of the country by Jan 20th… pic.twitter.com/Y0oFz727WO

— Acyn (@Acyn) September 25, 2024

There's a formula here that the GOP employs again and again: the Tweet/statement/activity was terrible, but this is a good person (because I said so), and while I didn't see the Tweet/know all the details, I will forgive/absolve this person, even though I was not the person hurt by the activity.  Because it's the Christian thing to do. 

It's a lie. They aren't forgiving a "real" transgression (to them), and they don't care if the person is a good person--that person is "good enough for the political moment" and requires a permission slip. The permission slip has been pre-written, and we are only really just viewing what the in-group's tolerances are.

This type of cheap grace applies to Higgins, to Mark Robinson, to JD Vance, and entirely explains Trump. 

Instead of this statement vouching for Rep. Higgins, who is not noticeably repentant, I would throw it back to Speaker Johnson--why do have such a nasty racist for a good friend? 

TWGB: Milwaukee and the MAGAts

 

The Trump campaign put out an official statement with one (of several offered) explanations of what Trump meant by his comments about Milwaukee.

And yet here is the speaker of the House hours later saying it didn’t happen: https://t.co/srS4u9Yrut

— Edward-Isaac Dovere (@IsaacDovere) June 14, 2024

Poor little Trump. He has to be saved, you know. Mike Johnson is expected (by Trump, even if it isn't technically his job) to save Trump from the consequences of his Manhattan trial. He also wants to save Trump from his own motormouth. 

But why?  Of course, Trump is trashing the host of this year's Republican National Convention--he trashed the host of 2020's RNC as well.

He's not a big fan of Philadelphia--"bad things happen there!" He doesn't like Detroit. Actually, he hates whole swathes of the US--mostly the big cities. And blue states in general. Not a big fan of Puerto Rico, either. 

TWGB: The Back-up Singers

 

Yesterday, when we saw J.D Vance and them come out to the courthouse to defame the judge and his daughter, I wrote a thing and deleted it and don't even recall what I said because I realized in the morning it was incomplete.  Look at these "pick me pygmies". Look on these little men. Look at these ants peeping round the legs of a great colossus who hath bestrided their world. 

Look on today's brood of vipers in matching suits looking for all the world like a pack of back-up singers for the main event, Donald Trump. Did they sing "Da woo, doodly do?" 

No, they helped Trump violate his gag order and tried to make us feel bad for poor old thin skinned and very chilly Trump, same as Tuberville and Vance and them the day before. Maybe Mr. Trump (not, "former president Trump" because fuck giving honorifics to rapists, racists, and traitors--which is this withered old full diaper of a man) can't violate a gag order himself, but what of his little friends?

He can't tell them to do that, and maybe he did:

Tommy Tuberville admits on Newsmax that "one of the reasons he went" to NYC yesterday was to "overcome this gag order" pic.twitter.com/cGCK5iAcsZ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2024

Trump is not supposed to be violating the gag order by proxy. I don't think the court is supposed to be stupid about this--do you? And I don't think harassing the Judge's family members is in regular order--it's just bullying--obstruction of justice. See, I do say Tuberville isn't very smart, but maybe is dumb, but he isn't just as dumb as you might imagine but is very possibly dumber. He was on Trump's fat-finger speed-dial on 1/6 after all.  

Maybe they don't know Micael Cohen used to be this man's back-up singer. Maybe they don't understand where this road leads. 

Maybe they think they can loan their souls to Trump and haven't sold them. Maybe they think they can get their dignity back after whatever this is.

Trump doesn't pay back loans. He inflates his value of course and then?  Hopes banks are willing to negotiate for pennies on the dollar. This is what Michael Cohen was talking about--negotiating invoices of all kinds. These political wannabees are auditioning to play Celebrity Political Apprentice, but don't realize what portion of their credibility as a political figure or just a human being they are ceding to a racist, rapist, fraudulent, highly suspect and damaged fuck of a human. 

Michael Johnson played this game, and I sort of wish MTG would put another MTV up for debate just for the real fuckery of it, so Dems can agree that this man is utter trash serving no one but himself. 

MTG Doesn't Know the House She Sits In

 

SEE IT FOR YOURSELF: The Uniparty cheers for the man who is actually running the House, Hakeem Jeffries. pic.twitter.com/nQcrRmSTRU

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 9, 2024

 Marjorie Taylor Greene, thinks that she has revealed that there is a "Uniparty" where somehow MAGA Mike Johnson, who is going along with 2020 election denial right this very day, and who vowed to do whatever was in his power to STOP the charges and investigation against Trump, is basically Jamie Raskin in Republican drag. 

OK, Marge at Large. Accept your soggy potato chip. 

MTG would rather have bad attention and be considered a chaos agent, a bad Republican, and so on, than for people to not recognize her at all. 

All very well and good. She is a special one of a kind snowflake in a very unique globe called the planet Earth, existing only this one time in cosmic history. She also isn't helping anyone else but mostly getting attention for herself and helping Donald Trump. Probably because she thinks Donald Trump will in turn do things for her.

TWGB: Fresh New Contempt

 

🚨This appears to be a gag order violation. Habba’s title is Trump’s “legal spokesperson.” The gag order also restricts Trump from “directing others” to make statements like this about witnesses in addition to Trump making statements. https://t.co/vYvJyhOUVn

— Ben Meiselas (@meiselasb) May 8, 2024

Disclaimer: I am not a lawyer, but in a situation where re-posts count as violations of the gag order, yes, it seems very likely to me that Trump's paid spokesperson trashing one of the witnesses would also count: he is just trying to use other people's mouths to say what his can't.  

It's clear that Stormy Daniels' testimony made Trump very uncomfortable, and looking again at her story, I see why: it isn't really a story about a fully consensual fling. Although there is some playfulness (the rolled magazine part), the invitation to dinner to have...not-dinner and the discussion of a possible Celebrity Apprentice spot that now looks more like there were sexual strings attached, it seems clear she felt obligated or manipulated into sex. I don't think that it makes him look MORE of a creep to me but solidifies the type of creep he is. 

But at the same time, "family values" choir boy Speak Mike Johnson was saying this:

 

TWGB: Impeaching Trump By Accident?

 

We are not at a serious point in this Biden impeachment inquiry--that much is sure. In the spirit of Jim Jordan, who has unseriously referenced random unrelated things like the 1/6 pipe bomb, the bag of coke in the White House, and the leaked Dobbs opinion, to do what other than pretend the Biden Administration is awash in scandal, I don't know, let me get my inappropriate rhetoric on:

You know how we have all these options in the "dairy" section of the supermarket these days? Vegan and lactose-free vegetable-and-nut based milk substitutes showing up on our shelves to give options to people who either can't or prefer not to drink animal milk? Anyway, I see these varieties and am pretty happy that people have choices to fulfil their own unique dietary requirements and tastes. Almond and oat milk both taste pretty good to me. But I see some people complain: How can you milk a soybean? How can you milk a cashew? 

Well, I don't know about that. What I do know is that in this impeachment inquiry, the House Republicans don't have beans and they don't have nuts, so I don't know where they think the milk is coming from, but the cow done died ages ago. 

And that is why in the image above, Rep. Raskin is smiling and Comer looks like his life is flashing before his eyes. 

Dark Brandon Rises

 

Just as a throw-away sort of post, the sheer discomfiture the right has with Joe Biden doing regular stuff and having fun with his image absolutely delights me. Today, the chatterati were all in their feels about whether ice cream is manly and sunglasses are cool because of his appearance on Seth Meyers' show. I think the embrace of "Dark Brandon" as a counter-meme to "Let's go Brandon" fucks with their idea that the LEFT CAN'T MEME--of course liberals can meme. There's just more to life than trolling. 

Unless it makes hoes mad, and man, I sure do like to see hoes mad. 

But just to get more tendentious about the thing, the idea that it is less "something-something" of a president to eat ice cream is tan suit shit.  Ice cream is delightful--why so lactose-intolerant, Western Man? Even DJT gets his two scoops on, and I don't mean raisins.  Frankly, whoso would be a man, should be a nonconformist, and eat the damn cone even if everyone else should say him "ghey". 

Also, what are you going to do with a cone? By the sheer physics of ice cream cones, you can neither put it down nor stop licking, for it is constantly melting around you. It is a metaphor for a calling.

Or maybe I'm just flipping riffing because little man Moses left the White House with his bush burning because everyone wants him to do at least one useful thing in the House and he doesn't know how. And yes, there's memes for that, too. 

House Republicans are what they are and are big Trump fans and Biden is sonning their leader and they can be mad, stay mad and die mad, IDGAF. 

The Superlative Mr. Trump

 

Mike Johnson wants us all to know he spent part of his extended Presidents' Day vacation having made a pilgrimage to Mar-A-Lago to get his performance review and take this very optimistic picture with a shoe salesman. Johnson posts that he and Trump will "grow the majority and save America!" 

I always wonder what they are saving America from. Or maybe it's--what are they saving America FOR? Dessert? 

Anyway, that's a nice thing to say about the future of the House, despite the House being a complete clusterfuck with GOP members retiring left and right. And it's a nice thing to say about Mr. Trump, who is, as the title above states--superlative. He's the worst president ever, as determined by a group of scholars. 

Some people were aghast at this report. You just wouldn't think that a one-term, twice-impeached, four-times indicted man who is purely self-involved could somehow be the worst--if you were out of your goddamn mind. This is a man who finally had something to say about the murder of Navalny and predictably made it all about himself, while demonstrating contempt for our legal system in a way I can only call "un-American." 

I like presidents who actually like America--don't you?

You Know What They Are Going to Do?

 

Reporter: You yourself were part of killing the senate compromise bill. You say there need to be solutions, what are house Republicans doing to get to a solution on the border and on Ukraine? Or are you going to actually do nothing? pic.twitter.com/3CjaN9BCx0

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 14, 2024

The last post, I suggested some things that the House might be doing next, and my goodness! It turns out, the answer is--

Nothing. They are taking off for two weeks.  

You have to ask yourself--can you really say that people are earning their government paycheck if they can't be counted on to work in an election year because actually doing real stuff (as opposed to political stunts) is complicated and might have some kind of political blowback? And what does it say about a person who believes they were called to lead (Mike Johnson) who refuses to bring up a vote even when there are negative consequences?  (His fuckery regarding immigration also has immediate effects.) 

That's not leadership at all.

There is no good reason to vote for Republicans. Ever.

Look, House Republicans Did Something!

 

They managed to get Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas impeached (by one vote) for the high crimes and misdemeanors of not being in a Republican Administration and them not having bugger-all else to show for themselves. This is the very important vote that Rep. Steve Scalise came back from cancer treatment for. This would have been a tie if one Democratic member wasn't out with Covid-19. They rushed to get this in ahead of Tom Suozzi's win in NY-03. 

Oh, Democrats accomplished something, too, last night. They flipped George Santos' seat, making a Republican slim majority that much slimmer. I'm sure that will help reduce the chaos! (No. I am being sarcastic,) Is it unreasonable to suggest, though, that a Democrat got elected in large part because Republican's seem like they can't get things done? 

Is Mayorkas likely to be convicted for the high crime of being a Democrat in the Senate? No. But that isn't the point. It was about sticking up a stubby middle finger at Democrats for any reason. You may ask, isn't it hypocritical after the games Speaker Johnson has been playing regarding the border?

TWGB: Trump is Immuno-Compromised

 

Claims of executive privilege and presidential immunity have been something like Citizen Trump's "Rosebud"--they represented a fantasy of unaccountability and lack of responsibility that might just afford an old crook some peace of mind, and that specter of hope has now been taken away. Someone of course will have to pay for this--and it will be his little rubes. When he goes sniveling that "they" (the Deep State, Biden, black hats--whatever) have singled him out, maybe they won't consider this:

Why is Trump the only president who ever had to make this case regarding immunity? Over 200 years of presidents, and not one had this problem. Maybe they were all previously completely capable of doing the job without just rolling in criminality. Trump apparently is not, because this is how he lives his life.

It's a thought! 

However, in TrumpWorld, Trump can only be failed. That's why it was time again for another really futile and stupid gesture on the part of Matt Gaetz et als.  Marjorie Taylor Greene took up the spotlight in explaining:

"And then when Joe Biden was inaugurated, and this entire Capitol complex was surrounded with 30,000 National Guard troops, none of you stood there and called that an insurrection. No, you all stayed silent."

God damn. She's right. When Joe Biden was inaugurated because he was the lawful winner of the 2020 election, and duly constituted authority were placed as security at the inauguration in case Trump and Marge's little friends started trouble again, no one DID call that perfectly lawful act an "insurrection". Will the wonders of correct syntax never cease?  

No, I Never Did Hear of "Supply Change".

 

Trump: Things like supply change. You never heard that term pic.twitter.com/Cr0RU9z2F0

— Acyn (@Acyn) February 6, 2024

I've heard of the "supply chain" and so has everyone else. We heard about it especially when it was broken during COVID shutdown when you couldn't find toilet paper or rubbing alcohol or Lysol.  Does Trump really misremember the phrase as "supply change"? As in, we changed from when we could find things in the store to where we could not find things in the store? 

Trump's economy was stupid and not great. It really wasn't what we were promised. His only success was inherited.  The story of his life. 

Maybe he thinks this is a phrase he invented, like when he invented "priming the pump". Trump is the Edison of prevarication--he's always inventing things. Sometimes he Columbuses stuff people have known since forever and asks if they've heard about it, like he's a pioneer. This is because the guy who can't remember people's names, even now, always tries to cover up for his lapses. He's covering up for one of his major lapses right now--he forgot to secure the border during his first term. He could have made it a priority since he ran on it, but he forgot and only shut down the government when he lost the midterms. 

And couldn't get his wall money because Mr. Art of the Deal had no leverage. And shutting down the government didn't help anything. It was costly and dumb. His immigration policy was meh at best. And abusive of human rights at worst. 

Speaker Johnson Can Get Lost

 

I have some questions about just what Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House, thinks his job in the US House actually is, because he said this:

“President Biden falsely claimed yesterday he needs Congress to pass a new law to allow him to close the southern border, but he knows that is untrue,” Johnson said. “As I explained to him in a letter late last year, and have specifically reiterated to him on multiple occasions since, he can and must take executive action immediately to reverse the catastrophe he has created.”

Ok, he's wrong on what needs to be done, because closing one border doesn't actually fix immigration but even if Johnson doesn't understand the problem is bigger than just "people try to come though the Mexican border and Biden isn't fixing it" the solution is that we have an equal but separate branch of government that could compel him to do so.  It's in the Constitution--he can check it out. 

The Senate worked on a bill because they understand their job--get things done. If the border and Ukraine funding and funding for Israel are all bundled: figure out a way. But in addition to denying ANYTHING needs to be done about the border during what Republicans have been alleging is a crisis, Speaker Johnson is going to deny the House voting on the Senate bill and wants to put up a standalone bill for aid to Israel. And claims he was cut out of being briefed on the Senate bill. 

Oklahoma Republican Sen. Lankford says that just isn't true--and I believe him. Maybe Mike Johnson claims that God called him to be another Moses, but in real life he knows he's Speaker of the House because Trump suffers it. And Trump already told us what he thinks about a border deal or Republicans who would support one. 

The Mirror Universe View

 

Just to get this out of my system: it's sad that we creep along in the country from continuing resolution to continuing resolution. We should be able to just get some kind of a budget going. That we just hover on the edge of a government shutdown every couple months is appalling and no damn way to run a country. And I feel the same way the most recent one--hey, no government shutdown, but it only gets us to MARCH. These people have calendars, right? They can count how many days they will even be in Washington to vote, right? 

It would be great to manage a deal on immigration reform, too. There's clearly more to the issue than what I sometimes think of as "the barrier method" (the border wall, a decade-old condom in a ripped wrapper). It would be great to get beyond the stupid GOP rhetoric about an "open border" that simply isn't. 

House Republicans Had Some Kind of Day

 

Things aren't great with the House Republicans. For one thing, some of them are big mad at Speaker Mike Johnson for trying to do something useful like make the government still happen, in part because it involves dealing with Democrats and obviously, that's insane. They tanked some rules just from spite because they're salty about it.  And poor Mike Johnson has to make a pilgrimage to Godfather Trump to get his blessing on the whole avoiding a shutdown thing, which is awkward, because we all know Trump wants the economy to crash because he absolutely said so. 

I have some idea of the kind of arguments that have to be made. If House Republicans are responsible for a shutdown--all Republicans could be blamed, including Trump. Whether Trump can hear arguments like that is dicey, though. Ditto (or maybe that should be "MAGA-dittoes") for the mascots some red districts have elected to Congress--they were elected to sow chaos and it really shows. They want a shutdown for the same reason Patriarch Newt Gingrich normalized Republicans causing shutdowns--just burning spite against the idea of doing government at all. 

This is why the House sucked out loud in 2023. They couldn't pass legislation for shit and just did mascot stuff. Retiring Rep. McHenry referred to it as "a very actively stupid political environment" and that sounds exactly right. 

What the Biden Impeachment Inquiry is About

 

Earlier this year, I wrote a blogpost about the House GOP Biden impeachment inquiry back when I agreed with Rep. Raskin that this inquiry has been an impeachment about nothing, but now I'm pretty sure I see exactly what's it's about. Thanks to Rep. Troy Nehls, we can all appreciate what it's for: "Donald J. Trump 2024, Baby!"   (Okay, I lie--I always knew it was exactly about that.) 

I mean, Trump's legal fund money is going to Trump himself and his PAC money is paying his own legal bills, so why not have the taxpayers fund an anti-Biden campaign for him? And that's what he wants, so that's what every little GOP congressperson in the House gave him. 

I mean, here's a snip about what Trump wants from July:

Former president Donald Trump called on congressional Republicans to withhold military support for Ukraine until the Biden administration cooperates with their investigations into the president and his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

The demand, delivered at a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, echoed Trump’s conduct at issue during his first impeachment, when Trump withheld aid from Ukraine while pressuring the country’s president to announce an investigation of Biden.

“Congress should refuse to authorize a single additional shipment of our depleted weapons stockpiles … to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden Crime Family’s corrupt business dealings,” Trump said at the rally. He added that any Republican lawmakers who didn’t join the effort should face primary challenges, a tactic he used last year to unseat Republicans who voted to impeach him for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

That little bit there? "Echoed Trump's conduct at issue during his first impeachment." It's a great touch because it sure does! The US conditions aid to Ukraine (although the Republicans in congress are playing their fund-denial games with border security) and the pay-off is dirtying up Biden so that Trump can win re-election! See how in those paragraphs, you can understand who is doing what for whom, to get what in return? And what should happen to GOP reps who don't do what Trump wants?

Yeah, well, after all the "inquiring" that Comer, Jordan, and Smith have done so far, we still don't have anything like that for how Hunter Biden paying back his loans equals political favors the senior Biden was going to do for...anybody.  

Now, Hunter Biden showed up yesterday and called out the House GOP over their subpoena shenanigans, letting them know he would give a deposition, but not behind closed doors. Sounds to me like he isn't hiding something, the House GOP are. After all, I remember when they just hated closed door depositions. Then they realized that if they used closed-door depositions, their failures wouldn't be nearly as, um, public.

And then they could keep up the lying. And I while I certainly could expect less from them (I mean, MTG wants to toss around revenge porn again, I just know it), I trust they will continue to limbo under my expectations.