POKING AROUND 12-18-24

Every time you think Trump has finally topped himself, that he can’t get lower, that there really is a bottom, that he’s made the worst decision ever - that lasts till the next one comes along.

Department of He Really Is This Fucking Stupid: At 0300 this morning, Trump sat on his golden toilet, unable to sleep from all the adderall, and posted on Truth Social (spelling mistakes are actual): "No one can answer why we subsidise Canada to the tune of over $100,000,000 a year? "Makes no sense! Many Canadians want Canada to become the 51st State. They would save massively on Taxes and military protection. The Great State of Canada is stunned as the Finance Minister resigns, or was fired, from her position by Governor Justin Trudeau. Her behaviour was toxic, and not at all conducive to making deals which are good for the very unhappy citizens of Canada. She will not be missed!!!"

Department of Democrats Really Are This Fucking Stupid: AOC lost her bid to be ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, as the Democratic Establishment maintained their committment to Seniority Uber Alles and made 74 year old Gerry Connelly - recently diagnosed with esophageal cancer - the ranking member. Connelly has good politics, but - my god! - do these fuckwits have a fucking clue what esophageal cancer does? What the treatment will take out of him? We have two years of trench warfare ahead of us, so of course they put a “walking wounded” in charge of the most-important committee in the House, the birthplace of all the MAGA horseshit to come. And do it over the opportunity to place the Democrat Most Likely To Become The Next Nancy Pelosi in the position - because Pelosi keeps a grudge well (never fight a grudge match with the Italians or the Irish). Democrats - never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity. My nearly 60 years of hating the motherfuckers and being stuck with them continues.

Department of This Is Really Awful (from the Guardian): ICE deports mother and children, including newborn twins, to Mexico, despite the infants being US citizens, Christina Salazar and all four of her children were put on a plane on 11 December. Salazar, 23, and her children were put on a plane at Houston’s George Bush airport bound for Reynosa, Mexico – a place where they had no contacts and no way of getting money, according to the family’s lawyers. Lawyers also said it was cold the night Salazar and her children were detained and they were not allowed to get their coats. Salazar was born in Mexico. She and her two older children were awaiting immigration hearings. Arellano Jr told local Houston news outlet KHOU the family had missed an immigration hearing on 9 October, when Salazar had been recovering from the emergency cesarean section she had had to deliver the twins. According to the family, they had been told the hearing would be rescheduled when they called to inform the court of the health issue. The family received a call back from an official at the immigration court and were instructed to arrive at a meeting point in Houston to discuss their case. It was there Salazar and her four children were arrested. The family did not have legal representation at the time of the arrest, but is now represented by immigration attorneys Isaias Torres and Silvia Mintz, who said “the reason she was arrested, they were told, is that she failed to go to an immigration hearing”.

Department of Take Your Victories Where You Find Them: The House Ethics Committee secretly voted earlier this month to release its report into the conduct of Matt Gaetz before the end of this Congress. The report is now expected to be made public after the House’s final day of votes this year as lawmakers leave Washington for the holidays. The vote, which has not previously been reported, amounts to a stark reversal for the panel after it had voted along party lines in late November not to release the results of the investigation. The decision to release the report suggests that some Republicans ultimately decided to side with Democrats on the matter, and it is unclear if the committee will once again change course now that it has voted.

Department of How Fucking Stupid Is This Ignoramus? Nancy Mace suggested during an interview recorded Monday that a recent surge in unexplained drone activity in the U.S. could be coming from “outer space.” During an appearance on “OutKick The Show with Clay Travis,” Mace said the government is not being honest with Americans about the sightings. “My concern is, if it’s not craft from outer space — because I think that has to be on the table, that has to be an option — is it our technology? Or is it Russia or Iran or China? Is there someone who’s winning the arms race, and are we behind?” Her bra size really is double her IQ.

Department of This Guy Could Fuck Up A Wet Dream: Trump continues to fuck up even before he gets into the White House. The result of all his appointments of the incompetent and the ignorant, plus his total ignorance of anything to do with economics, has resulted in the Stock Market now recording its longest decline since 1978, when Jimmy Carter was president. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed lower by 267 points on Tuesday, or 0.6%, down for its ninth-straight day.The blue chips haven’t closed in the red for nine consecutive days since February 1978.

Department of Surprise! Surprise! (From the Guardian, again): Elon Musk is unlikely to receive government security clearances if he so applied, even as his SpaceX launch company blasts military and spy agency payloads into orbit, according to a report on Monday. Musk is reported by the Wall Street Journal to have been advised by SpaceX lawyers not to seek highest-level security clearances owing to personal drug use and contacts with foreign nationals. Musk currently holds a “top-secret” clearance that took years to obtain after he discussed use of marijuana on a 2018 podcast with Joe Rogan, according to the outlet. But that may not be enough to have access to information about US government payloads in his rockets. Musk’s lawyers outlined scenarios in which he might inadvertently disclose secrets to foreign officials with whom he regularly speaks, including the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, with whom he is reported to have been in regular contact since 2022. Musk’s use of another semi-legal drug, ketamine, in pursuit of what friends call “pure creativity”, along with reports of LSD, ecstasy and magic mushrooms, could also be an issue. SpaceX lawyers and executives reportedly concluded that if the company sought a higher level of clearance than Musk currently holds, he risked being turned down and potentially stripped of the clearances he currently holds.

Department of At Least One Democrat Figured Out The Scam: Jared Moskowitz says he’s staying in Congress. Trump claimed to want to appoint him as FEMA Director. But it turned out that what he really wanted to do was remove a Democrat from the House, knowing that DeSantis would slow walk scheduling a special election to replace Moskowitz, thereby giving the House Republicans a little breathing room with their one-vote “majority” in 2025. Good move, sir.

Department of They Really Are This Shit-headed: A House Republican said yesterday that Liz Cheney should face criminal charges for her role with the Jan. 6 committee. Trump followed up on that by saying Cheney “could be in real trouble.” Republicans are going to try to rewrite history and throw the truth-tellers in prison. We should probably think about fighting back. Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight (who has been credibly accused of allowing seditionists to conduct a “reconnaissance” of the capitol on January 5, while it was closed, taking photos of office locations - making Loudermilk an actual seditionist) said Cheney may have illegally tampered with a witness and encouraged that witness to commit perjury - the witness being Cassidy Hutchinson. The report claims Cheney improperly interfered with Hutchinson’s relationship with her attorney, Stefan Passantino, causing her to alter her testimony after having spoken to the committee twice. Actually, Pasantino was actually telling her to continue to commit actual perjury in her coming testimony. “Based on the evidence obtained by this Subcommittee, numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, the former Vice Chair of the January 6 Select Committee, and these violations should be investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It is no surprise that the claims made in Hutchinson’s first two sworn interviews vary substantially from the claims she made following Representative Cheney’s direct intervention.”

Cheney said in a statement Tuesday that Loudermilk’s new report “fabricates lies and defamatory allegations” that are a “malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”

Department of The Cruelty Is The Point: Indiana carried out its first execution since 2009 before sunrise Wednesday, with much of the process concealed from the public.Joseph Corcoran, 49, died by lethal injection for the 1997 killings of his brother and three other men, one of whom was the fiancé of Corcoran's sister. Corcoran's lawyers maintain that he suffered from "severe and longstanding paranoid schizophrenia," documented in self-published books from prison in which he described being subject to "ultrasonic surveillance." His mental state, the lawyers add, has prevented him from properly seeking post-conviction relief. In a dissenting opinion for the appeals court, U.S. District Judge John Lee acknowledged that "given Corcoran's long, undisputed history of severe mental illness and the pervasiveness of his continuing delusions, as evidenced by his book and recent medical records, Corcoran is entitled to have at least one court assess his competency to be executed."

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