THE REPUBLICAN WAR AGAINST AMERICA CONTINUES

Yesterday was fun, even nearly getting flooded off the road up in the high desert on our return. The car’s getting a good wash and it looks like S. Calif. may have something I haven’t seen in awhile: a wet winter; this is the earliest I have seen a winter storm in a long time.

The upside-down-and-backwards crowd continues their assault on America with the daily cruelty and destruction that defines this cult of destruction’s goal of destroying the country:

Late last night, Trump posted a statement encouraging Republicans to vote Tuesday to release the Epstein files, which will likely cause the number of Republican yeas to skyrocket beyond the 48 additional votes now expected, writing, “We have nothing to hide. It’s time to move on from this Democrat Hoax perpetrated by Radical Left Lunatics in order to deflect from the Great Success of the Republican Party.” The apparent face-saving maneuver became necessary as it became increasingly clear he was set to face the biggest defection of party members since January 6. However, DC Republicans believe Trump still spent the weekend working to whip members against the vote, with the intention of seeing that, even though the vote seems certain to pass, there is no veto-proof margin and to peel off as many Republicans as possible. A veto-proof margin in the House is the one thing likely to defeat efforts in the Senate to kill the bill with the filibuster. Trump knows if the legislation were to pass both houses only to have him veto it, that would insure loss of support among his MAGA base.

Maladministration II appears poised to force more coal plants to stay open past their planned closing dates, an unprecedented intervention in the power sector that is already making energy even more expensive for Americans.The first signal of the strategy came in late May. A week before the J.H. Campbell coal plant’s scheduled shutdown, the Department of Energy directed the 63-year-old facility in Michigan to keep operating for 90 days. The agency has since re-upped that order, and the power plant’s owner, Consumers Energy, expects another extension later this month. Through the end of September, the move had already cost Consumers’ customers a total of $80 million, or roughly $615,000 per day. But the J.H. Campbell plant is unlikely to remain the lone example. Despite the costs, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, a former gas industry executive who denies the severity of the climate change crisis, is reportedly intending to interfere in more long-planned coal plant closures, this time in Colorado. Late last month, the Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association revealed that DOE officials have indicated they will issue a Section 202(c) order to keep Unit 1 of the electric cooperative’s Craig Station coal plant online past its scheduled closure later this year. Tri-State provides power to member utilities that collectively serve over 1 million customers in rural Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Wyoming. “Based on conversations with the U.S. Department of Energy, we believe that it is likely that we will receive an emergency order before the end of the year,” Tri-State spokesperson Mark Stutz told Canary Media. That puts the cooperative in a bind, given that “we do have legal requirements to close that unit, but we also are closing it for economic reasons,” he said. Tri-State declined to disclose the costs it would incur due to an emergency order. But the cooperative’s broader plans to expand clean energy and close coal plants are expected to save its members $422 million over 20 years. Another Colorado coal plant slated for closure this year is also likely to stay online, whether via DOE fiat or more typical state processes. U.S. Rep. Jeff Hurd, a Republican representing a district in western Colorado, wrote a letter to the DOE last month asking it to stall the planned retirement of Comanche Unit 2, a more than 300-megawatt power plant owned by Xcel Energy. The utility estimated in 2018 that shutting down two Comanche units and building out renewables would save customers about $213 million over time. This week, Xcel Energy and state agencies petitioned Colorado regulators to delay the retirement of Comanche Unit 2 until the end of 2026 due to repeated failures at the newer Unit 3. In both Michigan and Colorado, regulators and utilities had previously determined that shutting down the coal plants in question would not compromise grid reliability.

Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, celebrated Maladministration II’s fight against what it sees as anti-energy, anti-prosperity policies. The two officials highlighted a mid-October effort to tank what would have been the first global carbon tax. A United Nations body, the International Maritime Organization, was on the precipice of approving rules that would have created a net-zero framework and a cap on greenhouse gas emissions from shipping vessels. Ships exceeding those limits would need to purchase carbon credits or be subjected to additional fees. “It’s a foregone conclusion,” Wright recalled hearing from one foreign energy minister whose country planned to vote for the measure. A draft of the framework was overwhelmingly approved in April, with 63 countries voting in favor and only 16 voting against, alongside 24 abstentions - despite the U.S. abandoning negotiations. But months of pressure from Trump led to a drastic swing in countries’ support for the measure. According to reporting by climate newsroom Grist, Maladministration II threatened countries with tariffs, visa restrictions, sanctions and additional port fees unless they opted to abandon the deal. Those efforts paid off in October. With the support of the U.S. and other nations, Saudi Arabia successfully introduced a proposal to postpone adoption of the net-zero framework until October 2026 - this time with 57 countries voting in favor of postponement and 49 countries voting against it, with 21 abstentions.

El Jefe del Motel A Lardo is still pissed at Marjorie Taylor Green, posting the following on Lies Anti-Social: “Lightweight Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Brown (Green grass turns Brown when it begins to ROT!), betrayed the entire Republican Party when she turned Left, performed poorly on the pathetic View, and became the RINO that we all know she always was. Just another Fake politician, no different than Rand Paul Jr. (Thomas Massie), who got caught being a full fledged Republican In Name Only (RINO)! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” He’s really upset that his name appears 1,628 times - more than all other names combined - in the Dead Pedo Bestie Files. That’s a lot of times for a completely innocent bystander to be mentioned.

El Jefe is also still pissed at Seth Meyers. This has resulted in FCC goon Brendan Carr hopping to it when President Donald Trump took another swipe at the late-night host. Trump, who is apparently furious with Meyers for his unrelenting criticism of the administration, fired off a Truth Social post sprinkled with capital letters on Saturday evening, writing: “NBC’s Seth Meyers is suffering from an incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). He was viewed last night in an uncontrollable rage, likely due to the fact that his ‘show’ is a Ratings DISASTER. Aside from everything else, Meyers has no talent, and NBC should fire him, IMMEDIATELY!” Carr reshared Trump’s message to his own Twitter account. The social media backlash to the post was swift, with former U.S. Rep. Justin Amash writing “Abolish the FCC. The government shouldn’t be pressuring companies with respect to late night hosts, comedians, or anyone else for monologues, commentary, or jokes—whether their words are insightful, ignorant, funny, boring, politically neutral, or politically biased,” in response. Gregg Nunziata, a conservative legal veteran, asked: “Why in the world is the FCC chairman posting this?” On Thursday’s show, Meyers homed in on Trump’s recent negative polling showing that he was losing support among Republican voters, his attack on American workers and their lack of “talent” and his apparent total incomprehension of magnets. “Why are you shitting on people in the unemployment line? If you didn’t have a rich dad, that’s where you’d be my man,” Meyers quipped. This is the second time that Meyers has been explicitly called out by Trump, making him the latest late-night host to fall into Trump’s crosshairs after the cancellation of Stephen Colbert and the temporary removal of Jimmy Kimmel. At the start of the month, Trump took to social to claim it was “PROBABLY ILLEGAL” for Meyers to mock him. (FACT CHECK: No, it isn’t you total fucking “most persistent ignoramus I ever met.”) Meyers then fired back with a riff going after Trump for pretending not to watch his show when it appears he can’t tear himself away, and for surrounding himself with lackeys and yes men. “That is your First Amendment right, which I have too, right? We all have it, right?” Meyers asked. Carr has previously expressed glee at being able to carry out Trump’s wishes hand-in-glove and has railed against the “censorship” of right-wing views online.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was ridiculed yesterday for suggesting skyrocketing beef prices have nothing to do with MAGA’s economic policies and everything to do with a supposed invasion of cows across the southern border. In an interview with Fux Snooze’s Maria Bartiromo, he expounded his wild theoryfollowing questions from Bartiromo asking for his take on “ten dollar meat, a pound!” Arguing the beef industry is in “a perfect storm” that the White House “inherited” from the Biden administration, he said that rising costs are a direct result of migrants entering the U.S. from Latin America: “Because of the mass immigration, a disease that we’d been rid of in North America made its way up through South America as these migrants brought some of their cattle with them. We’re not gonna let that get into our supply chain.” Earlier in May, the Department of Agriculture indeed announced it’d be suspending live cattle, horse and bison imports across the southern border due to an outbreak of New World Screwworm cases in Mexico. FACT CHECK: There is little to no credible evidence that migrants traveling north into the U.S., otherwise a highly perilous journey ordinarily undertaken with only the barest essentials, have been seen routinely transporting or smuggling live cattle at a scale that would affect the domestic market; there have been zero confirmed animal detections of the disease in the U.S. since the outbreak was first recorded in Mexico last November. While there has been at least one documented human case, it was recorded in Maryland after a resident of that state, which is almost 2,000 miles from the border with Mexico, had made a trip to El Salvador. Bessent’s theory about migrants transporting livestock quickly became the subject of scorn online. “Scott Bessent says the reason beef prices are so high is because immigrants from South America are bringing their cattle with them as they come here and they are infected with diseases,” one person wrote on X. “What a weird take!” Economists suggest the spike in beef prices can be attributed to a far more complex and far less dramatic combination of factors, including long-term challenges like U.S. cattle shortages, drought and pasture degradation. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs, overseen by Bessent in his capacity as Treasury Secretary, are also thought likely to have contributed to rising feed and production costs for domestic beef. Combined with higher levies on beef products from abroad, these costs are now being passed on to the consumer. These idiots get more pathetic by the day as they cast about for a reason for the economy tanking that doesn’t say “We are incompetent fools who can’t do anything right.”

Trump’s been caught out on his latest hobby horse, that Joe Biden’s use of an autopen to sign the last pardons he made before leaving office makes the pardons “void, vacant, and of no further force or effect” because of his use of the autopen. Trump pardoned seven Trumpcreeps - Darryl Strawberry, Michael McMahon, Troy Lake, Robert Henry Harshbarger Jr., Cade Cothren, Michelino Sunseri, and Glen Casada - on November 7. The pardons were posted on the DOJ website, and on last Wednesday, Brian Krassenstein noted on Xitter that the signatures looked very uniform, and he said they were signed with an autopen. He then wondered whether these too were “void, vacant, and of no further force or effect” because of Trump’s use of the autopen.

On November 13, the signatures on four of the pardons - for McMahon, Strawberry, Harshbarger, and Casada - visibly changed compared to the signatures that were logged by an internet archiving service. The DOJ blamed the snafu on a technical issue. “President Trump signed seven pardons by hand and D.O.J. posted those same seven pardons with seven unique signatures to our website,” said Justice spokesperson Chad Gilmartin. “The website was updated after a technical error where one of the signatures President Trump personally signed was mistakenly uploaded multiple times due to staffing issues caused by the Democrat shutdown.” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson added: “President Trump signed each one of these pardons by hand as he does with all pardons. The media should spend their time investigating Joe Biden’s countless auto-penned pardons, not covering a non-story.” “The most persisten ignoramus I ever met” is also the most petty-minded dimwit in history. Trump also pardoned militia member Dan Wilson, previously pardoned for his seditious participation in the January 6 insurrection, received a second pardon after being convicted of illegal firearm possession in Kentucky.

Sen. John Barrasso went on Meet the Press yesterday morning, and didn’t definitively say that eliminating the filibuster was out of the question. “President Trump makes a compelling argument,” referring to Trump’s public efforts to pressure Republicans into eliminating the 60-vote threshold to advance legislation in the Senate, Pressed, he said, “I support the filibuster, as do, I believe, a majority of Republicans in the Senate. So I expect it’s going to continue to be here.” Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Maybe he knows that if Trump pushes hard enough, Senate Republicans will fold. If Trump can force the Senate Republicans to drop their main weapon they use to kill progressive legislation, he’ll actually have done one act of service to the country.

Additionally this week, the Republicans are going to have to face the issue of their assault on healthcare, which they now clearly own, and have lost on several times in the past. A poll by Democratic firm Navigator found that Republicans are losing the healthcare costs blame game with voters by 16 points. Similarly, polling of battleground House districts by Republican firm McLaughlin & Associates found that 39 percent of battleground voters said healthcare was their biggest affordability concern, slightly edging out the cost of everyday needs. After an off-year election Republicans lost on affordability, the party is once again realizing health insurance is an issue they can’t afford to ignore. According to multiple senior Republican aides, the White House hasn’t notified Congress of any specific healthcare components that should be changed. Vulnerable Republicans in swing districts want to extend ACA subsidies immediately; McLaughlin found that 57 percent of battleground voters are likely to vote for a candidate that extends ACA subsidies. They have no plan; the majority of the party will never vote to support the ACA; Trump’s spent 10 years promising to present a better plan “in two weeks.” This is the tar baby they can’t get loose of, and with luck it will strangle them next November.

Saturday, Arian Campo-Flores of the Wall Street Journal reported that the net worth of the top 0.1% of households in the U.S. reached $23.3 trillion this year, while the bottom 50% hold $4.2 trillion. Campo-Flores outlined a world in which the “ultrarich” are living in luxury and increasingly sealed off from everyday people. “They don’t wait in lines. They don’t jostle with airport crowds or idle unnecessarily in traffic,” Campo-Flores writes. “Instead, an ecosystem of exclusive restaurants, clubs, resorts and other service providers delivers them customized and exquisite experiences as fast as possible. The spaces they inhabit are often private, carefully curated and populated by like-minded and similarly well-heeled peers.” These are The Enemy.

For a show everyone has dismissed as ‘gutted’ by the new Trumpscum owners of Paramount, “60 Minutes” did a good job of “stand and deliver” with a hard-hitting report on the Trump family’s crypto scams and how they were financed by Changpeng Zhao, the founder of major crypto scam “comany” Binance, who was recently pardoned by Trump for his crimes. On the show, former U.S. Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who worked for the DOJ, said Zhao’s case was “unusual.” “The influence that money played in securing this pardon is unprecedented. The self-dealing aspect of the pardon in terms of the benefit that it conferred on President Trump, and his family, and people in his inner circle is also unprecedented. This is absolutely not justice. This is corruption.” “60 Minutes” said Binance had also donated software to World Liberty Financial to help Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump launch their cryptocurrency, with the program quoting a source who said without Zhao “the technology doesn’t exist.” Harvard legal scholar and political activist Lawrence Lessig told the program of the currency selection: “The only reason it makes sense is to ingratiate with the president. There’s no clear evidence of quid pro quo, but there wouldn’t be. Nobody is so stupid as to conduct themselves with that explicit structure. Instead, it’s the culture of giving and exchanging in a much more informal way that we clearly know is happening right now. Zhao’s Binance left the $2 billion deposited in World Liberty Financial. That money could be earning interest for the Trump’s and their partners of $80 million a year. Also, $2 billion represents most of World Liberty’s deposits.” World Liberty Financial spokesman David Wachsman said, “It’s disappointing that a once-respected news program like 60 Minutes would conduct such disgraceful and false reporting.” The show went on to disprove every lie Wachsman proceeded to tell. It sure sounded like the old “60 Minutes” to this viewer. How it didn’t get “Baried” is a miracle. And Nora O’Donnell, who got excoriated for the interview with Trump she did with Bari Weiss minding the store right in the room during the interview, was the one who did it.

Finally, Epstein’s brother has clarified that the “Bubba” he mentioned in an email to his brother as having engaged in a sex act with Trump is not Clinton. In his clarification, he said, “For the avoidance of doubt, the reference to ‘Bubba’ in this correspondence is not, in any way, a reference to former President Bill Clinton.”

Photo: KarenRN

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