Category: Uncategorized

Keeping one eye on her political future and the other on a yummy bowl of grits, the GOP’s poster child for nepotism Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders has given up trying to justify a $19,000 expenditure for a wooden podium she took on a brief European tour, refusing to use the piece in press conferences because, she claims, it would distract from the culture war issues she’s addressing while standing behind it.

KTHV CBS-11 in Little Rock reports that an indignant Sanders chided reporters for pursuing a news story about excessive waste in her Administration after being asked why she wasn’t using the podium during press conferences.  “While we are focused on things that actually impact our state and impact Arkansas, the media wants to spend all of their time focused on things that frankly don’t,” Sanders said.  The important issue she was addressing at that specific press briefing was Chinese ownership of land in Arkansas, a major issue for citizens of a state that ranks 43rd in education, 47th in health care and 40th in domestic violence.

While the cost of the podium–which Sanders claims was needed for a short European “trade mission” she and a number of allies took to Europe, with some watchdogs concerned the cost was cover to pay travel expenses for Sanders’ allies–was reimbursed by the state Republican Party after the excessive cost of the piece was disclosed, critics have slammed Sanders for the excessive cost for a podium which has nearly identical models on Amazon available for under $900.

“Just so there’s no surprises: Jordan will likely have FEWER votes today than yesterday – as I expected. This is the fight – which Jim Jordan represents – to end the status quo, and it ain’t easy… Stay strong and keep praying,” tweeted Freedom Caucasians leader Scott Perry on Wednesday just ahead of the second vote for the wrestling freak’s almost certainly doomed speakership.

Meanwhile Florida Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart, a Steve Scalise ally whose name we’ve definitely seen misspelled as “Diaz-Blart,” told Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman that he’s working on empowering current Speaker pro-tempore Patrick McHenry to have the full powers of the office, saying “there’s a consensus that we need to, in the meantime, have a process where we can move legislation forward to get the conservative agenda back on track that has been derailed.”

A spokesman for Gaza terrorist group Hamas on Wednesday freaked out over President Joe Biden’s assessment that the hospital blast which killed hundreds on Tuesday was the result of a misfired rocket attack by jihadists and not an Israeli bombing, calling Biden “blindly biased,” CNBC reports.

“I am deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” Biden said to reporters while sitting with Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv. “Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you. But there’s a lot of people out there who are not sure, so we have to overcome a lot of things,” Biden added.

The explosion prompted a wave of angry, violent protests across the Arab world and led to the cancelation of a planned summit between Biden, Jordanian leadership, and Palestinian leadership in Amman on Wednesday, a worrying sign in an already deeply tumultuous clusterfuck of a situation.

On impulse on Tuesday we had sourced from the New York Times the claim that the Israelis were responsible for the horror. Some smart people we follow on Twitter – as well as Biden himself, citing US intel – are now saying that a preponderance of evidence does indicate that a Palestinian militant group had in fact fucked up and accidentally destroyed the hospital (or maybe did on purpose to blame Israel). This does not mean that the IDF are being careful overall with their retaliatory campaign (they aren’t really) but that particular barbarity may indeed not have been their doing.

Minnesota Dem Congressman Dean Phillips, who reportedly is “mulling” a primary challenge to President Joe Biden, missed the Monday deadline to register for the Nevada primary to actually mount a challenge President Joe Biden, Fox News reports with plain unhappiness over the failure.

William Knight, one of the members of the Ohio State wrestling team impacted by the sexual abuse Jim Jordan reportedly ignored, took down Jordan’s lack of leadership:  “The funny thing is that when people always call Jim Jordan a fighter, and I always wonder who he’s fighting for because he had a real opportunity to fight to us and the people that he coached and the people he recruited at The Ohio State and he’s, all he’s done is turn his back on us, so I don’t know what the ‘fighter’ thing is. I know he used to be a fighter.  I know he used to be a good wrestler, but he’s not a good fighter for anyone else that I know of.”

The Senate voted unanimously to fill key committee seats left vacant after the death of California Democrat Dianne Feinstein at the end of September, tapping her replacement, Laphonza Butler, to take her seat on the Judiciary Committee.  Arizona’s Mark Kelly will join the Senate Intelligence Committee and his senior colleague, Kyrsten Sinema, an independent, was chosen by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for the seat on the Appropriations Committee.

Butler’s seating on the Judiciary Committee means the 36 pending nominations will now have timely hearings to get their placements, something that couldn’t happen when the Committee was evenly divided due to Feinstein’s long absence due to illness.  Since taking office, the Biden Administration has seated 145 Article III judges, but there are currently 68 federal judicial openings remaining.  In total, there are 870 federal judges from the Supreme Court to courts of appeals, district courts, and eight Court of International Trade appointees.

Buried in a Politico story about the only man aspiring to be House Speaker who actively attempted to thwart the Constitution Jim Jordan’s pressure tactics to get 217 Republicans to vote for him is a rather mundane line:  Nebraska Republican Congressman Don Bacon “added that his wife even received multiple anonymous emails and texts saying: ‘your husband better support Jim Jordan.'”

Reporter Olivia Beavers’ Twitter post demonstrates the desperation Jordan’s supporters feel in their need to threaten the Congressman’s seat to his wife through an anonymous text messages. One rambling texter told Bacon’s wife that he better vote for Jordan because “you guys take five steps forward and then turn around take 20 steps backward no wonder our party always ends up getting screwed over[.]” Another anonymous texter told her, “Your husband will never hold any political office ever again.  What a disappointment and failure he is.”

“Now what the president should be doing is giving Israel his full support from US soil,” man who never worked in foreign diplomacy or public service Jesse Watters demands.  “But we feel Biden’s narcissism is propelling him to undertake ‘shuttle diplomacy,’ like a Secretary of State who thrives on the so-called ‘peace process.’  This is a dangerous game.”

Yes, Jesse, this is a dangerous game, one for which a former “gotcha” reporter who stalked people for Bill O’Reilly is woefully unprepared.  Of course, this is the Fox “gotcha” again:  had Biden not gone to Israel, they would have whined, “Yeah, but he went to see Zelenskyy.  The Jews shouldn’t vote for him.”  But Biden did the opposite, so Fox must reverse its planned attack.

The US Senate on Tuesday showed the amateurs in the House how it’s done, passing by unanimous consent SR 409, “a resolution authorizing the use of the atrium in the Philip A. Hart Senate Office Building for a Bipawtisan Howl-o-ween Dog Pawrade on October 31, 2023, from 4:00 to 6:00 pm.”

The House can’t even elect a Speaker and here the Senate is just blowing their doors off with bipartisan ultra-efficiency to do the work demanded by the American people who put them there.

LSD-brained billionaire edgelord Elon Musk is planning to start charging new Twitter (or “X” if you’re a douchebag) users $1 a year to tweet, retweet, or like other tweets, Fortune reports.

As far as Musk’s stupid ideas for the platform have gone this is… actually not that bad, contrary to what certain seasoned observers are saying. If you’re already a Twitter user this particular policy does by definition not apply to your account. Unless on one of Musk’s moronic whims that does change, this would take a serious bite out of the bot operations hawking crypto and all sorts of other bullshit on the site. “It’s the only way I can think of to combat vast armies of bots,” Musk said as much during a livestream last month. He could do worse. He has and he will.

These Halloween costumes will help you stand out in 2023 https://t.co/ZhT5bo4kKO

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 17, 2023

Far right Arizona Congresswoman Debbie Lesko, the sick freak who said she would shoot her own grandchildren to protect them, announced on Tuesday she won’t be running again next year.

Spandex-wearing grapple freak Congressman Jim Jordan has pushed back the second planned attempt at getting himself elected Speaker to 11 AM Wednesday, CNN’s Manu Raju reports.

A DC federal court on Thursday sentenced failed Republican Michigan gubernatorial candidate Ryan Kelley to 60 days in prison following his guilty plea to several misdemeanor charges over his participation in the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection at the US Capitol, NBC News reports.

Kelley, who was not one of the five candidates who were disqualified in the 2022 ballot petition forgery scam, had briefly led in the polls of the primary field – even after the arrest, but came in fourth against former B-movie actress Tudor Dixon after fat former President Trump endorsed her. Dixon was then crushed by 10 points against incumbent Dem Governor Gretchen Whitmer in November, so it’s hard to see how Kelley would’ve done much better while facing the charges.

A new Marist College/NPR/PBS Newshour survey of registered voters finds President Biden leading disgraced former President Trump 49 to 47 percent in a two-way race… which drops to Biden 44 – Trump 37 when Robert F Kennedy Jr is added to the question, scoring 16 percent and quite obviously, as expected, hurting the Orange God Emperor far more than Dark Brandon.

It’s just one early poll and it’s only registered voters, but Marist/NPR/PBS is pretty well-regarded and this result certainly tracks with the internal polling Trump’s minions freaked out over.

Lawyers for disgraced former President Trump on Tuesday filed a notice of appeal of the gag order prohibiting the fat bastard from making any statements about DC Circuit Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, her staff, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith and his staff, and any potential witnesses (except GOP primary “rival” Mike Pence) in the federal criminal conspiracy case against him over his failed post-2020 election coup attempt. The actual appeal itself, which we’re sure will be full of laughs, has not submitted to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals yet.

“The White House has been discussing the possibility of using military force if Hezbollah joins the war in Gaza and attacks Israel with its huge arsenal of rockets, three US officials and one Israeli official with knowledge of the situation” have told Axios, which we copied verbatim from them to not mince words on a potentially serious development in the situation in the Middle East.

Obviously if Hezbollah attacks en masse there wouldn’t be much choice and the US military probably should intervene but that also risks an escalation from Iran and other players.

In very related and horrific news, the New York Times reports the Israelis bombed a hospital in Gaza killing at least 500 people. That’s a fucking war crime and whoever ordered it should be tried at the Hague. Great timing too, right before our president is about to visit the country to show support and solidarity for the mission after more than a thousand innocent Israelis were murdered.

Digital World Acquisition Corporation, the scam company that had been set up to merge with Truth Social parent Trump Media and Technology Group so it could be publicly traded on the stock market and is probably about to dissolve, on Tuesday informed the SEC that its 2021 financial statement “should no longer be relied upon,” Forbes reports. Sounds a lot like Trump’s own statements.

National Zero’s special live coverage of the House GOP’s inability to elect a speaker picks up once again from where we left off just two weeks ago when Kevin McCarthy was ousted. Right now it appears Jim Jordan is going to try to wrestle the holdouts into submission and win the gavel.