Senate Majority Leader John Thune and one of his top minions, Majority Whip John Barasso, were spotted by Politico Playbook outside of a Dollar Tree on Michigan Ave NE in DC on Wednesday evening. The senators were eating directly out of cans of what appeared to be Dinty Moore beef stew, “Sunny Select” saltine crackers, and “Fiddle Faddle” brand caramel popcorn on top of the trunk of a 2012 Honda Accord as they talked strategy for winning the shutdown fight with Dems, their apparent economy choices for the meal some sort of play for positive optics during the crisis.

Just kidding. Playbook wrote “Thune, Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso and other GOP pals dining last night at swanky Capitol Hill hotspot Bistro Cacao – where filet mignon and magret de canard go for $45 a head and the cabernet sauvignon list ranges from $60 to $750 a bottle, per Playbook’s Adam Wren. Fine dining on the first night of a government shutdown? Those Democratic attack lines almost write themselves,” emphasis theirs because French menu items italicized.

A suspect was shot by police responding to a report of a stabbing attack outside of a synagogue in Manchester, England on Thursday, the AP reports on yet more not great news while the UK is already a powder keg of racial/ethnic tensions wrought by right wing nationalists.

Former Fox News sexual harassment victim Megyn Kelly lost her shit earlier this week over the selection of rapper Bad Bunny as the Super Bowl’s halftime show artist, calling it a “middle finger to MAGA” because Bad Bunny sometimes dresses in women’s clothing, probably because he’s confident in his sexuality and thus can comfortably joke around like JD Vance did in college.

One-term former North Carolina Congressman Madison Cawthorn on Wednesday launched a bid to return to the House, this time from the southwest Florida district currently “represented” by gubernatorial hopeful Byron Donalds. “Madison Cawthorn knows the system is rigged against hard-working families. Washington insiders cut deals while Floridians pay the price. That’s why he’s running for Congress: to defend the America First agenda, hold bureaucrats accountable, and put Floridians first. Madison is proud to call Cape Coral home – and he’s ready to take Florida values to Washington,” says the announcement on the carpetbagger’s new campaign site.

“The Soybean Farmers of our Country are being hurt because China is, for ‘negotiating’ reasons only, not buying. We’ve made so much money on Tariffs, that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers. I WILL NEVER LET OUR FARMERS DOWN! Sleepy Joe Biden didn’t enforce our Agreement with China, where they were going to purchase Billions of Dollars of our Farm Product, but Soybeans, in particular. It’s all going to work out very well. I LOVE OUR PATRIOTS, AND EVERY FARMER IS EXACTLY THAT! I’ll be meeting with President Xi, of China, in four weeks, and Soybeans will be a major topic of discussion. MAKE SOYBEANS, AND OTHER ROW CROPS, GREAT AGAIN!” posted Comrade Trump on this glorious day of tribulation. Four weeks is too long.

And the tariffs that ALL OF US pay are going to bail out the fucking farmers. Awesome.

The above clip is journalism. For all the mainstream media’s many, many, many faults, they don’t call him George “Slopodopoulos” because he rolls over for their constant bullshit. Demanding accountability for words and actions is not an agenda. It can be the imprimatur of an agenda, but here it’s just demanding accountability. Jesus Dork Mike Johnson regretted going on ABC News.

The MAGA Catholic douchebags are kind of freaking out after Pope Leo XIV on Wednesday told a reporter that American right wingers aren’t really “pro-life” just because they’re anti-abortion, the AP reports. Not very long story short, Chicago’s Cardinal Blase Cupich was planning to give Dem Illinois Senator Dick Durbin a lifetime award for his work helping immigrants amid the objections from conservative bishops because abortion. Durbin already pre-declined the accolade and hometown hero Leo wasn’t even familiar with the situation when a reporter from right wing US Catholic-themed outlet EWTN asked him for comment. Still they proooobably didn’t get the answer they wanted.

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favor of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life. Someone who says that ‘I’m against abortion, but I’m in agreement with the inhuman treatment of immigrants in the United States,’ I don’t know if that’s pro-life,” said Leo, the first American successor to famous popes like Saint Peter and criminal sociopath Rodrigo Borgia.

“I don’t know if anyone has all the truth on them but I would ask first and foremost that there be greater respect for one another and that we search together both as human beings, in that case as American citizens or citizens of the state of Illinois, as well as Catholics to say we need to you know really look closely at all of these ethical issues and to find the way forward in this church. Church teaching on each one of those issues is very clear,” the Pope continued during his presser.

Creepy Nazi incel EJ Antoni’s nomination to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics – to replace his Senate-confirmed predecessor who was fired because of a bad jobs report – has been withdrawn by convicted felon President Trump’s regime after ONE monthly report, CNN reports.

Credit to CNN’s Manu Raju for the video and for speaking to Pennsylvania Congresswoman Madeline Dean to get the after-action. “He asked me, like, rhetorically, ‘is that really racist?’ It’s really racist, it’s despicable, and he should have called it out,” Dean said, referring to convicted felon President Trump’s utterly deranged AI slop video post depicting House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wearing a sombrero. “And I said, ‘Did you see what the President did in that performance before the Generals?’ He said he hadn’t seen it. I said, ‘you should watch it. The President is unwell… That somebody needs to go to him,” Dean then added after she further emasculated Johnson.

Tuesday, Wednesday, and however many days come after it represent what could be a critical juncture for how next year’s midterms shake out, so maaaaaybe it’s not that early to do a rundown?

To begin, this week’s Economist/YouGov poll brings some of the usual laughs, like that only 72 percent of Trump 2024 voters said yes to the question of whether former FBI Director James Comey committed obstruction of justice, just 64 percent said no when asked “Is Trump Prosecuting Comey for Political Reasons?” and 53 percent of Trump fans saying no vs 21 percent admitting yes when asked if their Orange Jesus is directing the DOJ to harass his political opponents.

Then there’s 71 percent of Trump voters who approve of the Comey indictment – and there’s prooooobably plenty of overlap between that subsample and those who admitted that it is political.

But it’s two other more generic – outright ubiquitous among other major big pollsters – questions’ findings on the poll that merit attention here, if only to vainly attempt a counter to this background noise circlejerk that’s been going on for months now: “Favorability of Congressional Political Parties” on which among respondents overall the Democrats rate at an abysmal 32 percent favorability to 58 percent unfavorable. It’s the kind of numbers Axios faps to with headlines like “Democrats hammered by ugly unpopularity numbers,” Breitbart with “Poll: Dem Favorability Hits 35-Year Low as GOP Gains Trust on Key Issues,” and so on in the mainstream and MAGA mediaverses.

Meanwhile on the very next question YouGov asks the same of Congressional Republicans and, wait for it, they land at 36 percent favorability to 55 percent unfavorable. So they’re 4 percent more favorable of 7 percent closer to zero on net favorable/unfavorable than Democrats are.

If you want a hint about how it went for convicted felon President Trump’s regime in a case brought by pro-Palestinian student visa holders targeted for deportation there’s the above screenshot of a postcard Massachusetts US District Judge William Young received from an anonymous fanboy. Or that after opening his 187-page ruling with that missive, Young then wrote “Proposed by Congress in 1789, and ratified in 1791, the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States – its words carved in New Hampshire granite on the exterior of the very courthouse in which this Court sits – provides: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Young then sorts out the case and then, at the bottom for 12 pages rips into the fat fuck’s personality disorders and then writes “Everything above in this section is necessary background to frame the problem this president has with the First Amendment. Where things run off the rails for him is his fixation with ‘retribution.’ ‘I am your retribution,’ he thundered famously while on the campaign trail. Yet government retribution for speech (precisely what has happened here) is directly forbidden by the First Amendment. The president’s palpable misunderstanding that the government simply cannot seek retribution for speech he disdains poses a great threat to Americans’ freedom of speech. It is at this juncture the judiciary has robustly rebuffed the president and his administration.”

So yeah, young ruled against him.

To the surprise of approximately no one, the AP reports that MAGA Evangelical preacher/musician Sean Feucht – the one with the really lustrous, long hair who was reportedly effing divorced grandma Lauren Boebert – is running a slush fund snapping up expensive real estate and hasn’t filed a required 990 form with the IRS since 2020, when his organization reported $5 million in revenue.

A source inside Disney told indie blogger Maria Kabas that between the Mouse megacorporation’s namesake streaming service, Hulu, and ESPN+ there were 1.7 million subscription cancelations after ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel’s suspension at the command of convicted felon President Trump and FCC incel Brandon Carr on the 17th until his abrupt uncancellation on the 23rd, a 436 percent increase compared to a typical six-day period for the array of digital entertainment services.

Huh. So it takes six days for this to quietly leak out to a journo on BlueSky, where it got 7,800 likes, all the while the rest of the political/media world moved on because James Comey got indicted, an anti-Mormon MAGA terrorist shot up a church, something something Ryder Cup, and the government’s about to shut down. Carr, who was talking a LOT of shit before and immediately after Kimmel was seemingly done forever, has apparently stayed off Fox News while his partners in corruption, right wing affiliate chains Nexstar and Sinclair, capitulated on their preemption of Kimmel’s show just three days later. The latter’s cave was particularly embarrassing as Sinclair had demanded that the host make a large donation to TurningPoint USA, and they got nothing.

All the momentum that the MAGA Reich had in making Charlie Kirk’s assassination into a Reichstag fire moment and an all-out assault on the First Amendment has been seriously sapped by regular Americans simply saying “fuck this” and turning off their Disney streaming subscriptions in protest of the company’s cave to a fascist autocrat. That’s all it took. The significance of the moment is only outstripped by its insignificance amid a hurricane of other dark and absurd batshittery. Kabas even wrote “Can someone share my news on X so the weirdos can have a meltdown” as she has obviously been – like so many other libs – boycotting the bigger platform because of Ketamine Brain.

You maybe it’s worth using this space to offer a substantive observation of what Florida Senator Ashley Moody is saying but the unsettling sound of her voice as well as just her general affect are simply too disquieting to ignore. She may be suffering from some potentially serious psychiatric and/or neurological impairment and may require serious medical attention. That is all.

Republican Arizona Congressman Dave Schweikert on Tuesday told the Washington Post that he’s suffered enough “intense frustration” with an “intellectually calcified” Congress and will instead throw in the Grand Canyon State’s GOP gubernatorial primary, a field that’s already a little crowded and in which convicted felon President Trump has already doubly endorsed both miserable white nationalist MAGA Congressman Andy Biggs and 2022 primary loser Karrin Taylor Robson.

Schweikert’s announcement, making him now the 15th Republican in the chamber to call it quits on DC so far this cycle, seems pretty likely to have less of an impact on the gubernatorial race than it does control of the House as his seat in Arizona’s 1st District has been seen as among the most highly competitive on the map nationally since it was drawn in 2021. Schwiekert squeaked by with a less than 1 percent margin win in 2022 and then slightly more comfortably at 3.8 percent in 2024.

Trump had in July successfully hounded “moderate” Congressmen Mike Lawler and Bill Huizenga to stay put in the House and out of the New York gubernatorial and Michigan Senate GOP primaries, respectively, to protect their vulnerable seats. It was a power move to maintain the incumbency advantage that either didn’t work on Schweikert or, maybe even more likely, that the fat bastard was too distracted to even try it, endangering a critical swing seat and forcing the NRCC to spend.

“The Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index® declined by 3.6 points in September to 94.2 (1985=100), down from 97.8 in August. The Present Situation Index – based on consumers’ assessment of current business and labor market conditions – fell by 7.0 points to 125.4. The Expectations Index – based on consumers’ short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions – decreased by 1.3 points to 73.4. Expectations have been below the threshold of 80 that typically signals a recession ahead since February 2025. The cutoff date for preliminary results was September 21, 2025,” says the Conference Board’s bad news of the day.

Worse: “Consumers’ views of their Family’s Current and Future Financial Situation both weakened in September. Notably, consumers’ views of their current financial situation recorded the largest one-month drop since we started to collect this data in July 2022. The share of consumers thinking that a recession is very likely over the next 12 months rose slightly in September, to the highest level since May. In addition, more consumers thought that the economy was already in recession.”

Jesus Dork Speaker of the House Mike Johnson violated the 8th Commandment on Tuesday, live on CNBC, telling the hosts that Democrats had “put in writing” that they want illegal immigrants to receive Medicaid benefits as part of their shutdown demands. Mike Johnson is going to hell for violating this most sacred of God’s directives to all of his people of faith. He will burn forever.

“I’ve never walked into a room so silent before. Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, you’re not allowed to do that. You know what, just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you can do anything you want. If you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course there goes your rank and there goes your future,” said convicted felon President Trump to the dead silence of the generals and admirals assembled at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, Virginia on Tuesday. It was that last bit that finally elicited moderate, possibly forced/nervous, laughter from the crowd.

The “WATCH LIVE” is still running but the very Jeb Bush-esque moment required a separate article.

Governor of Russia’s Belgorod region Vyacheslav Gladkov on Monday assured his subjects that crews are working hard to restore electricity to the oblast after at least six Ukrainian missiles oblasted power stations in the capital city, also called Belgorod, Reuters reports.

Gladkov then posted video of the Belgorod philharmonic performing by torchlight, just like they did back in Tchaikovsky and Borodin’s days. Must’ve been a really authentic experience.