On Politico.com’s homepage on Tuesday the lead story declared “A blue wave in next year’s midterms might not flip that many seats. Here’s why,” deploying that most douchey of mainstream media tropes to a premise already tailor-made to be derided by those long past sick and tired of the sane-washy bothsides-y limp dick narratives of the Beltway/national political press that would print a headline like “Trump disparages Rob Reiner’s political views a day after his murder.

The article itself had a more tolerable headline of “The underrated factors limiting the power of a blue wave next year,” and the content even much more so makes the compelling case – that also isn’t surprising if you’ve internalized what the top election geeks have been saying and writing for the past three years or so – that, along with smaller factors like geographic assortation, the 2021 decennial redistricting greatly reduced the number of truly swing seats across the country.

Defensible, informed content with good data science design to it. If the writers end up being wrong it’ll be because of their small-c conservatism, not big-C. The big C-words are the editors who want the MAGA C-words to click on it out of excitement when they see the “Here’s why” but then don’t actually read the whole thing because it isn’t actually telling them what they want to read.

The editors probably wrote the headlines and appended that douchey “Here’s why” to the end of the one on the homepage. Make a statement and let the text itself tell you why it’s true rather than being such a twatwaffle that you need to affirm what’s already supposed to be self-evident.

“My Fellow Americans: I will be giving an ADDRESS TO THE NATION tomorrow night, LIVE FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, at 9 PM EST. I look forward to ‘seeing’ you then. It has been a great year for our Country, and THE BEST IS YET TO COME!” posted convicted felon President Trump ominously on Tuesday and one can only speculate as to what kind of Reichstag fire he wants to set this time.

The ratings for scumbag CBS News editor Bari Weiss’s big show with Erika Kirk were pretty limp at 1.5 million viewers, just a fifth of the Army-Navy game that led into it, Puck’s Dylan Byers reports.

This morning Pennsylvania Senator Dave McCormick previewed Vice President Neckbeard’s speech in the Keystone State by saying that Vance’s economic message to his constituents should be that “the Biden economy was a disaster” and damn Vance is playing that hit hard.

“A recent cybersecurity incident involving Mixpanel, a third-party data analytics provider, has impacted some Pornhub Premium users. Specifically, this situation affects only select Premium users. It is important to note this was not a breach of Pornhub Premium’s systems. Passwords, payment details, and financial information remain secure and were not exposed,” said artistic expression video service PornHub in a blog post Friday after the breach by a hacker crew.

What they kinda sort left out, per Bleeping Computer, is that the data includes all premium users’ registered email addresses and location, activity type – as in which videos and channels they watched, including the video name and web address – and the date and time of their activities.

Huh. Not for nothing but it may be a safe bet that these users would rather just have had their credit card numbers stolen if given the option. Minor hassle compared to their, um, private proclivities.

Alaska State Trooper investigators in Wasilla – aka Palinville – on Monday confirmed that the charred human remains found in the smoldering ruin of local cardiologist state medical board member Dr Ryan McDonough’s home were indeed that of the accused pedophile who was recently released on $50,000 bond after being hit with 10 counts child porno possession, Alaska Public Media reports.

Per Substacker Erin in The Morning, McDonough was appointed to the board by Gov Mike Dunleavy in August and had since only showed up to two meetings, one of which he voted yes on the first step toward banning hormone therapy for trans minors. That agenda’s stalled since McDonough tendered his resignation last month and without him there’s an insufficient quorum to advance it further. Surely they’ll do a better job vetting the next guy to make sure he doesn’t have pornographic images of children – including infants – on his devices so they can get the anti-trans job done.

The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.

Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the…

— Susie Wiles (@SusieWiles) December 16, 2025

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story. I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team. The truth is the Trump White House has already accomplished more in eleven months than any other President has accomplished in eight years and that is due to the unmatched leadership and vision of President Trump, for whom I have been honored to work for the better part of a decade. None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!” Wiles continued after the cutoff in the embed.

The Bulwark’s Sam Stein notes this is Wiles’s first tweet since October 31, 2024. That’s a context you may want to regard when evaluating how damage control-y the above screed is.

Leaving the room after a Tuesday House GOP meeting on how to proceed on healthcare policy, “moderate” Republican Congressman Mike Lawler told Punchbowl’s Laura Weiss that he won’t rule out signing onto a Dem discharge petition to force a vote on a “clean” extension of Obamacare subsidies – meaning no poison pills with income limits or abortion restrictions – a move that Weiss writes “would be a BIG escalation from [moderates] but only four more to put it over the top.”

“All options are on the table” said Lawler, adding “I am pissed for the American people. This is absolute bullshit,” rating specifically over leadership’s unwillingness to put the ACA subsidies up for a simple yes-or-no vote rather than playing all these ridiculous games.

What’s Steve Scalise’s appeal anyway? No, appearance is not everything, but one would think it should be at least kind of part of the package when it comes to political marketability, especially when the rest of the package is as pallid, pasty, and vacant as its appearance. Like what the fuck is his secret sauce with the voters of his impoverished, poorly-educated district in Louisiana? Merely being articulate relative to plenty of other Republicans doesn’t mean shit when the message is complete nonsense like that car insurance has the GEICO gecko so health insurance should have that too. Or that Trump is a (allegedly) a teetotaler so it doesn’t make sense to him that Susie Wiles told Vanity Fair that Donald has an “alcoholic’s personality,” as in that of an abusive wetbrain.

What the hell does saying Trump “never stops working” mean when it both was not true and wasn’t the question being asked? Lastly, you would think that MAYBE Steve could come up with something better than “All of it takes time, but we’re working on all of it at the same time right now. I think early next year you’re gonna start seeing bigger indicators. Trillions of investments already coming into the country from deals President Trump has already cut,” when asked when voters can expect some actual movement when it comes to affordability. This dipshit can’t even follow through and start rattling off some loose estimates of what it means for new jobs and economic growth.

“Governor Kathy Hochul holds double-digit leads over both Rep Elise Stefanik (Hochul leads 49-30 percent, with 20 percent undecided) and Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman (50-25 percent, 21 percent undecided), according to a new Siena Poll of New York State registered voters released today. Voters support, 65-27 percent, universal free childcare for infants through pre-K, paid for by increased taxes on New York taxpayers earning more than $1 million. By a narrower 50-41 percent New York City voters support eliminating bus fares, paid for by increased taxes on City taxpayers earning more than $1 million,” says a new Siena College survey of registered voters in New York.

“New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s 46-31 percent statewide favorability rating is up from 40-40 percent last month, and stands at 61-23 percent in New York City, up from 55-31 percent in November. By a 49-32 percent margin, up from 45-39 percent last month, voters statewide think his election will be good for New York City. And when looking at City voters alone, they say his election is good for the City, 66-25 percent, up from last month’s 57-26,” the bad news for Stef continued.

Not as bad for the insufferable MAGA Congresswoman as the last poll was. Still bad.

Trump White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’s job may or may not be in trouble soon as the New York Times reports that, in the course of 11 interviews with Vanity Fair, she confirmed that Trump is weaponizing federal law enforcement against Democrats (no shit, but you’re not supposed to say it, lol), is lying about whether Bill Clinton ever visited Epstein Island, “has an alcoholic’s personality,” that JD Vance “been a conspiracy theorist for a decade” and only went MAGA to win his 2022 Senate bid, that Elon Musk is “an avowed ketamine” user whose actions were not always “rational” and left her “aghast,” that OMB Director Russ Vought is “a right-wing absolute zealot,” and that Attorney General Pam Bondi “completely whiffed” in handling the Epstein files (also no shit, but lol).

This is worse than when Steve Bannon told Michael Wolff that Don Jr meeting with the Russians during the 2016 campaign was “treasonous” and then Trump ordered Breitbart to fire him, right?

Incredible … https://t.co/ipaps6uJpO

— Harmeet K. Dhillon (@HarmeetKDhillon) December 16, 2025

FBI agent Steve Friend, one of the douchebag “whistleblowers” suspended for spewing MAGA conspiracy bullshit over the January 6th investigations and subsequently paraded by spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan during the House GOP’s stupid “Weaponization” farce in 2023 and 2024, has been fired permanently after apparently threatening dipshit Director Kash Patel during an interview on another “whistleblower” assclown former agent’s podcast, the New York Post reports.

“You better pray to Gaia or Vishnu or whatever your maker is, that real Steve Friend is never in a position to be an instrument of God’s wrath, because I will be merciful: I won’t give you a trial and a hanging. I’ll allow you to breathe every breath that your body will have for the rest of its natural life inside of a box, and then when it ultimately fades to black, that’s when real wrath begins,” Friend told The Kyle Seraphin Show on December 5th when discussing the arrest of alleged pipe bomber Brian Cole – himself a MAGA asshole – who Friend thinks is a patsy and K$H is in on the cover-up.

The interview came less than two months after Friend had been reinstated to his position on October 10th, following his initial August 2022 suspension for violating the Bureau’s media policy by giving an interview to Kremlin outlet RT. During that stretch Patel had publicly supported Friend and as part of his “Government Gangsters” grift but, per the Post, “was concerned by what he found in personnel files about the real reasons for the ousting under the Biden administration.”

Friend was also late last month fired as a client by Empower.us, the slush fund agency-ish outfit founded by former Chuck Grassley staffer Tristan Leavitt that booked witnesses and coordinated all the insufferable, circlejerky hearings put on by Jordan and James Comer these last two congresses.

Drug-addicted billionaire Elon Musk is, for the moment, back on the GOP’s side and will be funding their campaigns in the 2026 midterms, Axios reports without mentioning the potential downsides of that, namely like his mental instability and godawful public image relative to where it’d been in 2024.

She said ‘yes’. 💍 @RepMTG @mtgreenee pic.twitter.com/C53kKbSQb5

— Brian Glenn (@brianglenntv) December 15, 2025

Asked by Huffington Post’s Igor Bobic to comment on convicted felon President Trump’s batshit insane “TDS killed Rob and Michele Reiner” post on Monday, Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin said that Trump “was respectful to him, said he was a once a really good actor and all that, and pointed out the fact that he didn’t like him at all… I don’t think it was distasteful at all. The guy does not like Trump and President Trump went out and still ended it in a very nice way.”

Well that’s a new one, right? Instead of the old “I haven’t seen it” to avoid addressing the batshittery, Markwayne mixes it up and just completely tries to gaslight people on the content of it to avoid addressing the batshittery. It’s like he hallucinated a much more logically coherent and grounded version of Trump’s post in which Donald wrote “Reiner was a liberal asshole, but this is a tragedy and my deepest condolences to his family. May he and Michele rest in peace.”

Convicted felon President Trump’s wienery son-in-law Jared Kushner on Monday pulled the plug on the Trump Tower Belgrade project after spending two years working on it, the planned development felled by local protests and the indictment of a local politician, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Some douchebag who does PR for Kushner’s slush fund confirmed in a statement saying “Because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade, we are withdrawing our application and stepping aside at this time.”

In lieu of an actual article about the matter, Fox News on Monday reported via tweet that former host and current Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino “will decide about his future at the bureau in the next few weeks,” according to two of Fox’s sources inside the Hoover building.