“Governor Gavin Newsom today proclaimed a State of Emergency to streamline and expedite the state’s response to Avian influenza A (H5N1), commonly known as ‘Bird Flu.’ This action comes as cases were detected in dairy cows on farms in Southern California, signaling the need to further expand monitoring and build on the coordinated statewide approach to contain and mitigate the spread of the virus. The virus has spread in 16 states among dairy cattle, following its first confirmed detection in Texas and Kansas in March 2024. To date, no person-to-person spread of Bird Flu has been detected in California and nearly all infected individuals had exposure to infected cattle,” says California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office in a Wednesday press release.

“California has already established the largest testing and monitoring system in the nation to respond to the outbreak. This proclamation will provide state and local agencies with additional flexibility around staffing, contracting, and other rules to support California’s evolving response.”

Kentucky MAGA hick Congressman Thomas Massie on Wednesday told Punchbowl’s Melanie Zanona he will not be voting for Speaker Mike Johnson come January 3rd, raising the possibility there could be major chaos once again at the beginning of the 119th Congress, just as there was in 2023 when it took goddamned 15 votes for Kevin McCarthy to squeak across the finish line.

In related news, maybe good for Mike Johnson but who the hell knows, Matt Gaetz on Wednesday floated the possibility he could come back to DC to get sworn in and serve for three days to “File a privileged motion to expose every ‘me too’ settlement paid using public funds (even of former members)” and then “Resign and start my @OANN program at 9pm EST on January 6, 2025.”

Maybe that’ll help Johnson. What won’t is what Elon Musk just tweeted. “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” wrote Ketamine Brain on the social media network he ruined, to which Gaetz replied “Elon isn’t fucking around. He’s fully engaged, funding massive efforts. This is not an empty threat.” Ballsucker, lol.

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer on Wednesday committed to possibly acknowledging that there might be a “cause for concern” if convicted felon President-Elect Trump is not “transparent” with his banking records, which if you recall was like a four year long court battle with House Democrats who sued to obtain a whole bunch of shit from Mazars USA, who fired Trump as a client.

“A Michigan man pleaded guilty today to one count of committing a hate crime by attempting to carry out a mass killing. According to court documents, Mack Davis, 22, of Owosso, admitted that he attempted to conduct a mass killing of individuals at a political party headquarters and a nearby bar in the Eastern District of Michigan because he associated both locations with gay people.”

“According to court documents, from at least July 2023 through June 2024, Davis accessed search engines and social media sites to research, post about, and pay tribute to mass killers, and wrote about dozens of mass killers in journals and on other items in his home. During that period, Davis also began to plot his own mass killing, by, among other things, drafting lists of weapons and tactical gear he owned and intended to acquire for use in his mass killing. By June, Davis had crossed off every item on the list of weapons and tactical gear he intended to acquire, and had amassed an arsenal that included two firearms, magazines, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a crossbow and arrows, assorted bomb-making parts, smoke grenades, tactical gear and clothing and several knives. Davis inscribed one of the knives with the anti-gay slur, ‘F*GGOT Killer.'”

The common California ground squirrel, long associated with nibbling on acorns and other seeds for sustenance, turns out to be a straight up predator. Not even an opportunistic one, but an eager and skilled predator, with researchers from the University of Wisconsin documenting no fewer that 74 instances of the squirrels viciously preying on smaller, mouse-like rodents called voles.

“Dietary flexibility allows animals to respond adaptively to food pulses in the environment. Here we document the novel emergence of widespread hunting of California voles and carnivorous feeding behavior by California ground squirrels. Over two months in the twelfth year of a long-term study on the squirrel population, we document 74 events of juvenile and adult ground squirrels of both sexes depredating, consuming, and/or competing over vole prey. Our video footage, photographic evidence, and direct observations of marked individual squirrels provide insights into the ecological circumstances favoring behavioral flexibility in foraging associated with a decadal peak in vole abundance,” says the abstract of the chilling new research into the bloody squirrel horde.

Here’s white nationalist Arizona Republican Congressman Andy Biggs telling a reporter he’s sure convicted felon President-Elect Trump “was just being humorous” when he again insisted he wants to annex Canada to the United States in a Truth Social post at 3:23 AM on Wednesday.

Noting correctly that “America’s political divide is likely to get even wider” in the lede, the Guardian reports that a new app called Oyssey (holy shit that name is awful) allows those in the markert for a new home to see, among other social metrics, the political affiliations of their potential new neighbors as a criteria on whether they want to move into an area full of MAGA chuds or libtards.

“We’re the advantage platform for homebuyers at a time when buyers have never needed an advantage more,” Oyessy CEO Huw Nierenberg said of the new self-sorting advantage.

The House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release the report on former Congressbro Matt Gaetz’s staturtoy rapey and drug-fueled party lifestyle and will be made public in days, CNN reports.

For those keeping score at home, Matt Gaetz, now apparently an OANN on-screen personality, talked convicted felon President-Elect Trump into nominating him to be US Attorney General and abruptly resigned in a bid to avoid letting the committee release the report due to him no longer being under their jurisdiction, only to back out eight days later and pass on returning for the 119th Congress in January as he very well could have because he won reelection last month, just to avoid the likely outcome that the Ethics Committee would resume moving toward releasing it.

Now they’re just going to release it anyway, so he might as well quit stupid OAN and come back, lol.

This bill should not pass https://t.co/eccQ6COZJ4

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 18, 2024

Ghana’s Supreme Court on Wednesday dismissed challenges to a bill currently moving through the small West African country’s legislature criminalizing being LGBTQ and failing to report an LGBTQ friend or family member to the anti-gay authorities, Bloomberg reports.

In a letter to the editor of the Tennesseean printed Wednesday, property owner William Scarbro of Bethpage, Tennessee writes “Just a comment, about all these drone sightings. The pundits say, do not shoot them down. Really? Personally, if i spotted a drone flying around my house or property, it would not be flying very long, since i would shoot it out of the air. Then, I would lay what might be left of it in the ditch of my front yard, hoping whatever person it belonged to would stop and collect their intrusive device. Then, we would be having a rather terse conversation. Keep your drones at home is my suggestion if you want to keep them. My home and property lines are my airspace. Not yours.” Copied verbatim from the Tennessean, who also appear to have copied verbatim the two occurrences of lowercase i that Mr Scarbro used to refer to himself in the first person.

You hear that Venezuela/Soros/NSA/World Economic Forum? Keep your surveillance drones the fuck out of the airspace over Willian Scarbro’s property in rural north central Tennessee or your foot soldiers will be forced to have a very terse and awkward conversation with him when they attempt to retrieve the remains of your precious flying terror. He already made it clear in the headline: “My Tennessee property is a drone-free zone.” This is non-negotiable. He’s not listening to your pundits pleading with him not to shoot them down. Drone-free zone or live fire zone. Your choice, commies.

“No one can answer why we subsidize 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. I think it is a great idea. 51st State!!!” posted convicted felon President-Elect Trump at 3:23 AM on Wednesday, still trollishly agitating for annexing Canada.

Trump was apparently citing a poll from last week finding actually pretty weak support for the entire nation of Canada to become the 51st state, with just 13 percent in favor. Maybe there might be more in favor if, rather than lumping more than 41 million people and all 3,511,023 square miles of the second largest country geographically into a single state, that at least 10 individual states for each province were admitted to the union, plus three more for each of Canada’s northern territories.

Perhaps then it’d be closer to like 20 or 25 percent support. Either way, it’s worth asking how much Republicans would want this even if a large majority of Canadians were interested in giving up their national sovereignty – and their monarchy under King Charles. They’d need like 55 seats in the House – and 57 Electoral College votes which would be very tough to win for the GOP as a single state. As 13 states it’d be a freaking nightmare for MAGA in the Senate – probably a whole bunch of independents caucusing with the Dems if not actual Dems. There could be reliably red seats in Alberta, maybe Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Manitoba, but on net it’d be suicidal for Republicans in the long term. Lucky for them their Orange Allah is just shitposting his imperial fantasy.

The orange slob also posted “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’ Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done,” just further ensuring Joe Biden will pardon her before leaving office next month.

Indiana corrections officials on Wednesday crossed 49 year-old Joseph Corcoran off the state’s naughty list just after midnight, putting him to death for the 1997 quadruple homicide in which the victims included his own brother and his sister’s fiancee, the New York Post reports.

We had to say dickety because the Kaiser had stolen our word “eighty”… A cartoon series even better than Steamboat Scratchy by Chester Lampwick debuted on the Fox Network on this very cold evening and its impression will last far longer than four years of McKinleynomics. Even if you’ve aged since Simpsons Roasting On An Open Fire debuted on December 17th, 1989 and now look more like the Bart above than the Bart of every other episode since the late 80s, the humor is timeless.

Mostly. That variety show skit from the mid-90s was pretty dated to those of us who were barely older than Maggie after the characters originally debuted on the Tracey Ullman show in 1987.

“I am pleased to nominate Herschel Walker as United States Ambassador to the Commonwealth of the Bahamas. Herschel has spent decades serving as an Ambassador to our Nation’s youth, our men and women in the Military, and athletes at home and abroad” posted you know who on Tuesday.

“On Monday, December 16, 2024, at approximately 11:30 am, Troopers responded to a single vehicle crash at Exit 79 on the Turnpike in Lewiston involving a pickup truck hauling a cattle trailer. The driver was traveling southbound when the incident occurred. The initial investigation indicates that the rear doors of the cattle hauler were not properly secured, causing them to unlatch. As a result, the cattle inside the trailer shifted, leading to three animals falling from the back of the trailer onto the roadway and one cow running out of the vehicle once the trailer had stopped. One cow landed in the passing lane and suffered a broken leg, while two others sustained road rash and were located on the shoulder of the road. The fourth cow ran out of the trailer and into the woods nearby.”

“Troopers secured one of the cows by tying it to the back of his cruiser, using a buddy system to help calm the other animals and prevent further movement. Traffic was impacted, with one lane temporarily shut down as the driver, 39-year-old Dustin Bubar of Stetson, Maine worked to reload the animals into the trailer. Bubar was cited for Unsecured Load on a Vehicle. Animal Control Officers from Lewiston Police Department assisted on scene, along with passersby who stopped to help. The crash remains under investigation,” says the Maine State Police in a Facebook post.

“I’m going to tell you right now that if they try to tell us all to stay inside, stay home, shelter in place ‘FOR OUR SAFETY’ from the drones, there is no way in hell I will comply with that absolute bullshit.”

“Not doing it. No way. I’ll shoot the drones down myself along with every other red blooded freedom loving American. 🇺🇸” posted white nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene on Tuesday.

“THE GRAND JURY OF THE COUNTY OF NEW YORK, by this indictment, accuses the defendant of the crime of MURDER IN THE FIRST DEGREE, in violation of Penal Law §125.27(1)(a)(xiii) and (b), committed as follows: The defendant, in the County of New York, on or about December 4, 2024, being more than eighteen years old at the time of the commission of the crime, with intent to cause the death of another person, caused the death of Brian Thompson, and said person was killed in furtherance of an act of terrorism, involving a violent act and acts dangerous to human life that were in violation of the criminal laws of this state and were intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion, and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping,” says the indictment from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg’s office hitting Luigi Mangione with 11 counts for the assassination.

The other charges include Murder Second, Murder Second as a Crime of Terrorism, four counts of Possession of a Weapon in the Third for the gun itself, the silencer, the high capacity feeder clip, and the “Magpul,” whatever that is, Possession Fourth because it was a ghost gun, and Forged Instrument because of the fake ID. Good luck finding a nullification-free jury, Al.

Kamala uses the horrific Christian school shooting in Wisconsin yesterday to call for gun control. pic.twitter.com/ZYME4DYaOr

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) December 17, 2024