Donald Trump holds a commanding lead in the final major poll of Iowa caucus-goers by NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa, with the bombastic basketball holding a 28-percentage point lead over second-place finisher Civil War denier Nikki Haley, who leapfrogged the failing Floridian Ron DeSantis in the final survey.  Trump finished at 48%, Haley at 20% and DeSantis with 16%.

As Politico notes, Haley’s numbers may be “soft” given that much of the caucus results are as much about persistence and fervor as they are political policy.  An astounding 82% of Trump supporters say they would not under any circumstances, consider another candidate; for Haley, that number is 63%, with just 9% saying they are “extremely enthusiastic” for their candidate, versus more than 60% for Trump’s base.

The Peregrine spacecraft whose mission was originally to end in a soft landing on the Moon is now hurtling toward Earth on a collision course that will likely end with it burning up in the atmosphere, according to an update from the private company that launched the vehicle.  The craft was doomed nearly from the start when ground controllers realized a propellant leak was causing the craft to act irregularly and draining energy for a safe landing.

The feeling of gloom looms heavy over Iowa as the caucus approaches, according to a New York Times report from the ground (gift link here).  As Doug Gross, a longtime Republican state activist who was a one-time candidate for governor, said, “You get the feeling in Iowa right now that we’re sleepwalking into a nightmare and there’s nothing we can do about it. In Iowa, life isn’t lived in extremes, except the weather, and yet they still feel this dramatic sense of inevitable doom.”

“There’s civil war coming. I’m convinced of it,” said Mark Binns, a chemical engineer who attended campaign events for both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, noting that he intends to spend November 2024 in Brazil to escape the violence he anticipates.  “Quite literally, I may leave the country for that week. The division is too wide.”

Here’s the problem with the Times’ reporting:  Iowa is being flooded by Republicans hellbent on getting Joe Biden out of office, so they’re warping reality to make it seem like everywhere outside Iowa is a liberal-run communist factory town churning out LGBTQ union teachers indoctrinating children in DEI while preparing them to be harvested for their adrenochrome.  There’s no Democratic equivalent giving a realistic perspective.

A rising Democratic star from Texas, Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett has earned plaudits from liberals for her direct-fire attacks on Republican performance artists, and in a CNN interview, she shreds the Republican House’s obsession with Hunter Biden:  “If they had [evidence of Joe Biden’s corruption], they wouldn’t’ve held back.”

“Lewis Kaplan, the terrible, biased, irrationally angry Clinton-appointed Judge in the Bergdorf’s Hoax, refused to postpone the sham trial next week, even in light of the funeral of my beloved Mother-in-law. [Editor’s note:  Trump has spent this week in Iowa holding political rallies, not sitting shiva in Florida.] This Judge has been ruthlessly unfair from the first day of Crooked Joe Biden’s Election Interfering Witch Hunt. I don’t know this woman, who I have never met (photo line does not count), who doesn’t remember the day, month, season, or decade the event she has made up supposedly occurred. She and her Democrat disgraced operative attorney, who I beat in another Election Interference type Hoax a number of months ago, tried to blackmail me with a dress, but once it was exposed to have no connection to me AT ALL, begged the Judge to exclude it from evidence. Of course, the Radical Judge went along with their wishes….. Page Two: [Editor’s note:  His notation.]  Before the trial, my lawyer told me that this was beneath me as a President and, by far, the Leading Candidate in 2024, and I should not attend—So I didn’t. It was funded by a Donor Slob named Reid Hoffman, and others—All political hacks. The fix was in, the Judge prevented our side from using the dress, or showing the full CNN tape (where Ms. Bergdorf’s said nothing happened and that “rape is sexy”), or truly exposing just how crazy and dishonest this woman is by revealing her ‘sick’ tweets and stories written about her. She called her African American Husband, former Newscaster John Johnson, ‘an Ape,’ and named her Cat ‘Vagina.’ Does anyone believe this ridiculous story, ripped straight out of an episode of Law & Order, her favorite Show? Of course not. End this Witch Hunt now!”  –The latest missive from Donald Trump on his failing social media platform in a totally rational outburst.  Earlier, he went off on the judge in one of his other New York-based cases:

A US military operation on Thursday to apparently intercept a ship in the Gulf of Aden off Somalia went awry, with two Navy SEALs rappelling down a rope to land on the ship falling into the ocean, the Associated Press reports.  The pair remain missing, and a search is underway.

Details of the operation are scant, but Pentagon officials say the mission was not part of a different international effort to protect shipping in the Red Sea from missiles and drones being launched by Houthi rebels in Yemen and the subsequent US attacks on those rebels.  The military has undertaken other missions in the same region to seize weapons going to various destinations in the Middle East.

A Trump-appointed judge in Florida ruled that the ban on guns in US Postal Service facilities is unconstitutional, Reuters reports, allowing employees to carry guns at workplaces that had at one time was so violent, the popular dark-humor phrase for mass shootings was “going postal.”

A spate of gun violence at Post Offices in the late 1980s to ’90s led to bans on weapons in the workplace as well as a reorganization of Post Office operations.  But District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle said that a charge against a former postal employee for carrying a gun into a federal office was “a blanket restriction on firearms possession in post offices is incongruent with the American tradition of firearms regulation.”  Kimball Mizelle was born in 1987, after the post office violence began, so to her, it never occurred.

The White House announced that climate envoy John Kerry will depart the Biden Administration in the coming weeks to join Joe Biden’s re-election campaign, Reuters reports, a move that someone believes will add a needed spark to Biden’s emergent effort, Reuters reports.  How the 80-year-old loser of the 2004 presidential election will help the campaign was not specified.

Unlike the Trump Administration, which had senior staff exit seemingly on a weekly basis–one of his appointees was in office so briefly his name became a mocking unit of time–the Biden Administration hasn’t had many senior staff resign:  Chief of Staff Ron Klain and Press Secretary Jen Psaki are the only two high profile departures.

“Republican Judges are very often afraid to do the right thing. They go out of their way to show they are totally impartial, to the point of making really bad and unfair decisions. Their counterparts, Judges appointed by Democrats, like Biden or Obama, laugh at the stupidity of it all. They go out of their way to follow the party line, they don’t give the opposition a chance. Such a difference – It is so SAD to see!” wrote fat former President Trump in a Truth Social post on Saturday.

It’s not clear which judge he’s talking about as pretty much all of those he’s encountered lately are, if not elected Dems or federal jurists appointed by Dem presidents, are not MAGA either. There has been some action in the Mar-a-Lago classified docs theft case over the last few days and to be honest we didn’t even bother to look into it because the motions and rulings are so deep in the weeds in a trial that has effectively zero chance of starting before the 2024 election there’s no real point in getting into it. Maybe Aileen Cannon acted like a judge and not his defense lawyer for once.

More likely however is that he’s anticipating the Conservative-majority US Supreme Court is going to fuck him on the “presidential immunity” argument in short order (pretty probable), the Colorado 14th Amendment case (improbable, not impossible), or both (hard to see them helping him on the 14th but not the immunity). He could also be complaining preemptively about Judge Karen Henderson, the George W Bush appointee on the DC Appeals Court panel that heard his case this week, that if she fully concurs with the other two – Michelle Childs (Obama) and Florence Pan (Biden) – then it’s going to be that much harder for him to slow things down en banc and at the Supreme Court.

Former Cochise County, Arizona Elections Director Bob Bartelsmeyer, who quit after just five months on the job in September 2023 spoke with CNN this week about the vicious harassment he faced from angry MAGA cultists during his short tenure and that he has “worries about the nation.”

“2024 is going to be very brutal. Going to be very hostile,” Bartelsmeyer warned after seeing firsthand the bottomless paranoia of the Trump fans in his deep red bailiwick on the Mexican border.

The punchline is that Bartelsmeyer himself is hardcore MAGA and only deleted Facebook posts saying “Trump legally won by a landslide” and other bullshit when he took the job. CNN’s article specifically notes that “he still seems unable to fully shake his doubt about the 2020 election.”

Yet still voters in the county screamed at him during public meetings, with one saying “Mr Bartelsmeyer, if I had the authority, I’d fire you,” just before Bartelsmeyer called it quits. “After hearing that nightmarish thing from Mr Bartelsmeyer – I was appalled by it, actually. To claim that he’s a conservative – you don’t need to claim it, it’s by your actions. And your actions, sir, are not that of a conservative, otherwise you’d be listening to your constituents,” said another.

The “nightmarish thing” was simply a plan to consolidate local precincts into larger voting centers, ones that would conveniently allow residents from anywhere in the county to cast their ballot at whichever center they want. “I believe that if we continue to take these easy choices, and we go down this path of least resistance in the name of convenience, it’s not going to be too long before every vote is by mail. And then it’s not going to be too long til every vote is online. And then it’s going to be not too long until there’s no voting at all,” said another attendee at the meeting.

At least twice in the last week now has Fox News propagandist Laura Ingraham urged Republicans in Congress to do nothing about the “border crisis,” on Friday night’s show telling them “No Republican should touch this or be involved with this sham in any way, shape, or form. Let the voters sort this out in November. We don’t need a fig leaf of enforcement, we need a new president.”

Now there are plenty of voices on the left – our own readers included – that say others shouldn’t be so dismissive of MAGA rhetoric on the border because it does carry some level of potency with swing voters, that there is a kernel of truth underneath all the histrionics and bullshit. We don’t dispute that, but it becomes maybe just a little bit harder to do so when one of their own leading Mini-Goebbels just comes out and says almost literally that it’s not an actual emergency and that their party should leverage it to win an election in 10 months instead of trying to fix it now.

What else are we supposed to think here? How the fuck are we supposed to take it seriously when it obviously isn’t that serious of a problem to them? Would it not be a good thing for the House GOP to be able to say “Hey we got this, this, and this in the border deal, but obviously that isn’t enough and we’ve still got more work to do, so let’s get Trump elected and keep our majority”?

Taiwan Vice President Lai Ching-te’s two main rivals in the island country’s Saturday presidential election didn’t wait for the Central Election Committee to finalize the results before they called Lai to congratulate him on his win and then publicly concede, CNN reports on a historic third term for the ruling Democratic Progressive Party and a blow to the ChiComs who were rooting against him.

“I want to thank the Taiwanese people for writing a new chapter in our democracy. We have shown the world how much we cherish our democracy. This is our unwavering commitment,” Lai told reporters, confirming the concession calls. “We are telling the international community that between democracy and authoritarianism, we will stand on the side of democracy. The Republic of China, Taiwan will continue to walk side by side with democracies from around the world,” Lai added.

Disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers on Friday filed another motion demanding DC Judge Tanya Chutkan to hold Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith and his team in contempt for continuing to work while the case is on hold during appeal is pretty freaking funny. A brief clip:

Last week NBC’s Ryan Reilly that the Trump team’s actual game here is to get “Jack Smith” and “contempt” in a bunch of headlines, to which the media – us included – took the bait. Guilty, but the actual content of this whining is still just too freaking funny to pass up and speaks a lot to the confidence that Trump and his lawyers have that they’re going to prevail on the appeal that they say is supposed to be prohibiting these motions from being filed to the court while the case is stayed.

• Chutkan, Pan, Childs, Henderson–the four women overseeing Trump’s DC case from the bench–have grabbed ‘im by the, um, briefs. He’s about to get the judicial equivalent of an atomic wedgie.  
• Ron DeSantis needs to finish with at least 30% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses to remain viable in the race.  He’s spent all his resources in the state and invested time for his “99 counties” stunt among other things, so anything short of stomping on the non-Trump field will be another complete failure for the campaign.
• If the Courts end up ruling Presidential immunity from any criminal prosecution exists, Joe Biden gets it, too and can exercise it immediately.  He’s the one in the Oval Office after all, so… If you win the case, sleep with one eye open, Don. One. Eye. Open.
• I believe Trump has made a calculation:  he does not believe he will ever face prison time due to his status as an ex-president, so he’s far more worried about the financial penalties he’ll have to shell out because (1) he doesn’t have the money and (2) he doesn’t want to lose his lifestyle. He’s most worried about the New York civil case that could cost him every cent in cash he has.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLV”

After determining cannabis has a lower public health risk than other substances similarly regulated by the government, Department of Health and Human Services officials last August recommended reducing marijuana’s classification to a Schedule III drug, not a Schedule I similar to heroin and cocaine, the Washington Post reports.

According to the document released Friday, DHHS recommended to the Drug Enforcement Administration that marijuana be reclassified because it’s more beneficial than harmful.  In a 143-page document supporting the Department’s opinion, research showed cannabis not only was not as dangerous as other similarly classified drugs but also echoed other findings about marijuana’s medical benefits to patients.

While the DEA has not yet acted on the DHHS referral, the White House has reduced the priority to enforce marijuana bans on federal property and President Biden has issued clemency orders for people convicted of some minor possession offenses on federal lands and in Washington, DC.  Reducing classification would allow cannabis business where the drug is legal to use federal banking and insurance systems, providing more services to those companies and their customers.

The Texas Tribune reports the chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Matt Rinaldi, worked as the attorney for Farris Wilks, the billionaire funder of Defend Texas Liberty, a Super PAC that happens to be the largest single funder for the state party and that also has ties to white nationalists including Nick Fuentes.

Rinaldi is one of several state GOP leaders who have benefited from their connections with wealthy Texas donors. Rinaldi did not support the impeachment of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton–accused of corruptly using his office to benefit donors–a signal to Republicans in the state senate, who acquitted the (allegedly) corrupt Paxton.

“In my two decades of involvement with the Texas GOP, I am not aware of anything even resembling the relationship between a state chair and a major donor that Matt Rinaldi has with Farris Wilks,” said Mark McCaig, a former member of the Texas GOP’s executive committee who noticed the relationship in recent SEC filings. “It’s certainly reasonable to ask whether chairman Rinaldi is working towards the betterment of the party, as he pledged he would do in 2021, or if he is more interested in promoting the agenda of Farris Wilks at the expense of a unified and functional party.”

With a new focus on collecting money from those who owe it, the Biden Administration’s policy of focusing audits and collections efforts on the wealthiest tax cheats has paid off:  the IRS announced it collected more than $360 million in back taxes from delinquent millionaires, ABC News reports.

The program is part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, passed in August 2022 but with some programs only taking effect with the October 1st start of the federal fiscal year.  The IRS released the information in a call with the media in which agency representatives bemoaned the proposed cut of $20 billion in federal funding to upgrade IRS computer systems to improve efficiency.

“Out of an abundance of caution amid severe weather advisories, Team Trump is announcing an adjusted schedule for this weekend ahead of the Iowa Caucus on Monday, January 15. In order to ensure the safety of MAGA patriots across Iowa, Team Trump will host a series of telerallies featuring President Donald J Trump, messages across social media and good old-fashioned telephones to keep Iowa caucus-goers excited as Monday’s Caucus Night fast approaches,” says disgraced former President Trump’s campaign announcing they were being pussies, not patriots.

After Donald Trump’s unauthorized outburst during his New York civil fraud trial, the lawyers for E. Jean Carroll have asked Judge Lewis Kaplan in their case to take “certain prophylactic measures and curative instructions” to ensure Trump doesn’t turn another courtroom into a circus.

“It takes little imagination to think that Mr. Trump is gearing up for a similar performance here—only this time, in front of a jury. Indeed, as noted above, Mr. Trump promised a second round of this same scenario in his remarks to the press just yesterday,” the lawyers say before listing a number of potential steps the court could take such as advising Trump of consequences in advance and also:

requiring Mr. Trump to state on the record and under oath, out of the presence of the jury, but in open court—that he understands that it is established for purposes of the trial that he sexually assaulted Ms. Carroll, and that he spoke falsely with actual malice and lied when accusing her of fabricating her account and impugning her motives, and that Mr. Trump further understands and accepts all of the limits that the Court has imposed on his testimony in this action and will conduct himself in the courtroom in accordance with those limitations.

Donald Trump must pay the New York Times $392,638 to compensate them for its legal fees relating to Trump’s failed lawsuit relating to the newspaper publishing information about his income taxes, ABC News reports.  In a suit thrown out by a judge last year, Trump sued the Times, his niece Mary Trump, and three Times reporters for a breach of confidentiality relating to the release of his financial information in a story about how he’s accused of defrauding family members to gain control of the family fortune.  With a judge finding Trump’s claims baseless, the Times could sue to recoup their legal expenditure in the case based on New York’s anti-SLAPP law.