Like a preacher drunk on the power of her claimed “divine ordination,” cryptid Republican Georgia Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene bellows at the latest Talking Turning Point USA cult reinforcement meeting that she’s collected an insurmountable amount of evidence to impeach President Joe Biden–none of which has apparently not been received by the various committees Republican coopted to conduct political theatre–that it’s impossible for South Caroline Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to claim it doesn’t exist.

A trio of Colorado robbers fixed on robbing a Commerce City check cashing business found the car they had likely stolen to serve as their getaway vehicle gone when they tried to make their escape, apparently stolen by a separate theft, NBC News reports.  Per the Commerce City Police’s Facebook page:  “In an unexpected and ironic twist… as the trio was robbing the business…a fourth criminal stole their getaway vehicle… which may have already been stolen. We don’t know. If we get a solid description of it, we will release that here.”

He may not like drag queens but he acts like a drama queen:  during a campaign appearance, Republican Florida Governor and man whose thing seems to be tanking a campaign Ron DeSantis does not tolerate being interrupted by a mere voter, chiding her, “Excuse me!  I’m not finished!  I’m doing my thing!”

The Florida Republican Party’s Executive Committee on Sunday voted to censure sexual libertine and not-really-credibly-accused rapist Chairman Christian Ziegler, strip him of all powers, and reduce his salary to $1, Meidas Touch reports on a step toward perdition for the right wing scumbag.

Again, and we cannot stress enough how fucking hilarious this is that Ziegler almost certainly did not rape his and his wife’s girlfriend and that really any day now it’s likely his name will be publicly cleared by investigators. Yet still the party’s moving against him for making them look as hypocritical and shitty as they actually are. Meidas Touch’s report says it’s still going to take weeks to remove Ziegler, who supposedly maintains the Orange God Emperor’s support – or at least his neutrality.

It’s quite easy to imagine Ziegler going on the offense if and when the local DA says they’re not going to be charging him, launching a legal case against the accuser and the party themselves for punishing him, dragging this fight out and embarrassing the party further during what an election year the censure motion describes as “the most important of our lifetime and demands the full and undivided attention of our party to defeat the Democrats and Joe Biden.”

Disgraced former President Trump on Sunday demanded his 2024 GOP primary opponents surrender to him unconditionally, writing “Where is the Nikki ‘SURGE,’ and the DeSanctimonious ‘BOUNCE.’ (I am beating Ron in Florida, 83% to 12%) I went up 7 Points, they both went down. Christie is dogmeat, Hutchinson is holding solid at 1%. Everyone should drop out, unify, and go after the WORST & MOST CORRUPT PRESIDENT IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, CROOKED JOE BIDEN!” on Truth Social with a pic of a Fox News national GOP primary poll.

The post came amid a weekend-long flurry of more batshittery posted on Trump’s lame personal social network, like “OUR ADVERSARIES ARE USING THE CROOKED JOE BIDEN INDICTMENTS OF HIS POLITICAL OPPONENT (ME!) AGAINST US BY STRONGLY PROCLAIMING THAT THE UNITED STATES IS A CORRUPT & FAILING DEMOCRACY!” and “ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS POISONING THE BLOOD OF OUR NATION. THEY’RE COMING FROM PRISONS, FROM MENTAL INSTITUTIONS – FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD. WITHOUT BORDERS & FAIR ELECTIONS, YOU DON’T HAVE A COUNTRY.”

“Look, it is what it is, but isn’t it unfair that I can be running such a great and successful campaign for President, leading in every poll against a corrupt and incompetent President, working so hard in a historic fight to save our Nation, and I have to go through the additional burden of, at the same time, fighting my political opponent’s many DOJ, AG, and DA inspired non-meritorious lawsuits against me. Joe Biden, and the thugs that surround him, should never be allowed to get away with this evil act of ELECTION INTERFERENCE. Even today’s Wall Street Journal Editorial stated that, ‘As we warned Mr Smith (Deranged Jack)and AG Merrick Garland, indicting Mr Trump would thrust them into the middle of an election campaign. This (the lawsuits) would have unintentional and perhaps damaging consequences. The wiser decision would have been…to let the voters decide.’ THIS IS ALREADY ON ITS WAY TO BEING ANOTHER RIGGED ELECTION!” the fat bastard warned on Saturday.

In an absolute shocker of a news story, a Dem Senate aide was stupid enough to film himself having sex with another dude in the Judiciary Committee room, MAGA dipshit Chuck Callesto reports.

The story is shocking because you would think it’d be a Republican staffer. They’re the party hostile to LGBTQ+ Americans, so it’s a more natural fit. Especially the filming part. On the other hand it’s not like this guy posted the video on Craigslist like QAnon-pilled activist Scott Presler did to get fired from the Virginia GOP back in 2016. This video was posted in a private chat group for gay male staffers, so it’s not like the guy DEFINITELY wanted it to become public like Presler did.

Anyway, Maryland Senator Ben Cardin fired 24 year-old Aidan Maese-Czeropski on Saturday and the Daily Mail reports he could face criminal charges for trespassing and obscenity. The other guy in the video hasn’t yet been identified, so the possibility he’s a Republican staffer remains.

[Dateline: Moscow, December 17, 2023] Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed US President Joe Biden’s statement that the Kremlin will not stop with its invasion of Ukraine, saying Russia has no intention of attacking a NATO nation.  “Russia has no reason, no interest — no geopolitical interest, neither economic, political nor military — to fight with NATO countries,” Putin said according to Politico.

[The Financial Times, November 14, 2021]:  “The US briefed allies last week about intelligence indicating that Moscow was preparing for a possible invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s president has dismissed the fears as ‘alarmist’ and accused NATO of inflaming tensions in the region with its own unplanned exercises.”

A new CBS News/YouGov survey of likely New Hampshire primary voters finds disgraced former President Trump leading Nimrata “Nikki” Haley by 44 to 29 percent, a sign of significant momentum for the former South Carolina governor with two months to go until the Granite State’s contest.

Hidden heel aficionado and one-time Next Great Hope for the Republican Party Ron DeSantis continues to watch as his Super PAC crumbles, changing leadership faster than the Trump Administration changed golf cleats.  As CNN reports, after losing its CEO and then firing interim CEO, the chief strategist for the Never Back Down Super PAC backing DeSantis quit.

With the Washington Post publishing a scathing article on the disfunction in DeSantis’s fundraising operation, the move comes after fill-in interim PAC CEO Scott Wagner made the baseless claim that the massive turnover was due to releasing people because they were leaking to the media, a statement he withdrew after reportedly being threatened with legal action by the people who left the campaign and PAC who are sick of Republicans’ baseless defamations.

In addition to the rotating menu of CEOs for the PAC, both communications director Erin Perrine and director of operations Matt Palmisano left Never Back Down in recent weeks for undisclosed reasons as DeSantis has taken blow after blow in embarrassing debate performances against other GOP candidates.  He also took a major self-inflicted wound by debating Democratic California Governor Gavin Newsom who despite having to fend off arguments from both DeSantis and Trump advisor Sean Hannity on a Fox broadcast, dismantled the diminutive debater easily.

A four-month-old baby whose bassinet was blown out of the family’s mobile home when a tornado blew through Tennessee last Saturday was found alive and unhurt in the bassinet that was lodged atop a fallen tree, CNN reports.

Sydney Moore and her boyfriend Aramis Youngblood lived close to where the tornado is thought to have touched down.  The winds knocked down the mobile home’s walls and started lifting the bassinet off the ground.  While Moore shielded their one-year-old son, Youngblood tried to grab the rising bassinet, but the winds flung both him and the baby into the air.

Youngblood, injured with a separated shoulder, found the bassinet, with baby Lord in it, atop a fallen tree about 30 feet from the house, which was leveled.  “It was like a scene in a movie,” Moore said. “I remember seeing Aramis walking up in the pouring down rain, clothes ripped, with Lord in his arms.”

Another conservative charlatan suffering the consequences of his vile words, Alex Jones reportedly made an offer to resolve the debt owed to families connected to the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre who received a $965 million judgment against him for defaming them, proposing roughly 10% paid over ten years, CNN reports.

In exchange for releasing all liability, Jones proposed paying ten annual installments of at least $5.5 million each, depending on Jones’s annual income, with the families additionally getting 70% of the revenue from the sale of some of Jones’s personal property not exempted under bankruptcy law.  Jones declared personal bankruptcy in December 2022, two months after the defamation decision.  His company filed for bankruptcy in July.

A lawyer for the families said they would consider the offer, and it might be the only opportunity to get any money out of Jones, who also has a $50 million judgment against him for another Sandy Hook family who sued him separately.

The USS Carney, a guided missile destroyer patrolling the Red Sea, shot down more than a dozen Iranian-made drones fired by Houthi rebels operating in Yemen on Saturday, CBS News reports, the latest wave in attacks the group says it’s carrying out in support of Hamas in Gaza, CBS News reports.

Two major shipping companies, Mediterranean Shipping Company and Maersk, announced that they were stopping their ships from sailing into the Red Sea either through the Gulf of Aden or via the Suez Canal.  A ship from MSC had been the target of a Houthi attack on Friday, suffering minor fire damage.

Despite objections from Congressional Republicans, the US Army will remove a monument to Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetary next week, another move in its continuing effort to rid honors for secessionists from its ranks, the Washington Post reports.

According to the cemetery’s website, the Confederate Monument, in Section 16, was erected in 1914 in an area designated for Confederate veterans who were reinterred there after President William McKinley called a “Peace Jubilee” in the days after the end of the Spanish-American War.  (The website’s description of the monument has an explanation for those of you wondering  about why Arlington, placed on the site of Lee’s former plantation in an act of spite against the Confederate general, has a monument to Confederates.)

The memorial’s removal comes as the Army scrubs the names of Confederate leaders from its posts and bans displays of the Confederate flags within its ranks.  Last week, more than 40 Republican members of Congress sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin telling him, the first Black man to hold that post, “Who do you think you are?” that he did not have the authority to remove the memorial from the cemetery managed by the Pentagon.  Human-sloth hybrid Marjorie Taylor Greene introduced a bill in the House protects from removal any memorial or statue to a Confederate on federal land.

Tom Lockyer, the captain of the Luton Town soccer team in the English Premier League, collapsed on the field during play with what the team later reported was cardiac arrest, the second time this year he passed out during a game, CNN reports.

Lockyer was responsive as medical crews from his team and opposition Bournemouth treated him on the field and took him off in a stretcher.  A post by the team said Lockyer was transferred to a local hospital where he was in stable condition.  In May, Lockyer passed out on the field during the season-ending promotion victory over Coventry City with what the team later identified as atrial fibrillation; Lockyer had surgery to treat the condition and was cleared to return to the field.

Again, we might as well just run this instead of having to slap together a bunch of clips of the fat bastard saying shit like he’s not going to let the banking industry “take advantage of you any longer,” or again declaring an imaginary victory in the already imaginary “War on Christmas.”

The Republican California Assemblyman designated by former GOP Congressman and failed Speaker Kevin McCarthy is not eligible to appear on the ballot for the office by California’s Secretary of State because he’s already registered for reelection for his current office, KFSN ABC-30 in Fresno reports.

McCarthy ordained Bakersfield Assemblyman Vince Fong as his chosen successor for his seat representing California’s 20th Congressional district, but because Fong applied to run for reelection to his Assembly seat prior to the December 8th deadline, he is barred from his name appearing another time on the ballot according to state law.  California law also prohibits a candidate from removing their name from the ballot after the deadline, meaning Fong cannot negate his reelection bid to run for McCarthy’s seat.

As he repeatedly did in the months he led the House, McCarthy caused the chaos himself.   By childishly announcing his retirement from Congress on December 6th, just two days before the normal candidate filing deadline in the state, McCarthy screwed all established Republicans in the state who had eyes for reelection or for a new office run and had already registered their campaigns for their desired office with the state Secretary of State office.  Fong says he will challenge the office’s decision in court, because Republicans believe they are exempt from laws they don’t like.

An Israeli Defense Forces official on Saturday admitted to CNN that the three male hostages mistakenly killed Gaza this week were shirtless and waving a white flag when some fucking idiot soldiers pulled the trigger on them, which was supposedly “against [their] rules of engagement.”

“The three men came out of a building ‘tens of meters from our soldiers’ position,’ the official said. At least one of the soldiers ‘feels threatened and opens fire. Two are killed immediately. One is wounded and runs back inside. The soldiers hear a cry for help in Hebrew and the brigade commander issues a ceasefire order, but there is another burst of fire,'” the official said at a briefing.

Sounds more like seeing shirtless guys waving a white flag and then immediately shooting them is actual IDF standard operating procedure and these poor fuckers were probably too excited to remember that after they had miraculously escaped from more than two weeks of abusive captivity.

The Lake County, Florida State Attorney’s office on Thursday announced they will seek the death penalty under the Sunshine State’s new enhanced capital punishment laws in the case of registered Republican voter Joe Giampa, indicted this week on six counts of sexual battery upon a person under 12 years old and three counts of promoting a sexual performance by a child after he was found to be in possession of a video of himself in the act with a young girl, Fox 35 Orlando reports.

“The decision to pursue the highest penalty reflects the gravity of the charges and the State Attorney’s Office’s dedication to holding criminals accountable for their actions. The State Attorney’s Office acknowledges the sensitivity of this matter and the impact it has on the community. Our commitment to ensuring justice and protecting the vulnerable remains unwavering,” the office said in a statement. Giampa’s case is believed to be the first in modern history in which Florida prosecutors will try to execute a defendant convicted of anything other than murder after heels-wearing Governor Ron DeSantis, whom Giampa in all likelihood voted for in 2018 and 2022, in May signed a bill allowing the death penalty to be imposed for some sexual crimes against children.

The bar for getting a jury to sign off on it is now lower too as DeSantis in April signed a law lowering the unanimous death penalty requirement to an 8-4 majority in response to 2018 Parkland high school massacre MAGA terrorist Nikolas Cruz being spared the gurney by one or two holdouts.

• I smiled when I saw the initial damages.  I chuckled at the amount awarded for emotion distress.  And I downright guffawed at the punitive damages.  But Rudy was nonplussed because he knows you can’t squeeze blood from a stone.  (You can, however, get hair dye from a Giuliani.)
• The Kate Cox plight in Texas has me furious beyond words. A court of supposed legal experts are making medical decisions.  We have found the Death Panels the Republicans of 2008 feared.  
• Yes, I want Trump to be convicted for his crimes and punished.  But I can’t help but want Trump to have a better legal team, one that is more-than-just-competent to handling the legal challenge with sound competent arguments.  As horrid as Trump is, these cases are historic.  They need to be handled with a seriousness and solemnity Trump himself is incapable of, but Trump’s lawyers must recognize.
• God bless Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.  They did their civic duties as poll workers.  They stood up to threats and lies.  They honor the Constitution more than those who put them in the crosshairs of the MAGA horde, claiming to be the real patriots.  This country owes them a debt more than Giuliani is ordered to pay.  Their names should be in history books.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLI”