Well..

Now in 2024, we will have a 1 seat majority in the House of Representatives.

Congratulations Freedom Caucus for one and 105 Rep who expel our own for the other.

I can assure you Republican voters didn’t give us the majority to crash the ship.

Hopefully no one dies.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 6, 2023

In a Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed, Loser former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy confirmed the rumors that he’s packing it in early and making the rest of the Republican caucus’s life with a thin majority even worse by resigning his seat effective at the end of this month.

This is the kind of development we should’ve done a pre-write for as it was becoming inevitable over recent weeks despite Kev shooting down rumors in the immediate aftermath of his ouster that he was headed for a near-term exit – actually fucking saying that he was even probably going to run for reelection in 2024. We’ll have plenty to say in at least one post-mortem, but for now the practical implication of McCarthy leaving is just lol. A two-seat GOP majority after that guy in Ohio leaves.

You know how on Tuesday we reported (twice, actually) that New York Governor Kathy Hochul set the special election to replace George Santos for February 13th? We’re not so sure her counterpart in California, Gavin Newsom, is going to be as alacritous with the same task given McCarthy’s district. He might just end up taking a page out of his frenemy Ron DeSantis’s playbook here.

“South Carolina State Treasurer Curtis Loftis has removed The Walt Disney Company from its approved investment list. The State Treasurer’s Office portfolio contains $105 million dollars of Disney debt instruments that will mature as scheduled and will not be replaced.”

“The Treasurer will focus on the equity portfolio in the coming weeks. In speaking to his staff, Treasurer Loftis expressed concerns that ‘Disney has abandoned its fiduciary responsibilities to its investors and customers by joining far-left activist in boycotting legal, taxpaying, employment-creating corporations to further Disney’s political agenda.’ Treasurer Loftis stated that ‘multi-billion-dollar corporations should not engage in boycotts designed to silence legitimate debate. Since America’s founding, freedom of speech has been one of its core principles, and Disney should not engage in nefarious practices aimed at silencing those with less power and money,'” said the South Carolina State Treasurer’s office in a statement on Tuesday, sticking it to Disney.

Not sure what we can add to this. The complete void of irony speaks more than enough for itself, and other than noting that the part about Disney “silencing those with less power and money” is technically accurate. Like Disney almost certainly does have more money than Twitter, Tesla, SpaceX, and Elon Musk personally. “Power” certainly applies here too, like there isn’t really anything that Musk or his companies can do to retaliate against Disney for not buying ad space. That’s why Elon publicly told CEO Bob Iger to go fuck himself at that big conference last week.

“Dear Chairman Comer: We write again to communicate the choice we made following your October 31, 2023, statement on The Benny Show: ‘We’re in the downhill phase of this investigation now because we have so many documents, and we can bring these people in for depositions or committee hearings, whichever they choose…’ This choice also reflects your September 13, 2023, statement on Newsmax: ‘Hunter Biden is more than welcome to come in front of the committee… he’s invited today. We will drop everything.’ And your November 8, 2023, statement in your cover letter addressed to me: ‘Given your client’s willingness to address this investigation publicly up to this point, we would expect him to be willing to testify before Congress.'”

“Contrary to your recent public statements, Mr Biden is not seeking special treatment. That other witnesses have opted for different choices in how they provided the Committee with testimony is simply a different choice than Mr Biden is making. As indicated in my November 28, 2023, letter, Mr Biden has offered to appear at a hearing on the December 13, 2023, date you have reserved, or another date this month, to answer any question pertinent and relevant to the subject matter stated in your November 8, 2023, letter. He is making this choice because the Committee has demonstrated time and again it uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort, the facts and misinform the American public – a hearing would ensure transparency and truth in these proceedings. We look forward to working out the schedule,” writes Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell to House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer, bringing extra pain with Comer’s own words.

In a Reuters article containing a number of plot elements outright copied from bigger-name political dramas, former Congolese President Martin Fayulu says he’s running in the big December 20th contest to avenge a 2018 election loss he says incumbent President Felix Tshisekedi stole from him.

“Is there a single Congolese who can tell me that he lives better than in 2018? Mr Tshisekedi has done absolutely nothing,” Fayulu told Reuters and Christ why not just call him “Crooked Felix”?

Fayulu claimed he won the 2018 election with 62 percent of the vote, but courts didn’t agree and god-freaking-dammit can someone come up with an original idea here? “The perceived injustice has fuelled Fayulu’s campaign for Democratic Republic of Congo’s Dec 20 presidential election, which follows what he describes as five years of corruption, incompetence and insecurity under Tshisekedi,” Reuters writes in the article and okay it’s not their fault the source material gave them such an unoriginal character but seriously this is so lame and lazy. Fayulu might as well be the star of one of the “Asylum” straight-to-DVD movies like Transmorphers or Atlantic Rim. What a dick.

Disgraced former President Trump on Wednesday lost out on Time’s Person of The Year to pop megastar Taylor Swift. It’s unclear yet if the 2020 election loser’s fanboys will photoshop his orange head onto the body of Swift like they did four years ago when he lost to Greta Thunberg.

In less than a week after he was expelled from the House for his myriad of scams and general scumbaggery, Republican now-former Long Island Congressman George Santos has earned a shit ton of money cranking out Cameo video greetings at now $200 to $300 each, Semafor reports. The wording of their story is slightly dicey but it appears he’s already just in the last few days earned more than the $174,000 annual salary he would’ve made had he survived a full year in Congress, according to screenshots Santos sent to Semafor that were then verified by Cameo’s CEO.

The videos take less than a minute to crank out and if Santos did a few thousand that’s a pretty realistic sum. The demand is obviously there too, as Georgie boy definitely seemed a little fatigued when Senator John Fetterman used Santos to troll scumbag colleague “Bobby from Jersey.”

And yes, be outraged that Santos makes this much while doctors and firefighters and teachers make blah blah blah. It’s a novelty that people are into right now because Santos just got expelled that will fade and then probably spike again when he goes on trial in the spring. It’s the same story as Tom DeLay going on stupid Dancing with the Stars before he just barely avoided going to prison and Rod Blagojevich doing that stupid California pistachios commercial before he did not avoid it… at least partially since Trump fucking commuted his sentence after eight years for God knows what reason.

In an unfortunately politically smart move, President Joe Biden will delay a long-expected ban on menthol cigarettes as the risks of pissing off a potentially large segment of Black voters during an already fraught election year are too great to ignore, the Washington Post reports.

“The timing matters,” said one official acknowledging the delicate politics. It isn’t all about winning or losing however, since getting the process started in early 2024 would take years of legal challenges that would leave the effort vulnerable to being reversed if disgraced former President Trump – who declined to enact a ban while in office – or heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis – who has specifically pledged to undo any menthol ban – end up taking over. So Biden could screw himself by pushing for a ban only to see it erased by Trump or – far less likely – DeSantis.

It was almost four years ago that Axios reported Trump had raged at his HHS Secretary Alex Azar during a call in the Oval Office over the ban on flavored vape pods enacted in 2019. “I should never have done that fucking vaping thing,” said Donald, worried that his administration had cost him politically with the move. This reporter wasn’t going to vote for Donald anyway, and didn’t, but cucumber Juul pods being banned felt like just one extra “fuck you” from the Trump regime.

Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis wants former Vice President Mike Pence to swing by and testify for the prosecution against disgraced former President Trump and his 14 remaining co-defendants in the upcoming trial for his failed post-2020 election coup attempt, CNN reports.

Pence had previously told CNN he would comply with any requests to testify, specifically in Georgia, despite what he believes are “profound” First Amendment issues in the case and blah blah blah.

A woman in Ohio who threw her burrito bowl into the face of a Chipotle store manager because she was enraged that her order wasn’t made correctly will get 60 days off her 90-day jail sentence if she works at a fast food restaurant for 20 hours per week over two months, the WJW Fox 8 in Cleveland reports.

Thirty-nine-year-old Rosemary Hayne was found guilty of one count of assault for the September incident, and she was fined and sentenced to 180 days in jail, with 90 days suspended.  Judge Timothy Gilligan of Parma Municipal Court then made her an offer:  get a job at a fast food restaurant for 60 days for 20 hours per week so she could experience the other end of customers’ ire and he would take 60 days off the jail sentence.

Of course, various customers took video of the assault, which went viral.  Saying she “didn’t get a slap on the wrist,” Gilligan justified the deal by saying, “So I thought, why should the city taxpayers pay for her and feed her for 90 days in the jail if I can teach her a sense of empathy? I also hope this deters others from this type of behavior.”

President Joe Biden reportedly shocked senior advisors by candidly admitting that he might not have chosen to run for reelection if Donald Trump had not sought to reattain the office, CNN reports.  Noting that Democrats “cannot let him win,” Biden told a group of donors outside Boston on Tuesday, “If Trump wasn’t running, I’m not sure I’d be running.”

One senior advisor who was not at the dinner responded with “Yikes,” when told of the statement.  Others, however, pointed to Biden’s statements when he entered the 2020 race, citing the divisiveness of Donald Trump as one of the primary motivators.

“President Biden said in 2020 he was running to restore the soul of our nation – he got into the race after Trump said what he did after Charlottesville – and he correctly views the former president as a unique threat to our democracy,” Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a national co-chair of Biden’s 2024 campaign, told CNN. “President Biden beat Trump before and he will do it again.”

The special election to replace expelled fraudster George Anthony Devolder Santos for the Congressional seat representing the NY-3 district will be held February 13th, Politico reports, with Party leaders in Nassau County and Queens forgoing a primary and instead opting to appoint the nominee who will finish out the final ten months of the term.

Democrats are expected to select former Congressman Tom Suozzi as the Party nominee.  Suozzi retired from Congress to run for governor in 2022 but lost to Kathy Hochul.  Suozzi and Hochul reportedly met Monday to clear the air after a mud-filled campaign.

Republicans have no clear leader for the Party nomination, but they are sure to conduct at least one call to confirm employment for whatever candidate they select.  Cook Political rates the district at D+2.

Floribama Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville took a seat on the back bench and gave up his months-long hold on promotions for flag and executive military officers in a misguided protest about abortion that threatened US national security.  According to the Associated Press, the Senate acted immediately, pushing through more than 400 promotions after Tuberville gave up under pressure from both sides of the aisle.

“In the end, this was all pointless. Senator Tuberville, and the Republicans who stood with him, needlessly hurt hundreds of servicemembers and military families and threatened our national security — all to push a partisan agenda. I hope no one forgets what he did,” President Dark Brandon said in a statement from the White House.

What remains of moron South Carolina Congresswoman Nancy Mace’s team will have to switch to microwaved Orville Reddenbacher’s or some other common retail brand the next time they want to do that grating “bring the popcorn” meme in real life, as newly-departed Chief of Staff Dan Hanlon took the machine with him when he was fired last week, the Washington Examiner reports.

Hanlon was not alone in his exit, as Deputy Chief of Staff Richard Chalkey and Legislative Director Randal Meyer also left the “toxic work environment.” A source told the Examiner that Mace’s congressional office could see a complete staff turnover by January, that how badly she sucks.

Demonstrating that even Satanic forces have their price, the Fox cable propaganda network is pre-taping and likely editing the custom townhall meeting it’s sponsoring for candidate Donald Trump, according to its website, and the promotion will be aired with covert Trump advisor and primetime propagandist Sean Hannity serving as host.  Of course, with the reality of a quarter billion-dollar-plus payment for unquestionably airing Trump’s claims in the past, Fox may have found it makes for a better business model to incur the wrath of the Apricot Autocrat on a failing social media site than to go to court again.

Spandex-wearing grapple-freak Jim Jordan on Tuesday wrote another bitchy letter to Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis demanding she give him all correspondence with the House January 6th Select Committee so he can do, something, who the fuck knows. Probably just whine about it on Fox News, to be honest. It’s not like he can legislate a fix. Wrote Jordan:

“The Committee on the Judiciary continues to conduct oversight of politically motivated prosecutions by state and local officials. Although we were aware that your office had coordinated its politically motivated prosecutions with the Office of Special Counsel Jack Smith, we recently learned that your office also coordinated its investigative actions with the partisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol (‘January 6 Select Committee’).”

“Accordingly, we write to request documents relating to the investigative coordination between your office and the partisan January 6 Select Committee [lots of complaining about how unfair this is and that he knows they communicated, she needs to respect his authoritah] Although it is not clear what records, if any, you obtained from your coordination with the partisan January 6 Select Committee, this new information raises additional questions relevant to the Committee’s oversight of your politically motivated prosecution of a former President of the United States and several former senior federal officials. The partisan January 6 Select Committee had a troubling track record of procedural abuses and due process violations. It only solicited evidence from a select set of relevant individuals, ignored exculpatory evidence, and did not pursue witnesses with evidence that would not advance its partisan narrative. It fabricated and publicly released doctored evidence.”

Democratic former Long Island Congressman Tom Suozzi will face the winner of the Republican primary in the race to replace Cameo star George Santos on February 13, 2024, CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane reports citing the announcement by New York Governor Kathy Hochul on Tuesday.

Suozzi, who left Congress to unsuccessfully run against Hochul in the 2022 primary, was picked by the governor (after he made amends for shit-talking her during the campaign) due to New York’s system which allows her to bypass the primary and crown the nominee. The race, of course rated as a toss-up by the horserace circlejerkers, is expected to be pretty freaking expensive.