Happy New Year!  We’re hours away from entering 2024, when we can be expected to be bombarded with campaign ads, Russian trolls and talking points, not to mention the possible end of the American democratic experiment.  But that’s not tonight, so party on, dudes!  (Apologies, Bill and Ted.) Let’s take a look back at some of the events from the last year that will shape the next.

[The necessary disclaimer:  Yes, there are many other stories this year not covered here like the Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war, the ongoing war in Ukraine, flip-flopping Nikki Haley whitewashing the cause of the Civil War, the Maui wildfires, the mess of gun violence in the United States, King Charles’s coronation, Robert Menendez being indicted and the disclosure of classified documents on Discord by a member of the US military.   But it’s New Year’s Eve, so let’s take a lighter look at things.]

There really was no bigger story in 2023–both in terms of news coverage and in regards to historical significance–than the various Trump criminal indictments.  Two federal criminal indictments joined one from Fulton County and another from Manhattan to make Trump not just the first former president to face felony charges, but he set that mark with the federal, state and local hat trick.  Add civil suits for financial fraud in New York, for defaming E. Jean Carroll after raping her, and the class action suit for the ACN multi-level marketing scam, and you can see why Trump’s Frequent Litigant Card is maxed out.  But it’s just the beginning.

In the traditional “Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary,” Supreme Court Chief Justice John adroitly side-stepped the issue of ongoing ethics questions on the High Court and eroding public confidence in its rulings, opting instead to concentrate on technological advances the Court made in 2023, the Washington Post reports.

Besides not mentioning the enlarging Clarence Thomas “gifts-from-‘friends'” scandal that benefited the Justice and his insurrectionist wife to the tune of millions of dollars since he’s been on the bench, Roberts also opted to not mention Alito’s acceptance of travel from “friends.”  He did, however, tout the potential for artificial intelligence, apparently because that’s more important than restoring public approval of the Court’s actions.

The 83-year-old Queen of Denmark surprised Danes by announcing during her traditional New Year’s Eve address that she was stepping down from the throne after more than half a century, turning the crown over to her son, Crown Prince Frederik, the Washington Post reports.

Denmark’s monarch, Queen Margrethe II, citing her advancing age and health problems, said she would step down on January 14th, the 52nd anniversary of her ascension to the throne in 1972 following the death of her father, King Frederik IX.  More than 40 countries still have some type of monarchy, with the plurality being part of the old British Commonwealth headed by King Charles III.  Most remaining monarchies are constitutional monarchies where the royal has no, limited, or ceremonial power.

Bring it on.

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) October 2, 2023

A flurry of Sunday morning posts on disgraced former President Trump’s Truth Social feed that were obviously in response to a trio of younger female former aides who worked for his failed administration sitting for an anti-Trump interview with ABC News’s Jonathan Karl revealed, simply by omission, that one of the three is probably a witness for the prosecution in the fat bastard’s upcoming trial on conspiracy charges stemming from his failed post-2020 election coup attempt.

As of this writing, it’s been 49 minutes since the last post in a string of those showing former Trump White House Communications Director and current “The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin and former Deputy Press Secretary Sarah Matthews tweeting various praises for the Orange God Emperor, all dated prior to his failed January 2021 coup attempt or, in Griffin’s case, downplaying it in the immediate aftermath and criticizing Dems for refusing “outright to have serious conversations about voter fraud in this country.” The usual “counter-punching” bullshit from Team Trump.

There were no similar posts concerning Cassidy Hutchinson, the third former staffer who sat for the damning pre-taped interview airing Sunday, indicating that Hutchinson – famous for her “ketchup incident” testimony to the House January 6th Select Committee – is probably a witness for the prosecution in Trump’s upcoming trial, as the gag order imposed on Donald by Judge Tanya Chutkan and recently mostly upheld after his appeal to the DC Circuit expressly prohibits him “from making public statements that ‘target’ the parties, counsel and their staffs, court personnel, and ‘any reasonably foreseeable witness or the substance of their testimony.'” Put together with the fact that the fat bastard wasn’t afraid to trash Hutchinson back when she first testified publicly in 2022 makes it very likely he and his minions know they can’t go there with her now.

“The fact that he feels that he needs to lean into being a dictator alone shows that he is a weak and feeble man who has no sense of character and integrity and has no sense of leadership,” Hutchinson told Karl in the interview and damn that part really has to drive him fucking nuts.

US CENTCOM statement: “On Dec 31 at 6:30 am (Sanaa time) the container ship MAERSK HANGZHOU issued a second distress call in less than 24 hours reporting being under attack by four Iranian-backed Houthi small boats. The small boats, originating from Houthi-controlled areas in Yemen, fired crew served and small arms weapons at the MAERSK HANGZHOU, getting to within 20 meters of the vessel, and attempted to board the vessel. A contract embarked security team on the MAERSK HANZGHOU returned fire. US helicopters from the USS EISENHOWER and GRAVELY responded to the distress call and in the process of issuing verbal calls to the small boats, the small boats fired upon the U.S. helicopters with crew served weapons and small arms. The US Navy helicopters returned fire in self-defense, sinking three of the four small boats, and killing the crews. The fourth boat fled the area. There was no damage to US personnel or equipment.”

Surfers from around the world are flying into California to catch massive waves, some estimated to be 70 feet tall, smashing into the West Coast, the BBC reports.  A massive rogue wave struck Ventura on Thursday, causing about a dozen serious injuries as it swept people off their feet.  Beachfront hotels, shops and homes sustained damage.  A video posted to Surfer.com shows surfers catching waves at Platform Esther, an oil refinery rig one mile off the coast in Orange County, with waves that far out rising nearly to the bottom platform of the refinery. The waves are primarily driven by the El Niño weather system with the help of a waning moon.  (Video from KABC 7 in San Francisco.)

The planned induction of traitorous former Trump National Security Advisor and friend of Vlad Mike Flynn into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame has put on indefinite leave after multiple members of the board resigned in protest and the organization received massive public pushback, Newsweek reports.

Though one board member had publicly announced his resignation after Flynn was named to the Hall, at least four others apparently resigned privately.  In a letter obtained by the Providence Journal, board members Bea Lanzi, a former state senator, and lawyer John Tarantino wrote: “There is an overall right and wrong in the universe, and what has happened here, in our view, and according to our moral compasses, and consciences, compels us to resign.”

The former three-star Army general found success selling his access to foreign contacts:  dining at the RT anniversary celebration with Vladimir Putin, selling technology to Saudi Arabia, and planning the kidnapping of a Turkish dissident in the US. He then served as Trump’s national security advisor for two Scaramuccis before being forced out for lying to national security investigators about his contacts with Russia.  Flynn pleaded guilty, and then changed his plea un-guilty, to making false statements to the FBI; after Attorney General Bill Barr assigned a hand-picked Trump appointee to review the case, the Department of Justice dropped all charges.  Flynn later accepted a pardon from Trump.

Democratic Senators Tim Kaine (Virginia) and Chris Van Hollen (Maryland) voiced objections to the Biden Administration’s decision to sell $147 million in armaments in a move that skirted around typically normal Congressional oversight, the Washington Post reports.

“Just as Congress has a crucial role to play in all matters of war and peace, Congress should have full visibility over the weapons we transfer to any other nation,” Kaine said in a statement. “Unnecessarily bypassing Congress means keeping the American people in the dark. We need a public explanation of the rationale behind this decision—the second such decision this month.”

Both Kaine and Van Hollen noted that Congress has developed accelerated approval processes for arms sales to Israel, who went to war with Hamas after the terrorist group attacked civilians in an October 7th attack.  The State Department said the sale of artillery shells and related material was in line with previous transactions that had been approved by Congress.

The Florida State Seminoles got fucking destroyed by the Georgia Bulldogs to the tune of 63 to 3 in the Capital One Orange Bowl on Saturday, ESPN reports on an utter embarrassment of a game.

As you’re probably aware, we’re not a sportsball news site. In fact not too long ago we were very emphatic about our disinterest in NCAA football. We do however very much enjoy it when Republicans look like complete assholes and that’s exactly what happened in this game after heels-wearing Governor Ron DeSantis, white collar Skeletor-like Senator Rick Scott, creepy jittery Attorney General Ashley Moody, and fat former President Trump all freaked out when the Seminoles were left out of the final four NCAA football playoff despite having gone 13-0 during the regular season.

“My Office is launching an investigation to examine if the Committee was involved in any anticompetitive conduct. As it stands, the Committee’s decision reeks of partiality, so we are demanding answers – not only for FSU, but for all schools, teams and fans of college football,” said Moody in a statement earlier this month. DeSantis threatened to sue them – after the Orange God Emperor posted “Really bad lobbying effort… Lets blame DeSanctimonious!!!” on Truth Social. “I appreciate your response on Friday, December 15, to my letter dated Monday, December 4, regarding the unprecedented exclusion of the 13-0, Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Champion Florida State University (FSU) Seminoles from the College Football Playoff (CFP). Unfortunately, your response failed to answer all 10 of the questions I posed in my initial letter,” Scott wrote to NCAA playoffs committee director Bill Hancock on the 18th, still fuming over the “snub.”

Hancock should just print out a copy of that ESPN box score and send it to Scott. That’s his answer.

A three-judge panel from a California federal appeals court lifted an injunction on a California law set to take effect in January that would ban carrying guns in most public places, Reuters reports, reversing a lower court GW Bush-appointed judge who called the law unconstitutional, Reuters reports.

Signed into law in September by Dreamboat California Governor Gavin Newsom, the law would bar carrying a weapon in 26 categories of “sensitive places” like hospitals, playgrounds, stadiums, zoos and places of worship regardless of any carry permit.  It would also bar carrying weapons, including concealed weapons, in privately owned public areas like stores unless the proprietor posts a sign explicitly allowing it.

The law was passed as a response to the Supreme Court overturning the New York’s gun control law that severely restricted where people could carry guns in public.  A number of states, including New York and California, revamped existing laws and regulations to meet the new legal specifications that allow limiting gun possession in specific areas, a regulation acknowledged by conservative Justice Antonin Scalia in his Heller opinion (Sec. III Para 1). 

“As the New Year fast approaches, I would like to wish an early New Year’s salutation to Crooked Joe Biden and his group of Radical Left Misfits & Thugs on their never ending attempt to DESTROY OUR NATION through Lawfare, Invasion, and Rigging Elections. They are now scrambling to sign up as many of those millions of people they are illegally allowing into sour Country, in order that they will be ready to VOTE IN THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2024,” writes disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social, now for the second time in less than 24 hours making this shit up that the border “invasion” is part of some sort of Soros-Biden election-rigging op.

Again, this just isn’t a thing. The largest case of voter fraud by non-citizens was in 2020 when 19 foreign nationals residing in North Carolina were charged with casting ballots illegally in the 2016 election, according to an ICE press release. Nowhere in the statement does it say that any of them were illegal immigrants and the very, very wide array of nationalities among the 19 – China, Israel, Yemen, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, Bermuda – strongly suggests that this was not a coordinated plot but just a bunch of fucking idiots who didn’t know that only American citizens can vote. ICE has only one other release, “Illegal alien arrested, charged with voter fraud,” dating to 2011 in their archive.

Disney reported that virtually all its available tickets for the holiday season from Christmas Eve to New Year’s Day to its Florida parks have been sold out, a clear sign that Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s efforts failed to make the entertainment giant the target of his culture warriors, TheStreet reports.

While some tickets may open up because of cancelations, all park reservations are booked for the Magic Kingdom, Epcot, Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom.  A look back from DeSantis’s attack shows the culture war had little impact on The Mouse:  operating income at the company’s parks increased 30% from 2022 even though attendance dropped a little after Disney’s 50th anniversary celebration in 2022.

DeSantis and conservatives also lose when examining their victory cries over the summer as they claimed their boycott led to reduced attendance during the July 4th holiday:  comparisons to other similar properties like Universal Studios showed attendance at those properties suffered the same ebbs and flows that Disney attractions did, meaning any reduction in attendance happened across the state, not just with Disney.  And that was impacted by two key factors:  100-degree plus weather for most of July in Florida as well as consumers boycotting the state to protest DeSantis’s culture wars.

Take any report coming from the Kremlin with a grain mountain of salt, but Russian officials report a major Ukrainian bombardment of the border town of Belgorod, located about 20 miles inside Russia, resulted in the death of 14 including two children on Saturday, CNN reports. The attack came after a Russian aerial attack that led to 39 Ukrainian deaths on Thursday.

Russian defense ministry officials called the shelling “indiscriminate,” said forty civilian buildings were damaged or destroyed in the city of around 380,000 people, and pledged that “the crime will not go unpunished.”  Belgorod is a staging area for Russian troops and is the site of large fuel deposits for the Russian military.

Speaking at a town hall event in New Hampshire Thursday evening, Civil War history rewriter and Republican candidate for president Nikki Haley said she would issue a pardon for Donald Trump if she becomes president, Axios reports.  Responding to a nine-year-old’s question, Haley indicated that she would pardon Trump if he’s found guilty, not because he is innocent of the charges a jury of his peers convicted him on, but because she wants to take the Gerald Ford approach to “healing” our nation after it was split apart by Trumpism.

“If he is found guilty, a leader needs to think about what’s in the best interest of the country.  What’s in the best interest of the country is not to have an 80-year-old man sitting in jail that continues to divide our country,” Haley said, adding, “What’s in the best interest of the country would be to pardon him so that we can move on as a country and no longer talk about him.”  Fellow GOP candidates Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy have also indicted that they would pardon Trump for his federal crimes.

Haley didn’t explain how issuing a pardon and releasing from responsibility a man who attempted to undermine the Constitution and national security of the United States is “in the best interest of the country,” nor did she expound on how issuing a pardon would heal the nation given that Richard Nixon’s malfeasance is still regularly discussed even after he was pardoned.

Cops in the southwest Siberian city of Tobolsk have more or less already wrapped up their investigation into the falling death of the town’s deputy to parliament, finding “no sign of criminal death on the body” of Vladimir Egorov after he plunged from a third-story window of his home onto the front lawn on Wednesday, the New York Post reports citing posts on Telegram.

“One of the most likely reasons is heart problems,” said a local news outlet, failing to follow through on how cardiac issues would prompt a politician to jump out of a window.

Though it seems contradictory in the age of political upheaval we live in, US beer sales dropped to their lowest level since 1999 this year, falling below the 200 million barrel mark, NBC News reports, but the major brewers are still reaping profits thanks to price increases that outpaced inflation.  The homophobe boycott of Bud Light notwithstanding, the worldwide beer market continues to expand, but the US market it getting segmented by premixed spirit drinks and alcoholic offers from energy drink brands and other non-beer manufacturers.

Analysts also noticed that while people may still drink beer, consumers are opting for less consumption of more expensive craft and small-batch beers from both the major breweries and local shops, rather than higher consumption of popular beer brands.  Another impacting factor:  people giving up alcohol altogether, either opting for sobriety or choosing newly-legalized marijuana in states across the country.

“Moderate” Republican New York Congressman Mike Lawler, a swing district d-bag nobody likes, is also apparently a Michael Jackson stan and molestation denier, according to an entertainment reporter who wrote a Jackson biography published after the creepy pop star’s death in 2009, so much so that the then 18 year-old Lawler got himself tossed out of the courtroom for cursing under his breath while an alleged molestation victim’s mom testified, the Daily Beast reports.

“A friend of mine named Michael Lawler – an ardent Jackson admirer who had followed the proceedings so closely he knew the evidence better than even I did – had flown in from New York to attend the trial,” wrote J Randy Taraborrelli in Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story. Per Taraborrelli’s account, Lawler was “so disgusted” by Janet Arvizo’s testimony “that he couldn’t help but mutter something derogatory under his breath. Overheard by the officials, he promptly got tossed right out of the courtroom,” with a sheriff’s deputy later warning Taraborrelli that “the next time you help someone get into here, you’d better tell him to keep his trap shut.”

Lawler still remains a Jackson superfan nearly five years after the documentary Leaving Neverland premiered at the Sundance Film Festival. So horrific and disturbing were the details of Jackson’s predation of young boys that Sundance’s organizers hired mental health counselors to wait in the theater’s lobby to help audience members. “It’s true that Congressman Lawler – who is known to have performed the Moonwalk once or twice – is a fan of Michael Jackson’s music and even attended one of his last concerts at Madison Square Garden in 2001,” a spokesman told the Beast.

Google settled a $5 billion lawsuit alleging its Chrome browser’s “incognito” mode–which users believe hides personal data from perusal, actually allowed the company to track users browsing habits and provided the company with data it used to target ads and other promotions, ABC News reports.

Reached Thursday, the company agrees to compensate users who put in a claim.  The amount is as yet unknown, but the original plaintiffs sought between $100 and $5,000 per Chrome user since 2006 for Google planting cookies and using data collected while users were in incognito mode.  Terms of the final agreement are not yet public.

Disgraced former President Trump has been telling his minions he’s worried that the US Supreme Court is worried about being perceived as “political” and will sidestep any means of overturning the decisions removing him from the ballot in Colorado and Maine, the New York Times reports.

Per the Times, Team Orange are expected to file their challenge Tuesday, three years exactly after the fat fuck called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger demanding he “find 11,780 votes.”

In somewhat related news, Trump early Saturday posted on Truth Social just about the stupidest conspiracy theory possible, and that’s saying something. “It’s becoming more and more obvious to me why the ‘Crazed’ Democrats are allowing millions and millions of totally unvetted migrants into our once great Country. IT’S SO THEY CAN VOTE, VOTE, VOTE. They are signing them up at a rapid pace, without even knowing who the hell they are. It all makes sense now. Republicans better wake up and do something, before it is too late. Are you listening Mitch McConnell?” Trump wrote. In what fucking universe is your average Guatemalan migrant farm worker going to be risking prosecution and deportation by registering themselves to vote and then showing up and casting a ballot?