Colorado Republican Congressman and Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck injects a modicum of reality into the Fox audience so deep in the cult they’re watching Trey Gowdy on a Sunday night.  Buck points out that while there’s a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden benefited from his father’s job, there’s no evidence any of that benefited Joe Biden or that Joe Biden even knew of it.  Showing a shocking amount of rationality for a member of the Freedom Caucus, Buck is careful to point out he feels the rumors should be investigated, but they don’t rise to an impeachment inquiry yet.

Two disagreeable factions of the Republican House caucus reportedly reached an agreement to fund the government for an additional month, through October, thereby avoiding a shutdown at the end of September and allowing them to address other key bills they’re too chaotic to deal with.

Per NBC News, the moderate-for-the-GOP Main Street Caucus and the nihilist Freedom Caucus agreed to a deal that would cut domestic spending but only fund government operations through October 31st.  The delay, however, would allow the Republicans to find support to pass defense and agriculture appropriations bills that require immediate attention.

The measure would cut by 8% all domestic spending except military and veterans spending.  It would also implement most of the Freedom Caucus’s migrant oppression efforts.  It would also cut cancer research funding at NIH, coronavirus research, and defund much of FBI management.

Titular Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy on Saturday told Breitbart that the Biden Administration’s memo to the media telling them – correctly – that there’s no evidence supporting the GOP’s bullshit fantasies about bribery and all sorts of other crimes involving his son and shady foreign actors is an act of “obstruction” of the not-really formal impeachment inquiry.

“You just raised another issue that points to why we need impeachment inquiry to have the strength of our subpoenas because you now have the White House counsel. That talking point didn’t come from the campaign. It came from the taxpayer-paid White House counsel directly to media outlets. So think of the fear they have, whether they’re going to be allowed to go before government or others when you have the White House counsel threatening them to say investigate Republicans, there’s nothing here. I mean, right there is obstruction. Would you not question that? I would wonder is it not? It would be a question raised,” McCarthy said to the far right propaganda website.

Nearly four years ago to the day was when the Trump’s minions fucked up and accidentally emailed House Dems a bunch of talking points claiming there was no evidence that Donald had attempted to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing a fake investigation into the Bidens.

You will not be surprised to learn that Axios reports it was made clear to Texas state Senate Republicans that they would face “well-funded” primary challengers if they voted to convict Picasso-faced Attorney General Ken Paxton on the extremely credible allegations of corruption presented in the case against him during the impeachment trial, according to a GOP strategist.

“We didn’t care what the MSM said,” the strategist told Axios, meaning this person knows all the allegations in the impeachment articles were true but because the “leftist” mainstream media reported on them they were invalid. “We basically ignored them from start to finish. Goal was to fire up the grassroots. A story in National Pulse, Post Millennial and similar publications was more valuable than any harm an A1 NYT story could do,” the strategist continued, adding small-faced shitweasel right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk “had his people posting senators’ office numbers and was giving them out on his show. Driving the senators absolutely crazy.”

The fact remains that about two-thirds of the state House GOP caucus voted to impeach the piece of shit and at some point in the next few months it’s pretty likely that Paxton is going to be slapped with a federal criminal indictment for the very crimes and misdemeanors alleged. Of course the same assholes who campaigned for the acquittal are going to say it’s “the Biden Regime” going after Paxton and blah blah blah. They’ll do it, but it’ll be harder after the impeachment.

Returning to the White House on Sunday from a weekend in Delaware, President Biden was asked by reporters what he thought of the House GOP’s impeachment efforts. “Lots of luck,” was all Joe had to say to the media who had plainly hoped he would lose his shit and explode with anger.

Pool reporters spotted a MAGA terrorist with a gun in his waistband protesting outside of the Biden home in Wilmington, Delaware on Sunday, the Associated Press’s Seung Min Kim reports.

Delaware is an open carry state so there was technically no crime committed. The pool report says Secret Service vehicles followed the asshole after he left the scene of his “protest.”

Supposedly “normal” Republican Congressman Michael McCaul says he’s hot on the trail of evidence to support the impeachment inquiry against President Biden over the “foreign policy decisions” he made as Vice President back between 2009 and 2017. Reminder that the House GOP have already started this supposed impeachment inquiry, without having taken a full floor vote on it yet.

Disgraced former President Trump’s interview with Meet the Press’s new host Kristen Welker went about as badly for him as you would expect. Here’s some new clips from Sunday’s airing of the chat starting with when Trump said it was his idea to try to dispute the 2020 election, completely undermining the “advice of counsel” defense he was supposed to be using in his DC trial:

Next he claims he simply “assumed” Nancy Pelosi had it under control on January 6th and was calling for backup to remove the insurrectionists from the Capitol with no input from him.

Contrasting herself with her feckless and nauseatingly weak successor, former House Speaker and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi tells NBC’s Lester Holt about how she resisted pressure to impeach George W Bush over the Iraq War the first time she won the gavel in 2007 when she could have.

What she’s leaving out by calling it a “policy matter” is that the circumstances were different in that Bush was already in his second term, Republicans had gotten absolutely destroyed in the midterms, and either Obama or Hillary were going to crush the GOP nominee in 2008, so there wasn’t much of a point in pursuing a removal – especially after Bush had already fired Donald Rumsfeld and the attacks on American troops had largely subsided. So agree or disagree with the decision, it was a different time. Bush was a lame duck but probably wouldn’t have been removed, so there wasn’t much point in trying to remove him only to then have to try the same with Dick Cheney.

“It was only a matter of time… Crooked Joe is asking the Court to impose a GAG ORDER on me to limit my public statements. I’m a former US President. I’m the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for the presidency. I’m the leading candidate for the White House in 2024… And yet – the Department of Justice is asking an Obama-appointed judge to RESTRICT MY PUBLIC STATEMENTS on the Biden Administration’s corruption?” writes some asshole working for the Trump campaign in an email to his fans, blaming Biden for the self-created legal shitshow Donald faces.

Again, it’s important to point out that the “Obama-appointed judge” was confirmed in 2014 with the votes of no less than 17 currently sitting Republican Senators, among them staunch Trump allies like John Barrasso, Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham, Charles Grassley, Ron Johnson, Rand Paul, and Marco Rubio, something the fat bastard and his fanboys whom, to our knowledge, have yet to mention.

“… because if we continue the current trajectory of spending, it just goes up like a rocket,” South Carolina Senator and long-shot Republican presidential nominee Tim Scott asserts without noting that deficits would be righted if the ultra-wealthy paid a fair share of taxes, something Republicans oppose.  “If we went t- –there’s no longer Covid, by the way.  We can’t use that as an excuse.  Someone say, thank God, right?  So if we went back to the level of spending before we had a crisis, it would reduce our spending by billions of dollars.”

An armed 44-year-old California man falsely claiming to be a US Marshal assigned to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s security detail was arrested at an event the candidate appeared at on Friday after his private security detail spotted the man’s gun and detained him until police arrived.

According to the Washington Post, Adrian Paul Aispuro arrived at the Los Angeles event and demanded to be taken to the candidate.  After a member of the security team spotted the handgun in a shoulder holster, they called police and surrounded the man, but did not approach him, opting to keep him contained for police, who took the man in custody.

Unlike major candidates, Kennedy does not get Secret Service protection even though his family has a rather lengthy history of being the targets of assassination attempts.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a notorious far right scumbag whose ignominious resume of crimes against the people of the Lone Star State and even the rest of the country beyond is far too long to list here in any concise manner, has almost certainly walked from all 20 of the impeachment articles again him, judging by the way things are going as of Article 7’s vote.

With 21 guilty votes required to convict, none of the counts so far has gotten more than 14 guilty votes, with two Republicans joining 12 Democrats on those votes. While they are Republicans and of course they would fucking do this in the end, it is still a little surprising considering the 86 GOP – 64 Dem Texas House voted 121 to 23 in favor of impeaching Paxton back in May.

While Pax’s political peril is now almost certainly over for now, his legal troubles continue and may worsen, with reports of a federal grand jury investigating his crimes and his real estate hustler buddy Nate Paul – the center of many impeachment articles – has already been indicted.

During his Friday night speech to the “Concerned Women for America” – which sounds like some not particularly clever liberal’s joke about what a right wing moms’ group would be named, except they actually really called it that – disgraced former President Trump made a number of bizarre and false claims to the audience, like saying the military wanted electric tanks and that Ron DeSantis was copying his method of flinging free hats to campaign crowds. The kind of shit that should give pause to the mainstream media’s increasingly insufferable overemphasis of Joe Biden’s age, but won’t.

It’s hard to single out a moment from this speech – and one right after it to the “Pray Vote Stand Summit” in which Trump said illegal immigrants were wearing his mugshot t-shirt and that if reelected he would appoint a special commission to review clemency claims for Capitol rioters, which should be pretty disappointing to the insurrectionists who previously were made to understand it would be a near-universal blanket pardon. However the one lowlight that sticks out just slightly more than the others is Trump replaying the famous “You need to show ID to buy [something you don’t actually need to show ID to buy]” line, this time specifying a “loaf of bread,” to complain about how most Blue States do not have photo ID requirements for in-person voting.

• Hey, guys, when are we gonna take to the streets to show our outrage over Hunter’s indictment?  Maybe we should attack the Capitol.  Whaddaya think, guys?  Guys???
• So the Party of George W. Bush is concerned that Joe Biden’s son might’ve benefited from his father’s political influence, hm?
• Texans can walk out of a shop with a gun in hand because it doesn’t enforce a waiting period.  Some Texas Republicans also want a 10-day waiting period after registering to vote so you can’t vote too rashly because they know ballots are more powerful than bullets.
• The most chilling part about the sneak peek of Mitt Romney’s upcoming biography:  Romney recalling conversations with Republican Senators who admired his stand against Trump but wouldn’t publicly support him because they feared for the safety of their wives and children.  They know how violent al Qaeda the Base is.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXXVIII”

After spending two days reveling in being a disruptive ass during a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” at a Denver theater, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s “little bitch” Lauren Boebert expressed “regret,” apparently that she got caught on security cameras getting groped and vaping when she said nothing happened, the Denver Post reports.

“The past few days have been difficult and humbling, and I’m truly sorry for the unwanted attention my Sunday evening in Denver has brought to the community,” Boebert said in a statement. “While none of my actions or words as a private citizen that night were intended to be malicious or meant to cause harm, the reality is they did and I regret that.”

The Florida Republican Party dealt a blow to its titular leader Governor Ron DeSantis:  it’s dropping its requirement mandating candidates that appear on its presidential primary ballot support the person who ultimately wins the nomination, a move supported by indicted golf club landlord Donald Trump NBC News reports.

The loyalty pledge was something brought up in 2016 to ensure that Donald Trump would not run as a third-party candidate he had lost the primaries; Trump refused to take the pledge then and he’s refused to taking it again this year, forcing the GOP to back down once again.

“Now they want to go to all-electric cars.  They don’t go far.  They cost a lot of money.  They got a little, they got some basic problems.  They very expensive and they don’t go far.  I think they want to keep you somewhere around your home.  They don’t wanna build highways or sumthin’.  They got some crazy plan.  They always have something,” Donald Trump muses like a stand-up comic who forgets the segue to his next bit.  “You know, they wanna build, I don’t know if you know, all-electric army tanks.  We have these army tanks–no, I just, ah, saw this, ahhh, yesterday.  They wanna build all-electric army tanks.  The army tanks, the greatest tanks, the Sherman tank, the greatest tanks in the world we build.  So now when we go in to obliterate a country with our army tanks, at least we won’t pollute it with the pollutants pouring out of the bank of the tank.”

Well, besides referring to the Sherman tank, which the US hasn’t used since 1957, as the greatest tank in the world–thereby proving most definitely that Trump did, obviously, rebuild the military because he knows more than the generals–Trump fucked up again.  He’s apparently referring to a Rand Corp report released in August which noted that the military is expanding its fleet of electric vehicles to use for support and non-combat functions; the report specifically states the military is not pursuing electric tanks.  But again: … more than the generals.

The number of people confirmed killed in the Maui wildfires was lowered from 115 to 97 as officials received DNA results from remains found at the scene confirmed some samples came from the same victims while others were animal remains accidentally collected, the Associated Press reports.  Hawaiian officials also announced the number of missing–which sat at more than 1,000 just three weeks ago–was lowered from 41 to 31.

Of the deceased, 74 have been positively identified. Officials said the downward revision was caused by a number of factors, including the chaos in the immediate aftermath of the fire.  Other remains may have been moved from their original locations as searchers looked for survivors, with responders unknowingly kicking the remains, which were found in subsequent searches.  Some of the remains tested turned out to be animal bones.

President Joe Biden will propose new rules protecting career civil servants in the federal government targeted for dismissal by now-indicted felon Donald Trump who characterized them as soldiers of the Deep State working against MAGA aspirations, the Washington Post reports.

In his last days in office, Trump signed Schedule F, which allowed wider justification for dismissing career non-partisan federal employees; Trump and conservatives claimed these civil servants were Deep State operatives hellbent on blocking Trump’s agenda, even though these people’s jobs are to implement the policy without regard to whoever is in the White House.

“The reason we put a nonpartisan civil service in place 140 years ago was so that the American people could trust that their government worked for them, irrespective of which party was in power,” Jason Miller, the deputy director for management at the Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. “This action is about strengthening that foundation so that the people doing the work on behalf of the federal government from administration to administration are dedicated, are capable and are nonpartisan.”