After getting a 90-day extension, New York Republican Congressman and unheralded inventor of sand George Santos failed to file his required financial disclosures with the House Ethics Committee, even after a 30-day grace period subsequent to the 90-day extension expired, the Associated Press reports, meaning he’s four months late on the mandatory filing.

Saying the deadline was missed because he wanted to make sure the disclosed information was accurate–George always makes sure the i’s are dotted and the t’s are crossed in the signatures he forges–Santos also claimed various deadlines from his legal and tax issues on federal and state levels also contributed to the delay.  The initial deadline was in May.

“Despite my legal team’s and my best efforts to meet the deadlines, additional auditing and tax filing for 2022 remained,” Santos said in an email to the AP. “I still have until November 2023 to submit my 2022 taxes with the IRS in order to avoid legal troubles. Because House filing deadlines conflict with IRS regulations, this misalignment exists,”

“We’re using lethal force against the cartels,” flailing Florida tough guy Ron DeSantis asserts to a cultish studio audience at a supposed news program on a proven propaganda network.  “If they’re bringing fentanyl in, breaking into our country, ah [note the momentary struggle to recall the landing line], we’re gonna leave ’em stone cold dead at the border.  Trust me, they will get the message.”

Set aside the illegality of executing civilians extrajudicially at the border.  Given that most fentanyl comes across the border at authorized border check points, and the people smuggling it in are usually Americans, DeSantis’s authoritarian policy proposal is the red meat the far right craves, but it’s also a felony.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell called out House Oversight Chair James Comer for lying about being stonewalled by Biden after Comer attempted to get Biden’s financial records in a search for anything implicating wrongdoing by Biden’s father.

Lowell came with notes:  “On February 9, we wrote back to you and, while pointing out the concerns about the motive and improper basis for your requests, I specifically said, ‘I would offer to sit with you and your staff, including the ranking member and his staff, to see whether Mr. Biden has information that may inform some legitimate legislative purpose and be helpful to the Committee.’ (Lowell Ltr. at 4). You never responded to that offer. For you to now go on live television and say we did not respond or ignored your Committee’s requests is simply not true. We ask that you correct what you said, but more importantly, we remain available to have the discussion that I suggested some seven months ago.”

While pantomiming either a shrinking orb or grabbing someone by the balls, the last effective Speaker of the House of Representatives, Democratic California Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi responds to CNN host Anderson Cooper’s proposal that Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy has painted himself into a corner by negotiating with terrorists by saying, “I think it’s the incredibly shrinking speakership.”

A cruise ship with more than 200 passengers on board ran aground in an isolated stretch of the Northeast Greenland National Park and because it cannot free itself, will be stranded there for days until a rescue ship arrives, CNN reports.

Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command noted that after the Ocean Explorer ran aground Monday, the hope was that Tuesday’s high tide would give the ship clearance to move out, but the water did not raise the ship enough to free itself.  The closest inspection ship that could work to free the cruise ship was 1,200 nautical miles away.

Just because Matt Gaetz is a lying piece of shit with an oversized forehead and a credibly alleged statutory rapist whose main vendetta against his boss, titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy is almost certainly the ethics investigation into those allegations doesn’t mean he’s wrong about McCarthy being “a sad, pathetic man.” He’s just making us uncomfortable for being right about that. Even worse was when he said something pretty funny later in the interview by jokingly mistaking a clip of McCarthy speaking to reporters for “a commercial for low [Testosterone treatments].”

With an end-of-month deadline to fund the federal government looming and the Speaker pro tem angering various factions of his caucus while trying to please others, the Republican leadership of the House pulled two key bills amid intraparty squabbling, Politico reports.

A key agriculture funding bill was suspended as the anti-choice wing of the Party attempted to insert language limiting reproductive health care into the bill.  It’s a goal of the Handmaid Caucus to reduce reproductive health access by inserting provisions in key bills.  The practice annoys conservatives who want the legislature to pass “clean” bills as well as a dozen or so moderate Republicans who have let Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy know they do not support such moves.

Later Wednesday, a $826 billion defense spending bill was suspended because McCarthy did not have the support of some conservatives members of the GOP caucus.  Members of the Freedom Caucus are demanding McCarthy specify budget cuts he’ll include, both inside and outside the defense appropriation, with other members objecting to the Biden Administration supplying arms to Ukraine.

In a motion seeking dismissal of the charges in the Fulton County, Georgia RICO case against her, insane MAGA lawyer Sidney “Kraken” Powell again claimed in a court filing that her goons had authorization from the Coffer County Board of Elections to take whatever they wanted from the Dominion Voting Systems server housed at the Coffee County, Georgia Clerk’s office when they were trying to find proof the 2020 election was “hacked” in January 2021. This time however, she backed off from claiming the decision was “unanimous,” merely calling it authorization and saying one of their MAGA buddies, a former board member named Ed Voyles “likely received a written invitation” from the county board to go check out the machines. Still probably not going to fly.

In related news, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals set a Friday hearing in disgraced former White House cHief of Staff Mark Meadows’ bid to remove his charges to federal court. The judges? Two Obama appointees and one Clinton appointee. That just freaking sucks so badly for him.

Day 7 of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial which we haven’t been as tuned into as we probably should have been given our volume of past coverage of the Picasso-faced fascist criminal. What better time to jump in to the live feed than the expected 3:53 PM CDT appearance of Paxton’s mistress Laura Olson, whose relationship with Pax is the center of a great many of the accusations against him. Fun fact: Though she’s barred from voting in the final verdict in the trial given the very obvious personal conflict of interest, Ken’s wife, Texas state Senator Angela Paxton, will reportedly be present in the chamber while Olson testifies after 3:53 PM CDT. The exact, oddly-numbered minute of her appearance is due to a 24 hour notice rule for the defense before a witness can take the stand. Paxton’s team were informed at 3:53 PM CDT on Tuesday.

Florida MAGA federal Judge Aileen Cannon on Wednesday finally granted the protective order sought by Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith in the case against fat former President Trump for stealing and hoarding classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, setting forward a process for Donald and his lawyers to review and discuss the top secret shit he took from the White House.

Trump had wanted to establish a SCIF at Mar-a-Lago so Team Orange could huddle and talk about the case against him and at first glance Cannon’s ruling did not actually address that ask while setting the rules for the discovery process. The Hill characterized it as a “sidestep” in their headline, writing Cannon’s order “does not acknowledge a request from Trump to review those documents by redesignating a space in his home as a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF).”

Sharp-eyed Twitter user @secretsandlaws, purportedly a former CIA attorney looked through the footnotes of the order and found that yeah, Cannon really did rule against Trump by granting a motion opposing that stupid Mar-a-Lago SCIF plan. All it took was a literal national security lawyer to scrutinize every word of the order to find out that Cannon betrayed her Orange Master.

Hunter Biden IRS “whistleblower” Gary Shapley, a guy whom we were willing to hear out and take at least sort of seriously initially before finding out that he’s being repped by that Tristan Leavitt shitweasel, might have kind of perjured himself while testifying to the House Ways and Means Committee about his investigation into Hunter back in May, according to EmptyWheel.

Like a lot of things with this Hunter Biden-David Weiss shitshow, it’s deep in the weeds and hard to grasp the significance. But that Shapley contradicted himself is unmistakeable. Basically, Shapley told a committee investigator he did not know which media outlet published a story based on a leak when literally in his handwritten notes taken during the internal meeting in question say it was the Washington Post. These notes are of course at the center of another frenzied circlejerk in the MAGAverse after Leavitt published them on Wednesday. It is a monumental struggle to focus for even a few minutes on their contents so we really have to question how the fanboys can make it from beginning to end, even with the confirmation bias giving a boost to their attention spans.

“A new investigation with NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope into K2-18 b, an exoplanet 8.6 times as massive as Earth, has revealed the presence of carbon-bearing molecules including methane and carbon dioxide. Webb’s discovery adds to recent studies suggesting that K2-18 b could be a Hycean exoplanet, one which has the potential to possess a hydrogen-rich atmosphere and a water ocean-covered surface… The abundance of methane and carbon dioxide, and shortage of ammonia, support the hypothesis that there may be a water ocean underneath a hydrogen-rich atmosphere in K2-18 b. These initial Webb observations also provided a possible detection of a molecule called dimethyl sulfide (DMS). On Earth, this is only produced by life. The bulk of the DMS in Earth’s atmosphere is emitted from phytoplankton in marine environments,” says NASA in a press release.

South of the border however, Mexican Senators were treated to a presentation in which alleged alien non-life was displayed on stage in a glass case for politicians to gawk at. The very tiny, clay-like “aliens,” said to have been recovered from an ancient dig site in Peru, supposedly have internal skeletal structures and all the other stuff that proves they really were alive at some point.

Utah Senator Mitt Romney told the Washington Post on Wednesday he will not run for reelection in 2024. The announcement brings to a close to the career of the former Massachusetts governor, 2012 Republican presidential nominee, and as far as we know is the only living American elected to statewide office in two different states, and beginning a period of joyous celebration for the fanboys who hate him for voting to convict Trump in both impeachment trials.

UPDATE 9/13/2023 2:15 PM EDT: Surprise! Fat former President Trump heralded the “FANTASTIC NEWS FOR AMERICA,THE GREAT STATE OF UTAH, & FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY” in an all-caps scream on Truth Social. “A BIG PRIMARY FIGHT AGAINST HIM WAS IN THE OFFING, BUT NOW THAT WILL NOT BE NECESSARY. CONGRATS TO ALL,” wrote the ebullient orange toddler.

Accusing the far right little freak former Trump White House aide Garrett Ziegler of “a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign” against their client, lawyers for Hunter Biden on Wednesday filed a federal civil complaint against Ziegler alleging violations of various computer privacy laws, which isn’t exactly a baseless accusation against the sick asshole who last year doxxed the son of an FBI agent who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago classified documents search warrant.

“Garrett Ziegler is a zealot who has waged a sustained, unhinged and obsessed campaign against Plaintiff and the entire Biden family for more than two years. While Defendant Ziegler is entitled to his extremist and counterfactual opinions, he has no right to engage in illegal activities to advance his right-wing agenda. Yet that is precisely what Defendant Ziegler and his so-called ‘nonprofit research group,’ Defendant ICU, d/b/a/ Marco Polo, have done and have asserted they will continue to do in the future. Since approximately December 2020, Defendant Ziegler, Defendant ICU and their ‘team’ of volunteers and independent contractors have spent countless hours accessing, tampering with, manipulating, altering, copying and damaging computer data that they do not own and that they claim to have obtained from hacking into Plaintiff’s iPhone data and from scouring a copy of the hard drive of what they claim to be Plaintiff’s ‘laptop’ computer,” says the complaint.

Just watch this force of nature completely steamrolling all doubt, putting on a masterclass on how to project nothing but the utmost confidence in the noble, righteous cause of restoring accountability to Wash… Ah goddamn it we can’t even keep it up for a whole paragraph because holy shit it’s only day two and this is where Kevin McCarthy is at on answering simple questions from the press.

We cannot emphasize this enough: Far too many folks are still in the initial shock phase, feeling like House Republicans have seized a major initiative and overwhelmed by this new “momentum” without really taking a moment to picture what it’s actually going to look like when this kind of basic scrutiny amid wall-to-wall coverage and televised hearings really heats up. This is but a small preview.

Finding that an appeal of the order rejecting his bid to remove the charges against Mark Meadows in the Fulton County, Georgia post-2020 election coup attempt RICO case was not “likely to prevail on the merits” US Circuit Court Judge Steven Jones on Wednesday declined to stay District Attorney Fani Willis’s prosecution of the disgraced former Trump White House Chief of Staff while he takes his bitchy attempt to avoid accountability for his crimes to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

“In sum, the Court concludes that Meadows has not shown he is entitled to an emergency stay under the aforementioned factors. The Court thereby denies his request for a stay pending appeal of his removal of his State criminal prosecution… For the foregoing reasons, the Court DENIES Meadows’s Emergency Motion for a Stay Pending Appeal,” wrote Jones in the ruling, which was probably rigged to distract people from the new House GOP impeachment inquiry or something.

“It’s all happening, even worse than anyone projected. President Vladimir Putin of Russia is using Crooked Joe Biden’s illegal Banana Republic style treatment of his Political Opponent, who is beating him badly in the Polls, to condemn America and all of the good things it once stood for. The whole World is watching as the USA is being torn apart by dreams of Election Interference!” wrote fat former President Trump in an early Wednesday Truth Social post referencing his boss in the collusion “hoax” publicly badmouthing the American justice system’s “persecution” of Donald.

Later that morning Trump freaked out over a little-noticed New York Times column questioning his mental state by pointing out a strange ramble from last month’s Tucker interview. “We lost 35,000 people to the mosquito. Malaria. We lost 35,000 people. We lost 35,000 people because of the mosquito. Vicious. They had to build under nets. It was one of the true great wonders of the world. One of the nine wonders… No, no, it was one of the seven. You could make nine wonders,” op-ed guy Frank Bruni transcribed Trump as saying, raising the obvious point that Donald’s defenders should maybe stop hyping Biden’s perceived senescence when their guy isn’t all there either.

“Such dishonesty at The Failing New York Times. Recently I did an interview with Tucker Carlson [blah blah blah] During the interview I talked about the Panama Canal, & how we so stupidly sold it back to Panama for one dollar, very sarcastically mimicking Crooked Joe Biden & how truly lost he is…” wrote Trump, then continuing with “You see, Crooked Joe had just called “something” the Ninth Wonder of the World, & it made headlines because it had always been the Seventh. I made it clear in the interview that by my jokingly imitating Biden’s recent gaffe, I was just trying to show how truly dumb & out of ‘it’ this guy really is. The Times knowingly tried to make my spoof on him into my making the same mistake as Biden, no sarcasm, no nothing.” Very Streisand effect-y stuff.

Well this ought to be entertaining given the questions they’re going to get following up on reporting that titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy and malevolent razorback conference chair Elise Stefanik been coordinating with disgraced former President Trump on Biden’s impeachment inquiry… as if it was supposed to be some kind of a major bombshell given Trump’s Truth Social posts on it.

House Oversight dipshit James Comer on Wednesday struggled to allay the concerns of some Newsmax assclown, not really addressing the repeated question of why his committee doesn’t just go ahead and subpoena Hunter Biden already other than to say Hunter would just fight it in court.

It’s hard to credit that as an actual reason and maybe even a little harder to imagine what the actual reason is. Of course the immediate take is “They’re afraid that having Hunter come testify and answer questions to risk perjury would debunk their narrative,” but it has to be something more layered and complex of an excuse than that, doesn’t it? James Comer isn’t that fucking utterly basic that the best dissembling he can do is this line of bullshit, right? Somebody speak up for him here.

Wednesday morning’s Beltway media tip sheets on titular Speaker McCarthy’s big announcement all center on confident assurances of the inevitability of Joe Biden getting impeached, seeming as though they were written at least in part by the House GOP’s marketing department. Consider:

Politico Playbook with “Is there any way this doesn’t end in Biden’s impeachment? Don’t count on it. McCarthy is privately trying to appease his unhappy centrist members by telling them that opening an inquiry is just that – an inquiry – and that doesn’t mean they’ll have to vote to actually impeach Biden someday… Any other scenario ignores the reality of 21st-century impeachment politics. Opening an inquiry then failing to follow through would be a major political boon to Biden – essentially, a tacit admission by the GOP that he’s innocent. And we wouldn’t be surprised if McCarthy uses that argument to squeeze moderates who currently see no evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors to back impeachment later on.”

Punchbowl News with “The reality for the 58-year-old, nine-term McCarthy is that once he opens an impeachment inquiry, it’s almost guaranteed that House Republicans will impeach Biden. Remember, a sizable number of Republicans were ready to impeach before the inquiry even began. And once the House has begun the process, not impeaching Biden will look like a validation of the president to many rank-and-file lawmakers. That may be too much for McCarthy to control.”