Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Why did Dr. Oz lose? well, according to the exit polls, it’s because Fetterman won.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

We still have time to mess this up!

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

If senate republicans had any shame, they’d die of it.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Bark louder, little dog.

This really is a full service blog.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

Infrastructure week. at last.

T R E 4 5 O N

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

This fight is for everything.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Republican Venality

Republican Venality

Late Night Open Thread: TFG’s Dinner with AngrYe

by | 51 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

I too thought, at first, that the publicity over Trump’s dinner with Ye / Fuentes was a too-clever-by-half Republican attempt to scapegoat Trump as an anomaly, a novelty figure whose removal would return the GOP to its former proud status as the Grand Old Party. But it seems like the Permanent Republican Party just isn’t that organized any more! It’s reduced itself to a bunch of random office drones and coatholders, individually scrambling to save what they can from the wreakage, while the petty grifters siphon off the shark’s vital bodily fluids.

Marc Caputo is second only to Maggie Haberman in the ‘Serious-Media Trump Court Sycophant’ field… and, like Avis, he tries harder:

Just two days before Thanksgiving, Donald Trump was planning to have a private, uneventful dinner with an old friend: Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West.

But Trump may have been walking into a trap in Mar-a-Lago’s gilded halls — one that leveraged his own penchant for spectacle and showmanship against him. Ye arrived with three guests, including white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes…

The headline-grabbing attention on his guests — and therefore the subsequent fallout — were all but ensured by Trump before the dinner when he made a grand entrance at about 8 p.m. on Nov. 22 to meet his guests.

“We saw everybody in the dining room get up and start applauding, and then the president entered,” Fuentes told NBC News. “He greeted us, and he invited Ye into dinner and Ye said that he wanted to bring us with him to the table. So we walked in and Ye took some pictures with some of the guests in the dining room and then we sat down at the table.”

Trump made sure they sat at his specially reserved table on the patio, for all to see, according to Fuentes.

But the dinner wasn’t the happy photo-op the president had planned.

Ye criticized Trump for not doing enough to help pay the legal bills of those arrested in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots; and he also told Trump he might run for president against him and said Trump should instead be his running mate — all of which angered the former president, who attacked Ye’s ex-wife, Kim Kardashian, according to two dinner participants and Ye, who blasted out a “Mar-a-Lago debrief” video to his 32.2 million Twitter followers the next day…

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: TFG’s Dinner with AngrYePost + Comments (51)

Monday Evening Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Is No Nancy Pelosi

by | 149 Comments

This post is in: , , , , ,

Kevin McCarthy - STOCKPILE

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)


Admittedly, that’s a high bar… but right now, the GOP nutballs are fighting to dig that bar into the ground:

… Every new commitment from McCarthy can be seen as a potentially strategic move, intended to quell skeptics on his right flank as he reaches for the speaker’s gavel. With a slim House majority in the midterm elections, the GOP leader must solidify his ranks in a sprint for the 218 votes he’ll need when the new Congress convenes — each coming at a cost and with no room for error.

“We’ll get there,” McCarthy said in accepting his party’s nomination to run for speaker.

The overtures McCarthy is making, some symbolic, others substantive, provide a snapshot of the speaker hopeful’s emerging leadership style. While McCarthy is expected to prevail in his quest for the speaker’s gavel, it is destined to come at a political price, setting the tone and tenor of new Congress.

To start, McCarthy has promised to restore committee assignments for far-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., after she and another right-flank lawmaker were booted by Democrats over incendiary remarks.

And he has vowed to oust Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and other high-profile Democrats from their committees in a form of political payback, setting up a divisive House action early in the new Congress.

McCarthy has assured that under his leadership, the House will remove the metal detectors that were installed to prevent firearms in the House chamber; end COVID-era protocols that allowed lawmakers to vote by proxy; and fully reopen the Capitol’s limited visitor access since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection by supporters of the former president, Donald Trump.

And in a dramatic nod to the far-right, McCarthy has threatened an impeachment investigation against Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas unless he resigns over the department’s handling of the U.S.’s southern border with Mexico…

After pushing his party to victory in the midterm elections, McCarthy won the nod from a majority of his colleagues nominating him to run for speaker. But the 188-31 vote among Republicans showed the shortfall he must overcome. When the new Congress convenes in January, the whole House, Republicans and Democrats, will vote on speaker and McCarthy’s party will need to stick together with their slim majority for him to prevail. Otherwise, a different Republican could emerge as a compromise candidate…

show full post on front page

Monday Evening Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Is No Nancy PelosiPost + Comments (149)

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Good Time to Be A Democrat

by | 82 Comments

This post is in: , ,

… Energized by the White House’s actions on key priorities such as climate, student debt and marijuana, progressives are openly rooting for Ron Klain to stay on as Biden’s top aide. And they view better-than-expected midterms as vindication of the president’s decision to pursue an expansive agenda.

“A lot of people see him as one of the few avenues they have to have a glimpse into the dynamics and considerations of what’s happening in the White House,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said of Klain. “When I think about some of the conversations that build trust, build the sense of open communication, he’s usually part of that.”

An around-the-clock communicator who courted Democrats’ grassroots groups even before Biden took office, Klain has become a critical conduit between liberal leaders and the administration’s upper echelon, according to interviews with more than a dozen leaders and lawmakers on the left. He offers a level of access the left has rarely enjoyed — and that progressives now say will be crucial to maintaining a united Democratic front in the face of divided government.

The outpouring of support comes amid growing speculation over whether Klain will exit the White House, triggering a West Wing shakeup that could reshape the remainder of Biden’s presidency and reverberate through the Democratic Party. Biden has asked Klain to stay, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO…

Since Politico can’t find anyone to complain about Klain or speculate on his possible replacement for the record, I’m guessing this is 99.9% the Media Village Idiots whining that they’re *boooored* with competence, and would prefer some hair-pulling & sh*t-flinging, such as could always be expected under You-Know-Who.

Meanwhile, across the event horizon aisle…

Tuesday Morning Open Thread: Good Time to Be A DemocratPost + Comments (82)

Late Night Open Thread: Busy Bloody Week

by | 174 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: Busy Bloody WeekPost + Comments (174)

Late Night Open Thread: The Ancient ‘Conservative’ Tradition of Exploiting the Vulnerable for Money & Publicity

by | 89 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

That does not sound at all like a cult, does it? Perhaps it’s just as well, for the Kanyatics (Yeezoids?) who might otherwise end up in peonage (if not in a line for the cyanide Flavor-Aid), that The Artist Formerly Known As Kanye has opened his heart & his wallet to some extremely sketchy new ‘friends’…

I knew Candace Owens, professional ‘Every Rich Rightwinger’s Black Friend, Once the Check Clears’, was somehow involved in the Parler social-media grift. But until this past week, I didn’t know she was married to a right-wing British Bullingdon alum who *just happens* to be Parler’s CEO. Per the Financial Times:

show full post on front page

Late Night Open Thread: The Ancient ‘Conservative’ Tradition of Exploiting the Vulnerable for Money & PublicityPost + Comments (89)

Friday Evening Open Thread: Steve Bannon, One Step Closer to Jail

by | 84 Comments

This post is in: , , , ,

… U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols allowed Bannon to stay free pending appeal, a potentially lengthy process, and also imposed a fine of $6,500 as part of the sentence. Bannon was convicted in July of two counts of contempt of Congress: one for refusing to sit for a deposition and the other for refusing to provide documents…

“In my view, Mr. Bannon has not taken responsibility for his actions,” Nichols said before he imposed the sentence. “Others must be deterred from committing similar crimes.”

The House panel had sought Bannon’s testimony over his involvement in Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Bannon has yet to testify or provide any documents to the committee.

Prosecutors argued Bannon, 68, deserved the longer sentence because he had pursued a “bad faith strategy” and his public statements disparaging the committee itself made it clear he wanted to undermine their effort to get to the bottom of the violent attack and keep anything like it from happening again.

“He chose to hide behind fabricated claims of executive privilege and advice of counsel to thumb his nose at Congress,” said prosecutor J.P. Cooney.

“Your honor, the defendant is not above the law and that is exactly what makes this case important,” Cooney said. “It must be made clear to the public, to the citizens, that no one is above the law.”

The defense, meanwhile, said he wasn’t acting in bad faith, but trying to avoid running afoul of executive privilege objections Trump had raised when Bannon was first served with a committee subpoena last year. The onetime presidential adviser said he wanted to have a Trump lawyer in the room, but the committee wouldn’t allow it…

Prosecutors had pushed for the maximum fine, saying Bannon refused to answer routine questions about his income and insisted he could pay whatever the judge imposed. The judge, though, found the short answers were an effort to spare court staff a lengthy effort of tracing Bannon’s finances and imposed a smaller fine.

Bannon has also argued that he had offered to testify after Trump waived executive privilege. But that was after the contempt charges were filed, and prosecutors say he would only agree to give the deposition if the case was dropped.

Bannon is also facing separate money laundering, fraud and conspiracy charges in New York related to the “We Build the Wall” campaign. Bannon has pleaded not guilty…

show full post on front page

Friday Evening Open Thread: Steve Bannon, One Step Closer to JailPost + Comments (84)

Repub Venality Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Is Having A Bad Week

by | 136 Comments

This post is in: , , ,

A bad week for K-M’Carth is a good week for us decent people, so: MORE OF THIS, PLEASE…

But that’s not all, folks!

Props to Cheryl Rofer for her choice of photo here:

show full post on front page

Repub Venality Open Thread: Kevin McCarthy Is Having A Bad WeekPost + Comments (136)