There’s already trouble in GOP paradise even before Trump takes office. Government funding is about to run out and they need to either pass a budget or punt with a continuing resolution. Otherwise we’re looking, once again, at a government shutdown. There are some Republicans who relish that because they just love to be transgressive. But Speaker Johnson just wants to get past it however he can until Dear Leader can come in and magically make everything work perfectly. The problem is that the House Republicans are in disarray with some wanting just a clean extension until March while others want to shoot the moon with massive cuts (as usual.) Johnson can’t get anything done unless he gets cooperation from at least a few Democrats as a result. Grab some popcorn. They’re already at each others’ throats.
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A big shout-out to everyone who has contributed to the annual fundraiser this year. I’m blown away by your generosity and kindness. In times like these it matters more than ever that we all stick together and I am so very grateful that you are sticking with me. Things are already getting weird in DC. As I wrote earlier, the infighting over the budget has already begun with the co-President Elon Musk threatening GOP members with primaries unless they agree to shut down the government until the congress comes in (apparently failing to understand that they will have an even smaller majority in the House than they do now.) We’re back to the tried and true GOP strategy of “if I hold my breath until I turn blue I will get what I want” and it doesn’t ever work out. So stay tuned for that. But the Trump Vengeance and Retribution Tour has officially begun as well, which will probably dominate the news once the new congress convenes. And the opening salvo is a House investigation into … Liz Cheney, who is apparently enemy #1.
Bret Stephens of The NY Times has written a fatuous piece abandoning his “Never Trump” status (which, I admit, I didn’t even realize he had obtained. Really?) Anyway, he says Trump’s not bad and never was and everyone is being hysterical. This is something I’m hearing from a lot of people. I’m not going to offer a gift link to it because it’s really not worth it. Unless you have amnesia of the last 10 years it’s anything but persuasive. Instead I want to direct you to the Bulwark’s JV Last’s response which he has posted outside the paywall so you can click over to read the whole thing. Here is a small piece of it. It’s really good: He goes on to discuss everything we’re already seeing for Trump II and I think people are very much underestimating his intentions. Whether he’ll be able to accomplish his toxic agenda is yet to be determined. Never Trumpers and the rest of us who saw what Trump was, and see what he is today, are taking quite a bit of incoming from a number of different directions. We are outside the mainstream right now.
The House is scrapping Mike Johnson’s year-end spending plan after Republicans had a shit-fit led by chief cheerleader the Real President of the United States, Elon Musk. They are back to the drawing board with the government set to shut down on Friday night. At the end of the day he told his puppet and vice-puppet to bless his efforts publicly and it was done: Musk spent Wednesday stirring Republicans into a frenzy over the stopgap spending bill filed by Johnson — one loaded up with $100 billion in disaster aid funding, billions more in farm assistance and dozens of other side deals that pushed the final product past 1,500 pages. His daylong flurry of dozens of postings on his X account appears to have succeeded: President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance came out against the bill this evening, calling instead for a pared-back measure coupled with a debt-limit increase. Not even disaster funding? Man, that’s cold. Musk knows nothing about policy, budgets or politics.
If you want to know where they get their information,here’s the breakdown:YouTube 90%TikTok 63%Instagram 61%Snapchat 55%Facebook 32% (down from 71%)WhatsApp 23%X 17% (down from 33%)Reddit 14%Threads 6% I have to wonder about the Youtube use. It could just be music or some other very specific interest there but if they ever get caught up in something and go down the Youtube rabbit hole it’s very dangerous. That site is full of disinformation and it’s very compellingly presented. I don’t know what to do about it exactly. YouTube is extremely valuable. I use it constantly myself. But if you don’t know what you’re looking at it can be disorienting and destructive. I use Tik Tok much less, but I go there enough to see how much fun it is and understand why the kids like it so much. And from what I gather it’s full of disinformation too. If we weren’t working overtime to destroy the education system we might try something like this:
The AP reports: A former FBI informant pleaded guilty on Monday to lying about a phony bribery scheme involving President Joe Biden and his son Hunter that became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress. […] Smirnov will get credit for the time he has served since his February arrest on charges that he told his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015. Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said. […] No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes as president or in his previous office as vice president. While Smirnov’s identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, his claims played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark a House impeachment inquiry into Biden.
Trump only cares about his agenda of deportation, revenge, tariffs and personal profits. He’s fine with Elon doing whatever as long as it doesn’t interfere with his own agenda. The Daily Beast reported in his last term that when pressed about the rising deficit, he would say: “Yeah, but I won’t be here,” the president bluntly said, according to a source who was in the room when Trump made this comment during discussions on the debt. The episode illustrates the extent of the president’s ambivalence toward tackling an issue that has previously animated the Republican Party from the days of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of Barack Obama. But for those who have worked with Trump, it was par for the course. Several people close to the president, both within and outside his administration, confirmed that the national debt has never bothered him in a truly meaningful way, despite his public lip service. “I never once heard him talk about the debt,” one former senior White House official attested. He never talked about it when he ran for reelection both times either.
They obey the call How many times have “Twilight Zone” references popped into your head lately? These times are as surreal as they are threatening. Except there’s no Rod Serling to offer a pithy observation on the human condition or to offer a moral coda to each day’s news. For those among the uninfected, there is only a collective shaking of heads, a silent prayer, at the behavior of MAGA millions, titans of industry, and newsies genuflecting before the Great Orange Oz. Witnessing this “Great Capitulation,” Michelle Goldberg writes: Different people have different reasons for falling in line. Some may simply lack the stomach for a fight or feel, not unreasonably, that it’s futile. Our tech overlords, however liberal they once appeared, seem to welcome the new order. Many hated wokeness, resented the demands of newly uppity employees and chafed at attempts by Joe Biden’s administration to regulate crypto and A.I., two industries with the potential to cause deep and lasting social harm.
How many Democrats does it take to change a light bulb? Lefties’ fondness for novelty goes only so far. Democrats are policy liberals (sort of) and campaign conservatives. Party culture is built around seniority and whose “turn” it is to move up the organizational ladder. There is ageism in that, but also resistance to generational change. (I wrote about our local changing of the guard a few years back.) That’s visible in real time in the contest for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee between Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s (D-N.Y.). Politico: House Democrats have solidified the generational shake-up at the top of their committees, after significant behind-the-scenes influence from both current and former leaders of the caucus. The caucus faced tough races for the Agriculture, Oversight and Natural Resources Committees. Rep. Angie Craig (Minn.) won the nod for the top party spot on Agriculture, beating incumbent Rep. David Scott (Ga.), who’d faced long-standing questions about his health, and Rep. Jim Costa (Calif.). Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.) won the Oversight recommendation over Rep.
Nancy Mace says she is concerned that the drone sightings off NJ is either aliens from another planet or Russia/Iran/China searching for a missing nuclear warhead. pic.twitter.com/Uf6GiEm84v — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) December 17, 2024 These are elected GOP officials. They are not fake tweets.