TRUMPS CLOWN SHOW CONTINUES: Picks Dr.Oz to head Medicare/Medicaid

THE CRUDITE CANDIDATE": And yet another third-rate charlatan with big baggage"

 

By TheCriticalMind 

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Tuesday, November 19, 2024 at 3:51:56p MST

 

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Donald Trump’s latest cabinet pick is yet another third-rate charlatan with baggage. Last seen running for a PA US Senate seat from his home in NJ, TV's Dr. Oz is Trump’s pick to head the the agency that oversees Medicare/Medicaid. 

He is not Trump’s worst pick — Gabbard, Gaetz, Hesgeth, and RFK Jr. lead that race to the bottom. However, he has no obvious qualifications for the role.  

It’s a position that needs management ability, while Oz’s talents lie in separating the gullible from their hard-earned by shilling snake oil and useless weight-loss nostrums. 

Not that anyone, besides the easily deluded, thinks that Trump picks people because they can do the job. The man is a vandal looking to tear things down. Ergo, he is looking for incompetents to blow things up.

But that explanation does not hold water. If you want to raze a building, you don’t send in mouth-breathers with bags of dynamite and no plan. Destruction may require less strategy than construction, but demolition is still a skill. 

The people behind Project 2025 are probably ecstatic at the general tenor of Trump’s appointments. However, I expect there is whispered muttering in the right-wing think tanks expressing consternation that their boy is not appointing the best people for the teardown. 

They would like to see efficiency in their fascism. Their role models are people like Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect and armaments minister. A man who managed his bailiwick with Teutonic precision — and increased Nazi war production every year until 1944, even as the Allies carpet bombed everything that could make or move materiel. Dr Oz has yet to show such mission commitment.

Trump is stupid, but he’s not an idiot. So why is he picking people who will not get the reductio ad nihilum completed as quickly and comprehensively as more able candidates?

I think the answer is twofold. On the one hand, he is playing chicken with the Senate. He aims to browbeat, cajole, and threaten the Republican Senators into rubber-stamping absurd cabinet picks. Thereby reducing them to the independent status enjoyed by Saddam Hussein’s legislators.

The other reason is that this self-aggrandizing buffoon thinks he can do all the jobs himself. If he had ever studied he would have noticed that the federal government is not a mom-and-pop store. It isn’t that easy to dismantle a nearly $7 trillion annual dollar enterprise (10x the global revenues of #1 company Walmart).

I suppose you could try to fire all federal employees and ignore the court cases saying the job cull is against the law. But that would come with a downside. It would be like curing someone of bone cancer by removing all their bones — technically effective, but the patient dies. Killing the federal government would kill the country — and what’s the point of being a plutocrat in a wasteland where no one has the money to buy stuff?

Downsizing the government, hurting the right people, and installing compliant drones takes skill. Does Oz have it? I doubt it. Not that Trump gives a shit. He’s just taking the piss. 

As I write this my phone tells me Trump has picked ex-WWE impresario Linda McMahon to be the Education Secretary. There is no risk of the MAGAs getting smarter.

 From your friendly party in power: "Take this, my fellow Americans."  And you're worried about the price of eggs? 
 

Ode to a Gay "Dawn" Trump

 

Renowned Lake Wobegon humorist ponders the ultimate "what if?"

By Garrison Keillor / Garrison Keillor's Website 18 November 24

 

Every morning when I wake up, I ask myself: what have I done the previous day that entitles me to draw upon the nation’s precious water supply and enjoy a hot shower? I don’t see this as a basic human right; it should be earned. And what I did the other day was accompany my beloved to the Met to see Puccini’s Tosca.

She dearly loves grand opera and I dearly love her, and I was glad to go for the chance to see the tenor be executed and the soprano leap to her death. I enjoy violence more when it’s accompanied by great music.

What makes the Met’s Tosca remarkable is that the tenor’s girlfriend Tosca, sung by the six-two Norwegian goddess Lise Davidsen, towers over him and when they embrace, he disappears, and when they sing a duet, you forget he’s there. Her voice can go from pianissimo to pee-in-your-pants forte in two seconds and during one duet I somehow found myself thinking about transgenderdom. When I listen to people sing in Italian, my mind wanders.

The subject of transgender was more prominent in Trump’s 2024 campaign than in any presidential election I can recall. Reagan never went there, nor did George W. Maybe I’m hanging out with the wrong people but I wasn’t aware that it was such a major issue, the fear of trans boys competing in girls’ basketball.

I am not without prejudice and I admit that I would prefer that my cardiologist be okay with his or her birth gender. I’m not proud of it but there it is. As for basketball, I take no interest in it whatsoever and haven’t for years.

But the current bromance between Donald Trump and Elon Musk, World’s Richest Man, forces me to take up the subject. I’ve long thought that there is something sopranoish and prima Donald about Trump, the fussiness with the hair, the adoration of the spotlight, the reverence for makeup. And Mar-a-Lago with all the frilliness and glitz, the gilded cherubs, the ladylike glamour — no man I know would feel comfortable there.

So watching the man’s victory speech on Election Night in which he spoke so admiringly about Musk’s Space-X rocket, it struck me as odd: you’ve just been elected Leader of the Free World and you’re fascinated by the size of another man’s rocket?

It just made me wonder if we haven’t elected our first trans president before electing our first woman.

El Don’s obsession with trans people in his campaign bore unmistakable signs of self-loathing and I think that we hippy-libs have a duty to encourage him to come out of the locker room and embrace his identity.

It’s heartwarming to see a 78-year-old person head-over-heels for a guy devoted to cars and rockets, and now that La Donna is elected, he can cut the macho act and bring out the pantsuits and high heels and just be himself. I’m an old Marxist-Communist but still I think power should be liberating: take that Oval Office and ovulate to your heart’s content, pal. “Trump Will Fix It” was the slogan and now it’s time for him/her/them to fix him/her/them. Everybody could tell that he needed a new pronoun and now he can have it by executive order.

Dawn is in love with his Musk,

They’re dancing together at dusk.

Each little fist bump

Makes her heart jump,

His tail and his tush and his tusk.

I wish Kamala had become First Woman President because she seemed actually interested in government and policy issues, more than in sharks and electric boats and Arnie Palmer’s manhood. But so be it, the voters have spoken. But let’s try to see the bright side.

If you are a soybean farmer in North Dakota and you feel God made a mistake in giving you a penis, you are in a tough spot and most trans farmers would take the easy way out and move to West Palm Beach, but a President with the courage to come out publicly on Day One and accept what is so clear about him could change that instantly.

He is a great storyteller. He loves the unexpected. His nomination of a Fox News host to head the Defense Department, and Matt Gaetz, under investigation for drug use and sex trafficking, nominated to be Attorney General. So why not hold a press conference wearing a sparkly red gown and jangly jewelry? People want entertainment. They’ll be talking about it for weeks. Fashion will trump inflation.

 

The case for the glass half full

 Kamala Harris herself performed better than I could have ever imagined. She was disciplined, focused and charismatic. She’s a brilliant orator and debater.

By Cosecant 

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Saturday, November 16, 2024 at 4:34:20p MST

 

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I’m off cable news for the next 4+ years, only getting little glimpses here and there of what’s going on in print. But the takes I’ve been reading from the so-called pundit class have been really bad.

I’m not sure the presidential election was ever winnable. Kamala Harris performed fantastically well. Much better that I expected. The campaign was also very good. It’s painful because the polling, which was also pretty good, showed a coin toss race. Unfortunately the polling error was not in our favor.

Inflation is a nearly impossible force to counter. I remember Americans going nuts over small blips in gas prices in 2012. Food and shelter price increases feel ten times worse. Here’s a look at how governments in the G7 have fared (or are projected to fare*) since 2022

Country	Party in Power	Previous election	Recent election	change
UK	Conservative	43.6%	23.7%	-19.9%
France	Ensemble	38.5%	24.5%	-14%
Japan	LDP	48.1%	38.5%	-9.6%
Italy	The League	7.8%	37%	-29.2%
Canada*	Liberal	32.6%	23.3%(polling)	-9.3%
Germany*	SPD	25.7%	15.5%(polling)	-10.2%
US(Pres)	Democratic	51.3%	48.3%(projected)	-3%

Add to this the fact that the war in Gaza put Democrats in an impossible position. Polls went from Biden +4% to Biden -4% in fall of 2023 and never really bounced back. I still believe that if the war had ended, Harris might well have won.

There are lessons to be learned from every election, but the Democrats ran a very good campaign. Kamala Harris’s favorability increased 13%. She dramatically closed the gap on the economy and immigration. On exit polling, “defence of democracy” was cited as the most important issue, followed by the economy and then abortion (so much for Republicans owning the top two issues).

Kamala Harris herself performed better than I could have ever imagined. She was disciplined, focused and charismatic. She’s a brilliant orator and debater. 

The ground game also worked just like it was supposed to. Harris ran 2-3 points better than her average in the 5 battleground states that are far away from Mexico.

Pundits are gonna pundit and there will be lots of over-interpretation to be had, but the bottom line is this: sometimes life deals your side a bad hand, and there’s not much you can do about it.

But, but, what if she picked Josh Shapiro????  VP candidates hardly ever make a difference. Even if she won PA, she still loses MI and WI. There was potential for some unwanted palace intrigue here too as Shapiro didn’t really want to be chosen. This might have saved Bob Casey though.

But, but, what about The View Interview, Biden’s Garbage comment, Joe Rogan????  No campaign is perfect. It’s like asking a pitcher who threw a 2-hitter, “why didn’t you pitch a perfect game?” Even when Democrats don’t make mistakes, Republicans make them up anyways (“You didn’t build that”, “Lipstick on a pig”). If the debate, which was watched by 67 million people only created a temporary 2 point bump, no singular event was going to make much of a difference.

But, but, if they only tried this message with the working class…. Give me a break. They had all the best coms people working on this and focus-tested the campaign messaging to death. Whatever message you think they should have used, they checked and it wouldn’t have worked any better.

But, but, Biden should have dropped out sooner……. Okay, yes, probably. But this would not have made a difference either. Let’s game this out. Harris would have had a huge advantage in the primary as a sitting vice president. She would have inherited a lot of Biden’s team and a ton of institutional support. 

Democrats had no appetite for a protracted primary process facing an existential threat. With her orating and debating abilities and competent campaign management, she would have very likely won any regular primary in a walk. During the primary, she would have taken damage and possibly have had to take more positions to the left of where she ran in the general election. Trump’s campaign would also be much better prepared for her. She had a phenomenal first month. You weren’t going to beat Brat Summer as an introduction.

This wasn’t a football game. The score still matters. The senate could be 57-43 right now and out of reach until 2030. We could be staring at a strong 25 seat Republican majority in the house. Not to mention a possible wipeout in state and local races that were mostly a wash.

Now for the bright side:

The House

Democrats are nearly guaranteed to regain the majority in 2026. Aside from 2002 when Bush’s approval was 70% and 1998 during the Clinton impeachment overreach, you have to go back to 1934 to find an election where the party out of power didn’t gain 4 seats.

The Senate

This will be a bit harder. Democrats have a good shot at North Carolina and Maine. Iowa looks possible as well as Joni super-pro-life Ernst won in 2020 with only 51.7% support in a state with a draconian, unpopular abortion ban. People write off Florida, but remember that Nelson lost by 0.1% in 2018. With Trump choosing the candidates, we can probably count on at least one Roy Moore, Richard Mourdock, Todd Akin situation. Admittedly, this would have been much easier if Bob Casey had pulled out a win. (edit: he still might have an outside shot now down only 19K votes)

The Presidency

Democrats have a deep bench for 2028. Donald Trump has remade the Republican Party to serve only himself. He’s destroyed its institutions and driven out a lot of the smart people. Nobody else can pull off what he did politically. Look at how his chosen candidates have fared when he’s not on the ballot. The low propensity voters that he got off the couch aren’t coming out to vote for anyone else and the suburban voters he lost aren’t coming back to a party enthralled to crazy.

Right now

I know it looks bad, but the defining feature of Donald’s Trump’s tenure is utter and complete incompetence. Harris was right when she said that Trump would have no guardrails, but he also has nobody around him who knows how to get anything done. He’s chosen the dumbest of the dumb to work for him.

Look at what happened last time he was in office. He passed one stupid tax bill. The bill is now expiring and also very unpopular. All of his executive orders can be undone with a pen in 2028. A great many of them will be held up in court since he doesn’t have anyone competent writing them. The non-partisan public service is still there, and Biden’s administration has spent the past two years putting up roadblocks to safeguard it. When Trump tries to purge it, there will be many lawsuits grinding the process to a halt. He won’t get to remake the courts since Republicans didn’t hold up 2 years of Obama’s nominees this time, and there is no more Mitch McConnell. 

Trump is also declining fairly rapidly. It becomes harder and harder to bully people when you can’t finish a sentence. And if you think that JD Vance and others will step in to fill the void, there is one constant about Donald Trump: his ego will never allow it. He will cling to every tendril of power until the last bit of orange fades from his face.

In two years, Trump will be a lame duck with a hostile congress and taking the blame for a bad mid-term. In four years, he will be gone forever. The Republicans may be craven, but their corporate masters will never support a full-on coup d’etat for a lunatic.

"The defining feature of Donald’s Trump’s tenure is utter and complete incompetence....  He’s chosen the dumbest of the dumb to work for him."

John Roberts Bet Big on Trump—and Won

 On the last day of democracy the voters gave to us: one president smirking...

 

Will he rubber-stamp the White House’s most authoritarian ambitions?  

 

 

 

Mark Joseph Stern / Slate 17 November 24

You have to hand it to John Roberts: The chief justice played his cards right. For more than a year now, Roberts has largely dropped his pose as an institutionalist, let alone a moderate. He has instead thrown his weight behind Donald Trump, reestablishing his control over the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. These apparent acts of self-preservation, seemingly undertaken in anticipation of a second Trump term, turned out to be the smart bet. It’s easy to imagine an earlier version of the chief justice spending the next four years losing his grasp on the court’s direction and drawing Trump’s public ire. Today’s iteration of John Roberts need not fear this fate. His position of appeasement, if not outright capitulation, to a MAGA vision of the law is about to pay off in spades.

To see how much the chief justice has changed, remember the role he played in Trump’s first term: the uneasy guardrail against some of the president’s most extreme policies and grievances. After Trump condemned an “Obama judge” for ruling against his administration in 2018, Roberts issued a rare public rebuke, scolding the president for besmirching the “independent judiciary.” (Trump fired back over Twitter, keen to seize the last word.) In 2019, Roberts cast the decisive vote to block a citizenship question on the census, correctly accusing the administration of misrepresenting its reasoning for adding one and then shabbily trying to cover its tracks. In 2020, he once again cast the key vote to halt Trump’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program protecting Dreamers from deportation. That year, he also voted to protect LGBTQ+ people under civil rights law, impeding the administration’s anti-trans agenda.

During this period, Roberts was still delivering significant victories to the conservative legal movement. But there was a limit to his tolerance for big swings, especially those that reflected poor lawyering by unscrupulous Trump loyalists. SCOTUS was divided 5–4 along ideological lines, and Roberts sat at its center, allowing him to guide a majority back toward the middle to reject some MAGA excesses. After Justice Amy Coney Barrett replaced Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in late 2020, however, she shored up a new ultraconservative majority that left Roberts in the dust on hot-button issues over the next two years. This five-justice bloc weakened COVID restrictions to promote “religious liberty.” It abused the shadow docket to revive Trump-era regulations. Most infamously, it fully abolished the constitutional right to abortion. All as Roberts stood on the sidelines, pleading for compromises that his hard-right colleagues spurned. As recently as 2022, it felt as if the chief justice was losing control of the court that he nominally led.

The lesson Roberts took from this losing streak was simple: If you can’t beat them, join them—and if you join them, you might as well take the reins. Trump’s steady return to power in 2023 and 2024 coincided with the chief justice going full MAGA. When the five other conservatives held together, Roberts joined them every time, refusing to be sidelined with the liberals. And, most revealingly, the chief justice powered the court toward huge victories for the former president in a trio of cases that helped pave the way for his comeback.

First, Roberts prohibited states from removing Trump’s name from the ballot under the 14^th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from returning to office. According to the New York Times, he wrote the court’s unnecessarily broad ruling, which went out of its way to ensure that Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election would not prevent him from reclaiming the presidency. Second, he wrote the court’s opinion undermining obstruction charges for many Jan. 6 participants, including Trump himself, weakening the legal basis for the former president’s prosecution. Third, he steered the court toward a sweeping decision granting Trump shockingly broad immunity for criminal acts undertaken in office. Behind the scenes, Roberts never wavered on his position in the immunity case, and his muscular intervention helped run out the clock for Trump, ensuring his case would not reach a trial before the election.

The immunity decision came down on July 1, just days after Joe Biden’s catastrophic debate performance made Trump’s victory seem inevitable. Roberts and his colleagues purported to be crafting an opinion for the ages. But given the obvious direction of the election, the ruling seemed tailor-made to let Trump off the hook for his misdeeds, helping him skate straight back to the Oval Office. The former president praised it as a “big win for our Constitution” and, on the campaign trail, seemed to view it as a license to do anything he wanted in his second term. His first-term spats with Roberts had become a distant memory. The chief justice was back in his good graces.

At the dawn of Trump’s next term, Roberts will arguably hold more power than ever. He has reestablished himself as the leader of the court, the justice with the greatest influence over the most important opinions. The question now is how he’ll use that power in a second Trump term. Will there be a limit to what he’ll seek to allow from the second Trump administration? What comes next may well be far worse than what came before, including mass deportations and vindictive prosecutions that test the boundaries of executive authority. With Trump promising to staff his administration with staunch allies, and Republicans poised to take total control of Congress, there will be no other guardrails but the judiciary.

The question mark that hovers over the Supreme Court in the years ahead is straightforward. Will Roberts expend any of the capital he’s amassed to rein in Trump? How far will he and the rest of the court’s conservatives allow Trump to go? Even if no other conservative will stand athwart Trump, will the chief justice sound the alarm in dissent? Or will he rubber-stamp the White House’s most authoritarian ambitions? Roberts himself may not even know the answers yet. But his decision to take the path of least resistance to Trumpism over the past four years suggests that he will not pose an obstacle to it in the four years ahead.

On the last day of democracy the voters gave to us: one president smirking, six dudes a-milking, and three ladies up a pear tree.

A giant middle finger from a tiny, malevolent man

Will "bootlicker" Senate majority cave to Trump on craven cabinet picks?

By Sabrina Haake

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Thursday, November 14, 2024 at 3:02:31p MST

 

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Giving the middle finger to anyone who bought his schtick about lasting peace, Trump has chosen stunningly unqualified cranks and loyalists to help him burn down the government.  

Matt Gaetz, more barking clown than lawyer, is under investigation relating to alleged sex with a minor. In an SNL skit that writes itself, Trump would name him Botox King Attorney General.  Tulsi Gabbard, who thinks it’s ‘defensible’ to gas civilians then bomb the clinics treating them, would be Director of National Intelligence. Trump’s deputy chief of staff, the dead-eyed Stephen Miller, says red states will send their National Guard units into blue states to execute mass deportations. (Civil war, anyone?) Pete Hegseth, a white nationalist tattoo-sporting Fox News commentator, would lead the Defense Department, condoning preemptive strikesand seeking pardons for war criminals. Worm-on-the-brain RFK? I can’t even. Too bad Jeffrey Epstein is gone, he's missing a short-window opportunity at the Education Department.  

And how many Hannibal Lecters must Trump want to appoint, that he’d try to strong-arm the Senate into taking recess just so he can bypass their advice and consent? The Senate’s role on presidential appointments is more than window-dressing. It’s a core Article II Constitutional function, foundational to the separation of powers. Advice and consent from the Senate was designed to keep nutjobs away from the seat of government. Given that the GOP will have a solid 53 member majority of bootlickers in the Senate come January, Trump’s desire to bypass them is even more alarming than who he’s picked so far.

These developments would be funny if they weren’t so dangerous. Trump now has a SCOTUS imprimatur to sic Seal Team Six on domestic enemies. One wonders if President Biden has read that opinion. A president’s first duty is to protect and defend, and it’s often said that the best defense is a good offense. Why not use the next two months to put Trump on an island or behind bars sans Twitter for the rest of his miserable life, if it will prevent the bloodshed he’s promising?  The right already projects Trump’s “lawfare” and criminality onto Biden anyway, why not earn the label?  

Buzzing narratives ignore a remarkable global trend

Trump’s asinine choices make clear that we’re in for a bumpy ride for the next two years, but Democrats need to knock it off with the intra-party blame game. In pontificating about what Dems “did wrong,” the line between helpful introspection and destructive navel-gazing is thin already. The most common rejoinder is: ‘If only Biden/Harris/Dems had done X, they’d have won, and it just so happens I’ve been arguing for X for years.’ But there’s a major difference between data-informed reality and narratives that regurgitate pre-existing worldviews.

Instead of bald recriminations, Democrats should look at the numbers. Harris lost by 3 million votes, out of a national total of 151,318,415 votes. This loss by less than 2 percent of all voters is hardly a mandate. Whatever the spin of the hour is, it should be tempered with awareness of global reality. In defeating Biden’s party, the US did what every other industrialized nation in the world did, with shocking uniformity:  We punished the incumbent party, the party who was holding the bag during the worst years of post-covid economic pain, regardless of who caused it.

In a remarkably under-reported phenomenon, in 2024, whichever ruling party occupied the seat of government was voted out of office, world-wide. This chart from Financial Times plots the increase and decrease in share of votes for incumbent parties dating back to 1910. Over the past century, there’s been a fairly even distribution of incumbent gains and losses, at least  through 2020. But in 2024, in elections across the globe, whichever party was in charge- left or right- was shown the same exit door. In 2024, for the first time dating back to 1910, incumbent parties were removed from office with ZERO wins, without regard to partisan ideology.

So, the real narrative isn’t right vs. left, progressive vs. moderate, Trump vs. Harris.  Democrats lost due to post-covid economic pain outside their control, as it was for every other incumbent party in the world. I realize this is an argument so nice I made it twice, but I offer it again to not only encourage democrats to stop the blame game, but also to give comfort. As horrific as sending a craven felon to the White House is, US voters fell in line with the same global upset displayed by voters around the world.

It's important to get behind that reality and remember that this too shall pass. There’s another election in two years. Every seat in the House and a third of the Senate — mostly Republicans — will be up for reelection. And if Trump keeps up the juvenile shenanigans, voters will punish his party hard, most likely all the way through 2032.

So as painful as this is, it’s temporary. The only enduring quality about elections is that, as soon as the victor is announced, the next election has already begun.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.

 

Conservative pundit writes scathing review of Trump’s AG choice, “vile sex pest” Matt Gaetz

Botox Boy Matt Gaetz

Will any other Republican have the courage to stand up to Trump?

 

By TheCriticalMind

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November 14, 2024 at 4:38:54p MST

 

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In politics, commentators writing harsh pieces targeting opponents are predictable. Far more enlightening are critical opinions offered by a pundit on a nominal teammate. When that commentator is a conservative offering a no-holds-barred, scathing review of a Trump nominee, we should view that nominee as unqualified even by MAGA standards. There is no lower bar.

Ben Domenech is a big noise in conservative circles. He is a co-founder of The RedState group blog and The Federalist. He is currently the editor at large of The Spectator World (the international division of the venerable British conservative magazine The Spectator). And a contributor to Fox News

After some 2016 hesitation over Trump, he quickly lined up to carry the man’s water. By 2020, he was an election denier. And he embraced COVID-19 conspiracy theories. He has also been generally supportive of wackadoodle MAGA politicians, including MT Greene and Lauren Boebert, by attacking liberal outlets that have pointed out those MAGA Reps are nuts. He is married to Meghan McCain. So I will grant you there may be some friction at home over his general support for the cult and its leader.

The Vile Sex Pest

On Thursday, however, Domenech’s disdain for Trump’s AG nominee Matt Gaetz could have been written by a Democrat. He published an article on Transom, his subscription opinion outlet, that he posted to Substack. The headline left no doubt as to the tenor of the piece: “Matt Gaetz is a Vile Sex Pest and Any Senator Who Votes For Him Owns That”.

Domenech starts by introducing the subject.

“Matt Gaetz is a sex trafficking drug addicted piece of shit. He is abhorrent”

And: “He is a walking genital, warts included as a bonus.”

Ben goes on to offer a critique of Matt’s corporal deficiencies.

“His eyes are permanently rimmed with the red rings of chemical boosters. In person, he smells like overexposed Axe Body Spray and stale Astroglide.”

He later adds:

“Matt Gaetz isn’t just your average extreme Florida MAGA Man, he’s a hypocritical ass with the worst Botox money can buy, pursuing an ever-thinner nose and higher cheekbones at every opportunity like a Real Housewife gone mad for fillers.”

Domenech comments on Gaetz’s widely rumored love of statutory rape and his need to share.

“The fact that he boasted on the floor to multiple colleagues in the House of Representatives of his methods of crushing Viagra and high test Red Bull to maintain his erection through his orgiastic evenings is perhaps the least offensive of his many crimes against womanhood and Christian faith. The man has less principles than your average fentanyl addicted hobo. He likes them underage and he’s not ashamed about it.”

He adds that few of Matt’s DC teammates have a positive review of the oil slick in a suit.

“Every Republican in Washington has an opinion about Matt Gaetz, and 99 percent of those opinions are “Keep Matt Gaetz away from my wife/daughter/friend and anyone I care about.”

Domenech then offers a mental health advisory to Republican Senators.

“If you vote for him to be the Attorney General of the United States, you don’t just need your head examined, you need to be committed to a mental institution. The man is absolutely vile. There are pools of vomit with more to offer the earth than this STD-riddled testament to the failure of fallen masculinity.”

Just in case anyone has forgotten Gaetz’s sins during the electoral excitement, Domenech offers a cheat sheet.

Let’s just deal with the facts.

• Did Matt Gaetz transport an underage woman across state lines with the stated intent of her having sex with him and his friends? Yes.
• Did he later claim to Tucker Carlson that this woman did not exist? Yes.
• Does this conflict with the fact that one of his closest friends was convicted of having sex with this underage woman for pay? Yes.
• Are Gaetz and his orgy friends attempting to destroy the records — images, videos, etc. — from this sex party to protect his political future? Yes.

Domenech then outlines the choice Republicans face. (Note: the language suggests that Ben may have lost his loving feeling for the President-elect)

”Here’s the real deal: Matt Gaetz is the line for how we assess the Republican Party. If they are truly a cult of personality, beholden to Donald Trump in ways that we could not even imagine for a party that rejects cults and idol worship, they will approve this choice.”

Here Ben has lost part of the plot. While he was incisively accurate about Matt, he is a magical thinker to believe that the GOP rejects “cults and idol worship”.

Domenech then engages in wishful thinking. But a boy can dream. 

“But if they have a degree of independence, any kind of free thought, mindful of the fact that a presidency is four years but your career is forever, they will reject this choice so emphatically that it sends a very simple, straightforward message: you can be an absolute dirtbag wannabe pimp pounding dick pills and caffeine while you film your “girlfriend” twerking on the gram, or you can be a Republican. The choice is yours.”

I am genuinely curious if any Republican Senators still have a “degree of independence.” Or was the last one with a spine Domenech’s dead father-in-law?

Maybe Trump's attraction to Gaetz harks back to his younger days spent in the company of Jeffrey Epstein.

Trump rewards 'Liddle Marco' Rubio for his years of groveling and sucking up

Clap, Marco, clap!  Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump talks to Sen. Marco Rubio during the Republican National Convention Wednesday, July 17, 2024, in Milwaukee.

Trump once called him a "total lightweight" he wouldn't hire to run one of his "smaller companies"

 

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 8:30:02a MST

By Oliver Willis 

Daily Kos Staff

 

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Rim Country Gazette Blog

Daniel Webster, William Seward, William Jennings Bryan, Dean Rusk, Henry Kissinger, Madeleine Albright, and Marco Rubio?????

Donald Trump is expected to nominate Sen. Marco Rubio, who he once described as a “lightweight” and a “choker” to be secretary of state.  Lord help us.

The impending announcement marks another major milestone in Rubio’s transition from somewhat feisty Trump political opponent to a complete submissive. During the 2016 presidential primaries, Rubio emerged for a moment as a possible alternative to Trump before the nomination had been decided. Trump then directed a barrage of insults at the Florida senator.

He made fun of Rubio’s height, giving him the nickname “Liddle Marco.” He accused Rubio of running “phony television ads” against him, said he was a “record no-show in the Senate” who was “scamming Florida.”

At one point, Trump even wrote, “Marco Rubio is a total lightweight who I wouldn’t hire to run one of my smaller companies—a highly overrated politician.”

For his part, Rubio did throw a few rhetorical punches at Trump. During a primary debate in 2016, he suggested Trump had a small penis, noting, “I’ll admit he’s taller than me. He’s like 6’2’’, which is why I don’t understand why his hands are the size of someone who’s 5’2’’. Have you seen his hands? And you know what they say about men with small hands?”

Rubio also sold “#NeverTrump” merchandise on his campaign website.

We can only imagine how he'll do up against world leaders.  On second thought, let's not.

Eventually, Rubio said that he apologized to Trump for the penis jibe, and it became clear that as Trump amassed political power, Rubio would fall in line with the man who took great pleasure in humiliating him.

In the 2024 cycle, Rubio campaigned for Trump and was reportedly in the running for the vice-presidential position—but was again snubbed by Trump, who instead chose JD Vance.

Trump’s past treatment of his subordinates, particularly his secretaries of state, make it extremely likely that he will humiliate Rubio while he serves as America’s chief diplomat.

Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, served for just a little longer than a year and was later quoted as saying that Trump was completely unprepared for a meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin. In response, Trump wrote that Tillerson was “dumb as a rock.” Similarly, Trump recently announced that there would be no place for Mike Pompeo, his other secretary of state, in his next administration.

Rubio appears to consider Trump’s past insults water under the bridge and is willing to
grin and bear it—or maybe he just likes it, because more is surely to come.

In case you don't remember, this is Liddle Marco with a bottle of water he reached off camera to get during his Republican Response to the State of the Union some years ago.  He got really thirsty mid-speech and almost fell over lunging for the bottle, hence the label "choker."  Look out Vladimir, here he comes.  Glug Glug Glug.
 

Trump picks infamous dog killer Kristi Noem to deport accused dog eaters

Madame Noem aka The Dog Butcher and Cricket aka The Victim.

 If she'd only shot a Spanish speaker instead of a wirehair pointer she'd be VP today

 

By TheCriticalMind

Community

DailyKos 

Tuesday, November 12, 2024 at 9:39:30a MST

 

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The nominee

By TheCriticalMindCommunityDailyKosAccording to those who say they know, Trump will nominate SD Gov. Kristi Noem to be head of the Dept. of Homeland Security. Is he working on the theory that it takes a dog-killer to deport a dog-eater?

Kristi Noem

The Governor of a Dakota is rarely well-known, even a pretty one (the kind that catches Trump's attention and adoration). But this year both of them have had an unexpected turn in the national spotlight. Doug Burghum (R-ND) spent 15 minutes as a contender for the GOP presidential nomination.

Noem (R-SD) grabbed the national spotlight in April as pre-publication reviews of her political autobiography, No Going Back: ‘The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward’ hit the newsstands. At the time Noem was in the running for the VP nod. But dreams of being Trump’s #2 foundered after she revealed herself to be a dog killer.

Worse, the recipient of her shotgun blast was not a mangy rabid hound of unknown and perilous pedigree. The victim was Cricket “a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old.” In Noem’s estimation, the adolescent canine had earned its execution by nipping at the neighbors’ chickens. Noem also boasted of despatching a billy goat (unnamed) with hygiene issues — she wrote he was “disgusting, musty, and rancid.”

Noem wanted to show she was a modern-day frontier woman who had the spine needed to do what must be done. But it derailed her VP plans. Even MAGAs have a soft spot for dogs. She should have shot a swarthy Spanish speaker. The VP position would have been thrust upon her.

The irony

That was then. Now a man with zero affection for man’s best friend has realized that canicide is no bar to high office. There will be no hesitation by Trump’s rubberstamp Senate to sign off on her ascension. And the MAGA base will be content that the machinery of mass deportation will be in good hands.

Yet it was only yesterday that Trump and his ultimate VP, the socially awkward uber-misogynist, JD Vance were making political hay out of whole-cloth lies that a legal hard-working population of Haitian refugees was feasting on their white neighbors’ dogs.

The dystopian doomsayer warned that Fidos everywhere were being dognapped for human consumption by people they smeared as being sub-human. They insisted this insult vested on God-fearing real Americans was the crime of the century — along with all the other crimes of the century committed by illegal aliens sponsored by the Biden/Harris ‘Destroy America’ nihilism.

Homeland Security

In her new position, Noem will be in charge of enforcing Trump’s anti-immigrant pogrom. It is a responsibility she will wear lightly. Let’s do the math. She cares not a whit for dogs. And she works for a boss that views immigrants as worth less than dogs. 

She will also have enthusiastic help. Tom Homan, head of ICE during Trump’s first term, will be back in the job. Homan is mission-focused. He is a man who is not shy to break eggs even if no omelets result. This enthusiastic enforcer is a fan of breaking families up and using children as bait to snare parents.

Sad Sadist Conclusion

Trump is a sadist hiring sadists to manage sadists. America’s shame is that the one thing Trump does not lie about is his plans for brown people. Yet the majority of voters heard that and signed off. Including some Hispanics. 

How will they feel if they are the victims of Trump/Noem/Homan’s wide net? They should have watched Cheech Marin’s ‘Born in East LA’. Another movie (see ‘Idiocracy‘) made as a comedy, now viewed as a documentary.There was an alternative to this dog-destroying regime.

There was an alternative to this dog-destroying and people-deporting regime.

Putin is Already Showing Trump Who's the Boss

It was about Ukraine, of course.

Putin shows nude photos of Melania on Russian TV - an obvious slight toTrump

 

By Dan K 

Community 

Daily Kos  

Monday, November 11, 2024 at 10:26:19a MST

 

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By Dan K Community Daily Kos Dictator-elect Trump claims he warned Putin against ramping up the fighting in Ukraine: Trump talked to Putin, told Russian leader not to escalate in Ukraine

During the call, which Trump took from his resort in Florida, he advised the Russian president not to escalate the war in Ukraine and reminded him of Washington’s sizable military presence in Europe, said a person familiar with the call, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

But did he really? Did he even speak to Putin at all? As of this morning, the Kremlin is denying it: Kremlin spokesman claims Putin-Trump call did not occur:

The Kremlin denial of the call came amid nervousness in Moscow over whether Trump would stick to his pre-election campaign rhetoric and seek to restore relations with Russia and bring an end to the war in Ukraine.

Why would Putin deny it? Well, to start with, the report that Trump mentioned our troops in Europe did not sit well with him:

Abbas Gallyamov, a former speechwriter of Putin’s and political analyst, suggested the Kremlin did not like the phrase about U.S. troops in Europe.

“It looks like Trump is threatening Putin. If Russia now agrees to Trump’s proposal at least partially, it will turn out that he did so under pressure,” said Gallyamov, who lives in Israel after being branded a foreign agent by Russia. “Putin is very concerned with appearances and wants to look like the master of the situation, and not the one who is being threatened.”

Because Trump hasn’t signed the necessary conflict-of-interest papers required — by law, not that Trump cares about law — to start the transition process, his call, if it was made, was done without any assistance from the State Department. Which among other things means there was no expert diplomatic advice and no record of the call.

I think Trump either did say that to Putin, or he put that out for US domestic consumption to show his voters that he is the tough guy here. Either way, Putin was not pleased and reminded Trump who is really running the show here.

The phone call, or at least the announcement of the phone call, was on Thursday. On Friday, Russian TV posted nude photos of Melania. From Newsweek: Russian State TV Airs Melania Trump's Nudes on Prime Time

On the show 60 minutes, Russian television presenters, husband and wife Yevgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva, spoke about Donald Trump's reelection and showed numerous photos from Melania Trump's modeling days on screen, including nude photographs from a GQ profile in 2000.

Julia Davis, founder of the Russia Media Monitor watchdog group, posted video of the broadcast alongside the caption: "Meanwhile in Russia: this is how the most watched state TV channel in the country welcomed Melania Trump's upcoming return to the White House. Olga Skabeeva is trying not to laugh. This was probably her idea."

(No, it was Putin’s idea.) After giving the photos a couple of days to sink in, Putin then had his spokesman deny the phone call ever took place, just in case Trump was too dense (and he probably is) to get the point the first time.

Interesting side note: I have not found any US media other than Newsweek that ran the nude photo story. Overseas media, however, are running with it. The Sun (which has its own history of scandalous photos) was scandalized: SICK STUNT Melania Trump’s nude pics on Russian TV spark outrage as state media broadcasts photos after Donald wins re-election.  Also The Mirror: Melania Trump's nude pics aired on prime time Russian TV show sparking outrage. Katie Livingstone, an American journalist who has been covering the war in Ukraine since 2022, wrote in today’s Kyiv Post: ANALYSIS: Kremlin Power Games Begin: Exposing Melania Nude Photos on State TV

Sharing Melania’s old photos in the popular show was meant to be an obvious slight to the president-elect that spells out the power dynamic of the US-Russia relationship – or at least how Putin would like it to be. The Russian leader has used misogynistic attacks and rhetoric for decades to demean his enemies and bolster his supporters.

Now the Kremlin is using Melania to make Trump understand that Russia has power in many forms, and is not afraid to personally attack the president-elect to achieve its aims. Putin is attempting to set the stage to welcome his ally back into the White House on Russian terms. Trump has not publicly responded to the situation.

It had seemed a little early for Putin to so publicly remind Trump who is boss. My reading is that Trump, who as usual has no impulse control and no concept of diplomacy, thought he could score a few points either by actually telling Putin not to go too far or to boast that he had. The new photos a gentle — for Putin — way of reminding him just who is really in charge here. This morning’s denial that the phone call ever happened at all is the follow-up.

Putin is a master manipulator with decades of experience. Trump has decades of experience at being manipulated without even realizing it. He never had a chance. Maybe now he’ll get it; so far, there has been no reported response from his office about the Melania photos.

With her sartorial choices (remember "I don't care, do you?"), maybe naked is her best look.