Lawrence O’Donnell tells us that our supposedly august corporate media has to find a way to keep up with the laws broken by the Gropenfuhrer (who of course has proclaimed himself king...somehow I think there are a lot more laws broken than 22)...and yeah, “Crazy Eyes” Kash Patel is going to hasten the lawlessness of this wretched administration every way possible...and I have to admit that I didn’t have “Thom Tillis Shows A Spine” in response to Vlad The Butcher and Ukraine on my Bingo card, but credit where it’s due...
...and David Shuster of Rebel HQ tells us that it looks like Bronzer Beelzebub is doing his best to completely tank the stock market, and he’ll try to blame Biden for this in 3,2,1...as Rachel Maddow says, in terms of polling, no *president has ever started off a term this poorly (and of course, Our Ochre Abomination goes to CPAC and prattles on about Maddow – what an utter coward this guy is)...I wish Shuster would stop playing that clip of that idiot Jonah Goldberg saying that USAID doesn’t “touch” the lives of Americans; once more, try running that line past our Kansas farmers...
...and under the heading of reckless and utterly ridiculous abuse of taxpayer dollars, Jesse Dollemore tells us that #47 was able to get Homeland Security Secretary Kristi (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) Noem to spend $200 million to thank Our Ochre Abomination for “closing the border”...yep, banana pants time indeed, you might say (mildly NSFW/H)...
...and apparently, Our Treasonous Orange Pestilence just wants blue states to “disappear”? For all of the reasons David Pakman notes in this video, that would be catastrophically destructive to this country (but of course, the person uttering these words about blue states may be the most intellectually lazy human being we’ve ever seen...definitely not referring to Pakman)...
...and according to what Tennessee Brando is telling us, it looks like politicians in the “party of Lincoln” are having to face the music for the incredible abuses of President Musk and his orange sidekick...it’s a shame that this is what it took for people to wake up, but we are where we are of course (first clip is Scott Fitzgerald and the second one is Glenn Grothman...both are U.S. House Repugs from Wisconsin)...next clip is this Rich McCormick person in Georgia – yeah, so he pivots right to “but Biden was just as bad”...and comparing your constituents to the 1/6 insurrectionists? Wow, this McCormick guy is a real MENSA candidate, isn’t he? (NSFW/H)...
I know I discussed the departure of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao from the U.S. Senate a couple of days ago, but I didn’t mention the episode noted by Rachel Maddow here, namely, about how Russia first sought to undermine our influence domestically and around the world, and I think it’s safe to say that their efforts have been successful, tragically...Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao shows up at about 8:08; clip argues that we needed a “bipartisan punch back” against Russian interference in our elections, but that death eater from Kentucky said “naaah”...and oh yeah, McConnell also blocked two bipartisan election security bills in response to Russia’s threat...Maddow’s segment also mentions Putin pal Oleg Deripaska and his connection to (senior Trump advisor at the time) Paul Manafort...and oh yeah, under the heading of “quid pro quo,” we found out about a Russian company linked to Deripaska that made a, shall we say, strategic investment in Kentucky at the time the sanctions against Russia were due to be passed, leading to McConnell forcing the sanctions against Deripaska’s firm to be cancelled (and a very interesting update from ’21 is here...clip ends at about 29:39 and loops into another one)...
...and Jen Psaki speaks with MSNBC Pentagon reporter Courtney Kube about the firing of the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Gen. Charles Q. Brown) because he’s black (I don’t feel like dancing around this subject anymore – we have a *presidential administration of racists...period, full stop), along with two other women in senior management positions at the Navy and the Coase Guard respectively as well as a general who promoted DEI, which of course is the black spot of career death as far as Trumpers are concerned (let’s see...“unit cohesion” – might be something this accursed administration should look into)...
...and speaking of our wretched SecDef (who rubber stamped the moves noted in the prior video), Farron Cousins informs us that Pete Hegseth owes $33K in back taxes...sweet! – and I definitely agree with Cousins that the whole “witch hunt” metaphor falls apart if you actually find something, which appears to have happened in this case...Cousins is also right when he says that an audit is a bit of a multi-layered process and it doesn’t just turn out without warning that you owe a ton of dough to the taxman (and yeah, it’s not like Hegseth doesn’t have the scratch to pay it either...yeah, just be a WATB instead, huh?)...
...and concerning Hegseth’s boss, Jonathan Pie gives Bronzer Beelzebub the shellacking he deserves over #47’s utter betrayal of Ukraine...and of course, our utterly gutless PA-01 U.S. House Rep Bri-Fi found a way to criticize Our Ochre Abomination without mentioning his name (clip is incredibly NSFW/H but appropriate IMO...we think politics is “rough and tumble” on our shores; we’ve got nothing on the Brits when it comes to that stuff, folks)...
...and this video from The Lincoln Project lets us know that Republican senators in “the world’s greatest deliberative body” (spare me) continue to follow the example of their utterly awful former “leader” from Kentucky in completely ignoring the health care needs of families and kids in their confirmation of “brain worms” RFK Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services...of course, if we had an opposition party in this country that, collectively, could find its own metaphorical butt with multiple sets of hands, THEY would have created an ad like this when it might have mattered (and yes, the odds were long against preventing confirmation, I know)...
...and RIP Jerry ("Iceman") Butler...the following hit from Butler was recorded at Philly's Sigma Sound Studios.
(The title of this post is based on this, by the way.)
So it turns out that Kentucky Republican Mitch McConnell won’t seek another term in the U.S. Senate, as noted here. And in response, I offer a quiet prayer of thanks for his departure (some reasons why are here).
I’m not sure it’s possible to find a more odious political creature than Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao, and believe me when I tell you that that’s saying something. McConnell is, to me, the embodiment of Republican deceit, gall and entitlement made manifest in (barely human) form. He became proficient at bending the Senate to his foul will on behalf of his well-to-do benefactors and, in the process, doing his best to grind our democracy into dust (and making it easy for White House cretins like Dubya and our current occupant to enact their horrific agendas while doing his best to scuttle anything of benefit to the majority of this country, especially from President Obama as well as President Biden).
One of the reasons why McConnell’s moral descent is such a mystery to me (though I’ll admit that it’s probably best that I don’t know the particulars) is that he contracted polio when he was young and was treated at Warm Springs, where FDR rehabilitated from his own attack long ago. You would think an experience like that would have enlightened McConnell as to the struggles and sacrifices of everyday Americans. You would think that – but you definitely would be wrong.
There is so much utter detritus in McConnell’s infamous political history that it’s really impossible to cover it all here (maybe someone enterprising will write a book?), but we can focus on a few areas for now. One (as documented here) is the fact that McConnell engineered the theft of not just one, but two seats on the U.S. Supreme Court. The first came when McConnell refused to even consider the nomination from President Obama of Merrick Garland, allowing Trump to eventually fill the seat with Neil Gorsuch (Garland, by the way, was someone Obama floated to Orrin Hatch to find out if Senate Republicans would accept him, and Hatch said yes - shows how reliable the word of a Republican senator is). McConnell’s cheap excuse for not moving on the Garland nomination was because of this imaginary Senate rule that a SCOTUS justice can’t be confirmed in a presidential election year (despite the fact that Anthony Kennedy was confirmed in 1988). However, McConnell quickly jettisoned that BS theory to confirm Amy Coney Barrett in 2020 upon the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Also, you cannot take a serious look at McConnell’s foul legacy without examining his gross abuse of the filibuster, which has always served as a tool for the minority in the Senate to block legislation, requiring the infamous “60 votes for passage” to defeat that stalling tactic. Financial bills can pass through the so-called “reconciliation” process, requiring only a 50-vote majority. Basically, if you want to know why the Senate passes almost no non-financial legislation, McConnell’s legendary obstruction is the reason.
Filibusters used to be exceedingly rare. One common method used to measure the frequency of filibusters is to count the number of “cloture” votes, the process used to break a filibuster, taken every year. And from 1917 until 1970, the Senate held less than one a year.
That number started to rise well before McConnell became his party’s Senate leader. But the rate of cloture votes doubled in 2007, when McConnell first became minority leader. And it has grown rapidly since then. Between 2010 and 2020, the Senate took more than 80 cloture votes every year.
...
This escalation in filibusters, a tactic spearheaded by McConnell, has transformed the role of Congress in society. And it’s similarly transformed what kind of legislation governing parties even attempt to pass.
And as noted here, McConnell's abuse of the filibuster is so egregious that he once even filibustered his own bill.
McConnell has also spent his wretched career attacking the integrity of our elections, as noted here. More simply put, McConnell started engaging in legal gamesmanship in an effort to overturn the so-called McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform bill (named for Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold, who championed the legislation) as soon as it was signed into law, leading us all the way to the infamous SCOTUS ruling in Citizens United in 2010.
Oh, and please try telling me again how McConnell supposedly supports infrastructure spending; I know the metaphor of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown at the last minute is overworked, but it really does apply to Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao when he supports such bills before at the last minute - oopsie! - it turns out he was against them all along as noted here.
And as noted in the following clip, all of these antics have truly been detrimental to the constituents he was elected to ostensibly represent (though not so much to McConnell of course)...
...and as far as I'm concerned, McConnell's little laugh at the end here pretty much gives away the game.
I know there have been stories coming out about McConnell forgetting his words when speaking in public,falling down and apparently needing to use a wheelchair. Despite McConnell’s wretched policies and actions against this country, I don’t wish ill on him because that would be wrong. However, he certainly isn’t worthy of any kind of sympathy as far as I’m concerned, to say nothing of a bit of historical revisionism for his public life either.
One day, like the rest of us, McConnell will shed his mortal coil. And I’m sure there will be commemorations of a sort from those in his party in an attempt to mythologize his slavish devotion to his well-heeled benefactors as some demented notion of doing the public good. There will no doubt be mentions of some imagined stand against MAGA (even though McConnell voted to acquit Combover Caligula in the impeachment trial for inciting the 1/6 insurrection, despite what he said in the video above) and what some would view as government overreach, particularly in response to the 2008 financial meltdown and the COVID pandemic (though I hate to imagine where we’d be without those efforts from Presidents Obama and Biden).
And when McConnell passes, I’ll be tempted to opine on the matter too. So what will I say?
To quote one of the clips from The Lincoln Project, not a damn thing.
Jesse Dollemore brings us the sorry tale of wingnut U.S. House Rep Claudia Tenney of NY who wants to make Trump’s birthday a federal holiday (and oh yeah, Flag Day too, from the party that fought giving the same status to MLK’s birthday)...who’s next, I wonder? Gary Heidnik? Marty Graham? And oh yeah, I’d almost forgotten about that Georgia U.S. House idiot “Buddy” Carter wanting to rename Greenland as noted here...
...and retired Army Major Richard Ojeda tells us here that it looks like King Elon’s Magic Tesla Cybertruck wasn’t so “magic” after all, based on this Rachel Maddow clip of the glass breaking so easily...and I think trying to stick U.S. taxpayers with a $400 million tab for these beyond ridiculous accidents waiting to happen is an impeachable offense all by itself...I wish Ojeda had also included a clip of Trumpette spokes-liar Karoline Leavitt losing her cool, but that’s OK...
...and speaking of Apartheid Clyde, Brian Tyler Cohen discusses Norm Eisen suing King Elon I and DOGE for the completely justifiable claim that the activities of our unelected president and his cronies violate state and federal law...so OF COURSE the assclown who killed Xitter takes to “X” to attack Eisen and Marc Elias...clip has a lot of important (and commendable) background on Elias and Eisen and how exactly the “pay no price, bear no burden” crowd expects everyone disagreeing with them to instead kowtow in abject servitude....
...and I realize this video is essentially satire, but for Claudia Tenney, it’s probably a How To guide for real...
...and Trae Crowder tells us that the MAGA crowd is mad at Tom Hanks because he poked fun at them on the recent 50th anniversary show for Saturday Night Live (can’t speak to that since I gave up on the show awhile ago)...and “Elon’s army of broccoli-headed believers”...nice one...Crowder also mentions all of the ridiculous, and dangerous, firings, as well as the administration of President Elon kow-towing to Nazis for real as well as dictators, mainly Vlad The Butcher (NSFW/H)...
...and congratulations to our neighbors up north for winning the “4 Nations” men’s ice hockey competition (here); I’d said I would feature tunes from Canadian and Mexican artists last week as a response to the insane nonsense from Our Demented Toddler-In-Chief and King Elon I, so you can consider this my most recent contribution.
Dem Governor Kathy Hochul of New York tells Orange Sh*tstain what he can do with his attempt to overturn congestion pricing in New York City...oh, and did everyone get the memo that #47 has proclaimed himself king as noted here?Heckuva job, all of you idiots who supported this delusional egomaniac as well as those who did nothing to support Harris/Walz...
...and Dem U.S. Senator Dick Durbin says Bronzer Beelzebub’s remark that Ukraine started their war with Russia is “outrageous,” and Durbin is right, to say the least...additionally, Eric Schmitt is nothing but a suck-up to our “king” of course, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but John Neely Kennedy is spot-on correct here (I’ll let that remark about the dog and the fire hydrant go for now)...
...and boy, is Dem governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois hitting the proverbial bullsye here as well...
JB Pritzker, sounding the alarm. Fascism is here, y'all. 2025 America is 1934 Germany. 😳👇 pic.twitter.com/XZOSx5ILUX
...and John and Viviana Vigil of The Damage Report let us know that “King” Trump is splitting up families, again, who are trying to emigrate to this country, citing an example of a woman stopped by Arizona cops for driving under the speed limit...and yeah, it does indeed sound like some “Karen” ratted out the woman, who was engaged in the apparently highly offensive act of selling empanadas – God almighty...after hearing stories like this, it’s wonder anybody wants to still come to this country at all...
...and Lawrence O’Donnell informs us that, for the first time since the program was instituted, Social Security payments aren’t guaranteed thanks to Combover Caligula and Apartheid Clyde...not surprised in the least to hear that President Musk and his flunky violated the terms of succession when it comes to oversight of this hugely vital program...important history lesson here from O’Donnell on how Social Security originated and was supported by Dwight Eisenhower, the first Republican president elected after the program was enacted...on a personal level, I can’t tell you how important and gratifying it is – and more importantly, how TRUE it is – to hear O’Donnell praise the IRS and the Social Security Administration...
...and I’ll keep an eye out for ’25 tour dates for this group, but nothing has shown up so far...I like their sound, I have to admit.
Ali Vitali speaks with Dem U.S. House Rep Seth Moulton about that insulting speech from Couch Boy in front of our NATO allies (who hopefully will remain allies)...and I’m sure China and Russia thought Vance’s ridiculous words were just peachy...and I don’t think it’s a coincidence under any stretch of the imagination that Vance also went to meet present-day Nazi party members, which is truly gut-churning...not the biggest fan of Moulton to be honest and he kind of lost me a bit towards the end here, even though he has served our country; I’m tired of hearing about how Dems lost the damn election because of trans women in sports...there were a lot of factors behind what happened which I’ve gotten into ad nauseum I’ll admit, but I’ll just say this; when families like those of yours truly are sitting around the dining room table meeting over bills and the checkbook and looking at the $$ coming into the Doomsy household, we could absolutely care less if someone currently taking puberty blockers and looking at possible gender reassignment surgery is going to play field hockey for a women’s collegiate team in Kentucky (and by the way, for everyone freaking out about sharing a bathroom with an LGBTQ individual, I’ll just say this – it’s likely that YOU ALREADY HAVE AND YOU JUST DIDN’T KNOW IT, SO GET A F*CKING GRIP, OK???!!)...
...and Rachel Maddow lets us know that President Musk and Our Ochre Abomination laid off a bunch of workers at the Hanford nuclear site and left the place with a skeleton crew (“Have you considered resigning?” indeed...sooo, first they fired the nuke personnel and then tried to “un-fire” them – are there any actual adults in this clown car of a *presidential administration* I wonder?)...I have to admit that I didn’t know about the drone that crashed into the Chernobyl nuclear site, but thank God it didn’t lead to anything...
...well, if nothing else, it looks like this abomination of a *presidential administration is trying to Make Cancer Great Again...here comes The Lincoln Project doing more of the work that the DNC should be doing, whether it’s run by Ken Martin, Jaime Harrison, Tom Perez, Tobey Maguire, ZaSu Pitts or whoever (you can Google her)...
...and Marc Elias and Paige Moskowitz of Democracy Docket discuss PA Dem governor Josh Shapiro suing President Musk and Bronzer Beelzebub to potentially unlock $3 billion in federal funds (more specifically, from the OMB under Project 2025 cretin Russell Vought)...and Elias is right that Repug governors and attorneys general should be joining Shapiro’s suit also, but good luck with trying to stand up to our ruling cabal of grifters and lowlifes...I know Elias knows the law on this stuff better than I do, but to me, it’s still a constitutional crisis if the Trump gang decides to “slow walk” compliance with a court order and tries to use stoo-pidity as a defense...
...and this is probably low-hanging fruit by comparison, but I think it still deserves to be mentioned...it looks like Elon’s “baby mama” is acting like a woman scorned, if you will, and is behaving accordingly on social media (Kyle Kulinski explains)...not to split hairs too much, but that first paragraph of Ashley St. Clair’s statement doesn’t make sense; “protect your child” from what?? Yes, the safety of the child should be ensured, but I think the lady doth protest too much also...I think St. Clair is another “clout chaser” in the final analysis...I went back and forth a bit on whether or not I should include this because I honestly don’t care about Elmo’s personal stuff, but if nothing else, it points out yet again the double standard of the “fundies” out there who proclaim that #47 is an allegedly godly man who has had multiple divorces/multiple kids with other women and now takes orders from the world’s richest man who apparently has had so many kids with other women that you need a scorecard to keep track of them...meanwhile, they ruthlessly attacked #46, who had two wives, one of whom was killed in a car crash with their daughter, and was a devout father who regularly attended Church services, not that conservative hypocrites cared of course (NSFW/H)...
Sam of The Majority Report tells us that Pete Hegseth, the Fix Noise host turned SecDef for President Musk and his orange minion, decided to rename Camp Liberty in Nort Carolina (which used to be called Fort Bragg after a Confederate traitor) back to Fort Bragg, but this time, after a different “Bragg,” if you will, from Maine, who apparently was a legit hero in WWII as noted here...even when this administration screws up, they manage to do it in reverse and in this case actually did something kind of OK (yeah, and Hegseth was the guy who just gave that speech telling Ukraine they’re on their own against Vlad The Butcher)...Sam talks about the revisionist history in favor of the “star n’ bars” that really goes back to the beginning of the last century...commentary ends at about 6:54 (and I definitely share Sam’s Dem frustration that he articulates with the caller)...
...also, we had a bunch of commendable "Not MY President" day protests on Presidents Day against our criminal ruling regime...video includes commentary from Nicolle Wallace (more here) ...
Thousands of Americans came out for 'Not My President's Day' protests in numerous cities across the country. 😳👇 pic.twitter.com/8YaOb8QD8p
...and Farron Cousins of Ring of Fire tells us that Trump AG Pam Bondi has decided that the FBI doesn’t need to investigate foreign influence in our elections since she abolished the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force...and oh yeah, that means that we’re not going to investigate people working as foreign agents in our government also – what could go wrong I wonder (especially since Bondi herself was working as a foreign agent for Qatar)...
...and continuing with the nonsense going on at the Trump “Justice” Department, Lawrence O’Donnell informs us that that wretched body now isn’t allowed to investigate utterly corrupt NYC mayor Eric Adams in accordance with an order from President Musk and his orange flunky, as well as a directive from this Emil Bove character...yep, we’re pretty much officially a banana republic now; oh, but all is forgiven if the stock market does well, amirite? (#sarcasm)...I’m sure Adams will celebrate this development with another plane flight to Turkey, assuming he hasn’t already done so...have to admit that I’m not familiar with Danielle Sassoon and I’m sure she’s a bedrock conservative in many ways, but she’s spot-on here in the matter of following the law and statutes despite political influence...kudos to her and the other DOJ lawyers who resigned instead of participating in this pathetic farce...
...and Yasmin Khan of Rebel HQ tells us about the Murdoch Street Journal more or less politely questioning Mango Mussolini on his alleged financial skills, with #47 definitely “getting it backward” on wanting Fed Chair Jerome Powell to cut interest rates while all of this BS with supposedly raising tariffs plays out...and by the way, it’s an open question as to whether or not a president can fire a Federal Reserve chairman since it’s never been tried before and each Fed chair is confirmed for a 10-year term (Powell was appointed in 2018), but law and precedent have never mattered to our demented toddler-in-chief before (actually, second-in-command to President Musk), so why should it now I guess...
...and I don’t see any Philly-area tour dates coming up for this guy, but I hope one is forthcoming...I really get into this newer tune.
