Ok sure. I’m not sure that an immigrant can be in the line of succession but I’ve never heard otherwise. But why would Musk want such a thing? He can run the country just by pulling Trump’s strings and shitposting on his personal social media platform. Why would he want to do all that dirty work? Just give it Marjorie Taylor Green or some other MAGA cultist and have them do his bidding.
I must admit that I’m a little bit surprised that it’s gone so far off the rails already. It’s not even Christmas!
This morning Trump is saying that he wants to eliminate the debt ceiling altogether, which is actually a great idea. If that were to happen the Democrats would have to help because his Republican zealots will never vote for it. The big question right now is whether they will do it.
I’m torn. It would be great if we could eliminate the debt ceiling. Democrats have been for that ever since the Republicans decided to use it as a weapon to threaten government shutdowns which they did even when Trump was president. (The Democrats never do that.) But should they help the Republicans get over this hump right now? Normally I’d say yes but this time….?
Consider this: if Elon succeeds in shutting down the government until January 20th, as he ordered on Twitter yesterday, there will be no inauguration. I think it might be worth it.
After a long day on the golf course and a big dinner with his other new best billionaire pal Jeff Bezos, Little Donny was very happy indeed. Everybody loves him. All the fancy ladies in their glittery gowns want to take their picture with him and all the important men want to bow down to kiss his tiny ring.
Meanwhile, his bestest friend, the richest man in the world, told all the bad people to shut down the government so America can be great again. And they did!
When Fox News accuses invisible others of “Stealing Your Vote” (aired Nov. 8, 2018)
Despite what you’ve heard, the 2024 election is not over. Republicans treated Donald Trump’s failed 2020 effort to reverse his loss to Joe Biden in court and via an insurrection on the Capitol steps as a how-to manual. They’re emulating Trump right now in North Carolina.
Bryan Anderson of Anderson Alerts substack comments on the North Carolina Supreme Court race in which Justice Allison Riggs defeated Republican Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin by 734 votes after multiple recounts. Griffin is going to court:
Griffin is specifically asking the high court to step in by Monday to prevent certification of the election, bypass a lower court and discard the ballots of more than 60,000 voters who state and county elections administrators have concluded were legitimately cast. In doing so, he believes he could overtake Riggs’ lead.
Griffin is largely seeking to toss out ballots of people whose voter registrations don’t include driver’s license or the last four digits of their Social Security number, arguing that such incomplete registrations render their votes ineligible.
That argument was partially rejected in federal court shortly before the November election, with a Trump-appointed judge concluding such intervention could move the country “away from a democratic form of government.”
The rest is behind a paywall, but you get the point. Four friends from my county are on Griffin’s list.
Remember, Griffin ran for and lost a seat on the state’s Supreme Court. Gene Nichol, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor and News & Observer columnist, reminded readers last week, “In embracing the North Carolina Republican ‘politics of façade,’ Griffin shows he shouldn’t become a justice.” Griffin means to prove Nichol right by litigiating his loss until he wins or can litigate no more.
It’s a Trumpish variation on an old Republican theme. If they win, the election was fair. If they lose, Democrats cheated. Normally, the perps are those ubiquitous yet invisible voter fraudsters:
Voter fraud frauds have for years scare-mongered Republican voters that should anyone anywhere cast even a single ballot improperly, it “stealsyour vote.” Your vote. They are careful to personalize it for their white audience. They have spun the all-but-nonexistent problem into a widespread one (that isn’t) requiring draconian voting restrictions. Those laws, in their “majestic equality,” apply to all yet, just coincidentally, predominantly impact minorities of voters that tend to vote for Democrats.
Griffin and accomplices in this case are themselves trying to steal 60,000 of “your votes” in broad daylight with court filings. Shamelessness is their superpower.
Thank you sharing this Sanctuary of Sanity with us each day. Happy Hollandaise!
Democrats trolled Donald Trump as Elon Musk’s chief of staff after “President Musk” blew up House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-Louisiana) three-month continuing resolution with a five-word tweet early Wednesday: “This bill should not pass.” TweedleDim is not known for being loquacious.
Before it’s begun, this is what Trump’s second term amounts to (The Daily Beast, emphasis mine):
Elon Musk sticking his fingers in congressional affairs before his new pal Donald Trump is even sworn in as president had many Democrats referring to the tech figure as “President Musk” Wednesday.
The billionaire Tesla CEO successfully lobbied—with Trump’s help—for the death of a bipartisan spending bill Wednesday that would have staved off a shutdown and funded the government through March—leaving the Capitol in chaos as Congress scrambled to keep Washington running as the Christmas holiday looms.
Regarding the pair’s efforts to kill the spending bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson had painstakingly negotiated with Democratic leaders, New York Rep. Daniel Goldman told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell: “It’s not Donald Trump asking for this. It’s very clearly President Elon Musk asking for this.”
“The fact that Donald Trump has been completely AWOL during these negotiations to the point where only after Elon Musk publicly tweets about his displeasure, about this budget deal,” he continued, “all of a sudden Donald Trump, chief of staff to Elon Musk, comes trotting in and blows up the deal.”
Those of us living in a disaster zone knew we’d be abandoned as soon as election results rolled in on Nov. 5. The CR contained “more than $100 billion in aid for natural disaster survivors, bipartisan health-care policy changes and other unrelated provisions,” reports the Washington Post:
In scrapping Johnson’s plan, Republicans cast doubt on his ability to maintain the speaker’s gavel in next year’s Congress. Johnson must run for the position again when the new House is sworn in on Jan. 3, and enough GOP lawmakers to deny him the position have already declared they won’t support him, according to two members who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations.
Everything Trump touches dies (ETTD), as the Bulwark’s Rick Wilson reminds us. His Republican former colleagues seem not to listen.
Eugene Robinson Wednesday night reminded those with ears to hear what fealty to Trump brings:
Titans of industry and commerce, beware. When you bend the knee to the Mad King, when you shower him with money and bathe him in flattery, he will receive your gifts with apparent gratitude. But he will want more. He will always want more.
Industry’s titans have made pilgimage to Mar-a-Lago to fall at Trump’s feet since his election. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, Apple’s Tim Cook (Tim Apple), Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and others. These three kings and others have showered the reborn king with lavish donations to his inauguration.
They may feel a fiduciary duty to shareholders to make the most of their access to Trump (I wouldn’t call it friendship), There are zillions in government contracts and profitable policies on the line, says Robinson.
But the business leaders should remember what it is about our system that has allowed their companies to grow and thrive — the rule of law and the impartiality of justice; immigration policies that welcome brains, talent and ambition from around the world; ample funding for basic research that leads to world-changing breakthroughs. Government shapes this landscape, and Trump threatens to alter it dramatically.
A sharp turn toward nationalism and xenophobia would be bad for the nation and the world, but it would be nothing short of disastrous for companies such as Apple or Meta or Alphabet. Maybe these executives believe they can convince Trump that mass deportations are a bad idea and that immigration greatly boosts the U.S. economy. Or that arbitrary and excessive tariffs would needlessly burden the American consumer. Or that unnecessary regulations should be eliminated with tweezers, not a lawn mower.
But it is hubris characteristic of these moguls to believe Trump won’t trash them as soon as he sees them as disloyal or snatching too much of the attention he cannot live without.
So remind TweedleDoofus that President Musk views him as his chief of staff every chance you get. The sooner Musk, Ramaswamy, and company fall out of Trump’s favor, the less chance the oligarchs will have to turn the U.S. government into their wholly owned subsidiary. They may already see a 25th Amendment solution to his brand of chaos, warns a friend, and J.D. Vance as more controllable.
Move fast. They will.
Thank you sharing this Sanctuary of Sanity with us each day. Happy Hollandaise!
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.
But among the 100-plus tweets Musk sent Wednesday were a number of misleading or outright false claims — a worrying start to the mogul’s new role as co-leader of a Trump-blessed effort to slash government funding.
— Government shutdowns aren’t painless: Musk is repeatedly posting on X that a government shutdown wouldn’t have any significant consequences for the country. He responded “YES” to a post that read, “Just close down the govt until January 20th. Defund everything. We will be fine for 33 days.” Another Musk post said a shutdown “doesn’t actually shut down critical functions.”
File this one as a half-truth: Yes, essential government functions and personnel are allowed to continue during a shutdown. But there are significant real-world effects: Other government employees will halt their day-to-day work and miss paychecks. While Social Security checks will go out and mail will be delivered, agency shutdowns cause massive lost productivity. A five-week shutdown from 2018 to 2019 caused the economy to lose about $3 billion, according to estimates from the Congressional Budget Office.
— Member pay won’t be raised 40 percent: Both Musk and the X account for his “Department of Government Efficiency” got the facts surrounding lawmaker paychecks wrong: Members of Congress have not had a raise to their $174,000 salaries since 2009, after repeatedly freezing a law implementing automatic cost-of-living increases.
The pending CR does not include a COLA freeze, but that would not result in a 40 percent boost in pay — far from it. The maximum potential pay adjustment would be 3.8 percent, an increase of $6,600. Even if lawmakers had given themselves all 15 years of rejected COLAs — which, again, they are not doing — it would only result in a 31 percent increase, according to the Congressional Research Service.
— Taxpayers aren’t paying for a new stadium: Musk reposted a claim that the bill would provide $3 billion for a new NFL stadium in Washington. Not true: The bill transfers control of the site of the existing RFK Stadium to the D.C. local government for redevelopment, which could potentially include a stadium. No federal funds are changing hands as part of the transaction.
There is a possibility that D.C. taxpayers could eventually be on the hook for the project: Mayor Muriel Bowser has floated using local funding to cover environmental remediation costs and upgrade underlying infrastructure. But any redevelopment plan would be subject to D.C. government approval and wouldn’t involve any federal dollars appropriated in the pending bill.
— The bill isn’t shielding the Jan. 6 committee: Musk said it was “[o]utrageous” that the bill would block House Republicans from investigating the Jan. 6 select committee established in the prior, Democratic-majority Congress. Not exactly: The section of the bill cited by the convicted Jan. 6 rioter that Musk quoted has nothing to do with internal House investigations.
Rather, it’s language meant to clarify that House data stored on outside digital platforms remains under control of House offices — and thus subject to House rules and procedures for accessing it: “A House office shall be deemed to retain possession of any House data of the House office, without regard to the use” of any particular platform, the bill reads.
— No “bioweapon labs” here: Musk reposted a screenshot from a conservative account Libs of Tiktok claiming that the legislation would fund “bioweapon labs.” That is false: The provision in question would establish regional biocontainment laboratories as part of a larger pandemic preparedness plan. Their stated purpose is “conducting biomedical research to support public health and medical preparedness,” not creating bioweapons. The provision is part of a long-sought reauthorization of the Pandemic and All Hazards Preparedness and Response Act.
This is what happens when you put a red-pilled,conspiracy theorist, politically ignorant troll in charge of the US government. And I’m not talking about Trump.
I really need the inevitable break up between the two Big Narcissists to happen sooner rather than later. Right now it sure looks like Trump is just an old guy playing golf, having dinner with friends and talking to the clouds. Unfortunately there’s a new MAGA King in town and he’s just as bad.
President Musk just took over the Republican Party and blew up the bipartisan agreement on the budget. Now they’ve come up with a GOP-only bill that many Republican members won’t vote for and it needs 60 votes in the Senate.
They will need Democrats to vote for it and this should be their answer:
I offer this excellent piece by Jamelle Bouie with a gift link.He writes that Democrats may be in the minority but they are not yet the opposition and there’s a distinction. An excerpt:
An opposition would use every opportunity it had to demonstrate its resolute stance against the incoming administration. It would do everything in its power to try to seize the public’s attention and make hay of the president-elect’s efforts to put lawlessness at the center of American government. An opposition would highlight the extent to which Donald Trump has no intention of fulfilling his pledge of lower prices and greater economic prosperity for ordinary people and is openly scheming with the billionaire oligarchs who paid for and ran his campaign to gut the social safety net and bring something like Hooverism back from the ash heap of history.
An opposition would treat the proposed nomination of figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kash Patel and Pete Hegseth as an early chance to define a second Trump administration as dangerous to the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Americans. It would prioritize nimble, aggressive leadership over an unbending commitment to seniority and the elevation of whoever is next in line. Above all, an opposition would see that politics is about conflict — or, as Henry Adams famously put it, “the systematic organization of hatreds” — and reject the risk-averse strategies of the past in favor of new blood and new ideas.
It’s about conflict and in this case all they have to do is say no and let the Republicans tear themselves apart:
Please read the Bouie piece and email it to your Democratic Representatives and Senators. They need to know that while we may have taken a break after the Great Disappointment, we are still here and we have expectations.
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.
I want to take Stephens’s larger point: That Trump’s critics were wrong about the dangers Trump posed in 2016, 2020, and 2024.
It’s impossible to enumerate all of the warnings made about Trump and different people focused on different aspects of the danger he presented. But I think we can reasonably summarize the general concerns as:
Trump is dangerously ignorant of basic reality.
He is easy to manipulate.
In a time of crisis, he can not be trusted to make sound judgments.
His commitments to democracy and the rule of law are weak and his attraction to authoritarianism is strong.
In a second term, he would surround himself with dangerous button men and be focused on retribution against perceived domestic enemies.
Now what did the reality of Trump deliver?
He attempted to blackmail the president of Ukraine into lying about his likely 2020 election opponent.
His handling of COVID represented the single greatest failure of the federal government in American history.2
He disbanded the government’s pandemic response team in 2018.
He coddled the Chinese dictator at the outset of the outbreak.
He failed to push forward aggressively on the production of testing kits and PPE during the opening months.
He muddled public health messaging coming from the government.
His one COVID success was the creation of Operation Warp Speed, to accelerate the development of a vaccine. That project worked. But Trump then botched the rollout of the vaccine.
And in the wake of the creation of the vaccine, Trump created a political atmosphere in which his supporters turned against first the COVID vaccine and then all vaccines.
He surrendered Afghanistan to the Taliban and committed America to a hard deadline for withdrawal without securing any meaningful concessions from the Islamists.
He refused to accept the results of the 2020 election and plunged the country into a crisis by lying about it.
He summoned a mob to Washington on January 6th. He knew that this mob was armed. He directed the mob to march on the Capitol so as to prevent Mike Pence from certifying the electoral vote count. When this mob turned violent, he declined to send the National Guard to break it up.
He allegedly stole classified government documents and then allegedly lied about it.
I’ve written this before, but the reality of Trump’s first term came pretty close to the worst-case scenarios. It is simply not true that Trump’s critics oversold the danger he represented. If anything, they underestimated it.
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. But the idea that people who correctly anticipated Trump’s atrocities and called them out in real time are the ones who empowered him, as Stephens contends, is ridiculous. It’s the squishes and hacks like Stephens who are, this very minute, enabling yet another assault on democracy and the rule of law by pretending that he and this freak show he’s putting into government are normal and benign.
I don’t feel like there’s a whole lot I can do about Trump. I’m anything but a billionaire and I don’t have powerful connections. But I can try to convey the truth as I see it as clearly as possible. And what I have been seeing ever since he came down the golden escalator is an unfit, ignorant, immoral, narcissist who has no business being in charge of anything, much less the most powerful country on earth. Just because some people seem to really like all that about him doesn’t make it untrue.
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.
House Republicans on Tuesday said their one-time colleague, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, should face a criminal investigation for her role on the select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
A 128-page report from the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight said Ms. Cheney should be investigated for witness tampering. It accuses her of colluding with Cassidy Hutchinson, the former White House aide who became the committee’s star witness as it examined Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The report — released as Mr. Trump, now the president-elect, has been promising retribution against his political enemies, including Ms. Cheney — accused Ms. Cheney of using the select committee as a tool to attack Mr. Trump. It was spearheaded by Representative Barry Loudermilk of Georgia, the chairman of the oversight subcommittee.
Ms. Cheney defended her work on the select committee in a detailed statement, and called the Republicans’ report “a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth.”
Her full statement:
Update: Don’t watch this if you’re in a public place because you may want to scream “shut up, shut up, shut up!!” and throw your phone across the room. It’s Lara Trump saying Cheney must go to jail, calling January 6th a hoax.
🚨Lara Trump demands JAIL TIME for January 6th COVERUP after report EXPOSES Liz Cheney:
“When you break the law, you go to jail and you serve time. We'll make sure they never forget they tried to destroy this country. Wait until Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard get in there.” pic.twitter.com/DQ3BoSRqET
I suspect that they chose Cheney first out of the box as a warning to any apostate stragglers in the caucus. It’s also possible they think she will have no popular support because lefty Dems still hate her while Republicans also loathe her for her heresy against the Dear Leader. I’m not so sure about that.
It’s hard to imagine that this will go anywhere criminally because she didn’t commit a crime. In fact, if anyone was witness tampering it was Trump and his lawyers who were telling Hutchinson to keep her mouth shut. But this will play out as big drama on Capitol Hill. I would even expect Cheney to testify in an open hearing and if I am any judge I also expect she will probably be as good as Hillary Clinton was during the Benghazi hearings. They should be careful what they ask for. However you feel about Cheney, she’s tough as nails.
So, this is just a preview of what we’re in for. I would have thought we’d have a little bit of a break from the crazy until Trump actually gets in office but no such luck. So stay tuned.
If you’d like to help keep this old ship afloat for another year, you can hit one of the buttons below or send something to address on the sidebar. I think we’re going to have our work cut out for us.
Hang in there everybody. It’s going to be a very bumpy flight.
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.
Steve Bannon on Speaker Mike Johnson: “He’s a Democrat. He holds the Bible, and he’s got the New Testament wrapped up tight. He can talk happy talk on a handful of social issues, you know, checking his son’s porn sites. All this nonsense…” pic.twitter.com/iMcEh9Sy8z
House Speaker Mike Johnson was asked to respond to criticism from conservative lawmakers and Elon Musk over the bloated interim spending bill released Tuesday.
In a post on X, Musk said the measure “should not pass.”
During an interview on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning, co-host Steve Doocy pointed to Musk’s response and noted that the only way to pass the bill will be with Democrat support.
“Well, I was communicating with Elon last night. Elon, Vivek and I are on a text chain together and I was explaining to them the background of this,” Johnson explained. “And Vivek and I talked last night about almost midnight. And he said, ‘Look, I get it.’ And he said, ‘We understand you’re in an impossible position. Everybody knows that.’
“Remember, guys, we still have just a razor-thin margin of Republicans,” Johnson continued. “So any bill has to have Democrat votes. They understand the situation. They said ‘it’s not directed at you, Mr. Speaker, but we don’t like the spending.’ And I said, ‘guess what, fellas? I don’t either.’”
He went on to assure them that once the Democrats are no longer in control in the next Congress they will be able to do what they want. (I don’t think they’re actually “in control” in the House right now and the margin will be even tighter in the next Congress but whatever.)
I think Adam Kinzinger said it best:
America this is not healthy government. Text chains with oligarchs and dorks https://t.co/COsOrRVtny
— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) December 18, 2024
Seriously, who elected Musk and Ramaswamy to anything? Ever? This is insane.
Update — lol:
SCOOP: House GOP critics of Mike Johnson’s CR plan are already floating names to get behind instead come the Jan. 3 speaker vote, two lawmakers told me
She was not fired, she quit. And she quit at least partially because she didn’t approve of the Trump bootlicking. It’s much more complicated than that, of course. The government is falling apart for all the same reasons all the governments everywhere are falling apart and she’s in opposition to her former ally Trudeau on a number of issues.
Chrystia Freeland used to be a journalist and a good one. She’s going to run for Prime Minister and I hope she wins. She will not put up with Trump’s bullshit.
Meanwhile, Trump’s continuing on because he has the mind of a 12 year old bully:
He’s trolling, of course. But it also illuminates how idiotically he sees the trade issue. If we buy things from Canada he sees that as a subsidy. Apparently all the goods we are buying are worth nothing? It’s right up there with his insistence that NATO has to pay us “dues” like some Florida fat cat Mar-a-Lago member. It’s so embarrassingly stupid I don’t even know how to explain it.
I realize that by this time most people probably think this silly trolling stuff doesn’t matter and really don’t want to hear about it. But it does. This imbecile is dumbing down the entire world in ways that are going to damage us irreparably. We have some very, very serious problems to confront, the most important of which is climate change. Idiocracy isn’t going to fix that, it’s going to make it worse. And nihilism or exhausted fatalism will only help that happen.
