Tuesday, October 31, 2023

Today's Cartoons

 

(click on images to enlarge)


(Chris Britt, Creators.com)

(Jeff Darcy, Cleveland Plain Dealer)

(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

(Lalo Alcaraz, LA Weekly)

(Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune)


 (Matt Wuerker, Politico)

(Jack Ohman, Tribune Content Agency)

(Brian McFadden, gocomics.com)

(Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News)

(Mike Smith, Las Vegas Sun)

(Lars Kenseth, @AltaJournal)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Tweets / Xeets Of The Day

 

More gifts to their donors from the MAGAt Republican House --


 

 


As the Malignant Loser once said, will be wild! -- 



MAGA Mike Johnson a one-time Trump critic. Next up: a denial from MAGA Mike -- 

 


More analysis of why the 14th Amendment's insurrection clause applies to Trump --

 

 


They don't call him "Bootsie" for nothing --

 


Fighting back against Republican gerrymandering -- 



Russia's imperialist aims made clear by Kremlin propagandist -- 



Another careless Russian smoker? -- 



It's not who you are, it's who you aren't --  


 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

What's That Musk-y Smell? "X" Marks The Flop

 

According to stock that Twitter, now known as "X", gave as grants to employees, the value of "X" is now worth less than half of its purchase price of $44 billion. From the linked article:

"X, the company formerly known as Twitter, handed out stock grants to employees on Monday that showed it was worth about $19 billion, down about 55 percent from the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid to buy the firm a year ago, according to internal documents seen by The New York Times.

Mr. Musk paid $54.20 a share to buy Twitter just over a year ago. The tech billionaire has since said he overpaid for the social network. In March, he wrote in an email to workers that he believed the company was worth $20 billion, calling it 'an inverse start-up.'”

Since acquiring Twitter,  Musk has been a toxic force in the world of social media, adopting his version of "free speech" to "X" which has resulted in a proliferation of right-wing hate speech, disinformation, and manipulation by hostile foreign actors. As a result, the platform has lost boatloads of advertisers who don't want their products associated with what's increasingly appearing on "X":

"In his year of owning Twitter, Mr. Musk has overhauled the company and the social media platform. More than 80 percent of its 7,500 employees have either quit or been laid off. He has changed the service’s verification process, as well as content-moderation rules. Advertising, the company’s main source of revenue, was down in the United States by almost 60 percent this summer. Mr. Musk also loaded the company with billions of dollars in debt to help pay for the acquisition."  (our emphasis)

Musk is also having difficulties with his bug-ridden car company Tesla, which has suffered a drop in their stock of 18% since the third quarter earnings report, with Musk's awkward looking Cybertruck leading the losses. Bloomberg's Billionaire Index now reports that Musk's wealth has dropped below $200 billion, largely as a result of Tesla's poor performance. Keep up the bad work!

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Senate Committee Subpoenaing Justice Thomas' Cronies

 



Senate Democrats are ramping up plans to get to the bottom of the connections between Republican billionaire Harlan Crow, far- right Christofascist judicial "activist" and Federalist Society board co- chair Leonard Leo, and ethically challenged Justice Clarence "RV" Thomas: 

Senate Democrats announced plans Monday to vote to subpoena a pair of wealthy conservatives and a judicial activist who have underwritten or organized lavish travel for some Supreme Court justices, a move that adds to the pressure on the high court to strengthen its ethics policies.

Senate Judiciary Committee leaders said they would vote as soon as Nov. 9 to authorize subpoenas for information from Texas billionaire Harlan Crow, a close friend and benefactor of Justice Clarence Thomas, and from Leonard Leo, the conservative judicial activist. Senate Democrats do not need the vote of any Republican on the committee to authorize the subpoenas. No separate vote by the full Senate is necessary.

Democratic lawmakers are seeking detailed information about the full extent of Crow’s gifts to Thomas. News reports about the justice’s failure over many years to report private jet travel, real estate deals and other gifts from Crow have prompted calls for the court to strengthen its ethics rules and for greater transparency about the justices’ potential conflicts and recusal decisions.

“By accepting these lavish, undisclosed gifts, the justices have enabled their wealthy benefactors and other individuals with business before the Court to gain private access to the justices while preventing public scrutiny of this conduct,” Judiciary Committee Chairman Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said in the joint announcement. “It is imperative that we understand the full extent of how people with interests before the Court are able to use undisclosed gifts to gain private access to the justices.”

Senate Democrats have backed legislation that would impose disclosure rules on the court that are as strict as those that apply to members of the House and the Senate. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has suggested the court would act on its own as an independent branch of government to demonstrate to the public that it adheres to the “highest standards of conduct.”  (our emphasis)

Yeah, how's that been working out?  A reason why it's taken so long to get this hearing underway is Roberts' foot- dragging on establishing SCOTUS' own ethics rules.  It was time to force the issue for Senate Dems.

Not surprisingly, Christofascist judicial activist/ rat Leo has indicated he won't cooperate with the Committee, because he would have some 'splaining to do should he ever show up.  We know he believes in democratic institutions, ethics, and the rule of law, of course.

(Image:  Leo, second from left, Thomas and Crow on the right, at Crow's vacation resort / painting by Sharif Tarabay)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Republican Family Values: Traveling Man




North Dakota's longest-serving state senator, Republican Sen. Ray Holmberg, was indicted yesterday on Federal charges of "travel with the intent to engage in illicit sexual activity and receipt of child pornography," after his arrest Monday at his home in Grand Forks, ND.  Holmberg resigned from office last spring, and is pleading not guilty. The Associated Press has the report:

"Prosecutors said in a statement that Holmberg repeatedly traveled to Prague in the Czech Republic from June 2011 to November 2016 for the purpose of paying for sex with a person under 18 years old. The indictment, which also suggests Holmberg used aliases, says he received and attempted to receive images that depict child sexual abuse from November 2012 to March 2013.

Holmberg served more than 45 years in the North Dakota Senate until his resignation last year, after local media outlet The Forum of Fargo-Moorhead revealed he exchanged dozens of text messages with a person who was jailed on charges related to child sexual abuse images. [snip]

Holmberg was reimbursed roughly $126,000 for nearly 70 out-of-state trips from 2013 through mid-April 2022 to places that included four dozen U.S. cities, as well as Canada, Puerto Rico and several European countries, according to an AP review of his travel records.

Law enforcement searched his Grand Forks home in November 2021, seizing video discs and additional items."  (our emphasis)

Holmberg was first elected to office in 1976. You can be certain that Holmberg's 70 out-of-state trips had some sexual diversions involved. You also can be certain that Holmberg was a loyal, right-wing Christofascist to have survived that long in Republican / Forced Birth / Shooter Party politics. It's axiomatic that his political philosophy fits the vast majority of sexual predators and abusers in elected office. After all, look who their party leader is.

(photo: Your pervy Republican ex-state senator/ Official portrait)

 

Posted by at 2 comments:
Labels: , ,

Monday, October 30, 2023

QOTD -- What MAGA Republicans Bring

 

"...Biden might need to supplement his democracy message with a broader argument: namely, that MAGA Republicans bring violence, disorder, chaos and gridlock. The MAGA wing of the Republican Party, after all, broke the tradition of a peaceful transfer of power. It actively rooted for a default and then a government shutdown. It brooks violence against law enforcement, peddles conspiracy theories and refuses to accept the legitimacy of court cases against Trump.

"The pandemonium surrounding the selection of a House speaker points to the party’s inability to govern itself, let alone the country. We can expect plenty of other MAGA outbursts and mayhem with this faction’s nihilistic approach to politics — including, for example, the baseless impeachment effort against Biden — between now and the 2024 elections. Biden would have no trouble making the case against agents of anarchy, destruction and dysfunction..." -- WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin on the "all-purpose" message for President Biden and Democrats heading into the 2024 election.  We know there's a large built- in cohort of Christofascists in this country who applaud and support the "anarchy, destruction and dysfunction."  It's baked into our politics now.  But they don't represent a majority and likely never will.  The message of what the Malignant Loser and his MAGAts have brought and will bring in the future should be a powerful one, if only with the voters yet to make up their minds -- as boggling a thought as that is in 2023.


Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: ,

Tweets / Xeets Of The Day

 

MAGA Mike Johnson, deep in Christofascist derp and Trump's / Putin's pockets --

 

 

 

"But Biden is old!" --

 

 

 


Trump minus 75 pounds and wearing a vest --

 

 

 

"Protesters"...  OMFG Washington Post --

 

 

 

 

 

 

Giving hip hop a bad rap --


 

 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

UAW Strike Ends In Victory For Labor

 

 

An unmitigated victory for the United Auto Workers and organized labor:

The United Auto Workers strike is set to end as the union and General Motors announced a tentative agreement on a new contract Monday, according to sources cited by CNBC.

The breakthrough comes just days after similar deals with Ford and Stellantis.

The union announced a framework agreement with Ford on Wednesday, followed Saturday by a deal with Stellantis, which makes Ram, Dodge and Chrysler vehicles.

The pacts must be approved by local UAW leaders and then ratified by a simple majority of each automaker’s union-represented workers. That process will take several days.

About 13,000 UAW members went on strike Sept. 15, following the expiration of their previous contract with the Big Three. That gradually expanded to about 40,000 of the union's 146,000 members walking off the job. That slowed production for each company, with the effects ramping up over time.

GM said Tuesday that the strike would reduce its annual pretax profit by $800 million and was costing it $200 million per week at the time.

If members approve the contracts, they will last 4 1/2 years. Union members will get an 11% initial wage increase and a pay bump of 25% over the course of the deal. The new contract also reinstates cost-of-living adjustments, lets workers reach top wages in three years instead of eight, and protects workers' right to strike over plant closures, among other significantly enhanced benefits...

UAW President Sean Fain and his team are master strategists and negotiators.  This is just a complete victory for them and their members.  Let the plaudits flow --


 

 (Photo:  UAW president Sean Fain / Jeff Kowalsky, AFP, Getty Images)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Trump Angry Over Ivanka's Court Date




Now that the Malignant Loser's lusted-after daughter Ivanka will have to testify at his business fraud trial in New York on Friday, the Malignant Loser is reportedly angry and anxious about the prospect. Law professor Joyce Vance writes on her Substack platform:

"Trump’s attacks on others involved in his cases as unethical, racist, crazy and lying go beyond hyperbolic. It is a deliberate attempt to inflame the most volatile people among his followers. Anyone who doesn’t yet realize Trump would, quite literally, burn the country down to save his business and spare himself prison isn’t reading the room. And we enter dangerous terrain with Don Jr. testifying this Wednesday, Eric scheduled for Thursday, and Ivanka on Friday. The former president gets his chance to bat cleanup on Monday, November 6.

Trump is especially spun up about Ivanka testifying, saying it was unfair of the Judge to force her to testify, since she’s been dismissed as a defendant in the case. He conveniently overlooks the fact that most witnesses in a case aren’t plaintiffs or defendants. In Ivanka’s case, she’s a fact witness who was around for many of the transactions and meetings that are called into question in the Attorney General’s $250 million lawsuit. Who better to testify than someone with first hand knowledge? Ivanka was dismissed from the lawsuit because her direct participation happened too long ago to come within the 'statute of limitations'—the number of years back the AG is permitted to go with her allegations. Fortunately for Ivanka, she left Trump Organization for the White House in 2017, which puts her beyond the reach of New York law as a defendant, but does nothing to rule her out as a witness."  (our emphasis)

We're gratified that New York State's terrific Attorney General Letitia James didn't let Princess Ivanka wiggle out of testifying about what she knew about the fraudulent transactions while she was an active member of the Trump Organization during the time in question. We can imagine him glaring knives at presiding Judge Arthur Engoron as his daughter / object of his desire takes the stand and is forced to choose between perjuring herself and helping to convict him. Be assured that the prosecutors will have copies of memos and other documents that will link her to business dealings, and make it hard for her to deny. A good build up to the Malignant Loser's time on the stand next week.

(photos: The perversions of a sick man)

 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

Today's Tomorrow Cartoon: Hideous Abominations

 

 (click to enlarge)



Just in time for Halloween. The decayed and brain dead MAGAts are loose in the House, having found their new coup-plotting leader. Meanwhile, blindness seems to be afflicting members of the broken media, who refuse to see the danger they represent and blame Dems for fighting them.

Please consider supporting Tom's work by going here.

 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

A federal judge has reimposed limits on former president Donald Trump’s public statements in advance of his trial on charges of conspiring to subvert the results of the 2020 election.

U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan on Sunday evening put back in place an order she had lifted nine days earlier to give Trump and U.S. prosecutors more time to argue whether the restrictions were unconstitutional, as attorneys for the former president had claimed. Trump can now ask a higher court for an emergency stay pending appeal, but in the meantime he is bound by Chutkan’s limits. If Trump violates the gag, as he did a similar order by a state judge in New York, Chutkan will have to decide how to punish the former president and leading presidential candidate.  [snip]

Under the existing order Trump and all interested parties in the case are barred from making or directing others to make public statements that “target” individual attorneys, witnesses, “any reasonably foreseeable witness,” or court staff involved in the case or the substance of their testimony. While the order was on hold, Trump posted a comment on social media calling special counsel Jack Smith “deranged” and saying former chief of staff Mark Meadows would be a lying coward if he testified for the prosecution. Both comments involved some of the exact type of language Chutkan deemed out of bounds.

Trump appeared to potentially to violate Chutkan’s order 75 minutes after she gave notice that it was reinstated, attacking his former attorney general and potential witness, William P. Barr.

“I called Bill Barr Dumb, Weak, Slow Moving, Lethargic, Gutless, and Lazy, a RINO WHO COULDN’T DO THE JOB,” Trump said in part of an 88-word post on his social media platform that both belittled the man he chose to serve as the nation’s top law-enforcement officer and exaggerated his crowd sizes. “So now this Moron says about me, to get even, ‘his verbal skills are limited.’ Well, that’s one I haven’t heard before. Tell that to the biggest political crowds in the history of politics, by far. Bill Barr is a LOSER!”

About 19 minutes after his post about Barr, Trump complained on social media: “The Corrupt Biden administration just took away my First Amendment Right To Free Speech.”

We want the s.o.b. to suffer some consequences for a change.  F.A.F.O.

The bad:

All or most of a $267,000 loan obtained by Supreme CourtJustice Clarence Thomas to buy a high-end motorcoach appears to have been forgiven, raising tax and ethics questions, according to a new report by Senate Democrats.

Anthony “Tony” Welters, a longtime friend of Thomas who made the loan in 1999, forgave the debt after nine years of what he called interest-only payments, says the report, which was released Wednesday by Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee.  [snip]

Thomas borrowed the money from Welters, a healthcare executive, to buy a 40-foot refitted tour bus in which he tours the country with his wife, Ginni. Thomas has talked about staying in Walmart parking lots and RV parks, which are “what the neighborhoods used to be like.”

At the time of the loan, Thomas said in a handwritten note on his Supreme Court letterhead that agreements to pay interest of 7.5% a year and repay the money in five years, the report says. In 2004, the time to repay the loan was extended until 2014.

Documents voluntarily provided by Welters to the committee show that he forgave the loan in 2008, the report says. Welters gave the committee a copy of just one payment of $20,042 that Thomas made, in 2000.

“Welters forgave the balance of the loan to Thomas in recognition of the payments made by Thomas which Welters characterized as interest only payments that exceeded the amount of the original loan,” the report says. Nine years of interest-only payments would total roughly $180,000, considerably less than the loan amount. Welters did not explain the discrepancy...

We have six justices, all Republican, who are liars (saying they'd uphold precedent on Roe, but then overturning it) and religious zealots, one who was a serial sexual assaulter, and at least two who've taken money or favors from billionaire patrons.  The stench is overwhelming.

The ugly: 

At least 48 people died when Category 5 Hurricane Otis slammed into Mexico’s southern Pacific coast, most of them in Acapulco, Mexican authorities said Sunday as the death toll continued to climb and families buried loved ones.

Mexico’s civil defense agency said in a statement that 43 of the dead were in the resort city of Acapulco and five in nearby Coyuca de Benitez. Guerrero state’s governor had earlier raised the number of missing to 36 from 10 a day earlier. The death toll increased after authorities had raised it to 39 on Saturday.

In Acapulco, families held funerals for the dead on Sunday and continued the search for essentials while government workers and volunteers cleared streets clogged with muck and debris from the powerful Category 5 hurricane.

Katy Barrera, 30, said Sunday that her aunt’s family was buried under a landslide when tons of mud and rock tumbled down onto their home. Her aunt’s body was found with the remains of their three children ranging in age from 2 to 21. Her uncle was still missing. Separately, Barrera’s own mother and brother also remained missing.

“The water came in with the rocks, the mud and totally buried them,” Barrera, who was standing outside a local morgue, said of her aunt’s family.

On Sunday, authorities released the bodies of her aunt and the two youngest children to relatives. Bodies in white bags were loaded into open caskets in the back of hearses. The eldest daughter had already been buried the day before...

Otis went to a Category 5 hurricane so fast it caught everyone by surprise, leading to people sheltering in place instead of evacuating.  Now rescue efforts are being hampered by the damage to the infrastructure and the magnitude of the destruction. 


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Across The Universe, Cont. -- Dynamic Trio

 

(click on image to enlarge)

From NASA/ ESA, October 23, 2023: This striking image captures the interacting galaxy pair known as Arp-Madore 2339-661, so named because they belong to the Arp-Madore catalogue of peculiar galaxies. However, this particular peculiarity might be even odder than first meets the eye, as there are in fact three galaxies interacting here, not just two. 

The two clearly defined galaxies are NGC 7733 (smaller, lower right) and NGC 7734 (larger, upper left). The third galaxy is currently referred to as NGC 7733N, and can actually be spotted in this picture if you look carefully at the upper arm of NGC 7733, where there is a visually notable knot-like structure, glowing with a different colour to the arm and obscured by dark dust. This could easily pass as part of NGC 7733, but analysis of the velocities (speed, but also considering direction) involved in the galaxy shows that this knot has a considerable additional redshift, meaning that it is very likely its own entity and not part of NGC 7733. This is actually one of the many challenges that observational astronomers face: working out whether an astronomical object really is just one, or one lying in front of another as seen from Earth’s perspective!

All three galaxies lie quite close to each other, roughly 500 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Tucana, and, as this image shows, they are interacting gravitationally with one another. In fact, some science literature refers to them as a ‘merging group’, meaning that they are on a course to ultimately become a single entity.

[Image Description: Two spiral galaxies. Each glows brightly in the centre, where a bar stretches from side to side. The upper one is more round and its arms form two thin rings. The lower galaxy is flatter and its arms make one outer ring; a dusty knot atop its upper arm marks out a third object. Gravity is pulling gas and dust together where the galaxies come close. A number of small galaxies surround them on a black background.]

Credit:  ESA/Hubble & NASA, J. Dalcanton, Dark Energy Survey/DOE/FNAL/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA
Acknowledgement: L. Shatz


Posted by at No comments:
Labels:

Today's Cartoons

 

(click on images to enlarge)

(Pat Bagley, The Salt Lake Tribune)

(Clay Jones, claytoonz.com)

(Mike Luckovich, Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

(Joel Pett, Tribune Content Agency)

(Jimmy Margulies, jimmymargulies.com)

(Robert Ariail, Spartanburg Herald-Journal, SC)

(Barry Blitt, @AirMailWeekly)

(Bart van Leeuwen, Oedipoes.com)

(Andy Davey, Political Cartoon, UK)

(Mike Smith, Las Vegas Sun)

(Will McPhail, The New Yorker)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

Mike "Fly Guy" Pence To Spend More Time With Mother

 

 

He gone.

The head fly always had better odds and generated more buzz.

Mother Pence can now look forward to spending endless more years of boredom with her spouse.  Years.  Boredom.

(Image: via Reddit)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Sunday Reflection: The Great Stock Market Crash




Ninety-four years ago, on October 29, 1929, the New York Stock Market crashed, after days of falling stock prices and business bankruptcies. Called "Black Tuesday," it marked the beginning of the Great Depression which lasted well into the 1930s. Economist and ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in his 1955 book "The Great Crash, 1929" about the downward spiraling market and the shattering effects it had:

“The worst continued to worsen. What looked one day like the end proved on the next day to have been only the beginning. Nothing could have been more ingeniously designed to maximize the suffering, and also to insure that as few people as possible escape the common misfortune....The man with the smart money, who was safely out of the market when the first crash came, naturally went back in to pick up bargains. The bargains then suffered a ruinous fall. Even the man who waited for volume of trading to return to normal and saw Wall Street become as placid as a produce market, and who then bought common stocks would see their value drop to a third or a fourth of the purchase price in the next 24 months.....Clerks in downtown hotels were said to be asking guests whether they wished the room for sleeping or jumping. Two men jumped hand-in-hand from a high window in the Ritz. They had a joint account.” 

There are safeguards and institutions in place now hopefully to prevent a total market collapse, the most recent following the stock market drop in September 2008. But no safeguards that involve speculation, money and greed are failsafe. 

(photo: The Boston Globe)

 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , ,

The Star Witness?




Fulton County, Georgia's impressive District Attorney Fani Willis has managed racketeering (RICO) trials before, against drug cartels and other criminal organizations. So when she saw the criminal political organization headed by the Malignant Loser try to subvert Georgia 2020 election, she knew that she could use the state's racketeering law to prosecute him and his co-conspirators. The RICO concept is to flip lower level defendants until you get to the leadership of the organization. Jenna Ellis, one of the Malignant Loser's lawyers, pled guilty in exchange for lesser punishment, and that's bad news for the Malignant Loser and his deranged consigliere Rudy "Toot Toot" Giuliani:

"Ms. Ellis emerged from her plea hearing as a likely star witness for prosecutors, starting with the one who secured her cooperation, the Fulton County district attorney Fani Willis. Unlike Mr. Chesebro and Ms. Powell, in pleading guilty Ms. Ellis spoke in detail about her 'responsibilities as a lawyer.' Tearing up, she talked about the due diligence that 'I did not do but should have done' and her 'deep remorse for those failures of mine.' The judge, a tough former prosecutor, thanked her for sharing that and noted how unusual it was for a defendant to do so.

Trials are about the evidence and the law. But they are also theater, and the jury is the audience. In this case, the jury is not the only audience — the Georgia trials will be televised, so many Americans will also be tuned in. Ms. Ellis is poised to be a potent weapon against Mr. Trump in the courtroom and on TVs.

That is bad news for her former co-defendants — above all, Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump. Ms. Ellis was most closely associated with Mr. Giuliani, appearing by his side in Georgia and across the country. If her court appearance last week is any indication, she will be a compelling guide to his alleged misconduct. She will also add to what is known about it; she and Mr. Giuliani undoubtedly had many conversations that are not yet public and that will inform the jury. And because Mr. Giuliani was the senior lawyer on the case, her pointed statement that she was misled by attorneys 'with many more years of experience' hits him directly.

Ms. Ellis’s likely trial testimony will also hit Mr. Trump hard. She has now effectively repudiated his claims that he won the election — an argument that is expected to be a centerpiece of his trial defense. Coming from a formerly outspoken MAGA champion, her disagreement has the potential to resonate with jurors."  (our emphasis)

We'll see how many more co-conspirators flip before their trials, and provide testimony against the Malignant Loser. It's reported that Giuliani, Mark Meadows and John Eastman have not been offered plea deals from the District Attorney, implying that they and the Malignant Loser will be the prime targets of prosecution and will remain with the original charges.

(photo: Tearful Ellis agreeing to guilty plea / John Bazemore, AP)

 

Posted by at 1 comment:
Labels: , ,

The Russians Love The New MAGAt Speaker

 

Enemies, foreign and domestic:

A Russian state TV host has celebrated Mike Johnson becoming the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

The Trump-supporting Republican was elected to the role this week after 22 days of deadlock after Kevin McCarthy's ousting earlier in October and failed bids from other candidates, including Jim Jordan.

In a clip from Russian TV channel RTR Planeta, translated by Russian Media Monitor, Olga Skabeeva said Johnson would "suit" Russia because of his stance on Ukraine.  [snip]

She said: "Zelensky is in mourning today. Mike Johnson was elected House speaker. All 220 Republican Congressmen voted for him.

"Johnson is not only the ultra-right Trump supporter who always voted against aid to Ukraine and made corresponding statements that were considered to be anti-Ukrainian.

"Where Ukraine is concerned, it's sufficient to look at Johnson's ratings with his respect to his support of Ukraine. His rating is very poor. This means that all of this suits us well."

She added: "If the new speaker did not swear or make promises to his pro-Ukrainian fellow party members, the budget of aid to Ukraine is in question.

"With a Trump fanatic as a speaker, the bill for $106 billion, proposed by Biden, definitely will not pass. Johnson will simply not put it up for a vote. Outward attention of the U.S. will be focused on helping a Jewish nation [Israel]."...

They salivate (in vain we believe) for a Malignant Loser revival, and any glimmer of hope that support for besieged Ukraine will dry up under Speaker "MAGA Mike" Johnson is feverishly projected by the mouthpieces for war criminal Putin and his incompetent toadies.  We'll soon see if Russia's new favorite politician comes through for them, or stands for a free and independent Ukraine.  The Russians, at least, appear to think they have another Christofascist Republican in their pocket.


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: ,

Saturday, October 28, 2023

Today's Cartoons

 

(click on images to enlarge)

(Randall Enos, caglecartoons.com)

(Michael de Adder, Halifax Herald, Canada)

(John Buss, @repeat1968)

(Clay Jones, claytoonz.com)

(John Deering, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette)

(Paul Berge, @PaulBergeToons)

(Drew Sheneman, The Star-Ledger, Newark, NJ)

(Jimmy Margulies, jimmymargulies.com)

(Bill Bramhall, New York Daily News)

(Kathryn Lamb, @Spectator, UK)


Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , , , , , , ,

Tweets / Xeets Of The Day

 

Officials were told Maine shooter was a risk. Nothing happened. Then the massacre -- 


 

Coup leader House Speaker Mike "Shriveled" Johnson wants a return to the 1700s --



The Malignant Loser's sick affinity for terrorists and der Führer-- 


Speaking of terrorists, ask Hamas to explain why they're punishing their people in Gaza -- 


 


Right-wing money appears to be backing Rep. Dean Phillips' "campaign" -- 

 

 

Hey, go buy some Chinese-made Body Bags by Ivanka before they run out --


Russian humanitarians are shocked! by Gaza bombings, as their war crimes in Ukraine continue -- 



"Proud" Boy Tarrio sent to notorious Atlanta Federal Penitentiary. He'll need soap-on-a-rope -- 



"I'm stuffed" ? -- 


 

Posted by at No comments:
Labels:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)