Sunday Four-Play: Matt Gaetz vows to shiv Kevin McCarthy, and AOC says she may help

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Sunday October 01, 2023 · 12:02 PM PDT

2023/10/01 · 12:02

US Representative Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) speaks to US Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in the House Chamber at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2023. - Kevin McCarthy lost out in the 14th round of voting in the race to be the next speaker of the US House of Representatives late Friday, amid extraordinary scenes of acrimonious Republican infighting. (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY / AFP) (Photo by OLIVIER DOULIERY/AFP via Getty Images)

Wait, so Congress actually managed to pass a continuing resolution to keep the government open for another 45 days? And here two of the Sunday shows had already booked Matt Gaetz. This should be fun.

Will Gaetz 1) complain that this is brutally unfair to hardworking American taxpayers like Donald Trump and his next-door neighbor Vladimir, erm, Peterson, 2) introduce the world to his next wife, whose ultrasound photo he recently favorited on OkCupid, 3) slurp Jonathan Karl up like a hunk of Fazoli’s linguine while pugnaciously humming “Flight of the Valkyries,” or 4) promise to take another go at ruining the lives of millions of Americans who depend on government paychecks?

Or maybe he’ll be grilled about the Republicans’ fake impeachment of President Biden. In case you missed it, they held a hearing on Thursday that proved Joe Biden unconditionally loves his son. Republicans also called a witness who admitted there was no basis for impeachment. In other words, it was the shittiest shitshow you’ll ever see, even if you survive past the heat death of the universe. But hey, this is a resilient bunch. They can restart their impeachment crusade at another time. Maybe they’ll launch seven separate impeachment weeks before they eventually get bored and forget any of this ever happened.

Also, Kristen Welker is taking some time away from the 24/7 grind of undermining Western democracy. She’ll have to both-sides Donald Trump’s backyard orphans vs. puppies fight club some other time. “Meet the Press” has been preempted by NBC’s Ryder Cup coverage.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Saturday September 30, 2023 · 12:25 PM PDT

2023/09/30 · 12:25

Not sure if you’ve heard the news, but the president of the United States is old! Just look at him! That gray hair. Those pronounced forehead furrows. That slight forward tilt when he walks. And he sometimes stutters a bit—perhaps because of the lifelong stuttering problem he’s worked so hard to overcome. But let’s just pretend that’s “an age thing,” too, and he’s cognitively impaired!

Whatever are we going to do about it? Maybe we need a candidate three years younger, who thinks he ran against someone he never ran against, believes World War II is right around the corner, and is certain he can solve California’s seemingly intractable drought problem very easily, even though he didn’t lift a finger to help during the four years he was president.

Or … maybe not. You may have already seen that Donald John Trump gave a “speech” to the California GOP Friday night. And it was bad. Really bad. Even by Trump standards. It was like gaping into a yawning Icelandic hellmouth—or a chupacabra’s eyes as it takes a dump on your lawn.

Take your pick. It defies easy description—perhaps that’s why so few media outlets are bothering to describe it.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Friday September 29, 2023 · 12:50 PM PDT

2023/09/29 · 12:50

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 28: U.S. President Joe Biden answers questions after introducing his budget request for fiscal year 2023 in the State Dining Room of the White House on March 28, 2022 in Washington, DC. After giving remarks on his $5.8 trillion budget request, President Biden spoke on the speech he gave in Poland over the weekend. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

On Thursday, Joe Biden gave one of the most important speeches of his presidency. But because it didn’t include bitter complaints about low-flow toilets, his secret plan to avoid World War II, or stream-of-consciousness musings on perennial kitchen table issues like whale-murdering windmills, the legacy media largely gave it a pass.

And though the speech at times focused on the honor and heroism of Biden’s late friend, Arizona Sen. John McCain, at no point did Biden get confused and forget that he never ran against him.

What Biden did do was give a fierce defense of democracy, the Constitution, and American values—all while name-checking Donald Trump and the extreme MAGA movement that threatens the basic foundations of our republic. Unfortunately, he didn’t do it while falling over on his bike, so most Americans still don’t know about it.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Thursday September 28, 2023 · 1:04 PM PDT

2023/09/28 · 13:04

WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 02: Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) speaks during a news conference following a weekly policy luncheon on April 2, 2019 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Zach Gibson/Getty Images)

Republicans have long sought to embrace working-class Americans—who often jibe with them on culture war issues—while stabbing them in the back and claiming they just got shivved by a cheese-knife-wielding liberal.

If you need a timely illustration of this, consider Donald Trump’s pro-union posturing as the autoworkers strike grinds on. UAW President Shawn Fain knows Trump has been a lackey for the billionaire class—and he’s said so publicly—but Trump is hoping to consolidate his support among blue-collar workers who only notice what he says, not what he does. And so he pretends—with the help of a pliant network of right-wing propagandists posing as news outlets—that the people who vote for him in 2024 won’t be signing up for four more years of financial swirlies.

Of course, Republicans’ pro-corporate class warfare is especially galling when it comes to the IRS—specifically the provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act that have allowed the agency to hire more employees to go after wealthy tax cheats. You just knew Republicans would demagogue this issue—~~implying~~ stating outright that these new workers will go after you—when, in fact, they actually are pursuing wealthy tax cheats. (But hey, if the IRS can do this to them, they can do it to you, assuming you’ve ever attempted to deduct dead-corporate-whistleblower disposal as a business expense.)

Now, at least one Democratic senator is pointing out exactly how empty the GOP’s pro-worker posturing is, noting that Republicans’ attempts to enfeeble the IRS amount to little more than a reach-around for their wealthy donors.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Wednesday September 27, 2023 · 11:49 AM PDT

2023/09/27 · 11:49

WASHINGTON, DC - DECEMBER 13: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listens as John J. Ray III, CEO of FTX Group, testifies during the House Financial Services Committee hearing titled Investigating the Collapse of FTX Part I, at the US Capitol on December 13, 2022 in Washington, DC. Ray took over FTX after the resignation of Sam Bankman-Fried. (Photo by Nathan Howard/Getty Images)

Celebrated billionaire and captain of infancy Elon Musk may have bought X, the site formerly known as Twitter, lock, stock, and Catturd, but Rep. Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez still owns the place. And she’s not above reminding Musk that he spent $44 billion just to be mocked on his own website.

For some reason, middle-aged men with no discernible sense of humor still think they can own AOC on social media, and they keep discovering how disastrously wrong they are.

On Tuesday, an employee of the “satirical” conservative website The Babylon Bee—which is one of Musk’s favorite sites and has worked with Kevin Sorbo, so you just know it’s hilarious and edgy—took a shot at AOC over her observation that immigration has always been a big part of American life, particularly in New York, which has recently become a flashpoint for anti-immigrant sentiment.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Tuesday September 26, 2023 · 12:32 PM PDT

2023/09/26 · 12:32

US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper (L) and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Army General Mark A. Milley (R) listen while US President Donald Trump speaks before a meeting with senior military leaders in the Cabinet Room of the White House in Washington DC on October 7, 2019. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP) (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

It may seem odd that the leading presidential candidate from one of our two major parties is running on preventing his opponent from “weaponizing” the government while at the same time promising to rain vengeance down on his political enemies with the full force of his office, but that’s precisely where we are right now.

Donald Trump—who never misses a chance to claim the 91 felony counts he’s collected are all illegitimate and politically motivated, as if President Joe Biden forced him to store top secret government documents in his bathroom/auxiliary dining room—has already flatly asserted he’d lock up his political opponents if given the chance.

Of course, we’ve got a long way to go before the 2024 general election, and there’s a nonzero chance that, a year from now, Trump will be making his own MAGA swag in a prison workroom for 20 cents an hour after his campaign inks a lucrative contract with a for-profit prison, but the danger Trump presents—and openly promises—is so grave, it needs to be squarely dealt with. Now.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Daily Kos

Community

Sunday September 24, 2023 · 1:16 PM PDT

2023/09/24 · 13:16

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy almost certainly missed his calling. He should have been a middle-school teacher. That way, when his unruly charges inevitably shoved a chloroform-soaked rag in his mouth, buried him up to his neck in California clay loam, and slathered his gawping, cow-eyed melon in fruit bat pheromones and expired ghee, at least federal workers would have still gotten their paychecks on time.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Saturday September 23, 2023 · 12:25 PM PDT

2023/09/23 · 12:25

We’re on Day 3 of “David Brooks Drank $60 Worth of Hooch at an Airport and Indirectly Blamed Joe Biden”-Gate. Because he’s not Donald Trump—who loves to grab a bad news cycle and take it for a few extra spins around the block—this will probably be the end of this episode of “Rich Guy Orders Three Large Tumblers of Premium Bourbon and Instantly Feels Your Pain.”

In fact, on PBS’ “NewsHour” on Friday, Brooks, who appeared on a panel with host William Brangham and The Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart, even attempted an apology of sorts. The New York Times columnist didn’t cop to essentially lying about our nation’s long and difficult economic recovery from the depths of pandemic disruption. Instead, he claimed he’d been “insensitive” to the plight of ordinary Americans who, on a good day, might comfortably afford two well drinks at the dive bar across from the downtown Greyhound station.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Friday September 22, 2023 · 1:55 PM PDT

2023/09/22 · 13:55

NEW YORK, NY - DECEMBER 13: Journalist David Brooks speaks at the launch of the unaffiliated political organization known as No Labels December 13, 2010 at Columbia University in New York City. The event features numerous politicians, journalists and citizens in a series of panels which address some of the most intractable political issues in America. Led by Republican political consultant Mark McKinnon, Democratic consultant Kiki McLean, political advisor Nancy Jacobson and CNN contributor John Avlon, the group looks to find solutions to problems partly by getting politicians to put aside their partisan behavior in order to find common ground. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) — This guy.

UPDATE: Saturday, Sep 23, 2023 · 8:22:34 PM +00:00 · Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Brooks apologized Friday evening for his deceptive tweet. Sort of. Not really.

It’s usually pretty easy to ignore New York Times columnist David Brooks, who, along with eminently ignorable Washington Post columnist George Will, is what passes for an oasis in the sere, forbidding desert of intellectual conservatism these days.

But as Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson reported on Thursday, Brooks’ mealy takes on The Culture became impossible to ignore this week when he xweeted a xweet on X—the social media platform still pretty much known as Twitter—that was so out of touch it could have been crafted and focus-grouped by Mehmet Oz’s 2020 Senate campaign.

The tweet included a tableau of Biden-era economic horrors: a serviceable burger, a modest pile of crinkle cut fries, three empty ketchup packets, a ripe-ish tomato slice, and some unremarkable greens for—$78?! Oh, and it looks like there’s a tumbler of something, too. Could be some sort of brown liquor. And is that maybe an empty tumbler in the upper left there?

But still. Seventy-eight dollars?! What economic evils hath that fiend Joe Biden wrought this time?

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Thursday September 21, 2023 · 12:10 PM PDT

2023/09/21 · 12:10

A man dressed as Trump in a prison jump suit protests in front of Trump International Hotel & Tower on January 06, 2021 in New York City. - Donald Trump's supporters stormed a session of Congress held today, January 6, to certify Joe Biden's election win, triggering unprecedented chaos and violence at the heart of American democracy and accusations the president was attempting a coup. (Photo by Angela Weiss / AFP) (Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images)

During her first broadcast after taking over as host of NBC’s venerable Sunday gab show “Meet the Press,” enemy of democracy Kristen Welker interviewed Donald Trump for some inane reason and asked him if he worries about going to prison when he lies in bed at night. And if new reports are accurate, like nearly every other answer he gave during that interview, his signature “sir story” response was a lie.

“I don't even think about it,” Trump replied. “I'm built a little differently I guess, because I have had people come up to me and say, 'How do you do it, sir? How do you do it?' I don't even think about it.”

How does he do it? Well, chances are he doesn’t. As one media fact-checker long ago noted, “a ‘sir’ is a flashing red light that [Trump] is speaking from his imagination rather than his memory.” (And another notes that if Trump relates “a story in which an unnamed person calls him ‘sir,’ it’s probably invented.“)

Now there’s even more support that “sir” lied to Welker—beyond the definitive “Trump’s lips were moving, and he was neither eating a canned ham on the veranda with one hand like a Bosc pear, nor blithely admitting he’d hoped Mike Pence would be hanged.”

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Wednesday September 20, 2023 · 11:34 AM PDT

2023/09/20 · 11:34

English singer-songwriter and guitarist Eric Clapton performs on stage during a concert at the Stadthalle in Vienna, Austria, on June 6, 2019. (Photo by GEORG HOCHMUTH / APA / AFP) / Austria OUT (Photo credit should read GEORG HOCHMUTH/AFP via Getty Images) — "Lay down, Sally. Your temp is 102, and your lips look kinda blue."

Eric “Slowhand” Clapton is putting his still-considerable star power to work for Robert “Slowmind” Kennedy Jr., hoping to boost the lyin’* scion’s prospects in his quixotic, one-person Democratic primary slap-fight.

Clapton, who over the past few years has dipped his conspicuously polio-impervious toe into the shallow end of our nation’s roiling anti-vax pool, is now using his talents for evil, elevating Kennedy’s conservative-fueled campaign against an incumbent Democratic president prior to the most important presidential election of our lifetimes. On Monday, Clapton helped raise more than $2 million at a private fundraiser supporting Kennedy’s presidential bid.

RELATED STORY: Eric Clapton says he won't play venues that require COVID-19 vaccinations, because of course he did

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Daily Kos

Community

Sunday September 17, 2023 · 12:12 PM PDT

2023/09/17 · 12:12

BEDMINSTER, NEW JERSEY - JULY 28: Former U.S. President Donald Trump looks on during the pro-am prior to the LIV Golf Invitational - Bedminster at Trump National Golf Club Bedminster on July 28, 2022 in Bedminster, New Jersey. (Photo by Cliff Hawkins/Getty Images)

I just realized I’m the unwitting victim of one of the most fiendish long cons in the history of grifting. Here’s my story.

Several weeks ago, Jessica Sutherland, my wonderful editor here at Daily Kos, told me one of the muckety-mucks in the organization had suggested I write a fun and breezy weekly review of the Sunday morning political shows. What?! Hey, that sounds great. I love that idea, my wonderful editor! What an honor! I’m truly humbled.

And so I put together a formal proposal, the scheme plotters at Daily Kos accepted it with a scarcely audible cackle, and Sunday Four-Play debuted on July 30, just in time for a fresh wave of Donald Trump indictments.

Needless to say, I don’t have a crystal ball and didn’t know what was coming, but because I so eagerly accepted this plum assignment, I’m now essentially compelled to watch this unholy hippo fuck of a Trump interview on “Meet the Press” today instead of languidly pouring molten pig iron into my freshly voided eye sockets with a Hello Kitty glitter spoon like I’d originally planned on doing.

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