Billionaire chaos agent Peter Thiel is fed up with democracy, won't fund anybody in 2024

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Saturday November 11, 2023 · 1:00 PM PST

2023/11/11 · 13:00

no image description available — Mike Pence, Donald Trump, and Peter Thiel celebrate Trump's 2016 win

Billionaire and immortality enthusiast Peter Thiel, who placed a quixotic bet on Donald Trump in 2016, is standing down this election cycle, promising he won’t donate to Trump, or anyone else running for office, in 2024. Thiel’s abstention has been rumored since April, but in a move reminiscent of an addict who needs a sponsor to talk him off the ledge, Thiel asked Atlantic staff writer Barton Gellman to record his promise to stay out of politics in 2024 so he wouldn’t be tempted to renege.

And why is Thiel opting out? In part, it’s because he thinks Trump went too far and was a lot “crazier” and “more dangerous” than he expected.

Hmm, go figure.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

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Friday November 10, 2023 · 12:50 PM PST

2023/11/10 · 12:50

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday night’s election results, conservatives have been stumbling around like that soldier in the opening scene of “Saving Private Ryan” who keeps looking for his arm on the beach. But it appears they’ve finally zeroed in on a strategy to stanch the new waves of truculent young voters who keep insisting on securing their reproductive freedom: Somehow, some way, they must stop Taylor Swift.

Of course, they can’t be losing because their ideas are deeply unpopular. It must be some sort of deus ex machina that piggybacked in on a Jewish space laser. And so they’ve decided to blame a pop star. And, hey, considering the pop star, they do kind of have a point.

Maybe Swift should start dating George Soros. Not only would that make for an awesome pop song somewhere down the line—and no doubt a catchy portmanteau (Swiftos? Gaylor? Teorge?)—Republicans could also put all their excuses in one (admittedly kind of gross) bucket.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Community Contributors Team

Community

Thursday November 09, 2023 · 12:15 PM PST

2023/11/09 · 12:15

MANCHESTER, NEW HAMPSHIRE - JUNE 06: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a town-hall-style event at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College on June 06, 2023 in Manchester, New Hampshire. Christie, who filed paperwork earlier in the day that he would seek the 2024 Republican nomination, announced his candidacy at the event. Christie took aim at early frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, declaring that Trump had not delivered on a number of promises and saying his actions leading up to the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol had crossed a line. It is Christie's second run for president. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)

The primary—and only, really—goal of former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s presidential campaign should be to enfeeble Donald Trump, who is now so openly fascist he may soon start wearing his Mussolini Underoos on the outside of his pants. Otherwise, Christie’s just another lying blowhard doing lying blowhard things. Of course, at one point, it did appear that stopping Trump was the only reason Christie was running. After all, he couldn’t be trying to win, could he? Amazon sells more smallpox blankets than copies of his book.

But while Christie has rightly called out Trump over his brazen election lies, he’s cribbing straight from the big bleating meatloaf when it comes to abortion. Christie didn’t have a whole lot to say during Wednesday night’s GOP presidential debate, but he was a bubbling fount of nonsense while discussing abortion Thursday morning with Mika Brzezinski on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Brzezinski wanted to clarify Christie’s remarks on so-called “late-term” abortions, and Christie felt compelled to miss the forest for the trees. And maybe he can be forgiven for that because, in this case anyway, there are no fucking trees. But there’s still a lot of scaremongering on the issue, which has been true since Republicans started using abortion as an electoral cudgel in the wake of Roe v. Wade.

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Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Wednesday November 08, 2023 · 11:15 AM PST

2023/11/08 · 11:15

In this ad for a Biden-Harris 2024 coffee mug, President Joe Biden cheerfully sips from a"Dark Brandon"-themed coffee mug, saying "I like my coffee dark."

Joe Biden may be a feeble, addlepated old man who falls off his bike on his way to bingo night at the Ovaltine factory, but Dark Brandon is another story entirely. He’ll eff you up, man. He saw that New York Times/Siena poll on Sunday and, as Joe Biden cowered in fear in his basement, Dark Brandon sniggered derisively and intoned, “Hold my beer—which, as you can see, I’m drinking from the bleached, hollowed-out skull of the last Beltway pundit to underestimate me.”

The Dark Brandon meme—a sly nod to Biden’s entirely unearned reputation for fecklessness in spite of an impressive list of accomplishments—has become an unexpected sensation on social media, and the Biden campaign is taking full advantage.

Ahead of the Republican presidential debate in Miami on Wednesday—and in the immediate wake of yet another impressive Democratic showing at the ballot box—the Biden-Harris campaign is placing Dark Brandon signs around the debate venue to remind Republicans that Joe Biden can never be counted out.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Daily Kos

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Sunday November 05, 2023 · 11:26 AM PST

2023/11/05 · 11:26

TOPSHOT - US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky looks on during a meeting in New York on September 25, 2019, on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP) (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

For a guy who’s supposedly a multibillionaire, Donald Trump sure spends a lot of his time scrounging for ha’pennies with which to stuff his gross, linty, panko breading–lined pockets. That reality was on lurid display this week as his real estate empire-cum-perpetual grift machine got flayed over and over during testimony meant to establish just how yuuuge a fraud he and his company really are—and always have been.

Would a really rich guy stiff his blue collar contractors? Would he sell tacky NFTs for $99 a pop to a heaving throng of marks who are still hoping their Beanie Babies recover their value? Would he sell mail-order steaks? And would he sell out his country and, by extension, the whole of Western democracy for the chance to build a big tower in a country led by a brutal, murderous war criminal?

Trick question! He’d sell out his country for a week-old Wetzel’s Pretzel, and toss in Eric in his official Team CCCP banana hammock mankini.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Saturday November 04, 2023 · 10:42 AM PDT

2023/11/04 · 10:42

WASHINGTON, DC - OCTOBER 26: U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) gives a brief statement to reporters about the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine after a meeting with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the U.S. Capitol October 26, 2023 in Washington, DC. Albanese visited the White House on Wednesday for an official state visit and a state dinner. (Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

New House Speaker Mike Johnson, who will almost certainly turn into Jim Jordan if you get him wet or feed him after midnight, has a real problem with gay people. In fact, he thinks homosexuality is so seismically sinful, it has the unique power to end civilizations.

As Daily Kos’ Laura Clawson recently reported, Johnson once worked with the notorious gay-conversion group Exodus International on its annual Day of Truth event, a sad bastardization of the pro-LGBTQ+, anti-bullying Day of Silence. As Clawson put it, “The thinking behind the ‘Day of Truth’ appears to have been, ‘Oh, kids are going to oppose anti-LGBTQ+ bullying? Well, let’s organize a day to make clear that bullying is not going anywhere.’”

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Friday November 03, 2023 · 10:01 AM PDT

2023/11/03 · 10:01

CLEVELAND, OH - JULY 19: Former Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson delivers a speech on the second day of the Republican National Convention on July 19, 2016 at the Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland, Ohio. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump received the number of votes needed to secure the party's nomination. An estimated 50,000 people are expected in Cleveland, including hundreds of protesters and members of the media. The four-day Republican National Convention kicked off on July 18.. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Ben Carson, who achieved outsized fame in the ‘80s as the first brain surgeon in history to accidentally leave a pair of forceps in his own head, is back on television. Whether he knows it or not is an open question, but he is saying things. Weird things. Outrageous things. Things that only Ben Carson could—or would—say.

Carson endorsed Donald Trump at a speech in Iowa on Sunday (for president, in case you were wondering), and CNN’s Abby Phillip invited him on air this week to explain himself. It was eye-opening for everyone but Carson, who nearly always looks like someone who’s gotten up in the middle of the night to pee and is only marginally aware of where the toilet is.

Carson served as Trump’s Housing and Urban Development secretary for four years and left on good terms with his boss, which is just one indication of how incompetent he was. Another clue is the four years previous to that, when he was “doing” his “job.”

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Wednesday November 01, 2023 · 11:26 AM PDT

2023/11/01 · 11:26

ScreenShot2023-11-01at10.09.15AM.png — Alina Habba

If you ever find yourself in legal peril, you might want to consider hiring Alina Habba as your attorney. But only if you’re on trial for dropping a house on a witch, because if you hire her for committing crimes in the real world, you’ll likely be in for a rude awakening.

Habba, who averages one star on Yelp for her legal work and five for her spot-on Barry Zuckerkorn impression, is currently representing Donald Trump, a lifelong (alleged!) criminal and con man who was also a federal employee for a time. Trump is facing loads of legal peril, and Habba’s job is to go on teevee to convince millions of people who are already sure he’s innocent that the Brobdingnagian heap of criminal and civil accusations against him were all meticulously curated by a sitting president who’s nothing but a listless amalgam of advanced dementia symptoms. If, during sentencing, she somehow manages to score him a hard-bristled toothbrush for his weekly prison urinal cleanings, that’ll just be gravy.

On a recent appearance with Newsmax’s Carl Higbie, Habba claimed Trump isn’t worried about going to jail because he “did nothing wrong”—and, oh, the Secret Service will keep that from ever happening anyway.

RELATED STORY: Live coverage: Donald Trump, Jr. expected to take the stand in NYC civil fraud trial

Aldous J Pennyfarthing for Daily Kos

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Sunday October 29, 2023 · 11:54 AM PDT

2023/10/29 · 11:54

Remember “The Dating Game”? It was one of those shows that folks of a certain age would watch when we stayed home from school pretending to be bleeding from our eyeballs with hemorrhagic fever. Even as a kid it seemed odd to me that 1) anyone would go on a beach trip vacation alone with a stranger they’d just met, 2) they’d select their date, sight unseen, based on generic softball questions like “What’s your idea of a fun first date?” and 3) the woman would often look utterly stricken when she finally met her chosen suitor face to face, even though only one of the contestants ever turned out to be a serial killer. (That we know of, anyway.)

I couldn’t help but think of that show after Republicans chose Rep. Mike Johnson to lead the House for however long we have left until the rapture, when God finally calls Randy Quaid and his Igloo cooler full of squirrel heads home. The ordeal felt a bit like an episode of “The Dating Game” where Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan, and Johnson were the three eager bachelors and Republicans somehow decided Johnson was their least creepy option.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Saturday October 28, 2023 · 11:20 AM PDT

2023/10/28 · 11:20

WASHINGTON, DC - AUGUST 27: Ivanka Trump, daughter of U.S. President Donald Trump and White House senior adviser, addresses attendees as Trump prepares to deliver his acceptance speech for the Republican presidential nomination on the South Lawn of the White House August 27, 2020 in Washington, DC. Trump is scheduled to deliver the speech in front of 1500 invited guests. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

What could possibly be more entertaining than Ivanka Trump implicating her father in fraudulent business practices—right in front of his face? It’s difficult to fathom. Maybe George Santos inexplicably carrying a baby around the Capitol while screaming at randos? But only if the baby turns out to be Santos’ own clone or a preternaturally astute haggis or both.

Thanks to a new ruling from the judge presiding over Trump’s New York civil fraud trial, we’re about to be treated to just such a spectacle. If only cameras were allowed in the courtroom. It’s hard to imagine the court sketch artist being able to capture the subtle contours of Trump’s intricate emotional landscape without drawing daggers shooting from his eyes, stink lines over Judge Arthur Engoron’s poopy liberal head, and a solitary thought bubble featuring a 7-foot Jenga tower of Pepperoni Hot Pockets.

On Friday, Engoron ruled that Ivanka Trump will be required to testify in the ongoing trial, despite having been dismissed from the case in June on statute-of-limitation grounds.

And according to Laura Italiano, a veteran New York reporter who currently works for Insider on the “Trump Org is well and truly fucked” beat, her testimony could screw over a significant portion of her family—other than herself and the $2 Billion Dollar Man, of course. For instance, there was the favorable interest rate she secured on a $125 million loan for Trump’s Doral Golf Club in Miami.

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Friday October 27, 2023 · 12:57 PM PDT

2023/10/27 · 12:57

SIOUX CITY, IA - NOVEMBER 03: Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign event at Sioux Gateway Airport on November 3, 2022 in Sioux City, Iowa. Trump held the rally to support for Iowa GOP candidates ahead of the state's midterm election on November 8th. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)

Are Trump fans finally getting tired of Trump’s rallies? Would they prefer to stay home—or head for the exits early—to watch History Channel footage of Mussolini and Hitler instead? And what were Hitler’s views on low-flow toilets, the ongoing scourge of CFC-free hair sprays, and the brutal depredations of whale-murdering windmills, anyway? Answer: He had none! Which may explain why he failed to take Stalingrad and no one in the Republican Party wants to name an airport after him. Well, not yet, anyway.

According to a new analysis by Daily Beast political reporter Jake Lahut, Trump’s rallies, once a raging rash on the buttocks of our body politic, have cooled down in the run-up to the Jan. 15 Iowa caucuses—for a variety of reasons.

RELATED STORY: Donald Trump's speeches are turning into incomprehensible, fascist pablum

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

Community

Thursday October 26, 2023 · 1:06 PM PDT

2023/10/26 · 13:06

WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 13: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke testifies before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee March 13, 2018 in Washington, DC. Zinke testified on the proposed FY2019 budget for the Interior Department. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Republicans sure do love the military! Or at least say they do—right up to the point where they’re asked to take care of our veterans’ health and well-being. Then they’re suddenly like Donald Trump and his cavalcade of coffee boys. Toxic burn pit victims? Who? Never heard of them!

In fact, Republicans’ fervid, leg-humping embrace of our military is so clearly performative, they can’t even bother to check whether it’s our military they’re praising or, say, Indonesia’s. But hey, what’s the difference, really? Republicans don’t want to pay for Indonesian soldiers’ health care, either. Or much of anyone else’s, for that matter. After all, in their Elysian, health care-free coup-topia, even Lord Fetus gets the shaft.

In what is now a well-established pattern, Rep. Ryan Zinke—the scandal-tainted former Trump administration interior secretary and ex-Navy SEAL—shared a tweet on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, that was clearly meant to wish the U.S. Navy a happy birthday. And it did. Sort of.

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Billionaire chaos agent Peter Thiel is fed up with democracy, won't fund anybody in 2024

GOP losers keep losing, and now they're blaming Taylor Swift (and those meddling kids)

Mika Brzezinski calls out Chris Christie over his reckless and dishonest framing on abortion

Dark Brandon to haunt third GOP presidential debate as Democrats celebrate their big night

Sunday Four-Play: Zelenskyy seems skeptical that Trump will bring peace, and Mike Johnson lies

More nonsense from Mike Johnson: New speaker blamed Rome's fall on homosexuality

Ben Carson goes on TV to tell us Trump's call to terminate the Constitution was no biggie

Trump's lawyer appears to think the Secret Service will keep her client out of jail. Uh, no

Sunday Four-Play: Mike Johnson is a skilled (as in sociopathic) liar, and the GOP still loves Putin

Ivanka's New York fraud trial testimony could prove 'highly damaging' to Trump and sons

Are Trump rallies dwindling because he's busy or because they're stale as week-old white bread?

Another Republican congratulates U.S. military using photo of a foreign ship. It's a pattern