Somebody needed a fix

Time for a speech with MAGA props behind him. 

What are those prop people thinking when he says things like this?

US attack on Iran nearly two weeks on

 

I have a guess answer:  Shipping companies don't want to try to make the run, so there's no client to escort.

I wonder if he said that on Fox News.  I'm sure MAGA is willing to suffer.

Newt is still alive?!  He happens to be right about this.

I'm sure MAGA is willing to suffer.

I was living in San Francisco at the time.  We were limited to either odd or even days to even go the gas station depending on the number on our car licenses, and then we had to wait in very long lines, burning gas while we waited.  People were often in bad moods.

UPDATE 07:14 pm:

Somewhere I heard 150.  I guess that could be considered approximately 140.

The dead and wounded would like a word.

UPDATE 03/12/2026:

I'm shocked.

Truly horrific

 

DOGE kills 27 in Kentucky and Missouri

 

But will anyone tell them that's why?

Fox better be careful

Watch it scroll

Also...

What do you think, MAGA?  Did you vote for that?

“If prices go up, it’s because of other people’s reactions to America’s laws,” his homeland secretary, Kristi Noem, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

[...]

Trump railed against Canada’s trade surplus with the United States: “We don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited Energy, should make our own Cars, and have more Lumber than we can ever use.”

Despite Trump’s assertion that the U.S does not need Canada, one-quarter of the oil that the America consumes per day is from its ally to the north. He reiterated his false claim that America subsidizes Canada.

Trump contended that without that surplus, “Canada ceases to exist as a viable Country. Harsh but true! Therefore, Canada should become our Cherished 51st State. Much lower taxes, and far better military protection for the people of Canada — AND NO TARIFFS!”

[...]

About 60% of U.S. crude oil imports are from Canada.

[...]

Larry Summers, treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, said the tariffs were “a self-inflicted wound to the American economy.”

[...]

Outside analyses make clear that Trump’s tariffs would hurt the voters that he intended to help, meaning that he might ultimately need to find a resolution.

  AP

Not unless they go to the White House with pitchforks. He doesn't need them now.

More Dems like this, please.

"Spectacular" is one descriptor.  

UPDATE 02/03/2025:

Hello, Senator John Kennedy.  (I'm assuming his parents had high hopes for the man.)

The worst vice-president pick in history?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ooopsie

Of course she and her attorneys  “look forward to appealing this decision and taking this case to the US supreme court”.

October 5, 2020

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that allowed a lawsuit to move forward against a Kentucky clerk who was jailed in 2015 after refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The high court said Monday it would not take the case involving Kim Davis, the former clerk of Rowan County, and two same-sex couples who had sued her. Soon after the 2015 Supreme Court decision in which same-sex couples won the right to marry nationwide, Davis, a Christian who has a religious objection to same-sex marriage, stopped issuing all marriage licenses.

  AP

I guess they forgot.

Chickens still roosting

In Republican primaries in Kentucky and Pennsylvania last night, GOP candidates who made election denial a centerpiece of their campaign had a rough time. Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a first-term incumbent Republican who vigorously rejected election fraud narratives and attempted to expand voting access in Kentucky, easily dispatched Stephen Knipper, who embarked on a tour of the state to “Restore Election Integrity.”

Knipper, who claimed fraud in elections happened largely through hacked voting machines, won a little over a quarter of the vote — a sign that there is a residual base of support for election deniers in a GOP primary, but not nearly enough to win even in a conservative state.

  Politico

Well, at least Kentucky.

In Pennsylvania, meanwhile, Republicans who rejected election denialism turned back candidates who supported Trump’s claims in three important contests.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another day, another American mass shooting

There have been more mass killings than days so far this year.  Sadly, shrug, there's nothing we can do about it.

Where is that sarcasm font?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 09:26 am:  Ooops, there's another one.

Republicans don't have to be honest or right; they just have to feed the base red meat.

UPDATE 04/17/2023:

Four people were killed and 28 others were injured, some critically, in a shooting at a birthday party on Saturday night in the city of Dadeville, Ala., authorities said.

The attack took place at the Mahogany Masterpiece dance studio just after 10:30 p.m. local time as people gathered for a Sweet 16 celebration.

[...]

Heidi Smith, the marketing director of Ivy Creek Healthcare, which runs a hospital in Dadeville, said the hospital treated at least 15 gunshot victims.

Smith said at least 17 ambulances responded to the scene.

[...]

There have been 161 mass shootings in the U.S. so far this year, according to the independent group Gun Violence Archive. The group defines a mass shooting as any event in which there were four or more victims, excluding the shooter.

[...]

Authorities have not released details about the victims or their ages. But the shooting at the sweet 16 birthday party comes as firearms have become the leading killer of children in the U.S. In 2020, gun violence overtook car accidents as the leading cause of death in people 19 years old or younger.

  NPR

Another day, another mass shooting in America

Make that two days and two mass shootings.

Thoughts and prayers should take care of this uniquely American scourge.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 02:34 pm:

Fighting the good fight

Expect Missouri and Kentucky to try to make it illegal to cross state borders to obtain an abortion.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Coming soon to a state near you

Crying in the Kentucky wilderness

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

MAGA v. McConnell

Former President Trump is vetting possible candidates to remove Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his leadership position, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Sources familiar with the situation told the Journal that Trump has been speaking with senators and allies to gauge if there is any interest in deposing McConnell, though lawmakers and aides told the publication there has so far been little enthusiasm for the prospect.

  The Hill

Works for me. Replace evil with idiocy. 

 ...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Smart move by White House ad dept

The White House released a series of videos on Monday to bring attention to failing infrastructure in Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's home state of Kentucky in an effort to gather support for President Biden's infrastructure bill.

As the Lexington Herald-Leader reports, the videos focused on Eastern Kentucky residents struggling to get access to broadband and clean drinking water.

[...]

[BarbiAnn Maynard, a clean water activist,] describes her local water system as being "on the edge of total collapse."

Maynard also pointed out failing roads that were hollowed out by coal mining activity.

"The coal mines mined under our roads so there's hollow spots. There was no enforcement of the weight limit so they let the trucks drive overloaded on our roads," Maynard explains. In the video, Maynard drives past a large sign positioned on a destroyed bridge that reads, "China build us a bridge."

"There's about 25 houses on the other side of that road and they have no bridge, no access in or out," Maynard said.

[...]

McConnell has signaled some support for a bipartisan-led infrastructure package that have been proposed but he has maintained that stopping Biden's agenda is his top priority.

  The Hill

Democrats should drop leaflets over every county in Kentucky with a quote from McConnell saying just that.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Whoa, surprise!

The [Kentucky] state Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would create three days of early voting, including the Saturday before an election. It would let counties set up locations where any registered state voter could cast a ballot, and it would create an online portal that voters could use to make sure their ballots are counted.

[...]

The measure passed the state Senate in a 33-3 vote. It heads back to the state House, where an earlier version passed with only four legislators voting against it.

[...]

“We indeed are transforming the way in which we will elect our public officials, and we will ensure the integrity of the ballot to eliminate things like voter fraud, cheating, ballot harvesting and the like,” state Senate Majority Leader Damon Thayer (R) said Tuesday.

  The Hill

Aren't you afraid of Trump, Damon?

Kentucky is not a state I would have presumed to be bucking the trend to resstrict voting rights we're seeing these days.  Glad to be surprised.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mitch, in trouble, working on his legacy

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has compiled a short list of successors in his home state of Kentucky, preparing for the possibility that he does not serve out his full term, Kentucky Republicans tell The Intercept.

The list is topped by his protégé, state Attorney General Daniel Cameron, and also includes former United Nations Ambassador Kelly Craft, whose billionaire coal magnate husband is a major McConnell donor, as well as Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams, a former McConnell Scholar.

Under current law, the power to appoint McConnell’s replacement falls to Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear. But new legislation McConnell is pushing in the Kentucky General Assembly would strip the governor of that power and put it into the hands of the state GOP.

[...]

McConnell’s denunciation of former President Donald Trump — even as it was accompanied by a vote of acquittal and a pledge to endorse the former president in 2024 if he is the GOP nominee — has brought on calls for his censure by party leaders across the state. A candidate running in McConnell’s mold would face an uphill climb through a primary in the new Republican Party — unless, that is, the candidate has the benefit of incumbency.

[...]

If the bill becomes law, the appointment to fill a vacancy will be selected from a list of three names submitted by the state executive committee of the same political party as the senator who held the vacant seat.

  The Intercept

It's possible that Mitch is planning on stepping down before he faces the possibility of being primaried by the new Trumpublican Party. He has to know Trump is out to get him for his speech after the second impeachment excoriating Trump. Mitch does nothing that isn't precisely calculated, so I have to believe the speech was meant to put him on the right side of history after he leaves Congress. But the backlash may exceed even what he was expecting, and to avoid the ignominy of censure, he promised loyalty to Trump should he run for the presidency in 2024. (Personally, I don't think Trump will. I think he'll just threaten it to keep his hold on the party.)

According to the bill, the appointee from that list will then serve until a successor has been elected by voters. The legislation goes on to list instructions on when elections take place in the event of a vacancy.

[...]

Multiple sources say it is McConnell who is pushing this bill, but the claimed reasons for why he is pushing the legislation vary from health concerns to the makeup of the upper chamber.

[...]

Other Republicans in the Kentucky Legislature, who asked not to be identified over fear of reprisal from their party, see this move as less about McConnell’s health and more about hand-selecting his replacement and giving that successor the benefit of incumbency. One frustrated Republican elected official, who declined to be named for the same reason, referred to the bill as McConnell’s “escape hatch.”

[...]

Others close to McConnell say he is backing the bill because of the razor-thin margins in the U.S. Senate. For those Republicans, McConnell is seeking to protect the upper chamber from adding an additional Democrat. McConnell’s health has been a concern since boyhood. In 1944, he contracted polio and with his mother’s persistence, the young McConnell recovered and learned to walk again. In 2003, McConnell underwent a triple bypass heart surgery. In late October 2020, McConnell dismissed concerns over his health after appearing with bruised and bandaged hands days before his reelection. The previous year, the Kentucky Republican spent weeks recuperating after a fall which forced him to have surgery for a shoulder injury.

You can't kill Satan's spawn.

How does McConnell keep getting elected?

And he doesn't give a shit about any of them.

Which is what Republicans do every chance they get.  That's what the Trump tax cuts did.  That's not what the $2,000 checks would do.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE: