We shall see

Mitch McConnell is largely responsible for the shape this country is in.  And he's not going to be around for the next Congress, so...he can sit his ass down and watch what happens like the rest of us.

Of course they did

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

UPDATE 11/16/2024:  If that's not enough...

The Trump transition team is electing to bypass FBI background checks on some of its nominees, opting instead to use a private company. They are not required to do this, although every incoming president since World War 2 has.

[...]

Trump [is] talking about making his Cabinet appointments as “recess appointments” to get them in office prior to Senate confirmation hearings and votes. That would mean that both the House and the Senate would have to vote to adjourn. With a 3 seat majority in the Senate and a 4-5 seat majority in the House, it would take almost every Republican in both Chambers to go along with that after Trump takes office.

If one of the Chambers (most likely the Senate), does not agree to adjourn but the other does, then the President has the power to order them adjourned at that point. However, that has never been done in the history of the United States.

[...]

Once again we have to rely on the courage and integrity of a handful of establishment Republicans to stand up to Trump and stand for the Constitution. Each successive year since 2017, the number of Republicans willing to do that has steadily decreased. It may be zero now.

  Meidas Touch

That would be my guess.

Surprise, surprise

WASHINGTON—The Trump transition team is considering a draft executive order that establishes a “warrior board” of retired senior military personnel with the power to review three- and four-star officers and to recommend removals of any deemed unfit for leadership.

If Donald Trump approves the order, it could fast-track the removal of generals and admirals found to be “lacking in requisite leadership qualities,” according to a draft of the order reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. But it could also create a chilling effect on top military officers, given the president-elect’s past vow to fire “woke generals,” referring to officers seen as promoting diversity in the ranks at the expense of military readiness.

  MSN

"Retired" personnel like General Mike QAnon Nut Flynn?

Also...

Also...

Yes, the Constitutional Rights of all Americans is Trump's top priority.

Also...

Also...

What does he know about national defense?

Also...

What does she know about national security???  

If we're attacked by dogs or goats, we're golden.

UPDATE 11/13/2024:

Only the best people.  Actually, I don't really care about his personal family life.  But his qualifications and his MAGA attitudes are appalling.

I have no doubt.  Makes you wonder if the Trump administration is bent on destroying the US military, and now that I say that, it seems a very likely goal.

I doubt it.  Word is that the Pentagon is currently considering ways to avoid Trump's worst and illegal ideas.  But when he appoints General Mike Flynn as the top guy, and finds other MAGA generals to replace the ones he's currently working to purge, it will come down to the soldiers themselves whether they'll follow such orders.  I don't have a lot of confidence in them.

Probably joking.  But who knows?  OK, definitely joking - 10 years???  Right?  Maybe he should have been appointed to the Department of Health - or whatever they're going to have for- if anything - and now that I say that, I'm not sure they won't abolish all health agencies.  Or give them over to RFK, Jr, which would be essentially the same thing.

Yikes!

Department of Government Efficiency - DOGE - as in Dogecoin.  Musk and Trump are going to attempt to turn US currency (and world currency) to dodgy cryptocurrency, which is where they've been moving their fortunes.

Well, they owned the libs, and that's what's important.

UPDATE 01:49 pm:  And why nothing for Bobby yet?

“The stuff that he eats is really, like, bad,” Kennedy said during an interview on “The Joe Polish Show,” drawing laughter from the audience.

“Campaign food is always bad, but the food that goes onto that airplane is, like, just poison,” Kennedy added, saying that “you’re either given KFC or Big Macs.”

Kennedy went as far to say that he considers some of the options “inedible.”

  The Hill

You're given that because that's what Trump wants.

Kennedy, who dropped his own presidential bid and threw his support behind Trump in the final leg of the 2024 election, now appears poised to take on a role in the president-elect’s second administration.

The idea of him taking on an advisory role with a “direct line to POTUS” has been floated, according to a source privy to discussions about Kennedy this cycle, though the source said nothing is as of yet “solid or set in stone.”

[...]

The president-elect said he would let Kennedy “go wild” on the government’s health care systems, a line that his son Donald Trump Jr. also enthusiastically repeated to conservative media after his father’s victory.

Gotta give him a job first.

UPDATE 11/14/2024:  And there it is...

Also...

Sexual assault seems to be almost a prerequisite for getting on the Trump administration list.

UPDATE 11/17/2024:

Congress Trying to Trump-Proof the Country

Closing the barn door after the horse is out, yes. But, at least they realize they need triage.

Last week [...] brought the unusual spectacle of a Republican Congress moving to thwart a Republican president, with the Senate unanimously voting to hold pro forma sessions through the rest of August. [Ed: Avoiding Trump recess appointments.]

[...]

Senate Republicans have teamed up with Democrats to introduce two bills to shield Mueller and his probe.

One bill, authored by Coons and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), would direct a panel of federal judges to review Mueller’s firing and potentially reinstate him within two weeks if they find Trump had no good cause for his ouster. Another bill, introduced by Sens. Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), would have the judges weigh in and potentially block the firing before it occurs.

[...]

After repeated threats from the White House to cut off billions in payments to insurance companies that subsidizes health insurance for the sickest Americans, Republicans in Congress are moving to Trump-proof the vulnerable individual health insurance market.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is crafting a bill that would appropriate the cost sharing reduction (CSR) payments Trump is currently making on a month-by-month basis for a full year, giving the insurance industry a measure of stability as they decide their 2018 rates and the counties where they will offer plans. Republicans and Democrats in the House are also working on legislation that would appropriate and guarantee the CSR funds.

[...]

When it came time for Congress to pass a temporary budget, they largely ignored the president’s wishes, joining with Democrats to maintain and in several areas increase the funding for programs Trump aimed to cut.

  TPM

Suddenly, Congress Critters are having to work for a living.

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

Blocked Blockhead

I missed this. I knew it was being talked about, and then I don't know where I went.

The Senate blocked President Trump from being able to make recess appointments on Thursday as lawmakers leave Washington for their August break.

[...]

The move, which requires the agreement of every senator, means the Senate will be in session every three business days throughout the August recess.

[...]

The Senate has used the brief sessions to block recess appointments for decades, including last year to keep President Barack Obama from being able to fill a vacant Supreme Court seat.

[...]

The spokesman added on Friday that the Senate was holding the brief sessions because they didn't get a deal on adjourning, not specifically to block the president from making recess appointments.

"So to meet our constitutional requirement of meeting every few days, we’re doing pro formas. We didn’t do it to block Trump," the aide said.

  The Hill

Right.

This action, which is clearly aimed at cutting off any attempt to fire Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III as a prelude to defenestrating Robert Mueller, required the unanimous consent of the Senate, which, you may recall, has a Republican majority these days. This would seem to indicate that the president* has lost what Richard Nixon called during the death throes of his own presidency his "political base in Congress." Or in the upper half of it, at any rate.

[...]

The president* went to West Virginia on Thursday night for the purpose of being publicly adored. In addition to spouting off against the whole Russia business, the president* also took a whack at Congress for not giving him what he wanted on healthcare. That was guaranteed to endear him further to Mitch McConnell, and to people like Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, and West Virginia's own Shelley Moore Capito.

[...]

And this is my favorite part:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), doing wrap up for the entire Senate, locked in nine "pro-forma" sessions — brief meetings that normally last roughly a minute.

Lisa Murkowski is going to appear in his dreams for the rest of his life. The odds of his already having agreed to sell Alaska back to Russia get better by the hour.

  Charles P Pierce

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

Speaking of Firing

President Donald Trump is still mulling what to do about Jeff Sessions, but congressional Republicans, pro-Trump journalists and members of his own administration are sending increasingly explicit signals that firing the man Trump referred to as his “beleaguered” attorney general would spark a riot in the GOP.

  TPM

Yes, that's bluff bullshit, and I have to assume the tRump knows it.

The Post reported that Trump has spoken to advisers about installing a new attorney general when Congress is out for August recess, which would allow the appointee to skirt around Senate confirmation and serve through the end of 2017.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle already have signaled that they would use procedural maneuvers to block such a plan.

[...]

The White House sent the Post a brief statement from Trump denying that he was considering a recess appointment.

“More fake news from the Amazon Washington Post,” the President said, referring to the fact that the newspaper is owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

[...]

[Sessions] has stayed away from the press except to float the rollout of several new policies guaranteed to please the President. These include cutting off federal funding for sanctuary cities that don’t allow federal immigration agents to enter their prisons and jails and a new crackdown on intelligence leaks.

Mouse.

Sessions is headed for a temporary respite from the political heat in Washington, as he’s scheduled to spend the next few days in El Salvador, where the Associated Press reported he is expected to meet with lawmakers to discuss ways to eradicate gang violence.

Send Sessions out on the streets. He'll put the fear of God in 'em.

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

Interesting

President Barack Obama violated the Constitution when he bypassed the Senate last year to appoint three members of the National Labor Relations Board, a federal appeals court ruled Friday in a far-reaching decision that could severely limit a chief executive's powers to make recess appointments.

[...]

The court [found] that under the Constitution, a recess occurs only during the breaks between formal year-long sessions of Congress, not just any informal break when lawmakers leave town. It also held that presidents can bypass the Senate only when administration vacancies occur during a recess.

  NYT

Good.

If it stands, it could invalidate hundreds of board decisions over the past year, including some that make it easier for unions to organize.

Not so good.

"The decision is novel and unprecedented," [White House press secretary Jay] Carney said. "It contradicts 150 years of practice by Democratic and Republican administrations."

So it's about time they stopped getting away with it.

The Justice Department hinted that the administration would ask the Supreme Court to overturn the decision, which was rendered by three conservative judges appointed by Republican presidents.

That's going to be sticky.

Wow, Imagine That

Two of the top partisans in the U.S. Senate on Wednesday found themselves diametrically opposed to their former positions on presidential recess appointments, with each man virtually swapping their closely held views for their opponents’ with regards to the always-controversial tactic.

[...]

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), stumbled over his own words from less than a decade ago, revealing that he’s actually in favor of recess appointments when they’re made by a member of his own party.

[...]

Similarly, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) went 180 degrees against his prior opinion on recess appointments while Congress is still technically in session.

  Raw Story