EMPTY SEAT, EMPTY PROMISES, AND EMPTY HEADS

Despite New York’s Representative George Santos‘ protestations that he had done nothing wrong and was going nowhere unless his Third District voters decided otherwise, he was expelled from the House of Representatives. Still, Santos suspected his end was near, and as Redd Foxx was fond of saying, “When you see the handwriting on the wall, you know you’re in the toilet.” Even after the House Ethics Committee’s investigation and revelation of fraud and scandal within the freshman lawmaker’s campaign, he had survived one attempt to cast him aside. But, “the bullies,” as he termed them, won out on the second attempt, after several Democrats and Republicans flipped their previous votes, and in particular after Republican House member Max Miller revealed that Santos had fraudulently used his and his mother’s credit cards to add to his supposed campaign coffers. The 311 to 114 vote was not completed before Santos grabbed his coat and bolted out the door into a gaggle of media reporters. When asked if he would use his privileges as a former congressman to visit the House floor in the future, he barked, “To hell with this place.” As he walked toward his limo to transport him away, he was seen looking toward the heavens, seeking guidance from the Almighty, saying, “God, are you there? It’s me…Cher!”

Santos has upcoming court appearances next year from being charged in May with 13 counts (for which he posted $500K bail) that include wire fraud, money laundering, theft of public funds and lying to the House of Representatives…to which he has pleaded “not guilty,” calling it a “witch hunt.” In October the Justice Department charged him with 23 counts tied to campaign fraud, putting forth allegations of “stealing people’s identities and making charges on his own donors’ credit cards without their authorization, lying to the FEC and, by extension, the public about the financial state of his campaign. Santos falsely inflated the campaign’s reported receipts with nonexistent loans and contributions that were either fabricated or stolen.” Among his many falsehoods are lying about his religion, his “grandparents escaping the Holocaust,” before saying he was Catholic. He lied about attending New York University, and about being a star volleyball player at Baruch College. He falsely claimed employment at Goldman Sachs, and that his mother had died in the 9/11 attacks though she was not in the US at the time. It was reported that he had filed his campaign disclosure 20 months late, with an “inexplicable “rise in his net worth to $11M. Santos started, and stole from, a GoFundMe benefit for the dying dog of a military service member, and was accused of writing bad checks to dog breeders for which charges were dropped. One place of employment was with Harbor City Capital which was charged with running a Ponzi scheme by the SEC. Appearing youthful, coupled with physical fitness was important to him, and a recently completed a three-mile run was terminated when he was heard to say, “Okay, okay, lady…you can have your purse back!”

So who will fill the spot left by Santos? Both parties are scrambling to prepare for a special election, which could help determine control of Congress in ’24. New York’s Third Congressional District, a swing district which went for Joe Biden in 2020, but put Santos into the House in 2022, an assist to Republican control in the House. Governor Kathy Hochul has ten days to announce a special election date which must be held 70 to 80 days from her announcement. Neither Democrats or Republicans will hold a primary election; instead, the two parties of both Nassau and Queens Counties will make a decision on candidates. The disgraced ex-rep provided such a lengthy clown-show that the GOP will have to work a bit harder to overcome the embarrassment Santos caused them. And his revenge may exact a toll on those party members that he threatens to expose in the coming days, so the imbroglio may continue with more humiliations. Judging from indiscretions exposed in recent years, resulting in some resignations or apologies, Santos probably has a GOP dumpster-fire of accusations to inflict more chaos on his former colleagues.

Already many are licking their chops to see who is next to be expelled, and predictions are rampant. The buzz is that House Republicans are eyeing Matt Gaetz, who has been staying beneath the radar somehow, after months of whisperings about his escapades with underage females. But, Eric Swalwell is putting his money on seeing Kevin McCarthy exiting. “With Santos gone, you’re hearing it here first: the next GOP member to leave Congress will be Kevin McCarthy. No way he stays. A guy who kidney punches his colleagues from behind is too afraid to serve out a full term with them. I bet he’s gone by end of year. What say you?” he is asking. Around the time Mac was ousted as Speaker, a major news outlet ran an article saying that McCarthy was considering resigning. Many thought it could be true, and that he was signaling lobbying firms to make a lucrative offer that might encourage him to make the switch. Bill Palmer comments on his The Palmer Report that when there’s this much buzz about someone resigning it often ends up being based in reality, so we shouldn’t be shocked if it comes to pass before the end of the current term.

Aldous J. Pennyfarthing says, “Presidential hopeful Nikki Haley decided to alienate basically everyone in the country by suggesting all social media accounts be forced to display their users’ real, legal names. It went about as well as expected for the former South Carolina governor, legally named Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley; observers of all political stripes found the bipartisan bonhomie to savage the proposal, which she walked back in a matter of hours, claiming that she was really just talking about ‘anonymous Russians and Chinese and Iranians having free speech’.” Senator Ted Cruz in mid-November proposed a new bill that would “prohibit the use of funds to implement, administer, or enforce measures requiring certain employees to refer to an individual by the preferred pronouns of such individual or a name other than the legal name of such individuals.” Titled the “Safeguarding Honest Speech Act,” many were quick to point out that Canadian-born Cruz’s “legal” name is not “Ted, nor Theodore, nor ‘Teddy.’ It’s Rafael Edward Cruz according to his birth certificate, so according to his own law, we would call him Rafael Cruz, although the law would permit the use of Edward Cruz. Tennessee Representative, Andy Ogles, a co-sponsor of the bill with Cruz, tried to cast their attack on preferred names and pronouns as a “freedom-ish thing.”

“Forcing anyone to use pronouns that don’t accord with a person’s biological sex is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment. As the Supreme Court held, ‘if there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.’ The government has no business compelling anyone to use pronouns that contradict biological reality.” The San Antonio Express-News jumped on the hypocritical ‘Ted’ Cruz, for which he attacked them on X (nee Twitter), calling them “lying hacks who are purposely misrepresenting his new bill.” “Show some respect for religious liberty and free speech and fix your dishonest headline,” he whined. William Einenkel on Daily Kos writes, “While I am still not positive about the legal loopholes in this proposed bill, maybe we can still call ‘Ted’ Rafi (or Raffy) Cruz? Maybe Ed Cruz? Eddie Cruz? Maybe this is just a real roundabout way for R. Eddie Cruz to stop his fellow senators from calling him the Zodiac Killer?”

Aldous J. points out that Governor DeSantis and Haley are “currently fighting over who gets to be the Republican presidential nominee if Donald Trump starts choking to death on a luau pig and no industrial hydraulic presses are available to give him the Heimlich. And so they’ve found themselves in a squabble over Haley’s ‘legal name proposal,’ because attacking fellow hopefuls Asa Hutchinson or Doug Burgum would be a bit like standing on the side of the interstate screaming talking points at roadkill.” Aldous J. goes on, “DeSantis, who is presumably running for president to prevent anyone from discovering the existence of gay people, used this opportunity to put some distance between him and Haley, who’s gradually been gaining in the polls, to point out that several Founding Fathers used pseudonyms to publish some of their most important works. He also claimed that Haley’s proposal to ban anonymous speech online, similar to what China recently did, is dangerous and unconstitutional. Yes, it is a dangerous idea. And very likely unconstitutional, even in a country that picks its Supreme Court justices with all the care of a Boone’s Farm-besotted teenager pulling stuffed puffins from an arcade claw machine. But as some are pointing out, DeSantis is hardly the ideal spokesperson on this issue.”

Victor Mather of The New York Times reports on an Australian theft that can’t be sugarcoated. Seems that a delivery driver stopped at a 7-Eleven near Sydney and while he was inside a thief drove away in his van…containing 10,000 Krispy Kreme donuts. The van was unmarked so the thief likely was later surprised at the contents of Christmas-themed and classic donuts. Neither van nor thief were found at press time, as police were looking for a suspect with a glazed expression. Suspiciously, we find that Donald Trump has found a new environmental obsession: on at least eight occasions since May, he has publicly claimed the Biden administration’s climate policies threaten…you guessed it…donuts! The recurring theme in his riffing on donuts is that they are only possible through fossil fuels. “If you make donuts, anything you make has to do with fossil fuels to deliver your product. Energy is so big, so important,” he said in October. To Larry Kudlow on Fox Business Network in August, he pronounced, “Fossil fuels are so big, it’s like all-encompassing. Everything…you make donuts in the oven and the trucks that deliver them.” An Iowa speech in September had him saying, “If you make donuts, if you make cake, if you’re a lawyer, if you’re an accountant, if you’re in heating or trucking, no matter what you do, energy is so big.”

“The thing about Trump is, the more you pay attention to what he says, the less any of it makes sense,” said Josh Schwerin, a Democratic consultant who works on climate messaging. “This is nonsensical from a climate perspective. Clean energy is creating jobs, not shutting down donut shops. The only real takeaway from these comments is that Trump has donuts on the brain,” he adds. One Trump adviser told The Daily Beast that they had no idea where Trump had picked up the donut line, and the Trump campaign, on a coffee break, did not return a request for comment on the former president’s newfound preoccupation with donuts. To borrow a line from Victor Mather: And that’s the hole truth.

‘Morning Joe’ host Joe Scarborough recently interviewed Brian Klass, professor of global politics at the University College London, to discuss the former prez, his rhetoric, and what it means for the future of democracy in this country. Anti-Trumper Scarborough asked if we should be ambivalent about Trump’s Nazi leanings. Klass’ reply was, “I think you can try to claim there was a coincidence the first time this happened, but after seven years of Trump, it’s quite clear that he’s lifting not just rhetoric but actual plans from the authoritarian playbook. I study the breakdown of democracy, and I don’t know how to say this more clearly. We are sleepwalking towards authoritarianism, and people are not waking up to this. Our political class is not rising to the challenge. They’re not distancing themselves and the Republican Party from this rhetoric. They’re just sort of pretending like it doesn’t exist. This is the biggest story in American politics and nothing else comes close.”

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” – Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower. So where do we go from here, folks?