Dear Everybody:
There are two big stories today. The first is Thomas Massie’s filing of impeachment charges against Pete Hegseth and the responses to it:
–Hegseth is facing lots of damning charges: his purging of Black and female officers, his destruction of the military colleges and the War College, his $47 billion dollars and counting war in Iran, the destruction of our bases in the Middle East, his reckless waste of munitions, drones, and missiles, his press restrictions against the media, the Signal Chat leaks of classified information, the attempt to publicly execute a prisoner, the killing of over 100 girls at a girls’ school in Iran, the boat strikes, and especially the one where two men were clinging to their overturned and destroyed boat when he killed them. That is clearly a war crime and one Japanese military officers were hanged for after they killed sailors found in the water.
–Republican Thomas Massie said Hegseth has “knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders.”
–Hegseth held an unhinged press conference yesterday to respond to his impeachment, calling it “a stunt and a farce, and everybody knows it.” He denounced the whole thing as a “show trial” and said, “We’ve seen this show before. They impeached President Trump over a perfect phone call.”
–Hegseth: “This is sabotage.”
–Hegseth: “The fundamental duty of the armed forces of the United States is to ensure victory in war. Full stop.”
–Hegseth: “If they want to come for the warriors, they’re going to have to come through me.”
(Note: No one is coming for the troops. They’re coming for you, bucko.)
–Lakota man: “Pete Hegseth’s using the ‘I was just following orders’ defense. Hitler’s henchmen tried using it, and they were all hanged.”
–(Note: Marco Rubio is using the same defense. He said this week, “Ultimately our job is to execute on the president’s orders. In the end, the decision is the President’s.)
–The current lame-duck House had enough votes to pass the impeachment resolution before the election, which means they have almost enough votes to stop the procedural motion to table it, and a number of Republicans who got defeated in the election are simply not bothering to show up to work for the rest of their term.
–The Republicans have introduced a procedural motion for later today, which may lead to tabling the impeachment indefinitely. (They’d be idiots to do it, but that doesn’t mean they won’t.)
–Thomas Massie warned the Senate that if impeachment resolution is stalled by the Senate GOP, the articles will survive into the next Congress and a Democratic majority will run any Senate trial.
–UPDATE: Late this afternoon the still-Republican-dominated House turned aside a resolution to impeach Hegseth. They voted to table the measure and send it to committee rather than allow a full floor vote on the impeachment charges. The charges may be reintroduced as soon as the Democrats take control of the House, but boy, the Republicans seem determined to ride the Titanic all the way down to the bottom of the sea.
The other big story is the Trump administration’s exploding Nvidia scandal:
–Some background: Stephen Huang, the CEO of one of the biggest AI chip manufacturing companies, had (or is having) an illicit extramarital affair with a Chinese woman, who turns out to be a Chinese spy. She got Stephen Huang to sell chips to numerous companies that turned out to be fronts for her and her family. The chip sales in question add up to $7.5 billion dollars.
–The spy, Alice Huang (no relation) is a senior executive at A Singapore-based company that was buying Nvidia’s AI chips and being investigated for illegally smuggling them for China.
–The company NVIDIA sold high-end chips to in Hong Kong turned out to be a storefront operation with minimum staff and no paper trails. Some of the firms Nvidia chips went to have turned out to be shell companies, and in some cases companies which did not exist. One place listed as a company’s address turned out to be an empty warehouse with wires dangling from the ceiling. Another didn’t exist at all.
–The Department of Commerce approved dozens of these Chinese companies, including the front companies and firms with ties to firms under sanction by the US.
–Marco Rubio warned Trump about the national security risks of Huang and Nvidia a year ago, drafting a highly classified secret memo alerting Trump about the affair and warning about the national security risks.
–Trump completely ignored him. He insisted on keeping Huang as a trusted AI adviser. When the State Department kicked Huang off a trip to China, Trump arranged for him to meet Air Force One when they stopped for refueling in Alaska and join the trip. Huang opposes tighter regulations for AI.
–The Commerce Department was investigating Huang, but canceled its investigation following an email that Nvidia’s general counsel sent to them.
–Huang persuaded Trump to let him sell his chips to China after he made a $25 million dollar donation to Trump’s ballroom.
–And it gets even better: Trump owns stock in Nvidia.
–hiccup: “No one will sell national security secrets to our enemies unless I get a cut.!”
–Trump is defending Huang, calling him “an honorable man. He has a very successful business,” and saying, “I think he probably has an excuse for it. You have to hear it.”
–Also Trump: “He dealt with someone, but, you know, so does everybody else.”
–DoughW659: “LOLZ! He DEALT WITH somebody???Nice try at sanitizing his affair.”
–When Trump was asked, “There are reports that Rubio put out an intelligence memo last year. Did you read it?” Trump: “It could have been mentioned, but it didn’t make much of an impression.”
–Bill Kristol: The Jensen Huang scandal is exploding–did Trump knowingly subvert our national interests vis-a-vis China…I suspect it will soon be the biggest story out there.”
–Kristol thinks Rubio is going to have to resign or be fired. Except for warning Trump a year ago, he didn’t do anything publicly or privately to stop this national security breach.
In midterms news, the good news just keeps coming:
–Nancy Peltola increased her lead over the two Sullivans by oevr 2517 votes, putting her at 48.6% of the vote. Just a bit larger lead, and she could clear the 50% mark and be elected without going through the whole ranked choice voting process.
–In Mississippi, Scott Colom is ahead by 2,607 votes with an estimated 97% of the vote in. Today is the deadline for resolving affidavit or provisional ballots, which are cast by voters whose eligibility is disputed or unclear on Election Day. It is also the deadline for the receipt of mail-in absentee ballots that are postmarked by Election Day, November 3.
–And in a race I didn’t even realize was still a race, down in North Carolina, Democrat Charles Hubbard has re-taken the lead over Republican Virginia Foxx (a woman known as “Satan’s Meemaw”) by 196 votes as they continue the count. The deadline for the final count is November 13.
–Democrat Pramila Jayapal is the new chair of the Immigration Subcommittee.
–Sam Forstag is the first Democrat to be elected in Montana in over 30 years. He’s a union leader and a former smokejumper.
–Brad Chambers, a young Black Democrat with dreadlocks flipped a seat in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.
–Democrat Brett Jones just became Alabama’s first gay sheriff after defeating a two-term Republican.
–In Maryland, Democrat Karl Bickel defeated Chuck Jenkins, the sheriff who bragged about helping ICE deport 2000 people.
–Arizona Democrats couldn’t recruit anyone to run for Maricopa City Clerk, so they let a 19-year-old ASU sophomore, Sebastian Matta. do it. He won.
–In Tarrant County, Texas, the judge who closed 30% of the county’s polling locations, including college campuses and black-and-brown majority neighborhoods, was defeated by a Black Democrat, Alisa Simmons. And it gets better–she was one of the people he tried to gerrymander out of office.
–Christopher Hanks: “Red Texas is dead.”
–The new freshman classes of the House and the Senate have arrived at the Capitol, and there are great photos of them going through their orientation:
and
–The New Yorker’s new cover has the new Democrats waterskiing through the blue wave.
–Sarah B Calif: “I wish Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell were alive to see this.”
–Bill Kristol: “It was a massive defeat for Trump and Trumpism, and the country has the possibility of a very different political future. Still, Trump isn’t going down easily.”
In Trump dementia/insanity news:
–The night before last, Trump posted an AI slop cartoon video made to look like the characters in THE FAMILY GUY. It showed a Dana White press conference, with White ordering violence to reporters by his accompanying thugs every time they asked a question. White’s UFC fighters punched the reporters, pinned them to the ground, and in one case carried one off, saying, “Two, three years. Dagestan.” (Note: Dagestan is a orepublic in Russia famous for torture.)
–At the end of the video, all the reporters are lying broken, battered, and unconscious on the floor of the completely destroyed press briefing room. Trump pokes his head around the corner and asks how the press conference went. White says, “Fiery, but mostly peaceful.” Trump looks around at the destruction in the room, takes a sip of his Diet Coke, and says, “Beautiful.”
–Heather Delaney Reese: “Donald Trump shared a cartoon video, that, at any other time in history, would have had him removed from office, or at the very least, opened an immediate investigation into his mental health and his ability to lead this country…it was one of the most disgusting things he has done and further increases the temperature and division this country is facing.”
–George McCully: “So Trump and his team are interpreting their thumping defeat as taking the restraining lid off anything they do.”
–Urban Hermit: “Trump always tests public reaction to his planned moves by first running them up the flagpole, so to speak, as some kind of comment or meme he can pass off as a joke. He’s clearly telegraphing that he plans to attack journalists and that their physical safety will be in danger.”
Then, late last night, Trump also called in to C-SPAN during a call-in show and gave a demented rant about Venezuela and the war in Iran. (Note: This is something Trump routinely did decades ago, sometimes as himself and sometimes with a fake name, like John Barron. When he called in with a fake name, it was invariably to praise Trump to the skies.)
–The cherry on top was that a woman could be heard giggling in the background, a woman everyone assumed to be Natalie Harp. (Did I say it was very late at night?)
–Jim Stewartson: “Wow, Natalie is everywhere.”
–Keith Edwards: “Is that First Lady Natalie Harp?”
–Aaron Rupar: “Didn’t sound like Melania.”
In other You’re Not Going to Believe This news:
–Remember Katie Zacharia, who only lasted five days and one press conference before Trump gave her the boot? Well, now that Dana White has turned him down and he doesn’t dare offer the job to the OTHER Dana White, she’s auditioning for the job again:
–She’s been hanging around Mar-a-lago, hoping Trump will reconsider her for the job, and making appearances on shows Trump likes to watch (which is the only way to get his attention.)
–She’s texting stuff she thinks Trump and/or Stephen Miller might like, like, “Time to ramp up the deportations.”
–An anonymous White House official said, “She never stopped. She’s psychotic. She thinks she did a good job at her one briefing.”
–Gutenberg: “I want to see Katie Zacharia get another shot. It’s not every day you get to see a Hindenburg go down twice. ‘Oh, the humanity!’”
In nature news:
–You have to see this photo of tiny frogs peeping out of the petals of a bright pink dahlia. It looks like something out of “Thumbelina”: https://www.reddit.com/r/NatureIsFuckingLit/comments/y9ltud/froggys_tucked_in_a_mystery_berry_ball_dahlia/
In historical news:
–Today in 1969 Jim Henson’s Muppets premiered on PBS’s SESAME STREET: Kermit the Frog, Big Bird, Bert and Ernie, Oscar the Grouch, and Cookie Monster, along with humans Mr. Hooper and Susan and Gordon and Bob, making the world a better place for every child in America–and later the planet, as shows spread to over 150 countries, including Israel, Germany, Bangladesh, North Africa, and Arab countries in the Middle East.
–The show not only taught the alphabet and numbers to little kids, but tolerance, compassion, empathy, and kindness.
–It was primarily for preschool kids, but there were also jokes for the adults who watched right along with their kids: clever references to movies–“When Cookie Met Sally”– and books–the ever-bland Bert reading “Fifty Shades of Oatmeal”–and TV–“Desperate Houseplants.”
–It also featured guest appearances by everybody from Lily Tomlin and Harry Belafonte to Carol Burnett, Jackie Robinson, Burt Lancaster, Mahalia Jackson, and Pete Seeger.
–And in dark times ever since, when the world seemed a not-very-nice place, people have asked plaintively, “Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?”
In other news:
–Jim Jordan, the guy who stood by and did nothing as his wrestlers were sexually abused, has been elected by Republicans as Minority Leader in the House. John Thune has been elected as Minority Leader in the Senate.
–In Colorado, Lauren Boebert is refusing to concede the race for the House, even though Eileen Laubacher leads by 3200 votes and there’s no way for Lauren to catch up. By Colorado law, they will continue to count every vote until the deadline of November 13.
–France’s refrigerator controllers were hacked by Iranian military hackers at 100 different sites, from supermarkets to butcher shops. They turned up the temperature in the middle of the night, leading to the spoiling of millions of dollars’ worth of food. Grocery stores in other European countries were hit the week before.
–There are not enough powerhouse law firms in Washington, DC, to handle the rush of current and former administration members currently seeking counsel.
In good news:
–Keisha Lance Bottoms, who I already told you is the great-great-granddaughter of a slave, is also the daughter of a rhythm and blues legend: Major Lance Bottoms. He was a star in the 60s, especially in the north of England, where his fans included, yes, the Beatles. There’s a photo of Paul McCartney with a Lance Bottoms album under his arm.
–18 months after the initial diagnosis, Biden’s latest cancer scans indicated that the primary prostate tumors showed no remaining active signs, “offering a victory of hope through ongoing hormone therapy and modern medical care.” (Note: They didn’t say the tumors were gone or that the cancer hadn’t spread, however, but it is still good news considering the kind of cancer he has.)
–Even cats were willing to endure long lines to vote: https://www.facebook.com/pastorrandy.brewer/posts/even-the-cat-done-got-tied-and-said-its-time-to-get-out-and-vote-/10245617056786272/
Best denial/spin/delusion of the day, from Sean Hannity: “What happened during this year’s midterms is not unprecedented. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of more normal than not.”
–Alex Cole: “Yeah, Democrats win Texas and Kansas all the time.”
Best flat-out lie of the day, from Donald Trump: “I have a son who’s a very straight, good guy.”
Best comment of the day, from vasiliki kyriakidis: “Americans, you don’t understand. You didn’t just beat the fascists in the GOP, you beat the algorithms, you beat the billionaires, you beat the media sycophants and the tech psychopaths. You beat the Musks and the METAs and the Thiels. So much work to do from here, but BASK BABY BASK!”
Keep calm and carry on,
Connie Willis
