House GOP Unhappy with Speaker Johnson’s Preachifying During Leadership Retreat

Pensito Editors
GOP Speaker Johnson preaching
GOP Speaker Johnson preaching

Boredbat.com: Members of House Republican leadership expressed frustration at Speaker Mike Johnson after a GOP leadership retreat over the weekend, organized to outline plans for keeping the majority, quickly turned into a religious service.

“I’m not at church,” an anonymous attendee said in response to Johnson leading the group in prayers and Christian sermonizing. According to two people in the room the sermon was not well received, with one Rep. calling the session “horrible.”

Johnson was reportedly railing against government, saying that without God in their lives people will turn to the government for guidance. The sermon lasted for a full third of the meeting according to the anonymous members.

“I think what he was trying to do, but failed on the execution of it, was try to bring us together,” the anonymous source said. “The sermon was so long he couldn’t bring it back to make the point.”

Meduza Collected the Carlson-Putin Interview Memes So You Don’t Have to Watch

Buck Banks


Russian opposition media site meduza.io collected some of the funniest memes from Tucker Carlson’s “interview” with Vladimir Putin so you don’t have to watch it. Some of them are pretty funny. The one where Putin’s leg starts to crawl away reminds me of the scene in “Dr. Strangelove” where the doctor’s hand keeps doing a Hitler salute as he fights with his own body part.

See the memes here.

N.Y. Fraud Case Likely to Turn Trump from Billionaire to Thousandaire

Buck Banks

Daily Beast

Jose Paglieri of the Daily Beast has a trenchant analysis of the likely outcome of the Trump Organization’s New York fraud case, and it’s all bad news for Donald Trump. Besides the hundred millions of dollars in fines, two obscure state laws look set to balloon the fines into the fiscal stratosphere.

The first is a requirement that he immediately put up the amount of the fine before he can appeal the decision, and the second is a sky-high 9% state interest rate that could add another $200 million to the minimum $370 million fine the attorney general has requested.

As Paglieri lays it out:

Whatever the enormous judgment will be, the state-mandated 9 percent interest rate on the sum is likely to date back to the start of AG Letitia James’ investigation in 2018, which means Trump could be in the hole for nine-figures more. If the judgment against Trump is, for instance, $370 million, he would face an additional $33.3 million tacked on annually to the base amount of the original judgment. It’s simple interest, which means it only applies to the original judgment, but if the time period stretches back six years, Trump would automatically owe 54 percent more than whatever the judgment comes out to be. (In this hypothetical of $370 million with six years of interest, it’d be almost exactly $200 million more.)

…

Then there’s the matter of Trump’s inevitable appeal. The $315 filing fee will be the least of his worries. According to New York state court rules, Trump will have only a month to front a massive appellate bond worth anywhere from 110 percent to 120 percent of the judgment. Experts who spoke to The Daily Beast said Trump has two options: pay it directly to the court system, or find a surety company that would provide the state a guarantee on his behalf.

But if the Trump Organization is dissolved, as AG Letitia James wants, Paglieri notes, “Trump might not be able to rely on tainted goods to pay off the punishment for having tainted goods.”