Dark too soon this early-evening Friday here in California’s Central Valley — another week of useless Republican non-governance as the sun sets across a chaotic, close-to-the-edge-of democratic catastrophe America; a clusterfuck of a shitstorm for the country appears right around the corner.

The reason? One of our only two political parties is compiled solely of a bunch of nasty, mean-spirited assholes.

By now you’ve all read/heard about how shitty and truly physically scared Republicans are, especially the flapping House GOP where nasty, in-fighting, elbowing, pushing, and shoving has become normal — amusing, but a real slap-in-the-face to rank-and-file, regular, non-rich Americans.
Noah Berlatsky has a most-excellent recap of the Republican man-babies bullshit at Public Notice this morning — encompassing snips: ‘This is one of the core hypocrisies of the Republican House. The GOP says Democrats are evil and that engaging with them is anathema. But at the same time, Republicans need Democrats to lead if they’re going to engage in their preferred activities — performing for partisan media and grifting donors {…} While paralysis and pointless poo-throwing may be good for individual members, it’s not so great for the party as a whole. Or, as hyper-conservative Texas Rep. Chip Roy put it in a frustrated House floor speech Wednesday that went viral, “I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing — one — that I can go campaign on and say we did. One!”‘

Cruel nothing is the GOP guideline nowadays — Amanda Marcotte with another need-read at Salon, also this morning: ‘For decades, the party’s business wing was able to maintain power by selling their economic ideas as a way for the base to stick it to people they don’t like. Cutting social spending, for instance, was packaged with highly unsubtle racist propaganda about “welfare queens.” Deregulation was promoted by demonizing environmentalists as a bunch of tree-hugging hippies and latte-sipping elitists. But with Trump out there promising to “root out” the “vermin” and the Supreme Court ending abortion rights, the Republican base has lost interest in these roundabout, bureaucratic ways of hurting the people they hate. Why hit your perceived foes in the wallet when you can take a hammer to their kneecaps?‘

And along with the whole mental, decompressing virus of violent zeroness, there’s the mentally-disturbing baby whine:

He isn’t dealing well with his 5th place finish in today’s polls. pic.twitter.com/S2RmA1Dant

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) November 17, 2023

Details of that poll can be found at The Washington Post this morning.

Beyond all that shit, George Santos in turn is the reality-keystone mirror reflection of the current GOP:

That new George Santos report details so many apparently criminal schemes, it will make your head spin. I don’t know when he had the time to sleep! https://t.co/QgOyiAGuzF

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) November 17, 2023

And in the wake of the House Ethics Committee report, George (or whatever his actual name) is toast (New York Times this afternoon):

The move by Representative Michael Guest of Mississippi, the committee’s chairman, laid the groundwork for a pivotal vote after Thanksgiving that could make Mr. Santos only the sixth representative to be ejected in the chamber’s history.

“The evidence uncovered in the Ethics Committee’s investigative subcommittee investigation is more than sufficient to warrant punishment,” Mr. Guest said in a statement accompanying his five-page resolution. “And the most appropriate punishment is expulsion.”

Santos a shining example of the lying, grifting sense of Republicans at heart nowadays.

Meanwhile, in a step forward/backward this afternoon:

Uh oh Speaker Johnson’s accountability report to his son is about to get weird https://t.co/lIh9huIxlL pic.twitter.com/qrutzlhD4M

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) November 17, 2023

As if in response, supposedly real Republicans:

Mike Johnson, like Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson before him, is trying to use selective video to whitewash January 6.

But we remember what happened: Donald Trump sent a violent mob to the Capitol in an attempt to undermine our democracy. pic.twitter.com/CZNBm5UBlp

— Republican Accountability (@AccountableGOP) November 17, 2023

And: to close us out this evening, Miss Emily Dickinson: “The Only News I Know”

The Only News I know
Is Bulletins all Day
From Immortality.

The Only Shows I see—
Tomorrow and Today—
Perchance Eternity—

The Only One I meet
Is God—The Only Street—
Existence—This traversed

If Other News there be—
Or Admirable Show—
I’ll tell it You—

Linda Sue Grimes, poet, author, and writing teacher, from part of an academic note this afternoon on Emily’s poem: ‘While the physical reality is only temporary, the soul’s reality is permanent.‘

Yeah, and needs to be repeated. Especially among the shitty, soulless Republicans.

Anyhow, or not, once again here we are…

(Illustration out front by Daryl Cagle and found here)