Kristi Noem may be an imbecile - but Seven Democrats are even bigger ones.

I'm sick and tired of finding common ground with fascists and imbeciles. Enough.

We begin with Exhibit A:

Sigh.

I know I keep saying this, but…

I’m shocked, SHOCKED I SAY, to find gambling is going on in here.

(Peter Lorre suddenly appears): “Here are your winnings sir,”

Me: “Oh, thank you very much!’

And so it is with Kristi Noem, the gun-waving, dog-shooting, Constitution-mangling sociopath now in charge of the Department of Homeland Security.

Yes, the same Kristi Noem who believes "the President habeas corpuses people out of the country," who hasn’t read the Constitution, doesn’t speak Latin, and wouldn’t recognize the rule of law if it pissed on her boots.

So naturally, we gave her control of a $90 billion agency with a quarter million employees, responsible for everything from cyber defense to counterterrorism.

What could possibly go wrong?

The Confirmation Farce

Now, I understand—in the new "I have no other gods before Trump" mantra of the Republican Party, no Republican was going to object to Noem's nomination.

But these Democrats voted to confirm her:

• Senator John Fetterman - Pennsylvania

• Senator Maggie Hassan - New Hampshire

• Senator Jeanne Shaheen - New Hampshire

• Senator Tim Kaine - Virginia

• Senator Andy Kim - New Jersey

• Senator Gary Peters - Michigan

• Senator Elissa Slotkin - Michigan

And they had the gall to justify it.

Andy Kim said: "We both agreed that we could more effectively raise and try to address the pressing needs and concerns of communities and families in New Jersey if we communicate and engage directly with one another."

How do you feel now, jackass?

Still think you can engage with someone who doesn’t understand due process while your constituents get deported by someone who thinks "habeas corpus" is a breakfast cereal?

Gary Peters: "Given her openness to working on a bipartisan basis..."

Oh yeah? Still enjoying that openness, Gary?

Tim Kaine? No quotes from him—just silence, and a vote. The classic "The President is entitled to his nominees" cop-out.

Guess what? The nominee is an unqualified authoritarian.

You all hit "Yea." Congratulations. Morons.

And everyone is all excited because Maggie Hassan really gave it to Noem today.

Go back and look at that list I wrote.

Yeah. Great job Maggie. Really showed the fuck out of her, didn’t you.

(eye roll) Maybe you shouldn’t have voted for the clod in the first place?

Maybe?

Huh?

Maybe?

Just a little bit?

But First Came Rubio

Being hard on Maggie may be a bit unfair. She’s hardly the only idiot in the Democratic party.

As ridiculous as Noem was? First, Marco Rubio was confirmed 99 to 0.

I’ll say that again.

Ninety. Nine. To motherfucking ZERO.

Nada. Zilch. Goose-egg.

Really? He was that qualified, huh?

Well fuck me. I guess I’m the asshole for thinking he was a glass-jawed ideologue with a spine made of soggy linguine and a brain full of mashed potatoes.

Oh wait—I wasn’t.

Rubio’s tenure as Secretary of State will likely go down as a masterclass in noodle-bending neocon delusion—a tragicomic exercise in treating diplomacy not as strategy, but as theater.

He’s approached foreign policy like a Sunday school zealot with a drone budget, applying a binary, moralistic lens to global complexity. His obsessive crusade against Cuba and Venezuela hasn’t yielded one meaningful outcome—just photo ops and colder neighbors. Meanwhile, his knee-jerk hostility toward China and Iran, absent any coherent plan or leverage, has created confrontation without control.

At home, he props up an authoritarian presidency with the loyalty of a man happy to be patted on the head and left on the couch during gilded Oval Office briefings. Abroad, he bleats hollow moral platitudes—because the world sees the hypocrisy. U.S. credibility? Shot. Human rights rhetoric? Laughable. Leadership? Absent.

And for what?

To indulge some adolescent sociopath’s foreign policy fantasies while LARPing as the Secretary of State?

Yeah. That was definitely worth a 99-to-zero vote.

Sure glad we maintained the integrity of the U.S. Senate on that one.

Apparently I missed a goddamn memo.

Idiocracy by Committee

So, we have Rubio. We have Noem. We have one idiot after another in the cabinet. I’ve seen monkey shit fights at the zoo better organized than some of these policy sessions. I mean my God, the Cabinet meeting should be rated X and only broadcast after 9PM for God’s sake. I haven’t seen that much knob polishing outside of PornHub.

We have Signal chats where SCI material is dumped to The Atlantic. We have blatant bribery from Arab Emirs. We have absolute rampant incompetence abound. And all of this is protected by the Republican Congress that argues over whether Trump is more good-looking with each passing day.

Now, we should expect nothing but idiocy from Republicans—they have no other gods before Trump. They’ve lost their souls and their minds.

So be it.

But Democrats? What’s your excuse?

The Analytic

(takes a breath)

I am a student of history. A great admirer of Winston Churchill.

I admire Churchill for two reasons: One, the guy made no excuses and lived on his terms. Two, he kicked the shit out of Hitler when everyone thought Britain was done.

Those are two tasks that are pretty difficult to complete individually, let alone simultaneously.

And while it’s a dramatization, the lesson is true:

You cannot reason with a tiger—when your head is in its mouth.

This is a lesson Democrats seem absolutely incapable of learning.

My wife, exasperated, shows me the Hassan clip. She has held out hope longer than I have. But that clip shattered it. Her question was simple:

"Do you think the country can be saved?"

My answer: Probably not.

It’s not that redemption is impossible. It’s that momentum toward disaster may now be irreversible. Civil liberties are collapsing. The civic order is rotting. The republic is giving way to something new—and not better.

An America where Kristi Noem and Marco Rubio are confirmed without much objection.

That’s what’s replacing it.

What Should Be Done

If it were my call—which it’s not—and I were running CBS/Paramount, I’d tell Trump to go fornicate himself with an iron rod. I’d hire Quinn Emanuel and sue the ever-loving shit out of the FCC. Fight or go bankrupt. Because the alternative? You get annihilated anyway.

If I were the Democrats, I wouldn’t vote for anything Trump wants. Not one goddamn thing. If he proposed free puppies for children, I’d vote no. Because I’d assume the puppies are rigged to explode.

Hold. The. Line.

I wrote about this in the Ratfucked series: this isn’t about policy. It’s about time. Enough of the stern letters and “deep concern.”

And I’ll repeat it: Jake Tapper? Fuck that guy.

Enough with the postmortems on 2024.

Start fighting the next school board race. The next state house. The next tariff. Explain to people why eggs are still six bucks a dozen. Why they lost their job. Why America’s collapsing.

Will any of this happen?

Some of it. Maybe.

But mostly? No.

What we’ll get is a country that is somewhere between what it was and what Russia or Saudi Arabia is.

And that’s if Trump leaves.

Because for all the idiocy of the Republicans?

Democrats seem all too willing to be their accomplices.

Until that changes...

Stop telling me you’re shocked that gambling is going on in the casino.

Because, here are your winnings, sir.

---

Bonus content!

For those playing the game at home…

The clause pertaining to habeas corpus can be found in Article I of the Constitution (Article I, Section 9, Clause 2), and the relevant passage is as follows:

“The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.”

Only Congress has the explicit authority to suspend the writ of habeas corpus, as per Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, which defines legislative powers. The President is not granted this power directly—and any attempt to unilaterally suspend the writ is constitutionally dubious at best, and has been historically rebuked or tightly constrained.

Key Historical Context: Ex parte Merryman (1861)

During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln attempted to suspend habeas corpus unilaterally. Chief Justice Roger Taney, sitting as a circuit judge, issued a scathing opinion in Ex parte Merryman, ruling that only Congress had the constitutional authority to suspend the writ.

“The power to suspend the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus is vested in Congress, not the President.” — Ex parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861)

Lincoln ignored the ruling, citing wartime necessity, but Taney’s legal reasoning has never been overturned and remains the dominant interpretation among constitutional scholars.

So when “Mr. Penis head” Stephen Miller says he’s looking into it, it’s already been looked into. Only Congress may suspend the writ, and only in cases of rebellion or invasion, as determined by Congress, as the public safety may require it, and only for the duration of the rebellion or invasion.

But hey, since when do we care about the law?

Here are your winnings, sir.

Meanwhile, spin the wheel and on to the next crisis of idiocy.

---

Like what you just read?

Subscribe to The Long Memo for weekly dispatches on politics, power, and the architecture of collapse—before it hardens. We don’t do engagement bait. We do warning shots.

Please share it, if you think it will be helpful for others. (Sharing is caring.)

Please comment, if you think I missed something or have something to add.