Today is Monday, December 23, 2024. Today the House Ethics Committee finally – finally – released its damning report on the “Grinch” – Representative Matt Gaetz – who left Congress in the wake of this terrible report that found evidence that he paid thousands of dollars for sex and drugs, including allegedly paying a 17-year-old girl for sex in 2017. And this son of a bitch was being considered for the overarching job of attorney general by an adjudicated sexual predator known as Donald J. Chump. This bombshell of a report is contained in an online CNN article by Sarah Ferris and Jeremy Herb entitled “House Ethics report finds evidence Matt Gaetz paid thousands for sex and drugs including paying a 17-year-old for sex in 2017.”

The disgraced representative even tried to sue in federal court to prevent this incriminating report. The committee concluded in this document that Gaetz violated Florida state laws, including the state’s statutory rape law, as the GOP-led panel chose to take the rare step of releasing a report about a former member who resigned from Congress.

The panel investigated transactions Gaetz personally made, often using PayPal or Venmo, to more than a dozen women during his time in Congress, according to the report.

Earlier this month, the House Ethics Committee secretly voted to release its report after initially voting against doing so. The vote to put out the report was the culmination of a yearslong probe into allegations surrounding the odious representative.

The country has to be thankful that this committee ultimately decided to release this damning report on one of their own because the panel initially voted not to make public its final document on the former congressman. Of course, they were doing this in order to shield the criminal activities of the former congressman. This way the public would never have known the extent of Gaetz’s perfidy. It seems that there were some committee members, including Michael Guest, a Mississippi Republican and committee chair, who were opposed to the release of the report because Gaetz was no longer a member of Congress. Anyone with a brain could conclude that Gaetz was expecting this report to be made public soon, so that really formed the true rationale of his abandoning his seat that he just recently won again.

But don’t mourn the loss of this scumbag too soon; he’s now set to join the right-wing One America News Network as an anchor in January. But maybe not if the wave of criticism against him is extensive enough in the wake of the report’s release. Who knows? This is not a left-leaning network like CNN or MSNBC, so maybe their standards are much lower when it comes to hiring anchors formerly from the halls of Congress. Ah, the article does say this: “Some lawmakers believed his resignation was an attempt to bury the investigation.” Just like I said here.

Of course, the scumbag denied all charges leveled against him in the report, a mechanism he’s learned from his erstwhile boss, Donald Chump. He also castigated the Committee’s process as being “weaponized” against him, another accusation continually employed by the president-elect in all circumstances. Scumbag Gaetz also said the Committee was working on behalf of former-Speaker Kevin McCarthy whom he replaced in an infamous clash between him and Gaetz who forced a vote on the “motion to vacate” in October 2023. These are all sorrowful deflections instead of admitting his guilt in executing these acts of depravity while serving the American public in his role as a U.S. representative.

Anyway, it’s late here, owing to Elliot and I watching another fascinating episode of Midsomer Murders that is always entertaining to watch as we sit back and become armchair detectives, along with Detective Chief Inspector (DCI) Tom Barnaby and his younger sidekick, Detective Sergeant Ben Jones. I have to admit I didn’t solve who the murderer was in this episode. This series has been on for a vey long time in England, first premiering, I discover, on March 23, 1997. This series definitely differs from American crime dramas in several ways, mainly, with the use of the gorgeous setting, the English county of Midsomer, and its eschewal of gore and violence, even though people are murdered gruesomely at first. The violence, however, is generally not shown in livid color. However, the two detectives never use firearms in their pursuit of suspects; they usually don’t even tussle with suspects as well. They use their wits, which are generally not appealing to American audiences over here. The majority of the earlier episodes are based on the writings of Caroline Graham. I found this series a while ago on the station Ovation and tape the episodes on a regular basis. There is also gentle humor in every episode as Barnaby is generally pitted against his much younger colleague.

Tomorrow we are driving to Easton, Pennsylvania, to spend both Chanukah and Christmas with our friends “Jeff” and “Sandy.” We will be returning on Thursday, December 26. For the occasion, I baked my third Italian ricotta cheesecake. I hope it goes over well with everyone at the dinner table this time.

In advance of the holiday, I wish everyone then a Happy Chanukah (“Chag Urim Sameach!”) and a Merry Christmas.

See you on the 26th.

Oh, I have to retrieve Atticus who’s in a kitchen cabinet. I posted a video of him today successfully opening a cabinet door, by the way.

And so it went!

Here is my cheesecake that I’m taking to Easton tomorrow. I’ll let you know how it was received by Jeff and Sandy and their guests.