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“I think that the recent special elections are consistent with the idea that we are at something of a neutral political environment. It just seems to me at the moment that turnout is going to be through the roof on both sides. It’s going to be higher than it was in 2018. Both sides have reason to turn out now. Then it becomes a question of which of the two sides ultimately has the upper hand”

– Republican consultant and pollster Patrick Ruffini in an interview with Politico. Ruffini seems a little more than cautiously optimistic for the GOP nonetheless, which is kind of stupid because Republicans tend to get fucking crushed when turnout is high. The 2010 and 2014 midterms saw 41% (90.9 million) and 36% (83.2 million), respectively, of the voting age population show up, with Dems losing 63 House seats in 2010 and 13 in 2014 (smaller hit because they obviously couldn’t lose seats they didn’t already have). The popular vote delta was 6.8% in 2010 and 5.7% in 2014.

In 2018, when 50.3% (118.5 million) of eligible voters showed up, the Democrats took 41 House seats and won the popular vote by 8.6%, making a little weird, to say the least, to see a GOP strategist so sanguine about this, even given the advantages the Republicans still have in the House going into the midterms. While it would be utterly insane to think the Democrats are somehow going to crush the GOP like they did in 2018, it is far less so to also believe they wouldn’t still have a hell of an edge if overall turnout will be bigger than it was in that Blue Wave year.

In a verdict that could only come from a Texas school board MAGA heckler’s fantasies, five Hong Kong unionists were convicted of sedition Wednesday over the content of three illustrated children’s books, one of which, titled Defenders of the Sheep Village, depicted pro-democracy sheep driving totalitarian communist wolves out of their village, AFP reports.

Another one of the books published by Lai Man-ling, Melody Yeung, Sidney Ng, Samuel Chan, and Fong Tsz-ho portrayed the wolves as dirty and disease-riddled, which we guess was particularly offensive to the ChiCom Karens. The situation is reminiscent of the McMinn County, Tennessee school board’s January 2022 ban on Maus – an illustrated memoir of the Holocaust in which the Nazis and portrayed as cats and Jews as mice – as well as the overall creeping embrace of cultural fascism by American Red State school and library systems banning books for “objectionable” content – often just simply because an author is Black. This is the direction in which the MAGA Reich wants to take things, putting people in prison for “poisoning the minds of children,” even if they act like they hate the ChiComs when it’s politically expedient.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson lead their hardcore MAGA 2020 election conspiracy freak challengers Matt DePerno and Kristina Karamo by 40% to 34% and 43% to 34%, respectively, a new survey by the Detroit News and WDIV finds.

About a fifth of respondents remained undecided in each race, but with Karamo being a complete fucking nutcase Trump cultist and DePerno literally under criminal investigation for his involvement in a scheme to steal publicly owned election equipment the gap is probably more attributable to name recognition than anything else at this point for the would-be 2024 election gatekeepers.

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday he wants to decide which countries can receive the shipments of Ukrainian grain exports the Kremlin is allowing to leave the Black Sea under an internationally brokered deal, Reuters reports. “If we exclude Turkey as an intermediary country, then almost all the grain exported from Ukraine is sent not to the poorest developing countries, but to European Union countries,” Putin said while speaking at an economic forum.

“Joe Biden stood in front of Independence Hall and gave one of the most disgusting and decisive [sic] speeches in American history,” says Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Co.) who likely recently had to study American history to pass her GED exam.  “A speech that was laughed at and mocked by nearly everyone except for the Lefties.  A-The American people, they don’t need a lecture.  They need an apology from Joe Biden.  And Laura, Joe Biden… it’s very, very clear, is suffering from an illness, in addition to cognitive failure, TDS, Trump Derangement Syndrome, and I’m pretty sure it’s at a level four at this point.”

Facing state-level indictment in New York from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for the “We Build the Wall” scam which fat former President Trump pardoned him for, alcoholic degenerate Nazi Steve Bannon will surrender himself to authorities on Thursday, the Washington Post reports.

Republican former Massachusetts state lawmaker Geoff Diehl, who the fat and disgraced former President Trump endorsed by writing, literally no joke “Geoff is a proven fighter who successfully pushes back on the ultra liberal extremists, and who has driven them a little bit wild too because they can’t figure him out, and he’ll rule your state with an iron fist and he’ll do what has to be done,” won the GOP gubernatorial primary on Tuesday, per the Associated Press.

Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, who would be the first ever openly lesbian state governor in United States history in the very likely event she wins in November, took the Dem gubernatorial nomination easily on Tuesday night, with the Associated Press calling Healy the winner by over 70 percent over state Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz at just 22% reported.

How bad do you have to be for the Party leaders in your state to publicly disown you?  The Republican gubernatorial candidates for the states that straddle the Mason-Dixon line can tell you.

In Pennsylvania, retiring Republican Senator Pat Toomey was noticeable unwilling to endorse GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, a January 6th insurrectionist who vowed to make Pennsylvania “the Florida of the North,” which is a significant step down for the Keystone State.

At a campaign event for New Jersey Republican Mehmet Oz, who’s running to replace him in the Senate, Toomey was asked if he was also endorsing Mastriano, WFMZ Allentown reports.  Toomey demured, saying he was going to “stick to the Senate race and a handful of House races.”  (When Oz was asked, he replied he had no upcoming campaign events planned with Mastriano.)

After podcast host Stew Peters claims that the Biden Administration will “make an example of everyone who is an outsider by throwing them in prison or executing them”–executing?–former Trump advisor and coup apologist Peter Navarro claims he’s one of those being persecuted.

“Yeah, yours truly is Exhibit A,” Navarro offers.  “Think about that.  I’m like, I’m like a, a middle-class [Fact check:  Navarro has an estimated net worth of $5-6 million.] professor [FC:  he was Donald Trump’s White House economic advisor] who served four years honorably by all accounts [FC:  Navarro is charged with contempt of Congress for failing to comply with subpoenas for information about his involvement in the January 6th domestic terrorist attack and the coup planning.], saving lives [FC: The administration largely did nothing to address the coronavirus pandemic, and even contradicted their own medical experts.] creating jobs [FC:  Trump lost a net 2.6 million jobs over four years.] and now I’m facing a million dollars in legal bills [FC:  He’d face $0 in legal bills if he complied with the subpoena.] and they already put me in, in, in leg irons [FC:  True.  He was, after all, in custody at the time].  I mean, WHY?  Just ’cause I was a Trump guy [FC:  No, you ignored a legally issued subpoena for communications.] and, and it’s just, I mean, this country cannot function if we have people doing that to people like me! [Commentary:  Fuck you, Navarro.  You’re not above the law.]

The Washington Post reports that some of the documents Donald Trump had secreted to his Florida flop house and geriatric activity center Mar-a-Lago included intelligence on at least one foreign government’s nuclear capabilities.

The cache recovered by the FBI in an early-August search also included documents about operations so secret that would only be accessible to a Cabinet-level, equivalent positions, or near-Cabinet positions.  The documents, discussed with the Post by people familiar with the investigation, were part of the last group of papers recovered by federal agents, after Trump’s lawyers had guaranteed that all government documents had been returned to the National Archives.

After Trump had returned documents in January and again in June, federal agents and Archives officials suspected that a number of other known documents were at Mar-a-Lago, despite Trump’s team’s assurances.

Republican Pennsylvania Senate nominee from New Jersey Mehmet Oz has tried to white-wash his connections to Donald Trump from the primaries, but it seems he also shares some traits with Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo).

Jezebel reports that in a newly unearthed interview, Oz starts his campaign to secure the vote in Pennsyltucky by saying “smashing” is fine “[i]f you’re more than a first cousin away.”  It’s kind of shocking that the TeeVee doctor didn’t end up as Surgeon General given that the reality TeeVee president had an obvious affection for incest, given his frequent lusting after his own daughter.

But then Oz voyages Cruz territory: “You know, that’s why children, girls don’t like their fathers’ smell. Their pheromones will actually repel their daughters because they’re not supposed to be together,” Oz told the hosts. “My daughters hate my smell.”

Ted Cruz feels his pain:

Trump FBI raid could have ‘some connection’ to murdered CIA assets, MSNBC's Joy Reid speculates https://t.co/HbcwOfaX0G

— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 6, 2022

Democratic former Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl, heir to the Kohl’s department store fortune, is not dead as of 5:43 PM EDT on September 6th, 2022. The precise whereabouts of Kohl, 87, are not publicly known at this point, but our best guess is that he’s relaxing comfortably at home.

Non-former politician from Wisconsin Herb Kohler, heir to the Kohler plumbing fixture manufacturing fortune is not, however. He is dead as of Tuesday, per a report in CNN. He was 83.

A Michigan township clerk alleged to have helped a group of MAGA conspiracy theorists steal election equipment is among the plaintiffs who on Friday filed a federal complaint against Michigan Gov Gretchen Whitmer and other defendants seeking to overturn the 2020 election in the state, the Detroit News reports. Irving Township Clerk Sharon Olson joined the lawsuit filed by the Macomb County GOP, rejected Republican governor candidate Donna Brandenberg (now running on the US Taxpayers Party ticket), and others seeking to compel Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson to “work together to rerun the Michigan 2020 presidential election as soon as possible,” 668 days after the 2020 election which Joe Biden won by more than 150,000 votes in the state.

Olson is under criminal investigation in the state – along with current Republican state Attorney General candidate Matt DePerno for her involvement in a scheme to steal Dominion Voting Systems equipment to be examined by conspiracy theorists looking for some kind of proof they could be hacked remotely by Italian satellites or Chinese thermostats to throw the election to Biden.

Pennsylvania Capitol rioter Richard Michetti, who on the afternoon of January 6th texted “If you can’t see the election was stolen you’re a moron,” along with a number of pics and videos from the middle of the MAGA mayhem to a woman he had been dating – who then sent all of it to FBI agents – was sentenced Tuesday to nine months in prison, plus two years of supervised release after pleading guilty to a felony count of obstruction of an official proceeding in May, NBC News reports.

It’s not clear if Michetti and the woman were still together on the day of the riot. While the FBI affidavit in support of arrest, dated February 17th, 2021, says “a witness (‘W1’) reported to law enforcement that Richard MICHETTI, with whom W1 had a prior romantic relationship,” there seemed to have been quite a bit of back and forth between them in the middle of the riot. As such it would seem to us that they were in fact still in a committed relationship or were damn close to one on the 6th itself only for it to fall apart and end with the woman ratting him out the next month.

While it doesn’t actually matter practically because she still informed on him, we still think it would be extra fucking hilarious if their breakup was a direct consequence of the insurrection, that not only did Michetti get dumped but he got convicted too just because he was a dick to her.

Trump’s next-to-last attorney general, Bill Barr, makes a surprisingly clear, objective observation on the law surrounding the FBI’s retrieval of government documents from Donald Trump’s Lipitor testing facility and wedding venue Mar-a-Lago and the decision of a Trump-appointed judge to appoint a special master to review the cache of documents Trump absconded with from the White House.

The opinion, I think, was wrong and I think the government should appeal it.  Uh, uh, uh, it, it’s deeply flawed in a number of ways.  I don’t think the appointment of a special master is gonna hold up, but even if it does, I don’t see it fundamentally changing the trajectory.  In other words, I don’t think it changes the ball game so much as we’ll have a rain delay for a couple of innings, but I think the fundamental dynamics are set, which is the government has very strong evidence of what it really needs to determine whether the charges are appropriate, which is government dox, documents were taken.  Classified information was taken and not handled appropriately and, uh, they are looking into, and there’s some evidence to suggest that they were deceived and, and none of that really relates to the content of documents.

It relates to the fact that there were documents there and the fact that they were classified and the fact that they were subpoenaed and never delivered.  But they don’t have to show the content, y’know the specific advice given in a memo, for example, in order to prevail in this case, so I think, ahhh, it’s not really gonna change the decision.

Last week Kotaku writer Mike Fahey passed away at the age of 49, four years after suffering from a torn aorta which left him paralyzed from the chest down. Fahey had joined the staff of the Gawker network’s video game news site in 2006, hired by former editor Brian Crescente – Fahey had no experience but was a commenter on a blog Crescente had founded. Aside from gaming, Fahey’s main beats were snacks, toys, and officiating the spectacularly funny weekly Kotaku Shop Contest.

While he was funny as hell, Fahey also had quite a range and churned out deeply moving pieces about overcoming his gaming addiction and his experience inside his mind while in a coma following the aortic tear. National Zero sends its deepest condolences to Mike’s wife, two sons, and coworkers at Kotaku. His wit and ability to not take himself or his subject matter too seriously was a gift to readers and an inspiration for National Zero. May Valhalla welcome his soul.

“I would like to see the sampling numbers. Any poll with his approval number above 30 is BS”

– The current top comment on the American Greatness article “Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Surges to 45 Percent in New Insider Advantage Poll,” posted Tuesday afternoon. The survey was sponsored by American Greatness and conducted by Insider Advantage also found Democrats ahead of Republicans 45% to 44%, a switch from last month’s GOP 45% – Dem 44% finding.