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The initial launch of the Artemis program from Kennedy Space Flight Center in Florida, scrubbed Monday due to technical issues, has been rescheduled for Saturday with a two-hour window starting at 2:17 p.m. ET, USA Today reports.

The Artemis I mission will launch the most powerful rocket in NASA’s fleet to take an Orion capsule containing three mannequins to the moon and back, the first step in a three-year schedule that will ultimately carry humans back to the moon.

In a classic “…and that would be bad how?” moment, Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward’s lawyer argued to a judge that turning over her phone to the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol could lead to the end of the Party organization in her state, the Arizona Daily Star reports.

“If the subpoena is not quashed, members of the AZGOP will be made to feel that every time they communicate with party leadership, they risk those communications disclosed to law enforcement followed by a knock on the door (or worse) from federal investigators,” Ward’s attorney Alexander Kolodin argued in a filing with U.S. District Judge Diane Humetewa to try to dismiss the committee’s subpoena. “A stronger risk of associational chilling can scarcely be imagined.”

There is, of course, no such thing as “executive privilege” for the leaders of political parties.  And neither executive nor attorney-client privilege can be claimed when the communication concerns the undertaking of a criminal act.  And if you’re involved in a criminal plot to undermine the Constitution, I hope law enforcement can get your communications to protect the Constitution. 

“Three months ago, it looked like a category five hurricane was heading for President Biden and House Democrats clinging to a flimsy 221-214 seat edge. Today, not only has it weakened to a tropical depression, but GOP primaries have thrown Democrats enough sandbags to give them a plausible, if still unlikely, scenario to stave off a Republican majority.”

“Republicans don’t need gale force winds at their back to reclaim the House; they only need to net a minuscule four seats. By our estimates, they are likely to pick up roughly three seats off the bat from redistricting alone, owing to New York’s top court torpedoing Democrats’ gerrymander and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signing a brutal GOP gerrymander into law. That was once a tiny component of Republicans’ potential House gains. Now, it looks like a critical GOP insurance policy in a highly fluid political climate,” writes Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman.

Americans favor labor unions more today than at any other time since 1965, a new survey from Gallup reports, although just one in six households in the United States include at least one family member.

The level of support for unions, coming in at 71%, matches the approval during the heyday of modern manufacturing in the United States, when more than a quarter of the entire American workforce was a member of a union.

With unemployment at 50-year lows and more than 12 million job openings, the nation’s workforce has been organizing into unions at employers such as Starbucks, Amazon, Apple and Google as workers leverage their collective strength for increased wages and better conditions.

An Arizona judge on Tuesday tossed a defamation lawsuit from MAGA scumbags Congressman Paul Gosar and Secretary of State candidate Mark Finchem against former Dem state Rep Charlene Fernandez after she had called for an investigation into the two assholes over the involvement in the January 6th 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, the Associated Press reports. Adding insult to injury, the judge also ordered the two white nationalists to pay $75,000 in attorney’s fees.

HUGE news out of the Alaska State Fair! Reigning champ farmer Dale Marshall beat his own 2019 record 2,051 pounder with a 2,147 LBS WINNING PUMPKIN in the Midnight Sun Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off on Tuesday, AlaskasNewsSource.com reports. Holy jack-o-lantern that’s a big gourd!

Also the last Premier of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev died at age 91 on Tuesday, ABC News reports. Gorbachev had led some important political and economic reforms that signaled the end of the Eastern Bloc and… You guys gotta see this freaking pumpkin. They needed a special designed crane to pick it up from Marshall’s farm and take it to be weighed in at the State Fair. How the hell did he get it to be 500 lbs heavier than last year’s?!?! Look at this picture! Can you imagine how much pumpkin pie it could make? It would probably be the diameter of an above ground pool!

In an effort to prevent an overt display of partisanship in its ranks, the US Department of Justice issued a directive Tuesday preventing political appointees from attending any rally or event for a candidate or a cause in the upcoming election season, Politico reports.

“As Department employees, we have been entrusted with the authority and responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States in a neutral and impartial manner,” Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote in a memo distributed Tuesday.  “In fulfilling this responsibility, we must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work.”

The DOJ has been lambasted by Donald Trump and his minions who claim the prosecutors are acting out of political bias and favoritism for Democrat Joe Biden because it’s investigating Trump absconding with classified documents when he left the White House.  Oh, and the potential obstruction of justice he committed in hiding the documents and having made false statements to the government.  And his involvement in planning and encouraging the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.  And this doesn’t mention the investigations being conducted in New York and Georgia.  But the political thing, the GOP claims, is to investigate all these substantiated allegations, not blindly lining up behind the titular leader of the Party accused of a variety of malfeasance.

As college students head back to campus, it’s important to recognize the signs of suspicious activity. Remember that if you see something, say something.

Learn more: https://t.co/AmcsIaOrAD #SeeSay pic.twitter.com/my9nxutSn2

— Homeland Security (@DHSgov) August 30, 2022

Customs and Border Patrol agents at an authorized port of entry seized more than 1,500 pounds of cocaine hidden in a shipment of baby wipes coming across the southern border, CNN reports, a success in the effort to stop the flow of illegal drugs across the Mexican border but something Republicans regularly point to as a failure of Joe Biden’s border policy.

Agents working at Colombia-Solidarity Bridge near Laredo, Texas, agents felt suspicious after doing a preliminary visual search of a tractor trailer whose bill of lading said it was carrying baby wipes, so they pulled it aside for further inspection including by drug-sniffing dogs.  Subsequently, the agents found more than 1,900 packages containing cocaine that would have a street value exceeding $11.8 million.

As with the record number of undocumented migrants being interceded at the border, the standard GOP talking point will revolve around how this is a sign that Biden’s border policy is a failure, even though law enforcement officers prevented the drugs from reaching the US.  Republicans seem to have a problem understanding that when people and contraband are caught at the border, it means they’re not getting into the US illegally.  So to them, a law enforcement victory is actually a sign of impending doom.

The novelization of Dinesh D’Souza’s sci-fi fantasy epic “2000 Mules,” which was to hit bookstores Tuesday, was abruptly pulled over an unspecified “significant error,” the Daily Beast reports.

“Due to a publishing error, the publication date of 2000 Mules has been postponed to October 25, 2022. We look forward to publishing 2000 Mules by Dinesh D’Souza this fall,” right wing publisher Regenry tweeted on Tuesday, disappointing fans of the smash hit alternate history thriller.

It’s not clear if the error was somehow “factual” in nature because it’s not like such a flaw stopped the original film from being produced and distributed in the first place. Even if you accept the premise that the “Mules” existed and weren’t just say, Uber Eats delivery guys using the same route that took them past ballot drop boxes (because that’s what the plot of the movie hinges entirely upon – movement patterns in GPS cell phone data), then how did it invalidate the votes? Seriously, if the vote was legal then even if someone committed a crime in transmitting it to the clerk then how does that make Biden’s win illegitimate? D’Souza never says the ballots were tampered with or altered, he simply says that they were illegally “harvested.” That’s it. The will of the voters themselves was not abrogated in any way. Only between points A and B was a theoretically illegal harvesting scheme (which he did not actually prove). Should be a fun book.

Not all drones fly.  A US Navy coastal patrol vessel operating in the Arabian Sea stopped an attempt by an Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy supply ship to abscond with an American maritime drone, forcing the Iranian ship to cut the tether it was using to tow the drone to shore, CNN reports.

In a move a senior US commander in the region called a “flagrant” and “unwarranted” incident, the USS Thunderbolt spotted the Iranian Shahid Baziar towing an unmanned surface Saildrone Explorer drone and intercepted the IRCGN ship.  The Thunderbolt was later joined by a US Navy Sea Hawk helicopter, which positioned itself directly over the drone.  Officers aboard the Thunderbolt made direct contact with the Iranian ship and demanded the ship release the drone, which it did.  The Shahid Baziar remained in the area for about four hours more before heading back to port.

The Navy uses surface drones to help boost radar and sonar coverage.  It’s equipped with sensors to identify potential threats in the water and to help provide navigation information in crowded waters.

In a report on Trump hiring the former Florida Solicitor General to defend him from the likely pending indictment for stealing classified info and dumping it boxes that he hid the basement of his opulent hooker pad, Politico’s writers also say the Republican National Committee is not paying this guy’s probably pricy rate, prematurely ending the agreement that they would keep footing the bill as long as he didn’t launch a 2024 comeback campaign.

Think back a few months ago when the news broke of Republican former Missouri Governor Eric Greitens’ divorce papers containing some pretty damning episodes of abusive behavior inflicted on his wife and son. We were all obviously disgusted but not surprised considering that sick asshole’s history. There’s a reason he’s the former Governor, that the allegations of sexual assault and blackmail toward a woman he was having an affair with taken together with the corruption was beyond the pale even in a hardcore MAGA state like Missouri during the Trump era.

Greitens had however by earlier this year “rehabilitated” his image with the state’s Republican voters and was considered a serious threat to win the nomination amid a field of mostly assclowns including “Get off my lawn” guy Mark McCloskey and fat moron Congressman Billy Long. It was only through Mitch McConnell’s successful effort to recruit current Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and Trump’s indecision over who to back culminating in a lame 11th hour endorsement of “ERIC” was a very real chance to lose what should be a safe GOP seat averted.

Eight Pennsylvania state Republicans, including GW Bush’s one-time Homeland Security Secretary, have announced their support for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro over Republican Trumpist Doug Mastriano, the York Daily Record reports.

“I dedicated my career in public service to upholding the rule of law and defending the Constitution. Right now, we all have a responsibility to support candidates of whichever party who will stand up and defend our democracy,” said Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security Secretary under Republican President GW Bush, adding,  “I am deeply troubled by Doug Mastriano’s embrace of dangerous extremism.”

Along with Chertoff, seven state legislators including one who served in the US Commerce Department during the Reagan Administration, have joined nine other Pennsylvania Republicans who earlier expressed in their support for Shapiro.  Republicans are fleeing Mastriano’s camp as he plummets more into Trumpism and as other scandals–including a photo of Mastriano wearing the uniform of a Confederate soldier’s uniform during an education program at the US Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania–have come to light.

Russian drone operators eager to get an edge in Ukraine are finding themselves as disappointed as a kid on Christmas morning finding out the hard way the new toy they got looks nowhere near as nice as it did in the commercials as the new shipment of drones they got from their buddies in Iran are total pieces of shit, Insider reports. “There are a few bugs in the system… The Russians are not satisfied,” said a NATO official. Their first mistake was probably buying drones from fucking Iran.

Disgraced former President Trump’s lame Twitter clone Truth Social, already in a shit ton of trouble over a delayed merger with a publicly listed shell company and behind on more than $1.6 million in payments to its hosting company, is facing yet another holdup in reaching potential users as Google is demanding changes be made to content moderation before it approves the far right extremist social media network’s version for its Android platform, Axios reports.

“On Aug. 19, we notified Truth Social of several violations of standard policies in their current app submission and reiterated that having effective systems for moderating user-generated content is a condition of our terms of service for any app to go live on Google Play. Last week Truth Social wrote back acknowledging our feedback and saying that they are working on addressing these issues,” said a Google spokesperson in a statement to Axios.

Truth Social puts plenty of effort into moderation considering they’ve banned users for posting about the January 6th Select Committee hearings among other “leftist” transgressions, so it’s not a question of whether or not they’re capable of weeding out the “physical threats and incitements to violence,” which a source at Google told Axios more specifically was the problem, but whether they actually want to do that and alienate the MAGA user base. They don’t.

Filthy pervert former President Trump has bragged about having some sort of kompromat on French President Emmanuel Macron’s sex life, Rolling Stone reports.The Donald has told associates he held info on Macron’s “naughty” ways that not “very many people know” about.

Rolling Stone doesn’t definitively connect the reporting to “info re: President of France” listed on the original search warrant of Mar-a-Lago, but it’s hard not to see that being the kind of thing Trump would want to hang on to after leaving office since he’s that kind of sick bastard.

Cumberland County, North Carolina Sheriff Ennis Wright is asking the good citizens of Fayetteville for their help solving the mystery of the Great Street Sign Heist of 2022, in which more than 80 of the metal traffic control devices were stolen in a single weekend, WRAL reports.

“There is enormous frustration. The question is, is there willingness to express that frustration. I don’t know the answer to that. But there is real frustration, and with the exception of people who are too stupid to understand the need to be frustrated, it is nearly universal”

– “Top Republican fundraiser” quoted anonymously in the Tuesday Politico article “‘There is enormous frustration’: Trump forces Republicans off-script… again,” describing the mood among donors as the Orange God Emperor melts down over the Justice Department case against him.