Category: Uncategorized

To celebrate his 60th birthday, Nebraskan Duane Hansen sat in an 846-pound pumpkin he named Berta and rode it on a 38-mile trip down the Missouri River, setting a new world record for the longest ride by pumpkin boat, according to the people at Guinness, the Washington Post reports.

So that’s it.  That’s the story.  A grown man crawled into a gourd and rowed the damn thing on a rather large river for 38 miles.  And he’s not the first one to undertake such a journey, because the previous record was a 25-mile trip taken by Rick Swenson in 2016, spanning the North Dakota-Minnesota border.

(First, look at Steven Miller trying to do his best Zoolander “Blue Steel” look.). Gadfly Charlie Kirk literally does the “I am rubber,  You are glue” childish retort because he’s upset that he’s being probably labeled based on his political stances: “If they’re going to escalate the language then game on.  Like, okay.  If you’re going to call us a bunch of fascists, we’re not going to take that anymore. You’re the fascist, Joe Biden.  And there’s other words we could use as well.”

Seriously, Kirk wants to get into a name-calling fight rather than try to be less, y’know, fascist.

Nearly 200,000 people in and around Jackson, Mississippi will lose running water for an unknown amount of time while the city utility had to swap out the main pump at the city’s main water treatment plant, ABC News reports.

Over the past three days, massive rainfall swelled the Pearl River, which crested Monday morning at 35 feet, well above the “major flood” stage of 26 feet.  The flooding waters inundated the riverside water pumping station, knocking out the main pump.  The city will switch to less powerful and less reliable backup systems to try to provide some water to residents until the main pump is replaced, which could take as little as two days, but the city is not providing a specific schedule.

Republican Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves was informed Friday that the expected flooding would likely knock out water service.  He pledged to have potable and non-potable water available to residents, and he intended to declare a state of emergency to assist residents.

Simmie Poetsema, one of the three Dutch commandoes shot outside an Indianapolis hotel early Saturday morning, has died, the Dutch Ministry of Defence announced Monday, CNN reports.

The three, members of the Dutch Commando Corps, were in Indiana for a training session at the Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, a 1,000-acre complex southeast of the city.  They were outside their hotel in downtown Indianapolis at 4 a.m. when they were shot.

Police don’t have a motive or suspect for the shooting, but the Dutch Ministry of Defense stated that they were told the shooting was not a random act.

Eighteen Congressional Democrats sent a letter to a Montana finance company that allows gun buyers to walk out the door of a gun shop with a new weapon while paying it off in installments, asking the company to provide data on a number of gun safety issues, the New York Times reports.

The Democrats want to make sure the financing arrangement made between the buyer, the gun store and Credova Financial do not make it easier for straw purchasers, ineligible buyers and other malefactors to get their hands on a weapon when they should be banned from buying one.

The letter also notes that so-called “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) financing encourages people to purchase more than they can afford.  They’ve also asked for data from the company on the number of loans that are defaulted on, how many of their customers’ guns are reported stolen, and how many of the guns get resold by the borrower. 

The Drag Queen Story Time version of Morticia Addams and societal leech Kimberly Gargoyle Guilfoyle, currently known for unhinged screechy rants delivered at inappropriate volume, has another unhinged screechy rant:  “Enough of this nonsense.  I mean, paying off loans for people who don’t want, they want to have some sort of bizarre basketweaving, ah, y’know, ah, degree, they want all of us, people watching across this country, hard working men and women to subsidize their laziness and their inability to even contribute to society.”

Wait… did she–Miss “Pay Me $60,000 to Give An 80-Second Speech on January 6th, Daddy-in-Law”–just say others want to “subsidize their laziness” when she and her future in-laws have bilked people out of hundreds of millions of dollars in donations that are now being investigated by a Congressional committee?

One of the Secret Service agents at the center of the story about Donald Trump trying to seize the steering wheel of an SUV to redirect it to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 has announced he’s resigning from the Secret Service, CNN reports.

Tony Ornato, the Deputy Director of the Secret Service who at one point led the detail assigned to protect Trump and later became Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, has been eligible for retirement for years.  His announcement comes two months after testimony before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress by Cassidy Hutchinson, who said Ornato related the story of Trump trying to grab the steering wheel to her.

The Russian military received its first shipments of Iranian-made drones to assist on the battlefield in its invasion of Ukraine, but in tests of the systems before they were deployed, the drones failed preliminary operational tests, the Washington Post reports.

Russia accepted an unknown number of Shahed-129, Shahed-191 and Mohajer-6 drones from Iran, who have also supplied them to extremist groups in Yemen, Iraq and Syria.  However, the drones–which can be used to lurk over an area for observation or to deploy weapons–have not faced sophisticated defense systems like they would see in Ukraine.  Iran’s surrogate groups have used the drones in swarm attacks on opposition positions, including one that hit a US position in Syria last week.

“These Iranian drones have not operated in a sophisticated air-defense environment before,” Michael Knights, a military and security expert with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said. “The closest they’ve come to that is with [Houthi strikes against] Saudi Arabia or against U.S. bases in Iraq, and they have generally not done well. So I wouldn’t be surprised that, in a more intense environment like Ukraine, that they would have some problems.”

The Catholic Charities office in Omaha, Nebraska hired a security consultant to stage a mock mass shooting drill at its office last Wednesday, with the consultant roaming the building and firing blanks from a rifle, but didn’t tell employees the event was a drill, the Omaha World-Herald reports.  Afterward, the consultant asked employees if they wanted to buy a gun from him.

The man who ran the drill, 27-year-old John Channels, is in custody–but for a variety of charges in an unrelated case about Channels allegedly assaulting a teenager who was taking martial arts lessons from him.  Channels faces sexual assault and child pornography charges in that case, and prosecutors last week brought five counts of making terroristic threats and one weapons count for the misguided drill.

On May 19th, Channels entered the Catholic Charities office in Omaha wearing a hoodie and a dark mask, carrying an assault-style rifle.  He then wandered through the building firing blanks at people, who ran frightened from the building.  Some ran past “victims” Channels had staged–actors covered in blood, some of them pretending they were wounded and asking for help.  At one point, Channels stood in front of a glass-enclosed conference room and simulated gunfire into the office.

The Midnight Sun Great Pumpkin Weigh-Off at the 2022 Alaska State Fair kicks off Monday as Alaska’s News Source reports reigning champ farmer Dale Marshall returns once again after… we seriously don’t know how many times, we can’t get a straight answer and a lot of these goddamned local news sites are paywalled, but it looks like Marshall’s basically the Joey Chestnut of the Alaska State Fair pumpkin competition except he’s less likely to die for his achievement.

The only farmer Marshall appears to have lost against in recent years is himself, as his 2021 pumpkin was a meager 1,603 lbs, falling short of his all time state record 2019 pumpkin at 2,051 lbs.

A bartender from Washington, DC who was one of the first people to breach the Capitol during the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on the Capitol and came face-to-face with Capitol Police and DC officers protecting Congress has been sentenced to 55 months in prison, the Washington Post reports.

Pruitt came literally within feet of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was being escorted to safety by his security detail.  At one point, Schumer’s group turned a corner to see Pruitt and others just a few steps down the hall.  They turned Schumer around and headed to a safe location before Pruitt got within 30 feet of the senator.

Forty-year-old Joshua Pruitt stated in an encrypted chat weeks before the Capitol attack that he wanted to become a full-fledged member of the Proud Boys, the far-right ultranationalist groups whose members have been charged with seditious conspiracy for their part on the January 6th attack.  “I just want to do whatever needs to be done to be legit,” Pruitt told the other members of the chat group. 

Ukrainian military forces confirmed to CNN Monday reports of a major counteroffensive being launched to push the Russians out of the region surrounding Kherson and eventually the city itself. “Yes, (Ukrainian forces) have started the offensive actions in several directions on the South front towards liberating the occupied territories,” Ukraine’s Operational Command South spokeswoman Natalia Humeniuk, adding, “All the details will be available after the operation is fulfilled.”

The NAACP have submitted a brief supporting New Mexico plaintiffs seeking to ban convicted Capitol rioter, Otero County commissioner, and “Cowboys for Trump” asshole Couy Griffin from office over his refusal to certify the results of the June primary elections, the AP reports.

The civil rights organization argued their standing is that Griffin violated the civil rights of non-white voters after he and the two other Otero commissioners, who also serve as election canvassers, simply refused to certify the primaries because Dominion, holding out for 11 days until they were ordered to do it by the state Supreme Court. Well actually Griffin still refused, but was outvoted by the other two commissioners who were sufficiently scared enough of sanctions.

“Lawful protests and demonstrations in support of civil rights and the Black Lives Matter movement are fundamentally different from the insurrectionist conduct that occurred on Jan. 6,” wrote NAACP attorneys in the filing. Griffin faces a two day bench trial in a state district court to determine if he’ll be forced to ride off into the sunset to go play Cowboys and Indians in non-political pastures.

Known as “The Man in the Hole,” the last surviving member of an uncontacted indigenous tribe in the rainforest in western Brazil was found dead lying in a hammock outside of his hut, the BBC reports.

Researchers found the man’s body on August 23rd after a search party went looking for him after not seeing signs of activity in the area.  While police are investigating, no signs of foul play were found at the scene and nothing in the hut appeared to be disturbed.  The man, whose name was not known, was believed to be around 60 years old.

He got the moniker The Man in the Hole because he dug multiple holes around his territory, some had spikes at the bottom to kill prey and he used others to provide protection and hiding spots from overflights and intruders.  Most of the man’s tribe were wiped out by ranchers in the 1970s before Brazil adopted rules relating to uncontacted tribes.  Six other members were murdered by people illegally harvesting timber in the mid-1990s. 

We guess RNC Chairwoman Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel doesn’t literally mean “forever” when she told Fox and Friends Monday morning that she’s “been saying forever we don’t like the term ‘Red Wave'” because that would mean we’re just being leftist assholes and taking her “out of context” or whatever when we point out she said literally “The red wave is here, and things are only going to get worse for Joe Biden and the Democrats come November 2022,” back on November 3, 2021 after Republicans had a good night in Virginia and New Jersey. Or when she tweeted “This is the year a Red Wave sweeps across the country and Republicans retake our majorities in Congress. Let’s get to work!” on January 1st of this year. Or “In battleground Wisconsin, Kenosha County just elected the first Republican county executive in history! #RedWave” on April 6th. And probably a shit ton of other examples, but we think three just within the last 10 months is good enough here.

A Fulton County, Georgia judge on Monday ordered Republican Gov Brian Kemp to testify to the grand jury investigating the failed Trump 2020 coup attempt in the state, but allowed him to hold off until after the November 8th election, Politico reports. The reprieve helps Kemp avoid incurring the wrath of fanboys for cooperating with a criminal investigation into their Orange Warlord ahead of a tight rematch with Dem Stacey Abrams. In the same ruling, the judge also ordered scumbag Trump lawyer Kenny Chesebro to testify to the grand jury immediately.

The privilege review team established by the Department of Justice to examine documents seized at Donald Trump’s flophouse and supper club in Florida informed the court that it found a “limited set” of papers that might be excluded because of concerns of attorney-client privilege, according to a court filing by the DOJ.

“[I]n accordance with the judicially authorized search warrant‘s provisions, the Privilege Review Team (as described in paragraphs 81-84 of the search warrant affidavit) identified a limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information, completed its review of those materials, and is in the process of following the procedures set forth in paragraph 84 of the search warrant affidavit to address potential privilege disputes,” the motion stated.

According to the affidavit supporting the warrant application, the DOJ established a special, isolated review team, who are not involved in the investigation, to identify documents that could be excluded from further investigative processes because they include information covered by established laws on privilege.  The review was undertaken from the time the documents were recovered by FBI agents August 8th, and preceded the request by the Trump legal team for a special master, which was filed two weeks after the search had occurred.

Villages, Florida sex offender Edward Charles Wardingley, 61, who lives with his mom and was a registered Republican until he was convicted in 2018 of lewd and lascivious molestation of a victim between the ages of 12 and 15, serving three years in prison and losing his right to vote, is in trouble with the law again after he was was arrested Saturday night on a charge of driving under the influence and a parole violation, Villages-News.com reports.

It’s not clear if the Republican was driving his mom’s car or golf cart when he was pulled over on his way back to her house after drinking at some place like Applebee’s, probably on a tab with her credit card. It’s likely he complained about liberal groomers and leeches ruining America to whoever he thought was listening to him as he downed pint after pint of Miller Lite from an Imperial pint-sized glass and picked at his buffalo wings. Probably stiffed the 26 year old single mom bartender out of a tip after she wouldn’t give him her phone number, leading her to note his license plate number as he drove off, then calling police to tell them she witnessed that same car with that tag number swerving all over the road, leaving out that she was the one who had served him.

At least two or three of the above points of speculation we made to fill in the gaps here has to be true. Yeah, circumstances should speak for themselves, but why not have a little fun with this one?