Category: Uncategorized

Under an agreement by the two warring sides, the first freighter loaded with grain to help feed humans has departed the Ukrainian port city of Yuzhne, east of Odesa and now in Russian hands, and it will head to Africa to help abate the risk of famine, Politico reports.

Carrying 23,000 metric tons of wheat grain, The Brave Commander Sunday afternoon local time.  The ship will unload its cargo in Djibouti where it will travel on to Ethiopia.  The shipment will be one of many to nations in Africa, which were dependent on Ukrainian grain to feed their populations.

In an agreement reached last month thanks to negotiations led by the United Nations and Turkey, Russia and Ukraine agreed to let Ukrainian grain be shipped to needy countries in Africa to lessen a famine that has already struck most of the western region.

CNN’s Jim Acosta beautifully points out the faults in Andrew Yang’s new policies on controversial issues:  the Forward Party doesn’t have them.  While Yang attempts to explain his position on the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Acosta presses on, to which Yang replies:  “The Forward Party has not left or right but forward stance on even the most divisive and contentious issues.”

“Well, what does that mean?” Acosta asks.  “Don’t you have to take a position on something? … You can’t just say, ‘well, this is a hot button issue so I’m not going to take a position on it.  If you wanna run the country, you’re gonna have to make some hard decisions.”

Ted Cruz’s reported personal Girlfriend Experience and matron of the neighborhood family from Hell Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) was supposed to be a major draw at a rally in Clearwater, Florida for GOP Congressional nominee Anna Paulina Luna.  Apparently, the people of Florida’s 13th district really don’t give a shit about a performance artist like Boebert.

This week’s Otter Globe and Intelligencer makes a case for the Orange God Emperor to face criminal liability for whipping up his fans against the FBI. It should be a no brainer since already one of them is probably still in cold storage while his family haggles with a downmarket funeral home director over the price and trying to decide if he should be wearing a MAGA hat in the casket.

Donald Trump issued a decree on his failing social media platform, demanding that the FBI hand back documents he claimed they confiscated that would be covered under either “executive privilege” or “attorney-client privilege.”

“By copy of this TRUTH, I respectfully request that these documents be immediately returned to the location from which they were taken,” Trump posted on the failing social media site (which you can see on a reputable site here) that unironically calls all comments made on them “truths.”  To date, no court has recognized a post on the site an official request to turn over documents, and Trump would be better off using one of his various underperforming lawyers to file an official request.

Trump’s claim is curious as well, given that by claiming the documents were covered under “executive privilege,” they would inherently be the property of the United States because they would be official documents.  Of course, Trump could be claiming that they were “privileged” after he left the White House, which isn’t really a thing.

Police have released the identity of a man who who drove his car into barricades nears the Capitol, setting the vehicle on fire as he stepped, fired a number of rounds into the air and then killed himself with a shot to the head, WJLA ABC-7 in Washington, DC reports.

Authorities do not know yet why  Richard York III, a 29-year-old man from Delaware drove into the barriers at 4 a.m. local time.  The location of the crash– East Capitol Street and Second Street–is just a couple hundred feet from the Supreme Court building and about two blocks from the Capitol.

Police determined that York apparently did not intend to harm any member of Congress; Congress is on recess and there are few Representatives or Senators in the area, let alone at that time of night. 

After a school near Phoenix went on lockdown Friday after someone called police to report a man with a gun walking by, a number of parents descended on the school intent on rescuing their children, forcing police to taze two and arrest three, USA Today reports.

The Thompson Ranch Elementary School in El Mirage, Arizona went on lockdown when someone with a handgun attempted to gain access to either the elementary school or the attached administrative building.  The alert put both buildings on lockdown.  Police say the man never made it into the building and by the time police arrived, they could not locate the man, if he even existed.  Police did find what they deemed to be a suspicious package at the scene, although it was initially unknown if it was related to the “man with a gun” report.

After the school went on lockdown, a number of students with cell phones contacted their parents, and parents started arriving on the scene en masse as police were trying to search and clear the area.  Many tried to breach the police line to gain access to the campus to pull their children out, thinking police weren’t acting fast enough because they thought this was an active shooter situation, not a false alarm, which some schools go through on a weekly basis.

Asked by a reporter if he’s concerned about highly classified documents being found unsecured at Mar-a-Lago, Trump apologist and man with the spine of a gummi worm Senator Ron Johnson (Q-Wisc.) “First of all, I think Mar-a-Lago is a pretty safe place.  We have Secret Service protections.  Sounds like these documents might’ve been in a safe.  I’m not overly concerned that some top secret information being leaked out.”

Just a note:  Going into 2018–that’s not a typo:  2018–two years after Donald Trump took the White House–Ron Johnson was calling for the FBI to investigate Hillary Clinton’s handling of classified documents.  But now?  Meh.  It’s really not that important, right?

At least 41 people were killed and another 14 were taken to hospitals for treatment after an electrical fire started in an air conditioning unit on the second floor of the church in Cairo, Egypt as worshipers gathered for Sunday services, according to ABC News.

The first reports of the fire came just after 9 a.m. local time at the Coptic Orthodox Church of Abou Seifain as families gathered in the church for services and Sunday school.  The Egyptian health ministry reports that most of the fatalities came from smoke inhalation, with some of the victims reportedly children.

“I am closely following the developments of the tragic accident … and I have directed all concerned state institutions to take all necessary measures, and immediately to deal with this incident and its effects and to provide all aspects of healthcare to the injured,” Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi said in a Facebook post.  He said the army’s engineering authority would assist church leaders with ensuring its stability and rebuilding the structure.

A man who drove his car directly into a group of people holding a Saturday memorial service and fundraiser outside a bar for 10 members of a family killed in an August 5th house fire in Nescopeck, Pennsylvania has also been charged with murdering his mother after his attack, the Daily Beast reports.

Three children, seven adults and 13 dogs were killed in the house fire.  The memorial was organized by the town of 1,500 people about 30 miles southwest of Wilkes-Barre one week after the fire.  Police say Adrian Oswaldo Sura Reyes, 24, drove into the crowd, killing one and injuring 17; a local hospital lists five in critical condition.

Police say after driving through the crowd, Reyes then drove to his mother’s house in neighboring Luzerne County, where neighbors called police about a disturbance at his mother’s house.  Reyes reportedly hit her with his vehicle and then attacked her with a hammer.  She was pronounced dead at a local hospital.  Police have not said if Reyes is connected in any way to the fire that killed the family.

“Why on earth would they need to take photos, go into Melania Trump’s closet, I mean, are there classified shoes involved, I don’t know,” a member of Donald Trump’s Elite Strike Force of lawyers (many of whom are under indictment) and then hostess on failing cable propaganda network Jenna Ellis says, apparently very self-satisfied with her amaze-balls zinger.  “But one of the things we don’t have is the actual affidavit and that is really important and there are reports saying that there may not have even been an affidavit in support of the warrant, and this to me is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment.”

No affadivit?  Sez who?  Oh, right:  “reports.”  And it’s difficult to argue that there’s a violation of the Fourth Amendment when the FBI sought a judicially-approved search and seizure warrant from a (reportedly Republican) judge, and they found the things they were looking for.  Oh, and she may want to review the FBI procedures for processing searches, which includes photographing the scene to show the condition of rooms, where evidence was found and other things they can use in prosecutions to show evidence was properly obtained.

https://twitter.com/richardgrenell/status/1558847235097432064

At least a dozen Trump fans, several of them armed with assault rifles, others carrying signs reading “Honor your oath” and “Abolish FBI” held a demonstration on Saturday outside of the Phoenix FBI field office over the Great Raid on Mar-a-Lago, Fox 10 reports.

Typically the presence of an armed individual displaying a weapon openly is employed as a deterrent to malign actors – for example, NYPD counter-terrorism officers armed with MP5-type submachine guns will typically be positioned outside of the United Nations headquarters during the annual General Assembly as any gathering of world leaders is by its nature sensitive to threats from extremists of all stripes. Standing outside of an FBI office with a gun seems to be devoid of such a practical purpose. Of course, Arizona is an open-carry state and a person is free to stand on any public roadway armed with a weapon if they so choose. However they are not, with the exceptions of self-defense against other armed individuals and in extremely limited and exigent circumstances of lawful citizen interventions in aid of law enforcement, permitted to discharge such weapons.

So really it was just pointless dick-wagging and an implicit admission on the part of the MAGA militia people they have no faith whatsoever in their party’s promises to pursue accountability for federal law enforcement over slights real or imagined. The people holding the signs were actually more effective when you think about it, because they’re attempting to appeal to passersby with a message – even if it’s a really poorly written one. The ones with the guns are telling the passersby that they know their position is unpopular and will not convince enough voters and politicians that the FBI is evil and blah blah blah so they believe they’re going to get their way by using lethal force. Never mind the practical realities of the state monopoly on violence and what a firefight would’ve looked like if either the MAGA militia or FBI agents escalated, just focus on the message the AR-15s or whatever the fuck these cosplayers were carrying unintentionally implies.

“The last time Republicans held a Dem or Deep State member accountable was never”

– The current top comment on the Breitbart article “Exclusive – Chuck Grassley: Senate to Investigate Mar-a-Lago Raid if GOP Takes Majority,” posted Saturday evening.

Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
The FBI gas a long and unrelenting history of being corrupt. Just look back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover. In the modern era, nothing has changed except that it has gotten far worse. Look at Comey, McCabe, Strzok and lover Lisa Page. Check out the brilliantly written but damning I.G. Reports. See what they were willing to do in order to get Crooked Hillary Clinton elected (they failed), and got caught! They spied on my campaign, pushed the FAKE Dossier, and illegally used the FISA Court…

3,379 10,605 Aug 14, 2022, 00:30

Rant continued: “…The Inspector General said the FBI acted with ‘gross incompetence and negligence.’ I was fully vindicated in the Russia, Russia, Russia SCAM, the ‘No Collusion’ Mueller Investigation, Impeachment Hoax #1, Impeachment Hoax #2, and all else. NOW THEY RAID MY HOME, ban my lawyers and, without any witnesses allowed, break the lock that they asked us to install on the storage area that we showed them early on, which held papers that they could have had months ago for the asking, and without the ridiculous political grandstanding of a ‘break in’ to a very storied, important, and high visibility place, just before the Midterm Elections. The whole World was watching as the FBI rummaged through the house, including the former First Lady’s closets (and clothing!), alone and unchecked. They even demanded that the security cameras be turned off (we refused), but there was no way of knowing if what they took was legitimate, or was there a ‘plant?’ This was, after all, the FBI!”

A herpetologist once called the “ambassador of rattlesnakes” for his work in understanding and advocating for the poisonous snakes, died after being bitten by snake, believed to be a timber rattler, on his property in West Virginia, the New York Daily News reports.

Eighty-year-old William “Marty” Martin started studying the habits and habitats of rattlesnakes at a young age.  As a 13-year-old, he became one of the first people to document the existence of timber rattlers in Bull Run Mountains in Virginia.

As he grew, he started to advocate against policies that endangered rattlesnakes, particularly in the Western United States, where their populations were dropping as developments expanded into their natural habitats.

Because he’s recovering and can breathe on his own. We got the idea for this misleading but technically true headline from the Daily Beast because they led with the “taken off ventilator” too.

Joined by the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI has issued a warning about increasing threats of violence by Republican-inspired domestic terrorists against federal agents, courts and buildings since the FBI search of Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago compound and supper club, CNN reports.

After the release of the warrant which was served on Trump’s property, far right outlets doxxed the two agents whose names appear on the warrant, including information about one of the agent’s children.

Posts on various social media platforms, particularly far-right sights like Gab, Rumble and Turch Slovak Torque Slackwell Truth Social, the site owned by Trump, call for violence against federal agents and courts, particularly the court in south Florida which issued the warrant.

Television snake oil salesman and Republican nominee for the Senate from Pennsylvania (even though he lives in New Jersey) Mehmet Oz continues to ignore the fact that his audience lives in Pennsylvania by releasing an op/ed about the Keystone State in a Washington, DC media outlet.

Dogged by an effective campaign by Democratic opponent John Fetterman to paint him as an outsider with no connection to Pennsylvania, Oz demonstrated his indifference to addressing his home audience by printing an op/ed in the Washington Examiner, a far-right news outlet that runs out of DC.

In the op/ed, Oz lays on the Republican talking point in the DC outlet, slamming the state he wants to represent:  “This brand of criminals-first politics, championed by Democratic Senate candidate and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has ushered in a culture of subjective justice in which radical extremism is placed above the democratic rule of law and safe streets. Violent offenders avoid prosecution, immigration law is ignored in so-called sanctuary cities, and law-abiding citizens are left defenseless. Progressive leaders, more concerned with virtue signaling than with upholding the rule of law, have stood idly by while businesses are robbed, citizens are attacked, and neighborhoods are torn apart.”

The espionage act was abused from the beginning to jail dissenters of WWI. It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment.

Repeal the Espionage Act – The Future of Freedom Foundation https://t.co/3KCgujpS9z

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 13, 2022

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence the Beaker cosplayer and Republican junior Senator from Kentucky Rand Paul call for the repeal of the Espionage Act after it was disclosed Donald Trump was reportedly being investigated for violations of it.

Being a libertarian, Paul dislikes how the Espionage Age limits free speech, citing anti-war activists who have been prosecuted under the law.  He doesn’t mention how it also prevents people from providing secret US military and policy documents to foreign governments.