Category: Uncategorized

The Ohio Republicans’ fourth attempt to pass a highly gerrymandered redistricting map has been rejected by the state’s Supreme Court, which found the map did not meet the fairness requirements previously outlined by the court, the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

In the 4-3 decision, one Republican member of the bench, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, sided with all three Democrats to overturn the map and send the issue back to the state’s redistricting committee.  The judges found that the map violated efforts to fairly assign districts based on the citizenry’s historic 54% Republican-46% Democratic split in voters in the state.

The jurists stated that too many of the districts laid out in the Republican-drawn map were toss-up districts taken from previously strong-Democratic areas.  The panel recommended the commission refer to maps constructed by paid consultants who put out more equitable maps.

The USS The Sullivans, a World War II destroyer named after five brother killed when their Navy ship was destroyed by the Japanese, sunk at its dock in Buffalo, New York after suffering a hull breach, The Buffalo News reports.

Converted into a museum ship in 1977, The Sullivans is the only ship in the US Navy fleet named for more than one person.  It was declared a national landmark in 1986.  Conservators have attempted to raise $1 million to facilitate maintenance and repairs, and experts noted last year that the ship was at risk of sinking because of structural weakness.

Donald Trump continues to choose celebrity over experience and integrity in his endorsements:  NBC News reports that the twice-impeached philanderer will endorse novelist J.D. Vance in the upcoming GOP Ohio Senate primary.

Vance is running third in a five-horse race–it’s a figure of speech  not meant to imply Marjorie Taylor Greene is galloping for the seat–and hasn’t gained traction among Republican voters.  Vance has made a series of boneheaded comments, such as a commercial literally begging racists for their votes.

Earlier this week, Trump endorsed Republican Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz, a disgraced TeeVee doctor whom many MAGAts feel is not sufficiently radical (and perhaps white?) enough.

It’s been a more disastrous than normal month for Devin Nunes.  He lost one defamation suit.  He’s overseeing a highly-mocked roll out of Donald Trump’s social media platform.  He’s ridiculed for claiming Truth Social has more interactions than Twitter.  And now, he’s lost another defamation suit, Reuters reports.

Upholding a lower court ruling, three-judge federal panel dismissed the former congressman’s defamation suit against CNN for claiming he was involved in the Trump administration scheme to get damaging information from Ukraine about Joe and Hunter Biden.  The opinion stated Nunes waited to long to claim he was defamed by the CNN reports and seek a correction, and he could not prove he deserved “special damages” for financial losses.

Nunes is upset that CNN linked him to the plot reportedly organized by Nosferatu cosplayer Rudy Giuliani, convicted felon Lev Parnas, TheShill reporter John Solomon (who failed to acknowledge in his reporting that he was in the room advising the group on strategy, then writing up the bogus reports as “news” to claim objectivity) and Fox’s favorite conspiracy couple, Joe DiGenova and Victoria Toensing.  Another person involved in the planning:  Nunes’s former House top aide Derek Harvey, who Nunes would like people to believe didn’t fill his boss in on the discussions. 

The Russian warship famously told to go fuck itself is likely headed to the Crimean peninsula port city of Sevastopol after it was possibly hit with a Ukrainian cruise missile, Politico reports on the Pentagon’s assessment. Though Russia claims the explosion was not caused by a missile strike but rather a munitions explosion on board, the DOD Press Secretary John Kirby says they can confirm neither assertion. However if it was indeed an accident, we can say the warship fucked itself.

After receiving as much as 18 inches of rain since Monday, more than 300 people died in the eastern South African province of KwaZulu-Natal as water washed out roads and bridges, destroyed scores of homes and shipping, containers were set afloat, CNN reports.

Scientists studying climate change indicated the disaster is likely a result of rising global temperatures creating more powerful, intense and devastating storm.  As ocean temperatures rise, storms become more powerful and carry more water, which is then dumped when it hits landfall.

A Facebook post from the provincial government called the storm “one of the worst weather storms in the history of our country. … The heavy rainfall that has descended on our land over the past few days, has wreaked untold havoc and unleashed massive damage to lives and infrastructure.”

The RNC voted in favor of a requirement for all future presidential candidates to affirm they will only appear at party sanctioned debates on Thursday, effectively pulling out of the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates after Trump’s complete meltdown in the first 2020 election debate and shitty, subpar performance in the second. “We are not walking away from debates. We are walking away from the Commission on Presidential Debates because it’s a biased monopoly that does not serve the best interest of the American people,” said RNC Chair Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel back in February, serving the best interests of her party’s likely 2024 nominee who cannot be subjected to any sort of scrutiny from non-loyal questioners without an escape route.

Meet Republican Tennessee state senator Frank Niceley of Strawberry Plains, a central Tennessee town of 4,600 residents and one fan of a genocidal madman. Frank wants us to know people can work their way out of homelessness because someone named—-[checks notes]—HITLER did.

“I want to give you a little lesson on homelessness. In NINETEEN and TEN, Hitler decided to live on the streets for awhile, so for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory, his body language and how to connect with citizens and then went on to lead a life that got him into history books. So a lot of these people, it’s not a dead end. They can come out of these homeless camps and have a productive life. Or in Hitler’s case, a very unproductive life.”

Memos gathered by FBI show pattern of Hunter Biden mixing business affairs with hunger charity#JustTheNewshttps://t.co/MSegR5SgDM

— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) April 14, 2022

Former Trump Reichsminister of Racial Purity Stephen Miller will testify to the House January 6th Select Committee, even after suing them to keep his parents’ cellphone bill private, the AP reports.

Charles Herbster, the rootin, tootin, cowboy hat-wearin, America-firstin, dun most fuckin patriotic son of a bitch in that governor’s race they havin’ up in Nebraska also turns out to be a serial groper, with one accuser even being a Republican State Senator, the Nebraska Examiner reports.

State Senator Julie Slama says Herbster reached his hand up her skirt at some hoe-down or line dance or something event in 2019, at which he also grabbed a woman’s ass on the dance floor. Both incidents were confirmed by Slama and independent witnesses. Seven other women told the examiner that Herbster is automatically attracted to beautiful women – he just starts kissing them, it’s like a magnet. Just kiss. He doesn’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. “Charles W. Herbster has a lifetime record of empowering women to lead. His company, farm, and campaign are all run by women. Despite leading hundreds of employees, not once has his reputation been attacked in this disgusting manner,” said a boilerplate denial from some spokesminion for Herbster, who may or may not have been groped herself.

Ukrainian military have intercepted phone calls and radio transmissions detailing a Russian army in chaos with soldiers dropping their weapons or refusing to work because they have not been paid a bonus for going to war in Ukraine, The Daily Beast reports.

In the intercepted communications, one Russian calls their situation a “total clusterfuck.”  Ukrainians listened in on soldier’s phone call to his mother:  “There is such fuckery going on here, I’m telling you, 600 people have resigned from our brigade throughout this time, well about that much, give or take. Everyone is going home, they are just dumping their stuff and saying, ‘I’m going home’ and then leaving,’” he said.

Russian soldiers that are positioned on the Russian side of the Ukraine border are refusing orders to go to Ukraine unless the bonus is paid.  A soldier calling home said that his commander “was drawing up papers and firing them all.”

“…and S-SUPPLY CHAIN!  Yougu, You go to stores and they’re half empty,” says man who hasn’t stepped foot in a grocery store in his adult life and career con man Donald Trump.  “They can’t get product.  They can’t get anything.  You go to, ah, luxury stores or non-luxury stores or supermarket and the shelves are in some cases half bare and nobody’s ever seen it.  We had, we didn’t even have to discuss supply chain during my administration because it was, it was a perfect moving machine.”

That’s Trump’s version of reality.  However, Real Reality was a shortage of food, medicine, medical supplies, paper products and even hospital beds in 2020.  Let’s not forget oxygen, ventilators, and medical staff.

The Democratic National Committee announced that it is pitching the traditional primary schedule that puts Iowa as the first caucus and New Hampshire as the first primary, a schedule that’s been in place 50 years, and it will develop a new system for ordering state primaries, NPR reports.

Critics of the current system note that the first two states on the docket are not representative of the Democratic voter profile and are given too much influence in the direction of the nomination.  Supporters don’t say much but assert the early schedule are great for the economies of both states.

The DNC will have a “beauty pageant” for the states, in which states can lobby as to why the state should be included in an early group of primaries preceding “Super Tuesday.”

The Ukrainian military says it launched two missiles that severely damaged the missile cruiser Moskva, the flag ship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, while the Kremlin reports that nyet, the ship was not hit by a missile; instead, it’s ammunition just exploded causing a major fire onboard.

Reuters reports that the mayor of the Ukrainian port city of Odessa stated that two missiles struck the 12,200-ton Moskva, which was built in 1979.  “Neptune missiles guarding the Black Sea caused very serious damage,” he said in an online post.

After a Grand Rapids police officer scuffled with a driver stopped for a traffic violation–with the two struggling over a stun gun–the police officer shot the man in the back of the head as he laid face down on the ground, a newly released video shows, the Associated Press reports.

Patrick Lyoya, a 26 year old native of the Congo, was killed during the April 4th encounter, which started when an unnamed officer pulled him over because the license plate on the vehicle did not match the make of the car.  Lyoya dashed from the car after speaking briefly with the officer.

After the officer was able to catch Lyoya, a struggle ensued.  The officer got control of the Taser; he fired it twice, missing Lyoya, who ended up lying face down on the ground, with the officer kneeling on Lyoya’s back and controlling him.

Supreme Texas Overlord Low Energy Greg and Nuevo Leon state, Mexico Governor Samuel Alejandro García Sepúlveda agreed to ease up on Texas state trooper inspections at the Laredo-Colombia bridge border crossing Wednesday, the Texas Tribune reports.

Abbott’s latest moronic border stunt snarled traffic and led to protest blockade by Mexican truck drivers which – and this is totally weird – did not garner the same level of support that Canadian truckers did from MAGAmerica when they blocked a border a crossing between Detroit, Michigan and Windsor, Ontario over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate. Almost like the fanboys were rooting for the white guys who rebelled against vaccines and were ambivalent at best about the brown guys rebelling against performative “border security” by a man compensating for his inadequacies.

Just when you think the puddle can’t shallower, Fox personality and bro Jesse Watters claims that undocumented immigrants–shown on video getting off a bus after being kidnapped by Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott and dumped in Washington, DC–can’t be fearing for their lives because they’re wearing so-called “skinny jeans.”

“Look at the guy’s shirt. Look at the guy’s skinny jeans. You can’t show up to America claiming you’re fearing for your life dressed that well,” he whines.  I s’pose Watters will turn away Ukrainian refugees if they show up in Nikes.

Scam artist and convicted criminal James O’Keefe is very upset that federal authorities are investigating the theft of Joe Biden daughter’s diary, which O’Keefe’s Project Veritas purchased, making the conservative propaganda producer a target of the investigation, the AP reports.

O’Keefe is upset that investigators obtained records from Apple and Google to track the communications of people with Project Veritas.  Ashley Biden’s diary was circulated among conservative media outlets prior to the 2020 election after the owner of a residence where she had lived, a one-time friend of Biden’s, claimed she abandoned it; Biden has reportedly said she was storing clothes and other possessions at the friend’s house until she could collect them.

Prior to the 2020 election, the diary ended up in the hands of influential Republicans, including being passed around a Trump fundraiser being held at a major Republican donor’s house.  The person in possession of the diary attempted to sell it to media outlets, but found no takers.  At that event, Donald Trump, Jr. reportedly skimmed the book, but declined to pay for it. 

“Dear President Trump: After consultation with the Counsel to the President and the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel, and as instructed by President Biden, I have determined to disclose to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol (“Select Committee”) the Presidential records from our February 8, 2022, Notification that you identified as privileged in your letter of February 23, 2022, with the following limitations: the White House has reached an accommodation with the Select Committee to prioritize documents related to certain custodians (and to defer its request for certain records within the prioritized set), and NARA has determined that certain of these prioritized records are non-responsive. My staff will provide a complete list of non-responsive records and records subject to the prioritization and deferral agreements to your representatives.”

“Pursuant to President Biden’s subsequent instruction and my authority under 36 C.F.R. 1270.44(g), I will deliver the prioritized records that are subject to your privilege claim to the Select Committee 15 days after this notification (which is April 28, 2022), unless prohibited by court order. Consistent with past practice, we will continue to produce to the Select Committee forthwith documents you did not identify, with particularity, as subject to an assertion of privilege in your February 23 letter. In appropriate circumstances, NARA may redact non-responsive content in otherwise responsive records” says a letter from National Archivist David Ferriero to the Former Guy.