Category: Uncategorized

After voicing her enthusiasm for President Joe Biden’s reelection, Vice President Kamala Harris reminds voters that the best way Americans have to protect their hard-fought freedoms and rights is through the ballot box in 122 days.

Mirta Díaz-Balart, Fidel Castro’s first wife who supported him as he rose to power in Cuba but fled after the communist takeover, died in Spain at the age of 95, the Washington Post reports.  Díaz-Balart and Castro married in 1948, honeymooning in New York City.  She was the aunt of Republican Florida Congressman Mario Díaz-Balart.

A member of a once-prominent Cuban family, Díaz-Balart divorced Castro after her husband led failed attacks on military barracks and was imprisoned.  She married the pre-revolutionary Cuban ambassador to the UN, ultimately moving to Madrid, but she would in visit Cuba in trips arranged by her former brother-in-law Raoul Castro.

There appears to be a discrepancy in the claims made by Telegram Channel “GITMO TV” on the value of a “MAGA 2024 Golden Plate: ‘Never Surrender’ Edition” and the small fine print at the bottom of MAGA-Neversurrender.com, the website selling them for $149 each when purchased individually, $349 for a pack of three, $499 for a pack of five, $1,299 for a 10 pack plus three “free,” $2,249 for a pack of 20 plus five “free,” $4,499 for 40 plus 10 “free,” or $5,999 for 60 plus 15 “free.”

In a post headlined “🥇 TRUMP UNVEILS THE MAGA 2024 GOLDEN PLATE: AN INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY FOR PATRIOTS,” the “GITMO TV” channel asserts that “In a recent speech, former President Donald Trump unveiled the latest initiative under his ‘Never Surrender’ campaign: the MAGA 2024 Golden Plate. Addressing his supporters, Trump emphasized the unique investment opportunity these plates represent. ‘Dear patriots,’ Trump began, ‘I would like to announce our latest project of the Never Surrender campaign, the MAGA 2024 Golden Plate. This golden plate isn’t a part of any system, and you don’t need any other products to exchange it.’ According to Trump’s announcement, each MAGA 2024 Golden Plate can be exchanged for $10,000 after a successful election outcome in 2024.” Emphasis added to highlight the part where GITMO TV attributes these statements about the item’s value to the former president in an unspecified speech.

A Texas South Carolina man was utterly stunned and left breathless by an incredible, dazzling 4th of July fireworks display early Monday on Thursday, KSAT San Antonio WPDE in Florence, SC reports.

Pablo Ruiz, 43 Allen Ray McGrew, 41, was [probably] drinking heavily and lighting off fireworks with friends when he decided to make things even more exciting by placing a mortar upright on his head and lighting it… and yeah Ruiz McGrew was pronounced dead at the scene by police.

This article originally appeared on National Zero under the headline “Texas man absolutely blown away by amazing fireworks display” two years ago to the day. Minor edits have been made to adjust for details, as we don’t know if McGrew was definitely drunk. His family members did try to stop him too. In Ruiz’s case we don’t know if anyone told him not to do it or if he was encouraged.

“Crooked Joe Biden should ignore his many critics and move forward, with alacrity and strength, with his powerful and far reaching campaign. He should be sharp, precise, and energetic, just like he was in The Debate, in selling his policies of Open Borders (where millions of people, including record numbers of Terrorists, are allowed to enter our Country, from prisons and mental institutions, totally unchecked and unvetted!), to Ending Social Security, Men playing in Women’s sports, High Taxes, High Interest Rates, encouraging a Woke Military, Uncontrollable Inflation, Record Setting Crime, Only Electric Vehicles, Subservience to China and other Countries, Endless Wars, putting America Last, losing our Dollar Based Standard, and so much more. Yes, Sleepy Joe should continue his campaign of American Destruction and, MAKE CHINA GREAT AGAIN!” posted fat former President Trump – or one of his minions as “alacrity” seems a little outside his repertoire – on Saturday.

It was already obvious enough that Team Orange would prefer to face Biden. Donald doesn’t really need to be telegraphing that he’s spent three years running a campaign against Joe and that he’s going to have a hard time pivoting if Dems do end up with a new nominee for November.

In a text exchange last month former Trump 2020 campaign lawyer Jenna Ellis told former Trump 2016 campaign staffer AJ Delgado that the Orange God Emperor’s second White House run “settled multiple suits” against someone named “Boris,” the Daily Beast reports citing a motion filed Thursday in Delgado’s long-running case against Team Trump over her affair with Donald’s longtime political spokesman Jason Miller, who knocked up Delgado and tried to feed her an abortion pill milkshake.

Delgado had asked Ellis specifically if anyone on the 2020 team had “complained of gender discrimination, pregnancy discrimination, or sexual harassment,” leading Ellis to mention “Boris,” a person whom the Beast concludes is almost certain to be piece of shit Trump consigliere and failed crypto entrepreneur Boris Epshteyn – who’s also Ellis’s co-defendant in the Arizona Attorney General’s office’s case against Team Orange for the fake Trump 2020 electors scam. That Epshteyn was convicted in 2021 for sexually assaulting two women at a nightclub in Arizona, his current legal expenses are being paid by Trump’s “Save America” PAC, and that there’s no other publicly known Trump minion named “Boris,” would all strongly indicate that the man in question is in fact Epshteyn.

Not to mention that it’s very much on-brand for Team Trump to refuse to fire a violent, sexually abusive degenerate. And of course the fact that they’re led by the most notorious of them all.

Nigerien junta leader General Abdourahmane Tchiani will on Saturday host Burkina Faso’s Captain Ibrahim Traore and Mali’s Colonel Assimi Goita as part of initial talks for the three junta leaders to form their own little regional bloc of West African juntas, BBC News reports.

Top on the agenda will be security as all three military dictatorships seized power in response to democratically-elected governments’ failures to quell jihadist violence, but the cooperation won’t stop there as the neighboring countries will also look at launching a new common currency, maybe calling it JuntaBux or something funny like that, as well as leaving their current larger regional bloc, ECOWAS. The BBC notes that the three juntas have so far failed to contain ISIS.

• The Supreme Court got it completely wrong:  the Presidency is a position held by a citizen imbued with additional responsibilities and authority by the Constitution.  The job does not, however, give the officeholder additional Constitutional rights.
• The goals of the two candidates for between now and the election are clear:  Joe Biden must never wheeze, and Donald Trump must not test out his theory about shooting someone on Fifth Avenue.  
• The Heritage Foundation president saying he’ll lead a bloodless revolution “if the left allows it to be” is nothing short of a threat of violence, and it should be treated that way by federal law enforcement investigating domestic terrorism.  They’re telling you they’ll use violence; believe them this time.
• I was okay with the traditional performative patriotism that would occur on holidays like July 4th, Memorial Day, Veterans Day and even Labor Day.  But it loses all meaning today when one side demands constant über-patriotism to show your fealty to Dear Leader.  Demanded patriotism isn’t patriotism.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXX”

Even though it has less than 2% of the population of California and therefore merits two Senators, North Dakota is largely a vacant field with sporadic signs of human existence.  That was lucky on Friday after 29 rail cars carrying hazardous material derailed and burst into flames; it continues to burn more than 12 hours later, ABC News reports.

The train derailed 140 miles from Fargo in farmland, spilling anhydrous ammonia, sulfur and methanol.  A massive operation was launched to evacuate the twenty people who lived in the impacted area as plumes of smoke launched into the sky.  (For comparison, the East Palestine, Ohio derailment, with similar dangerous chemicals, had 38 cars derailed.)

Heavy rains caused a dam in eastern Wisconsin to breach, forcing the evacuation of communities downstream in the latest emergency caused by extreme weather moving across the country, the Associated Press reports.

While the Manawa Dam appears to be largely intact except for a 50-foot section along the top that broke away, officials say significant erosion in the structure will require additional inspection.  “It looks like the dam is intact, but there is quite a bit of erosion on the north side,” Police Chief Jason Severson said Friday afternoon. ”We think the worst of it is over, so now we’re going to start assessing things and see where we go from here.”

President Biden will sit for an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, billed as yet another make-or-break moment following last week’s train wreck of a debate against the Orange Allah.

Pope Francis kicked out of the Roman Catholic Church Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former ambassador from the Holy See to the United States, who had been found guilty of schism, or an irreparable separation from the Church, the BBC reports.  Viganò served in Washington from 2011 to 2016.

An ultra-conservative, Viganò refused to recognize any of the liberal policies of Pope Francis and denied the legitimacy of all liturgical and policy changes made by the Vatican after the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

Viganò had been in hiding since 2018 when he accused the Pope of covering up sexual abuse by an archbishop.  He has since grabbed on to various global conspiracies, including the illegitimacy of Pope Francis, posting on social media last month, “I repudiate, reject, and condemn the scandals, errors, and heresies of Jorge Mario Bergoglio,” referring to Pope Francis by his given name.

Nevermind that the crimes alleged in the Florida documents case all occurred after Donald Trump was out of office, regarding retaining documents, obstructing justice and lying to federal officials after he left office.  He’s not charged with taking the documents; he’s charged with plotting to keep them after the government demanded them back.  Trump’s lawyers claim the Supreme Court’s recent decision about presidential immunity will make the Florida documents case moot.

“The Court should stay all other proceedings in the case, except the pending gag-order motion, until the motions relating to Presidential immunity and the Appointments and Appropriations Clauses are resolved,” Trump’s lawyers argue in his latest filing.

If Clarence Thomas has his way, Aileen Cannon won’t have to do anything more to delay the Florida case; Clarence will have it tossed by voiding the Special Counsel’s authority.

Two separate textbook authors have told the Orlando Sentinel Florida state officials demanded textbook publishers remove or modify multiple references to man-made climate change in texts if they wanted them used in the state, including forcing one publisher to remove a 90-page chapter on climate change from a middle school science book.

Ken Miller, the co-author of that textbook and a professor emeritus at Brown University, said his publisher had to remove or add substantiation to a high school-level text referring to man-made climate change, and his publisher told him about the chapter being removed from his middle school text for Florida.  Miller is not just a textbook author; he’s president of the board of the National Center for Science Education.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s latest attempt to expand convicted felon and guy loving the Two-tiered Justice System Donald Trump’s gag order merited a summary for In-Pocket Judge Aileen Cannon that wraps up the rationale for gagging Trump judicially, metaphorically and physically.  His latest filing sums it up nicely:

CONCLUSION:  Over the past year, Trump has repeatedly targeted public servants with vitriolic attacks, resulting in a torrent of death threats, doxing, swatting, and other forms of harassment. When he recently decided to falsely accuse the law enforcement agents involved in this case with taking part in a plan to kill him and his family, he knowingly exposed them to similar treatment. The Court should modify his conditions of release to prohibit similar conduct moving forward.

Standing firm with union workers, President Joe Biden canceled his address to the National Education Association, the union representing three million education workers across the country and the largest labor union in the United States, because the NEA’s staff is on strike and Biden won’t cross their picket line at the Philadelphia convention site, Politico reports.

Citing unfair labor practices against the NEA, the National Education Association Staff Organization is out on strike for the second time this year.  The strike is the second for NEASO this year, and will limit the programming and functions at the union’s 103rd Representative Assembly.

The district clerk in Hays County, Texas resigned on Friday ahead of an expected move by the court to suspend him for incompetence and poor job performance, the Austin American-Statesman reports, noting that testimony into the Democrat’s performance including accounts that jury summonses weren’t mailed, resulting multiple times in trials unable to get underway for lack of jurors.

Avrey Anderson didn’t appear to know the duties of a district clerk.  “We hit a stretch where we didn’t have any juries showing up,” an assistant district attorney testified. “Mr. Anderson did not seem aware that he needed to be doing that.”  Anderson was also accused of fostering a hostile workplace and failing to properly track court filings.  Anderson was elected to the post in 2022 in his first campaign, ousting an incumbent Republican who had served in the position for 12 years in the suburban Austin county.

“I do not believe it is good for justice and the courts for me to continue in my role currently,” Anderson wrote. “Perhaps one day I will be able to get back into the government sector but for now I believe it is best for the people of Hays County to have someone who hopefully attracts less negative attention to themselves.”  It’s unclear whether the 20-year-old Anderson will return to school or take a job at an Appleby’s.

President Joe Biden will hold a rally in Wisconsin on Friday, one in which his performance will be heavily scrutinized and if he does well will be written-off as an aberration by the media.

Convicted felon former President Trump personally thinks he can handle Vice President Kamala Harris were she to take over as the Dem presidential nominee as he believes she’s “too liberal, too hostile to business and secure borders, and too inexperienced, weak and phony to be president. But some of his advisers are quite concerned that a fresh, youthful, non-Biden ticket presents a bigger threat than Trump assumes,” Axios reports, adding that they’d be even more worried that Harris would pick a “moderate Midwestern male” as her running mate for November.

Who knows what Axios’s agenda is here, if there is one. It’s obvious enough that having Harris take over would remove the age liability and even put it back on Trump. But this whole situation fucking sucks and as much as we hate to admit it, this is on Joe Biden for not showing up to the debate the way he did for the State of the Union. All this douchey pile-on “insider” reporting – case in point from Axios themselves with “Biden staff ‘miserable,’ alarmed as pressure builds” – is accelerating this spiral into what Talking Points Memo editor and fellow Axios-skeptic Josh Marshall writes is “very likely when, not if” Harris takes over as the 2024 Dem nominee or maybe even as president sooner.

This is not where we or any other anti-MAGA voters wanted to be right now. You can see how we’ve been trying to skirt around it in our coverage while every other site is going balls-to-the-wall with Biden-is-Old-a-Mania for the past week. The Narrative™ is starting to coalesce around Harris and the hard truth is that The Narrative™ all too often gets what it wants. The good news at least is that’s not what the MAGA Reich wants, if we’re to take Axios’s “scooping” at face value.

Convicted felon former President Trump on Friday tried to distance himself from the fascist agenda his own advisers have been devising, posting “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” even though obviously he’s voiced much of these ambitions himself.