Category: Uncategorized

The swearing-in ceremony for a new county Board of Commissioners in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula was supposed to take place Wednesday night is now been postponed indefinitely after the two GOP members of the Delta County Board of Canvassers refused to certify their election because the tallies of the votes in the three races was too proportional, Iron Mountain Daily News reports.

Seriously. “They’re basing their decision on the ratio of the votes, because two of (the races) have the exact same ratio and the third one was a similar ratio, so they think that that shows that the machines were somehow programmed with (an) algorithm,” said County Clerk Nancy Przewrocki, adding “I tried to tell them that the machines have been tested and the results came out exactly as they should. I have every confidence in our voting equipment because it’s always tested and in the recounts and the audits we have done, the ballot hand count has always come out exactly very close to… the tabulator results.” Problem is that three challengers defeated three incumbents with 72 percent of the vote to 27 percent, or 73 to 26 percent in the case of the third.

So the two canvassers – whose job does not entail deciding the validity of the election – refused to certify, with one them, Bonnie Hakkola the county GOP chairwoman, being advised by her son, Seth, who is active in the “Stop the Steal” movement. “A news release dated Monday but sent to the Daily Press late Tuesday by her son, Seth Hakkola, indicates local citizens working with members of Michigan-based groups that deny the validity of the 2020 presidential election have ‘identified certain statistical anomalies and suspicious voting ratios,'” the Iron Mountain Daily News writes.

Complete fucking worm disbarred MAGA lawyer John Eastman pleaded not guilty to crimes related to his attempts to overturn the 2020 election in Arizona on Friday, CNN reports. “I, of course, plead not guilty,” Eastman told reporters outside the Phoenix courthouse after the hearing. “I’m confident that, with the laws faithfully applied, I will be exonerated at the end of this process.”

We question how confident he is really considering that the process which took away his law license, now just steps away from being permanent, did not actually end with his exoneration.

“Flying an upside-down American flag – a symbol of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ movement – clearly creates the appearance of bias. Justice Alito should recuse himself immediately from cases related to the 2020 election and the January 6th insurrection, including the question of the former President’s immunity in US v Donald Trump, which the Supreme Court is currently considering. The Court is in an ethical crisis of its own making, and Justice Alito and the rest of the Court should be doing everything in their power to regain public trust. This latest story is further proof that Congress needs to pass the SCERT Act to create an enforceable code of conduct for the Supreme Court. Supreme Court justices should be held to the highest ethical standards, not the lowest,” meowed Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Dick Durbin at Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito over the inverted flag “Mrs Alito” flew after fat former President Trump lost the 2020 election.

Grow some fucking balls dude. Just announce a confirmation hearing for six new liberal justices and say Alito is free to retire if he doesn’t like the court having more than nine seats. Time to man up and put them on the defensive while the Dems still have a majority in the Senate. Stop letting them piss on your faces while you say “Well at least it’s not that warm, yellow, and salty this time.”

In related news Alito gave a statement to Fox’s Shannon Bream where he said the neighbors had a “Fuck Trump” sign up and the wife was responding with the upside-down American flag. “Justice Alito says he and his wife were walking in the neighborhood and there were words between Mrs Alito and a male at the home with the sign. Alito says the man engaged in vulgar language, ‘including the c-word’. Following that exchange, Mrs Alito was distraught and hung the flag upside down ‘for a short time’. Justice Alito says some neighbors on his street are ‘very political’ and acknowledges it was a very heated time in January 2021,” Bream wrote. Which means he’s admitting that yes, the Alitos flew a “Stop the Steal” signal in response to their lib neighbors hating Trump.

“We are deeply concerned by reports suggesting that the US Marshal Service did not provide medically necessary health care services to two prisoners in its custody: Ms Jean Marshall, 74, and Heather Idoni, 59. On May 15, 2024, Ms Marshall was sentenced to 15 additional months in prison, and Ms Idoni is scheduled to be sentenced next week. We ask Director Davis to provide a clear and comprehensive account of the care provided to Ms Idoni and Ms Marshall during their time in the custody of the US Marshals Service. As you know, the US Marshal Services is required to provide appropriate medical care for all prisoners. US Marshals Service Policy Directive – Prisoner Health Care Management states that ‘All prisoners will receive medically necessary health care services.'”

“This is defined as ‘[n]ecessary to diagnose or treat a medical condition, which, if left untreated, would likely lead to a significant loss of function, deterioration of health, uncontrolled suffering, or death,'” write a bunch of MAGA House members in a letter to US Marshal Service Director Ronald Davis and Federal Bureau Of Prisons Director Colette Peters. Signatories include Andy Biggs, Claudia Tenney, and Harriet Hagerman, all calling themselves the “Pro-Life Caucus.”

Interesting choice of words that “medically necessary health care services” part. Sounds familiar.

House Oversight ranking member Jaime Raskin tells CBS’s Scott MacFarlane that Thursday night’s shitshow of a hearing was partially alcohol-fueled as some members had been boozing, even in the room. Just like the member who uttered the words “bleach blonde butch body,” in accordance with standards of Congressional decorum on addressing others, Raskin did not name names.

Good morning to everyone except hoodlum @JasmineForUS who made a fool of her self last night in congress.

— George Santos (@MrSantosNY) May 17, 2024

In related news a former member of Congress tweeted an opinion about the way Jasmine Crockett openly mocked Marjorie Taylor Greene and Anna Paulina Luna at the hearing, though we suspect some of that is jealousy as he wishes “Kitara” was half as witty and vivacious as Crockett.

“Going to Barron’s High School Graduation. Great student, wonderful boy! Very exciting!!! DJT” fat former President Trump posted Friday morning to let everyone know he was DEFINITELY going to the commencement and not sitting in his bedroom looking at old issues of Hustler magazine.

Commission on Presidential Debates Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf is understandably pissed that the Biden and Trump campaigns are bypassing their system this year by setting up their own face-offs hosted by CNN and ABC News (with maybe more on the way). But he tells Politico Playbook he’s nevertheless impressed by how well Biden played this and got Trump to take the bait, saying the fat fuck’s immediate and unconditional acceptance “could end up being one of the great blunders of the entire election cycle,” adding “Someone called me this morning and said it was political malpractice.”

Farenkopf says he suspects Trump completely ignored his campaign staff and posted “Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!” just 43 minutes after Biden challenged him, without bothering to read the details of Biden’s terms. “It was a pretty spectacular job by the Biden people,” said Farenkopf.

Asked for comment in response to Farenkopf’s scoring, Trump campaign chair Chris LaCivita lost his shit. “Frank’s political analysis is as relevant as the Commission on Presidential Debates is… which is… oh wait… done. The bottom line is we have debates that are a far cry more than an outdated Washington committee filled with a bunch of washed up swamp rats could deliver. Frank’s a cassette tape living in a digital world and some of the biggest political blunders on the Republican side have been in participating in his ‘commission’s’ debates,” wrote LaCivita in a text. The reaction kind of tracks with CNN’s Wednesday afternoon reporting that Team Orange was “irked” by “the fact that Joe Biden somehow took over the debate narrative” by moving first that morning.

In a total throwback to the mid-20th century anti-colonial uprisings and conflicts that largely ended the once-vast global empires of the European powers, the French government in 2024 is rushing to contain an outbreak of violence on the distant Pacific island territory of New Caledonia, as unrest sparked by a pro-independence movement among the native Kanak people has led to rampant arson, looting, and violent clashes that have left at least five dead, the AP reports.

French President Emmanuel Macron has declared a state of emergency lasting at least 12 days and sent 1,000 troops the island of 270,000 lying about 900 miles northeast of Brisbane, Australia. It’s not the first rodeo there as the last time France imposed a state of emergency was in 1985. The freedom fighters’ main gripe is the National Assembly in Paris this week passing a law allowing residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to cast ballots in provincial elections, which seriously pissed off the Kanaks. The indigenous group comprises a roughly 40 percent plurality in the territory but fear the Metropolitan French are purposely encouraging more people to relocate to the colony to water down Kanak political power. Complicating matters is some Azerbaijani fuckery, as France has (with evidence) accused the grimy former Soviet state of supporting the Kanak nationalist movement in retaliation for French support of the Azeris’ hated rivals in Armenia.

Under the mess is a large deposit of nickel, crucial to EV battery production. Above it is the simple fact that, unlike most other French territories in the Carribbean, South America, and the Indian Ocean, New Caledonia is not fully integrated, although residents are enfranchised in the presidential and European Parliament elections. It’s on Paris to invest in the people with exceptional political and economic generosity if they want to hang on to the islands, and it’s on the Kanaks to demand a very, very large percentage of the royalties from nickel extraction disbursed onto debit cards with their national flag on it. The other option might seem awesome at first, but probably ends with a shit ton of Chinese communist navy personnel calling the place home by the end of this decade.

Dem think tank Third Way will this weekend try to get this ad in front of fat former President Trump by running it in New York City, Palm Beach, and in Dallas where the Orange God Emperor is headlining the annual convention for violent right wing terrorist group National Rifle Association.

“Seventy-three percent of people step into a religious place of worship at least once during the year on the primary day of worship (eg Sundays for most Christian churches). However, only 5 percent of Americans attend services ‘weekly,’ far fewer than the roughly 22 percent who report they do so in surveys” says the abstract of a University of Chicago study of cell phone GPS data out of a sample of 2.1 million anonymized phones examined in a ten-month period from April 2019 to February 2020.

“The intensity of religious observance correlates with a host of other activities. For example, relative to non-attenders and infrequent attenders, frequent religious attenders are less likely to go to strip clubs, liquor stores, and casinos,” the study also found, a surprising indicator that at least some of the Americans who moralize based on religion are not in fact fucking hypocrites.

In what seems like it’ll be the new normal, CTV News reports that 122 wildfires – 32 of them deemed “out of control” – most of them in the northern reaches of British Columbia and Alberta or in neighboring Saskatchewan or the Northwest Territories – are burning as of Friday morning.

At least 60,000 people have been evacuated in Alberta alone – remember, this is a pretty vast and sparsely populated region, which speaks to the scale of the fires. More than 4,000 square kilometers have been burned already in 1,023 recorded wildfires in 2024. The weather forecast calls for a low pressure system bringing light rain over the next few days that will slow but not snuff out the flames.

Opinion | GREG GUTFELD: Don't expect a 'fair fight' in Trump-Biden debates, it's 'not part of the Democrat playbook' https://t.co/ZVKjs4Bfnv

— Fox News (@FoxNews) May 17, 2024

Is it Florizona or Aridora?  A woman in Arizona, a.k.a. West Florida minus the humidity, was arrested by federal agents for getting remote IT jobs for tech workers in North Korea and running a laptop farm that allowed them to log into companies’ computer systems, the BBC reports.

The woman, 49-year-old Christina Chapman is charged with stealing the identities of 60 Americans under which she was able to secure work for three North Korean workers from 300 companies, including a number of Fortune 500 companies,  a television network and at least one defense contractor.

Chapman set up a laptop farm in her Arizona home, allowing the North Korean workers to appear to be working from a home address in the US using the companies’ proprietary hardware, while the workers were signing in from their locations in North Korea, something the indictment says was done with permission of the regime of Kim Jong-un.  Since 2020, Chapman was able to collect nearly $7 million in compensation from the companies for a fake personnel placement company, taking a large cut for herself.

The last witness for the prosecution, Michael Cohen, returned to the stand for another six hours of cross-examination Thursday, largely keeping cool under inconsistent and choppy questioning by defense attorney Todd Blanche.  

• A gaggle too big to list of Congressional lackeys showed up to supplicate themselves to Donald Trump.  Committee hearings in DC were postponed because of this shameful sycophancy.  
• Observers noted Trump’s attorney was frequently getting angry and flustered, while Cohen largely remained calm and cool.
  Read More ▶ “The beginning of the end to Trump trial testimony”

We really should’ve ran this one live but shit happens and we forgot they were starting at 8 PM EDT because too many Republicans went to Manhattan to watch Trump’s trial. What a glorious shitshow.

Police in Colorado and Texas are investigating “Stop the Steal” douchebag activist Ali Akbar, aka Ali Alexander, for grooming underage boys and asking them for dick pics, the Daily Dot reports.

Arizona Democratic Congressman and nominee for the Senate Ruben Gallego continues to garner support from around the state which will not make the opponent in his general election, reigning delusional un-Governor Republican Kari Lake, happy.

As Politico reports, Gallego has been gathering donations from donors who had previously supported then-Democrat Kyrsten Sinema in her 2018 Senate race and earlier Congressional races.  Plus, Gallego will attend a fundraiser this weekend hosted by supporters of the late Republican Senator John McCain, who are ditching the string of insane candidates the GOP has touted in the state recently.

Gallego already has a substantial fundraising advantage:  at the end of March, he reported having $9.6 million cash versus just $2.5 million for Lake.  Sinema has a $10 million war chest, collected largely when she was still with the Democratic Party.

Now we’ll be totally upfront about this homewrecker: Texas MAGA Congresswoman Beth Van Duyne’s campaign website specifically says she’s “a single, working-mother of two amazing kids,” so it’s not like her fucking around with a fellow House Republican, Georgia MAGA Congressman Rich McCormick, is as big of a scandal is it could be. It’s just pretty close. Oh yeah this was confirmed by the Daily Mail, the dirty rag that still nails good scoops like this. They updated their story. Props to Laura Loomer for actually getting something right too, as she had Van Duyne named an hour ago.

While Republicans continue to obstruct bipartisan programs to stem illegal border crossings at the command of adjudicated rapist Donald Trump, the Biden Administration works to speed up processing of the tens of thousands of asylum seekers entering the United States.

Per Reuters, the program would process asylum claims for single adults within 180 days by setting up “recent arrival dockets” at immigration courts in five cities:  Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York City.  Immigration courts–which are headed by administrators appointed by the Attorney General, not actual jurists–are facing a long backlog because of budget and personnel shortfalls stressed by Republican obstructionism.

“This administrative step is no substitute for the sweeping and much-needed changes that the bipartisan Senate bill would deliver,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement, jabbing at Trump’s slavish GOP House caucus.