Category: Uncategorized

Defying the Orange Jesus’s commands again, Arizona state House Republicans on Wednesday blocked two Dem attempts to repeal the state’s 1864 abortion ban, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Republican Washington state House member Jacquelyn Maycumber on Tuesday released a statement denying she had ever tweeted “Enough is enough. Please vote blue this November. With our President’s ignorance when it comes to lockdowns, racial justice and women’s issues, we cannot allow Donald Trump to have a second term #RepublicansforBiden” in 2020 and ripped into the state’s losing GOP gubernatorial nominee from that year (and Trump-endorsed 2022 WA-04 primary loser) Loren Culp for retweeting a screenshot of the “deepfake,” the Spokesman-Review reports.

“Loren Culp has obsessed over my candidacy for Congress. He knowingly promoted false deepfake tweets. He pretends to defend election integrity but knowingly promotes material designed to influence the election for another candidate. He needs to issue a retraction on the electronic impersonation ‘deepfake’ tweets. If he fails to do so we will take legal action,” wrote Maycumber.

We were to understand that something needed to be AI-generated and not just photoshopped to qualify as a “deepfake,” but here we are with Republican-on-Republican rhetorical violence and defamation lawsuit threats. Contacted by the Spokesman-Review, Culp said simply “I don’t even remember doing that. So I retweeted it and she hired lawyers? It’s America, right – she can get a lawyer to do anything.” Washington’s 4th is particularly important for MAGA as Republican Congressman Dan Newhouse is one of just two remaining incumbents or the 10 “RINOs” who voted to impeach disgraced former President Trump following the January 6th insurrection that he incited.

Maycumber might already be screwed anyway because she endorsed Nikki Haley a few months ago, which makes her just as much of a “RINO” as the guy who tried to help remove Trump from office.

Jamie Raskin has had enough of Jamie Comer’s idiocy.  Raskin pointed out that saying the “Biden family” is doing something to earn money is like saying the “Comer family” does the same, noting that Comer has family members who don’t do what Jamie does.  (“I’m a farmer,” the five-term Congressman asserts.) After Raskin notes Joe Biden made money after publishing his books,  Comer continues on a rant about how “That’s why Ukraine, Kazakstan, Romania, China, Russia, that’s why they paid the Biden family money?”–interrupted only by New York’s Dan Goldman correctly interjecting, “None of those governments paid anyone any money.”–  Raskin looks on in amazement:  “Somebody needs therapy here, but it’s nobody from our side of the aisle.”

Opinion – Fox News is leftist propaganda

— Tristan Flynn (@TristanCPDT) April 17, 2024

This is the “best” reply we have to Fox News’s tweet at this point. Kind of disappointing considering that freaking nutcase and all her pals are online all day, every day. The Flynn we have here isn’t even disgraced former General Mike Flynn. He’s just some right wing Canadian douchebag who looks like he’s purposely grew out his hair and beard so he can appear as differently as possible from his mug shot on the sex offender registry. What the fuck, MAGA? Step it up for Christ’s sake.

“Crooked Joe Biden wants PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY to be protected perhaps more than any other living (barely!) individual because if it isn’t, and having absolutely nothing to do with me, he will surely be Indicted and Tried for many of his Dishonest, illegal, or Incompetent Actions (Afghanistan disaster, Southern Border catastrophe!). A President should not be placed in that position – MUST BE FREE TO MAKE DECISIONS, HOPEFULLY CORRECT ONES!” posted fat former President Trump on Wednesday, his panic over next week’s Supreme Court arguments suddenly surging.

If this is supposed to be some kind of reverse psychology play then it sure sucks. The whole point of the Supreme Court’s bullshit intervention is to determine where the line is between the regular functions of the presidency and prosecutable crimes. If anything, under the worst case scenario where they decide against Trump but indefinitely delay his DC trial by forcing Judge Chutkan to go through a laborious process to determine which acts were not “official” and thus prosecutable – and then Trump wins the election, then that actually protects Biden personally from legal jeopardy from whatever kind of frivolous bullshit the new MAGA DOJ could try to bring, by like a lot. So no matter where in the fairly narrow band of (realistic) outcomes in US v Trump the decision lands, it is absolutely in Biden’s interest to let Smith continue pushing the case to Los Supremos.

Two top officials in the DC National Guard last month told House Administration Committee staffers that former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley could have stopped the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection sooner if she had just picked up the phone and called, Politico reports, citing closed-door testimony to Georgia MAGA Congressman Barry Loudermilk’s investigation of the investigation.

Oh wait, shit. We got Nikki Haley mixed up with Nancy Pelosi. Anyway the… Heyyy… The Politico article says it was actually Donald Trump who should have called the DC National Guard to stop his fanboys from rampaging in the United States Capitol. They have this exchange from the transcript:

“Could the president have picked up the phone, called the secretary of defense, and said, you know, ‘What’s going on here?’ Our law enforcement is getting overrun, make this happen!'” a committee staffer asked DCNG senior enlisted man Michael Brooks, who answered with “I assume he could expedite an approval through the Secretary of Defense, through the Secretary of the Army.”

The word “Pelosi” doesn’t even show up in the article and… Ahem, in all seriousness the rest of the report paints a larger picture of inaction by Pentagon leadership and that they could have responded independently of Trump, which in turn tracks with a theory printed in detail by JustSecurity in December 2021: That it was a tactical decision to avoid putting troops there that Trump could have immediately taken command of and then used to subjugate Congress to prevent the transfer of power from taking place at all. And even though holding back allowed cops to have the shit beaten out of them by crazed Trump fans and created space for Trump to continue lying about who’s call it was not to have the National Guard at the Capitol, not deploying them was the least bad option.

Mark Milley and the other brass are never going to say this publicly that they purposely committed such an act of purposeful dereliction. They’ll probably take it to the grave. Still the right call.

A Pennsylvania Taco Bell manager decided she could no longer bear to see what was happening and ran off the job to demonstrate her commitment to protecting precious life Saturday, 6ABC reports.

Becky Arbaugh, general manager at Taco Bell location #026064 in Richboro, but first a loving mom of two, rushed out to the parking lot to take her belief in post-fetal personhood into her own hands by performing chest compressions on 11 month-old Myles Long, who suddenly was having serious difficulty breathing while his mom Natasha was in her car waiting in line at the drive-thru.

“I ran out of the car and ran around and opened the car door,” said Myles’s mom Natasha. “I pulled him out and he turned completely blue and was lifeless. At that point I just completely blacked out. I didn’t know what to do.” Arbaugh said she heard Natasha screaming and “threw my headset. I ran outside. I took the baby and I started to do chest compressions on the baby and then he finally started to breathe.” Paramedics arrived shortly thereafter and Myles is under observation as doctors try to figure out what happened. Arbaugh told 6ABC she’s offered to come sit with the boy in his hospital room so Natasha and her husband can get a few hours’ break from the anxious tedium.

Most Americans Don’t Think Trump Acted Illegally In Alvin Bragg Case: POLLhttps://t.co/o9WoDkmifq

— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) April 17, 2024

The actual breakdown of this “Most Americans,” per the AP-NORC poll’s findings: 35 percent say Trump “acted illegally,” 31 percent say he acted “unethically but not illegally,” 14 percent say he did “nothing wrong,” and 19 percent say they “Don’t know enough to answer,” on “Allegations that he covered up hush money payments to a woman who said he had an affair with her.”

Yeah, we guess it’s objectively true that in THIS particular case MOST Americans (but really respondents to this poll) don’t think he did anything illegal… while the poll was conducted. It’s a very safe bet however that the “Don’t know” is going to ebb and a lot, maybe even most, of them will end up in the “acted illegally” column over the next few weeks as the coverage of the trail percolates into lower-info spheres. Same with the “unethically” if and when he’s found guilty.

And this was just the baseline before the trial even gets started. The other baselines are that 47 percent believe he acted illegally when he hid classified documents, same number in the Georgia RICO case, and 45 percent in the DC case. Then there’s the “Forty-five percent of Republicans would consider Trump fit for office if he were convicted of any of the charges, while 22 percent would not consider him fit to serve if he were convicted of at least one. Democrats are much more likely to consider him unfit for office across all four cases.” Not great, and probably why this dipshit former Trump White House comms aide-turned-failed Congressional candidate-turned-Trump 2024 campaign spokeswoman should’ve read the Daily Caller article she linked. They didn’t leave the findings about “fitness for office” out of their write up of the polling “win.”

Michigan Dems Mai Xiong and Peter Herzberg crushed their Republican opponents 65 to 34 percent in the 13th state House District and 60 to 38 percent in the 25th, respectively, on Tuesday to restore the Democratic trifecta in the Great Lakes State’s government, the Detroit Free Press reports.

Obviously there are a great many other implications of unified control at least through January but one worth mentioning here, as pointed out by Daily Kos’s Stephen Wolf, is the rare opportunity to get Michigan’s 15 electoral college votes added to the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, which currently stands at 209 with Maine’s recent addition to the generation-long effort to runaround the 18th century relic that advantages Republican presidential candidates unnecessarily.

“I thought STRIKES were supposed to be ‘unlimited’ when we were picking our jury? I was then told we only had 10, not nearly enough when we were purposely given the 2nd Worst Venue in the Country. Don’t worry, we have the First Worst also, as the Witch Hunt continues! ELECTION INTERFERENCE!” posted fat former President Trump on Truth Social Wednesday morning.

IRS filings reviewed by Forbes reveal that, out of $478,000 spent in the first quarter of 2024 by the “Patriot Legal Defense Fund,” which was supposed to pay the legal bills of disgraced former President Trump’s minions in the various crimes in which he got them implicated, $465,000 – 97 percent of it – went to invoices from a firm called HaystackID for “attorney review service.”

HaystackID is in charge of producing documents to retired Judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed monitor tasked with babysitting the Trump Organization to ensure they don’t commit any more fraud – meaning that nearly all the money supposed to help keep the fat fuck’s co-defendants out of prison really just went to defending his corrupt business empire. Among other expenditures noted in Forbes’s report are $18,000 for a reception at Mar-a-Lago, $2,500 to a former Trump White House photographer’s bill for taking pics of the reception, and $3,000 to their accountants.

Just $342 was spent at an actual law firm. The firm, California-based Higgs Fletcher and Mack LLP, formerly employed OANN reporter and sort-of Trump lawyer Christina Bobb, the idiot who had to be educated by Laura Ingraham on the basics of criminal law practice on live television in 2022.

President Joe Biden’s reelection effort received a $929,600 check – the maximum possible individual contribution – from David Ellison, son of tech billionaire Republican megadonor Larry Ellison, who spent $3 million on GOP candidates in 2022 alone, CNBC reports on a betrayal or something.

Citing “the growing importance of abortion rights and campaign finance,” the latter referring specifically to Dem Congressman Ruben Gallego’s $9.6 million to $2.5 million cash advantage over batshit MAGA maniac Kari Lake, Sabato’s Crystal Ball have moved their rating for the seat currently occupied by lame duck “independent” Kyrsten Sinema from “toss-up” to “Leans Democratic.”

The election egghead team also moved 6th District “moderate” GOP Congressman Juan Ciscomani’s race left from “Leans Republican” to “toss-up” given the abortion shitshow in the state, making it now the second GOP seat in Arizona up for grabs, along with AZ-01. They did not however move the state’s 11 electoral college votes, which remain rated as a “toss-up” between Biden and Trump.

Lake summed up the state of the race at a recent campaign event with “The next six months is going to be intense. And we need to strap on our – let’s see. What do we want to strap on? We’re going to strap on our, our seat belt. We’re going to put on our helmet or your Kari Lake ball cap. We are going to put on the armor of God. And maybe strap on a Glock on the side of us just in case.”

Lara Trump goes off on 'deranged' media pundits giddy over Trump trial https://t.co/Fzco39tGiG

— Fox News (@FoxNews) April 17, 2024

Divisions among Senate Republicans over how to handle Wednesday’s debate over the impeachment articles against DHS Secretary Alex Mayorkas are threatening to cause a mess and could make the immediate dismissal that much more likely, Punchbowl News reports.

“I don’t think we should be negotiating with the arsonists here. If Chuck Schumer wants to blow up impeachment trials forever, he ought to own that,” said MAGA Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt. Fellow Missourian Josh Hawley was more resigned, saying “The outcome is the same either way. If we do a bunch of talky-talk and then we vote to table or dismiss, it’s the same thing functionally.”

With one eye on public image and another focused on the next step of her political career, Republican Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders spent way too much taxpayer money on a $19,000 lectern she supposedly bought for a trip to Europe and may have broken state laws in the way her administration paid for the (rather ordinary) piece as well as in their handling of media requests for information and documents after.

The Washington Post reports that after auditors from the legislative branch found Huckleberry Slanders–who served as RNC chair before the nepotistically appointed Ronna Romney McDaniel, who was booted for the equally nepotistically appointed pop singer Lara Trump–shredded documents relating to the purchase and mishandled reporting the payment.

Now legislators from both political Parties forwarded the legislative report to both the state Attorney General and the local prosecutor, suggesting they independently pursue possible charges.  The Attorney General, a Republican ally of Huckleberry, already announced the Governor’s Office is exempt from state purchasing rules, but didn’t address the destruction of evidence.

“Let me just say, since we’re addressing the subject of style,” fashion influencer of the #HauteMortician microtrend Stephen Miller forcefully asserts, “the most stylish President and First Lady in our lifetimes are Donald Trump and Melania Trump.  Donald Trump’s a style icon. He changed American fashion in “The Apprentice.”  People spent the next ten years tryin’ to dress like Donald Trump, so if anyone deserves a puff piece on their sense of style, it’s Donald Trump and the First Lady.”

So is it wearing an ill-fitting blue suit and unnecessarily-long red tie everywhere that makes someone a fashion icon or is it the goofy red hat?

Documents released in the upcoming corruption trial of New Jersey Democratic Senator and allegedly collector of precious metals Bob Menendez show that the politician’s defense will revolve around blaming his wife, who will be tried separately for her role in the crimes, the Washington Post reports.

The Senator (for now) and his wife, Nadine, face charges that they received financial benefits from sponsors within the Egyptian government for helping to direct US policy to benefit Egypt; Menendez served on the Foreign Services Committee, chairing it from 2013-15 and again 2021-23.  For his services, the Menendezes received gifts like luxury cars and gold bars.

“Uh, we’re in a Blue state.  That’s all by design,” attorney failing up Alina Habba contends without noting the crimes Donald Trump is accused of committing happened in the Blue state where he’s being tried for that crime.  “Don’t get it twisted, folks.  They do this intentionally just like they’re bringing the one in Washington just like Georgia.”

As Trump Media’s stock continues its tumble–it closed down another 14% on Tuesday, dropping to 22.97, one-third the value at its peak at the end of March–the company’s executives are already planning for their next steps even with their initial offering, Truth Social, floundering.  According to CNBC, Trump Media plans to launch an as-yet-unnamed “content delivery service” which will, of course, be a subscription that automatically renews.

“With our streaming content, we aim to provide a permanent home for high-quality news and entertainment that face discrimination by other channels and content delivery services,” Devin Nunes, the company’s ersatz chief executive, said. “There is a lot of great content that simply can’t find an audience for unjust reasons, and we want to let these creators know they’ll soon have a guaranteed platform where they won’t be canceled.”

With no announced timeframe–not even Trump’s infamously inaccurate “in two weeks”–the new venture will debut first on Truth Social, then expand into a dedicated streaming service, and then launch a cable television network.  The plan sounds as though the company wants to see what kind of audience it can attract to Truth Social using paid “creators,” which they’ll then post as streaming content.