Category: Uncategorized

A new Yahoo News/YouGov survey finds President Biden leading disgraced former President Trump 47 to 38 percent in a 2024 rematch “if Trump is convicted of a serious crime in the coming months.”

A writeup from Yahoo News says “support for Trump falls by 3 points, from 41% to 38%, while the overall number of voters who say they’re not sure (9%) or that they would not vote (6%) increases by 3 points” even though the crosstab data doesn’t appear to show the non-convicted Trump matchup numbers, so the race as it stands is Biden 47 – Trump 41. Among Republican respondents, Trump would still lead the GOP field 35 percent to heels-weaing Florida Govenor Ron DeSantis’s 20 percent under if convicted before the primary contest is decided – less likely than November 2024 and really would have to come before Super Tuesday on March 5th at the absolute latest.

Other findings: Large majorities, 66 percent and 70 percent, say stealing classified documents and trying to overthrow democracy are serious crimes, respectively, underscoring the potential political damage the Orange God Emperor faces in going on trial for those offenses during his campaign for “retribution.” A tenth of respondents overall and 22 percent of Trump 2020 voters said the January 6th insurrection was justified – 21 percent overall and 25 percent of Trump voters said “Not sure” which sure as shit is closer to saying “Yeah it was justified” than that it wasn’t.

“<i>GOP failing with viewers as well as voters</i>” would be how a dishonest former media columnist would characterize the ratings plummet from the first 2016 GOP presidential debate to its 2024 descendent.  Per CBS News, Wednesday night’s program shown exclusively on Fox drew 12.8 million across all platforms, about half the audience that tuned in to the first GOP debate in 2016.  [There were no GOP debates in 2012.]. During the 2020 cycle, Democratic debates averages about 11 million viewers.

How quickly the mob can turn on you:  Oliver Anthony, the bluegrass balladeer whose song “Rich Men North of Richmond” became such a conservative anthem it was the opening act for the GOP presidential debate, is now facing the conservative backlash for being too “woke” during a Fox network interview.

Anthony has frequently described his political views as centrist.  He appeared on the Republican propaganda network because the video of his song, which decries greedy, self-serving, rich leaders disconnected from their constituents, has somehow been coopted by Republicans who, lacking an iota of self-awareness, use it to point a finger at Democrats for corruption.

According to the Daily Beast, Anthony is drawing fire from far-right influencers for saying on Fox something that was too “woke” for their tastes:  “I don’t see our country lasting more than another generation the way we are headed.  We have to go back to the roots of what made this country great in the first place, which was our sense of community.  We are the melting pot of the world. And that’s what makes us strong, our diversity.  And we need to learn to harness that and appreciate it and not use it as a political tool to keep everyone separate from it.”

Officials warned the residents of Orange City, Florida, about 30 miles north of Orlando, to be on alert after a number of sightings of wild monkeys came into the police department Tuesday, NBC News reports.  The sightings happened over a relatively short period of time, and officials still cannot confirm if they involve one creature or a group of monkeys.

One monkey, believed to be a Rhesus macaque, a species from Asia, was spotted at a local Popeye’s Wednesday; police did not specify if it was seen in the restaurant or the drive-thru.  Animal control authorities warn people to stay away from the monkeys as they can be aggressive; monkeys are warned to stay away from Floridians as they can be… well… Floridians.  They also note it’s against the law:  Feeding wild monkeys in Florida is a second-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a fine of up to $500.

It’s an event that will be re-enacted in future MAGA cathedrals the way the Stations of the Cross are commemorated in Catholic churches.  On an appropriately overcast day as Mother Nature sobs at the injustice, a comically-long string of vehicles drives indicted felon Donald Trump to a New Jersey airport, from where he’ll travel to Atlanta to get booked for RICO and have his long-awaited mugshot taken.  Trump says he’ll arrive at the Fulton County Jail at 7:30 p.m. ET.

The speedy trial right is a real thing:  Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee agreed to former Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro’s request for a speedy trial, and he’s set the trial to start on Monday, October 23rd, per Chesebro’s request.

The Pentagon announced the US military will start training its first class of Ukrainian pilots on how to fly F-16 fighters starting in October, after the Ukrainians finish a month of English language education, CNN reports.

Thirty-two Ukrainian pilots have been selected to start the training, which will be facilitated by the Air National Guard’s 162nd Wing at Morris Air National Guard Base in Tucson, Arizona.  The US program kicked off after training programs at European allies Denmark and the Netherlands filled up.  Those nations have promised to provide dozens of the aircraft for Ukraine.

Former Trump White House Chief of Staff really didn’t want people to see him in a mugshot.  He tried to prevent it from happening through various court maneuvers, but he failed.  Enjoy Mark Meadows’ mugshot.

Stephen Sadow, the newest member of Donald Trump’s legal team, filed his first motion in his client’s Georgia RICO criminal trial requesting Trump’s trial be severed from the case against one-time Trump lawyer Kenneth Chesebro, who had exercised his right by requesting a speedy trial, something Trump opposes because he wants to string out the trial until after the 2024 election.

Sadow also noted that Trump would make a similar motion for any of the 17 other co-conspirators who request a speedy trial.  Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee will have to decide how feasible it is to have various trials for each of the defendants, possibly over years, versus a more compact trial schedule.

Two new developments in the Fulton County RICO case against Donald Trump and his 18 co-conspirators:  former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has turned himself in to the Fulton County Jail and is being processed, so we should have a mugshot within two hours.  He will be freed on $100,000 bail after he is processed.

Former Justice Department lawyer and possibly momentary Attorney General Jeffrey Clark, who MSNBC reports is in Atlanta but has not yet made it to the jail, had his bail set at $100,000.

This was no normal flying accident.  Saying it matched Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “long history of trying to silence his critics,” US intelligence officials say the explosion that destroyed the plane carrying the head of the Wagner mercenary force in Russia was intentional, the Associated Press reports.

To demonstrate how obvious that assessment was, even President Biden’s response didn’t try to couch his reaction in the typical diplomat-speak.  The fact he wasn’t shocked by the incident that caused the death of Yevgeny Prigozhin, who just months ago undertook a coup to topple Putin, was evident. “I don’t know for a fact what happened, but I’m not surprised. There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind. But I don’t know enough to know the answer.”

Disgraced lawyer and newly-indicted felon Rudy Giuliani claims he shouldn’t be prosecuted under RICO laws because he didn’t commit old-fashioned “mob”-style racketeering.  “In any event, there would have had to have been magic words there, words like, ‘if you don’t do it, I’m gonna break your legs.’ ‘If you don’t do it, I’m gonna shoot your wife.”  Those are the [RICO] cases I prosecuted.  Not cases where people are persuading, people are debating, people are even arguing.”

As a reminder of what threats were made, here is what Donald Trump said to Brad Raffensperger when he believed Raffensperger wasn’t going to help his plot:  “You know what they did and you’re not reporting it.  You know, that’s a criminal — that’s a criminal offense. And you know, you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer. That’s a big risk.”

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis requested an October 23rd, 2023 start date for the RICO trial for Donald Trump and 18 other defendants, CNBC reports. The date is just nine weeks away and would put this trial at the front of the list for Trump’s various legal entanglements.  Trump is expected to turn himself in to the Fulton County Jail sometime Thursday evening.

In a sign that the former Trump White House Chief of Staff will be abandoning his fight to avoid his arraignment, Fulton County officials have set bond for Mark Meadows at $100,000, CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane reports.  The announcement of the bond amount is a prelude to the defendant being processed at the Fulton County Jail, so Meadows will likely meet the Friday 5 p.m. ET deadline to surrender himself.

Rightwing provocateur Clay Travis continues the rightwing playbook of trying to compare President Joe Biden’s response to the wildfires on Maui, where about 1,000 are unaccounted for, versus hurricanes hitting New Orleans and Puerto Rico, when more than 3,000 people died in each.  Lying about the causes for pushback on how GW Bush and Trump handled deadly hurricanes hitting US territory, Travis glosses over the utter ineptitude of the two Republicans.

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and state election investigator Frances Watson have been subpoenaed to testify during a Monday hearing in federal court in Georgia to determine if the RICO indictment filed against former Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows should be transferred to federal court, Kyle Cheney of Politico reports.

Presumably, Meadows will try to use Raffensperger to bolster his claim that he did not act outside the purview of his official duties and Meadows will try to get the Georgia Secretary of State to claim all Meadows did was arrange phone calls.  Watson explained the vote recount and ballot verification process to Meadows during a December 2020 trip Meadows took to Georgia, and Meadows gave Trump her phone number; Trump called Watson later to pressure her to nullify or “find” votes to give him a victory in Georgia.

“On August 14, 2023, you brought a 41-count indictment against 19 defendants – including a former President of the United States and current declared candidate for that office, his attorneys, a former White House Chief of Staff, and a former US Department of Justice (DOJ) official – related to the 2020 election for President of the United States. Among other things, you have alleged that these 19 individuals, 30 unindicted co-conspirators, and others were part of a ‘criminal enterprise.'”

“And you have identified a number of acts that you claim were committed in furtherance of this purported criminal enterprise, including: (1) the then-White House Chief of Staff asking a Member of Congress for the phone number of the Speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives; (2) the then-President tweeting that hearings in the Georgia legislature were being aired on a news channel and commenting on those hearings; and (3) numerous acts taking place in other states not involving the conduct of the 2020 election in Georgia or the counting of the votes cast in Georgia. Your indictment and prosecution implicate substantial federal interests, and the circumstances surrounding your actions raise serious concerns about whether they are politically motivated,” writes perpetually miserable Congressworm Jim Jordan in his letter to Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis demanding she answer his bullshit questions about her prosecution of Trump.

Jordan even kind of acknowledges it by writing “acts that you claim were committed in furtherance of this purported criminal enterprise” but still goes full bore into that incredibly fucking lame “OH SO NOW ITS A CRIME TO TWEET SOMETHING?!?” argument the fanboys tried this month to make it seem like Willis’s listing of acts in furtherance were represented as statute violations. That and the weak little “WERE YOU AND JACK SMITH TALKING?!?” on the second page really drive home what everyone already knows: Jordan just sucks so badly at this and he isn’t getting any better.

Here’s a clue:  according to Newsweek, the Federal Aviation Agency ordered airspace over the Fulton County Jail to remain clear between the times of 6:45 p.m. ET and 9 p.m. ET, indicating those are the times Trump is expected to be in the building being processed for his multi-count RICO felony indictment.  The FAA’s announcement said the restriction is due to “VIP Movement.”

Ukrainian Defense Ministry officials on Thursday announced troops have landed in the Russ ian-occupied Crimean peninsula, ABC News reports. It’s not clear yet if this operation was a raid or, probably less likely, they’re undertaking some sort of D-Day type of invasion of “Russian” soil.

Either way any significant assault on the landmass, illegally annexed by the Putin Regime in 2014, could mark the opening of a new front in Kyiv’s grinding counteroffensive in eastern Ukraine.

I'm glad that my Administration’s infrastructure investments are so popular that even Speaker McCarthy is trying to take credit for them, despite voting against them.

That’s alright. I’ll see him at the next groundbreaking. https://t.co/IDmJ4hbSDm

— President Biden (@POTUS) August 24, 2023