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Unsurprisingly, GOP presidential nomination frontrunner with multiple criminal indictments, Donald Trump, will skip Wednesday’s televised Republican candidates debate to do a sit-down interview with freelance liar and misogynist Tucker Carlson online, the New York Times reports.

Too much of a coward to face the multitude of accusations about poor management, high deficits, skyrocketing federal debt and a lack of success at any of his key goals (except a tax break for himself), Trump will seek to avoid answering for his poor performance in office and his criminal activity out of it.

Angry that a memo leaked detailing his conflict of interest between his position on the state ethics committee and a $400,000 per year job being Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’s “muscle” harassing Disney, Glen Gilzean accused the committee he once led of “weaponizing” the information to make him look bad, the Orlando Sentinel reports.

“[I]t is deeply inappropriate that your legal opinion was disseminated to the press at the same time you sent it to me,” Gilzean wrote in the email whining to the commission. “As far as I’m concerned, someone on your staff knowingly leaked this memo and weaponized it, how did this happen?”  The memo, in fact, had not been leaked and was released pursuant to a public records request from a journalist.

Gilzean was chosen by DeSantis to head the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District, the new organization DeSantis created to replace the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the entity that provided oversight of Disney development, because Disney opposed DeSantis’s anti-LGBTQ policies that criminalize discussing non-straight Christian relationships and target minorities for scorn and violence.  Gilzean, who led the non-partisan ethics committee–claimed he did not know he could not take a public sector job and remain on the volunteer ethics committee, even though the rules for members on the committee expressly bans it.

In a string of raids conducted Thursday, FBI agents arrested ten current and former police officers from the Antioch and Pittsburg (California) police departments on charges ranging from criminal conspiracy to using police dogs against their targets, the Washington Post reports.

Following a two-year federal investigation, the defendants were charged with an array of felonies including criminal conspiracy, illegally distributing steroids,  fraud, and obstruction.  One of the charges is abuse of office “under color of law,” a charge similar to the one brought against the Trump organized crime syndicate.

Morteza Amiri, an officer with the Antioch police, was charged with instructing his police dog, Purcy, to attack, resulting in bites that required medical attention on 28 people; 19 of the people were Black.  Only one in seven residents of Antioch is Black, putting the proportion of Black people Amiri ordered Purcy to attack at an unusually high clip.

“And to that end I also think, look, I– if I President of the United States, we’re going to get a new chairman of the Federal Reserve,” former target of the Trump mob Mike Pence mildly asserts.  “I mean, this business of quantitative easing that’s been underway must end.”  The announcement elicits a smattering of weak applause for the crowd, numbering in the double-digits, in a Jeb Bush-level response.

For the record, the quantitative easing Pence laments was started by the Trump administration in March 2020.  Under current chair Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve has committed to ending the Trump administration’s QE policy:  “The Fed also retained its commitment to reversing a previous policy of quantitative easing (QE) that involved purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities. QE was aimed at providing more liquidity to capital markets.”

Russia’s intelligence service is recruiting desperate, unknowing Ukrainian refugees to conduct intelligence and even sabotage operations in Poland, starting with paying them to distribute pro-Kremlin fliers around Poland but escalating within weeks to acts of war, the Washington Post reports.

Western nations have been supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammo by shipping them through neighboring countries; 80% of the material is funneled through Poland, which has a 300-mile border with Ukraine.  To date, Russia has not been able to disrupt this supply path, with military observers noting Russia has been unable to destroy a single supply train or convoy since the Kremlin order the invasion in February 2022.

The people who responded to the job offers, found in generically worded fliers, online ads or apps like Telegram, aimed at the thousands of refugees coming from Ukraine, were first told to hand out or post similar fliers.  They were then instructed to track shipments along roadways and ports.   In March, Polish authorities said the handlers–likely Russian GRU agents–told their “employees” that they were directed to derail a train headed to Ukraine.

In a sign that Republicans are more backward than oil-rich Arabs, the leaders of the United Arab Emirates will announce the creation of a multi-billion dollar investment fund to finance green energy projects around the world, a major shift for a nation that collects tens of billions of dollars in oil revenues each year, Politico reports.

A European government official privy to the information said the managers of Dubai’s sovereign wealth funds said the amount discussed for initially funding the projects was set at $25 billion, targeted with shifting economies of underdeveloped nations away from fossil fuels.  The UAE is expected to announce the opening of the fund as it hosts the COP28 global climate talks in November.

Federal Judge Lewis Kaplan denied Donald Trump’s latest attempt to delay one of his civil lawsuits scheduled for trial:  the latest defamation lawsuit relating to E. Jean Carroll’s defamation claim stemming from Trump’s sexual assault of the magazine columnist in a department story dressing room in the 1990s.

“This case was largely stalled for years due in large part to Mr. Trump’s repeated efforts to delay, which are chronicled in the Court’s prior decisions.1 Mr. Trump’s latest motion to stay – his fourth such request – is yet another such attempt to delay unduly the resolution of this matter,” Kaplan wrote, maintaining the January 15, 2024 court date.

Although it’s expected to weaken by the time it makes landfall, Hurricane Hilary is gaining strength, expected to become a Category 4 storm before it’ll lose power prior to hitting the Los Angeles area, the Weather Channel reports.

It’s rare for a hurricane to hit the West Coast; the last storm believed to be of hurricane strength to hit California was an unnamed 1858 storm that struck San Diego.  In 1997, Tropical Storm Nora became the last major storm to hit land on the West Coast.

Officials warn that southern Californians should be prepared for heavy rain and flash flooding as the storm hits the area, which is expected early next week, with rain reaching Tucson and Phoenix by Tuesday.

Kenneth Chesebro, Donald Trump’s “Co-conspirator 5” in his federal indictment for trying to undermine the Constitution, followed soon-to-be-bankrupt conspiracy theorist Alex Jones around the Capitol grounds as Trump supporters attacked police protecting Congress, CNN reports.

One of the creators of the false elector plan to illegally void slates of valid electors from states, Chesebro was seen filming and photographing Jones as they were part of a group strolling outside the Capitol; neither Jones nor Chesebro is accused of attacking police or trespassing in the Capitol.  It’s unknown what relationship, if any, Jones and Chesebro had before or after the insurrection.

The former top commander of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, General Gennady Zhidko, died Wednesday of a “after a long illness,” CNN reports citing the Kremlin’s TASS news agency.

Zhidko’s story is convoluted as hell but basically he was a propaganda officer and not a real commander who effectively served as the Deputy Minister of Defense in the Putin Regime for much of last year before what we can only guess was Polonium that prompted his “long illness.”

MAGA Georgia state Senator Colton Moore, who definitely comes across as the kind of guy who lives with his mom, told deranged Newsmax host Greg Kelly on Thursday that she – and not his wife or girlfriend because he almost certainly doesn’t have one – “was worried about” Moore “taking action” after “Gestapo” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis got a grand jury to hand down an indictment against fat former President Trump and his allies. It’s not clear what happened after that since Kelly wrapped up the segment, but we would have to guess that Mrs Moore told her son he’s a state senator so he should try to get Governor Brian Kemp to call the legislature in for a special session rather than strap on his body armor and load up the AR-15 he definitely owns and “take action” the way other men of his age, appearance, worldview, and relationship status usually do.

Urging the judge to apply a terrorism enhancement to the sentence, federal prosecutors submitted sentencing recommendations up to 33 years for the five members of the neo-fascist Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges for their roles in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.

Per NBC News, prosecutors are seeking 33 years in federal prison for Enrique Tarrio and Joseph Biggs, 30 years for Zachary Rehl, and 27 years for Ethan Nordean.  A fifth member of the group, Dominic Pezzola, was convicted of assault and other violent crimes, but not seditious conspiracy; prosecutors sought 20 years for him.

“A significant sentence is necessary ‘to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct’ by others,” the memo notes. “Here, the need to deter others is especially strong because these defendants engaged in acts that were intended to influence the government through intimidation or coercion—in other words, terrorism. And they were leaders of such efforts. Because these defendants not only contributed to the attack on the Capitol but helped to organize it, their sentences will be noted by those who would foment such political violence in the future.”

Jacob Smith was settling into the first day as a police officer in Pleasant Hill, Missouri on Monday. All the formalities had been done:  he was sworn in, the “welcome the new hire” email had gone out to the town’s employee list, and the department had announced the new hire on its Facebook page.

And according to the Atlanta Black Star, that’s where it went bad for Smith:  someone replied by posting a link to Smith’s social media accounts.  Sprinkled in the endorsements of right-wing views and politicians, Smith had posted comments and memes espousing violence and racism, including one about decapitating Black people, made less than a month previously.

Smith’s job with the Pleasant Hill Police Department–and hopefully his career as a police office–ended at 1 a.m. local time Wednesday when he was fired.  “This is totally our fault. We traditionally do a very comprehensive background. This time we failed to do so,” Pleasant Hill Police Chief Tommy Wright said in an interview with a local television news outlet.

Hard to imagine a Republican attorney general or district attorney seeing this and not saying “Okay asshole, so what the fuck are we supposed to charge Hillary Clinton or Stacey Abrams with? Is it still within the statute of limitations? Do you even know what the hell the statute of limitations is? No, of course you don’t because Fox News fucking hired you. Thanks for tying up our phone lines with your stupid hick audience calling us demanding we prosecute Abrams for refusing to publicly concede when she lost to Brian Kemp back in 2018. Or Hillary for not conceding to Trump in 2016 even though she actually did on election night. Those’ll be real slam dunk cases, you fucking genius. Why did we ever even bother going to law school and taking the bar exam when we could just watch Fox News to understand how to prosecute criminals? Boy do we feel like total suckers.”

“Rather than releasing the Report on the Rigged & Stolen Georgia 2020 Presidential Election on Monday, my lawyers would prefer putting this, I believe, Irrefutable & Overwhelming evidence of Election Fraud & Irregularities in formal Legal Filings as we fight to dismiss this disgraceful Indictment by a publicity & campaign finance seeking DA, who sadly presides over a record breaking Murder & Violent Crime area, Atlanta. Therefore, the News Conference is no longer necessary!” fat former President Trump posted on Thursday, chickening out of his “EXONERATING” press conference Monday as had been presaged by reporting earlier in the day.

That’s such fucking bullshit. We were eagerly looking forward to running it and mocking the fat bastard further incriminating himself from the podium at his stupid golf club. What a chickenshit.

A new survey by Fox News finds President Biden leading disgraced former President Trump 44 to 41 percent in a 2024 matchup. At minus 3, the Orange Pharaoh does the best against Dark Brandon than his dead-end rivals for the nomination, with fascist millennial rapper Vivek Ramaswamy down 4 percent, heels-wearing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis down 5 percent, and South Carolinians Senator Tim Scott and former Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley down 6 versus Biden.

“Well, it is the million dollar questions.  I do not have any answers for that.  Um, why you would call yourself Robert L. Peters, Robin Ware, JRB Ware, I don’t know why you have multiple email addresses to send, receive and forward government correspondence.  Um, obviously I heard you talkin’ to the previous guest.  I can’t think of any good reason anyone would do such a thing.  I can only think of only nefarious, shady reasons why people would do such a thing.”

It’s actually not a new story; it broke in 2021.  So why a man who spent four decades in the Senate would have private email addresses that don’t blare his name isn’t difficult to figure out, particularly when emailing people outside the secure government system.  But the daughter-in-law of David Dennison Carolin Gallego John Miller John Barron Donald Trump Drumpf may want to look into the family history of using false names.

“President Donald J Trump, through counsel, submits this response in opposition to the government’s proposed trial calendar, Doc 23, and respectfully requests the Court place this case on the April 2026 trial calendar” write the former guy’s lawyers in a response to Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s proposed January 2, 2024 start date. Same decade at least.

Three stock transactions made by Republican Alabama Coach (not Senator) Tommy Tuberville relating to a company that later received praise for innovative medical treatments on the front lines of the Ukraine warn are raising calls for elected officials to put their assets into a blind trust, Newsweek reports.

Tuberville made three separate trades involving the small biotech company Humacyte on the same day, July 25th, with each trade having a total value between $1,000 and $15,000.  According to financial disclosure documents, Tuberville mainly traded in top-name companies including Pfizer, Proctor & Gamble, and Under Armor over the same period.

As a member of the Armed Services Committee, Tuberville would have access to reports about military intelligence about the Ukraine defense, its tactics and its equipment.  His seat on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee would connect him with information on new medical technology. 

The Republican-dominated North Carolina General Assembly passed an “election reform” bill that would end the three-day grace period for mail-in ballots to arrive after Election Day even the Republican leaders of both chambers supported the measure when it first passed, WNCN CBS-17 in Raleigh reports.

After state elections officials extended the grace period to nine days in the 2020 election, Republicans objected to any grace period to account for mail delays.  Instead of honoring the previous three-day grace period, the GOP legislators completely eliminated it.  In 2020, 13,669 mail-in ballots arrived in the nine-day period after Election Day; 85% came in within three days.

Election Day is “when folks are supposed to vote. Why are we counting ballots after that date?” Republican House Speaker Tim Moore said, echoing Republican Senate Leader Phil Berger, who also downplayed the impact:  “Folks have plenty of notice and should have knowledge that if they’re going to vote absentee, they need to make sure that they get their ballots in so that they will be received by the board of elections on time,”