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After losing his appeal in the Second Circuit, Hunter Biden’s old business partner Devon Archer is challenging a court order to report to prison while he’s scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, Politico reports.

Archer was convicted of attempting to defraud a Native American tribe in 2018, an incident not involving Hunter Biden.  On Saturday, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York asked a federal judge to schedule Archer’s date to report to prison after he lost his appeal Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld his one-year sentence.  The judge’s decision isn’t expected to interfere with Archer’s testimony.

Claiming Archer played a significant role in the “Biden family” dealings with Chinese businesses backed by the government, Republicans will question him behind closed doors, likely to say they got more damning evidence to bolster the lock-solid evidence they’ve claimed to have divulged in the last six months.

As part of the response to the Supreme Court shutting down a forgiveness plan, the Biden Administration will debut a beta version of a website where holders of student loans can apply for more flexible income-based repayment plans, CNN reports.

Called the SAVE Plan, for Saving on A Valuable Education, allows borrowers to apply one-time to update the terms of their repayment plan.  The goal of the site is to be able to access information from across agencies, including the IRS, to allow the borrower to see their exact payment and plan instantly.  Officials say applications to the program can be completed in around ten minutes.

The SAVE Plan allows people earning under 225% of the federal poverty levels to waive payments until their household income, meaning families of four with a household income under $67,500 could bypass payments.  Combined with Obama-era pay-as-you-earn programs, low income families could have loans forgiven after a decade.

“Y’know, nominating Donald Trump for the Republican Party is a lot like peeing in your pants:  it’s gonna feel good for a couple of seconds but then you wake up and realize the realities of what you just did,” the Republican former lieutenant governor of Georgia Geoff Duncan describes accurately.  “We’re going to get beat in the general because we picked the wrong candidate.  We couldn’t get out of our own way.”

Three Ukrainian drones were shot down in and around Moscow, according to Russian officials, targeting the city as it was readying itself to host a parade celebrating the nation’s military might President Vladimir Putin was scheduled to attend, NBC News reports.

Reports showed the facade of a glass-covered office building in downtown Moscow damaged by one of the drones.  Earlier this week, a drone crashed near the Ministry of Defense building and another crashed into a high-rise, destroying the upper floors.

Recently reported to be rattled by the attacks on Moscow and the mutiny of his allied Wagner forces, Putin did appear at the scheduled parade and gave a speech in which he promised dozens of additional warships produced in the coming year–perhaps to make up for the loss of so many ships in the Ukraine war, including one of its flagships.  To secure Putin’s safety, the airspace of the surrounding region was closed and the local civilian airports were shut down for more than an hour.

A new CBS News/YouGov survey finds just 12 percent of respondents saying Republicans in Congress have done anything to fight inflation, which seems a little high since they’ve actually done jack shit. A quarter think Republicans actually made it worse, while 22 percent say they’ve had no impact, and 41 percent answered “Not sure what they have done about inflation.”

Even among Republican respondents only 20 percent say the Congressional GOP have put a dent in inflation, while 9 percent say increased, 31 percent say no impact, and 39 percent not sure.

“Same as the Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX. They knowingly accuse you of a fake crime, a crime that they actually make up, you fight these false charges hard, and they try and get you on ‘obstruction.’ We are dealing with sick and evil people!” the angry fat senior continued in another post.

The California Republican Party’s executive committee on Saturday voted 53 to 19 to adopt a change to the way delegates are awarded in next year’s state presidential primary seen as likely to seriously advantage fat former President Trump against his rivals, the Los Angeles Times reports.

For most of the last two decades, candidates were awarded 3 delegates per congressional district won, a system that allowed campaigns to target certain regions strategically rather than have to take on the whole state and spend ad money in some very expensive media markets. Under the new rules, if any candidate pulls in more than 50 percent of the vote in the March 5, 2024 primary they automatically win all 169 of the Golden State’s RNC delegates. Trump’s campaign favored this option as polling shows he can probably win a majority. If he falls short the delegates will be awarded to each candidate proportionally, which is still preferable to the district-by-district system.

“Smoke filled back rooms do not reflect the will of or benefit voters in any state. Yet across the country games are afoot to enhance the potential outcome of primary elections for one former president who half of the Republican electorate no longer wants as the party leader,” bitched former Trump Acting Deputy DHS Secretary and current DeSantis PAC chieftain Ken Cuccinelli in response to the change in California and similar moves made by other state Republican parties.

An Arkansas federal judge on Saturday issued a preliminary injunction against a law making libraries and book stores criminally liable for failing to remove “harmful” material signed by lying piece of shit Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and set to take effect Tuesday, the AP reports.

Judge Timothy L Brooks, an Obama appointee, opened the decision with a quote from Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451,” writing “There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches,” which was a pretty sick burn, pun intended.

Trump’s PAC has paid at least $40 million in legal fees for him and others in the first half of 2023 related to the multiple investigations and prosecutions of Donald Trump, leading prosecutors to question potential conflicts of interest among the group of lawyers common among defendants, the Washington Post reports.

In federal filings due Monday, Save America PAC is expected to list $40.2 million in spending on legal affairs covering Donald Trump and the increasing number of people drawn into the investigations and grand jury inquiries on federal, state, and local levels who request its assistance.  It is the single greatest category of spending for the PAC this year so far.  Since Trump left the White House, his PAC has spent $56 million in legal fees.

Prosecutors are also making a point of asking potential witnesses if they know who is paying for their legal counsel and what other witnesses, targets or defendants that lawyer may be representing.  Funded largely through small-dollar donors, the PAC is the best way to pay for the legal fees of those drawn into the inquiries, Trump advisors say, particularly those who could not afford legal fees themselves.  The fact that only a small number of lawyers will work for Trump-affiliated clients is another issue.

Well, this is awkward.  One day after Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked North Korea for being one of the handful of countries supporting the Kremlin since its invasion of Ukraine, reports come from the front lines of Ukrainian forces using North Korean rockets seized from Russian forces.  Video shows Ukrainian forces loading a Soviet-era launcher with North Korean rockets.

Reuters reports Ukrainian officials have not detailed how its military came into possession of the arms, saying only they were seized by a “friendly” country and turned over to Ukraine. Shipments of arms and other supplies to Russia have been halted and strict sanctions imposed by most nations, although North Korea and Iran are thought to be supplying Russia.

https://youtu.be/n7PCwno-v88

Indicted felon Donald Trump continues his tour to sucker his followers to fund his attempt to avoid accountability for his misdeeds, taking his rantings to Erie, Pennsylvania and addressing a crowd at Erie Insurance Arena, which has a maximum capacity of 9,300. Trump is scheduled to take the stage at 6 p.m. ET.

With a Fulton County grand jury expected to decide on indictments imminently, Donald Trump’s motion to disqualify Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and the judge overseeing the case merits a hearing according to Georgia Senior Superior Court Judge Stephen Schuster, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.  Schuster set the hearing for August 10th.

Schuster, a retired Cobb County judge, was called in on the case because all active judges in Fulton County recused themselves due to Trump’s motion targeting their fellow Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney as well as Willis.  Although pundits give the motion little chance of succeeding, it could impede the issuance of indictments in the case.

From the groomers to the people who admit they don’t socialize with anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs, the people who lined up for Saturday’s Trump rally in Erie, Pennsylvania share their common love for their king and cult leader.

More than one hundred Wagner Group forces are reportedly traveling the Suwalki Gap, a 50-mile strip of land between Poland and Lithuania that connects Belarus to the isolated Russian Kaliningrad Oblast on the Baltic Sea, a movement that worries the  NATO allies concerned Wagner forces will infiltrate their countries, CNN reports.

Kaliningrad is a vital port region for Russian trade and maintaining its naval power on the Baltic, and the Suwalki Gap is strategically important to keep open to defend the NATO allies on the Baltic.  Moving Wagner troops along this undefined stretch of land to Kaliningrad concerns leaders of Poland and the Baltic states of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia because it could signal Russian intent to isolate the region and limit trade.

The man who got thrown into the Trump indictment buffet was given an interview known as a “Queen for a Day” meeting where he could share his story without fear of prosecution, the Washington Post reports.  Prosecutors, however, did not believe Carlos De Oliveira was being honest or completely open with them and told his lawyers to expect an indictment.

De Oliveira worked with fellow defendant Walt Nauta to move boxes of files after Donald Trump’s lawyers were advised of meetings at Mar-a-Lago with government lawyers in June 2022.  He was also seen on security footage moving at least one box on June 3rd, 2022 that Trump ultimately took to Bedminster, New Jersey that day.  From the day of the FBI raid to secure government documents in August 2022, investigators have felt De Oliveira had obfuscated when responding to direct questions; for example, when FBI agents asked for the key to the room where Trump stored boxes of documents, De Oliveira, the property manager, claimed he didn’t have it and said either unknown Secret Service agents or Trump campaign staff had it.

Prosecutors ended up charging De Oliveira after offering an opportunity to give an honest and complete account of his activities after he appeared before the grand jury in early April and then appeared for a proffer session weeks later.  During those times, De Oliveira claimed not to remember key details–like two out-of-character trips Trump made to Mar-a-Lago in the heat of summer in July 2022–as well as specifics of if he was asked to perform certain tasks and by whom.

In his quest to Make Ukraine Great Again, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took the war with Russia to a whole new level Friday when he signed a declaration moving the official recognization of Christmas from January 7th, the date of the Russian Orthodox observation, to the Western traditional day of December 25th, Politico reports.

Zelenskyy said the move was to encourage his countryman to “abandon the Russian heritage” Ukrainians have adopted after generations of occupation and rule from Moscow-based overseers.  It also pushes Ukrainians to move away from the Russian Orthodox-affiliated churches in Ukraine, which have been shown to be giving aid to Russian invaders.

Trump-appointed Florida federal circuit Judge Raag Singhal late Friday dismissed with prejudice the twice-impeached loser’s moronic defamation suit against CNN over their usage of “the Big Lie” to describe his fantasies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, which he alleged made him sound like a Nazi because some reference to Hitler and Goebbels his lawyers tried to draw.

“Acknowledging that CNN acted with political enmity does not save this case; the Complaint alleges no false statements of fact. Trump complains that CNN described his election challenges as ‘the Big Lie.’ Trump argues that ‘the Big Lie’ is a phrase attributed to Joseph Goebbels and that CNN’s use of the phrase wrongly links Trump with the Hitler regime in the public eye. This is a stacking of inferences that cannot support a finding of falsehood,” Singhal wrote in the opinion.

NSA can’t even keep basic secrets when employees go rogue that I highly doubt the government could keep spaceships and alien bodies a secret. Still waiting for someone to disclose the address of where the alien bodies are.

Also, why are space aliens always showing up in America? https://t.co/Rk79ulVFFy

— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) July 29, 2023

This is what we want to see from members of Congress amid all this recent UFO mania. Start asking the hard questions and get this shit sorted out. Make this a real debate, get to the bottom of it, see if there’s any there there instead of letting all these allegations run wild.

• Last week, we noted that HBO decision to rebrand as Max was a bad idea.  While I stand by that statement, Elon Musk just committed the biggest rebranding error in the history of American marketing.  
• Mark my words:  weeks after Ron DeSantis drops out of this presidential race, he will call for a socialized federal insurance fund to cover homeowner losses to hurricanes.  He will need to socialize the insurance industry because his regulations have hopelessly dismantled it.  Oh, and the fact that Florida is just a money pit thanks to stupid people who build houses in flood plains.
• Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss were targeted in a vile racist way by Trump and his supporters, but by Rudy Giuliani most heinously.  His racism wasn’t dogwhistled; it was bullhorned.
• Isn’t it odd that you never hear of a doctor supporting the vaccine AND claiming ivermectin could cure Covid?  It’s like they refer to two different sciences to reach their conclusions.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXXI”

Meet Republican presidential candidate Perry Johnson.  “Who?” you rightfully ask.  Johnson is one of those entrepreneurs who made a lot of money in the private sector–in his case, running a consulting company on international quality control standards; think ISO9000–which he believes qualifies him for the highest public office in the land.

Johnson’s not a neophyte, exactly:  he was one of five candidates disqualified from the 2022 Michigan governor’s race because of a ballot petition signature scam.  He’s polling… well, he’s not polling anywhere outside the margin of error, so his glory days in the Republican race are likely this speech at the Iowa GOP conference.  And he certainly brings the SlapChop energy the Republican base loves.