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President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Friday changing the way the military handles sexual assault and harassment accusations in the military, taking the alleged victim’s chain of command largely out of the reporting process to streamline the investigation process, Politico reports.

The new process assigns independent military prosecutors in serious cases to remove the decision-making process from the reporting soldier’s chain of command, which is typically comprised of friends, colleagues and subordinates of the personnel of the accused.  Biden’s order intents to provide more ways for victims to report and pursue serious offenses without fear of retribution from commanding officers and NCOs.

“The historic reforms announced today will better protect victims and ensure prosecutorial decisions are fully independent from the chain of the command,” the White House statement said.

General Abdourahmane “Omar” Tchiani on Friday declared a massive, historic victory over stone cold loser President Mohamed Bazoum in the 2023 Niger coup, the BBC reports. It was sad really, how Crooked Bazoum lost complete control over the country during his failed presidency. Niger was basically a third world country before Tchiani took over and already the General is seeing just massive, historic support like you wouldn’t believe. Big Nigerien men, really tough guys, are probably coming up to Tchiani with tears in their eyes to say “Thank you, sir.” Many of them are farmers.

You know, a lot of people don’t know this but Tchiani is from the western region of Tillabéri where many people are into farming. Tchiani loves farming and knows probably more than anybody about it. Even some farmers who have been doing it for years are very surprised when Tchiani tells them he knows that the male goats have horns. You know Crooked Bazoum destroyed Nigerien agriculture. It was so sad, such a disgrace. He gave it away like no one has ever seen before.

Sources close to President Biden’s reelection campaign tell Axios that the incumbent’s plan is to not just run against his once-vanquished rival, fat former President Trump, but the MAGA movement as a whole for all the white nationalist revanchism and malevolence it represents.

“With every passing day of the GOP primary, the 2024 Republican field lurches further right just to cater to the MAGA base,” DNC spokesperson Ammar Moussa said. “Whoever comes out of this Dumpster fire of a primary to become the GOP nominee will only have done so by being the most MAGA – and alienating millions of voters.” It’s not a bad plan, if a little obvious, given how effective the line of messaging was in draining momentum from the “Red Wave” that wasn’t in 2022.

North Korea’s economy is in pretty rough shape these days, likely to the surprise of however many observers who thought having a totalitarian Marxist regime led by an obese millennial who smokes three packs a day and was simply born into power was superior to capitalist western democracies that, despite their many flaws, continue to be the best system available.

Granted there probably aren’t a lot of observers outside of North Korea who believe this sincerely, but Bloomberg still reported the news as if its readers, many of whom work in the worlds of international finance and economics, were supposed to be like “Oh man, I guess I should tell the guys we have to back out of that new cathode ray tube television factory investment deal even if that malnourished state media minister guy seemed like a straight shooter on ROI targets. Thanks for the heads up, Bloomberg. We could’ve gotten soaked big time on that one.”

In a poorly-timed Thursday interview with Breitbart, coming apparently just moments after he had been informed he had been hit with three more charges in a superseding indictment over his theft and hoarding of classified government documents at Mar-a-Lago, disgraced former President Trump promised to fire Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith if he’s reelected in 2024.

“I wouldn’t keep him,” Trump said when asked if he would fire Smith. “Jack Smith? Why would I keep him? He is – look, he’s gone after other people. He’s been overturned unanimously in the Supreme Court. He’s destroyed a lot of lives. Lives have been destroyed. He’s destroyed people – he’s destroyed lives… He was Lois Lerner and the IRS case, which was one of the most egregious abuses what happened. The government had to apologize to people. He went after Christians. This is a guy – he’s a wild man. I call him deranged. He’s been overturned. He went after the governor of Virginia – overturned unanimously. He went after another senator or something and was overturned. What he’s done is just horrible. The abuse of power – it is prosecutorial misconduct.”

The interview article contains several such paragraphs of agitated ranting by the fat bastard but this was the dumbest/funniest one. Also a pretty stupid question on Breitbart’s part, like that’s somehow the most salient issue in a guaranteed end of the prosecution against him should this demented, racist loser end up scamming his way back to the most powerful office on the planet.

The Webb Telescope has identified water vapor in discs of rocky material circling a young sun that could eventually form a proto-planet, the first time scientists have found signs of water early in the formation of a planetary system, CNN reports.

The discovery of water in planetary discs in a solar system with a star that is just 5.4 million years old–compared to ours, which is 4.6 billion years old–contradicts the theory that water vapor would be destroyed by the solar radiation coming from the star before the planet could form.

While astronomers have identified water on exoplanets in the past, the discovery of water in such a young solar system in a proto-planet that will become a rocky world in the so-called “Goldilocks zone” indicates the frequency of Earth-like worlds may be greater than expected.  It could also change the theories on how and when Earth collected its water.

Further illustrating Speaker pro tem Kevin Meow-arthy‘s incompetent management of the House, the New York Times reports that in the last hours of the session before Congress is scheduled to begin a six-week recess, House Republicans attempted to pass a critical $25 billion funding bill for the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration–y’know, nothing critical; just the people who safeguard our food supply–but could not come to an agreement because the far-right wing of the caucus demanded the legislation include provisions to bar organizations that provide abortions from benefiting from the bill.

Instead of telling the anti-choice zealots that the bill is for vital services from the Department of Agriculture, McCarthy and GOP leaders decided to table the bill until after the recess, adding another essential bill to the pile that needs to be passed by October 1st.  The sheer volume of bills needing floor votes combines with the insolence of the far right-wing makes a government shutdown more likely in the fall.

The superseding indictment issued Thursday against disgraced former President Trump and his minions over the Mar-a-Lago classified documents shitshow specifically adds to the charges the unlawful retention of the now-infamous Iran war plan the fat bastard was caught on tape in July 2021 showing to dickhead former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ ghostwriters during an interview for Meadows’ lame memoir in which Trump complained about Joint Chiefs Chair General Mark Milley.

“At the time of this exchange, the writer, the publisher, and TRUMP’s two staff members did not have security clearances or any need-to-know any classified information about a plan of attack on Country A [Iran]. The document that TRUMP possessed and showed on July 21 2021, is charged as Count 32 in this Superseding Indictment,” Smith’s prosecutors wrote in the complaint. The addition of the Iran document raises questions of why it was left out of the first complaint against Trump even as the transcript of the audio of him showing it to the ghostwriters was included.

CNN first reported the existence of the Iran war plan document and the interview audio on May 31st, following up on June 2nd with sources telling them the file’s whereabouts were unknown and that Smith had issued a subpoena for its return in mid-March. That the document was not included in the first indictment just days later would have seemed to confirm that Smith’s team didn’t have it yet, which of course Trump and his fanboys seized on as proof that it never existed. Then as more details and then the actual audio of the exchange steadily leaked out they stuck to that, with Trump also for some fucking insane reason claiming it was “actually an exoneration” and even pretending to a Semafor reporter that he had been lying to the Meadows memoir ghostwriters and was trying to impress them while waving around newspaper articles or some bullshit.

“Merrick Garland, are you proud of this?  Christopher Wray, are you proud?  Mr. Higher Honor, James Comey signed three of the FISA warrants when none of the information you gave was verifiable, says ‘verified’ at the top of the warrant, are you proud tonight?  Under Garland’s disgraceful partisan leadership, the DOJ has now gone from bad to worse.  Any trust in the Department of Justice has now been shattered, and yet Merrick Garland, he seems to care less, doesn’t seem to care at all.”

Wait, I thought the fact that the lead prosecutors in neither the Hunter Biden nor the Special Counsel cases had to report to Merrick Garland was what the talking heads on Fox wanted?  Now they want Merrick Garland to meddle in investigations, in the way Trump would?

Republican Wisconsin Congressman Derrick Van Orden called a group of Senate pages resting in the Capitol Rotunda and taking photos of the dome “lazy shits” and ordered them to “get the fuck up” as he gave a tour late on Wednesday night, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports.

Typically high school seniors, pages work for Senators and Congressmen delivering messages, handling errands, and acting as runners for the officials.  Pages frequently gather in the Rotunda when the Senate is in session, which it was last night in one of the final nights of the session, scheduled to end Friday.

Attempting to defend his profane outburst at teenagers, the former Navy SEAL harkened back to the sacrifice of soldiers during the Civil War.  “I would think that it’d be terribly disrespectful to lay on the grave of a soldier that died fighting for freedom,” Van Orden told the Journal Sentinel. “And I don’t know anybody that disagrees.” 

The Senate passed a defense funding bill Thursday night with an overwhelming 86-11 votes, setting up a fight with the House over its version of the bill, which includes anti-choice, pro-pollution and anti-LGBTQ provisions Democrats oppose, USA Today reports.

The bill authorizes $866 billion in spending for the Pentagon, along with a 5.2% pay increase for members of the military and civilian employees.  The Senate version of the bill maintains current Pentagon policy regarding abortion, the environment and LGBTQ service members.  It does take a couple bows to the far right in barring the Pentagon to require people list preferred pronouns in correspondence and freezes hiring for DEI training.

Legendarily uncourageous House Speaker Kevin McCarthy lived up to his billing last month as a tense confrontation between himself and Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell ended with Kev’s fighting words not being backed up by his actions, sources tell the Daily Beast belatedly.

On June 21st, just after the House GOP censured Congressman Adam Schiff for the “crime” of annoying their Orange God Emperor for far too many years, Swalwell needled McCarthy with “This is pathetic. You’re weak. You’re a weak man,” leaving the weak man fuming over the insult. The next day, as the House was readying to hear from Indian dictator Narendra Modi, McCarthy sought out Swalwell and warned him “If you ever say something like that to me again, I’m gonna kick the shit out of you,” according to a witness. “They were in each other’s faces. Basically nose-to-nose. And Swalwell said something like, ‘Are we really gonna do this?’” another House member told the Beast, escalating until McCarthy said “Call me a pussy again, and I’ll kick your ass.”

“You. Are. A. Pussy,” Swalwell then said, per witnesses. McCarthy then stepped aside and let Swalwell continue walking. “While Democrats may not love the particular insult – a gendered slur denoting that someone lacks courage – they are absolutely delighting in the exchange. They believe it’s indicative of McCarthy’s empty threats and ultimate weakness,” the Beast writes.

Fox News isn’t the national leader in right wing propaganda for nothing. They stay quick and sharp with the latest breaking whatabouting bad news for their audience’s most holy and beloved living god by with the legal travails of the left’s not-at-all equivalent figure Hunter Biden and baselessly speculating that Hunter’s troubles were the precipitating event less than an hour after the new charges dropped. If in their rush to be first Fox News blurs out some details such as the fact that it had been previously reported that Trump guy De Oliveira had already received a target letter two weeks ago or that Hunter Biden is actually trying to plead guilty to crimes he committed rather than going to trial like Trump and his two hapless sycophants, then that’s okay. They can just not correct it later and leave their audience in a state of hapless ignorance.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has asked the judge overseeing the resurrected E. Jean Carroll defamation lawsuit against Donald Trump to allow Carroll’s lawyers to provide all the video and files relating to Trump’s deposition in the trial, Adam Klasfeld reports.

“[W]e believe the full transcript and the video recording of the deposition are relevant and material to our proceedings, The People of the State of New York vs. Donald J. Trump,” the letter states.

A superseding indictment has been issued in the Trump Mar-a-Lago documents case, filing two additional obstruction counts based on trying to delete security footage, with Carlos De Oliveira also being charged with lying to investigators.

De Oliveira is a maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago.  CNN reports that De Oliveira told an employee at Mar-a-Lago that “the boss” wanted the security footage deleted, reiterating “the boss” wanted the server deleted and asking “What are we going to do?”

A 38-year-old Florida manatee named Hugh died at the Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in Sarasota after a sexual encounter with his brother resulted in a six-inch tear in his colon, NBC News reports.  Staff at the aquarium observed the pair interacting playfully throughout the day, the pair apparently shared an intimate moment that led to the fatal wound.

Florida Republican Governor and self-promoting -phobe Ron DeSantis may have to try to ban manatees from Florida waters given the species’ wanton sexual habits that frequently involve homosexuality. and incest, the former of which is looked down upon in the Republican Party.

“They’re not too meticulous about who their partners are. They just have this kind of a sexual urge and then they’ll engage in activity with whomever seems to be in the area, and if that’s a female, great,” said Jenessa Gjeltema, an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis’ School of Veterinary Medicine.  “But if there are not enough females around or there are only males around, they may express that sexual behavior on whatever individual may be in the vicinity.”

When California Democratic Congressman Mike Garcia displays a tweet from Georgia’s self-promotion superstar Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Congresswoman objects and asks for the chair to enforce the “rules of decorum” during the committee meeting, at which the chair reads the rules. Curious about what he did wrong, Garcia presses for clarification, given that the objection came from a woman who displayed the alleged pornographic photo claiming to depict the son of the President–a photo which she did not authenticate and downloaded from the internet–during her own committee meeting, which was televised nationally.  Here’s the tweet Marge didn’t want you to see:

A hyperdramatic Florida Man wants a book from the PBS Arthur franchise removed from his local public schools because it includes a scene in which a character mentioned the children’s game “spin the bottle,” the Daily Beast reports.

Signed by Bruce Friedman, the head of an organization named No Left Turn in Education, a so-called “parents’ rights” group that supports an anti-science, pro-censorship agenda in schools, the complaint against “Arthur’s Birthday” reads in capital block letters:  “PROTECT CHILDREN!  IT IS NOT APPROPRIATE TO DISCUSS ‘SPIN THE BOTTLE’ WITH ELEMENTARY SCHOOL CHILDREN!” become checking a box that the book contains obscene material.  “SPIN THE BOTTLE NOT OKAY FOR K-5 KIDS!” he finishes.  Asked “what do you believe will be the result of a student using this material, “Friedman” wrote, “DAMAGED SOULS.”

The book is about reaching out and befriended people different than yourself.  As Arthur plans a birthday party, he invites the girls in his school to the event, which leads to this exchange between characters, which Friedman found objectionable:

“How about me?” asked Binky Barnes.

“You’re invited,” said Arthur, “and Francine, too.”

“Oh, boy,” said Francine, “we can play spin the bottle.”

That’s it.  That was the single reference to Spin the Bottle in the book.

Characteristic of the teenage mentality permeating his caucus, Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy gets snide with a reporter who questions him about his support for an impeachment investigation.

“Okay, let me first correct you.  Were you there when I said that?” McCarthy asks the reporter like he’s an adolescent boy trying to use Super Logic on a teacher.  “Okay, so yer– you’re claiming that I said we’re going to impeach the President.”  The reporter responds that McCarthy floated the idea, to which an indignant McCarthy snaps back, “I floated the idea of impeachment?  Okay, so you’re wrong.  So if you record, go back and watch.  I said ‘impeachment inquiry.’  There is a big difference.”

Here’s what Kev doesn’t want to admit:  at the end of said “inquiry,” articles of impeachment will be voted on because McCarthy has already promised the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her “little bitch” LB² Lauren Boebert vote on impeachment on the House floor.  How do we know this will happen?  Because if it wasn’t meant to lead to an impeachment, the investigation could have been pushed off onto a standing committee which already have investigatory powers, not one specifically about impeachment.

A newly-released study by the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research found that right-wing echo chambers on Facebook during the 2020 election cycle were inundated with misinformation and were far more insular than the closest liberal parallels, Forbes reports, adding to the isolation of conservatives who amplified the lies.

The study found that right-wing news outlets have far greater incidents of posts being labeled as false information by Meta’s third-party fact-checkers, with those stories rapidly circulating through the conservative Bubbles even after they were tagged as disinformation.  One study found that people who used chronological sorting of posts versus algorithm-selected sorting were exposed to more diverse posts, but it also found that it did not matter for people in the right-wing echosphere, who sought out information that reinforced their views.