Category: Uncategorized

MSNBC reports, per Politico’s Josh Gerstein, that a DC court officer told them that no grand jury indictments handed down Thursday, and they don’t expect to have any more issued through the day.  The timeframe does match up with the previous federal indictment of Trump, where his lawyers met with prosecutors from Jack Smith’s office three days prior to the public announcement of Donald Trump in the documents case.

It is possible, though unlikely, that indictments could have been voted on earlier today or even at a day prior to this, but have been held under seal.  The grand jury, however, is still meeting at 3 p.m. ET; they are scheduled to stop for the day at 4 p.m. ET.

The Supreme Court lifted a lower court injunction blocking further construction of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Democratic West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s pork project, allowing work to continue on the project while legal battles proceed, CNN reports.  No reason was listed in the one-paragraph order.

The 300-mile pipeline would transport shale gas from West Virginia to processing sites in southern Virginia.  Approving the pipeline was a key concession to get Manchin’s vote to raise the debt ceiling in June.

In a surprisingly accurate and on-point assessment of Republican House performance art, Colorado GOP Congressman Ken Buck states on Fox that Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy is avoiding the difficult choices he promised he would make regarding the budget and spending cuts by touting an impeachment investigation promoted by the lunatic rightwing fringe of his caucus.

Speaker McCarthy has promised conservatives in the House a low appropriations number.  He’s promised President Biden a high appropriations number.  He’s doing everything he can to obfuscate, to avoid the real issues which are how do we deal with spending.  We have six different committees that are looking into President Biden and Hunter Biden at this point.  We don’t need to start floating the term ‘impeachment’ when we have such a serious investigation process going on right now.

.@NatResources passed my Western Water Accelerated Revenue Repayment Act.

My bill will generate millions of dollars for new water infrastructure and storage, decrease operating costs for water users, and cut bureaucratic red tape.

Wins all around!https://t.co/qOGk0OKbpW

— Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) July 27, 2023

Boebert is trying really hard to show her constituents that she’s doing more than social media posts and horrific behavior to justify her reelection campaign.  And to do that, she regularly touts her claimed legislative accomplishments in her social media feeds.  Here she touts “my Western Water Accelerated Revenue Repayment Act” that made it through committee.  But the substance of the “Act” leaves a lot to be desired:  it consists entirely of punctuation and grammar changes to the bill.

Responding to the beating death of 29-year-old Black man Tyre Nichols, who died three days after a brutal beating at the hands of Memphis Police officers on an anti-crime task force, the US Department of Justice has opened an investigation into sweeping accusations of civil rights violations throughout the police department, the Washington Post reports.

The investigation goes beyond the DOJ’s investigation into the incident that led to the death of Nichols, looking into accusations that system bias against Black and minority citizens led to unjustified use of physical force and violence against citizens.  “This federal civil rights investigation will examine whether police violated the Constitution or federal civil rights laws in a systemic way,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said at a news conference Thursday.

Hidden in the latest agenda for the board of trustees for New College in Florida–a once-innovative higher education institute that Republican Florida Governor and anti-tolerance activist Ron DeSantis is destroying by installing radical right-wing xenophobes to run–is a $2 million request for the “New College Freedom Institute,” an indoctrination effort to normalize hate speech and bigotry under the guise of “free speech.”

DeSantis’s proposal would hire “prominent figures in the free speech movement who have access to major media and are proven capable of delivering the Freedom Institute’s message” to groom audiences, both on campus and independent of the school, to accept the radical intolerance promoted by DeSantis and Republicans.

A Republican operative who was part of a group that illegally obtained and tampered with voting machines from four different Michigan counties says she was indicted by a Michigan special prosecutor for their efforts to support their false claims that the 2020 presidential election results were changed by some convoluted plot to change votes.  Stefanie Lambert’s claim that she was advised of the indictment has not been verified or confirmed by the Michigan Attorney General’s office.

“My attorney has been informed me that I have been indicted by DJ Hilson, the special prosecutor in Michigan, working at the request of [Michigan Attorney General] Dana Nessel,” Stefanie Lambert said Wednesday on a local conservative podcast. “I’m not losing any sleep over this.  I know that I’ve done absolutely nothing illegal. My clients have not done anything illegal.”

The morning meeting between disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers and Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s office over the pending charges against the obese orange autocrat over his post-2020 election coup attempt ended badly for Team Orange, with the prosecutors telling them to expect an indictment as early as Thursday, MSNBC reports.

A judge with London’s high court rejected a motion by Rupert Murdoch’s News Group Newspapers to block a lawsuit filed by Prince Harry alleging two British tabloids illegally hacked into his voicemails and used other illegal methods to get material for their stories, CBS News reports.  Murdoch’s lawyers had argued that the lawsuit, originally filed in 2019, was too old to continue.

Although London High Court Justice Timothy Fancourt ruled that Harry’s suit about the phone hacking could have been brought sooner, he ruled that the suit could continue because the tabloids continued to use other illegal methods, such as hiring private investigators, to dig up dirt for publication.  Murdoch-owned outlets including The Sun and the defunct News of the World published suspect stories using information gathered through means that violated the Royal’s privacy.  It’s one of at least four lawsuits Harry is currently pursuing against British media outlets for intrusive, gossipy and untrue reporting.

Trump-shielding New York Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik continues the Republican campaign of indictment by insinuation.  The GOP have not presented a single bit of hard evidence of any of the claims they’re making, and Stefanik continues that practice of throwing shit against a wall to see what sticks.

The American people deserve to know that.  They deserve to have all of the facts.  And we’re going to do that, and I believe that what we’ve uncovered just in seven months alone is stunning.  It is chilling.  It is the biggest political scandal of my lifetime and perhaps the last century, perhaps ever.  But I want to make sure we have all the evidence possible.

And while the 39-year-old Stefanik did not live through Watergate, she did live through Reagan selling arms to Iran, Bush starting the war with Iraq based on lies, and every crime of the Trump administration including the insurrection, so to say this unspecified Biden is the worst in her lifetime demonstrates she’s perpetually wearing blinders.

Katherine Faulders of ABC News reports soon-to-be-thrice-indicted former president Donald Trump’s lawyers were spotted entering the offices of Special Counsel Jack Smith Thursday morning as the grand jury in Washington, DC was meeting potentially voting on indictments for their client.

The American economy bested estimates in the second quarter, coming in with a 2.4% year-over-year growth, fending off fears that a recession is brewing even as the Fed raised interest rates, Bloomberg reports.  For the fourth straight quarter, the economy had growth of 2.0% or greater, with job creation holding steady and consumer spending strong.  In a sign that the Fed’s interest rate manipulations are fine-tuning the economy, the housing market has cooled, but spending on other large ticket items such as vehicles has increased.

The grand jury that could soon end up handing down an indictment of disgraced former President Trump and his minions for their attempt at overturning his humiliating defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election were spotted entering the DC federal courthouse by NBC’s Dan Barnes on Thursday.

In a preview of Tucker Carlson’s upcoming biography obtained by the Guardian, the former top Fox News propagandist tells author Chadwick Moore that being racist “isn’t a crime,” but he would be totally open about it if he believed himself to be racist… Even though he pretty obviously is one.

“Being racist is not a crime. Maybe a moral crime, but not a statutory crime – so if I was racist, I would just say so,” says the frozen food heir in the book, as if he hasn’t already made it plain that he has held and continues to hold deep contempt for non-whites and non-Christians.

LAURA INGRAHAM: This is why people don't trust the government https://t.co/DxJ1cJr2KO

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 27, 2023

The new backer of disgraced former President Trump’s deeply corrupt business empire tells the Washington Post on the record that the $225 million in cash his bank supplied to keep the sinking ship afloat for another year or two was totally legitimate and the fact that he’s a Republican who personally donated to the fat fuck’s 2020 campaign had nothing to do with his decision.

“It wouldn’t matter if I was friends with someone, I’m not going to make a loan that’s no good. I don’t like anyone that much,” said Axos Bank CEO Gregory Garrabrants, who indeed comes across as a douchebag who doesn’t get along with people, providing a convenient cover story. Public records show Axos lent the Trump Tower $100 million at a 4.25 percent interest rate and the Trump Doral $125 million loan at a 4.9 percent, each maturing in 10 years, but Garrabrants was unwilling to discuss other terms such as the long-term rate and what the collateral was. So yeah, he probably lent the money hoping for some political favors if Trump wins in 2024.

A Nigerian judge last week sentenced internet scammer Emmanuel Chisom Mbah to two years in prison following a Mbah’s guilty plea on impersonation contrary to Section 1 (1) (a) of the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act 2006, the Guardian of Nigeria reports.

Mbah is not royalty nor did he claim to be. Instead his racket was simply pretending to be a professional foreign exchange trader and ripped off two other Nigerian guys for $4,655. It’s not clear if he met his victims by cold emailing them but that would be fucking hilarious if he did.

A Pennsylvania MAGA terrorist who wore his high school varsity football jacket to the January 6th, 2021 MAGA insurrection and was identified by former classmates who tipped off the FBI after seeing him fighting cops during the melee – captured nearly eight years after he graduated from high school – was sentenced to 18 months in prison Tuesday, NBC News reports.

Bryan Gundersen, now 28 and who we must emphasize again was still wearing his fucking high school varsity jacket while trying to violently overthrow the US government and embodying the kind of townie douchebags naturally drawn to Trumpism, had been convicted last November of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers.

Credibly suspected statutory rapist Congressman Matt Gaetz on Wednesday told News Nation’s Kellie Meyer he and other MAGA Congressman Tom Tim Burchett will soon be talking with titular Speaker Kevin McCarthy to form a select committee to investigate the military’s knowledge of UFOs.

A consortium of seven carmakers that sell in the US market have vowed to construct 30,000 fast-charging stations for electric vehicles in urban areas and along highways, doubling the number available to travelers, the Washington Post reports.  The first of the stations will open by next summer.

General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, BMW Group, Mercedes-Benz Group and Stellantis N.V. said they will construct the stations to be universally available to their vehicles.  Tesla owns a network of around 20,000 chargers in the US, but only around 7,500 will be available to other manufacturers by the end of 2024.

One of the major hurdles for electric vehicles in the consumer market is the concern about not being able to recharge quickly and conveniently on long journeys.  As goals for electric vehicle sales increase, establishing a network of reliable charging stations will be key to overcoming consumer fears.