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In one of the first uses of newly-deployed US-made Patriot anti-missile systems in Ukraine, the Russians targeted a battery with an advanced hypersonic missile, but the Patriot system destroyed the weapon before reaching the target, CNN reports.  It marked the first time the Patriot was used in Ukraine and the first known time it’s gone up directly against Russia’s most advanced weapons.

Hiding the exact location for security purposed, US officials say the Russians likely picked up on unique signals transmitted by the Patriot system, which is a stationary, fixed platform whose location will catalogued by attacking forces, to find its location.  Ukraine currently has two Patriot systems, one each from the US and Germany.  Russian forces have never faced the system directly and will likely attempt to overwhelm the position if it should choose to destroy it, but with the Kremlin reportedly running low on ammunition and with the economy faltering under the strain of war, it may be more prudent to avoid the airspace protected by the systems.

Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough, the only jurist nationwide to have briefly ordered a halt the certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election, is on the ballot in Tuesday’s Republican primary for the state Supreme Court, seeking to advance to the general election on November 7th to fill a seat on the bench left open by the death of Dem Chief Justice Max Baer, who passed away on September 30, 2022, Bolts Magazine reports.

The stakes aren’t as high as those in Wisconsin last month when liberal Justice-elect Janet Protasiewicz’s victory against former state Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly flipped a 4-3 MAGA majority to a 4-3 liberal after she’s sworn in, as Pennsylvania’s state Supreme Court bench currently sits at a 4-2 Dem majority with the one seat vacant. Still this asshole shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the state’s highest court given her campaign connections to fellow election denier and QAnon freak failed 2022 Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano’s PAC.

She’s not shy about embracing the 2020 conspiracy bullshit either. “I was the only judge in the entire country to enter an order to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election results,” said McCullough in 2021 – which is true, even if three MAGA state Supreme Court justices in Wisconsin and possibly more elsewhere voted against certifications and Trump scored various smaller victories, only one of which stood. McCullough lost the 2021 Republican primary by 19 points to now-Justice Kevin Brobson so it’s quite possible this bid is a dead end too. However McCullough’s 2023 opponent, Montgomery County Judge Carolyn Carluccio is just a less extreme MAGA douchebag. “If even one Pennsylvanian has concerns about our electoral process, we must address them. Our government cannot simply dismiss the concerns of a large portion of our electorate,” Carluccio told the Philadelphia Inquirer last week, as if believing some dogshit country like Venezuela built a supercomputer that could hack an American election is something that belongs in court of law, no matter how many Gateway Pundit-diseased brains believe it.

• We’re getting to FIFA-level corruption within the Republican Party.  I’d be worried, but thankfully they have a Keystone Kops-level of competence.
• That CNN town hall was disastrous. No one could control Trump.  No one vetted the questions.  The crowd laughed at sexual assault.  No one came out of it looking good. Not Trump. Not CNN.  And not New Hampshire.
• I’m curious how the history books that will be written long after I’m gone will treat this era of American history.  The good history books, I mean, not the ones Florida will use.
• Comer and Jordan personify why the American public has negative views of Congress:  they don’t want to accomplish anything other than political hits.  They’re not serving the People of the United States; they’re serving their own ambitions.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXXI”

Florida Republican Governor and really bad librarian Ron DeSantis will likely launch his presidential campaign in the coming days, but when he will hold a public announcement is unknown, according to NBC News.  The hint:  the unofficial campaign staff is due to move into larger offices in Tallahassee on Monday, something that will cost more than the $5,000 threshold for FEC reporting by campaigns for federal office–whether the campaign is official or not, with the rationale being if someone is spending $5,000, they’re definitely running for office.  After a campaign spends $5,000, they are required to file formal paperwork with the FEC and submit financial reports.

The operations director for New York Republican Congressman and, well, anything you want him to be George Santos will be disciplined for a series of tweets in which he threatened a reporter and claimed she would enjoy being sexually assaulted, the Daily Beast reports.

Vish Burra, a convicted drug dealer who serves as Santos’s director of operations, has claimed freelance journalist Jennifer Sweet is “obsessed” with him, although she’s actually been covering the various foibles of Santos since he came on the national scene. During Santos’s recent indictment on 13 felony counts, Sweet tweeted that Burra was eying her ominously.  Among his replies posted to the tweet, Burra included a response to a generic misogynist who said that he should have “hit her with that venom” saying  “I think she wants me to hit her with something else!”

“This kind of behavior from anyone is unacceptable, much less from a congressional staffer,” Santos communications director Naysa Woomer told The Daily Beast in a statement on Friday. “Threats of violence of any kind will not be condoned. The tweets have been deleted and disciplinary action will be taken.”

A pro-life Texas patriot was arrested Wednesday for avenging the life of his unborn child, cruelly taken… Ah fuck it, we’re supposed to be cutting back on that “grim sarcasm” thing.

Dallas cops arrested 22 year-old Harold Thompson on Wednesday after surveillance footage captured him choking and then shooting his 26 year-old girlfriend Gabriella Gonzalez in a parking lot, just a day after Gonzalez had returned from Colorado where she had reportedly gone to obtain an abortion, the Dallas Morning News reports. So without sarcasm, we’ll just note that Texas is the kind of place where this would happen: where a woman who was correct in her assessment that she should not be having a baby with the kind of guy who would shoot her in the head for having an abortion and fatally paid the price for it. A place whose leaders Greg Abbott, Dan Patrick, and Ken Paxton set the example for and enabled deranged young assholes like Thompson.

We can’t be 100 percent sure this is real. There’s always the possibility that this is some kind of parody deepfake. However the web address is real and the phone number did connect when we tried calling, though it was just a second of background noise before it disconnected. It really does appear that white nationalist twatwaffle Stephen Miller is running an ad for his MAGA law firm on daytime TV just as if it were another ambulance chasing or asbestos lawsuit mill.

Florida education officials loyal to heels-wearing autocrat Ron DeSantis have rejected two new textbooks covering the Holocaust for use in history classes, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports.

The Florida Department of Education would not specify their reasons for the rejection, but we’re thinking the books didn’t offer “an opposing viewpoint” on why the Nazis killed 6 million Jews.

Despite days of soiled MAGA underoos being stretched to the breaking point in excited anticipation of a massive wave of asylum applicants at the southern border over the expiry of the Title 42 lockdown policy, the scene was relatively calm at crossings, the New York Times reports.

Mark Pomerantz’s subpoena “was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the ‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations.'”

“No one is above the law.”

-U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil, Bragg v. Jordan

— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) May 12, 2023

Car thief Congressman Darrell Issa on Thursday told CNN’s Annie Grayer that former Manhattan prosecutor Mark Pomerantz isn’t telling Issa and the rest of the Trump fanboys shit as they question him over Alvin Bragg’s investigation and prosecution of their Orange Lord and Savior.

“The witness has not cooperated in any way, shape, or form,” said Issa, adding that Pomerantz has invoked the Fifth Amendment, which only the mob did until Trump did it himself 440 times.

Pomerantz doesn’t just have the right to not answer, it’s his responsibility to do it to protect the integrity of an ongoing criminal proceeding (nobody realistically thinks he’s worried about facing liability himself) and stonewall these losers from trying to impede it. Tough shit they don’t like their God Emperor to get indicted. At least Pomerantz showed up, unlike Jim Jordan who was actually subpoenaed by the House January 6th Select Committee. But let’s hear it anyway MAGA trolls. Tell us why THIS time is totally different and Pomerantz is committing treason by not answering.

UPDATE 5/12/2023 12:45 PM EDT: Pomerantz explains in an opening statement.

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows on Thursday sent a cease and desist letter to the pro-Trump “No Labels” sandbaggers over their fraudulent efforts to enroll voters into their fake party by misrepresenting a registration form as a mere petition, the Portland Press-Herald reports.

“Over the past few months, municipal clerks have received reports from numerous Maine voters who did not realize that they had been enrolled in the No Labels Party,” wrote Bellows. “These voters have provided similar accounts of how they came to be enrolled in the party: that they were approached by No Labels Party organizers in public places and asked to sign a ‘petition’ to support the new party. These voters have further stated that No Labels organizers did not disclose – and the voters did not understand – that No Labels was asking them to change their party enrollment.”

Helmed by Mark Penn, a particularly vile Trump ball-sucker famous for his fellatious columns defending the twice-impeached failure published by The Hill who also happened to be Clinton’s pollster back in the 90s (which we guess makes him “centrist”), No Labels’ plan is to recruit Joe Manchin or some other gullible, self-centered dumbass into a pointless kamikaze 2024 run to split votes from Biden and return the Orange God Emperor to power. The level of threat they pose probably hinges on whether or not they can sucker Manchin or a similar caliber “centrist” more than any other factor but Dems would do well to fight hard against them not just in Arizona (where they’ve already qualified) and other swing states but even deeper on the blue parts of the map in places like Colorado (also qualified), Virginia, New Mexico, and Minnesota.

Conspiracy freaks of all right wing stripes reacted with a mix of disgust and horror Friday to Elon Musk’s hiring of now-former NBC Universal chief ad sales exec Linda Yaccarino to serve as Twitter CEO, saying her side gig on some media committees at famous globalist boogeyman outfit the World Economic Forum means Musk is selling them out to the enemy.

“Hey @elonmusk, will @TuckerCarlson still be able to talk about the WEF like this with Twitter’s new lizard overlord lady running the show?” wrote one MAGA user. “Dear Elon Musk, I have exposed WEF, George Soros, Klaus Schwab, Club of Rome, Mossad and ADL. If the new Twitter CEO has one ounce of bias, it has been a pleasure,” wrote another called “Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives.”

“The last thing Twitter needs is a CEO that’s on the Board of the World Economic Forum. Why is it so hard to find someone that’s not a Nazi?” and then “[World Economic Forum Chair] Klaus Schwab is a Nazi that embraces the Third Reich Ideologies…which he has made CLEAR. He’s literally implementing the Fourth Reich. IF YOU ARE A MEMBER OF WEF…YOU ARE A NAZI…and you KNOW what you signed up for. Stop insulting our fucking intelligence,” wrote Canadian right wing influencer Liz Churchill, who later shared Devin Nunes personally welcoming her to Truth Social.

That’s at least $24 a month in subscriber fees Musk might have just lost. Probably.

Republican consultant Matthew Bartlett told Puck News not all of the audience at Trump’s CNN town hall were thrilled with the shit the fat former president said on stage and that before the start they were asked not to boo him at all, a request they obviously obeyed whether or not they wanted to.

“The floor manager came out ahead of time and said, Please do not boo, please be respectful. You were allowed to applaud. And I think that set the tone where people were going to try their best to keep this between the navigational beacons, and that if they felt compelled to applaud, they would, but they weren’t going to have an outburst or they weren’t going to boo an answer,” said Bartlett.

“There was a feeling of bewilderment… There were plenty of people in that room that were ardent supporters of President Trump, and no matter what he said, they were ready to jump out of their seats and applaud. But there were also people that sat there quietly disgusted or bewildered. In a TV setting, you hear the applause, but you don’t see the disgust. So Trump did not have the entire room on his side, make no mistake, even if it certainly came across that way on TV… But in that room, I remember walking out and people in the front row were like, He’s talking some crazy stuff, and I think a lot of these lawsuits are adding up. There was heavy skepticism. He kind of lost the audience at some point when he was rambling about January 6th.”

This was good stuff from Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, a woman who knows a thing or two about having a reckless and irresponsible son causing her political headaches and fathering grandchildren out of wedlock, so on paper she’s definitely qualified to opine on Hunter Biden. However in practice she’s not great at it, as she completely failed to address Newsmax host’s Eric Bolling’s question about Fox News host Steve Doocy “attacking” House Oversight Chair idiot James Comer. Boebert instead just rambled for 90 or so seconds about how it’s the committee’s job to investigate the Biden family, falsely claiming that “We aren’t Democrats that just scream ‘witch-hunt’ for no reason,” forgetting she tweeted “We’re witnessing the most obscene political witch-hunt in American history,” over criminal investigations into Trump less than two months ago.

Boebert then replayed an old QAnon classic, saying “I don’t think the Department of Justice officials are very eager to cuff their boss right now who is currently in the White House – whether that’s the fake White House set that they built for him or the original,” very likely referencing the particularly insane Q cult theory that the Biden White House is actually a movie set built on film producer Tyler Perry’s estate outside of Atlanta. Gotta thrown in some fan service every now and then.

“What would be amazing instead of the Post finding every negative issue relating to President Trump they would describe the successes of his presidency… energy independence, protected borders, soaring employment, decreasing unemployment, miniscule inflation, low gas prices, fair and honest tariffs, no wars, no banking problems, 401K’s growing rapidly and on and on. Is there a journalist on the Post staff that has the courage to cover Trump in a fair and balanced way? Probably not”

– The current top comment on the New York Post article “Trump campaign attack ad uses stock images from Ukraine to depict Americans suffering under Biden,” posted Thursday.

The article correctly points out that two of the B-rolls used in the Trump 2024 campaign’s “Mourning in America” ad – a title stolen from a 2020 Lincoln Project spot ripping Trump’s failure to manage the COVID-19 pandemic – were stock footage filmed by Ukrainian production crews, the first being a 2021 clip of a couple balking at the price of a home and walking out on the real estate agent, used to depict rising housing costs, which was generic enough. The second shows a hipster-ish man staring at a tablet in dismay as he sits on a beanbag chair in a sparse cellar while the narrator decries younger Americans being “forced to live in their parents’ basement,” a clip whose producers told the Post was actually filmed to depict Ukrainians sheltering underground from Russian bombardment.

The second one is certainly a bit more embarrassing for Trump’s campaign given his record of willingness to undermine Ukraine’s defenses against Russian aggression. Still, as far as right wing misrepresentations of imagery – intentional or otherwise – used in their propaganda goes, this is pretty low on the scale compared to Ted Cruz using a pic of a statue of Mother Russia on the cover of his stupid book, Fox News using a photo of a ransacked Japanese supermarket after the 2011 earthquake to attack “Empty Shelves Joe” in 2022, and when the Trump 2020 campaign used pics of Russian fighter jets in a “support our troops” ad. Just last week the Trump 2024 campaign put out a Facebook ad using pics from 2020 to sell “A Nation in Decline” under Biden… probably something the Post’s readers would be far more upset with the paper for covering “in a fair and balanced way.”

Turkish President Recep Erdogan is going full Trump ahead of Sunday’s election, accusing his main secularist rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu of links to the PKK Kurdish rebel militia, the Daily Beast reports.

“My people will not surrender this country to an individual who became president with the backing they received from Kandil,” said Erdogan at a rally last week, referring to the Iraqi region in which the Kurdish rebels are based. Erdogan’s allies are also working on a “western-backed coup” excuse to refuse to concede and “Stop the Steal” should the autocratic strongman lose.

“Legitimate Governor of Arizona” Kari Lake on Thursday met with Republican Senators Tommy Tuberville, JD Vance, Bill Hagerty, Joni Ernst, Lindsay Graham, and, perhaps most importantly, Senate GOP campaign chief Steve Daines for two hours as Lake considers a 2024 bid, Axios reports.

As Russian military bloggers report significant advances by Ukrainian forces around the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, the head of the mercenary Wagner military group said Russian troops have abandoned their positions around the region, the BBC reports.  The Kremlin denies it has ceded ground in its invasion of Ukraine.

The reports of Russian losses came after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy told a consortium of European public service media that the anticipated counteroffensive is not in the immediate future.

“With [what we already have] we can go forward and, I think, be successful,” Zelenskyy said. “But we’d lose a lot of people. I think that’s unacceptable. So we need to wait. We still need a bit more time.”

“Myorkas is gonna–[mumble] replace him. It’s like Whack-a-Mole.  You’ll get another Myorkas but if you impeach Biden, that totally is a different message to the American public,” woman who literally just endorsed an anti-constitutional coup for a second time Laura Ingraham asserts, without realizing the message is fascistic.  “I mean, I get what they’re saying–‘ the election’s around the corner’–but we’re gonna have ten million more people in the country if this spigot is left open for two years.  Do you not doubt we’re gonna have– we could have upwards of ten million people cross our border?”

“Basically the administration is saying, ‘Come on into the country. We’re gonna release you,'” says Republican insurrectionist Congressman Chip Roy of Texas.  “These are impeachable offenses.  Some Republicans try to say it’s not a high crime and misdemeanor.  Yes, it is.  [Ingraham interjects:  “Absolutely! Absolutely it is!”] It’s a blatant violation of their oath to defend the Constitution, to defend our nation.”

Our Constitution, in fact, assures individuals have equal rights on the law, and asylum seekers have the right to a hearing on their status.  Oh, and Laura, the people coming across the border won’t be eligible to vote in our elections until they individually gain citizenship.