Japanese singer/anime voice actress Rie Takahashi politely asked fans attending her recent debut concert to make sure they bathe thoroughly beforehand as to not ruin the experience with the stink of involuntary celibacy distracting her while she was trying to sing, Kotaku reports.

None were reportedly offended by a woman they will never ever have sex with telling them they smell awful. It’s also more direct of an ask than an American public figure with a similar fanbase of unhygienic shut-ins does prior to his “concerts,” simply holding them mostly outdoors instead.

Two of the four Americans who were kidnapped after they traveled to from South Carolina to Mexico have been found dead and a third wounded in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas, with the fourth rescued uninjured, CNN reports.

Authorities believe the group drove their personal vehicle, with South Carolina license plates, into a dangerous part of Mexico where drug cartels control large areas as the Americans sought medical care; one member of the group reportedly wanted to go to the city of Matamoros to get a “tummy tuck.”  US officials believe the four were mistaken to be a group of Haitian drug smugglers from a gang trying to infiltrate the territory of a Mexican gang.

US intelligence organizations believe an unspecified pro-Ukrainian group independent of the Ukrainian government and military is responsible for the explosions that shut down the Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea, undermining claims by Tucker Carlson and other right-wing pro-Putin gadflies who want to blame the United States, the New York Times reports.

Intel reports admit the agencies do not know a lot about the group responsible except that it appears to have strong anti-Putin sentiment and was likely trying to damage Putin’s power and reputation while aiding the Ukrainian war effort by damaging Russia’s economy by cutting off revenue from gas sales.  Western officials have long denied involvement in the attack, but pro-Kremlin elements in American media and politics have persisted in claiming the Biden Administration ordered the attack despite no evidence.  Fox anti-American propagandist Carlson claimed after the attack in September, “If [the Biden Administration] did this, this will be one of the craziest, most destructive things any American administration has ever done.”  Carlson apparently forgot about George W. Bush’s order to invade Iraq in 2003.

Chairman Jerome Powell told Congress Tuesday morning the Federal Reserve may have to raise interest rates again when they meet later this month to pull the reins of a robust economy to control inflation, the Washington Post reports.

“The latest economic data have come in stronger than expected, which suggests that the ultimate level of interest rates is likely to be higher than previously anticipated,” Powell wrote in written testimony. “If the totality of the data were to indicate that faster tightening is warranted, we would be prepared to increase the pace of rate hikes.”

https://twitter.com/davidmweissman/status/1632961119852589061?s=21

The family of slain Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick on Monday released a statement in reaction to Fox News propagandist Tucker Carlson’s insulting lies about his death:

“The Sicknick family is outraged at the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so called ‘news’ network of FOX news who will do the bidding of Trump or any of his sycophant followers, no matter what damage is done to the families of the fallen, the officers who put their lives on the line, and all who suffered on Jan 6th due to the lies started by Trump and spread by sleaze slinging outlets like FOX. FOX has shown time and time again that they are little more than the propaganda arm of the Republican Party and like Pravda, will do whatever they are told to keep the hatred and the lies flowing while suppressing anything resembling the truth. Fox does this not for any sense of morality as they have none, but for the quest for every penny of advertising money they can get from those who buy airtime from them. It is well past time that we move past Trump, the GOP, and all of the lies which have severely weakened and divided us as a nation and start seeking truth.”

QAnon freak 2022 Pennsylvania governor’s race loser Doug Mastriano tells Politico he’s considering running for the seat held by Dem Senator Bob Casey in 2024. “What do you do with a movement of 2.2 million? We’re keeping it alive,” said Mastriano, who lost by nearly 800,000 votes to Josh Shapiro.

Fun side note: Mastriano, still serving in the state Senate, has hired fellow Republican QAnon asshole and 2022 Maryland gubernatorial race loser Dan Cox to serve as his chief of staff.

A day after the US flew a B-52 by its airspace, North Korea’s Official Greatest Little Sister In the Global Universe Kim Yo-Jong, Princess of the Fertile Land, the youngest sister of North Korea’s latest President for Life Kim Jong-un, said the leader is watching the “reckless actions” of the United States and South Korea, Politico reports.

“We keep our eye on the restless military moves by the U.S. forces and the South Korean puppet military and are always on standby to take appropriate, quick and overwhelming action at any time according to our judgment,” Kim Yo Jong said according to state media, which like a Trump policy statement, provided little details of what such action would look like.

Over the last two years, the US has deployed B-1 or B-52 bombers in South Korea multiple times as a show of force to Russia, China and the petulant leader of North Korea, who no longer has his naptime buddy in the White House but who now knows his pal valued his love letters enough to steal them from the National Archives.

Georgia Republicans are trying to undermine a community’s ability to elect its local prosecutors by giving the Republican-dominated state government the power to fire any elected prosecutors at its will, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.  Shitting their pants after a special grand jury likely recommended indictment for state GOP leaders as well as national criminals like bumbling archvillain Rudy Giuliani, Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham and career criminal Donald Trump.

With Fulton County District Attorney, a Black woman who holds the fate of the 2024 hopeful in her hands which must piss off the Old Boy network of the Georgia GOP to no end, likely to drop indictments soon, Georgia Republicans passed a bill through the state house and state senate that would establish a five-person board with people appointed by the Republican governor, the Republican lt. governor, the Republican Senate leader, the Republican House leader, and some guy, probably Black, so Repubicans can claim its legitimate.  The Party bosses will then appoint their lackeys to fire anyone they think is getting too close to their political friends, fundraisers, or fundraising activities.  It also has the added bonus disenfranchising Black voters further, because only the people the white Republican board members approve of may sit in a seat of power.

“The surveillance footage we reviewed show that famous clip was a sham edited deceptively by the January 6th Committee.  The clip was propaganda, not evidence,” Man lying to your face Tucker Carlson asserts.  “The actual videotape shows that Hawley was one of many lawmakers being ushered out of the building by Capitol Hill Police officers.  And in fact, Hawley was at the back of the pack.  The Coward Tape was a lie, one of many from the January 6th Committee.”

No one claimed Hawley was the only one fleeing the violent mob storming the Capitol, Tucks.  And, yeah, okay, maybe the January 6th Committee was intentionally (and effectively) mocking a man who just hours before stoked the crowd.  But the tape doesn’t lie:  Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) ran away, scared of what the crowd of Trump supporters was going to do to members of Congress.

The Jim Jordan-led House Judiciary Committee subpoenaed the Biden appointee who headed the Department of Homeland Security’s short-lived Disinformation Governance Board, an advisory panel of disinformation experts and civil liberties advocates tasked with developing guidance for federal agencies on how to balance those interests relating to national security and law enforcement, NBC News reports.

While Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, tweeted that she would comply with the subpoena, she told NBC in an email she questioned the legitimacy of Jordan’s various inquiries:  “the abuse of congressional oversight powers is about to get wildly out of control [under Jordan].  His ‘weaponization’ committee is the entity that is actually weaponizing our government, and the American people deserve better,”

“This is who the Democrat Party is,” human Play-Duh Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Ga.) proclaims on fellow Confederate and Trump advisor Sean Hannity’s Fox propaganda show, where he lies directly to your face.  “They are the domestic terrorists and Antifa needs to be held accountable and the Department of Justice better start doin’ their job.”

So we’re agreed:  the Department of Justice needs to do their job, but I imagine we have very different images of what that job entails.  While Marge wants the amorphous philosophy/guys who kinda hang around with each other but never had a formal meeting group antifa prosecuted, her outrage is selective.  Marge defends the January 6th domestic terrorists sitting in the DC Jail awaiting trial as if they were white Mandelas.  Amazingly, though, Marge completely misses the point:  if the people accused in the arson in Atlanta are, in fact, guilty of arson and destruction of property, liberals will want them punished as well; we want people held accountable… unlike you.

Eight minutes into the Tucker Carlson “expose” on the video Republican House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy aired Monday, and Fox’s playbook for the video is clear:  “We going to show you the video in pieces tonight,” Carlson said downplaying the violence of the day by predictably highlighting snippets of mundane and boring shots of people to claim it was just a “hundreds, maybe a thousand” bad seeds with hundreds more “tourists” who respected the Capitol.

Carlson and Miranda Devine, a New York Post columnist, used the QAnon Shaman as an example:  they were (mostly) peaceful who didn’t break windows–even though they can into the building through broken windows–and they came through.  Carlson and Devine note most protestors came through “open doors”–doors that were opened by the first people to crawl through the broken windows.

After a second train derailment in Ohio and a deal to spend millions of dollars to compensate governments on the Pennsylvania side of the border after its massive spill and file in East Palestine, Ohio, Norfolk Southern Railroad has announced it will implement safety upgrades that may have prevented or lessened the impact of the recent accidents, the Associated Press reports.

Norfolk Southern said it would install more “hot box” detectors along the rail lines it owns, which includes the locations of the East Palestine wreck and a second derailment Saturday near Springfield, Ohio; no hazardous materials were involved in the second derailment.  In addition, the railroad said it would strengthen instructions to engineers on what to do and how to safely stop trains when a problem is identified.  After lobbying to ease regulations–and having receptive ears in the Trump administration–Norfolk Southern now faces hundreds of millions of dollars in damages and repair costs that will come from anticipated lawsuits.

Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro announced a multi-million dollar agreement to compensate state, county and local agencies that responded to the East Palestine derailment which spill toxic vinyl chloride, a deadly chemical that was set on fire, sending a toxic cloud into the atmosphere.  Civil lawsuits are pending, and investigations.  After being mocked for initially contributing $25,000 to a fund for victims of the East Palestine wreck, Norfolk Southern has now pledge more than $1 million to replace fire equipment damaged in the wreck, another million for the town of East Palestine, and $1.2 million to the more than 2,000 people evacuated.

A 19-month-old French child died of a fentanyl overdose at a Palm Beach County, Florida home her family had rented as an AirBnB for a vacation stay in the hellscape state, NBC News reports, with authorities unsure about how the child got the drug.

Enora Lavenir died in August after checking into the four-bedroom home with her parents and four siblings.  The day after the family arrived at the home, the girl and her sister took a nap in one of the bedrooms.  Enora was found unresponsive and foaming from the mouth.  She was pronounced dead at a local hospital; the autopsy found she died of fentanyl overdose.

The Lavenir family discovered that the house, located on a lake in Wellington, has frequently been used as a party house by people who booked it using the service, with the knowledge of the property owner. The family is suing the homeowner, the previous renter, and AirBnB for negligence.

Former Trump White House town bike Hope Hicks met with the Manhattan District Attorney’s office on Monday to talk to investigators about fat former President Trump’s hush money payoff to pornstar Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election, the New York Times reports.

It’s not clear if Hicks testified to the grand jury impaneled in January to reopen the investigation into the orange degenerate slob’s burying a 45-second sexual encounter with the blonde adult performer in 2006, however according to court records from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s 2018 court case, Hicks was aware of Daniels’ request for $130,000 to stay quiet.

A new survey by Morning Consult finds President Joe Biden leading new age self-help weirdo Marianne Williamson 77 to 4 percent among Dem voters in the 2024 presidential primary race.

Morning Consult notes that Biden actually does slightly better than Trump among GOP voters in March 2019, when they found 73 percent of Republican respondents supported Donald’s 2020 bid.

The US Department of Justice on Monday announced they’ve arrested over 1,000 MAGA terrorists in connection with the January 6th 2021 Capitol insurrection in the past 26 months.

Disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers on Monday moved to delay the scheduled October start of the trial in New York Attorney General Leticia James’s $250 million lawsuit against his corrupt company, citing the “staggering volume” of evidence in the case, ABC News reports.

“The current schedule makes the preparation of a defense impossible. Fundamental notions of fair play and due process mandate that Defendants are afforded every opportunity to prepare a meaningful defense, rather than to have an impossible schedule forced upon them,” Trump’s incompetent defense attorneys Alina Habba and Clifford Robert wrote in the filing.