🚨BREAKING: Gov. DeSantis calls for Change at the RNC🚨

"We've had 3 substandard election cycles in a row, '18, '20, and '22, and I'd say '22 was the worst…I think we need a change. I think we need to get some new blood in the RNC. I like what Harmeet Dhillon has said…" pic.twitter.com/dayeCSVtJ0

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) January 26, 2023

Also Charlie Kirk ought to get his ass beat for betraying his Lord and Savior Donald Trump by cozying up to DeSantis like this. What a disloyal, small-faced little fucking bandwagoning rodent.

The number of incidents in which Baltimore City Police used force against people they’ve interacted with dropped 55% in the years following the police-involved death of handcuffed detainee Freddie Gray in 2015, a new report by a multi-jurisdictional panel found, the Baltimore Sun reports.

Gray died after being handcuffed in the back of a police van and being taken on a “rough ride” where the driver allegedly intentionally drove unsafely to throw the detainee in the back around, a way to punish a person without officers laying hands on him.  Gray was detained after being chased by police on suspicion that he did something wrong because he fled police; police had no other probable cause to accost Gray, whom family and friends say had had numerous negative contacts with police harassing people on the street.  Gray’s death sparked sometimes violent protests in the city, and was an early incident that culminated in the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020.

Baltimore City leaders entered into a consent decree with the Department of Justice in 2017, allowing the DOJ to review, oversee and recommend changes to the Baltimore Police Department.  Scores of officers in BPD retired or resigned after the decree was signed because they were fearful of inquiries into their behavior, attitudes and actions.  The DOJ and other parties recommended significantly changes to department training, education and policies.  The program was fully implemented by the end of 2020. 

“What?!” you likely uttered when reading the headline.  “Three hundred children died from cough syrup?  Is this another Marge conspiracy theory?”  Well, no, it’s not. You likely hadn’t heard about the story because the 300 dead children were primarily Africans, and American media–with National Zero unfortunately included–typically only report on African news when the US bombs something or pop musicians release a charity song.  Given that Africa has twice the population of North America, maybe we should pay more attention.

It’s true:  back in October, the World Health Organization announced that cough syrup distributed in many African and Asian nations was contaminated with diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol, chemicals dangerous to humans that can be fatal if ingested, particularly to children.  The Food and Drug Administration, a federal agency Republicans target for elimination in their campaign of fear and hate under the guise of “small government” advocacy, noted that none of the contaminated cough syrup has made it into the United States thanks to our socialist safety regulations; however, the FDA warns to check the manufacture location for cough medicine to make sure it was sold in the United States and not use products imported from foreign sources, particularly over internet sales.

According to CBS News, the FDA has joined the effort to trace the cause of the contamination, the distribution of the contaminated products, and potential remedies for the impacted people.  The products were sold under the brand names Promethazine Oral Solution, Kofexmalin Baby Cough Syrup, Makoff Baby Cough Syrup and Magrip N Cold Syrup, was Maiden Pharmaceuticals Limited, a company in Haryana, India that provides generic products for companies around the world, including the US.

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s aides did not start sorting through papers and packing up until after January 6th, 2021, due to disgraced former President Trump’s insistence everyone pretend there was going to be a second term, CBS’s Robert Costa reports, citing two sources on why the Evangelical Christian houseplant ended up taking classified documents home to Indiana in 2021.

Costa adds the papers themselves appear to be mostly low-level shit, such as briefing materials for foreign trips, but this hasn’t been confirmed yet. Of course it would be surprising if Pence or Biden had actually held onto anything that would be of any particular value to bad actors or foreign adversaries. Or to be held hostage in exchange for cherry-picked “exonerating” evidence.

.@Newsweek should take this down and fire the writer and editor for publishing libelous garbage about @mattgaetz and his staff.

The fact that Newsweek would do this should tell everyone to NEVER read their 💩 ever again.

All they do is lie.https://t.co/AACrtDtbM0

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) January 26, 2023

Not for nothing, but if something is “libelous garbage” maybe don’t tweet it out and help spread it if you’re so concerned over you friend’s (already suspect) character impugned. And then there’s that Newsweek aren’t actually making the accusation, but Gaetz’s 2022 Dem opponent Rebekah Jones, and she’s not exactly a shining beacon of truth herself either. Newsweek just reported on it.

Trump-nemesis Congressman Adam Schiff now joins fellow Californian Katie Porter in a Dem primary bid for the seat currently kept warm by old dinosaur Senator Dianne Feinstein, who still hasn’t actually announced her retirement yet and will not make a decision for at least a few months.

Looking to find out how enthusiastic the Republican National Committee’s delegates are for disgraced former President Trump’s 2024 campaign, the New York Times called, emailed, and texted all 168 of them and got only four to reply with “an unabashed endorsement” of the twice-impeached loser’s comeback bid. Another 20 who answered said he shouldn’t be the nominee and 35 of them said they would want to see a big primary field. The rest did not respond to the Times.

Some of those that did grant interview estimated that as many as 120 to 140 other members are opposed to Trump 2024. Of course it doesn’t actually matter, since the RNC delegates don’t decide who the nominee is, it’s the primary voters – who would almost certainly pick Trump if all the primaries were held now. But the article quotes more than a handful of the delegates – by name – wary of a third campaign centered around the unhinged orange maniac doing more and more damage to the GOP’s appeal to independent voters every single fucking day for the next 22 months.

DC Circuit Court Judge Timothy Kelly on Thursday paused the ongoing seditious conspiracy trial of the Proud Boys’ leadership to hold a hearing, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports, while noting it comes a day after the Boys indicated they may try to subpoena fat former President Trump to testify.

Kelly scheduled the next day of the trial proceedings for Monday. It’s not clear what was supposed to happen on Friday, as in if it was already a day off or if Kelly is now blocking off two whole days to figure the (possible) Trump subpoena attempt out. We’re in the dark on the likelihood of success for such a move, as we have no prior example of the fat bastard being subpoenaed to testify in a trial. Assuming the judge even allows the defendants to try it, the safe bet is that Trump would fight it all the way to the Supreme Court, taking months, probably even years, to resolve in the middle of a trial that was supposed to last weeks. That’s quite a lot of standing back and standing by.

Jones County, South Dakota Anti-grooming Party chairman Rocky Hayes was arrested in September 2022 on child pornography charges, a bust which was only recently turned up by CBS South Dakota affiliate KELO in documents listing an upcoming court appearance for Hayes.

Hayes was caught when he apparently accidentally (or intentionally, who the hell knows with these fucking scumbags) had uploaded a 16-second video file of a sex act involving a minor to Dropbox, who tipped off state law enforcement. Cops then obtained a warrant to search Hayes’s home and devices, finding two more files. In the months since, all of Hayes’s social media profiles and business websites have been scrubbed, and the state party only acknowledged they “terminated” their “relationship with Rocky Hayes” and his marketing company after being asked to comment by KELO.

So yeah, it’s pretty clear this was swept under the rug as much as it could have been by the sparsely populated one-party state. Like yeah, they’re prosecuting one of their own as they should but they also almost went out of their way to keep it under wraps for months and only a yokel CBS affiliate owned by the Hill’s parent Nexstar media spots it on a local court docket. That’s transparency.

Probably because that, and we’re just throwing this out there, it would mean an unconditional capitulation to Putin and the effective end of Ukraine as a sovereign, independent state and Donald can only hint at such things obliquely instead of coming out and saying it.

A top lieutenant of RNC chair candidate Harmeet Dhillon was fired from a job with the Virginia Republican Party in August 2016 after he “engaged in sexual activity” in a Virginia Beach office space and then posted photos of the encounter on fucking Craigslist, Politico Playbook reports.

Dhillon has promised to hire Presler for a top post if elected chair in the hotly-anticipated Friday delegate vote, leading some in the RNC to worry that she’ll let the party become even more unhinged than it currently is if she denies Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel’s bid for a fourth term.

Of course in describing Scott Presler as “a pugnacious, MAGA-inspired grassroots organizer who boasts more than 1 million social-media followers,” Politico deeply understates the guy’s batshittery and evil. Even right wing psychopath Congresswoman Elise Stefanik was cowed into canceling an event with Presler in 2021 in response to uproar over his being named in multiple Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League reports on his involvement with Islamophobic hate groups, not to mention all the QAnon COVID and 2020 election bullshit he’s been tagged with.

Cops in India on Wednesday arrested at least 70 students at a Muslim university over the planned screening of a 2020 BBC documentary India: The Modi Question, examining with the 2002 Gujarat riots and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s role in fomenting the violent pogrom in which over a thousand Indian Muslims were slaughtered by the fascist Hindu cult RSS, Bloomberg reports.

Most of the students were later released, though at least 13 remain in custody over the planned screening. The film, in which former UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw lays responsibility for the violence at the then-Gujarat Chief Minister Modi’s feet, is subject to an “intellectual property rights” violation in India, and the government has pushed Twitter and YouTube to block it.

A fresh wave of drone and missile attacks rained down on Ukraine on Thursday, a day after the US and Germany agreed on a deal that would see at least dozens of advanced battle tanks sent to help defend the country from the destructive ongoing invasion and occupation, the AP reports. A Kyiv city official said at least 15 missiles bound for the capital had been shot down.

Citing a case that overturned an Arizona law that banned a Mexican American history class saying the law was “motivated by racial animus,” civil rights attorney Ben Crump threatened to sue Republican Florida Governor (and a 70% size replica of Orange Julius with 100% of the hate) Ron DeSantis if he does not reverse a decision to ban an African American History Advanced Placement course from Florida high schools, according to the Washington Post.

DeSantis claims the AP course, a pilot program being developed by The College Board, the company also responsible for the SAT exams, violates his bigoted law to ban discussions about race, gender and sexuality in classrooms because, he believes, it makes straight, white “christian” students uncomfortable to learn that their ancestors–and maybe their contemporaries–did shitty things because they thought they were superior.  DeSantis claims the new course would violate the new Florida snowflake law because it does not present America’s history of slavery and bigotry in a positive light.

“If he does not negotiate with the College Board to allow AP African American Studies to be taught in classrooms across the state of Florida, these three young people will be the lead plaintiffs in a historic lawsuit,” Crump said.

Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, made a horrible business decision and like all conservatives, he can’t deal with the backlash.  After Newsmax demanded television providers pay them a carriage fee–a charge paid by the provider to content providers–after years of not charging a fee, Ruddy was shocked–shocked! I say–to find the providers didn’t want to pay to air the third-tier network’s propaganda for its 13 million customers.  Apparently, Ruddy doesn’t like capitalism, where service providers get paid commensurate to the quality of service they provide.  In this case, apparently, the value of Newsmax programming to DirecTV is …(calculating… carry the two… divide by pi)…exactly zero.

Instead of being responsible adults or competent government officials by paying the bills they’ve racked up, House Republicans will consider passing a series of “clean” short-term debt limit increases to buy time, a move that would unsettle global financial markets and leave the American economy teetering on the brink of a GOP-induced calamity.

Roll Call reports that the nihilists in the Republican House Caucus want to increase the chaos by matching the ending date of one of the short-term increases to terminate on September 30th, that last day of the government’s fiscal year.  That would essentially defund all government spending going into the new fiscal year, adding pressure to get a deal done, but also–given the disarray in the GOP and the ineffective leadership of House Speaker pro tem Kevin McCarthy (who may not be in that position after any given day because he ceded his )–increasing the likelihood that the government will pass the deadline without a deal.

Democrats have been pushing McCarthy to present any type of solution to the debt ceiling issue, but McCarthy has none.  “We have to try to get together and see what we can do in a bipartisan way, that’s true,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said Wednesday.  “But on the debt ceiling, you know what I’d say to Speaker McCarthy when we sit down: Show us your plan.”

Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton has vowed to slow down all nominations submitted by President Joe Biden, saying it’s ostensibly because Biden improperly had government documents at his office and his home, but it’s really because Tom Cotton is a six-foot walking penis.

According to Politico, Cotton is suddenly incensed that fewer than 20 documents were found at an office formerly used by Biden and at Biden’s home in Delaware.  The documents, which were never sought by the National Archives, were back in NARA’s possession within a day of being found without the need for court action or million of dollars of taxpayer money going to a doomed legal fight.

“I’m prepared to refuse consent or to fast-track any nominee for any department or agency. And take every step I can on every committee on which I serve to impose consequences on the administration until they provide these documents for the Congress to make our own informed judgment about the risk to national security,” Cotton said.

An 87-year-old Holocaust survivor embraced modern technology, using a dating app to find love.  Unfortunately, he hooked up with a 36-year-old Florida con artist who milked the man for $2.8 million over a five-year period, CNN reports.

Calling herself “Alice,” Peaches Stergo met the unidentified victim, then a Manhattan resident, about seven years ago.  In 2017, she asked him for a sizable amount of money to pay for a lawyer to get a settlement she said she was due; in fact, there was no settlement and she kept the money.  She then created a stream of fake invoices, collection statements, correspondence and other material to convince the victim that she needed a $50,000 monthly allowance.  She also set up a fake email account and impersonated a bank employee to convince the victim that he would be repaid the cash he thought were going to help “Alice” out of financial scraps.

Instead, Stergo used the money to buy a house in a gated community in Florida, a condo, a boat, and numerous cars including a Corvette.  The victim ultimately told his son that he had no savings remaining, telling the son that “Alice” was going to repay him.  The son called the police.  Federal officials say more than half a billion dollars were lost in 2021 to romance app scammers.

Did you try to overthrow the government?
Are you worried that the rule of law is catching up to you?
Thanks to Kevin McCarthy, the attorneys at #InsurrectionLLC are standing by and ready to take your call… pic.twitter.com/M1Dv0nMj2V

— Eric Swalwell (@ericswalwell) January 26, 2023

Satellite photos have revealed a cemetery set aside for killed in action members of Russia’s group of paid mercenaries from Wagner Group show the toll Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is taking on Putin’s private army, NBC News reports.

The photos last autumn showed 17 grave sites at the cemetery, located about 200 miles into Russia from the Ukrainian border.  After Wagner Group fighters were used to hold territory at the eastern Ukrainian town of Soledar late last year, the number of graves jumped to at least 120, seven times the number.

Satellite imagery shows the area where the cemetery is located, near the Russia town of Bakinskaya in southwest Russia, containing one of six sections of the area designated for Wagner Group remains filled with bodies.  The five other cemetery sites are not occupied, yet.