Space Force, the cartoonishly named branch of the US armed services, has opened up its first post on foreign land at Osan Air Base in South Korea, the BBC reports.

Space Force Guardians–you forgot that’s what their service members are called, didn’t you?–will monitor activities in Russia, China and North Korea, whose missile tests have alerted the US and its regional allies.

South Korea was likely chosen because of its geographic advantages, but also because a joint forces operations agreement between the two countries makes establishing new operations easier than it would be with other allies.  Like the United States prior to Donald Trump establishing the Space Force in 2019, South Korea’s space defense program is operated by the nation’s air force.

Congress has passed a bill ordering the removal of a statue of former Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney, the justice who crafted the Dred Scott decision that ruled Black people were not eligible for citizenship in the United States, whether they were slave or free, NBC News reports.  The statue will be replaced with a bust of the first Black justice on the Supreme Court, Thurgood Marshall.

“While the removal of Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s bust from the Capitol does not relieve the Congress of the historical wrongs it committed to protect the institution of slavery, it expresses Congress’s recognition of one of the most notorious wrongs to have ever taken place in one of its 19 rooms,” the bill reads.

In a Capitol ceremony Wednesday, Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi of California unveiled the portrait of her that will hang in the Speaker’s Lobby, home to paintings depicting dozens of white men who preceded and followed Pelosi holding the gavel.  Honoring the first female Speaker of the House, former Speaker John Boehner cried his way through a tribute (seriously), noting that his daughters told him to relay to her how much they admire her.

The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans and the neighboring town of Arabi are currently being struck by a large tornado for the second time this year following a devastating EF3 twister that hit the area in March. The windy son of a bitch may even still be on the ground as of this writing.

Ever the champion of transparency and free speech, Twitter’s owner and new libertarian hero Elon Musk has banned an account that tracked the location of his private jet from the social media platform after vowing he would take no such action against it, the Washington Post reports.

The account @elonjet was operated by Florida college student Jack Sweeney, who said he was a fan of Musk’s and his stand for free speech after the self-declared “free speech absolutist” tweeted, “My commitment to free speech extends even to not banning the account following my plane, even though that is a direct personal safety risk.”

“I mean, this looks horrible. He literally said he was keeping my account up for free speech,” Sweeney said. “He’s trying to bring the company to profitability, and this is the last thing he needs.”

UPDATE:  Apparently, even Musk can sometimes be shamed.

https://twitter.com/ElonJet/status/1603174681439526913

“The administrator of an online group chat dedicated to the trafficking of child pornography has been sentenced to 22 years in prison, announced Dena J. King, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina. Dakota Ray Maddy, 33, of Lenoir, N.C., will also be placed under a lifetime of supervised release after he is released from prison and will be required to register as a sex offender. According to filed documents and court proceedings, in June 2019, an FBI agent working in an undercover capacity accessed an online group chat dedicated to trading child pornography.”

“Over the course of the investigation, the FBI identified Maddy as the group’s administrator. As the administrator, court documents show that Maddy was in charge of adding and deleting members from the group chat and required members to actively share child pornography or they would be removed. In addition to his administrative duties, Maddy shared child pornography in the group chat, and posted requests for others to send him child pornography. Forensic review of these files established that Maddy distributed a substantial amount of child pornography. On June 14, 2022, Maddy pleaded guilty to advertising videos and images of children being sexually abused. He is currently in federal custody and will be transferred to the custody of the federal Bureau of Prisons upon designation of a federal facility,” says a Wednesday Justice Department press release.

Weird how VoterRecords.com says Maddy is a registered Republican. We were to understand that GOP voters were decent Americans dedicated to protecting children from sexual abuse, not distributing images of it for their arousal. Also, why was it the Deep State FBI who caught this sick asshole and not QAnon “digital soldiers”? Why didn’t they do anything to stop him?

After the United States diplomatic delegation organized member nations, a United Nations group kicked Iran off a commission responsible for reporting on the status of women around the world, Reuters reports.

Citing Iran’s recent passage of more laws restricting women’s rights and its crackdown on women’s rights demonstrations following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman imprisoned by Morality Police for showing too much hair, the US drafted and circulated a petition to remove Iran from the Commission on the Status of Women, a project of the 54-member UN Economic and Social Council, and received votes in favor of the resolution from 28 nations.  Eight members including China and Russia voted against, with the other nations abstaining.

“It’s hugely important for the women of Iran,” American UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield told Reuters after the vote.  “They got a strong message from the United Nations that we will support them and we will condemn Iran and we will not let them sit on the Commission for the Status of Women and continue to attack women in their own country,”

“Sec.A120.111.AA USE BY CHILDREN PROHIBITED. (a) An individual between 13 and 18 years of age may not use a social media platform. (b)AA Upon amendment to the definition of ‘child’ under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, 15 U.S.C. 6501 – 6506, this Subchapter shall apply to any person younger than 18 years of age. Sec.A120.112.AA ACCOUNT AND VERIFICATION REQUIREMENTS. (a) A social media platform shall: (1)AA require the social media platform’s users to use an account to access the social media platform; and (2)AA verify that each account is held by an individual who is at least 18 years of age. (b)AA A social media platform shall verify the age of the account holder by requiring the account holder to provide a copy of the account holder’s driver’s license along with a second photo showing both the account holder and the driver’s license in a manner that allows the social media company to verify the identity of the account holder,” says a new bill in the Texas State House which sounds super practical and easy to enforce.

That last part was total sarc. The kids say “sarc” a lot in their “Tick Tock” video app thingamjigs these days, right? We don’t want to sound all sus by not knowing what the lingo is.

A new survey by Quinnipiac University polls finds that on the question of “How serious a problem do you think that prejudice against Jewish people is in the United States today: a very serious problem, a somewhat serious problem, a not so serious problem, or not a problem at all?” 23 percent of the self-identified Republican voters answered “not at all,” while another 28 answered “a not so serious problem,” combining for 51 percent of MAGA voters in the sample. Only 13 percent of Democrats said the same (4 percent “not at all,” 9 percent “not so serious”) versus 39 percent of independent voters (14 percent “not at all,” 25 percent “not so serious”).

On the similarly premised question of “Do you think prejudice against Jewish people, also known as antisemitism, represents a growing threat to Jewish Americans, or don’t you think so?” 54 percent of Republicans and 42 percent of indies said no versus only 20 percent of Dems.

The survey itself was otherwise a grab bag of questions: Trump is at his lowest positive rating in Quinnipiac polling (31 percent) since July 2015, the month after he started his campaign. Only 26 percent of Americans want Biden to run again, Trump gets the exact same number. A plurality (47 percent) think Trump should be charged with a crime over January 6th, and 36 percent of respondents have a favorable opinion of Elon Musk because that asshole just won’t go away.

Despite smiling throughout the brief ordeal, complete worm GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy was unhappy to be asked “Why has it been so hard for you to get 218 votes when you have Trump lobbying on your behalf?” by a reporter at a press conference Wednesday, saying they were there to talk about the spending bill and “I can always count on you for the most inappropriate question.”

McCarthy was then asked “Trump had endorsed you for Speaker. Are you planning to endorse him above all other candidates?” to which he said “We haven’t talked about that yet.”

A Turkish court on Wednesday sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu to two years and seven months in prison, plus a ban on public office, on a bullshit charge that he insulted members of the country’s Supreme Electoral Council, the AP reports on right wing President Recep Erdogan’s pretty obvious locking off of a likely strong challenger ahead of the June 2023 presidential elections.

The obligatory “See Trump fans, this is what actual politically motivated prosecutions of fake crimes against an opponent look like. They don’t look like your fat Orange Allah being treated deferentially by the Justice Department for months before they had no choice but to send the fucking FBI to his house to recover the classified nuclear intel he stole” paragraph goes here.

Fucking seriously. The Incredible Orange Blob just posted this on Truth Social, writing “AMERICA NEEDS A SUPERHERO! I will be making a MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. Thank you!” like he’s going to reveal his laser vision and super strength to the public. Holy shit, lol.

Preliminary late night dumps of ballots with all kinds of irregularities are coming in from the radical socialist People’s Alliance Party’s election rigging operation, trying to steal Fiji from the Fiji First patriots who support the very tough and smart Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, Reuters reports.

It’s the crime of the century and Fijians have to stand up or they’re not gonna have an island anymore. Crooked Sitiveni Rabuka will bring in a leftist dictatorship. Well a third one, since he already successfully took power in two coups in 1987. They were way worse than the peaceful, patriotic coups that Bainimarama led in 2000 and 2006. It’s a disgrace. Rabukaflation will destroy Fiji. Antifi and FLM will throw coconuts at you just for walking down the street. Bainimarama is the victim here. He’s the victim. A sacred victory is being stolen from him. Sad!

“Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger today called on the Georgia General Assembly to eliminate General Election Runoffs in the state. ‘I’m calling on the General Assembly to visit the topic of the General Election Runoff and consider reforms.’ The General Assembly convenes in January and could select from a wide range of options to address this topic to help further the goal of safe, secure, and efficient elections. No one wants to be dealing with politics in the middle of their family holiday,’ said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. ‘It’s even tougher on the counties who had a difficult time completing all of their deadlines, an election audit and executing a runoff in a four-week time period,'” says a statement from the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.

It’s interesting that Raffensperger says this now and not after the 2021 runoff where his fellow Republicans, now former Senators David “Chickenshit” Perdue and Kelly “Left-Eye” Loeffler, were defeated by Dems Jon Ossoff and Reverend Raphael Warnock, respectively. It’s not clear if what Raffensperger proposes would’ve stopped Warnock from taking the seat on election day in November 2020 given that was a multi-candidate special election, but Perdue would have defeated Ossoff. Now that Herschel Walker came in second against Warnock in both rounds this year, it really seems like Raffensperger just wants the hassle over with rather than a “We lost, so let’s change the rules to make it easier to win” sort of thing that’s all the rage with Republicans these days.

The irony of the January 5th, 2021 double-header – which saw over a billion in combined spending by both sides as control of the Senate hung in the balance – was that Georgia’s runoff system is a historical relic of Jim Crow election rigging, created in 1964 to make it easier for racist Southern Democrats to defeat Republicans by diluting the Black vote in the second round. So the system really worked as intended in 2021 – minus the “racist” and “by diluting the Black vote” parts.

Disgraced former President Trump on Tuesday filed a defamation lawsuit in a Florida court against the Pulitzer Prize board over their 2018 award to the Washington Post and New York Times for reporting on his 2016 campaign’s links to Russia’s criminal dictatorship, Fox News reports.

The complaint, which comes after years of moronic threats to the Pulitzer board and Fox News didn’t even share so we have no idea if it was in a federal or state court, says a “demonstrably false connection was and remains the stated basis” of the prizes awarded to the Times and Post. It’s not clear why the fat fuck didn’t just sue the two papers themselves rather than an independent organization that awarded them for the coverage. Oh wait, it is actually pretty clear.

Federal prosecutors in Texas on Tuesday charged a three-time loser primary challenger to GOP Congressman Randy Weber on a count making a threat against a US official, the Beaumont Enterprise reports. Keith Douglas Casey, a self-proclaimed “prophet” who lost the 2016, 2018, and 2022 primaries against Weber by successively worse respective margins of 68, 70, and 81 percent, began telling people in March that he had won and was going to kill Weber for stealing the election from him. Weber’s office got word of this and reported it to the FBI on March 29th.

In August, Casey showed up at a courthouse demanding a meeting with a judge, claiming he was a “servant of the most-high God,” and rambled about messages being downloaded into his brain, after which he hospitalized for a mental health checkup and then released. Then on November 10th, law enforcement received a report from a witness who claimed they encountered Casey acting strangely in a parking lot, again ranting about Weber stealing the election from him, saying he was “going to take him down.” Casey was finally cuffed on Tuesday after cops found social media photos of him holding firearms, even though that’s not really out of the ordinary in Texas.

What’s weird though is how Weber felt threatened by a guy who thinks an election was stolen from him, especially since Weber objected to Joe Biden’s win on January 6th, 2021 and the next week voted against impeaching Trump for inciting the deadly insurrection that happened the same day. It’s almost like Weber thinks the example he and most other Republicans in Congress set by refusing to honor the will of the people and then condoning a violent assault on democracy by the losers doesn’t apply to their own intra-party primary elections. Weber should’ve manned up and faced Casey in a trial by combat instead of ratting him out to the FBI like a total pussy.

A new Wall Street Journal survey finds short little bastard Florida Governor Ron DeSantis leading disgraced former President Trump 52 to 38 in the 2024 GOP primary race among likely voters. The question was posed only as a head-to-head however, and in the real world the presence of other candidates would likely splinter more of DeSantis’s support than Trump’s. When up against former Vice President Mike Pence, Trump crushes his erstwhile second-in-command 63 to 28 percent.

Legendarily uncourageous “Speaker-elect” Kevin McCarthy is facing an impossible demand from the hardcore MAGA wing of the House GOP caucus, who insist that their support is contingent on him allowing for any member, at any time, call a “motion to vacate,” which is exactly what it sounds like: the option to force a vote to remove and replace the Speaker, Punchbowl News reports.

The numbers aren’t totally clear quite yet, given the lack of a viable alternative, but at least six MAGA members of the House are dead set against McCarthy and will not budge. In a 222 member GOP caucus vs 212 Dems who will almost certainly all vote in unison for their Speaker candidate, McCarthy can afford to lose those six as long as they don’t vote for anyone else, since the Speaker is determined by a majority, not a plurality vote. If he fails to get a simple majority of members voting for a candidate by name then the House goes to a re-vote again and again until a winner is picked.

Attention whore billionaire Elon Musk encouraged his fanboys to vote Republican in the midterms and then did not actually vote himself, according to public records obtained by the Daily Beast.

The Democratic and Republican leaders of the respective House and Senate appropriations committees agreed to a framework for an omnibus spending bill, moving one step closer to a deal that would avoid a government shutdown, Politico reports.

“If all goes well, we should be able to finish an omnibus appropriations package by December 23rd,” Republican Alabama Senator Richard Shelby, the lead Republican negotiator and the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Specifics are not available, but negotiators had settled on a 10% increase in defense spending to $858 billion in earlier discussions.  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said earlier Tuesday that additional aid for Ukraine was included in the package, as was the Electoral Count Act, which would solidify the certification process for future presidents by closing gaps in language Donald Trump’s supporters seized on to stoke the Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress on January 6th, 2021, when Congress met to certified Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.