“We can build things like this. But we can’t count votes accurately”

– The current top comment on the Gateway Pundit article “MIT Engineers Invent Robot Capable of Building ‘Almost Anything’ Including Replicating Itself,” posted Tuesday afternoon. It’s literally almost the only one out of the past 100 articles on the site’s Disqus feed whose subject matter isn’t somehow connected to right wing political and cultural grievances. You have to scroll back to Sunday’s “2,500 Australians Strip Naked for a Photoshoot to Raise Awareness About Skin Cancer” to find a piece that isn’t intended to fire up the site’s demented MAGA-QAnon fan readership.

Legendarily uncourageous House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy swayed back and forth endlessly while facing a barrage of unwelcome questions from reporters about his Orange God Emperor’s embrace of hardcore anti-semites Kanye West and Nick Fuentes outside the White House following his meeting with President Biden and other Congressional leaders on Tuesday. It’s unclear why he couldn’t control his movements or at least mask the impulse to do so with a less perceptible shifting of his stance to expend nervous energy while he lied and claimed Trump has since “condemned” Fuentes four times (it was actually zero). McCarthy should probably get that tic looked at.

Feeling as though the city has been left behind on developing exciting and innovative new ways to kill criminals, officials with the San Francisco Police Department are asking the Board of Supervisors to reconsider its ban on use of lethal robots in law enforcement, NBC Bay Area reports.

“Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers are imminent or outweigh any other force option available to the SFPD,” the department wrote in its draft proposal to the board, smartly leaving out that their future lethal robot cops’ programming might be a little overly broad in its interpretations of what constitutes a “risk of loss of life.” Like if a future robo-patrol unit incinerates a junkie before he can die of an overdose from the syringe of super-fentanyl he’s carrying his pocket that would kind of technically fit the letter of the proposal. That’s the type of forward thinking law enforcement needs these days.

“In the midst of Russia’s continued brutal attacks against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, Secretary of State Blinken announced today during a meeting of the G7+ on the margins of the NATO Ministerial in Bucharest that the United States government is providing over $53 million to support acquisition of critical electricity grid equipment. This equipment will be rapidly delivered to Ukraine on an emergency basis to help Ukrainians persevere through the winter. This supply package will include distribution transformers, circuit breakers, surge arresters, disconnectors, vehicles and other key equipment,” says a State Department press release.

“This new assistance is in addition to $55 million in emergency energy sector support for generators and other equipment to help restore emergency power and heat to local municipalities impacted by Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s power system. We will continue to identify additional support with allies and partners, and we are also helping to devise long-term solutions for grid restoration and repair, along with our assistance for Ukraine’s effort to advance the energy transition and build an energy system decoupled from Russian energy. Since Russia’s further invasion on February 24, working together with Congress, the Administration has provided nearly $32 billion in assistance to Ukraine, including $145 million to help repair, maintain, and strengthen Ukraine’s power sector.”

Trump-loyal former Secret Service agent/White House Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato on Tuesday will interview with the House January 6th Select Committee, months after the shitweasel retired from the agency following explosive testimony about his Orange Allah’s meltdown on the day of the MAGA insurrection and revelations about an attempted coverup, the New York Times reports.

Ornato and another MAGA former Secret Service agent, Bobby Engel, had previously interviewed with Committee investigators in the spring of 2022, prior to former aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s hilarious public testimony in which she related secondhand an account from both Ornato and Engel that Donald had tried the grab the steering wheel and then assaulted Engel when told they weren’t going to be taking him to the Capitol as his fans marched toward the attack. Hours after Hutchinson’s testimony the two put out a leak to the press claiming they were ready and willing to go back under oath to dispute the account, testimony which never materialized until this month when first Engel and now Ornato finally returned to tell their side of the story.

It’s not clear why the two took so long to come back. You would think that since both were supposedly so eager to “debunk” the story about Donald getting violent that they would’ve used any and every means available to them to do so, even if not under oath, and especially since they’re now-former Secret Service agents and thus no longer bound by any legal or professional code of silence. Like how about just fucking go on Fox News and say “We never told Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump tried to strangle us”? Was that really so hard for them to do? It’s also hard to see how the onus for testifying again sooner would’ve been on the committee, and even if it was, why wouldn’t they simply go public and say they were being stonewalled? Something’s not adding up here.

The Republican National Committee is putting together a “where we fucked up” panel to review the 2022 midterms and figure out a winning strategy going forward, Politico reports. The panel will include Alabama Senator-elect Katie Britt, Michigan Congressman-elect John James, and Arizona Senator-not-elect Blake Masters among others examining why the “red wave” turned into a ripple.

Masters, aka “Beijing Blake” for his business connections to China, is a particularly solid choice given his unique perspective on how nominating shitty candidates cost the GOP its chance at the Senate.

A DC federal judge on Monday ruled that disgraced former President Trump’s “absolute immunity” defense against a lawsuit brought by the NAACP and the Michigan Welfare Rights Organization over the 2020 election is complete bullshit, CNN reports. Judge Emmett Sullivan found that Donald’s attempts to disenfranchise voters and overturn his humiliating defeat to Joe Biden was political activity and the defense that he was acting in his official capacity as president as such was moot.

The lawyer for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito sent a letter Monday night to two Democratic members of Congress who stated Congress would open a probe into ethics and leaks at the Supreme Court if the Court didn’t do it themselves, claiming Alito had nothing to do with a reported leak of a Supreme Court decision in 2014.

Alito was accused by a minister of providing information relating to a case involving retailer Hobby Lobby’s desire to not pay for birth control pills, claiming the store had a Constitutional right to practice its religion freely.  (Hobby Lobby’s specific denomination and the name of the parish it attends are unavailable.)  Rev. Rob Schenck wrote a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts last week informing him that a benefactor of Schenck’s had been told the outcome of the case at a dinner party at Alito’s house prior to the decision’s release.  The Court ultimately found in Hobby Lobby’s favor in a controversial decision.

“Justice Alito has said that neither he nor Mrs. Alito told the Wrights about the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or about the authorship of the opinion of the Court,” Alito’s attorney wrote to Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and Georgia Congressman Hank Johnson.  “Gail Wright has denied Mr. Schenck’s allegation in multiple interviews, saying the account given by Mr. Schenck was ‘patently not true.'”

Virginia Dem Congressman Don McEachin died Monday after a long battle with colorectal cancer, just 20 days after winning a third term to the seat from the Richmond-area 4th District.

More than 21,000 Russians have sought asylum in the United States at the US’s southern border with Mexico since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, an increase of nearly 4,500% since 2020, the New York Times reports.

The Times reports that most of the Russians seeking asylum in the United States are anti-war protesters or people who are fleeing likely conscription.  The Times story centers on two young doctors, both anti-war activists in Russia, who flew to Mexico planning to seek asylum in the US.  They turned themselves in at a border port-of-entry, and spent the next six months in separate migrant detention facilities.  They were released when they each posted $15,000 bonds.

The US had seen a boost in migrants and asylum seekers from Russia over the last two years as the Kremlin has cracked down on the LGBTQ community, political activists and even religious groups like the Jehovah’s Witnesses.  Unrest with the Putin regime has been simmering for years, and the poorly-run invasion of Ukraine, with the subsequent mandatory conscription of tens of thousands of people to fight at the front.

“For this year’s holidays at the White House, we hope to capture the spirit embodied in the very idea of America: We the People,” First Lady Dr. Jill Biden tweeted Monday, with photos of the White House holiday decorations; note Dr. Biden doesn’t use the word “Christmas” in her message, something that will undoubtedly implode more than one conservative skull.  “As our country gathers for the holidays, traditions may vary, but our shared American values — a belief in possibility, optimism, and unity — endure each season.”

A group of Arizona voters on Monday filed suit against the Board of Supervisors of Cochise County, Arizona for refusing to certify the results of the 2022 election, Dem lawyer Marc Elias reports. The board tabled certification “based on nothing more than vague and unsubstantiated allegations that the county’s electronic voting machines could not be trusted” per the complaint.

Oh, poor Elon Musk.  First, he tweets out a parody story from a satirical website from a site called Genesius Times that claims CNN reported that Musk would ruin free speech.  Like a true conservative, Musk believes he’s a martyr when he does something, so him picking up on a fake story that demonized him is right on brand for him.

But to add insult to injury, Musk’s own toy, Twitter, corrected his claim and noted that the world’s richest man isn’t very discerning, as evidenced by his getting duped by a parody site.

The military of the Central African Republican have put neighboring Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of the Congo, and Cameroon on notice after one of them – they’re not sure which – conducted an air raid Monday on a town in the country’s northwest held by CAR government troops and the Russian mercenaries supporting them, AFP reports.

They think it might be Chad. It is a total Chad thing to do as the border is close to the town, Bossangoa, which until recently was held by rebels who have been operating from inside Chadian territory. No one was reported injured in the attack, but the bombs damaged an abandoned cotton factory the Wagner Group goons have been using as their base. Still sounds like an easy gig for those guys compared to getting blasted to kingdom come by American-made missiles in Kherson.

Maricopa County, Arizona certified its results of the November 2022 election, giving the county to a mostly Democratic slate of candidates including Democratic Governor-elect Katie Hobbs, who defeated Republican drag show fan Kari Lake. During the meeting of the county Board of Supervisors which Republican chairman Bill Gates–but not that Bill Gates–said, “This was not a perfect election, but it was safe and secure. The votes have been counted accurately.”

Republicans have said that the vote tally conducted by the Republican-led county board of elections, with Republican governor Doug Ducey at the state’s helm, are inaccurate because Republicans always lose Maricopa County, the second largest voting jurisdiction in the country. The long parade of members of the MAGA public aggrieved over the Dem victories coming in to rant at the supervisors for two minutes of allotted right wing conspiracy time each said as much.

The certification took much less time in Mohave County, where all the resistance was coming from the other at least two of the supervisors said they were certifying “under duress,” as Governor-elect and current Secretary of State Katie Hobbs has promised to rain hell on rogue counties. “I found out today I have no choice to vote yes or else I’ll be arrested,” said Mohave County Supervisor Chair Ron Gould before he voted yes. Cochise County, in the Southeast corner of the state, is still holding out.

Struggling to write some sort of wiseass remark here. Trump really outdid himself in the self-parody department this time around. It’s actually really impressive in its own baroque way.

Trump later continued his meltdown on Truth Social, writing “This fully weaponized monster, Jack Smith, shouldn’t be let anywhere near the political persecution of ‘President Donald J. Trump.’ I did nothing wrong on January 6th, and nothing wrong with the Democrats’ fix on the Document Hoax, that is, unless the six previous Presidents did something wrong also… When will you invade Bill and Hillary’s home in search of the 33,000 emails she deleted AFTER receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Congress? When will you invade the other Presidents’ homes in search of documents, which are voluminous, which they took with them, but not nearly so openly and transparently as I did?”

The next one was even funnier: “Many Republican Judges go out of their way to show they are beyond reproach, & will come down hard on people before them in order to prove they cannot be ‘bought’ or in any way show favor to those who appointed them. People, including me, are oftentimes shocked by the lack of courage and wisdom shown. As soon as they get appointed, they go ‘ROGUE!’ Democrat Judges are the exact opposite in attitude – Screw you, this guy appointed me, I’m a Democrat all they way, you don’t have a chance. So SAD!”

Disgraced former President Trump will not hold a rally for deadbeat dad Senate candidate Herschel Walker ahead of next week’s, runoff election having been sufficiently cucked off the campaign trail by Republicans, the New York Times reports. Donald will instead hold a “tele-rally” for Walker.

What’s going on here @tim_cook?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2022

The murderer who killed five people at the Club Q bar in Colorado Spring had been arrested in the summer of 2021 for two counts of felony menacing and three counts of first-degree kidnapping, but they was never entered into the state’s “red flag” system to keep guns away from dangerous individuals because the county where they allegedly committed the crimes likely because the county is a “Second Amendment sanctuary” jurisdiction declared by county commissioners, CNN reports.

Colorado’s red flag law, signed by Democratic Governor Jared Polis in 2019, requires a complainant to initiate action to take away weapons from dangerous individuals, with many times the action being taken by law enforcement officers who act on behalf of a victim who is too scared or intimidated to file a complaint.  However, the El Paso County (Colorado) sheriff’s office has never initiated a red flag hearing although they have arrested scores of people on abuse, assault or other charges since the law went into effect.

“We’re going to be taking personal property away from people without having due process,” El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder told a local television station.  “We’re not going to pursue these on our own, meaning the sheriff’s office isn’t going to run over and try to get a court order.”  Elder also insinuated that the Sheriff’s Office would not execute a judge’s order to seize an individual’s guns, saying after a judge issues such an order, “it is up to law enforcement to execute that order.”