“NASA has selected 16 individuals to participate in its independent study team on unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP). Observations of events in the sky that cannot be identified as aircraft or as known natural phenomena are categorized as UAPs. The independent study will begin on Monday, Oct. 24. Over the course of nine months, the independent study team will lay the groundwork for future study on the nature of UAPs for NASA and other organizations. To do this, the team will identify how data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources can potentially be analyzed to shed light on UAPs. It will then recommend a roadmap for potential UAP data analysis by the agency going forward. The study will focus solely on unclassified data. A full report containing the team’s findings will be released to the public in mid-2023,” says NASA in a statement about their new team of UFO research eggheads.

Among the members of the panel are Senator Mark Kelly’s twin brother Scott, also a former astronaut and Navy test pilot, Federica Bianco, joint professor at the University of Delaware in the Department of Physics and Astrophysics and the Biden School of Public Policy and Administration, biological oceanographer Paula Bontempi, and National Geographic journalist Nadia Blake.

Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro, fuming over public polls that low-balled his strength ahead of the first round presidential election earlier this month, has fast-tracked a bill through Brazil’s House of Representatives that would make it a criminal offense to publish a poll for an election whose result is later outside the margin of error for that poll, the New York Times reports.

The bill faces an unclear at best prospect in Brazil’s Senate, where Bolsonaro’s opponents hold a majority, but it was just part of the pro-Trump despot’s ongoing meltdown amid his narrow path to a second term, in which he claimed the polling misses swung as many as three million first-round votes to his leftist opponent, former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “Not for getting it wrong, OK? An error is one thing,” Bolsonaro said. “It’s for the crimes they committed.”

“Starting this type of investigation during the runoff campaign period, when the polling companies are carrying out their work, demonstrates another clear attempt to impede scientific research,” the Brazilian Association of Pollsters said in a statement reacting to the legislation.

Though it will not be clear until GDP numbers are released next year, California, as the global capital of the tech and entertainment industries, may have already overtaken Germany as the world’s 4th largest economy, per an estimate cited by Bloomberg opinion writer Matthew Winkler.

“It had already leapfrogged Brazil (No. 7) and France (No. 6) in 2015 and supplanted the UK (No. 5) in 2017. Although many of California’s current figures won’t be published until 2023, estimates suggest the state may have already caught Germany, with at least one forecast implying California is ahead by $72 billion when considering the state’s recent growth rate,” Winkler writes, no doubt to the chagrin of the Trump fanboys who freaked out when California took the (hypothetical if it were an independent nation) 5th spot from the UK back in 2017.

Conservative MP Penny Moradaunt has dropped out of the British Tory leadership race, leaving the only remaining contender, former Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak, the default winner of the premiership. The son of Indian immigrants, Sunak will be the UK’s first ever non-white leader.

The attorney for Oath Keepers founder Stewie Rhodes on Monday informed the court in his ongoing seditious conspiracy trial that the MAGA terrorist leader has tested positive for COVID, CBS’s Scott MacFarlane reports. Hope he’s taking his ivermectin, would hate for him to die in agony.

“Georgia voters continued to hit record breaking turnout on the first mandatory Saturday of Early Voting. As of Sunday morning, approximately 740K Georgia voters have cast their ballot during in-person Early Voting, with a whopping 79,682 showing up on Saturday, October 22nd. Saturday’s total marks an astounding 159% increase from day six of 2018 midterm Early Voting and shattered the turnout record of day six of Early Voting in the 2020 Presidential election by 20%.”

“Georgia has had record Early Voting turnout since the first day of Early Voting this year, surging to nearly twice the number on the first day of Early Voting in 2018. Totals have remained within striking distance of the 2020 Presidential election turnout, and have shattered previous midterm turnout records by 50% or greater during every day of Early Voting this week. ‘Early Voting is strong because Georgia’s Voter Registration system is strong,’ said Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. ‘Every eligible Georgian who wants to be registered to vote is registered to vote. Georgians have taken advantage of Automatic Voter Registration at the DDS, online, and kept up with their status on My Voter Page,’” says a press release from the Georgia Secretary of State.

https://twitter.com/JonathanTurley/status/1584335782067961856

The Hill’s “legal expert” and MAGA bullshit artist Jonathan Turley on Sunday managed to mix up Congresswoman Liz Cheney with her mother, not-Congresswoman Lynne Cheney.

Tucker Carlson exploded at National Republican Congressional Committee chief Congressman Tom Emmer in a phone call on Friday, with Tucker warning Emmer that if he did not give up the source of a quote in a Daily Beast article badmouthing son Buckley Carlson, a House GOP aide, that Tucker would just assume Emmer was the one who said it, Axios reports.

“Deep down, [MAGA asshole Congressman Jim Banks] dies to be liked by the Establishment. He hires Tucker Carlson’s son, a 24-year-old kid, to be his communications director,” a “GOP strategist” told the Beast. The whole thing is a shitshow that for some reason involves Donald Trump Jr and we think has something to do with the fact that Hunter Biden once wrote a letter of recommendation for Buckley to get into Georgetown University. The whole thing is pretty goddamned stupid, but it’s funny to see Tucker being such a wiener over an innocuous quote.

Hate in America:

Yesterday, the head of an antisemitic and white supremacist group (and his supporters) dropped banners over the 405 in Los Angeles. One banner read, "Kanye is right about the Jews.” pic.twitter.com/FQBFIm0WLX

— Oren Segal (@orensegal) October 23, 2022

Tweet by Anti-Defamation League Vice President Oren Segal, pointing out the support for Kanye West’s anti-semitic bullshit from Trump fanboys who probably throw the n-word around a lot too.

Saudi dictator Mohammed Bonesaw on Sunday dropped out of a planned appearance at a regional summit in Algeria on November 1st on the advice of his doctors, spurring speculation that the murderous 37 year-old despot could be suffering from karma, the Associated Press reports.

Algeria’s state-run press service reported that Bonesaw called President Abdelmadjid Tebboun and “apologized for not being able to participate in the Arab Summit to be held on Nov. 1 in Algiers, in accordance with the recommendations of doctors who advise him not to travel. For his part, Mr. President said he understood the situation and regretted the impediment of the Crown Prince, His Highness the Emir Mohammed Bin Salman, expressing his wishes for his health and well-being.”

The Saudi state news service had said the same earlier while leaving out the part about Bonesaw’s health. The Royal Court later on Sunday issued a statement saying the doctors had advised against the travel due to “trauma” in the tyrant’s eardrum or eardrums. Hope it hurts.

Disgraced former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who ignored credible reports that one of his lieutenants would drink too much and grab other guys’ dicks, on Sunday announced he wouldn’t be running again for the premiership. “I believe I am well placed to deliver a Conservative victory in 2024 – and tonight I can confirm that I have cleared the very high hurdle of 102 nominations, including a proposer and a seconder, and I could put my nomination in tomorrow. There is a very good chance that I would be successful in the election with Conservative Party members – and that I could indeed be back in Downing Street on Friday. But in the course of the last days I have sadly come to the conclusion that this would simply not be the right thing to do. You can’t govern effectively unless you have a united party in parliament,” wrote Johnson on Telegram.

Republican Alaska governor candidate Charlie Pierce faces a sexual harassment lawsuit from a former assistant filed just weeks before Pierce faces voters in an election he’s already pretty much guaranteed to lose, the AP reports. The woman, not named in the report, alleges Pierce touched her breast, made sexual remarks, falsely imprisoned her in his private office, kissed her neck and face, asked questions about her sex life and made unwanted and unsolicited embraces and massages while he was serving as mayor of the Kenai Peninsula Borough. The Borough government was also named as a defendant as the plaintiff says there was no system for her to report the harassment.

Pierce had pretty much no chance in a top four ranked choice field against Trump-endorsed incumbent Gov Mike Dunleavy, former Independent Gov Bill Walker, and Dem Les Gara even before this lawsuit, but it’s still worth reporting that his campaign is even more doomed.

Democrats are statistically tied with Republicans 47% to 46% on the latest NBC News survey of registered voters. The survey also found “threats to democracy” as voters’ topmost concern.

US border security agencies recorded more than 2.38 million migrants illegally crossing the southern border in the fiscal year that ended September 30th, the highest ever intercepted coming into the United States, the Associated Press reports.

The number of interdictions increased by 37% over the previous year, reflecting both deteriorating conditions in the South and Central American countries from which the migrants leave, and an increased presence on the border of federal agents working to stop them.

The numbers for September show that most migrants–78,000–are coming from Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua, not the traditional home nations of border crossers who come from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, which accounted for only 58,000.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday tossed Arizona GOP Chairwoman “Chemtrails” Kelli Ward’s challenge to the House January 6th Select Committee’s lower court win allowing access to her phone records pursuant to a subpoena inquiring what the right wing psychopath was up to when she signed a fake electoral college vote certificate for Trump in 2020, Politico reports.

https://youtu.be/PBGj899geuY

The gates opened five hours before Donald Trump’s scheduled speaking time of 8 p.m. ET, and the crowd has been hearing from the warm-up acts since 5 p.m. ET in 85-degree temps with no shade.  But it’s not a cult.

After a Connecticut jury awarded nearly $1 billion to survivors and family members of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre, Alex Jones has now decided it might be a good thing to try to put on a defense, and he’s filed a motion to have the previous verdict dismissed because he doesn’t want to lose all his money he feels the trial judge was unfair.

According to NBC News, Jones claims that Judge Barbara Bellis established ground rules for the trial in pre-trial hearings that made the proceedings impossibly unfair for Jones and therefore the verdict–and the subsequent $965 million awarded to plaintiffs for Jones’ defamation–should be dismissed and a new trial held.

Jones’ lawyers also claim that the amount of the damages awarded was too much.  “Additionally, the amount of the compensatory damages award exceeds any rational relationship to the evidence offered at trial,” they wrote in the filing.

Being in a shit-ton of legal trouble could actually work to Donald Trump’s advantage in dealing with his newly-minted subpoena from the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress which was meant to fraudulently install Trump in a second term even though he lost the 2020 election.

According to the New York Times, Trump could claim that his ongoing legal regarding the cases in New York and Georgia, as well as the potential federal case for steal government documents, could be enough to persuade a judge to delay enforcing the subpoena.

“We are in a constitutional gray area here where there is no clear guidance as to exactly what should happen,” Mark J. Rozell, a George Mason University professor and author of “Executive Privilege: Presidential Power, Secrecy and Accountability,” said. “That gives the former president some leeway to put forward various creative legal arguments and ultimately delay the process until it doesn’t matter anymore.”

Russian collaborationist authorities on Saturday began ordering civilians evacuated from the occupied city of Kherson ahead of an expected advance by Ukrainian troops, the AP reports. The Kremlin puppet leadership of the city urged civilians to cross the Dnieper River citing the threat of “terror attacks” and shelling by the incoming Ukrainian counteroffensive.

Kherson, the capital of a region with the same name, has been occupied by the Russians since the war’s first days and is one of the four illegally annexed by the Kremlin earlier this month. Kyiv officials have urged residents to do whatever they can to resist forced displacement by Russian troops, warning that Ivan intends to use them as “human shields” to cover the withdrawal.