Trump advisor and convicted grifter Steve Bannon was sentenced to 4 months in jail and fined $6,500 Friday by federal Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, after being found guilty of two counts of contempt of Congress, NBC News reports.  Nichols commented that Bannon “has not taken responsibility for his actions.”

Prosecutors sought a six-month prison sentence and a $200,000 fine, saying the right-wing blowhard claimed executive privilege as a fraudulent way to avoid testifying before the House Select Committee investigating the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election and reinstall Donald Trump to a second term, something Bannon had been advocating for months prior to the election.  Instead of appearing before the committee or sending a letter to Congress to assert his claim of privilege, Bannon simply didn’t respond to the subpoena.  Trump eventually dropped fallacious potential claims of executive privilege concerning the testimony of various people including Bannon, but Bannon persisted in making the claim.

“The government further argues that Mr. Bannon has not expressed remorse and has attacked the select committee at every turn. On this point I agree with the government,” Nichols says. “He has expressed no remorse for his actions.”

US District Judge John Sinatra of the Western District of New York, a Donald Trump appointee, threw out a provision of New York State law that bans people from carrying guns into churches and other houses of worship, saying it violates the Second Amendment even though the Heller decision, written by dead and rotting Justice Antonin Scalia, explicitly states the Constitution allows state and local governments to restrict weapons in certain places.

Reuters reports that Sinatra cited an earlier Supreme Court decision that struck down a New York law that restricted who and where people could carry concealed weapons.  “The nation’s history does not countenance such an incursion into the right to keep and bear arms across all places of worship across the state,” Sinatra wrote. “The right to self-defense is no less important and no less recognized at these places.”

However the 2008 Heller decision explicitly states that state and local governments have the right to restrict weapons possession.  “[T]he Second Amendment right is not unlimited. It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the [Second] Amendment or state analogues,” Scalia wrote.  “The Court’s opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings[.]”

Charges were dropped Friday against one of the 20 people targeted by Florida Gov Ron DeSantis’s moronic voter fraud enforcement police in August, ABC News reports

Recently ousted prime minister Boris Johnson’s are pushing him to replace fellow conservative member of Parliament Liz Truss, who replaced Johnson as prime minister just seven weeks ago after Johnson was forced out for violating coronavirus protocols his administration put in place, the Associated Press reports.

Calling Johnson “a known winner,” Conservative Party MP Nadine Dorries pushed reinstalling Johnson saying, “Having a winner in place is what the Party needs to survive,” she told Sky News.

The nomination was not universally praised.  Many members of the Conservative Party stated they would leave the Party if Johnson was the Party’s nominee for the position, making it impossible to put together a coalition to put Johnson in place.

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Ahmad Khan’s fans protested in multiple cities Friday as the ex-leader, expelled from the premiership by parliament earlier this year, was banned from office permanently after a top election tribunal found him guilty of unlawfully selling gifts from foreign dignitaries and heads of state, Reuters reports. “We didn’t disqualify their leader, then why do they punish us?” said a fan blocking a road in the city of Peshawar, where Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party runs the provincial government.

Launch the black helicopters!  Sweep for listening devices!  The FBI on Thursday arrested a 9/11 conspiracy lawyer who participated in the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress after the man was identified using facial recognition technology, NBC News reports.

FBI agents arrested John O’Kelly of East Williston, Long Island, New York and charged him with two felonies related to attacking a DC Metropolitan Police officer and trying to take away the officer’s baton.  Federal agents received a tip that O’Kelly participated in the attack and was involved in an assault on a police officer.  After obtaining his driver’s license photo from the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles, the FBI matched his face to that of a man caught on bodycam footage assaulting an officer.

O’Kelly has represented a group called Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, trying to get the federal government to investigate a baseless claim that the Twin Towers were destroyed by pre-planted dynamite, not the impact of two airliners.

“Well, Leader McCarthy is exactly right.  He’s stating the obvious:  No more blank checks around the world to solve problems overseas when America is on its knees at home,” Republican Indiana Congressman and left striker on Congress’s life-size foosball team Jim Banks declares, without noting that every spending bill for Ukraine aid has actually had a finite number attached to it.  “We can’t be the leader around the world when we have such big issues to solve in America.  We need to secure the border, address inflation, address crime, deal with gas prices first before we can help other countries.”

A document filed by the Justice Department in the continuing series of challenges by Donald Trump’s legal team as they bail water on the Titanic trying to delay the inevitable, prosecutors released a list of documents the two sides are disputing, with Trump claiming nine documents including pleas for clemency that can only be issued by the President of the United States are not documents of the government, but instead his personal correspondence.

As the New York Times reports, the Justice Department noted the six clemency packages were by definition government documents.  “Those requests were received by plaintiff in his capacity as the official with authority to grant reprieves and pardons, not in his personal capacity,” it wrote.

Among the other material:  two documents relating to immigration policy and an email sent to the President by someone studying at one of the military service academies.  The two parties agreed to the status of six different documents, but Trump’s lawyers argue that the nine in question were personal records under the Presidential Records Act, which states records kept by the person in the office of the President unrelated to his official duties as President may be kept by a former office holder.  Clearly, Trump would not had received the letter from the academy student if he were not President, nor would Donald John Trump been discussing immigration policy while eating a taco bowl.

Straight from the Office of Official Speak, Trump advisor Sean Hannity pumps up Li’l Marco Rubio, the Republican Florida Senator who stammered his way through talking points in his debate against Democrat Val Demmings.

Twitter will cut its staff by at least 25% even if Elon Musk’s takeover bid doesn’t go through–and the company’s prospective new overlord himself said he would only keep 2,000 of the company’s 7,500 employees, the Washington Post reports.

The lower level of cuts would likely impact things like customer service and marketing efforts.  Experts say cuts at the level Musk has suggested would directly impact user experience because it would reduce the technical teams’ ability to respond to hackers, and per Musk’s dicta, monitors and moderators would be cut allowing more spam and porn to overtake the platform.

“It would be a cascading effect,” Edwin Chen, a data scientist formerly in charge of Twitter’s spam and health metrics and now CEO of the content-moderation start-up Surge AI, said, “where you’d have services going down and the people remaining not having the institutional knowledge to get them back up, and being completely demoralized and wanting to leave themselves.”

Kash Patel, the conservative gadfly who Zeliged his way onto Devin Nunes’s staff, to White House advisor, then to chief of staff to the Defense Secretary and finally to become a child groomer, reportedly testified before the grand jury investigating Donald Trump’s illegal possession of government documents, including some classified documents, at his Florida tax haven and fan club headquarters, Mar-a-Lago, CNN reports.

A one-time White House staffer during the Trump administration, Patel has claimed in public statements that he was aware of a standing order Trump supposedly issued that automatically declassified documents he removed from the West Wing.  Such a practice would not hold up because people responsible for declassifying the documents would not know what exact documents Trump took his residence.

Trump himself has claimed he had a standing order declassifying documents in his possession.  Patel’s testimony would likely shed light on how this myth started, and more importantly, when–as in if the story was concocted after Trump left office.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin directed the Pentagon to set up a travel reimbursement plan for members of the US armed forces and their family members who must travel to another state to get an abortion if their home state makes the medical procedure impossible to access, Politico reports.

“Our Service members and their families are often required to travel or move to meet our staffing, operational, and training requirements. Such moves should not limit their access to reproductive health care,” Austin wrote, noting that the Supreme Court overturning the Roe decision harms military readiness as members of the military and their families do not have an available standard of care across the United States. “In my judgment, such effects qualify as unusual, extraordinary, hardship, or emergency circumstances for Service members and their dependents and will interfere with our ability to recruit, retain, and maintain the readiness of a highly qualified force.”

The new policy does not provide for the military to pay for the abortion itself, but it directs the various branches of the service to establish travel and transportation allowances that military families can access to pay for travel, lodging and other necessities while they find a medical services provider in another state.

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett rejected an appeal by a Wisconsin group that wanted to reverse President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness because they had to pay off student loan debts so everyone must have to suffer under that burden, too.

The Associated Press reports Trump-appointee Barrett turned away without comment an appeal by the Brown County Taxpayers Association, which wanted an immediate injunction to stop Biden from canceling up to $20,000 in student loan debt for some people holding federal student loans.

Brown County Taxpayers Association had lost every round of its lawsuit before being curb stomped by Barrett, who oversees appeals cases coming from Wisconsin and neighboring states.

Republican South Carolina Senator and fainting couch aficionado Lindsey Graham must testify before the Fulton County [Georgia] grand jury about his involvement in and knowledge of plans to pressure state elections officials to overturn the authentic results of the 2020 presidential election in the state so Donald Trump, not Joe Biden, would get the state’s Electoral College votes, a panel of judges for the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled.

Graham had attempted to quash the subpoena on the grounds that he was protected from any inquiry by the Speech and Debate clause of the Constitution that protects members of Congress from external investigations so long as the individual is conducting proper legislative work.

At a recent dinner for the Knox County (Tennessee) Republican Party, alleged former prostitute and abortion for her but not others devotee Lauren Boebert (Q-Colorado) tells the attendees, “It is something else to be serving in our nation’s Capitol right now,” the reprobate from Rifle recites.  “In all seriousness, there is a calling on each and every one of you to be involved, for you to rise up.  It is an honor to serve in this time.  I believe that, many of us in this room believe that we are in the last of the last days. … You get to be a part of ushering in the second coming of Jesus.”  (You can find the longer version here; it wasn’t suitable to post here.)

Set aside the creepiness of the message.  Set aside the cult-like presentation given by the GED Congresswoman.  Set aside that her husband, who whipped out his wang in front of teenaged girls at a bowling alley, is still allowed in public.  Boebert is speaking at a political event, not at a religious revival.  This is the official position of a member of the Republican Party:  that we live in the “end times” when Jesus Christ Himself will descend from Heaven and remind those fucking conservatives that He cured the sick, welcomed strangers, forgave sinners, and taught that people should live in peace, all while giving unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s–everything conservatives despise.

With billions in property damage from the last hurricane alone, Florida’s property insurers were screwed, but it was just the latest blow to an industry that has survived primarily because they get bailed out by the government after every natural disaster–and from hurricanes to sinkholes to conservatives in The Villages setting things on fire–there’s a lot in Florida that needs covering.

But according to Politico, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is going to bring the state’s legislature into a special session to fix the industry, which if it follows the way Republicans have fixed things in the past, it’s fucked.  “It costs way more to replace a roof today than it did just three years ago,” DeSantis said in a statement apropos of nothing. “So we need to do everything we can to push back on that and fight for a more competitive market where rates are incentivized to go down.”

The bigger problems for Florida property insurers are pretty obvious to anyone who isn’t a conservative:  Florida is a low-lying, flat state that was once swampland surrounded by water as hurricanes are becoming more powerful and water levels are rising due to climate change.  Add to that crappy building codes put in place by Republican-led state and county governments and you’re looking at year after year of massive claims that only the might of the federal government could cover.  For the industry to survive in Florida, it needs to increase its rates to the point that most people couldn’t afford to live there, but because DeSantis is a self-serving Republican, he’ll promote a tax break for everyone as a way to cover the fact that he’s relying on the socialist payouts from the government to do what the private sector cannot.

After a voter reported feeling intimidated by a crowd of self-appointed election box monitors determined to find evidence of non-existent vote theft, Arizona officials filed reports with state and federal officials, the Washington Post reports.

The voter, who was not identified, described being stalked after dropping a ballot off at a designated drop box.  The voter made a complaint on the Arizona secretary of state’s website, saying “There’s a group of people hanging out near the ballot dropbox filming and photographing my wife and I as we approached the dropbox and accusing us of being a mule.  They took … photographs of our license plate and of us and then followed us out the parking lot in one of their cars continuing to film.”

Voter intimidation is barred by Arizona state law and the federal law, including various aspects of the Voting Rights Act.  Such intimidation is expected to increase as Donald Trump and his political mobsters insist that the 2020 election was stolen from him and handed to President Joe Biden.  Trump and his minions claim a number of crazy conspiracies, including a claim that China printed millions of ballots that people are dropping off at ballot boxes.  This defies logic on its face:  distributed mail-in ballots are tracked and numbered, and they are sent only to addresses of registered voters. 

Consumers feeling the squeeze of inflation, high gas prices, wokeness, and squeezing are going to vote Republican to feel less squeezed and there’s nothing you can do about it, the mainstream media reports. There is no hope for Democrats to hold on to the House, the Senate, over a dozen state governorships, offices, and legislatures. Polls show somewhere between a 100% and a 100% lead for Republicans in every single race. The summer surge of hope that Dems felt was just a mirage. “QAnon defeats libs, lol,” said Axios’s Josh Kraushaar as he fondled himself and drooled.

Lee Zeldin is going to be governor of New York because of crime. Democrats are soft on crime. That’s why they’re going to lose, they never took crime seriously enough. And the fundraising too, they never raised enough money for these swing seats and to protect these safe blue seats and then there’s not enough messaging either. Independent voters aren’t getting the message. Messaging is really important on kitchen tables. Kitchen table politics are a big deal, even though “kitchen table” is just a metaphor for personal finance and household expenses.

Fluoride conspiracy freak and Richmond, Vermont town water superintendent Kendall Chamberlin resigned this week after the asshole recently copped to secretly lowering the addition of the chemical to the municipal water supply for the last several years out of belief it was some kind of Chinese plot against Americans – something he still believes, local blog VTDigger reports.

“I owed it to the customers of the Richmond Water System to make my position clear,” Chamberlain told VTDigger on Wednesday. “I understand there are different opinions, and some of them are strongly held. I do not want to get dragged into a public debate about this.”

Last year Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dave Bronson, also a complete MAGA dipshit, was caught attempting to force a shutoff of fluoride to the city’s water supply, but quickly backed off. Drinking water fluoridation is to paranoid right wing conspiracy theories what “Stairway to Heaven” is to hard rock. Sometimes it’s important for the old guard to bring back the classics and expose them to a new generation of young pups raised on insipid, manufactured pop hits like “Biden is a cyborg,” “COVID vaccines turn you into a cyborg,” and “the Chinese thermostats hacked the 2020 election”.

The would-be first-ever Confederate-themed superhero movie “Rebel’s Run” has gone to shit as $1 million of the movie’s financing crowdfunded from backers has disappeared in China and the banker who was supposed to help get it made faces a federal indictment, the Daily Beast reports. “I wouldn’t count on us getting the money back,” MAGA blogger and Rebel’s Run creator Theodore Beale told investors and fans in a video last week. Stupid story short, Beale dumped all of the money with Utah-based Ohana Capital Financial, which billed itself as “banking [to] the unbankable.” Ohana’s founder, James Wolfgramm went ahead and pissed all of that money away to pay off a $4 million debt to another client in a Chinese medical equipment racket.

“I strongly suspect that this whole thing was a targeted operation intended to break our community,” Beale told his fans because that’s always the real reason and it could never ever be that he’s the one who fucked up and trusted a scam artist without doing his due diligence.