A Thursday piece on fascistic right wing opinion site American Greatness titled “Yes, Republicans Are Blowing the Midterms” contains a line that gives away probably way more than the author Eric Lendrum intended. “The problem is that the original core issues that drove up anti-Democratic sentiment earlier in the summer have already begun to fade. Like it or not, Biden’s strategy for reducing gas prices is working. The national average price of a gallon of gasoline has dropped for 70 consecutive days, in the second-longest such streak since 2005. In July, the national average was $4.38 a gallon; in August, it dropped to $3.89, and it continues to go down,” writes Lendrum.

So quite literally he’s breaking the bad news to his fellow fanboys that the thing they were complaining about is less of a problem than it was two months ago. Give him credit for at least being consistent about Biden’s level of responsibility here, in contrast to pretty much every other MAGA asshole who got a raging hard-on over those “I did that!” stickers being put on gas pumps and are almost certainly regretting it now and probably feverishly removing every one they see.

But fucking seriously? “Like it or not”? Of course you’re supposed to like it. Everyone who drives a combustion engine vehicle should. Unless of course it was never about what he and his readers voters pay for a gallon of gas because they were never voting for Democrats anyway and instead they’re like “SHIT! This makes independent voters less likely to turn out for Republicans who sold them on the idea that making Kevin McCarthy speaker would somehow mean lower gas prices in 2023 even though that actually doesn’t make any fucking sense at all when you think about it.”

Believe it or not, a Democrat is leading the race to finish out the term of the dead Alaskan Congressman Don Young, who ceased to be last March at the age of 88.  But in Alaska’s rank choice voting, it doesn’t mean much until the votes of third place finisher, Nick Begich, get divided between the two remaining candidates.  Using the figures above, former half-turn governor and reality TeeVee personality Sarah Palin would have to get about 14,000 more of Begich’s votes than the Democrat, Mary Peltola, to come out on top.  Begich is a third-generation Alaskan Republican–in other words, as establishment as you can imagine, so it’s unknown how they’re split.  Will they overwhelmingly support the Republican No Matter Who, support the sensible candidate in Peltola, or leave their second choice blank?

The shooter and law enforcement officer are among four people reported dead after a tenant being served an eviction notice opened fire, killing the county constable and two other people, the Arizona Republic reports.

Around 11 a.m. local time, 43-year-old Constable Deborah Martinez-Garibay went to a unit in an apartment complex with the complex’s assistant manager to serve the eviction notice.  The tenant then opened fire, killing the constable.  It’s unclear how the shooter was killed.  The identities of the two other victims have not been released.

The largest state in the Union, which accounts for 10% of all vehicles purchased in the country, will require all new cars, SUVs and pickup trucks sold in the state to be zero-emission electric or hydrogen-powered by 2035, the Associated Press reports.

Endorsed by Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, the policy passed by the California Air Resources Board will transform California highways–and California skies–by phasing out gas-powered engines all but large commercial vehicles.  It will also spark a races to strengthen the state’s power grid and to increase the number of electrical power stations across the state.

“It’s going to be very hard getting to 100%,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation — people actually have to buy them and use them.”

A Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas voided one of the state’s few gun control laws, a law that bans people from the ages of 18 to 20 from carrying a handgun in public, the first reversal of a state gun law since the Supreme Court struck down New York state regulations in June, Reuters reports.

Judge Mark Pittman referred to the Supreme Court order to use a “history-only” prism to interpret the Constitution–that is, what gun control laws would have been enacted at the time the Constitution was ratified in the 18th Century–in order to decide if a gun law would be Constitutional now.

Pittman determined that limiting the right to carry a handgun should not be limited to any legal adult over the age of 18.

The James Webb Space Telescope has found the first definitive evidence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of an exoplanet located 700 light years from Earth, NASA announced Thursday.  The planet, circling WASP-39, is a gas giant about the size of Saturn.  The project proves the Webb Telescope will be able to identify carbon dioxide in the thinner atmospheres of rocky planets at closer range.  Rocky planets with carbon dioxide-rich atmospheres also lead exo-geologists to investigate the possibility of terraforming planets in the future.  (And no, I don’t know what the chart means.  I think it just looks smart and cool and stuff.)

Infamous conservative activists at Project Veritas paid a Florida couple to steal the diary and other items of President Joe Biden’s daughter in a plan to get information to use during the 2020 presidential election, Florida prosecutors alleged in court documents, the New York Times reports.

In documents filed relating to the guilty pleas of Aimee Harris and Robert Kurlander, the couple who actually stole the diary, prosecutors say an employee of Project Veritas advised the couple to steal more of Ashley Biden’s property to verify the authenticity of the diary after the group agreed to pay the couple $40,000.

The couple then drove back to Florida to steal more items, and delivered them to Project Veritas’s office in New York, where they got more money.  The pair pleaded guilty to a single charge each of conspiracy to commit interstate transportation of stolen property and face up to five years in prison.

The Lord of Ice Cream thundered with an almighty rage to his followers at a rally in Maryland on Thursday night, promising them further glories if they obeyed his commands to make an offering at the altar of the dark elder god he calls Demok-Rase’e on its pagan festival day in November.

Iranian-backed militants in Syria have picked up attacks on US forces in the region, with US military using its air superiority to neutralize multiple threats in the last 24 hours, according to Task and Purpose.

An unknown number of AC-130 gunships, AH-64 Apache helicopters, and M777 howitzers were trained on the attackers throughout the day.  “We will respond appropriately and proportionally to attacks on our servicemembers,” Army Gen. Michael Kurilla, head of the US Central Command, said in a statement. “No group will strike at our troops with impunity. We will take all necessary measures to defend our people.”

The attacks have ramped up since August 15th, when Iranian-backed militants launched a drone attack on a Syrian troop training facility run by US forces and soldiers from the US-backed group Maghaweir al-Thowra.  No one was injured in that attack, but in the subsequent counterattacks and counter-counterattacks, four militants have been confirmed killed.

Congressman Kevin Hern had over $1 million in PPP loans forgiven. https://t.co/XsBaqxNZN4

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) August 25, 2022

They wanted their “mean tweets” back, they got em.

The Fulton County, Georgia grand jury investigating the failed attempt by Trump and his minions to overturn the 2020 election have demanded shitweasel fraudulent voter and former White House Chief of Staff Mark “Pussy” Meadows to testify on his role in setting up the infamous “Find 11,780 votes” call between the Orange God Emperor and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, signaling District Attorney Fani Willis is zeroing in on the fat former president himself, Politico reports.

From the “Everything Trump Touches Dies” Department: Fox Business reports that finances at Donald Trump’s social media company Touche Slacker Trough Solow Truth Social are so bad, its unpaid bills to its web hosting contractor total more than $1.6 million since March.

The hosting company, RightForge, targets right wingers with its promise to build a “second internet” where conservatives could spout their bullshit without repercussions, so working with Trump seemed like a nature fit.  But according to the Fox Business report, RightForge soon found out all those left-wing, Mainstream Media Fake News reports about Trump’s poor business practices were accurate:  Trump Media Group, headed by former Republican California Congressman and faux farmer Devin Nunes, has failed to pay more than $1.6 million in invoices since March.

After claiming he wouldn’t comment “on private matters” though he acknowledged tension in the relationship between his company and Trump’s, RightForge CEO Martin Avila released a statement saying: “Our founding vision is to make a second internet to support American ideas online. RightForge believes in the mission of President Trump’s free speech platform and wish to continue supporting the president in his media endeavors.”

Officials with the Northwest Public School’s in Grand Island, Nebraska have confirmed the district’s award-winning 54-year-old “Saga” student newspaper won’t be returning this year after its May suspension for printing a pro-homo issue, the AP reports. The district superintendent and board justified the decision by saying they were “unhappy with the last issue’s editorial content.”

Considered spinning this into a fake MAGA article, saying shit like “Fair is fair libs. You shut down OAN so now you have to lose a media outlet too” to underscore the absurdity but this is almost too sad and infuriating to joke about. These cocksuckers complain about kids spending too much time on trying become influencers on social media and then do something that’s going to guarantee that their now former student journalists end up spending more time trying to become influencers on social media. The world needs more professional reporters and columnists earning an honest living in the fourth estate and fewer unhinged 38 year old man-boys with stupid cyber Jesus avatars writing angry nonsense and mooching off of readers via PayPal. Please donate.

Judge Bruce Reinhart on Thursday ruled that the hotly anticipated Mar-a-Lago search affidavit is ready to rock audiences at noon EDT on Friday, CBS News’s Scott MacFarlane reports.

With the estimated number of his soldiers killed or wounded in Ukraine topping 80,000, Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his nation’s military to increase the number of active-duty personnel by 137,000, the New York Times reports.

With one year of compulsory military service for men ages 18 to 27 already the law, the way in which Putin intends to achieve this goal is unknown.  Currently, about two million people serve in Russia’s military if including soldiers and civilians across all branches, with about half of the uniformed personnel being conscripts who typically are assigned to support roles, not fighting units.  The other uniformed personnel are contracted career soldiers, who for the most part face mandatory discharge at the age of 40.

Putin’s goal, which will go into effect in 2023, may force a number of uncomfortable options.  While Putin has attempted to maintain a veneer of normalcy on the homefront while his military suffers heavy losses of equipment and personnel in the protracted war in Ukraine–which Putin’s military leaders said would be over in weeks after a Russian invasion in late February–the pressure for victories in Ukraine may force Putin to extend compulsory service time or to increase the mandatory discharge age.

Hey Matthew Ygelesias and all the rest of you Suckstackers (hehe), watch us come up with a better “You know, America should really do this: Here’s why” essay than the 8,000-word “innovative idea” circlejerk you published on Tuesday after reading someone else’s Suckstack and responding to each other to the entertainment of no one but yourselves, your $5/month subscribers be damned.

This is America. It’s got 50 states. We need more states because Republicans control too many. Republicans hate America. Making more states is hard but a really good midterms for Democrats might create opportunity to abolish Senate filibuster and make more states. Except filibuster abolition dangerous without like serious fucking entrenchment of Democrat political power to make it impossible for Republicans to win Senate majority ever again. Not so many opportunities to create new states from existing sovereign territory of the United States. Washington DC, Puerto Rico, and maybe Virgin Islands. Not enough. No guarantee Puerto Rico elect Democrats.

In a September 2021 appearance on some shitty right wing talk radio station, Republican Minnesota Secretary of State candidate Kim Crockett called expanded mail-in voting proliferation in 2020 “our 9/11,” CNN reports on an increasingly hyperbolic victim complex among MAGAmericans.

“People are discouraged and this is still an exceptional nation. We are still the American people and I’m betting on us. This is a challenge. Maybe we needed a wake-up call. This is our 9/11,” said Crockett, adding ” if we lose our right to free and fair elections – and I don’t just need the right to vote, I need to know that it’s being counted fairly and that someone’s not cheating and canceling me out,” which sounds like an unintentional dig at the electoral college.

Welcome to the post-Trump America, where a man gets arrested for “obstructing government operations” for watering his neighbor’s flower bed, but a man who stole classified government documents is free to play as much golf as he wants.

According to NBC News, a Black pastor in Childersburg, Alabama was arrested in May after a neighbor called police to report a suspicious man at a neighbor’s house.  The pastor, Michael Jennings, was charged with “obstructing government operations,” but the charges were eventually dropped.  Now that the bodycam video of the incident has been released, Jennings is considering legal action against the officers involved.

On May 22nd, Jennings crossed the street from his home to his neighbors to water flowers in the neighbors’ garden.  A different neighbor, not recognizing Jennings, called police to report a suspicious man at that house.  When police arrived the neighbor who made the call to 9-1-1, a white woman, came out to tell police that she had made a mistake and had not recognized Jennings when she made the call, confirming that he was just taking care of the vacationing neighbors’ flowers. 

The self-proclaimed pastor of a sketchy Texas church filed a $3.1 million claim against the owners of the Champlain Towers condominium in Surfside, Florida claiming that half a dozen of his parishioners had residences destroyed in the collapse of the towers in 2021, the Miami Herald reports.

Another claimant, a man from Oregon, claims he just happened to take up an offer from a stranger to stay at a friend’s condo in the towers after driving to Surfside, and within minutes, he heard a rumble and then blacked out when a chuck of concrete hit his head.  Upon regaining consciousness, he simply left the scene and drove back to Oregon.  He never mentioned his experience to anyone prior to filing his claim.  “I just want that part of my mind gone,” the 33-year-old Oregon man said in his compensation application.  “I wish I could somehow erase that part, but I cannot.”

The claims were filed as part of a class action settlement totaling $1.1 billion designated for claims by survivors and family members of the victims of the building collapse.  One of the 741 applications for a share of the settlement, “Rev. Kelly Dean Ph.D.” of Baptist Faith Church in Dallas claimed his alleged parishioners lived in six units in the towers, but the unit numbers on the claim didn’t match any units in any of the complex.

“On Thursday, August 25, 2022, at 0253 hours, Rome/Floyd E-911 received a call about a male possibly shooting his family members and then himself at [redacted], the home of Marjorie Greene. The males name that was given was Wayne Greene. The call came in as though it was from a suicide crisis center but it was not through a phone, it was from an internet chat. The person who made the call through the chat advised that they ‘came out as trans-gender and claimed they shot the family.’ They also claimed, ‘If anyone tried to stop me from shooting myself, I will shoot them.'”

“They also advised ‘they would be waiting for us.’ Lt. Smith advised Officer Groover and I to go to the location and try to make contact with Ms. Greene. We arrived and approached the house. Officer Groover went to the front door to make contact. Ms. Greene came to the door and we alerted her with the reason why we were there. The suicide chat line that was used could not get a location due to the person(s) using a VPN,” says the police report from Rome, Georgia.