“A 28-count indictment was unsealed today in the Eastern District of California charging a former member of Congress with multiple fraud schemes and campaign contribution fraud. Terrance John ‘TJ’ Cox, 59, of Fresno, is charged with 15 counts of wire fraud, 11 counts of money laundering, one count of financial institution fraud, and one count of campaign contribution fraud.”

“According to allegations in the indictment, Cox perpetrated multiple fraud schemes targeting companies he was affiliated with and their clients and vendors. Cox created unauthorized off-the-books bank accounts and diverted client and company money into those accounts through false representations, pretenses and promises. From 2013 to 2018, across two different fraud schemes, Cox illicitly obtained over $1.7 million in diverted client payments and company loans and investments he solicited and then stole. In addition, Cox allegedly received mortgage loan funds from a lender for a property purchase by submitting multiple false representations to the lender, including fabricated bank statements and false statements that Cox intended to live in the property as his primary residence. However, the indictment alleges Cox intended to and did buy the property to rent it to someone else,” says a Justice Department press release.

At a news conference pitched as an announcement on his administration’s efforts to fill thousands of vacant teaching positions caused by Florida’s mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic and his administration’s demonization of educators, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis decided to end the event by undermining science and efforts to improve classroom instruction in the state, bragging that Florida is “where Intelligence Woke goes to die.”

NBA officials on Tuesday announced they will be interfering in the midterm elections by giving all 30 teams the day off on November 8th to help make sure fans vote, the Associated Press reports.

“The scheduling decision came out of the NBA family’s focus on promoting nonpartisan civic engagement and encouraging fans to make a plan to vote during midterm elections,” said the China-funded pro basketball league, blatantly lying because “non-partisan” means “Anti-Trump,” and by encouraging NBA fans to participate they’re all but ensuring higher turnout from lower quality voters, ones who aren’t as informed as those who watch NASCAR and Bass Pro fishing.

“Since May 2022, we have written to you on three separate occasions to request documents and information about your conduct as Inspector General: first, following serious allegations that your office censored findings of domestic abuse and sexual harassment by Department of Homeland Security (DHS) employees; second, after you failed to promptly notify Congress of crucial information on the Secret Service’s erasure of text messages related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol; and third, after new information emerged on your repeated failures to gather text messages from the Secret Service and other senior officials related to the January 6 attack.”

“In response to the Committees’ requests, you have refused to produce responsive documents and blocked employees in your office from appearing for transcribed interviews. Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an Inspector General. If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternate measures to ensure your compliance” – Letter from House Homeland Security Committee Chair Bennie Thompson and House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney to Homeland Security Inspector General Joey Cuffari ordering him to stop fucking around.

From the Florida First Circuit Court of Appeals’ mega-MAGA Patriotic smackdown lib-owning ruling in Doe v Florida: “Appellant, a minor, wishes to terminate her pregnancy. She appeals the trial court’s dismissal of her petition seeking judicial waiver of the parental/legal guardian notice and consent provisions under section 390.01114, Florida Statutes. The trial court found, based on the nonadversarial presentation below, that Appellant had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”

“Having reviewed the record, we affirm the trial court’s decision under the deferential standard of appellate review set out in the governing statute. (‘The reason for overturning a ruling on appeal must be based on abuse of discretion by the court and may not be based on the weight of the evidence presented to the circuit court since the proceeding is a nonadversarial proceeding.’). We note that section 390.01114 allows for a remand to the trial court with instructions for a further ruling, but no such remand is warranted here. The trial court order and findings are neither unclear nor lacking such that a remand would be necessary for us to perform our review under the statute.”

Donald Trump won’t accept responsibility for infuriating his base to the point of encouraging them to commit violent acts, but this time, it’s not the January 6th Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress.  Now, he’s claiming that the man who attempted to attack the FBI office in Cincinnati was a Deep State operative conducting a “false flag” operation to discredit him.

According to Rolling Stone, Trump has been telling associates that the man who used a nail gun and an assault weapon to attack the FBI field office in Cincinnati was actually a liberal operative who gave his last full measure in an effort to make MAGAts look bad.  The shooter, who was shot and killed when he aimed his assault weapon at law enforcement officers after leading them on a 50-mile pursuit, was literally posting to Trump’s social media platform outlining various stages of the attack as he committed them.

The shooter, who will not be named here, posted on various social media platforms that he attended the January 6th attack on Congress, had made various posts encouraging people to join the far-right domestic terrorist insurrectionist group Proud Boys, and repeated debunked claims that the November 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

It’s been a week since the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago, causing an explosion of anger among Republican voters demanding their party’s Senators, Congressmales, and Congressfemales do something about it immediately and yet the FBI is still in business. Look at their website, FBI.gov and not only is it still up, but it doesn’t say anything like “Due to overwhelming demand from Republican voters, we have decided to shut down, effective immediately. Please call the Department of Homeland Security at 1-800-DHS-4-USA if in need of federal law enforcement assistance.”

Republicans simply haven’t done shit about this other than go on Fox News and tell at the camera about what they’re going to do if their fans vote for them, which a classic bait-and-switch. “Oh vote for me and I’ll kick some serious FBI ass!” says Jim Jordan as if he isn’t already serving in Congress. What’s stopping him from kicking FBI ass right now? Probably too busy having intimate candlelight dinners with special interests and woke corporate donors. He’s a fraud and Republican voters see right through this. They’re not stupid. They know a liar when they see one.

Even worse is how getting involved in grassroots activism isn’t working out either, with one regular Joe Republican voter shot dead for trying to engage in legitimate discourse with the FBI and another facing years in federal prison for just exercising his right to free speech on Gab. Yet elected Republicans aren’t even offering up a supportive tweet, let alone working on getting people at the FBI fired or arrested for those incidents. Not even a word from Ted Cruz or Marjie Greene on that.

Where’s Durham? Why isn’t he doing anything? Brett Kavanaugh? Why won’t he throw Merrick Garland in jail for violating the Constitution? Why won’t Kevin McCarthy declare the FBI corrupt and leave the rest to other Republicans? When is Greg Abbott going to ban the FBI from Texas? When are these RINOs going to start taking real action to defend the American people from the FBI?

Unable to accept the crushing 59% to 41%, 165,000 vote loss suffered by Republicans two weeks ago in the Kansas abortion access ballot measure, far-right activist chode Mark Geitzen has racked up nearly $120,000 in credit card debt to pay the Secretary of State’s office to hand recount ballots from the nine most populated out of Kansas’s 105 counties, the AP reports. This ding comes on top of whatever this assclown pissed away in legal fees in his failed lawsuit to ban ballot drop boxes ahead of the election. Geitzen told the AP he even tried to put his home up as collateral to cover more counties, but this was rejected as the state requires cash, check, or credit card.

Now it’s easy enough to say in the abstract there’s no chance of this being overturned, all you need do is look at the lack of buy-in from the Republican state legislature and attorney general. But to truly appreciate how fucking stupid this is, according to a 2020 report by FairVote.org there were 5,778 statewide elections over from 2000 to 2020, of which there were 31 statewide recounts. Only three of those 31 ended with the result being overturned, the highest margin of them being the 2008 US Senate race in Minnesota when Al Franken beat Norm Coleman by 225 votes.

That’s 1/733th of the margin in Kansas. Geitzen claimed he’s raised about $43,000 from donors so it’s not clear how deep in the red he’ll actually be when the recount fails, which it will. Then all he’ll have to worry about are chargebacks from the donors who correctly think they were scammed.

FLOTUS Dr. Jill Biden has tested positive for the coronavirus and will follow isolation guidelines for patients during her recovery, CNN reports, noting that Biden reportedly has mild symptoms.  Dr. Biden has received both vaccine doses and two boosters.

“After testing negative for Covid-19 on Monday during her regular testing cadence, the First Lady began to develop cold-like symptoms late in the evening. She tested negative again on a rapid antigen test, but a PCR test came back positive,” said Elizabeth Alexander, her communications director.  Dr. Biden will take the anti-viral medication Paxlovid to treat the infection.

The Biden were vacationing in South Carolina when she tested positive, and she will remain there during her isolation.  President Joe Biden is expected to return to Washington today to sign the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by Congress last week.

Dark Brandon’s evil inflation plot has been dealt a severe setback in Canada, with the Maple Land’s consumer price index dropping to 7.6% in July driven by a decline in gasoline prices even though the Keystone XL pipeline, which would’ve made gas free, didn’t get built, CTV News reports.

A heretofore unknown to us bellwether in Washington state’s Dem primary vote indicates that, while turnout was about 6% shy of the show of force from before the 2018 Blue Wave, it was also 6% higher than what preceded the absolute beatdowns Dems took in 2010 and 2014, Politico reports.

“Nationally, we expected the low approval rating of Joe Biden to create a Republican wave. In Washington state, the election results were closer to neutral,” said some GOP consultant who obviously didn’t get the memo about the huge Red Wave coming because the FBI Mar-a-Lago raid.

In related news, a new Morning Consult survey found Democrats with a slight rage-thusiasm edge over Republicans, with 42% of Dems to 41% of MAGA voters calling themselves “angry” going into the Midterms. Dem anger is down from 49% in 2018, while GOP anger – surprise – is up from 28%. Also compared to 2018, fewer Republican voters described themselves as “confident” – 60% to 51% from four years ago while Dems remained almost flat from 43% to 41%. Republicans are more “worried” too thqn in 2018: 49% from 37%. Democrats meanwhile stayed a flat 61% from 2018 to 2022, because Dems are always worried about everything no matter what.

WHOA! Did you know that Liz Cheney’s big primary is Tuesday? Did you know that she’s going to lose but will something something continue her fight against fat former President Trump for the future of the Republican Party? Did you there’s “buzz” that she’s going to run for president in 2024?

What?! You didn’t know that? How the fuck could you be so lame and self-centered? What is wrong with you? Why don’t you care about Liz Cheney? She’s the Republican that stood up to Trump! Everyone loves a good underdog story! Especially media consumers! It’s important political news that everyone will be watching closely! Well everyone except you, because you’re not “in the know” like all the Politico Playbook and Punchbowl subscribers! Those are the coolest “tip sheets” in the industry! You suck if you don’t read them! Get caught up on the Liz Cheney storyline or get left behind like VHS and LaserDisc! Don’t be a friggin dinosaur. Just read all the Liz Cheney-mania stories, okay? People put a lot of time and effort into them. They’re important.

Look, if you don’t read them you’ll be left behind and look like a total square. The mainstream media are covering Cheney. They know politics. You’ll get all the latest “scoops” from them. It’s a big story.

Ukrainian saboteurs have apparently taken out both a large Russian ammunition depot and electricity substation in occupied Crimea, the BBC reports on the second major attack this month behind enemy lines following last week’s massive explosion at an airbase on the peninsula.

The United States, Japan and South Korea finished a series of missile defense exercises in a show of unity and power two quiet North Korea and China, who have each undertaken provocative acts in the previous months, Reuters reports.

The exercises began on last Monday (local time) and wrapped up this weekend.  The event included a test deployment of the U.S. military’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery, a system deployed in South Korea in 2016, which raised tension with North Korea, which had been testing missile systems that reportedly could hit the continental United States.

Along with the missile defense drills, South Korea announced that it would host field training with the United States August 22nd to September 1st.  It will be the first live joint training exercise between the two countries since 2017.  Donald Trump ordered the cancelation of military exercises with South Korea as he courted North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un.  The previously annual exercises were canceled jointly by both countries in 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Anthony Sabatini, a Florida man who wants to be in Congress, apparently couldn’t afford a 4K feed from whatever Russian dacha Mike Flynn (doing his best Kirk from “The Tholian Web” imitation) is calling from, so he gets this transparent image in low res to awe (?) viewers into voting for him.

The Ukrainian government said its military forces have repelled more than a dozen attacks by Russian forces in the eastern and northern parts of the country, as Ukraine reports that it is keeping key cities in the contested Donetsk region, the Associated Press reports.

Ukraine reports that it held off waves of attacks that tried to take the cities of Bakhmut and Kramatorsk in the Donetsk province, but they were able to hold off the Russians.  Along with Luhansk, the two provides compose the Donbas region, a key target for the Kremlin to capture.

In the northern city of Kharkiv, Russian troops reportedly advanced on the city only to be “met harshly and thrown back,” the Defense Ministry reported.

The Federal Aviation Administration is warning that staff shortages in the New York City area will cause it to reroute aircraft to ease air traffic in the area around some of the nation’s busiest airports, ABC News reports.

The pace of flights coming in and out of LaGuardia, John F. Kennedy and Newark International airports were being slowed to reduce congestion for the limited number of air traffic controllers available.  “Due to the availability of staff tonight, the FAA must reduce the flow of aircraft in certain airspace serving New York City to maintain safety,” the FAA said in a statement Monday afternoon.

The FAA and airlines have had a months-long feud about ongoing delays and ensuing cancelations, which have cost the airlines thousands of flights.  While the FAA has acknowledged human resource problems at certain locations like Jacksonville, Florida, it counters that air crew shortages from the airlines were responsible.

Whispers in the ear of the chunky Orange Caesar grow increasingly urgent, imploring him to begin a campaign to reclaim his imperium immediately if he is to escape the feared Praetor Merricus Decimus Meridius Garlandum and his Venator Christophus Gaius Wrayton, the Guardian reports.

Or, without the fake Roman bullshit, Trumpus Fatticus’s minions are telling him he “has to” announce a campaign within the next week or two if he wants to avoid indictment. Since this isn’t real legal advice at all, we probably can dismiss the possibility that this source is also somehow informed that an indictment is imminent within that timeframe. Still the die is cast, as they say, and Orange Caesar pretty much let Garland cast it first with the raid. But Trump really probably should cross the Rubicon and finally launch a 2024 campaign already. We don’t want him to be president again, no. But in his own interest, from a neutral perspective, he absolutely should do it. It would fire up his fans and give him a morale boost personally, even though it won’t mean shit legally. And in our interest, from a non-neutral perspective, he still should do it because it’ll fuck things up for the Republicans in the Midterms (though the raid has definitely already helped do that anyway).

“Well, what it means depends, in part, on what the documents were,” CIA reject and Saudi-rented country club patron Tucker Carlson says on his Fox show, without actually acknowledging that documents are classified for a reason.  “Did those documents contain meaningful information?  Should they have been classified in the first place?  Is there a good reason the rest of us should not have been allowed to see those documents?  You never hear those questions asked in public but anyone who lives in Washington knows they should be asked in public a lot, because in Washington virtually anything can qualify as an official state secret, and often does.”

Well, yes, Tucker, documents need to be classified to keep the information away from people like you who would give it to their friends in Moscow and Budapest, because American security isn’t your concern; your ego is.  Which is why you were rejected by the CIA when you tried to work there:  you’re unreliable and would trade state secrets to the first person who pampers your ego.