Former Trump minion Mick Mulvaney is expected to sit down for an interview Thursday with House January 6th Select Committee investigators to talk about the Orange God Emperor’s state of mind during the Capitol insurrection, CNBC reports. Mulvaney served as Trump’s Chief of Staff and Office of Management and budget director until being fired and named “Special Envoy to North Ireland” where he served until resigning the day after the riot Trump had incited.

Separately ABC News reports former Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin has already sat for an interview with investigators. It’s not clear what subject matter was covered. Mnuchin reportedly was in favor of the cabinet taking the Donald down via the 25th Amendment in the immediate aftermath of the riot. Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is also expected to interview soon.

An English couple relaxing at their vacation home in Cumbria, Wales earlier this month found a trail of destruction from their cat’s safety gate all the way to their bed where they encountered a wild otter curled up sleeping on their bed, Wales Online reports.

The contentious little bastard also helped himself to their cat’s food, which it promptly puked on the living room carpet. After waking the aquatic mustelid up to yell at it to get the fuck out, homeowner Peter Goldie to Wales Online the otter wasn’t in any particular hurry to leave. “It sauntered down the hall like it owned the place – it was hilarious! I’ve washed the sheets and had the carpets cleaned since its impromptu visit,” said Goldie, adding “the cat was really frightened, but we’re just thankful they didn’t cross paths as that could have ended very badly.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday there’s no deal yet on the prisoner trade proposed by the US State Department to return WNBA player Britney Griner and former Marine Paul Whelan home in exchange for arms dealer Viktor Bout, CNN reports. “So far, there is no agreement on this issue,” said the Putin toady during a Thursday conference call with reporters.

DC-based rights group Democracy for the Arab World Now – or DAWN – on Thursday filed a criminal complaint in France against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bonesaw for the murder of Jamaal Khashoggi while he’s in the country meeting with President Emmanuel Macron, the AP reports. The French criminal code has “universal jurisdiction” which allows for crimes such as torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, enforced disappearances – all of which would apply to the Khashoggi murder. It’s not likely the Gendarme are going to show up and cuff Bonesaw while he’s meeting with Macron, but it’d sure as hell be interesting if they tried.

“The district court agreed, as it had to, that ‘speech is unquestionably a critical function of the presidency,’ and it agreed that – whatever one’s personal opinion about President Trump’s position – his ‘pre–January 6th tweets and the January 6 Rally Speech addressed matters of public concern.’ JA 233. The court even acknowledged that ‘speaking on matters of public concern is a function of the presidency.’ And indeed, it is,” write Trump’s lawyers in an appeal claiming “absolute immunity” from the lawsuit brought by Dem members of Congress over January 6th.

“Unfortunately, the district court then misconstrued two critical cases on presidential immunity. First, it held that even though President Trump’s communications were on matters of public concern, that ‘d[id] not answer the question at hand: Were President Trump’s words in this case uttered in performance of official acts, or were his words expressed in some other, unofficial capacity?’ Id. The district court framed President Trump’s argument as a proposed test ‘that whenever and wherever a President speaks on a matter of public concern he is immune from civil suit’ and held such a test ‘goes too far,'” the bullshit “YOU CAN’T SUE ME” story contiues.

Apparently Joe Manchin was playing Republicans and not Democrats for a change and his bitching out last week was a head fake. Moscow Mitch had warned he would not green light any GOP support for the Chips Act on Wednesday if the Dems went ahead with any reconciliation bill. Well the Chips bill passed and a few hours later Manchin says he’s on board with a mini-Build Back Better bill. And now Tom Cotton feels like Manchin was supposed to be trustworthy to Republicans.

The friends of British man Jack Fenton, 22, learned a very important lesson about being extra careful around the spinning blades of a helicopter after a little mishap in at a resort just outside Athens in Greece on Monday, Sky News reports. Fenton and his friends had reportedly landed and already disembarked while the man on his phone, or had run back to the chopp- um, helicopter’s cabin to retrieve his phone, but was definitely not taking a selfie according to his sister who was also present for the unfortunate futz up in the land that invented democracy and gyros.

After a heated Oval Office meeting, former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly shoved socialite Ivanka Trump out of his way while passing her in a hallway, her weak husband and Saudi debtor Jared Kushner writes in a new book, according to the Washington Post.

Kelly denies it ever happened.  “I don’t recall anything like you describe.  It is inconceivable that I would EVER shove a woman. Inconceivable. Never happen,” Kelly wrote. “Would never intentionally do something like that. Also, don’t remember ever apologizing to her for something I didn’t do. I’d remember that.”

Kushner writes that Kelly went to Ivanka’s office later to deliver a “meek apology,” saying that Ivanka’s chief of staff–whose job description was sketchy as the head of the group of people who worked for a woman with no job description–heard Kelly make the apology in a rare visit to Ivanka’s office.

A source inside the RNC tells ABC News the party will cease paying disgraced former President Trump’s personal legal bills if and when he declares himself a candidate, a warning made public in an apparent attempt to dissuade the fat bastard from announcing the run before the Midterms, even though they have to cut him off anyway in a facade of “neutrality” whenever he does. The party earlier this year capped the total spending on the criminal degenerate at $1.6 million, though this apparently has already been exceeded as the RNC reported paying out $1.73 million from October 2021 through June 2021 on three law firms representing the Donald in the various criminal investigations he faces. This includes the one in New York State that has literally nothing whatsoever to do with his time as the Republican president or candidate.

Now, if this headline looks familiar that’s because two weeks ago I reported “Ronna Not-Romney McDaniel warns Trump the RNC will stop paying his legal bills if he announces 2024 run before midterms” which some readers took issue with because the Washington Post report it was sourced from did not actually characterize that as such, writing verbatim, that “McDaniel has told others that the party will stop paying his legal bills if he becomes the nominee.” What these readers did, mostly in good faith – except for that one fucking assclown with the yellow cartoon snake avatar – was question why I wrote it as such. My explanation was that it didn’t actually make sense for the threat to be contingent on the nomination and I had inferred that the Post had screwed it up.

Democrats deal approved Manchin Schumer CNBC report. Is big. Manchin finally stop cunty behaving. Deal include health taxes energy debt. Is accomplishment. Dems in array. Biden win big. Approval rating will still be shit after signing bill. Schumer happy. Manchin happy. Deal is big.

The story about the Federal Reserve Bank – which doesn’t have drive-thru ATMs or offer personal checks with Looney Tunes or Columbus Blue Jackets-themed backgrounds to depositors like a normal bank – raising its interest rate isn’t that interesting. All the other news websites are like “OMG! ThE fEd RaIsEd tEh iNteRest rAtE!” and sure, the story is impactful because it’s the Fed “pumping the brakes” on inflation and so on and so forth. The lede is just two sentences long because that’s all it takes to report the news about the interest rate being raised.

Then the rest is quotes from some asshole at Goldman Sachs reacting to the news, saying “Well we see the PFUX index in the next quarter really ejaculating some growth into the TARGOLOX ratio of the WOOFWOOF sector’s curve” while he’s thinking about buying extra party drugs this week because his bro at the Fed told him to offload his BAAL fund holdings before Jerome Powell – no relation to Sidney “Kraken” Powell – officially announced they were raising the rate 0.75 percent.

All of this is increasing our disinterest rates in stories about the Federal Reserve Bank. The fun just isn’t there in reporting on Wall Street shit when there are lots of more interesting stories out there about ketchup being thrown at walls and angry monkeys terrorizing Japanese people.

An Indiana man knew that he who laughed last laughed best, and now he’ll likely be laughing all the way to jail.  Seventy-nine year-old Dewey Fredrick waited 36 years to get his revenge on an Fort Wayne, Indiana car dealership that sold him a chronically troubled Jeep in 1986, the Washington Post reports.

Fredrick set four cars afire on the lot of O’Daniel Used Cars, part of a dealership that sells Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram marques, to get back on the dealership for selling him a Jeep that needed significant repairs and service.

According to police, Fredrick drove his current ride, a 2002 Chevy S-10 pickup, to the dealership where he used a flare to torch a Jeep Compass SUVs, which then set a nearby 2013 GMC Acadia and a 2020 Jeep Cherokee on fire.

WNBA star Brittney Griner and accused US agent Paul Whelan will be returned to the United States after the Biden Administration proposed to swap them for Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer, CNN reports.

The 25-year-old Griner was accused by the Russian government of drug trafficking after she was found with less than a gram of a cannabis concentrate.  Whelan, a 52-year-old former Marine, was sentenced to 16 years in a Russian jail after being convicted of espionage after being found with a thumb drive listing Russian intelligence assets; Whelan, who was in Moscow for the wedding of a Marine he had served with, denied receiving the device.

Bout had been arrested in Thailand in 2008 in a joint operation with US intelligence services.  He had been serving a 25-year sentence after being found guilty of plotting to kill American citizens, delivering anti-aircraft missiles to a terrorist group, and material support of a terrorist group for aiding Colombian rebels in plans to attack US soldiers.

Nicholas Sandmann, the smirking teen from Covington, Kentucky who was confronted by a Native American activist after he and his classmates were chanting MAGA slogans and wearing the Mark of the Beast on their foreheads, had five of the lawsuits he filed against national media outlets dismissed, the Lexington Herald Leader reports.

Then a 16-year-old smartass, Sandmann was shown smirking at Native American activist Nathan Phillips after Phillips reportedly approached the Covington students, some of whom mocked the group’s drum playing and chants, at the Lincoln Memorial in January 2019.

Sandmann filed suits against The New York Times, CBS, ABC, Gannett Co. Inc, and Rolling Stone claiming they intentionally characterized him in a defamatory way.  Another party in the suit, CNN, had previously asked the judge to dismiss the case, which the judge granted.  CNN and the Washington Post settled other lawsuits, likely for minimal amounts to get rid of the nuisance claims.

NEW: The Senate has passed the Chips and Science bill—one of the largest investments in science, tech, and manufacturing in decades!

This will create good-paying jobs, make microchips in the USA, alleviate clogged supply chains, boost America’s security interests, & lower costs.

— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) July 27, 2022

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted on Wednesday that a bipartisan majority approved a bill for Chips and Salsa investing in – oh wait, fuck he said “Science” and not “Salsa.” Dammit, we were excited to talk about Lays, Ruffles, Tostitos, Doritos, Cape Cod, Pringles, etc.

Eh, might as well just leave it as it is and prompt a discussion about which government policies could continue to assure America’s position as a global leader in chip innovation. It wasn’t Canada that invented Cool Ranch Doritos 3D or French Onion Sun Chips. It was America.

A federal judge sentenced one of the former Minneapolis police officers involved in the death of George Floyd to three years in prison for violating Floyd’s civil rights to get medical care, NBC News reports.

J. Alexander Kueng was sentenced Wednesday morning in the first of two hearings into the case.  His fellow officer, Tou Thao, was scheduled to be sentenced in a hearing following Kueng’s.  Both had been convicted of violating Floyd’s rights in a February trial.

Both Kueng and Thao are scheduled for a state trial in October on charges of charges of aiding and abetting second-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

This is devastating for Democrats as they only lead by six on the generic ballot question of the Economist/YouGov survey this week and 45 to 41 on the Politico/Morning Consult poll. The Red Wave just got 20 feet taller than the million feet high it already was. Just an absolute shitshow for the Donkey party. Fucking midterm wipeout incoming. Democrats in super mega disarray.

In a statement to Axios, Disney said Wednesday it would reverse its policy banning political issue ads and allow them to be placed along with candidate advertising on its Hulu streaming service.

“After a thorough review of ad policies across its linear networks and streaming platforms over the last few months, Disney is now aligning Hulu’s political advertising policies to be consistent with the Company’s general entertainment and sports cable networks and ESPN+. Hulu will now accept candidate and issue advertisements covering a wide spectrum of policy positions, but reserves the right to request edits or alternative creative, in alignment with industry standards,” said the Evil Empire in response to the Dem uproar over the inability to place ads concerning abortion and guns on the home of The Handmaid’s Tale and the upcoming Predator prequel Prey, which looks fucking awesome. It’s basically The Revenant but with Predators in addition to bears.

Anyway, Disney said they’ll still nudge campaigns for edits and will not be permitting the issue spots on their planned ad-supported, lower-price tier of their Disney+ streaming service, which is a bit more understandable given the amount of “family-friendly” content on the platform.

Milwaukee Bucks exec Alex Lasry announced Wednesday he’ll be dropping out of the Democratic primary for the Wisconsin Senate election against complete piece of shit Republican Senator Ron “RonAnon” Johnson, the second candidate this week to withdraw from the race after former Assembly Rep Tom Nelson threw in the towel on Monday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Bill Glauber reports. It’s not clear yet if Lasry will endorse frontrunner Lt Gov Mandela Barnes as Nelson did upon dropping out, but Lasry’s position in the top tier certainly creates more room for Barnes ahead of the August 9th primary and the crucial task of sending RonAnon back to his dungeon.

President Biden on Wednesday became the second president in a row to not publicly rip open his oxford shirt to reveal he’s wearing a Superman t-shirt underneath after being informed by White House physicians he was well enough to return to duty after a COVID-19 infection, CNN reports.

It’s not clear why Biden did not follow through on a public display of strength and tribute to the iconic comic book superhero. The unrealized plan by Trump to do so was one of his few actually good ideas. A president like Biden, who prides himself on his bipartisanship should be able to look past the political differences between himself and his predecessor and recognize it as such.