Associated Press:  “A man working his first shift at a manufacturing plant near Birmingham was shot to death by a fellow employee early Wednesday, authorities said.  Deputies found the body of a man who had been shot multiple times when they responded to a call shortly after midnight, said a statement by the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department.

“Authorities didn’t immediately identify the victim, but they said he was in his first day on the job, and the suspect also worked there. The shooting occurred at Samuel Associated Tube Group, which produces metal pipes for industrial use.  Dexter Rashad Walker, 34, was arrested after turning himself in to deputies at the scene, the statement said. He was held without bond on a murder charge, and court documents weren’t immediately available to show whether he has an attorney.

“It wasn’t clear what prompted the shooting, and a company spokesman didn’t immediately return an email seeking comment. Samuel Associated Tube Group is a division of a division of Samuel, Son & Co. Inc., a Canadian multinational corporation.”

“Lawyers representing former President Donald Trump issued a letter Tuesday threatening to sue the Pulitzer Prize board if they don’t ‘immediately rescind’ the 2018 awards given to both The Washington Post and The New York Times for their coverage of the Russia collusion case. According to a letter reviewed by Just the News, Trump’s lawyers are threatening legal action due to The New York Times and Washington Post’s stories concerning Trump’s ties to Russia.”

“‘​​It is hereby demanded that the Pulitzer Prize Board take immediate steps to strip the New York Times and The Washington Post of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Pulitzer Prize Board’s failure to do so will result in prompt legal action being taken against it,’ attorney Alina Habba wrote on behalf of Trump. The letter was sent out by Trump’s Save America political action committee. ‘It is hereby demanded that the Pulitzer Prize Board take immediate steps to strip the New York Times and The Washington Post of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting. Pulitzer Prize Board’s failure to do so will result in prompt legal action being taken against it.’ The letter goes on to state that if the board doesn’t hold these two publications accountable, it could irreparably tarnish the reputation of the Pulitzer Prize” reports John Solomon’s bullshit site.

Unstated is what the hell kind of relief Trump would be seeking in this lawsuit were he to prevail, which he won’t. Multiple defamation lawsuits filed by figures implicated in the Russia scandal were tossed by courts again and again over the years. The Steele Dossier might be falling apart, but that does nothing to debunk the meeting about adoptions or what the drunk coffee boy said in the months before the dossier was even compiled in the fall of 2016.

“The jury is still deliberating for one reason…..they feel like they must find something to convict him on to save their city from destruction; as well as their personal safety. Sadly, that is where this country is now…..the left has all but destroyed the rule of law.”

– The current top comment on the PJ Media article “The Morning Briefing: Let’s Hope We Survive the Rittenhouse Circus“, posted early Wednesday morning.

Washington Post: “As president, Donald Trump stymied lawmakers seeking his financial records and the testimony of a close adviser by employing a legal strategy that worked to his advantage even when he lost in court. Trump has turned to these familiar tactics now in a bid to thwart House investigators pursuing accountability for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but legal observers say that in this latest test of executive power, such an approach may fail to achieve his desired outcome. ‘Donald Trump just has one play in his playbook. Delay. He tries it everywhere,” said Washington lawyer Neal Katyal, a former acting solicitor general. ‘It was easier for him when his folks controlled the Justice Department, but now that they don’t, it’s a much harder strategy.'”

What race is Ernie is Bert? You are insane PBS and we should stop funding you. https://t.co/iHyGYJvG5l

— Matt Schlapp (@mschlapp) November 15, 2021

Sesame Workshop, the non-profit studio which produces the show reports the “primary sources of revenues are the sale and licensing of educational content and the licensing of the Sesame Street characters and brand, both domestically and internationally” in their FY 2020-2021 financial statement, so maybe Schlappy should harass Walmart, Target, and Amazon to get them to stop selling Sesame Street-licensed toys and products if he wants them deprived of revenue.

New York Times: “A Serb strongman, who for years exploited ethnonationalist feelings to claim more power, publicly pledges to break his country apart, threatening to set off cascading conflict. The West, distracted by its own problems, barely notices. No, that’s not Yugoslavia in 1991. It’s Bosnia and Herzegovina today. The country, whose complex constitutional order was painstakingly negotiated in the teeth of a bloody war and settled through the Dayton Accords, is on the brink of breaking up. At the heart of the crisis is Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader and longtime separatist. In October, he announced plans to withdraw the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, one of the country’s two administrative entities, from major state institutions.”

“In what effectively amounts to secession, he intends to set up a separate taxation office, army and security forces. For a region with a recent history of ethnic violence and conflict, it’s a terrifying development. Behind Mr. Dodik’s moves, 15 years in the making, lies the steady withdrawal from the region of the United States and the European Union. In their absence, competing foreign influences – Russia foremost among them – have stepped into the vacuum, emboldening autocratic leaders and destabilizing the region. To avoid the breakup of Bosnia, which could lead to a new war and all-out disaster, the West must reverse course immediately and set about to repair the damage”

“Federal, state and local authorities searched the homes of Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and three of her associates on Tuesday as part of an investigation into accusations the elected official was involved in voting machine security breaches, according to an official who helped conduct the searches. The FBI carried out a court-ordered search of Peters’ home in Mesa County early Tuesday morning, leaving her ‘terrified,’ Peters said Tuesday night in an appearance on Lindell TV, an online channel run by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, a Trump supporter and proponent of discredited claims the 2020 election was stolen. ‘We executed four federally court-authorized operations today to gather evidence in connection with the investigation into the Mesa County Clerk and Recorder’s Office,’ District Attorney Dan Rubinstein told Colorado Politics.”

“‘We did so with assistance from the DA’s office from the 21st Judicial District, the Attorney General’s Office and the FBI.’ He added that one of the searches occurred in neighboring Garfield County. Lindell said one of the homes raided by law enforcement authorities belongs to Sherronna Bishop, a Garfield County resident and former campaign manager for U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert. Peters, a Republican serving her first term as the Western Slope county’s chief elections official, was prohibited last month by a Mesa County judge from overseeing the election in the county in a ruling on a lawsuit filed by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold” – Colorado Politics

Daily Beast:  “Former President Donald Trump endorsed MyPillow chief Mike Lindell’s bonkers pipe dream of melting down voting machines used during the 2020 election and turning them into prisons.

“In a pre-recorded interview at his Mar-a-Lago Club that aired online Tuesday night, the pillow maven turned 2020 dead-ender peppered the ex-president with praise for nearly 45 minutes as the two discussed their supposed fight against ‘voter fraud’ and Lindell’s baseless claims that American voting machines were hacked by China in 2020.  Lindell told Trump, dressed in a tuxedo, that ‘anyone who moves on’ from the 2020 election is ‘saying that you’re OK’ with the results. ‘I have said we’re going to melt down machines and use them into prison bars,’ Lindell exclaimed.

“Trump called that idea ‘very interesting,’ adding that it was ‘a very good idea.’  He then proceeded to bash his very own former vice president for not intervening during the election certification process. ‘It was very sad when Mike Pence gave those votes over. When you have more votes than there are voters, when you have other things that are so wrong, and that was then,’ Trump riffed. ‘Since then, many other things have happened!’  Dominion Voting Systems currently has a $1.3 billion civil lawsuit filed against Lindell for making what it says are defamatory statements about their voting technologies company.”

CNN:  “A 12-year-old Boy Scout in Hawaii takes the organization’s motto “be prepared” very seriously and used his knowledge to help rescue a couple and their injured dog on a trail. David King was on the way back from a 15-mile hike near his home in Kailua with his mom, Christine, trying to earn his Hiking merit badge when they came across a couple, lost on the trail and trying to aid their dog Smokey, in August.

“‘We encountered them with about two to three miles left in the hike,’ David told CNN. ‘It wasn’t obvious (that something was wrong), but then the dog was on the ground, and we asked if they needed anything and they said yes.’ The couple had run out of water and their phones were dead, plus Smokey’s paws had been cut up from the trail and he couldn’t walk, David said. The couple tried to carry him out but the blue nose pitbull weighed almost 100 pounds.

“Christine said the couple was in danger of being stuck on the trail in the dark, so they shared their water and brainstormed a way to get everyone out. That’s when David tapped into his Boy Scout skills to save the day and created a stretcher to carry the dog, a skill he learned from his brother while getting his First Aid merit badge. ‘So we got a big tree branch that had fallen recently and snapped it in half, then we put on shirts,’ he said. ‘It took us a couple of tries because the dog didn’t really want to go on.'”

“South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s daughter on Tuesday said she would quit the real estate appraiser business following scrutiny over whether her mother used her influence to aid her application for an appraiser license. Noem’s daughter, Kassidy Peters, slammed a legislative inquiry and news reporting on the episode in a letter to Secretary of Labor Marcia Hultman. She also released a document that a legislative committee was seeking to subpoena.”

“Lawmakers were zeroing in on the timeline of a meeting Noem called last year that included Peters and key decision-makers in a government agency that had moved days earlier to deny her application for an upgrade to her appraiser certification. ‘I am writing you today to express my disappointment and anger that my good name and professional reputation continue to be damaged by questions and misinformation concerning the Appraiser Certification Program,’ Peters wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. KSFY first reported the contents of the letter. She told Hultman she would turn in her appraiser license by the end of the year, adding ‘I’m angry and I can acknowledge that this has successfully destroyed my business'” – AP.

Reuters: “U.S. President Joe Biden’s infrastructure and social spending legislation will not add to inflationary pressures in the U.S. economy, economists and analysts in leading rating agencies told Reuters on Tuesday.  Biden has spent the past few months promoting the merits of both pieces of legislation – the $1.75 trillion ‘Build Back Better’ plan and a separate $1 trillion infrastructure plan. read more

“The two pieces of legislation ‘should not have any real material impact on inflation’, William Foster, vice president and senior credit officer (Sovereign Risk) at Moody’s Investors Service, told Reuters. The impact of the spending packages on the fiscal deficit will be rather small because they will be spread over a relatively long time horizon, Foster added.

“Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat, has previously raised inflationary concerns in relation to Biden’s social spending plan, with a report earlier this month suggesting he may delay the passage of the Build Back Better legislation. ‘The bills do not add to inflation pressures, as the policies help to lift long-term economic growth via stronger productivity and labor force growth, and thus take the edge off of inflation,’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, which operates independently from the parent company’s ratings business.  Zandi said the costs of both the infrastructure and social spending legislation were sustainable.

Those Antira scumbags! Antira is going to riot and take over the suburbs! They’ll probably disguise themselves as patriots and attack Congress and then the FBI will say “Antira wasn’t involved in the Second Capitol Insurrection” just like they said about Antifa and the first one.

So let me understand, Gosar’s creepy anime of murder and such is ok, but John Katko is the sinner for… negotiating and voting for infrastructure? The @GOPLeader has once again abdicated his leadership to the insane asylum.

— Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦🇮🇱 (@AdamKinzinger) November 17, 2021

“Geraldo, you should apologize to this kid fer, fer really knockin’ on this kid for the fake 4chan, ah, ‘OK’ sign, white supremacy nonsense,” Fox host (and guy who wants you to know he’s a big Yankees fan.  Really big Yankees fan) Dan Bongino spittles at Geraldo Rivera.  “I can’t believe you fell for that ridiculous hoax that’s been debunked, like, 37 different ways from Sunday.  It’s the ‘OK’ sign.  It is not a sign of white supremacy.  That’s a 4chan hoax!  Look it up.  Everybody at home, look it up.”

Okay, Dan.  We looked it up.  It is a sign of hate groups.

An Axios article on Authorizations of Use of Military Force (AUMFs) details some pretty long-standing open season orders, most of them going back to the 20th Century in the Middle East, and Congress’s plan to repeal them, but what’s most interesting in the report is that technically the United States has been at war with France since 1798 and at any time President Biden (and all 44 of his predecessors) can legally order the Navy to open fire on any French flagged vessel. Even more interesting is that later AUMFs – against Tripoli in 1802 and Algeria in 1815 – were repealed by Congress in 1956. This is probably owing to the fact that at that time both were no longer sovereign states and were under French colonial control. Meaning Congress said “Hey these are redundant because they’re all France, so let’s repeal them but leave the main one on the books.”

So, to reiterate, 65 years ago Congress simply tidied up the paperwork on a state of open conflict with France rather than ending it. There is no similar open AUMF for Germany, Japan, North Korea, Vietnam, the Confederate States of America, Mexico, the UK, Spain, Italy, Serbia, Libya, Panama, or any of the other states still in existence or not that the United States has entered into open warfare with in the 223 years since the Washington Administration. Just France.

Politico:  “A federal judge poised to rule on former President Donald Trump’s effort to block Congress from obtaining his tax returns expressed skepticism Tuesday about the Justice Department’s abrupt reversal in the case after Trump left office. U.S. District Court Judge Trevor McFadden suggested it was strange that last July — about six months after President Joe Biden was sworn in — the Justice Department concluded the Treasury Department was legally obligated to fork over Trump’s tax returns to the House.

“That opinion reversed one DOJ issued in 2019 authorizing the Treasury Department to withhold the returns. McFadden, a Trump appointee, implied that the reversal was driven by politics and he said the new stance might dictate that Congress could be entitled not only to Biden’s returns — which have already been made public — but even the taxes filed by Biden’s son Hunter. ‘I mean if Congress changes hands in a couple years here and a Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee asked for Hunter Biden’s tax returns are [you] just going to say, “Oh sure, we’ve got to defer to Congress. They’ve said they’re interested in legislating on the presidential family. We’ve got to turn them over.” Is that going to be the administration’s position?’ the judge said.

“McFadden’s comments were the latest twist in a year’s long effort by the House to obtain Trump’s tax returns. After Biden took office, DOJ negotiated with the House and agreed to drop its objection to the House Ways and Means Committee’s bid for the documents. But DOJ agreed to continue litigating the case before handing the returns to the Democratic-led panel. Justice Department attorney James Gilligan said he couldn’t address the Hunter Biden hypothetical. ‘I’m just a career DOJ attorney. I don’t speak for the administration,’ Gilligan said. ‘You speak for the United States, though,’ the judge replied.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves calls for elimination of critical race theory in budget proposal https://t.co/dGRtYh3BR1

— Fox News (@FoxNews) November 17, 2021

Associated Press:  “Retired NFL player Brett Favre missed a deadline to pay $228,000 in interest on welfare money he was paid for a public speaking contract he did not fulfill, the Mississippi state auditor said Tuesday.  Auditor Shad White said he is turning the matter over to the state attorney general’s office, a month after sending a demand letter to Favre. White said the attorney general is in charge of enforcing unmet auditor’s demands.

“’My understanding is the AG and the Department of Human Services have given authority to a private attorney to recoup the misspent money,’ White wrote on Twitter. ‘We have been in contact with that attorney and will provide him any information he needs.’  Favre is not facing criminal charges, but the leader of the organization that paid him is awaiting trial in one of Mississippi’s largest embezzlement cases.

“The Associated Press left a phone message for Favre at his Mississippi business office Tuesday evening. Favre did not immediately respond to that, and he did not immediately respond to White on Twitter.  Favre and White feuded Oct. 29 over the auditor saying Favre failed to make speeches after being paid by welfare money. The Twitter spat happened days after Favre repaid $600,000 to the state — the last portion of the $1.1 million that the auditor said Favre received from a nonprofit organization that used money intended to help needy people in one of the poorest states in the U.S. The auditor said Favre still owes $228,000 in interest.”

NBC News:  Hollywood studio Miramax filed a lawsuit Tuesday against director Quentin Tarantino over his plans to sell digital collectibles based on his 1994 film ‘Pulp Fiction.’ Tarantino recently announced he will sell a series of unique, non-fungible tokens (NFTs) based on his handwritten screenplay for the 1995 Palme d’Or winner, a movie described by the Cannes film festival as a set of ‘dime-store stories set in lowlife LA.’

A website for the NFT sales states they will include a digital version of the film’s profane, ‘iconic “Royale with Cheese” scene,’ as well as a recording of Tarantino revealing “secrets” about the project. The lawsuit from Miramax, which produced the film and is owned by Bein Media Group and ViacomCBS, alleges Tarantino also plans to sell NFTs of page scans and digital film props. Tarantino’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

“According to the suits, which seeks unspecified damages, a lawyer for the director responded to Miramax’s Nov. 4 cease-and-desist letter by saying he holds reserved rights to print publication of the script. Miramax argued in the suit that print publication and NTFs are not the same. ‘The proposed sale of a few original script pages or scenes as an NFT is a one-time transaction, which does not constitute publication, and in any event does not fall within the intended meaning of ‘print publication’ or “screenplay publication,”‘ the suit states. ‘The right to sell NFTs of such excerpts of any version of the screenplay to Pulp Fiction is owned and controlled by Miramax.'”

“O thy wretched epoch, eclipsed into shroud the just and decent king of all. Curse be to the furies that conspired to end thou reign! Move from this perch and easel I shall not until the glory and righteousness be portrayed to its fullness – Bah! Is impossible! My two pence be paid to the ferryman much sooner, natheless my brush shall not be stilled until a moment before!” is the kind of thing we like to imagine this Jon McNaughton asshat saying to himself in his dimly lit garage as he continues to churn out this stupid bullshit, of which the above is one of the least dumb.