Ford Motor Co. announced Monday it and a South Korean partner will build three battery factories in Kentucky and Tennessee, adding 10,800 jobs, to bolster its planned future electric car manufacturing, the Associated Press reports.

The manufacturing operation is the single largest manufacturing commitment in the United States Ford has ever announced in its 118 year history.  With SK Innovation of South Korea, Ford will spend more than $11 billion total.  The Stanton, Tennessee facility will make an electric F150 pickup.  A joint venture known as BlueOvalSK will build battery factories in Glendale, Kentucky and Stanton.

Ford will not commit to having the factories be union shops, with CEO Jim Farley saying, “We love our UAW partners,” Farley said. “They’ve been incredible on this journey of electrification so far. But it’s up to the employees to decide.”

In a sign that they’re willing to let the country burn to demonstrate their power, Senate Republicans killed a bill that would have funded the government, raised the debt ceiling, avoided a government shutdown, and provided hurricane relief, the Washington Post reports.

The failure of the bill at Republican hands forces Democrats to scramble to find a way to continue funding the government after the midnight Thursday deadline.  Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced no Republicans would support the bill so long as it raised the debt ceiling.  Republicans have falsely stated that a debt ceiling increase would allow President Joe Biden to spend more when, in fact, the debt ceiling assures debts previously incurred by the federal government.

“We will support a clean continuing resolution that will prevent a government shutdown,” said McConnell. “We will not provide Republican votes for raising the debt limit.”  The bill had passed the Democratic-led House last week on a party-line vote.

Government is not God.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) September 27, 2021

The Congressional Committee investigating Donald Trump’s attempted coup on January 6th of 2021 has released their first round of subpeonas, and the Biden Administration replied to the news by announcing that they would be releasing all they can about the events of that day. Former President Donald Trump responded by saying that he would claim Executive Privilege to prevent the release of any materials to the public. There are several flaws with Trump’s legal strategy. The Supreme Court ruled that in United States v. Nixon that when there is probable cause to believe that a crime has been committed and that a President may have violated his oath of office, that Executive Privilege and Presidential Immunity are not absolute. The court further elaborated in Clinton v. Jones that Presidential immunity from prosecution does not apply to unofficial acts unrelated to one’s office.

Listen I get it. I signed up for this job. But now the media is trying to destroy my children. This story is just another example of the double standard that exists with the media… going after conservatives and their kids while ignoring Liberals #AskTheBigGuy

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) September 27, 2021

“Just eight months ago, the whole world knew that if you illegally violated America’s borders, no matter where you came from, you’d be immediately caught, promptly detained, and swiftly removed – perfect precision clockwork. Our border was the envy of nations. Now, our border is the laughingstock of the globe. Anyone, from anywhere, can just illegally walk across our border, turn themselves in, and then be on to the city of their choice. No testing, no masking, no mandates. Free healthcare, deliveries, and medical services in our emergency rooms, all paid for by taxpayers. Drugs pour through like water. Our border agents are disrespected, denigrated, and demoralized. ”

“Now, news reports indicate another 20,000 Haitians are staged in Columbia preparing to make the trek to our Southern Border. But that’s just the beginning. Wave after wave are heading our way, INVITED here to break our laws by Biden, Mayorkas, and the Marxist Democrats. Indeed, at this very moment, House Democrats are preparing to pass a Reconciliation Bill that includes total amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, and removes all limits on green cards and chain migration. Democrats are playing for keeps – Republicans better fight hard, fight strong, and stay united for America, or we won’t have a Country left” wails the Orange God Emperor, who just completely made that shit up about free healthcare and amnesty in a reconciliation bill.

“Maricopa County judge strikes down Arizona ban on face-mask mandates as unconstitutional. Ban was to have taken effect Wednesday. Ruling affects several other pending laws” reports KNPX’s Brahm Reznik and of course it had to be the “no you can’t see ‘the routers‘, fuck off, and oh by the way Biden won more votes than we originally tallied, lol” county.

Aaron Blake, The Washington Post:  “Gallup asked people two questions: First, ‘what percentage of unvaccinated people have been hospitalized due to the coronavirus?’ And second, ‘what percentage of fully vaccinated people have been hospitalized due to the coronavirus?’  Americans as a whole are actually reasonably well-informed about this. The median American — that is, the person exactly at the midpoint of all views — estimates the vaccines’ efficacy in preventing hospitalization is 80 percent (i.e. they say 20 percent of unvaccinated people require hospital care vs. 2 percent of vaccinated people). A study released this month showed the number is actually about 86 percent.

“Among Democrats, the median view of the vaccines’ efficacy is about right for both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The median vaccinated Democrat says the vaccines are about 88 percent effective at reducing hospitalizations, while the median unvaccinated Democrats pegs the number at 80 percent. The median vaccinated Republican is less sold on the efficacy of the vaccines even than the median unvaccinated Democrat, estimating a 73 percent reduction in hospitalization from the vaccines they’ve taken. But again, that’s in the ballpark.

“Which brings us to unvaccinated Republicans. The median unvaccinated Republican believes that the percentage of unvaccinated people like themselves requiring hospitalization is 5 percent. How does that compare to how they believe the vaccinated fare? It’s exactly the same. They believe the hospitalization rate for vaccinated people is also 5 percent. So the median unvaccinated Republican essentially says the vaccines have net-zero efficacy — i.e. there is no benefit to getting vaccinated when it comes to landing in the hospital.”

“DARPA’S Hypersonic Air-breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) Achieves Successful Flight Test advances goal to transfer technology to U.S. Air Force as program of record DARPA, in partnership with the U.S. Air Force, completed a free flight test of its Hypersonic Air- breathing Weapon Concept (HAWC) last week. The missile, built by Raytheon Technologies, was released from an aircraft seconds before its Northrop Grumman scramjet (supersonic combustion ramjet) engine kicked on. The engine compressed incoming air mixed with its hydrocarbon fuel and began igniting that fast-moving airflow mixture, propelling the cruiser at a speed greater than Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound). The HAWC vehicle operates best in oxygen-rich atmosphere, where speed and maneuverability make it difficult to detect in a timely way. It could strike targets much more quickly than subsonic missiles and has significant kinetic energy even without high explosives.”

“‘The HAWC free flight test was a successful demonstration of the capabilities that will make hypersonic cruise missiles a highly effective tool for our warfighters,’ said Andrew ‘Tippy’ Knoedler, HAWC program manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office. ‘This brings us one step closer to transitioning HAWC to a program of record that offers next generation capability to the U.S military. ‘ Goals of the mission were: vehicle integration and release sequence, safe separation from the launch aircraft, booster ignition and boost, booster separation and engine ignition, and cruise. All primary test objectives were met” – Department of Defense press release.

Entertainer R. Kelly was found guilty Monday of all nine racketeering he faced in a federal courtroom in New York City, bringing an end to a six-week trial that produced horrific claims of sexual exploitation by the singer/songwriter, the Associated Press reports.

The 54-year-old Kelly, whose full name is Robert Sylvester Kelly, had been accused for decades of sexually assaulting young women and girls.  He had been acquitted in a 2008 trial of more than a dozen counts relating to child pornography.  He is facing additional federal charges for child sex trafficking, producing child pornography, forced labor and other charges from a 2019 indictment in his hometown of Chicago.

With an unfortunate nickname of the “Pied Piper of R&B,” Kelly is best known for his song, “I Believe I Can Fly,” a song from the Space Jam soundtrack that reached number 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 in 1996.

What Could Cause a Government Shutdown and What Is the Debt Ceiling? https://t.co/NXHP6i2kkK

— NBC 6 South Florida (@nbc6) September 27, 2021

“This isn’t a comeback story – not yet. This is about how New Yorkers are carrying on after we lost 34,000 of our neighbors and were left to pile our dead in refrigerated trailers. This is about what we have left. And it’s about how so many around the country have learned so little from our grief. Early in the pandemic, when New York City was the epicenter of Covid in the United States, large swaths of the country looked on at our suffering but apparently found it impossible to see themselves in us. How many lives could have been saved if they had? New York City has always been, for some Americans, a punching bag. They mock our (mostly) liberal politics and wonder why we’d want to live in what they imagine to be a dystopian urban wasteland.”

“They call us sinners and tell us to find Republican religion. Every decade or so, they pronounce us dead. Like most haters, they’re obsessed with us. Eighteen months after the pandemic began in the United States, New York City is a far safer place to be than much of the country. We still have a lot of work to do, but most of our million-plus students are back in school. Nearly 75 percent of adults are fully vaccinated. It is the people who live here who deserve credit for getting us to this point: the residents who got vaccinated, who ate outside in the dead of winter, who canceled birthday parties and held Zoom weddings and holiday meals. It is painful to sit in New York, after all we went through, and watch the preventable tragedy unfolding in many parts of the country. Idaho hospitals are being instructed to ration care if needed. In the past two weeks, Alabama has reported more deaths per capita than any other state” – Marcia Gay, New York Times.

Days after her 26-year-old daughter was denied a real estate appraiser’s license by a state agency, Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem summoned the regulator, her boss and the state’s labor secretary to the governor’s office for a meeting which her daughter attended, the Associated Press reports.

Four months later, after Noem’s daughter Kassidy Peters successfully completed the needed work to obtain her license, the labor secretary demanded the agency head, 70-year-old Sherry Bren, submit her resignation, prompting a lawsuit that resulted in a $200,000 age discrimination settlement for the supervisor.

Peters originally applied for a license to become a certified real estate appraiser in September 2019, about three years after starting as an entry-level state-registered appraiser, but the application was denied by a review panel because the submitted application contained sample appraisals that did not meet the standards required.  South Dakota does not establish its own standards; instead, it uses national standards from professional organizations as its benchmark, and Peters’ work did not qualify. 

Marc Elias: “Donald Trump is the Republican Party’s useful idiot. He was their useful idiot when he turned over the selection of federal judgeships to the Federalist Society. He was a useful idiot when he became the improbable candidate of the white evangelical movement. But, nowhere has his idiocy paid greater dividends for the Republican Party than in his contributions to voter suppression and undermining elections. He was the GOP’s useful idiot when he refused to concede an election that Republicans knew that he lost. By doing so, he deprived President Biden of the traditional transition and, more importantly, slowed the momentum a new administration needs to set the public agenda and move their people into agencies. Commentators correctly criticized his allies and his legal team when they unleashed frivolous lawsuits aimed at the outcome of the election.”

“In hindsight, the Republican Party’s interest in those bizarre courtroom displays was as much about undermining confidence in the election process moving forward as it was about reversing the results. By undermining confidence in our elections, Republicans achieve several interrelated goals. First, Republicans want to create a sense of grievance among voters to motivate them to turn out in 2022 when Trump will not be on the ballot. Second, the GOP wants to offer its supporters and elected officials excuses to further limit voting rights under the guise of ‘security.’ Third, Republicans want to normalize the abnormal by making frivolous claims debatable and despicable political figures more mainstream. Finally, the party wants to create a sense that the outcome of elections is unknowable and subject to different interpretations depending on who counts the ballots, setting up the argument that state legislatures and partisan officials should step in and decide close elections.”

We are so grateful for all of the support from GEORGIA this weekend at the rally! Our first end of quarter deadline is coming up, please consider helping our campaign so we can fight for YOU and our great state. Anything helps! https://t.co/y4a8FXa1rd pic.twitter.com/Sw9osIsftQ

— Herschel Walker (@HerschelWalker) September 27, 2021

Dem Congresswoman Karen Bass’s site KarenBass.com has been retooled for a mayoral campaign.

John Hinckley, who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981, will be granted an unconditional release from prison effective June 2022 providing he continues to meet criteria in the next nine months, a federal judge announced Monday morning, the Washington Post reports.

To qualify, Hinckley, who has been living in supervised release in Virginia since 2016, must adhere to provisions he has met since his release from a mental hospital.  Prosecutors and case supervisors must sign off on the release, but the court will have no role in future judgements.

“At this point the ball is in Mr. Hinckley’s hands. The government agrees if the continues to do what he is doing between now and June 2020, he would be granted his unconditional release,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kacie Weston said.

Republican Utah Senator Mike Lee has introduced seven bills designed to revoke power of the Executive Branch to incentivize people to get the coronavirus vaccine through workplace mandates in a lonely effort to weaken vaccination promotion, the Salt Lake City Tribune reports.

The bills range in scope from stopping vaccine mandates by allowing people to sue the federal government over them, to stoking fears about them by requiring the Food and Drug Administration to disclose all potential side effects no matter how small or unlikely.  Lee also introduced a bill to exempt people from any government coronavirus vaccine mandates based on broad and unverifiable “personal beliefs” such as political suspicion about the efficacy of the vaccine.

Lee’s efforts, which have yet to attract a co-sponsor for any of the bills, likely demonstrate Lee’s fears that ongoing court challenges to vaccine mandates implemented by federal, state and local governments will fail, requiring Congress to pass laws that give anti-vaxxers bases for which to sue on other grounds.  None of the bills appear to have enough support to pass the Senate.

“In darker corners of the internet, Brian Laundrie is a victim of domestic violence, a symbol of bias against men when it comes to abuse accusations from women, and a poster boy for how bald men are treated as second-class citizens. And to those in the QAnon set, the 23-year-old person of interest in the death of Gabby Petito is merely the fall guy in a vast conspiracy meant to distract from criticism over President Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.”

“A site in the Reddit underworld, r/FriendsofBrian, is attracting trolls, Petito supporters, and men’s rights adherents. ‘Is Brian not attractive enough for gabby cultist (observation),’ read one headline from an apparent edgelord. The post continued, ‘One has to wonder if there is body shaming at play here. Brian is being accused of killing Gabby (with no evidence of doing so) and brians name is being dragged through dirt. These same people will watch a Ted bundy documentary and fawn and swoon’” reports The Daily Beast.