“Initially, believing in Q felt amazing, like being in some sort of mystical state or euphoria. For about six weeks, my fears about impending doom because of Covid-19, climate change and what I perceived as the threat of fascism were gone. The world felt safe and I felt energized, confident, creative and brimming with love. I’m not religious, but I kept thinking ‘Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God.’ I heard ‘Amazing Grace’ playing in my mind. I was so relieved to stop hating Trump, whom I used to see as racist, sexist and a Hitler-wannabe”

– Brief excerpt from the Politico Magazine story “QAnon Almost Destroyed My Relationship. Then My Relationship Saved Me From QAnon“, published Friday, written by a pseudonymous California woman and Bernie Sanders fan. She writes her Bernie fandom had somewhat predisposed her to conspiratorial thinking about “the establishment” and made her ripe for QAnon indoctrination.

On Friday the Texas Tribune reported Low Energy Greg is still trying to get a wall built between Mexico and Texas. He’ll get two miles for $25 million, and while the story isn’t totally clear on the point, it seems that, because this stretch of the border abuts a state highway, this “wall” is actually a repurposed design for a concrete highway median barrier and the funds to pay for the labor and materials are coming out of the Texas Department of Transportation’s budget.

The plan is stupid, and a waste of taxpayer resources on MAGA bullshit, but “creative” in its own way. Not being the federal government, and unable to print money to pay for such a major project, Abbott’s Texas government is forced to rely on what resources they have – and donations from the public – to try to press forward and get the job done. Shoes on the other feet, if this were a Blue State circa 2018 getting screwed by Trump out of a legitimately necessary public works project and that governor made similar moves to get it done, we’d laud the creativity here.

https://youtu.be/Kb2C8VokO58

“After just over a week in session, Ware County Schools made the decision Friday to put the school year on hold following a ‘sharp increase’ in the number of positive COVID-19 cases reported among students and staff. The Ware County School System said in an email to parents it will temporarily cease daily operations for traditional and digital students in all 11 schools and most staff members through Aug. 27 and students won’t return to school until Sept. 7.”

“During the pause, instruction will take place, but in-season extracurricular practices and competitions will continue as scheduled. As of Friday, the school district there were 76 students with a positive case who have attended school during the exposure period and another 679 students who have been quarantined out of 5,900 total students. Out of 950 school employees, 67 are currently positive with the virus and another 150 have been quarantined” News4Jax reports.

“The likes and shares earned by expressions of online outrage teach users to post more angry sentiments, a Yale University study out Friday shows. Social media amplification of moral outrage can play a crucial role in spreading misinformation or political polarization. Yale researchers measured expressions of moral outrage on Twitter studying real-life controversial events, such as the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, using machine learning to develop a classifier that could label some 12 million tweets. They also studied subjects in a simulated Twitter experiment designed to test whether algorithms, which reward users for posting popular content, encourage expressions of outrage” – Axios.

July 2021 will go down in record books as the hottest month ever recorded, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration which calculated the planet heated up more than a degree and a half.

“In this case, first place is the worst place to be,” said NOAA Administrator Rick Spinrad, Ph.D. “July is typically the world’s warmest month of the year, but July 2021 outdid itself as the hottest July and month ever recorded. This new record adds to the disturbing and disruptive path that climate change has set for the globe.”

The record temperatures, combined with other globally-hot months to start the year, means that 2021 is on pace to be one of top ten hottest years recorded.  Among the findings from NOAA:

New York Times: “The leader of the New York State Assembly announced on Friday that lawmakers will suspend their ongoing impeachment investigation into Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, following his resignation earlier this week over sexual harassment allegations. Carl E. Heastie, the speaker of the Assembly, said the impeachment inquiry was now moot since its main objective was to determine whether Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, should remain in office. Mr. Heastie, a Bronx Democrat, also said he believed lawmakers did not have the constitutional authority to impeach a governor who was no longer in office. Mr. Heastie said that the impeachment investigation, which was being led by the Judiciary Committee, ‘did uncover credible evidence in relation to allegations that have been made in reference to the governor.'”

Voice of America’s Steve Herman reports First Lady Dr Jill Biden was spotted by members of the White House press pool as wearing a medical boot Friday afternoon, an obvious sign that Dr Biden was feigning injury to hide an ankle monitor from media camera crews. What exactly the ankle monitor is for is unknown, but let’s go ahead and jump to the conclusion that Dr Biden was forced to wear it by a secret military tribunal judge while she’s out on bail awaiting a secret trial on child sacrifice charges, because that’s always what’s happening when certain public figures are spotted wearing medical boots. Or microphone equipment. Or if they travel to Greece.

US Department of Justice Special Counsel John Durham is reportedly presenting evidence to a grand jury on Friday as he seeks indictments against some low-level FBI employees and non-government persons as part of his 28-month probe into law enforcement misconduct during the Bureau’s Russia investigation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Durham’s investigation started in May 2019 as a Republican response to the Mueller report, which identified ten separate incidents of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump and outlined efforts of the 2016 Trump campaign to gain assistance from the Russian government.

The move may have more to do with continuing funding for Durham’s investigation rather than any actual findings:  Durham had to file a progress report by July 1st in order to secure funding in the next fiscal year from the Justice Department.

What time is Trump being sworn in today? I forget.

— E. Jean Carroll (@ejeancarroll) August 13, 2021

AP: “A federal judge is refusing landlords’ request to put the Biden administration’s new eviction moratorium on hold, though she made clear she thinks it’s illegal. U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich on Friday said her ‘hands are tied’ by an appellate ruling the last time courts considered the evictions moratorium in the spring. Alabama landlords who are challenging the moratorium are likely to appeal. Friedrich wrote that the new temporary ban on evictions the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed last week is substantially similar to the version she ruled was illegal in May. At the time, Freidrich put her ruling on hold to allow the administration to appeal.”

“This time, she said, she is bound to follow a ruling from the appeals court that sits above her, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. If the D.C. Circuit doesn’t give the landlords what they want, they are expected to seek Supreme Court involvement. In late June, the high court refused by a 5-4 vote to allow evictions to resume. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, part of the slim majority, said he agreed with Friedrich, but was voting to keep the moratorium in place because it was set to expire at the end of July.”

https://youtu.be/_RAjp7A3VDw

(UPDATE 12:20 p.m. ET):  The stealth takeover of the Executive Branch has either been exceptionally stealth or non-existent.  No speech.  No fireworks.  No moving van taking Bidens’ stuff out of the residence.  Just an elderly man with hair dye running off his scalp sobbing quietly on Pennsylvania Avenue.  (He must be a mental patient because his handler is referring to him as “Mr. Mayor.”)  NatZero intrepid reporter signing off.

CNN: “The Biden administration is receiving regular intelligence reports indicating Russian efforts to interfere in US elections are evolving and ongoing, current and former officials say, and in fact, never stopped, despite President Joe Biden’s warnings to Russian President Vladimir Putin over the summer and a new round of sanctions imposed in the spring. Biden made deliberate mention of Russia’s operations two weeks ago when he revealed in public remarks to the intelligence community that that he had received fresh intelligence about ‘what Russia’s doing already about the 2022 election and misinformation’ in his daily intelligence briefing that day.”

“‘It’s a pure violation of our sovereignty,’ Biden said at the time. One of the people familiar with the matter confirmed that there have been recent intelligence reports about what the Russians are up to, particularly their efforts to sow disinformation on social media and weaponize US media outlets for propaganda purposes. There are some indications that Moscow is now attempting to capitalize on the debate raging inside the US over vaccines and masking, other sources told CNN. Sources closely tracking Russian activity say that Moscow’s tactics are evolving and are more sophisticated than their early 2016 efforts, which included easy-to-trace efforts like buying Facebook ads. They also emphasize that elections are not Moscow’s only target. ‘There’s definitely a spike in activity around elections – they do take an interest in down-ballot races – but the activity is sustained,’ said Emily Harding, who was the deputy staff director for the Senate Intelligence Committee until this spring. ‘It never really stopped, and we should not be linking our attention or efforts to the election cycle, because they’re not.'”

In more than 1,250 pages of correspondence obtained by the Tampa Bay Times, Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Fox News coordinated their efforts to broadcast stories to put DeSantis’ disastrous coronavirus response into a positive light, including staging promotional events that only Fox News was invited to cover.

One of the frontrunners for the GOP 2024 Republican presidential nomination, DeSantis is overseeing a state that is single-handedly accounting for 20% of new coronavirus cases in the United States.  Hospitals in Florida are nearing capacity, and the state recently received 300 ventilators from the federal government, a fact DeSantis claimed he had no knowledge of.

For Fox News, however, DeSantis has become the poster boy for its “freedom” talking point, bullying local governments to abandon masking and public health restrictions as the delta variant sweeps through the state.  Nary a critical word of Florida’s case spike is heard on the network, but DeSantis is a fixture on the network, which heaps praise on the politician.

New York City Republican mayoral nominee and founder of the Guardian Angels civilian street patrol organization, Curtis Sliwa, claims he’s being embargoed by CNN in both appearances in coverage over his calls for nighttime CNN host Chris Cuomo, younger brother of soon-to-be-ex-Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, to quit the network over questions of improper coverage and personal involvement by the younger Cuomo in the sexual harassment scandals that brought down his older brother’s governorship, Fox News reported Friday, including the quote “I basically signed my death warrant,” by Sliwa. Whether this was meant to imply belief that CNN is going to kill Sliwa himself or was mere hyperbole about his political prospects was unclear.

“If I lit myself up on 10th Avenue and poured gasoline on myself and lit a match to myself, I still wouldn’t get a mention on CNN” Sliwa also told Fox News, so probably hyperbole. Maybe.

Sliwa told Fox News he stomped into the lobby of CNN’s headquarters in New York City carrying a letter addressed to CNN president Jeff Zucker demanding Chris Cuomo’s resignation. He was then told by one of Zucker’s assistants they would make sure the letter made it to Zucker’s desk. Whether Sliwa was then forcibly ejected by security or left of his own accord is unclear.

A search of “Curtis Sliwa” on CNN.com shows the most recent appearance Sliwa made on the network’s television coverage was in 2012, which strongly suggests Sliwa is full of shit and/or delusional in his claim that his lack of CNN on-camera appearances is retaliatory. There’s also that Dem rival and presumptive next NYC mayor Eric Adams had one appearance on Jake Tapper’s show over a month ago, and while one is more than zero, CNN isn’t exactly wall-to-wall on Adams either. Finally there’s the fact that this Fox News and Curtis Sliwa co-produced Jeremiad contains exactly jack shit about Sliwa’s campaign and his plans for the city should he win.

“Tragic mess in Afghanistan, a completely open and broken Border, Crime at record levels, oil prices through the roof, inflation rising, and taken advantage of by the entire world – DO YOU MISS ME YET?” asks the Orange God Emperor in yet another statement. What’s missing here is what Trump’s plans are for his new administration, why he isn’t in Washington DC to retake the Oath of Office, and what’s going to happen to Joe Biden and all the other RINOs and Dems.

https://youtu.be/AwXf8SZZifg

I mean, this guy guarantees it’s going to happen, so why isn’t Trump telling us what the plan is? Even just some basic details for his new cabinet would be helpful. Should Patriots nationwide mobilize to save America from the woke socialists and the Deep State when they try to fight back? And should Trump somehow not return to the presidency on Friday, what is the next date to look forward to? Is it tomorrow? Is it next month? November? What day on the calendar should Patriots build up their expectations for in the very unlikely event they’re somehow let down on Friday?

Former Wisconsin state Supreme Court justice Michael Gableman, recently appointed by State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to conduct a “review” of the 2020 election was in the audience at MyPillow assclown Mike Lindell’s failed “Cyber Symposium” in Sioux Falls, South Dakota for at least one of the three days the show went on this week, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

When asked via text message by a Journal-Sentinel reporter why he was there, Gableman replied “Stop calling me. Stop texting me.” Gableman also recently went on Hajj to Arizona to meet with the Cyber Ninjas and other fellow insufferable assholes dragging out their own misery over Trump’s loss. Per the Journal-Sentinel, Wisconsin taxpayers foot the bill for Gableman’s interstate outings to the tune of an $11,000 per month travel stipend, allocated by the state assembly.

Other Wisconsin GOP figures in attendance at Lindell’s apocalyptic death cult gathering included State Assembly Rep Timothy Ramthun (who spoke on stage), and Wisconsin Elections Commission member Bob Spindell, famous for “advising” 2020 Green Party presidential candidate Howie Hawkins on how to get on the ballot in the state in 2020 (he failed) and being the only one of six state election commissioners, including two other Republicans, to vote in favor of allowing Kanye West on to the 2020 ballot after the dumbass GOP lawyers delivered their scam ballot access petition paperwork two minutes after 5:00 pm on the final date state election laws allowed submissions. In casting his vote in favor of West’s case, Spindell argued he wanted to give Black Wisconsinites more choices on their ballots and didn’t mind his lawyers were too late.

“The Broward Teachers Union confirmed Thursday that three teachers and a teacher’s assistant have died from COVID-19 within the last two days. Union president Anna Fusco said those teachers were on summer break when they got the virus” NBC Miami reports.

“Their colleagues learned of the sad news on Wednesday when teachers returned to the classroom to prepare for the kids to come to next week. Fusco said at least three of the four were not vaccinated, but one had been recently cleared by a doctor to get the vaccine. ‘It really hits because we’ve been in this conversation about masking up in schools; our own elected governor acting like masks are not necessary,’ said Fusco. She also told NBC 6 that there is a teacher assistant currently in the hospital battling COVID. Just this week, the Broward County Public Schools board voted to require masks in school and defy Gov. Ron DeSantis’ ban on mask mandates.”

“A Tropical Storm Warning has been issued for the Florida Keys as Tropical Depression Fred drenches portions of Cuba with heavy rain. As of 8 a.m. Friday, Fred was 315 miles east-southeast of Key West. The depression was moving toward the west-northwest near 10 mph and this general motion is expected through Friday. A turn toward the northwest is expected Friday night or Saturday. On the forecast track, Fred is expected to move along or just north of eastern and central Cuba through Friday night, be near the Florida Keys on Saturday, and near the west coast of Florida on Sunday. Maximum sustained winds are near 35 mph with higher gusts.”

“Slow strengthening is expected during the next couple of days and Fred could become a tropical storm again on Friday. A Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for the Florida Keys west of Ocean Reef to the Dry Tortugas and Florida Bay. There is also a Tropical Storm Watch in effect for the southwest coast of Florida from Englewood south and east to Ocean Reef and the Cuban provinces of Ciego de Avila, Camaguey, Las Tunas, Holguin, and Granma.” – CBS Miami.

Daily Beast: “The man suspected of killing five people before turning the gun on himself in a mass shooting in England on Thursday night was a Trump supporter who posted about ‘devil worshipers’ and pedophiles in government. The suspected shooter has been named locally as Jake Davison, a 23-year-old who is reported to have worked as a scaffolder. Davison allegedly killed three females and two males – including one child – in the port city of Plymouth in the worst mass shooting in Britain since 2010. Before the shooting, he expressed his support for Donald Trump on his Facebook page and posted multiple self-pitying YouTube videos about how he looked, often using language common in the incel community. On his Facebook page, Davison claimed to be from Arizona, but his distinctive accent is typical of people from the south-west of England.”

“In one post from 2018, Davison shared a Trump quote and, when his friends ridiculed him in the comments, he hit back: ‘Trump has proved time and time again he is indeed for the people. You may not agree with his political views (I do) but he is different from the scum like Hillary or the people running our country like the neo-con sellout that is [then-British Prime Minister] Theresa May.’ Further down in the comments, Davison wrote about conspiracy theories that sound similar to those pushed by QAnon believers, writing: ‘Scepticism of government is key and everyone should be ready and prepared for anything bad that could happen. I am aware much of the government is deeply flawed there are many paedophiles and even reported devil worshipers people that sell us out to foreign countries.'”