https://youtu.be/RS-DXFQ8EQw

North Carolina Congressman and documented tree abuser Madison Cawthorn (Q-NC) attended a school board meeting in Buncombe, North Carolina to tell them how to run their schools.  Cawthorn–who failed out of a low-ranked college after falsely claiming he had been accepted to the US Naval Academy–said the school board will “muzzle [parents’] voice just like you muzzled our children.”  (Cawthorn has no children of his own, despite allegations that he’s tried to force himself on various women.)

Cawthorn claimed the school mask mandate passed by the board would impact the children’s “psyche-logical development”–and he likely knows something about stunted emotional growth.

Oh, and Buncombe isn’t in Cawthorn’s district. It’s in the 10th District; Cawthorn represents the 11th District. He’s only one off.

The International Olympics Committee revoked the credentials of two Belarusan coaches in the wake of an accusation from a Belarusan runner that she was being kidnapped and taken to the Tokyo airport, the Associated Press reports.

The coaches, Artur Shimak and Yury Maisevich, reportedly tried to force sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya onto a flight back to Belarus after the woman complained about the coaching of the Olympic team.  She was assisted by security officers at the airport, who took them out of the custody of the two men.

“The two coaches were requested to leave the Olympic Village immediately and have done so,” the IOC said, saying it acted “in the interest of the wellbeing of the athletes.”  Tsimanouskaya received a humanitarian visa from Poland and is currently in that county.

https://youtu.be/cqYJ4x2h0-U

“I mean, Joe Biden’s only legacy, Sean, at this point, is going to be showing America how good they actually had it under Donald Trump,” Junior says, completely aware that that’s not close to reality.

Cocaine really *is* a helluva drug.

The 750-megawatt hydroelectric plant at Lake Oroville in California went offline for the first time in its 54-year-history Thursday after the water level in the lake fell too low for it to operate, Politico reports.

The Edward Hyatt Powerplant, an underground hydroelectric power plant that’s part of the Oroville-Termalito Complex, automatically as the state’s second largest reservoir fell below 642 feet of water.  The plant can’t produce power when the water level falls below 630 to 640 feet.

“DWR anticipated this moment, and the state has planned for its loss in both water and grid management,” state Department of Water Resources Director Karla Nemeth said in a statement.

Washington Post: “The Biden administration is considering using federal regulatory powers and the threat of withholding federal funds from institutions to push more Americans to get vaccinated – a huge potential shift in the fight against the virus and a far more muscular approach to getting shots into arms, according to four people familiar with the deliberations The effort could apply to institutions as varied as long-term-care facilities, cruise ships and universities, potentially impacting millions of Americans, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive conversations. The conversations are in the early phases and no firm decisions have been made, the people said. One outside lawyer in touch with the Biden administration on the issue is recommending that the president use federal powers sparingly.”

“Let me be clear — we have a zero tolerance policy on this,” CNN president Jeff Zucker wrote in a company-wide memo Thursday after three employees were fired for showing up at corporate offices in Atlanta although they weren’t vaccinated.

The Associated Press reports that CNN allowed employees to come back to the office or go out on field assignments with other staff only if they were vaccinated.  The three reportedly arrived at the Atlanta offices of the news network.

CNN recently announced that its plan to bring its workforce back in mid-September have been pushed back to at least mid-October.  A mask mandate will be in place for all CNN offices.

“Texas nurse Jenna Price gets half a dozen solicitations a day from hospitals and staffing agencies that want to pay her four times her current salary to leave her job at a suburban Central Texas emergency room and take a temporary assignment in another hospital that needs nurses. ‘The money is ridiculous,’ Price said. Not to mention tempting – especially after the most traumatic year of her career on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic” the Texas Tribune reports.

In Texas, where hospitals are struggling with historically low staffing levels while hospitalizations from the COVID-19 delta variant are skyrocketing, nurses like Price are a hot commodity. There are 23,000 more unfilled jobs in Texas for registered nurses than there are nurses seeking to fill them, according to a labor analysis by the Texas Workforce Commission. ‘There’s no pipeline of staff that we see ready to just hop in and start helping,’ said Carrie Kroll, vice president of advocacy, quality and public health at the Texas Hospital Association. Burnout is causing nurses of all specialties to leave the profession in droves – or to accept better paying nursing jobs in an increasingly competitive market, nurses and hospital officials say.

Brooklyn-bound B D trains are getting back on schedule after a lost child was reunited with their group at 7 Av. https://t.co/nqpncxZDvj

— NYCT Subway (@NYCTSubway) August 5, 2021

The Hill “Changing America”: “The winner of Florida’s annual burmese python hunt, a government-sponsored program that enlists the aid of novice and professional hunters alike, nabbed more than three dozen pythons. Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that over a ten-day period in July, more than 600 hunters removed 223 invasive pythons from South Florida, The Miami Herald reported. Invasive Burmese pythons have wreaked havoc in the Everglades, negatively impacting native ecosystem and biodiversity,’ DeSantis tweeted. ‘At my direction, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the South Florida Water Management District have taken steps to increase python removal, and this year’s successful python challenge is an example of these efforts'”.

Charlie Dachton, a novice hunter, took home the $10,000 grand prize, removing 41 pythons. Female burmese pythons can lay between 50 and 100 eggs at a time, and Dachton, with the help of his son, came across a nest containing 22 eggs, according to The Herald. Burmese pythons are one of the ‘most concerning invasive species’ that compete with native wildlife for food in Everglades National Park, according to the US Geological Survey. The USGS estimates that tens of thousands of Pythons inhabit southern Florida. A Burmese python can grow up to 26 feet long and weigh more than 200 pounds, but the average python in Florida is around 8 to 10 feet, according to the FWC. The pythons are not a protected species and can be killed year round in Florida without a permit.”

“Vandals hit a Sikh temple under construction on Long Island earlier this week, spray painting messages of intolerance. But as CBS2’s Jessica Moore reported Thursday, the community is determined to turn the the moment of hate into awareness. The pristine white fence shrouding the new Sikh gurdwara, or house of worship, in the village of New Hyde Park is now covered in black graffiti. Messages ranging from benign words like ‘Hi there’ to racial slurs, religious and political phrases referencing Jesus as the only God, and former President Trump. ‘The Sikh community is deeply saddened by this act of hate,’ said Sahej Preet Singh of the Sikh Coalition” – WCBS.

CNN: “Prosecutors in Georgia are still investigating whether former President Donald Trump broke any laws when he tried to overturn his 2020 defeat in the hotly contested state. The probe ramped up earlier this year, with a grand jury convening in Atlanta. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has said the criminal investigation includes potential ‘solicitation of election fraud, the making of false statements to state and local governmental bodies, conspiracy, racketeering, violation of oath of office and any involvement in violence or threats related to the election’s administration.'”

“Months after the election, new information is still coming to light about Trump’s potentially unlawful effort to overturn the results. Recent reports indicate that he considered installing a loyalist as acting attorney general at the Justice Department – someone who agreed with Trump’s false claims about voter fraud and was prepared to pressure election officials in Georgia to overturn the results. Trump has claimed he didn’t do anything wrong and that the state investigation is politically motivated. Willis, who is a Democrat, was elected to her post last year.”

https://youtu.be/2W9kp29RV3s

Republican Louisiana Senator John Kennedy makes a ill-conceived joke about Bill Cosby drugging people in an attempt to demean Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP congresswoman from Georgia, plans to appear at Iowa State Fair Aug. 19… The fair is a traditional venue for politicians contemplating presidential runs, so it’s sparking questions about whether Greene may try to seek WH” reports Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs.

“The Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue has removed a donation page that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s campaign committee used to solicit contributions, the company confirmed to Axios. ActBlue is the lifeblood of grassroots Democratic fundraising. Its decision to cut off Cuomo following damning allegations of sexual harassment and assault deals a body blow to what’s left of his political future. ActBlue donation pages for Cuomo’s campaign and PAC were no longer active on Thursday afternoon. ‘You have attempted to make a contribution to a fundraising page that has no active recipients,’ an error message on both pages now reads. ‘Either the page’s owner has removed all committees or organizations from the page, or we have concluded processing contributions for these committees or organizations.’ ActBlue confirmed in an email to Axios it’s no longer processing donations to the Cuomo campaign” Axios reports.

And yes, white nationalist assholes Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, Mo Brooks, Lauren Boebert, Ron Johnson, and Greg Abbott are on the GOP knockoff of ActBlue called WinRed despite their shitbaggery. Ron DeSantis and Matt Gaetz are on “Revv”, which is WinRed’s parent platform.

While Grothman’s non-answer is of course weasely bullshit, at least he didn’t try to act like answering it would be a violation of HIPAA laws, like someone else we know did recently.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that the Department of Justice will open a probe into the Phoenix Police Department and the City of Phoenix to determine if their use of force policies violated individuals’ Constitutional rights, KNXV ABC-15 in Phoenix reports.

In what’s known as a “pattern or practice” investigation, the DOJ’s Civil Rights division will investigate use-of-force incidents involving the police department.  It will also look into allegations that the department engages in retaliatory activity against people for conduct protected by the First Amendment; the department engages in discriminatory policing; and the department unlawfully seizes or disposes of the belongings of individuals experiencing homelessness.

“When we conduct pattern or practice investigations to determine whether the Constitution or federal law has been violated, our aim is to promote transparency and accountability,” Garland said. “This increases public trust, which in turn increases public safety. We know that law enforcement shares these goals.”

Rick Hasen, Slate: “In recent weeks, we’ve gotten an even greater glimpse into Donald Trump’s efforts to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election. From the clownish ongoing audit in Arizona to the revelation of Jeffrey Clark’s insane and rejected December plan for the Department of Justice to cajole legislatures in states Biden won into overturning those results to the attorneys being sanctioned for their frivolous Trump election lawsuits, the 2020 election subversion attempt is being shown every day to have been a Keystone Cops Coup.”

“The crude and failed nature of Donald Trump’s attempt to destroy the 2020 election has made it easy to dismiss as overblown concerns about the integrity of the 2024 election too. After all, court after court rejected attempts by Trump and his allies in the aftermath of the November 2020 count to prove that fraud affected the election results. Despite Trump’s attempts to pressure state election officials, governors, state legislators, and officials at the U.S. Department of Justice like Clark to get state legislatures to meet and declare new electoral college votes for him after the presidential vote was certified for Biden in each challenged state, the system (barely) held, and Trump was removed from office on January 20, 2021. But there has been a subtle shift in how Trump and his allies have talked about the supposed ‘rigging’ of the 2020 election in a way that will make such claims more appealing to the conservative judges and politicians that held the line last time around. Come 2024, crass and boorish unsubstantiated claims of stealing are likely to give way to arcane legal arguments about the awesome power of state legislatures to run elections as they see fit. Forget bonkers accusations about Italy using lasers to manipulate American vote totals and expect white-shoe lawyers with Federalist Society bona fides to argue next time about application of the ‘independent state legislature’ doctrine in an attempt to turn any Republican presidential defeat into victory.”

In an interview with investigators from the Department of Justice’s Inspector General into leaks coming from the FBI, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani admitted that he completely made up a claim he made in October 2016 about agents telling him they were investigating Hillary Clinton, the Daily Beast reports.

During the interview, Giuliani attempted to furiously backpedal from a statement he had made during an October 28th radio appearance, claiming he was in contact with “active [FBI] agents” who verified that the FBI was investigating Clinton.  Earlier, Giuliani had said in an October 26th Fox News interview, “I think he’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next few days. I mean, I’m talking about some pretty big surprises.”

On October 28th, FBI Director James Comey made an unusual public statement announcing the Bureau was opening an investigation into Clinton’s handling of classified information.  The statement, days before the 2016 presidential election, is seen by many pundits as staining Clinton’s reputation, even though no evidence of wrongdoing was ever found.