So I had an interesting experience trying to find a right wing reaction to that really fucking dumb Trump statement from Thursday where he insists that removing inactive voters from the Georgia registration rolls before the election would have changed the outcome in that state, as if people who did not vote would have won him the state if they also weren’t allowed to vote. I highlighted the words “It is coming out FAST and FURIOUS“, right clicked on “Search Google for…”, and learned that Fast and Furious 9 is hitting theaters on Friday. Then I added quotation marks to the search bar to capture the phrase verbatim, hoping to find Breitbart, Fox News, Daily Wire, the Gateway Pundit, or some other MAGA-friendly website covering the statement.

My hunch was that the editorial staffs of those sites would ignore it due to the sheer dumbassery of the statement and so far it seems to be holding up [though in the middle of me writing this a new OAN article with the tweet included popped up and I got sidetracked into commenting there]. The first result from a right wing site is the QAnon fan hub GreatAwakening.win, and man this is a doozy.

The US Department of Justice will send agents trained in tracking and curtailing the distribution of illegal guns through “funneling corridors” that run guns Southern states to place in the Northeast and West Coast.

According to the New York Post, the five strike forces will be deployed to New York City; Washington, DC; Chicago; San Francisco; and Los Angeles.  They will be staffed by agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives assisted by local police, with each effort being led by a US Attorney in each city.

“Working with our local partners to tackle violent crime is one of the Justice Department’s most important responsibilities,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement.  “Our firearms trafficking strike forces will investigate and disrupt the networks that channel crime guns into our communities with tragic consequences.  This effort reflects our shared commitment to keep communities safe.”

The New York Times did a long piece on a class action lawsuit filed in California by Subway customers against the chain, part of which detailed a quest by Times staff themselves to have a DNA lab run tests on tuna sandwiches they bought and sent to the lab themselves. The answer they got: “‘No amplifiable tuna DNA was present in the sample and so we obtained no amplification products from the DNA,’ the email read. ‘Therefore, we cannot identify the species.’ The spokesman from the lab offered a bit of analysis. ‘There’s two conclusions,’ he said. ‘One, it’s so heavily processed that whatever we could pull out, we couldn’t make an identification. Or we got some and there’s just nothing there that’s tuna.’ (Subway declined to comment on the lab results.)”

Four of the Saudi agents who lured Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi to Turkey, where they murdered and dismembered him, received training in 2017 from a US government program approved by the State Department and conducted by an Arkansas paramilitary security contractor, the New York Times reports.

Tier 1 Group, owned by Cerberus Capital Management, many of whose board members are significant contributors to conservative political causes.  There is no evidence suggesting members of Tier 1 Group or the Trump Administration knew the intended missions of the four Saudis, who undertook a campaign of attacks, violence and terror against people challenging the rule of the Saudi royal family, particularly Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud.

According to the Times, the company says the training — including “safe marksmanship” and “countering an attack” — was defensive in nature and devised to better protect Saudi leaders. One person familiar with the training said it also included work in surveillance and close-quarters battle.

Philip Bump, Washington Post: “Nothing frustrates Trump more obviously and viscerally than coming in second. Which is not great news for Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. For months, DeSantis has been the focus of speculation about the 2024 Republican nomination contest. He has been adept at navigating the politics of the coronavirus pandemic (including managing to overstate his success without much pushback) and at leveraging culture-war fights to maintain the media spotlight. He signed new restrictions on voting in the state during a segment on ‘Fox & Friends.’ But despite that, it was still consistently the case that Trump was outperforming him in (very early, very sketchy) 2024 primary straw polling. At the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, DeSantis was the top pick of attendees – only when Trump was excluded from the competition. Over the weekend, a straw poll conducted at the Western Conservative Summit gauging views of potential 2024 candidates again had DeSantis in the lead. This time, though, Trump was one of the trailing competitors. Straw polls are only slightly more useful than wearing an anti-meteorite helmet, sure. But, again, Trump is not one to let even a random poll like this slide.”

“Consider what happened in April. After a political action committee affiliated with former Trump adviser John Bolton touted polling suggesting Trump’s grip on the party had weakened, Trump’s team pushed back hard. This broadly unimportant question in the moment – how much fealty did Trump engender – was something Trump simply couldn’t allow to stand without contest. He has also repeatedly trumpeted polling like that survey at CPAC, as surely as he once began his 2016 primary rallies by listing the recent polling showing him in the lead. Trump has clearly been watching DeSantis in the rearview mirror for a while. On multiple occasions over the past few months, he has made passive-aggressive comments meant, in his unsubtle way, to diminish DeSantis’s standing. There was the time in April he suggested DeSantis would be a good running mate, a classic politician move aimed at showing dominance.”

“House Speaker Pelosi tells Democrats she will create new committee to investigate Jan. 6 attack at Capitol” reports MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin.

“More than 150 health-care workers who did not comply with a Houston-based hospital system’s vaccine mandate have been fired or resigned, more than a week after a federal judge upheld the policy. Houston Methodist – one of the first health systems to require the coronavirus shots – terminated or accepted the resignations of 153 workers Tuesday, spokeswoman Gale Smith said. Smith declined to specify how many were in each category” – Washington Post.

USA Today:  “The Senate failed to advance a sweeping voting rights bill Tuesday, stalling the Democratic legislation aimed at countering recent restrictive state measures pursued in Republican-led states.  The Senate failed to advance the For the People Act to the floor for a debate. In a vote of 50-50, it fell short of the 60 needed to overcome a GOP filibuster.

“The For the People Act is largely hailed by Democrats as being necessary because Republican-led states have introduced a slew of new voting restrictions that civil rights groups fear could suppress the vote for marginalized groups and make it harder to vote overall.  The legislation aims to counter regulations that make it difficult to vote –especially for people of color. It includes provisions Democrats say would make it easier for people to vote and register to vote. These include expanding early voting and allowing for same-day voter registration.”

The United States government seized control of about three dozen Iranian-operated websites in an effort to crack down on disinformation as tensions between the two nations heighten while they negotiate a process to discuss Iran’s nuclear arms program.

According to Politico, the US government somehow took over control of the websites, which had been run by the Iranian state-owned media company IRNA.  When browsers were pointed to the sites of Iran state television’s English-language arm Press TV, Yemeni Houthi-run Al-Masirah satellite news channel and Iranian state TV’s Arabic-language channel, Al-Alam, viewers saw a federal notice stating the sites were seized as part of a “federal law enforcement action.”

It is unclear under what legal basis or investigatory authority the websites were seized, although the notice said it was done by the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security, Office of Export Enforcement and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas on Tuesday called a special session of the Texas Legislature that will begin on July 8, a move that revives Republicans’ effort to enact what are expected to be some of the most far-reaching voting restrictions in the country. Mr. Abbott, a Republican, had pledged to call for a special session after Democratic lawmakers staged an eleventh-hour walkout last month that temporarily foiled the Republican effort to overhaul the state’s election systems and delayed other G.O.P. legislative priorities. Now the new session restarts the clock.”

“Mr. Abbott did not specify on Tuesday what proposals the special session would address, but a Texas Republican legislative staff member confirmed that the session would address the state’s voting laws. Texas Republicans may also pursue other legislative goals, including an overhaul of the state’s bail system. Republicans will have to start the process from scratch, but it is possible they will simply use the final version of the bill that failed to pass in May as a starting point. Given that the party has control of both chambers of the Legislature, its leadership could pass a new bill along party lines. The initial voting bill, known as S.B. 7, contained new restrictions on absentee voting; granted broad new autonomy and authority to partisan poll watchers; escalated punishments for mistakes or offenses by election officials; and banned both drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, which were used for the first time during the 2020 election in Harris County, home to Houston and a growing number of the state’s Democratic voters” – New York Times.

The last thing America needs is Washington, DC bureaucrats controlling local elections.

S.1 would be a disaster for our democratic republic.

— GOP (@GOP) June 22, 2021

Daily Beast: “Onetime Chicago Cubs baseball star Ben Zobrist is seeking millions in damages after accusing his former minister of having an affair with his wife and bilking his charity, according to a bombshell lawsuit filed in Nashville Circuit Court. Zobrist, the 2016 World Series MVP, filed a lawsuit in May seeking $6 million in punitive and compensatory damages against Byron Yawn, who served roughly two decades as a senior pastor and elder at a Nashville church that the couple attended. While serving as both a premarital counselor to the couple and executive director to Zobrist’s charity Patriot Forward, Yawn ‘usurped the ministerial-counselor role, violated and betrayed the confidence entrusted to him by the plaintiff, breached his fiduciary duty owed to the plaintiff and deceitfully used his access as counselor to engage in an inappropriate sexual relationship with the plaintiff’s wife,’ the complaint says.”

“According to the complaint, Zobrist and his wife first submitted to premarital counseling with Yawn at Community Bible Church in 2005 and regularly sought advice from Yawn about ‘how to strengthen their marriage relationship.’ It was years later, in 2018, that the couple’s now former pastor allegedly began having calls ‘on a daily basis’ with Julianna Zobrist. According to the complaint, Yawn’s ‘romantic involvement with Ms. Zobrist escalated in the spring of 2019, when he began meeting her for sex.’ The affair allegedly continued until spring 2020, and was shrouded in secret through ‘burner phones,’ first discovered by Yawn’s wife. All the while, the pastor continued to serve as counselor to Ben Zobrist. Ben and Julianna Zobrist each filed for divorce in May 2019 and the baseball star ‘forfeited months of the 2019 season,’ causing him to lose approximately $8 million in income as he tried to rescue his crumbling marriage, the lawsuit alleges.”

“California authorities have arrested a man they say stole 42,000 pounds of pistachios – a haul worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to the American Pistachio Growers. During a routine audit earlier this month, the Touchstone Pistachio Company found 21 tons of its pistachios were missing and contacted the Tulare County Sheriff’s Office agricultural crimes unit, the sheriff’s office said. On Friday, investigators said they found a tractor trailer containing the pistachios had been moved from a lot belonging to Montemayor Trucking Company in Delano to another lot nearby. Authorities arrested and booked 34-year-old Alberto Montemayor, a driver for the trucking firm, in Tulare County. Sgt. Joseph England, who leads the agricultural crimes unit, told CNN that Montemayor was ‘bailed out’ and that he would likely appear in court in several weeks.”

“Montemayor has not yet been formally charged, according to authorities. It is not clear if he has an attorney at this time. Montemayor tried to conceal evidence that there was ‘an attempt or intention to resell’ the pistachios, England said. All but roughly 2,000 pounds of the nuts were recovered and returned to the company, according to authorities. The Touchstone Pistachio Company declined to comment on the matter to CNN, citing the ongoing investigation. This isn’t the first time thieves have tried to take off with pistachios or other nuts in this region by the truckload.” – CNN.

https://youtu.be/KO_neyminao

Alaska Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski states that she supports many of the provisions in S.1, the For The People Act, which would expand voting rights, ensure citizens have an easier opportunity to vote, and provide for automatic voter registration–all things she finds helpful in her own state of Alaska–but she won’t support S.1 because “I recognize we did this without DC prescriptives or mandates of uniformity.”

In other words:  Hey, it worked great in Alaska, and they’re all really great things to help people vote more easily, but that’s not something we want all the states to do because we don’t want everyone to vote.

The dumbass mistake – made by Gateway Pundit Jim Hoft’s brother Joe – was corrected in the headline of the article after publication, but the Disqus thread page remains the same, and evidently the GP staff do not know how to fix it. To be fair here, neither did we until about five months ago. Disqus’s admin portal is atrociously designed and most site owners are likely unaware that it is possible to correct a fuckup or otherwise change the article title within the platform. Many of you have probably also noticed that The Hill’s typos and factual errors in headlines always remain in their Disqus feed, never changing, so this is certainly not unique to the Gateway Pundit.

In any case, you’d think that guys who rip on GOP members disloyal to Trump day in and day out would be the last ones to mix up the shorthand for ‘rhinoceros’ with the acronym for Republican In Name Only, but the Gateway Pundit does suck really fucking badly.

Promising “fun, fun, fun for everyone,” Donald Trump and sidekick Bill O’Reilly are offering VIP tickets to “The We’re History Tour” of two old white male sexual harassers for a total cost of more than $18,000 for a pair, according to various news outlets.

Tickets for commoners will be just $106 each–not including fees and processing charges–but then, you won’t get the front row floor seats, the pre-event “meet and greet” and the opportunity to have your photo take with Trump and O’Reilly.  (Details are sketchy if Trump will personally grab women by the pussy or if O’Reilly will rub falafels over the ladies individually.)

VIP tickets are $7,500 each, with processing fees and taxes taking the cost to more than $8,500 when purchased through Ticketmaster. 

Detroit News: “The board of commissioners in a northern Michigan county that supported Donald Trump voted to pursue an audit of its election Tuesday, pointing to the ongoing tension among Republicans about the former president’s loss. Nearly eight months after Election Day, the GOP-controlled Cheboygan County Board of Commissioners voted 4-3 to send a letter to Jonathan Brater, the state elections director, requesting a recount of its ballots and a review of whether an “unauthorized computer” manipulated the tallies. The 25,000-person county is at the top of the Lower Peninsula, and 64% of its voters supported Trump, the Republican incumbent, in November. Only 34% backed Democrat Joe Biden. But for months, Cheboygan County officials have been discussing the idea of examining the election results amid a nationwide push among some in the GOP to question the outcome and to investigate unsubstantiated theories of voter fraud.”

https://youtu.be/ay80qHGE9Ag

doocy \do͞o-see\: vt -cies; -cied:  To make a fool of oneself repeatedly on the national stage through displays of cherrypicked information and limited research.  Example:  “He will really doocy the question about gun crime.”

“Schumer says Manchin will vote for motion to proceed to debate voting bill. ‘We worked it out,’ Schumer said. Legislation will not get 60” reports Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman.

“The Administration strongly supports Senate passage of S. 2093, the For the People Act of 2021, just as it supported H.R. 1 in the House of Representatives. Democracy is in peril, here, in America. The right to vote – a sacred right in this country – is under assault with an intensity and an aggressiveness we have not seen in a long time. The election of 2020 and its violent aftermath on January 6, 2021, when an armed mob of insurrectionists sought to overturn the voice of the people and a duly certified election, reminds us that our democracy is fragile. This landmark legislation is needed to protect the right to vote, ensure the integrity of our elections, and repair and strengthen American democracy. The For the People Act also would reform redistricting to curtail the partisan gerrymandering that distorts our democracy. It would modernize our elections system and make those systems more secure. Consistent with the Administration’s commitment to racial equity, the bill would also expand the tools available to the Justice Department to enforce the voting rights of all Americans. It would reform our campaign finance system with more transparency. It would establish stronger ethics rules for all three branches of government. These provisions would also serve to help restore confidence in our government, and in democratic institutions.”

“Since HR 1 passed in the House of Representatives, the assault on our democracy has intensified. In state after state, new restrictive laws on voting, and efforts to replace non-partisan election administration with partisan processes designed to overturn the will of the voters have become more widespread. The Administration applauds the efforts in the Senate to incorporate feedback that refines and strengthens the bill, and would make its reforms easier for states to implement. As the bill moves forward, the Administration will continue to work with Congress to ensure that it achieves lasting reform consistent with Congress’ broad constitutional authority to strengthen our democracy” – Statement from the Biden Administration in support of the For The People act.