“When Donald Trump arrives in Texas for an appearance with GOP Gov. Greg Abbott to tour the state’s border, he should bring a check to pay off his campaign’s nearly $570,000 debt to the city of El Paso,” Huffpost reports.

“’We have been trying to reach out to get the $570,000 from when he had his campaign’ rally two years ago, El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told local NBC affiliate KTSM-9 TV earlier this week. If Abbott “helps us collect” the money Trump owes, ‘that would be real nice,’ Samaniego added.”

“Trump racked up the hefty bill for his “Make America Great Again” rally on Feb. 11, 2019, at El Paso County Coliseum. Local authorities provided security, transportation, emergency and traffic services, and the bill was due in April that year. El Paso originally charged the Trump campaign $470,417, but late fees to cover lawyers and a private collection firm to recoup the loss have boosted the current bill to close to $570,000.”

A pickup truck driver careened through a pack of bicyclists during a road race in Arizona, injuring at least seven people, before police engaged in a pursuit of the vehicle, ending with the driver being shot by police, CNN reports.

The suspect, a 35-year-old white man, was in critical but stable condition.  One bicyclist was airlifted from the scene, and other four were in critical condition after the attack, which happened at 7:25 a.m. local time.

The bicyclists were participating in the Bike the Bluff, is a 58-mile benefit race to help the Mountain Christian School in Show Low, a town around 180 miles northwest of Phoenix.  Neither the suspect nor the names or ages of the victims have been released.

“Our community is shocked at this incident and our hearts and prayers are with the injured and their families at this time,” Kristine M. Sleighter, a spokesperson for the Show Low Police Department said in the news release.

https://youtu.be/4Ftpd8XMMbA

Tucker Carlson typically outperforms all his other Fox News brethren, and CNN’s Jim Acosta recognized on Saturday the important contribution Carlson add to fulfilling Fox News’ mission.

“Now, you may recall I recently described Fox News as ‘The Bullshit Factory’ in honor of its steady stream of bogus segments aimed at ginning up your outrage,” he said. “But Tucker has really outdone himself this week. So I’ve decided to award Tucker with distinction of ‘Bullshit Factory Employee of the Month.’ Congrats, Tucker, you did it. Nobody bullshits like you when it comes to the insurrection as good as you.”

In a national show of clerical stupidity, a bunch of Catholic Bishops announced that they may bar President Biden from taking communion, and also discussed extending that communion ban to all political figures who support keeping abortion safe and legal. It appears that the social media universe had an immediate and  unified response of “tax those stupid sonsabitches”. This author helped get the ball rolling with a comment over on that other website:

“An un-named US official said that armed F-22 Raptor fighters scrambled again Friday as Russian Tupolev Tu-95 “Bear” bombers headed for the second time toward Hawaii as part of an ongoing Russian naval and air exercise several hundred miles west of the Aloha State,” the Hawaiian Star-Advertiser reports.

“A Florida homeowners association has ordered a gay couple to remove a small rainbow flag from their front yard, but the couple has no intention of taking it down,” reports NBC News. “Bob Plominski and Mike Ferrari of Oakland Park, Florida, were issued a citation on June 5 that told them to take the flag down by June 15 or pay a $50 daily fine. The couple put it up to celebrate Pride Month.”

“Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike on Saturday cancelled all public viewing sites for the summer Olympics, diverting some venues to be COVID-19 vaccinations centres instead,” Reuters reports. “Foreign spectators are banned from attending the Games, delayed by a year due to the pandemic, but the government and Tokyo 2020 organisers have for months held off on deciding whether to allow Japanese spectators into the stadiums.”

RIP to our sweet, good boy, Champ. We will miss you always. pic.twitter.com/63hXXp8W9P

— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) June 19, 2021

Greg Abbot has vetoed funding for the Texas State Legislature members and their support staff after Democratic members of the State Legislature engaged in a “walkout” to prevent passage of Texas Senate Bill 7, a Republican voter suppression initiative meant to keep Abbott from being voted out of office in the 2022 elections.

A Florida judge has ruled that stupid old white people should be able to infect each other with Covid19 on cruises leaving from Florida ports.

“The federal government shut down all cruises in March of 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier this year, the state of Florida filed a lawsuit against the CDC over its no-sail order. The current CDC process requires each ship that will be permitting non-vaccinated guests to complete a simulation cruise before receiving approval to resume sailing once again from U.S. ports. The CDC is allowing ships with 98% vaccinated crew and 95% vaccinated guests to skip that step,” NBC 6 South Florida reports.

The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reports a new $19.99 BLT made with a pound of bacon has been added to the menu at Smokey Bones, a Florida-based midsize BBQ chain with 61 locations in the Eastern United states. A 1/3 lbs BLT is also on the menu, price unlisted, but with the fairly obvious implication that the option is available for lesser men.

“The electric vehicle maker Canoo announced Thursday that it would take a mega-factory and thousands of high-paying jobs to the Tulsa region, citing Oklahoma’s “energy-forward initiatives.”North Texas was “definitely in the race” in the multistate competition for the new assembly plant, but Texas energy infrastructure issues and other factors led the company to choose Oklahoma, chairman and CEO Tony Aquila told The Dallas Morning News.”

“A pair of Manatee County [Florida] employees died this week amid a COVID-19 outbreak among county staff. County officials closed the downtown administration building to the public at 2:30 p.m. Friday in response and directed employees to leave the building so it could be ‘disinfected, including fogging,'” the Herald-Tribune reports. The COVID-19 outbreak was announced in a tweet that stated ‘a number of COVID-19 cases were detected among County employees – including two deaths of our work family this week.'”

• Where’s Melania?  Donnie’s birthday was four days ago, and she didn’t even tweet him a birthday greeting.  
• To summarize the GOP’s view of the January 6th domestic terrorist attack developed in the last five months:  Agents from the FBI, CIA and other federal agencies, directed by the Barr-led Trump Administration Department of Justice, posed as antifa and BLM protesters (in an overwhelming white crowd) and successfully infiltrated the Oath Keepers, the III Percenters, the Proud Boys and other MAGA groups to organize peaceful tours of the Capitol (when the Capitol was closed to the public) and were escorted into the Capitol by officers (who were assaulted and attacked) where the federal agents cum antifa cum tourists then inspired otherwise peaceful Trump supporters to spontaneously vandalize and ransack the building coincidentally on the day that the Electoral College votes were being certified, even though these Trump supporters were told by Trump to march to the Capitol and many of them had weapons and planned attacks beforehand, therefore the Trump supporters should not be held responsible for their actions, which they undertook to undermine and disgrace Donald Trump, who was in charge of the government and who they believed was reelected.
• So, again:  if Republicans are so certain the January 6th attack was planned by rogue federal agents or BLM or antifa, why are they blocking an independent commission?

It’s a wild dance. Hope you’ll join. 10pET ⁦@FoxNews⁩ 10pET pic.twitter.com/023TOQLOYM

— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) June 19, 2021

New York Daily News: “A Queens Proud Boys supporter arrested in January for making online threats against Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock was all set to attend the Capitol riot with other Trump supporters – but couldn’t get a ride down to D.C., prosecutors said Thursday. Eduard Florea’s wife, Joni Florea, told prosecutors that her husband was in a ‘frenzy’ to go to the Capitol on Jan. 6., and even got dressed in a tactical vest and armed himself with combat knives. ‘Ultimately, the defendant was unable to get a ride and thus did not travel to the Capitol on January 6,’ wrote Assistant U.S. Attorney Francisco Navarro in court papers opposing bail for Florea.”

“The Middle Village man surrendered to the feds on Jan. 12 in a caught-on-camera raid, with authorities seizing about 1,000 rounds of rifle ammunition, 24 shotgun shells, 75 combat knives, two hatchets and two swords from his home. ‘Dead men can’t write shit laws,’ read one of Florea’s Jan. 6 posts on the Parler app. Authorities said the menacing remark was directed at Warnock, a Democrat who was elected in Georgia’s Jan. 5 Senate runoff election. On Tuesday, Florea, 40, requested that he be released on $100,000 bail so he could live with his mother. The application noted he’d be 13.3 miles away from the Queens apartment he shared with his wife, his defense attorney said. The bail request prompted prosecutors to share Florea’s sordid history of domestic violence, including a recent incident where allegedly he choked his wife for refusing to use their joint business account to raise money for the Proud Boys. ‘As a result of her refusal to support the Proud Boys, the defendant choked his wife, took out one of his combat knives and stated, in sum and substance, ‘What makes you think I won’t fucking kill you?” Navarro wrote.”

AP:  “A bus carrying mineworkers ran off a road in the Peru on Friday, leaving at least 27 people dead, according to local officials and the mining company.  Fire Department Lt. Hugo Meza said the accident in the province of Lucanas left dead and injured passengers scattered along the hillside. At least 13 workers were injured.

“‘We are all devastated by this news and we have already started a thorough investigation,’ said Ignacio Bustamante, chief executive officer of London-based Hochschild Mining. ‘However, our immediate priorities are to support those involved in the accident and their families and to work together with the relevant authorities.’

“Police said they did not immediately know why the accident occurred.  Those aboard the bus were heading from the Pallancata gold and silver mine to the city of Arequipa.”

Notably, nobody said crime https://t.co/9ihSrJwWy6

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) June 18, 2021

Gonna file a bill on Monday to ban crime.

— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) June 18, 2021

Fairfax County (Virginia) police are looking into the distribution of flyers, purportedly from the Ku Klux Klan and targeting members of the county school board, that were found throughout a neighborhood in the DC suburb, WTTG Fox-5 News reports.

About 30 fliers were recovered from the Chantilly community.  The flyers contained racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic messages and were signed by “Loyal White Knights.”  They contained the website and podcast name for the group.

“FCPD strives to ensure that Fairfax County remains as one of the safest jurisdictions to live and work. Hateful rhetoric such as this has no place in Fairfax county or anywhere else.  Chief Davis has tasked our criminal intelligence unit to lead this effort and although there are no known threats to the school board member, we take these matters very seriously,” police said in a statement.

AP: “High winds and heavy rains buffeted coastal Louisiana and Mississippi on Friday as a disorganized and unpredictable tropical weather system churned through the Gulf of Mexico, forcing cancellation of Juneteenth celebrations in Mississippi and Alabama and threatening Father’s Day tourism. The system, moving north toward Louisiana through the Gulf of Mexico carried tropical storm-force sustained winds of 45 mph (72 kph) but forecasters said it couldn’t be classified as a tropical storm because it lacked a single, well-defined center.”

“‘This one is just a sloppy mess. There’s multiple circulations within this broad area of circulation,’ said Benjamin Schott, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Slidell, Louisiana. Forecasters said the storm was likely to dump anywhere from 4 inches (10 centimeters) to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of rain along parts of the Gulf Coast – even 12 inches (30 centimeters) in isolated areas. The storm was expected to make landfall late Friday or early Saturday, imperiling Father’s Day weekend commerce in tourism areas already suffering economic losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic. ‘Of course, with weather like this, you know you can’t run, but weekends, holidays, that’s when tourists are coming down here,’ said Louisiana swamp tour boat captain Darrin Coulon. He canceled tours Friday and hoped for better weather Saturday and Sunday as he secured his boats in Crown Point.”