“German authorities disbanded a Frankfurt police commando unit Thursday over suspected far-right links to a group of active officers, the latest in a string of extremist-related scandals to blight the country’s police and military. Peter Beuth, interior minister for the Hesse state where Frankfurt is located, said ‘unacceptable misconduct’ prompted the decision to close the unit. He also said superiors had turned a ‘blind eye.’ Hesse’s prosecutor on Wednesday said the office was investigating 20 officers from the force with the majority suspected of sending messages in far-right chat groups, including Nazi symbols and ‘inciting content.’ Three supervising officers were accused of failing to stop or report the exchanges. All but one of the 20 was on active duty. The chat groups were uncovered after examining the phone of an officer suspected of possessing and distributing child pornography. One officer has been officially suspended, the others have been ‘banned from conducting official business,’ the public prosecutor said.” – Washington Post.

Forbes: “Gordon Sondland, a hotelier-turned-ambassador, halted his once-prolific political giving after getting caught up in the scandal surrounding President Donald Trump’s first impeachment. For years, Sondland had been a reliable donor, shelling out more than $537,000 to federal campaigns (mostly Republican) from 1984 to 2019. When Trump won the election in 2016, Sondland contributed $1 million to the inaugural committee through four LLCs, according to data obtained by OpenSecrets. In March 2018, Trump nominated Sondland to be the EU ambassador.”

“Yet Sondland’s largesse halted in March 2019 – just a few months before his major role in Trump’s attempt to pressure the government of Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden’s family came to light. At first, Sondland disputed accounts that military aid to Ukraine had been contingent on the European country trumpeting an inquiry into Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s son. But Sondland later reversed himself and implicated the president in a quid pro quo. Two days after the Senate acquitted Trump, he fired Sondland. ‘Ambassador Sondland chose to cease any and all political donations during and since his period of service,’ said a spokesperson for Provenance, the hotel business Sondland founded and chairs.”

“Peruvian socialist Pedro Castillo held a wafer-thin lead in a polarized presidential election on Wednesday, with a battle brewing over the result that could spark weeks of political wrangling, market volatility and deeper divisions. Castillo, the son of illiterate farmers who has rattled the Andean nation’s political elite and garnered huge support from the rural poor, had 50.2% with 99.8% of votes processed, just a 0.4 percentage point ahead of right-wing Keiko Fujimori.”

“Fujimori, the heir of a powerful political family, has however, raised unsubstantiated allegations that supporters of Castillo tried to steal votes, which the leftist’s party has strongly denied. International electoral observers and experts have said the vote was carried out cleanly. ‘Today we are presenting all the evidence of irregularities,’ Luis Galarreta, the vice presidential candidate on Fujimori’s ticket, told Peruvian radio on Wednesday, adding the party was preparing a case with lawyers. The allegations, with some echoes of the legal wrangling after the U.S. election last year, could trigger weeks of confusion and tension, amid a polarized election cycle that has divided Peruvians, with higher-income citizens supporting the right-wing candidate and lower-income ones supporting Castillo. On Tuesday, hundreds of voters on both sides demonstrated in front of Peru’s elections office against the perception of irregularities in the vote counting process. Castillo has made calls on supporters to ‘defend the vote’. There are also some 300,000 contested votes, which will need to be further scrutinized by an electoral jury, a process that will take several days to complete and could tip the balance” – Reuters.

Washington Post: “For weeks this spring, 28-year-old Seth Aaron Pendley had plotted an attack on Amazon data centers in Virginia. He’d already taken a sawed-off rifle to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Now, he hoped to cripple much of the Internet and take down government networks. Last April, he finally arranged a meeting with a man promising to provide the C-4 explosive devices. When they met in Fort Worth, Tex., the man showed Pendley how to arm and detonate the powerful bombs. But just as Pendley placed the devices into his Pontiac, federal agents swarmed in and arrested him. The bomb seller was actually an FBI plant who had helped unravel a plan Pendley believed could ‘kill off about 70 percent of the internet.'”

“On Wednesday, Pendley pleaded guilty to planning to bomb Amazon facilities in an attempt to undermine the U.S. government and to spark a rebellion against the ‘oligarchy’ he believed to be running the country. The case underscores the dramatic rise in domestic terrorism driven by right-wing extremists and raises concerns about those who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection plotting new attacks. Domestic attacks peaked in 2020, mostly driven by white-supremacist, anti-Muslim and anti-government extremists. Those far-right attacks have killed 91 people since 2015, according to an analysis by The Washington Post.”

“A man has died after he was struck by lightning while on a New Jersey golf course on Wednesday afternoon, Action News has learned. It happened around 3:45 p.m. at the Burlington Country Club located on the 100 block of Burrs Road in Westampton Township” reports WABC New York.

So that was 24 hours and 15 minutes after the Washington Post reported “Nobody has been killed by lightning in the United States this year, according to data from the National Weather Service. This is a record for the latest in the year the nation has made it without recording a lightning fatality” on Tuesday, and 4 hours, 6 minutes after National Zero sourced it for a satirical right wing conspiracy rant. Would be lying if I didn’t feel extremely guilty over this, lack of any of that “there are no coincidences” type of superstition aside. Sure, the Washington Post started it, but National Zero was the one who turned fatal lightning strikes into mockery. Ugh.

“Oh noes! Commie Joe raised your mediocre burrito’s prices by 4%! Vote Republican!” says this Mike Berg spokeswiener. Note his clip of the New York Times article omits the wage increase reported, which says “In May, in an effort to hire 20,000 employees in a tight labor market, Chipotle said it was raising wages and would pay workers from $11 to $18 an hour.” Linked in the Times article is reporting from May saying Chipotle was planning to raise the average hourly wage to $15, which unfortunately does not say exactly what the average wage was prior to that announcement.

According to Glassdoor, the average hourly base pay at Chipotle is currently $11 per hour nationally, and raising this to $15 makes for a 36% increase. So this is where Republicans are at these days: They’re complaining that the buying power of Chipotle employees increasing by more than a third comes at the expense of customers – from whom a $6.50 chicken burrito will now cost them $6.77.

This is what you’re supposed to use to justify to yourself why you’re voting for the party that won’t investigate why the Capitol was violently invaded by a horde of their fans on January 6th.

“Angela, Boris, Emmanuel, Justin, Mario, Yoshihide and a relative newcomer: Joe. They’re the board of global democracy’s most exclusive club, and they’re meeting this week after four years of U.S. disruption and a two-year coronavirus interruption. Already on a first-name basis with relationships that range from just months to years, the leaders of the Group of Seven industrialized democracies are gathering Friday amid hopes that the departure of their most unruly member and a new era of personal friendships enhanced by face-to-face discussions can restore a global anti-authoritarian consensus on climate, the coronavirus, China and Russia. The G-7’s return to polite quasi-normality comes as President Joe Biden seeks to restore steady U.S. leadership to the bloc, which had been hamstrung by his predecessor Donald Trump’s often confrontational approach to longtime American allies. U.S. officials believe Biden’s decadeslong experience in foreign policy combined with his personal skills and folksy demeanor will ease lingering resentments.”

“Trump had thrown a wrench into G-7 unity, demanding the absolute prioritization of U.S. interests, threatening decades-old security guarantees, insulting colleagues and loudly suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin be invited back into the group despite his refusal to meet demands for Moscow to stay out of Ukraine. Biden aims to take a new tack. Asked about his goals upon departing from Washington, Biden replied: ‘Strengthening the alliance and make it clear to Putin and to China that Europe and the United States are tight, and the G-7 is going to move.’ Of the seven leaders meeting Friday in Britain’s southwest Cornwall, two are newbies. Biden and Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi took office within weeks of each other this year” – AP.

Politico: “Charles Perko gestured past a vine-covered chain link fence toward a hulking steel facility with massive mills and squat brick office buildings. The 140-year-old complex had forged the iron that built the West, and once was Colorado’s largest employer, with some 10,000 workers. Now, much of the complex sits in disrepair. Some of its cylindrical stoves are rusted and empty – a symbol of an industry that Perko, a fourth-generation steel worker and president of a local union, says is in need of government help. Lauren Boebert, the controversial pro-gun, Covid-skeptical freshman congresswoman who represents Pueblo, has credited working-class voters for her improbable 2020 victory. But it’s not clear her version of ‘working-class’ includes the steel workers here. Perko didn’t vote for her. And, based on her opposition to President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion infrastructure plan, which Perko sees as a lifeline for his struggling industry, he doesn’t think Boebert cares all that much about his union members. He has tried to schedule a meeting with her to discuss these issues, he says. But the door to her local office is often locked, and her staff doesn’t return his calls.”

“‘One of the key parts of that [infrastructure] plan is Amtrak expansion. Ours is one of only three mills in the country that makes rail,’ Perko said on a breezy afternoon in April, as he turned to face the manufacturing complex, now owned by the multinational company Evraz Group. ‘If we can get just that part of the infrastructure plan alone passed, that will be business that would keep us in jobs for many years.’ ‘From what I’ve seen on Twitter,’ he added, ‘I don’t think Boebert’s a supporter.’ Since her election this past November, in a district that sprawls across a huge swath of the mountains and ranch lands that make up the western half of Colorado, Boebert, 34, has become known as one of Donald Trump’s most outspoken acolytes in Congress. A restaurant owner who had never run for office before she declared her candidacy in late 2019, Boebert tried to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election and made a show of carrying a gun inside the Capitol in her early days in Congress. On Twitter, she frequently attacks Biden and other Democrats; during the January 6 insurrection, she tweeted out House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s location to her hundreds of thousands of followers.”

A Columbus, Ohio special prosecutor has charges three Columbus police officers with misdemeanor dereliction of duty charges for their actions during last summer’s BLM protests in the city, ABC News reports.

Kathleen Garber, who was appointed by the City of Columbus to independently investigate complaints against members of the Columbus Division of Police during last year’s demonstrations, announced the charges, adding that two of the officers will also face misdemeanor counts of assault and interfering with civil rights.

Sgt. Traci M. Shaw and Officer Phillip Walls are charged with misdemeanor assault and interfering with civil rights for pepper spraying peaceful protesters during the May 29th and May 30th demonstrations.

A two-year-old dog was thrown from a car wreck on Washington state highway and feared lost when she was located at a nearby farm doing what she was meant to do:  herding sheep.

Tilly, a border collie-red heeler mix, flew out the car’s back window when Linda Oswald and her family got into an accident with another vehicle.  The family saw the dog, stunned, standing on the side of the road, but before they could collect Tilly, she ran away.

The Oswalds put up fliers and sent out social media posts asking for help finding Tilly.  For two days, they got no good leads.  Then Tyler, Travis and Zane Potter answered a Facebook post about the lost dog, saying she was at their family farm trying to herd the farm’s sheep.

“I think that dog was trying to herd,” Travis Potter said.  Oswald said that if the Potter’s hadn’t called, Tilly would still be trying to figure out how herding worked.

About two dozen states have changed their schedules for sharing data on new coronavirus cases and deaths as the number of cases continue to drop as the vaccines get more widely distributed, CNN reports.

Most of the changes shift reporting from seven days per week to just five days.  Alabama and Kansas will report data three times per week.  Florida will report cases and deaths just once per week.  Data scientists and public health experts warn that cutting reporting may hide outbreaks of the coronavirus, making cases harder to track.

“As far as I know, we’re still in a public health emergency as a country,” Lori Tremmel Freeman, the association’s chief executive officer, told CNN Wednesday. “That has not been downgraded yet.”

Eight states–Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont–reported that they now have more than 50% of their adults fully vaccinated.

https://youtu.be/DsD05XOc58w

Senator Rafael Cruz (Q-Quintana Roo) is positive he knows why people are buying Bitcoin, even though he states he doesn’t understand cryptocurrency.  Cruz says people are going to cryptocurrency as a hedge against inflation, which had a one-month spike in May to more than 4%.

The saga of Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colo.) and her extravagant $22,000 mileage reimbursement from her campaign won’t go away.

Besides using more than $19,000 to pay off court fines, back taxes and penalties for failing to pay unemployment taxes, as NatZero detailed back in February,  Boebert had another outstanding court case she ignored, and now she’s got to pay nearly $2,600.

As the Colorado Times Reporter recounts, Boebert’s restaurant, Shooter’s in Rifle, was ordered by the court to garnish an employee’s paycheck to pay off a debt owed to a collections company by that individual.  Boebert never remitted the debt to the court, as ordered, and now she’s ordered to pay $2,578 to pay off the debt, the collections fees and the court costs of the plaintiff. 

The principal of a Colorado high school resigned after a photograph of students, including one in blackface, reenacting the murder of George Floyd in the school parking lot surfaced, USA Today reports.

Rachael Ayers, principal of Mead High School in Longmont, Colorado–a town where Blacks comprise less than 1% of its population–resigned Monday, said a letter sent to homes by district superintendent Don Haddad.  Haddad thanked Ayers for her twelve years as a teacher, assistant principal and principal at Mead.

Haddad said he intends “to discuss advancing student success and achievement with a focus on a safe and inclusive school environment and culture for every student, teacher, staff, and community member.”

Axios: “The Senate on Wednesday passed legislation Wednesday that will officially designate the Pulse nightclub a national memorial, nearly five years on from one of the deadliest mass shootings in modern American history. The bill passed unanimously in the upper chamber following a request from Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) in observance of Saturday marking five years since a gunman opened fire in the Orlando gay nightclub, killing 49 people. Scott was governor of Florida at the time.”

https://youtu.be/qmdCfFOKQhw

Fox News host (and man who doesn’t understand why the person in the mirror does the exact same thing as he does) Tucker Carlson had Miami Zoo wildlife expert Ron Magill on his show to talk about the infestation of peacocks in southern Florida and southern California as people release their pet peacocks into the neighborhood and the birds take over.

One team. SAVE AMERICA!! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/TC2LjyvkMD

— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) June 9, 2021

Food processing company JBS USA paid $11 million in cryptocurrency to the hackers who go ransomware installed on the companies IT systems, creating havoc at the company and threatening meat distribution around the United States.

In a statement, the company acknowledged that some processing plants were shut down after the ransomware was discovered, but that most of its plants were still operational.  The ransom payment, the company said, was a preventive act to ensure continued operations.

“This was a very difficult decision to make for our company and for me personally,” said Andre Nogueira, CEO, JBS USA. “However, we felt this decision had to be made to prevent any potential risk for our customers.”

“New coronavirus cases leaped in Florida in the week ending Sunday, rising 14.9% as 12,049 cases were reported. The previous week had 10,483 new cases of the virus that causes COVID-19,” the Naples Daily News reports.  “Florida ranked third among the states where coronavirus was spreading the fastest on a per-person basis, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows.”