For a political party that seems obsessed with political theater, the GOP’s stage management sucks balls. The Arizona Republican Party has been in an on-going effort to audit ballots from the 2020 Presidential election – an extension of Trump’s “big lie”, and clearly a bad faith effort to make false claims about the integrity of ballots and generate conspiracy theories to feed the right-wing echo chamber and by extension claim that Biden’s not a legitimate President. Somehow the Arizona GOP managed to win a lawsuit allowing the matter to proceed, in spite of a prior ruling from a judge declaring that the Republican Party was presenting claims that were wrong as matters of both fact and law, and clearly presented in bad faith.

A Minnesota man trapped a police officer’s arm in the window of his truck’s driver side door and drove away with the officer standing on the running board of his vehicle, according to an account by CNN.

Luke Alvin Oeltjenbruns, a 61-year-old white man from Hutchinson, led police on a slow speed chase with the officer, his arm jammed in the window, trying to use an emergency hammer to smash the window.  Once the window was shattered, Oeltjenbruns seized the hammer and started assaulting the officer with it.

The chase ended peacefully when Oeltjenbruns pulled over and was taken into custody by pursuing officers.  He has been charged with first degree assault.

The officer who was trapped by Oeltjenbruns had been called to a local home improvement store because a man, believed to be Oeltjenbruns, had assaulted an employee with a piece of lumber after being told he was required to wear a mask in the store.  The officer approached Oeltjenbruns’ truck and apparently tried to remove the key from the ignition when Oeltjenbruns raised his window, trapping his arm.

According to information released Thursday by the Treasury Department, two 2016 Trump campaign officials gave private polling information from the campaign to a Russian government official, further detailing contacts between the Trump camp and the Kremlin, the New York Times reports.

Rick Gates and Paul Manafort provided the confidential data to Konstantin Kilimnik, an agent of the Russian government, during the 2016 campaign while Manafort was the campaign chair.  Kilimnik then passed the information on to the Russian intelligence services.  Presumably, the Russians used the information to direct its campaign to help get Trump elected.

“During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kilimnik provided the Russian Intelligence Services with sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy,” the Treasury Department said in a news release. “Additionally, Kilimnik sought to promote the narrative that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”

Make sure to vote!https://t.co/5OJa3IqhRA pic.twitter.com/m5kwc7tauJ

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) April 15, 2021

Axios: “For the first time, scientists have estimated how many Tyrannosaurus rex, the so-called king of dinosaurs, once roamed the Earth. The number is staggering: 2.5 billion Tyrannosaurus rex lived and died during the roughly 2.4 million years the species survived on the planet, according to a new study set to be published in the journal Science on Friday.”

“The study may help contextualize the fossil record and the rarity of finding certain fossilized prehistoric organisms, according to lead researcher Charles Marshall, director of the University of California Museum of Paleontology. ‘I mean, to me, it’s just amazing we could have come up with a number,’ Marshall said. ‘Some people have asked me, ‘How does your number compare to other numbers of the total that have ever lived?’ The answer is it doesn’t because there weren’t any.'”

Former vice president (and Race Bannon cosplayer) Mike Pence had minor surgery Wednesday to implant a pacemaker on his heart, utilizing modern science to defy the will of God, Politico reports.

“Over the past two weeks, former Vice President Pence experienced symptoms associated with a slow heart rate and, upon consultation with his doctors, underwent a procedure yesterday at Inova Fairfax Medical Campus in Falls Church, Virginia, to implant a pacemaker,” Pence’s office said in a statement on Thursday. “The routine surgery was successful, and he is expected to fully recover and return to normal activity in the coming days.”

Video from Jeremy Corbell of the July 2019 incident when ‘drones’ buzzed US warships off during maneuvers the coast of California, near the Channel Islands. Cool ‘drones’, right?

“President Joe Biden on Thursday addressed the sweeping sanctions his administration imposed on Russia, a move that seeks to address a litany of malign behaviors and is expected to peeve Moscow. ‘If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, I’m prepared to take further actions to respond. It is my responsibility as president of the United States to do so,’ Biden said from the White House.” The Biden administration unleashed several sanctions that named 32 Russian individuals and entities for their roles in attempting to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election, five individuals and three entities linked to Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea, and six technology companies for supporting support Russian Intelligence Services. In addition, the State Department announced the expulsion of 10 officials from the Russian Embassy in Washington. Russia has long brushed off allegations of meddling in U.S. elections, human rights abuses, cyberattacks as well as reports of placing bounties on U.S. troops serving in Afghanistan” – CNBC.

“Feds arrested Duke Wilson, a Capitol rioter who they say assaulted a police line while wearing a ‘CNN FAKE NEWS’ hat” reports Huffington Post’s Ryan Reilly.

Washington Post: “An Atlanta high school that bears the name of a Confederate Army general who was a leader of the Ku Klux Klan will be renamed for Hank Aaron, the Hall of Famer who broke baseball’s career home record and challenged racial barriers. The Atlanta Board of Education voted unanimously Monday to change the name of Forrest Hill Academy, named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, to Hank Aaron New Beginnings Academy. School district policy requires a five-year waiting period after the death of a notable person unless the vote to change the name of a school building is unanimous. Aaron died in January at the age of 86 and the name of the public alternative school for middle and high school students will occur sometime this year. ‘It is very important that we understand our history,’ board member Michelle Olympiadis said during the Monday meeting. ‘It’s very important that we understand where we are coming from.'”

The $4.20 Muncheese meal could be aaaaalll yours. And there’s $0 delivery on orders of $15+ so, happy holidays!

— White Castle (@WhiteCastle) April 9, 2021

“Digital publishers love people that notice their work – I mean, who doesn’t? There are ‘creators’ that will create UGC for your brand. The ‘engagers’ that will share your posts, and of course, the ‘commenters’ that keep your online community alive. But every online community has people that don’t participate. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t watching. Lurkers are actually a huge part of your community even if they aren’t commenting. But what are you supposed to do with lurkers?”

“In the online world, a lurker is defined as someone that sees content but doesn’t engage with it. This doesn’t mean that they don’t like the content, but they don’t necessarily feel the need to participate either. You should consider your lurkers when creating your content marketing strategy, they can play a critical role in growing your online community. Lurkers are important to your strategy because they still show up to consume your content. If you continue to deliver high-quality content, they may eventually reach out and engage with you! The most recent stats suggest that 26% of Americans never post anything on social media. So when you’re measuring your social media success with engagement rates, you are probably not including a large number of your audience that is viewing your content” – Disqus Blog.

NPR: “There are more than enough shots to go around in communities like Hartsville, Tenn. – the seat of Trousdale County, a quiet town dropped in the wooded hills northeast of Nashville. It’s a county that is nearly 90% white and where Donald Trump won nearly 75% of the votes in 2020. There was no special planning to reach underserved communities here, other than the inmates at the state prison, which experienced one of the nation’s largest correctional facility outbreaks of COVID-19. But now Tennessee, like much of the nation, is finding that rural white residents need a little more coaxing to roll up their sleeves for the shot. This week, the state published results from a statewide survey, and a focus group of unvaccinated residents. More than 45% of white rural conservatives said they were unwilling to even consider taking the vaccine.”

“‘There’s nothing inherently unique about living in a rural area that makes people balk at getting vaccinated. It’s just that rural areas have a larger share of people in the most vaccine-resistant groups: Republicans and White Evangelical Christians,’ says Drew Altman, president and CEO of the Kaiser Family Foundation. KFF’s latest survey data finds that more rural residents have been fully vaccinated than urban dwellers. But this is likely because there haven’t been the same long waits in rural areas, to get the vaccine. And now the initial demand has tapered to a drip. Currently, the number of rural residents (21%) saying they’ll never get the vaccine is twice the number (10%) in urban areas. On a recent weekend in Hartsville, the local health department had trouble filling up even half the spots for a COVID vaccination event at the high school. Down the street at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store, Cris Weske, 43, stopped in to buy a can of dipping tobacco. He says he isn’t even tempted to get the COVID vaccine, no matter how widely available it is. ‘Somebody like me that’s healthy, with a survival rate of 99%, I don’t need it,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to put that toxin – I’m kind of anti-vax, period.’ Weske, who is wearing a ‘We the People’ T-shirt, says the U.S. Constitution protects his choice to opt out of massive nationwide vaccination effort.”

“Two weeks after the 2020 presidential election was called for Democrat Joe Biden, and as President Donald Trump sought to overturn the results, Pennsylvania Republican U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey issued a statement accepting Biden’s win. The Keystone State’s 20 electoral votes handed Biden the White House. But they had become the target of an unprecedented effort by Trump and his allies to reverse what his Justice Department and eventually over 60 legal decisions would confirm was a free and fair election. On Nov. 21, U.S. Middle District Court Judge Matthew Brann, who is a member of the conservative Federalist Society, had just tossed out the Trump campaign’s efforts to invalidate all 7 million of Pennsylvania’s votes. Toomey, who voted for Trump, had seen enough. A contentious year: How Pennsylvania’s tumultuous 2020 election unfolded ‘President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,’ Toomey wrote. Four days later, Rep. Mike Kelly, a Republican from Butler County and a fervent Trump backer, filed a lawsuit challenging Act 77, which allowed for no-excuse mail voting.”

“Almost every Republican lawmaker voted yes when the state legislature passed it in 2019. Kelly was asking that all 2.5 million mail in votes be invalidated. It was shocking, to be honest,’ said former Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar. A Republican Congressman, she said, was ‘trying to disenfranchise millions of Pennsylvania voters.’ The lawsuit became a central piece of the former president’s sweeping campaign to halt the certification of Biden’s win in Pennsylvania and a handful of key states. The cost of Trump’s effort, along with other election-related lawsuits, hit taxpayers. The Pennsylvania Department of State paid law firms over $3.4 million for work on election-related lawsuits filed before and after election day by any group or political party, according to invoices obtained by WITF through a Right-to-Know request. All but one of the suits brought by Trump and his allies, before and after the election, failed. Yet they accounted for more than $1.9 million of the overall cost incurred by DOS” – Harrisburg Patriot-News.

AP: “A Canadian Parliament member was caught stark naked in a virtual meeting of the House of Commons. William Amos, who has represented the Quebec district of Pontiac since 2015, appeared on the screens of his fellow lawmakers completely naked Wednesday. The pandemic has meant many Canadian lawmakers participate in sessions via video conference instead of in person. A screenshot obtained by The Canadian Press shows Amos standing behind a desk between the Quebec and Canadian flags, his private parts hidden by what appears to be a mobile phone in one hand. ‘This was an unfortunate error,’ Amos said in a statement sent by email.”

“‘My video was accidentally turned on as I was changing into my work clothes after going for a jog. I sincerely apologize to my colleagues in the House of Commons for this unintentional distraction. Obviously, it was an honest mistake and it won’t happen again.’ Claude DeBellefeuille, a legislator for the opposition Bloc Quebecois party, raised the incident in a point of order after question period, suggesting that parliamentary decorum requires male Parliament members to wear a jacket and tie – and a shirt, underwear and trousers.”