Global powerhouse of journalism the Associated Press, a non-profit collective founded in 1853 that covered some of the most significant events in human history since then – with reporters on scene shortly after both the Lincoln and Kennedy assassinations, the Pearl Harbor attack as it happened, the Allied landings at the beaches of Normandy, the Montgomery bus boycott, the falls of Saigon and the Berlin Wall, and so much more – on Monday ran a story headlined “Churches hope to tap the power of pickleball,” about congregations using the, ahem, sport to draw in new members.

“The gym at the Adventure Commons was filled with sounds of pickleball – squeaking sneakers, the thwack of a paddle hitting a ball and cheers from players after a good shot,” was the lede setting the scene by an organization for which no fewer than 37 journalists have been killed while on the job, including Joseph Morton, an American who was executed by the Nazis in January 1945.

“A dozen players filled three courts at the athletic center, run by the Adventure Christian Church, located just off exit 315 from Interstate 57 in south suburban Chicago,” and come on man, pickleball? A STORY ABOUT FUCKING PICKLEBALL? THE “CHRISTIANITY BECOMING MORE MODERN” ANGLE GIVES YOU A FEW MORE KICKS AT THAT DEAD HORSE, RIGHT? FUCK!

Okay, okay, okay. Moving on… You know if it wasn’t named pickl- Alright, alright. Forget it…

An Edison, New Jersey mall on Saturday night became a scene reminiscent of late 1980s-early 1990s arcade classics Renegade, Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Double Dragon, and others as People Magazine reports Mayor Sam Joshi said “over 300 youth” were involved in a massive fight.

Joshi wrote on Instagram he “was notified that over 300 youth were gathered at Menlo Park mall and a brawl ensued. No weapons were confirmed at the incident and no injuries to juveniles at this time. Neighboring municipalities were notified and provided immediate mutual aid to the Edison Police Department to disperse the crowd,” later adding none of those arrested were from Edison.

It’s not clear which teenager was the hero and if he was able to pick up the turkey leg and restore all his health bars before defeating the boss, the neon blue-haired punk named “Axel,” who spins his spiked chains around. It’s a devastating spin attack players must dodge if they’re to advance to the “factory” level to battle the hoodlums that throw barrels of glowing green radioactive slime.

It was 2018 for me after the “midterms are safe” turned out to be a lie. Then Pelosi became Speaker after people didn’t turn out to vote for Republicans bc R’s did nothing to fight to protect Trump and did not pass the agenda.
Feels the same now for many.
Before the “do… https://t.co/TGnggdLQbH

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) May 19, 2025

Continued after the cutoff: “Before the ‘do something’ comments start, I have one vote, don’t have the power to arrest or prosecute people, don’t control the congressional calendar and can’t control which bills we vote on. If I could control all that, the MAGA base wouldn’t feel this way.”

Lol at the “don’t have the power to arrest or prosecute people.” Both because that’s not what was sold to MAGA voters before the 2022 and 2024 elections AND because it’s shade – whether intended or not – on convicted felon President Trump, Kash Patel, Dan Bongino, Pam Bondi, etc for overpromising and under-delivering on that kind of shit. Lol at the “If I could control all that, the MAGA base wouldn’t feel this way,” saying she’d be a better autocrat than Donald. Lol at the “Two more weeks” because again that’s a knock on Trump. But most of all, Lol at the image she’s responding to, one admitting that her whole QAnon belief system is millenarian horsehit.

Convicted felon President Trump is considering nominating really creepy-looking former defense attorney-turned Justice Department official Emil Bove to a federal judgeship, CNN reports on a pretty stupid move exposing Bove to a confirmation hearing with all sorts of pointed questions about why he completely wrecked the government’s pretty solid case against idiot NYC Mayor Eric Adams.

The first flight on dog-murdering Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s stupid “self-deport for a free flight and $1,000 cash” program departed from Houston on Monday, carrying 68 souls bound for their ostensible native countries of Honduras and Colombia, Axios reports on the Trump Regime’s utterly lame reality after a campaign filled with promises of an apocalyptic state of martial law in which US Marines would go door-to-door ripping undocumented immigrants out of their homes.

Unmentioned is how the Trump Regime is supposed to prevent some 21 year-old natural-born kid from Texas FedExing their passport to their abuela, giving a false name to ICE, jumping on the free flight and pocketing the $1,000 cash, and then heading back in time for the Fourth of July. Yeah, there could be some hurdles, like CBP questioning them on the way back in about why they’re not in any airline’s database of outbound fliers, but the burden of proof isn’t on US citizens in those situations, and “Hey, it’s not my fault Delta fucked up” is probably going to be enough.

Tucker Qatarlson

— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) May 19, 2025

Really sometimes you just know – especially if you’ve spent the last decade watching these freaks say and do stupid shit – to the point where it takes just two words – one of them made-up – that are completely inscrutable to probably upwards of 40 percent of Americans (and that’s probably being generous, it could be significantly more) and yeah. It’s probably going to be a pretty funny one.

American taxpayers will be charged $5 million in what amounts to a posthumous pardon of QAnon fan Ashli Babbitt, the chemically-imbalanced Capitol rioter who was shot dead by a cop as she attempted the breach the House of Representatives chamber during the assault on the building incited by convicted felon President Trump as his first failed administraion came to an end, the Washington Post reports on the dollar amount of the settlement with Babbitt’s family.

The “waste, fraud, and abuse” crowd are already cool with this though. Don’t even ask them.

“Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” posted convicted felon President Trump. Sounds like he heard what he wanted to hear from Putin and nothing else.

Continued: “The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic ‘bloodbath’ is over, and I agree. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED.” Yeah, Putin bullshitted him.

“Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country. Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me, immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope, has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin!” wrote the fat bastard in the rest of his stupid, manic post after getting all excited about “trade” with Russia.

The US Supreme Court on Monday lifted a lower court order blocking the Trump Regime from ending temporary protected status for over 350,000 Venezuelan refugees admitted during the Biden Administration, CBS News reports. It’s not the final ruling while related cases continue but it is almost certainly bad news for these people who fled a dysfunctional communist regime.

“So long as the order is in effect, the secretary must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to the national interest,'” Solicitor General John Sauer wrote in the reich’s appeal.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on Monday told CNBC that the Medicaid work requirements in the “Big Beautiful Bill” are “going to be significant reforms to get people back into the workforce” because too many recipients are “able-bodied and they can go get a job and they’re living in their mom’s basement playing video games.” Funny how the original plan, prior to Sunday night’s vote, was to have work requirements not kick in until 2029. Now supposedly it’s 2027, but still if this is such an urgent problem as framed with this poll-tested horseshit about lazy, basement-dwelling video gamers from Scalise, then you’d think that they’d make it happen right away, not at some point in the future when the political price of it would be more diffuse and/or the Dems’ problem.

Anyway, it’s beyond obvious the actual point is not to get Medicaid recipients to work but to force them through a fucking maze of paperwork and red tape to prove that they are unable to, which would force untold millions of actually disabled people – as in “the truly needy” – out of the system.

But that’ll take a while to sink in on top of two or four years, giving the GOP time to come up with some way to blame immigrants and minorities for the suffering they inflicted on their voters.

“Please pray for Scott Adams. Dilbert creator Scott Adams on Monday announced he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones,” far right propaganda outlet the Gateway Pundit reports in the lede to their story that apparently is not satire and Adams is, ostensibly, actually suffering from a similar diagnosis to former President Joe Biden and it was Biden’s announcement that spurred Adams to go public to his fans about his condition.

Scott Adams is fucking crazy, so who really knows. “I have the same cancer that Joe Biden has. I also have prostate cancer that has also spread to my bones. I’ve had it longer than he’s had it – well, longer than admitting that he’s had it so my life expectancy is maybe this summer. I can tell you that I don’t have good days,” that racist cartoonist said on the Monday edition of his podcast, describing the cancer as “intolerable,” and that he’s in excruciating pain and uses a walker to get around.

Maybe Dilbert can come back after he’s dead. A third-grader could draw it so that angle’s covered, the licensee would just need to be moderately witty and acerbic. They did that with The Lockhorns, who are still snapping at each other long after their husband and wife co-creators died. Man that one where the wife Loretta tells Leroy or whatever his name is that she saved him so much money because the unnecessary shit she bought was 25 percent off. What a hoot, those Lockhorns.

Republican Senator Bill Hagerty is too chickenshit to make the actual threat or even allude to what the consequences will be if Walmart does not “EAT THE TARIFFS” as commanded by convicted felon President Trump on Saturday. He might as well be saying “We’re going to be VERY MAD at them” if they don’t do as they’re told… In fact that seems to be what he is saying, if in not so few words.

Commenting on the outcome of Romania’s presidential election on Monday, rapey-mustached Kremlin spokesworm Dmitry Peskov said that the court-ordered re-do of a contest marred by Russian propaganda that ended up with liberal Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan winning a runoff over far-right asshole George Simion was “strange, to say the least,” Reuters reports.

Romania’s top court in December had canceled the first attempt at a runoff after extremist freak Calin Georgescu had taken the lead in November’s first round, ruling that the Russian interference and bullshit had completely skewed the result and disqualified Georgescu from running again.

“We know the story of the candidate who had the best chance of winning. Without bothering to find any justification, he was simply forcibly removed from the race,” Peskov said. Hilariously the Kremlin had tried to boost Simion’s pre-democracy cred on Sunday by having him drop a story via sketchy British rag the Telegraph, with Simion going “off-script” and calling Putin a “war criminal.”

Telling staff that “it’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward. It’s time for me to move on and for this organization to move forward with new leadership,” CBS News President Wendy McMahon called it quits on Monday, CNN’s Brian Stelter reports, adding “To state the obvious, CBS News has been under tremendous pressure due to Trump’s legally dubious lawsuit against the network, and McMahon has been bearing the brunt of that pressure.”

To state the even more obvious, Paramount’s leadership are being such cunts about this for reasons too numerous to list, but leading them is the primary motivation for entertaining settling: Trump threatening to block their merger with Skydance Media if they don’t settle his bullshit lawsuit for $20 billion or whatever abstract figure it’s up to now for applying standard edits to the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, the one that Trump pussied out of doing himself. The fact that the conflict of interest exists and that it’s blatant extortion should be a slam dunk in any antitrust case.

Second, barely 24 hours have passed since the fat fuck threatened to sue Disney for ABC’s reporting on Qatar Force One, which ought to give Paramount a pretty good idea of how settling with him now might end up working out. Third, they’re going to win the lawsuit case itself pretty easily. Now these are just the utilitarian, strategic reasons to keep their balls and not cave to the 21st century’s Hitler, ones where you don’t even need to consider journalistic integrity, virtue, the respect of audiences, and so on. Fuck them for even considering settling with Trump.

Commenting on right wingers “just asking questions” about what did former President Joe Biden’s doctors know and when did they know it about his prostate cancer diagnosis, Couchfucking Vice President JD Vance on Monday told reporters “Whether the right time to have this conversation is now or some time in the future, we really do need to be honest about whether the former president was capable of doing the job,” presumably as a means of using said controversy to keep the media’s focus on Biden and not on any corruption and incompetence Jaydee and his fat boss are up to lately.

That “conversation” certainly isn’t aimed at reform or addressing maybe any possible need of the current White House to be more transparent with the American people about the health condition of their president. Just a letter from an osteopath stating that Trump is 6’3, 215 lbs, and in phenomenal health for a man his age or whatever the fuck they claimed last time should work just fine.

“According to news reports, Beyoncé was paid $11,000,000 to walk onto a stage, quickly ENDORSE KAMALA, and walk off to loud booing for never having performed, NOT EVEN ONE SONG!”

“Remember, the Democrats and Kamala illegally paid her millions of Dollars for doing nothing other than giving Kamala a full throated ENDORSEMENT. THIS IS AN ILLEGAL ELECTION SCAM AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL! IT IS AN ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION! BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, OPRAH, BONO AND, PERHAPS, MANY OTHERS, HAVE A LOT OF EXPLAINING TO DO!!!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Monday. Prosecuting Beyonce Knowles is a great idea. He should totally do it. It’ll help distract Americans when prices on everything made in China go up 30 percent.

Contrasting convicted felon President Trump’s Truth Social posts from Saturday, when he lost his shit at Walmart and demanded they “EAT THE TARIFFS” after their leadership announced that they’ll be raising prices, and one from last year when he lost his shit over Kamala Harris pledging to prevent price gouging, the Wall Street Journal’s op-ed team on Sunday decided to tempt his wrath again by writing “Mr Trump’s flip-flop on price controls is a rebuttal of his own previous tariff claims. For months he’s said that foreign producers pay the full cost of tariffs. But now he’s admitting that Walmart, an American retailer, will have to eat some of the costs or pass them on to Americans.”

“Despite his business background,” the Journal continued and just need to stop there and hope that they’re trolling backhandedly because lol, what fucking “business background”? He got hit with a half a billion judgment for fraudulent valuation practices and that was AFTER what, seven bankruptcies? He was, is, and will always be a fucking two-bit con artist. Anyway… “Despite his business background, Mr Trump doesn’t know much about retail. Walmart’s net profit margin is below 3 percent, so it doesn’t have much room to absorb the higher costs caused by tariffs. Retail competition is intense, and Walmart’s longtime comparative advantage has been lower prices.”

“Mr President is telling a company how to run its business, along with a vague, implicit threat of retribution. Marxist? How would Mr Trump react if Congress told him how much his family could charge for a Mar-a-Lago fee? Mr Trump is trying to duck the political fallout for his misguided tariff policy by blaming everyone else. Americans are too smart to fall for it,” the Journal concluded their brief screed and they proooooooooooooobably could have left off the last sentence there.

White House Reichsminister of propaganda Karoline Leavitt will on Monday be on television earlier in the day when she knows her fat slob of a boss is watching instead of pretending to govern.

Most coverage of the luxury 747 convicted felon President Trump intends to accept as a gift “for the United States” before just keeping it for his personal and family’s use simply describes them as the “Qatari royal family” but right wing outlet the Washington Free Beacon dug into it a little further and found that the plane is owned by a member of the family and also former Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassim al Thani who, among other scams, is linked to Dem now former Senator “Gold Bars Bob” Menendez, having bribed him with “four tickets for the 2023 Formula One Grand Prix race held in Miami” and other gifts, presumably gold, as Menendez googled “how much is one kilo of gold worth” after a 2021 trip to Qatar, according to one of his several indictments, lol.

Even better: The Trump Administration as recently as March was considering sanctions on Jassim al Thani for supposedly funding “pro-Hamas protests,” also per the Free Beacon. So yeah, that Donald Trump’s got a pretty sweet deal going in that he can threaten to fuck someone up big time with sanctions but then get a free $400 million luxury 747 from the guy in the shakedown. Really helps that he’s flexible on what he purports to be a scourge of antisemitism on US college campuses.

Israeli dictator Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced in a video message he’s still aiming to have the IDF seize total control of the Gaza Strip, Newsmax reports on the latest of like however many fucking times he’s said the same thing in more than a year and a half since the horrific October 7th, 2023 surprise attack by Hamas terrorists on southern Israel that wrought an even more horrific bombing campaign on the tiny, ghettoized territory’s impoverished populace.

“The fighting is intense and we are making progress. We will take control of all the territory of the strip,” Netanyahu said in a video posted on Telegram. “We will not give up. But in order to succeed, we must act in a way that cannot be stopped,” yeah yeah yeah, you sick son of a bitch.

Israeli forces have been blockading Gaza since March 2nd, causing mass starvation in a place where half to population is under 18, the survivors of such brutality will undoubtedly have kind of a chip on their shoulder against Israel and probably the United States too. The previous sentence is a statement of simple fact, not any sort of foundation for arguing a moral righteousness to terrorism.

When you create an entire generation that doesn’t give a fuck then you’re going to find out, irrespective of which side is “right” in this situation. The consequences of the atrocities perpetrated in the name of “defending” Israel are going to be felt for a very long time after Netanyahu hopefully dies in prison at the Hague or from getting shot in the face by some far-right settler extremist.