The Florida Republican Party on Saturday pulled from its merch site a new line of gear bearing a logo for “The Deport Depot” and issued a statement apologizing for “mocking the unfortunate plight of undocumented migrants in the United States. We agree with all the criticism this has generated – we have this wrong and we agree that passive or casual cruelty toward migrants needs to be eradicated wherever it exists. We have a responsibility to be aware of and attuned to all racial and cultural sensitivities – and we have not lived up to this responsibility this time. We have taken down the images and we have removed the items in question from sale. They will be recycled.”

Pffftttttt – lol. The Washington Post reports the real reason the merch was taken down was that the Home Depot reached out and asked them to do it. Any legal threat would’ve in all likelihood been toothless given the Florida GOP would’ve had a strong enough claim to the merch being satirical in nature. Instead this was almost definitely about money, like the approximately $1.2 million the hardware retailer gave to Republicans last cycle. Anyone questioning whether the Florida GOP cares about offending people over the internment of migrants should look no further than the “FAFO Alligator Alcatraz” shirts, trucker hats, and other shit currently at the top of the store site’s page.

(Fake statement plagiarized/mad-libbed from 2018 H&M corporate press release apologizing for and announcing they pulled a definitely questionable hoodie saying “Coolest monkey in the jungle.”)

Israelis demanding the Netanyahu Regime reach a deal with Hamas to free hostages in Gaza attempted completely to shut down the country Sunday in one of the largest and fiercest protests in 22 months of war, the AP reports. The organizers, representing the families of hostages, claimed hundreds of thousands of people took part in the marches.

“The very unattractive (both inside and out!) Senator from Connecticut, Chris Murphy, said ‘Putin got everything that he wanted.’ Actually, ‘nobody got anything,’ too soon, but getting close. Murphy is a lightweight who thinks it made the Russian President look good in coming to America. Actually, it was very hard for President Putin to do so. This war can be ended, NOW, but stupid people like Chris Murphy, John Bolton, and others, make it much harder to do so,” posted a man who wears hundreds of dollars’ worth of Sephora products every single day out of deep insecurity for his appearance.

so nice! pic.twitter.com/mkOMRvAalh

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 17, 2025

oops our bad, sorry. meant to post this pic.twitter.com/n7VfUg6lWL

— Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) August 17, 2025

The Texas Oil and Gas Association on Friday released a statement announcing that “data from the Texas Workforce Commission show upstream oil and natural gas employment fell by 1,400 in July compared to June. June’s job loss has been revised to 1,500 – less severe than the previously estimated 2,700. Despite declines over the past two months, year-to-date growth remains positive at 4,300 upstream jobs,” and quoting the trade group’s president Todd Staples spin of the weak 2025 employment growth with “Forecasts for lower prices can slow industry growth plans. With approximately 8 bcf/d of new LNG export capacity under development in Texas and multiple infrastructure projects announced, we are optimistic stable global market conditions will strengthen short-term demand and reinforce our energy workforce.” It’s not clear how much Staples resembles deceased actor Larry Hagman or whether the oil lobby executive wears a ten-gallon hat and drives around in a comically gaudy mid-1980s Cadillac with steer horns affixed to the front of the grille.

Less ambiguous is how it signifies yet another failure by convicted felon President Trump to make good on his campaign promises to supercharge what had already been since 2023 an effectively maximally-optimized fossil fuel industry in the United States. It’s as if he and his fans expected simply saying “DRILL, BABY, DRILL” would lead to both $1.84/gallon gas AND a vast wealth of opportunities for work on extraction projects without the messy reality of producers needing to maintain the current circa $60-$70/barrel price range to remain profitable enough to re-invest.

A 79 year-old Pennsylvania man in poor health last week became the first known victim of a person identifying as a cat, the Pocono Record reports on an at least partial validation of the 2020s-era Republican assertions of schoolchildren transitioning into felines and clawing at each other.

According to the criminal complaint against 32 year-old Ashley Self, Pennsylvania State Police responded to a call at a home on Parker Mew (lol) in Penn Forest Township, Carbon County, shortly after 9 AM on August 10, finding Kenneth Greenfield on his bed, unresponsive, with a laceration on his left forearm, and his oxygen tank apparatus removed. Greenfield’s son told cops he had picked up Self and driven her to the home earlier that morning for a reason undisclosed in the article.

It does however say that Self was already being sought on a mental health warrant prior to that morning, though not whether the unnamed Junior Greenfield had been aware of her status. Self at some point fell asleep and when she woke up at 8:30 AM began meowing and rubbing up against Junior. At that point he asked her to leave and said he would call the cops if she didn’t, prompting her to strip completely nude and Junior to head to the garage to call a mutual friend to consult about Self’s behavior. It was then that Junior heard his dad yelling from his bedroom. Rushing in, Junior saw Self on top of the old man, attempting to push him down into the bed and “clawing at him like a cat,” according to the affidavit that also mentions Junior describing Self’s “superhuman strength.”

The Sunday after convicted felon President Trump’s failed meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is so confusing and diffuse because his minions are just talking bullshit out of the both sides of their mouths, it’s hard to maintain the attention span to conclude anything about where they’re at, other than to say nowhere good. Doesn’t help that they don’t even really know where they’re at but are pretending it’s good. So instead just enjoy this clip of Lindsey Graham gushing over Melania Trump as though she were some fabulous camp icon from when he was first discovering himself.

“It’s incredible how the Fake News violently distorts the TRUTH when it comes to me. There is NOTHING I can say or do that would lead them to write or report honestly about me. I had a great meeting in Alaska on Biden’s stupid War, a war that should have never happened!!!” posted convicted felon President Trump on Sunday. Then it was “If I got Russia to give up Moscow as part of the Deal, the Fake News, and their PARTNER, the Radical Left Democrats, would say I made a terrible mistake and a very bad deal. That’s why they are the FAKE NEWS! Also, they should talk about the 6 WARS, etc, I JUST STOPPED!!! MAGA” and “BIG PROGRESS ON RUSSIA. STAY TUNED!”

So no, he’s not happy this morning. It may’ve had something to do with the Sunday shows so far.

MAGA Red States South Carolina and Ohio on Saturday announced they’ll be sending 200 and 150, respectively, of their National Guard troops to stand around in Washington, DC and help legitimize convicted felon President Trump’s moronic militarization of the nation’s capital, the AP reports.

The announcements came just hours after West Virginia Gov Patrick Morrisey sent 400 of the Mountain State’s troops to suffer through the August heat instead of working and living back home.

The ending of Atlanta man Alton Oliver’s murder trial was almost as fucked up and wacky as the beginning: According to 11Alive in December 2022 off-duty Fulton County Deputy James Thomas Jr was driving in his personal vehicle at 4:30 AM and saw Oliver walking home from work – and promptly propositioned him for sex. Three times. Oliver was not interested, things escalated, words were exchanged, then bullets, and Thomas ended up dead. Oliver was charged with three counts of murder (one for each bullet), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, first-degree criminal damage to property, and possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony.

The trial lasted all of three days and the jurors deliberated for one. Fox 5 Atlanta reports there was a bit of confusion as the verdict was was read by Judge Henry Newkirt, who pronounced the jurors had found Oliver guilty on all six counts. The jurors then politely pointed out to the jurist that he had made a mistake. “Didn’t I say not” Newkirt then said, realizing the mistake as Oliver and his team celebrated his acquittal in the death of the horny scumbag deputy and walked out a free man.

Texas federal prison inmate Julie Howell.

It’s up to you whether you feel any sympathy for Julie Howell. She was an associate professor and the department head for Educational Leadership and Technology in the College of Education at Tarleton State University – part of the Texas A&M system – between April 1, 2022, and April 9, 2024, fired and later indicted because she used the card that’s supposed to be for work expenses and pissed away $941,128, mostly on gambling, something she says was induced by trauma caused by her daughter getting shot. She was facing 10 years in the joint but in January she signed a plea agreement which got her a year at the Club Fed in Texas, reporting to begin her sentence in June.

As reported on Friday, she didn’t last two months there. Now she’s at FDC Houston, a place where a female inmate sued claiming she was raped by a guard four days before her release in 2017. It’s not the worst in the system but it is most definitely not a Club Fed where inmates can train puppies to become service dogs. Howell now has to live next to violent offenders, gang members, unstable pretrial defendants, and all sorts of the people she was not incarcerated with two weeks ago.

All because she spoke out to the media and said she wasn’t comfortable with Ghislaine Maxwell being around her. And simply because convicted felon President Trump’s regime could.

The owners of two Emiliano’s Mexican Restaurant and Bar locations outside of Pittsburgh are wondering who the fuck is going to pay for the damages caused by ICE agents rampaging into the joints looking for undocumented workers to arrest earlier this month that nabbed nine workers at the Gibsonia outlet and 7 at another in Cranberry Township, two staffers and a witness tell NBC News.

Plus there’s the Instagram post showing the destruction: “Agents stormed our restaurants in a show of force that went far beyond anything reasonable or humane. They didn’t just detain people — they raided the heart of our business, tore through our spaces, and left behind a trail of fear, confusion, and destruction. Our kitchens were flipped. Our walk-ins emptied. Food trashed. Doors broken.”

Local activist Jamie Martinez, who showed up in the middle of the raid on the Gibsonia location, told NBC that ICE “actually caused a kitchen fire that agents were unable to extinguish at the beginning, which put people in danger,” adding that it was on the workers, who were sitting on the floor, in cuffs, to tell the stormtroopers how to operate the fire extinguisher to put it out. “By the time the fire department got there, the fire had already been put out with a dry chemical extinguisher, but only after this delay,” said Martinez. In a statement ICE responded pretty much how you would’ve expected, saying the “damage to the restaurant, including the small fire, was created by the illegal aliens themselves while they were trying to escape or hide from law enforcement officers.”

A woman, who was not detained after showing proper documentation, told Martinez she was cooking at the Cranberry location when an ICE agent entered the kitchen and ordered her to stop while aiming an assault rifle at her head. “This lady is now going to have to live with the trauma of having law enforcement point a gun at her head while she was at work,” said Martinez.

“President Trump is raking up global support in his push for a Nobel Peace Prize – garnering nominations from Pakistan, Cambodia, Israel and GOP lawmakers as he touts his role in talks to end various global conflicts. Friday may be Trump’s biggest diplomatic test yet when he sits down with Russian President Vladimir Putin to talk about ending the war in Ukraine, something the president has struggled to settle between the two adversaries,” says the lede to a Wednesday article at The Hill about “the pressure,” one that has aged somewhat over the past 72 hours or so.

“The White House is publicly arguing it is ‘well past time’ Trump gets the prize. A source close to Trump World said the White House is ‘very serious’ about getting Trump the prize, adding that ‘on the merits, it’s pretty straightforward,'” the article continues as if The Hill is a news source political news consumers should have taken seriously three days ago, let alone now after that “summit” which The Hill themselves on Friday reported that “Despite the talk of progress on both sides, neither Trump nor Putin offered any indication of how Russia and Ukraine had moved closer to a peace deal” in a “5 takeaways” article that makes no mention of the Nobel Peace Prize hype.

Back to the Wednesday piece: “The list of those who agree has been growing. Pakistan nominated Trump for the prize for his mediation of a ceasefire between the country and India in May,” The Hill wrote, leaving out that less than 24 hours later the Pakistanis condemned his decision to bomb Iran.

your grandson married an Ethiopian and you think her being a citizen is a good thing?

how are you not embarrassed about all of this.

— Rich 🐺 (@heywildrich) August 16, 2025

Congrats to Tsehay Grassley (?) for making it to the citizenship oath, the very second up to which she was subject to being cuffed and thrown in the gulag over an unpaid speeding ticket from 2021 under the regime her husband’s grandfather is fanatically loyal to. This is not to say Tsehay does have a criminal (or “criminal”) record so much as pointing out that if she did there’s no way she would have been detained. It’s also worth asking how long it took for her to make it to that point relative to other green card holders, although a 2022 pic of her with Grandpa Chuck and Grandma Whatever shows her with two kids, the older one a girl who looks at least five at the time, that Grassley says are his “great grandkids.” Meaning it’s likely been the better part of a decade since Tsehay and Chuck’s grandson got married and thus hasn’t been fast-tracked in any meaningful way.

That lack of any indication of special treatment apparent, Democrats would probably have to stretch pretty far to find anything particularly problematic about Tsehay becoming a citizen – or at least more problematic than the regular treatment in the dismal state of the American immigration system BEFORE the Trump Reich started tossing their own supporters in the gulag. Add to that Grassley and every other congressional Republican’s utter void of leadership on changes that would’ve made for less time and headaches for his grandson’s wife to get to take the oath to become a citizen.

The reasons why are right there in the replies, from the people who vote for him and his party, those who actually have a problem with Tseshay’s citizenship – and the biracial kids on the Grassley tree.

Republican West Virginia Governor Patrick Morissey, evidently eager to sacrifice the work and family lives of the men and women who serve in his state’s National Guard for the glory of his Orange God Emperor, announced Saturday he’s sending 300 to 400 “skilled personnel” to the nation’s capital to aid in the mission of standing around and intimidating people for no real reason, WDTV reports

“Under the command of West Virginia Adjutant General Maj Gen Jim Seward, the WVNG will deploy troops to the nation’s capital as a show of commitment to public safety and regional cooperation,” said Morrisey in a press release. “West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation’s capital. The men and women of our National Guard represent the best of our [opioid-ravaged, impoverished] state [which could probably use a militarized response to crime, particularly drug trafficking, far more that fucking Washington DC could], and this mission reflects our shared commitment to a strong and secure America.”

“This initiative aligns with our values of service and dedication to our communities. We stand ready to support our partners in the National Capital Region and contribute to the collective effort of making our nation’s capital a clean and safe environment. The National Guard’s unique capabilities and preparedness make it an invaluable partner in this important undertaking,” said Seward, whose more muted, boilerplate-y quote appears to indicate the stupidity and pointlessness.

University of Idaho quadruple murderer Bryan Kohberger is kind of acting like a bitch in solitary confinement, per NBC News carrying an Idaho Department of Corrections statement saying “We are aware of Kohberger’s complaints about what he considers taunting. Incarcerated individuals commonly communicate with each other in prison. Bryan Kohberger is housed alone in a cell, and IDOC security staff maintain a safe and orderly environment for all individuals in our custody.”

Kohberger is having difficulty sleeping because of other inmates yelling at him through the vents.

“Attorney General James Uthmeier today announced the arrest of Alexandria Mary Beatrice Tatem for Perjury by False Written Declaration, a third-degree felony under Florida law. The arrest follows a joint investigation led by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Office of Executive Investigations and the Elections Crime Unit. According to the investigation, Tatem, a registered Paid Petition Circulator (PPC), submitted a petition in support of a constitutional amendment initiative titled Adult Personal Use of Marijuana (Amendment 25-01), sponsored by Smart & Safe Florida.”

“The petition falsely claimed to have been signed by Amy Akins, a Florida voter who passed away on January 10, 2024 – more than a year before the date the petition was allegedly signed. The petition was submitted to the Hillsborough County Supervisor of Elections. Per State law, PPCs must swear under penalty of perjury that each petition they submit was signed in their presence by the named voter. Tatem signed the affidavit on the petition affirming it was completed in her presence.”

“During a sworn interview conducted by FDLE on July 1, 2025, in Killeen, Texas, Tatem confirmed that she signed the affidavit and submitted the petition, even after being shown that the voter listed had died more than a year prior. The investigation revealed that Tatem had been registered as a PPC with the Florida Department of State’s Division of Elections since 2019. Tatem collected and submitted petitions in the Tampa Bay and Sarasota regions. Election officials identified the forged petition due to the voter’s death before the date of the alleged signature. The Office of Statewide Prosecution is charging Tatem with one count of Perjury by False Written Declaration, a third-degree felony, punishable by up to five years in prison,” says Florida AG James Uthmeier in a press release.

“Consumer sentiment fell about 5 percent in August, declining for the first time in four months. This deterioration largely stems from rising worries about inflation. Buying conditions for durables plunged 14 percent, its lowest reading in a year, on the basis of high prices. Current personal finances declined modestly amid growing concerns about purchasing power. In contrast, expected personal finances inched up a touch along with a slight firming in income expectations, which remain subdued. Overall, consumers are no longer bracing for the worst-case scenario for the economy feared in April when reciprocal tariffs were announced and then paused. However, consumers continue to expect both inflation and unemployment to deteriorate in the future.”

“Year-ahead inflation expectations rose from 4.5 percent last month to 4.9 percent this month. This increase was seen across multiple demographic groups and all three political affiliations. Long-run inflation expectations also lifted from 3.4 percent in July to 3.9 percent in August. This month ended two consecutive months of receding inflation for short-run expectations and three straight months for long-run expectations. Still, both readings remain well below the highs seen briefly in April and May 2025,” says the University of Michigan’s monthly consumer sentiment survey.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer on Friday threatened to sue the Trump Regime to compel the release of the Justice Department’s files on dead sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after a Dem-imposed deadline for them to do so came and went with nothing, as usual, Fox News reports.

“They’re now breaking the law to hide the files,” Schumer posted, referring to the arcane 1928 statute the Dems had used to try to force the disclosure. “Thune must appoint a lawyer to defend the Senate in Court and get the files. If he chooses complicity – we’ll take them to court ourselves.”