You’d think a guy who just spent the last two weeks or so coaching a fellow Republican ahead of a big debate would sound a lot more, uh, cheerful and optimistic than House Majority Whip Tom Emmer does about JD Vance’s showdown with Minnesota Governor Tim Walz on CBS Tuesday.

In fact Emmer sounds just fucking pissed and defensive, bitching about how the election isn’t enough about the issues, when talking about it on CNBC this morning, like maybe the coaching didn’t go so well. Sucks for him. Anyway for his part Dem running mate Minnesota Gov Tim Walz seems to be undertaking a decidedly more deliberate expectations lowering campaign with multiple stories being planted saying he’s not all that great of a debater and gets defensive when confronted about his fuckups in private. The bottom line is Vance is vulnerable and can be destroyed.

“Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is designating Hilltop Youth, a violent extremist group that has repeatedly attacked Palestinians and destroyed Palestinian homes and property in the West Bank, pursuant to Executive Order (EO) 14115. Through these violent activities, Hilltop Youth is actively destabilizing the West Bank and harming the peace and security of Palestinians and Israelis alike. Hilltop Youth has devastated Palestinian communities and carried out killings, mass arson, and other so-called ‘price tag’ attacks to exact revenge and intimidate Palestinian civilians, and has repeatedly clashed with the Israeli military as it counters their activities,” says a Treasury Department press release announcing the sanctions.

“As noted in FinCEN’s February 1, 2024 Alert and July 11, 2024 Supplemental Alert, the United States has consistently opposed violence in the West Bank, including attacks by Israeli violent extremist settlers against Palestinians and attacks by Palestinian violent extremists against Israelis. The United States will continue to seek accountability and justice for all acts of violence against civilians in the West Bank, regardless of the perpetrator or the victim. Treasury remains concerned by reports of escalating violence in the West Bank and encourages continued reporting by financial institutions of suspicious activity potentially related to the financing of these violent acts.”

Cops in Racine, Wisconsin pursuing a suspect wanted for questioning in an earlier hit-and-run got help from an unlikely Good Samaritan on Monday night, according to a state Department of Justice press release: A tree that lended a helping branch by getting in the way of the unnamed suspect’s vehicle after he fled a traffic stop. It’s not clear whether the vegetative organism was severely injured in the crash. The same cannot be said of suspect, who was pronounced dead at the scene.

Less than 24 hours after he gutted the state’s six-week abortion ban, Fulton County, Georgia superior Court Judge Robert McBurney is hearing a case against the newly MAGAfied state election board’s new self-granted powers to hold up certification of the November results if they don’t like them. We’re joining late but Lawfare analyst Anna Bower’s live tweet thread says the plaintiffs are looking to McBurney to set guardrails for the pro-Trump scumbags on the board’s ability to fuck around and delay certification over whatever made-up “election integrity” bullshit they want.

Dumbass New York City Mayor Eric Adams’s legal team on Monday pulled a total Trump in the federal bribery case against him, as Politico reports they’re accusing the government of illegally leaking details of the investigation against him. “For nearly a year, the government has leaked grand jury material and other sensitive information to the media to aggrandize itself, further its investigation, and unfairly prejudice the defendant,” wrote attorney Alex Spiro in a motion.

That was Trump’s line last year against prosecutors Jack Smith and Alvin Bragg. A bunch of times.

A senior White House official tells CNN that “The United States has indications that Iran is preparing to imminently launch a ballistic missile attack against Israel. We are actively supporting defensive preparations to defend Israel against this attack. A direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran.” The MAGA kids are going to LOVE this.

Is this the real Oval or the fake one they send Biden to so he can play President? https://t.co/BTF2QKz5Pf

— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) October 1, 2024

Matt Gaetz seems a little butthurt over Biden calling out his Orange Allah’s lies. Butthurt enough to entertain the classic “Biden’s White House is a set on Tyler Perry’s lawn” fairy tale.

In a one-year retrospective on the massive self-own that was the House Republican Caucus’s ouster of feckless and weak now-former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, NOTUS reports that members are still “emotionally recovering” from the shambolic three-week long clusterfuck that brought them Speaker Mike Johnson, summing it up with “The House looks a lot like it did before Matt Gaetz and seven other Republicans, alongside House Democrats, voted to remove McCarthy, although Republicans have fewer members than they did then,” because now-expelled-and-convicted-felon George Santos’s seat flipped Blue and Mike Gallagher resigned too late for a special election to be held.

“They took an entire branch of government offline for three weeks, when we had two wars raging overseas,” said Pennsylvania “moderate” Brian Fitzpatrick “It was a very dark day in American history,” he added, even if it wasn’t dark enough for him to quit his shitshow of a party in disgust.

“There are many tragedies of the McCarthy ouster,” South Dakotan Dusty Johnson said. “But I think the eight renegades who ousted him have to acknowledge that they didn’t fundamentally change anything about the House.” Lame duck Virginian Bob Good, the only one of the “renegades” to be successfully ousted in a primary during McCarthy’s “revenge tour” (and even then it was mostly Trump’s revenge over Good originally endorsing Ron DeSantis’s failed presidential bid) agreed, lol.

“No,” Good said when asked if Mike Johnsons had done a decent enough job. “Speaker Johnson’s positions have changed on many things since he became speaker. He used to be against funding for Ukraine. He said we would use that as leverage to obtain border security. Not only did we not use it as leverage for border security, he’s supported more funding for Ukraine. He used to support a warrant requirement for FISA, and he changed his position on that,” Good continued crying.

Israel troops and tanks stormed in to southern Lebanon on Tuesday in an operation to perpetuate the 70-something years-long conflict between the Jewish state and its neighbors, the BBC reports.

Capitol Hill aides in both parties told Punchbowl News on Monday that President Joe Biden’s hint that he might call Congress back in to session to pass a supplemental to fund recovery efforts from Hurricane Helene since last week’s CR authorized Biden to spend $20 billion in FEMA funds for disaster relief and that FEMA has money marked for non-urgent projects that can be diverted.

The typically GOP-friendly newsletter detects a bit more apprehension on one side though. “But should Congress have to return to session to deal with the Helene fallout, it would be a mess. Republicans are all over the place when it comes to disaster relief. There are a number of GOP lawmakers who have voted against storm aid. When Sandy hit New York and New Jersey back in 2012, 67 Republicans voted no on a disaster aid package. Many of them are still in Congress,” they write, before mentioning the obvious fact that it would take members off the campaign trail.

Sort of sounds like Punchbowl are trying to communicate some sort of mutually assured destruction being visited upon Democrats too, even though it’s obvious Republicans are going to suffer more from having to go back to work and do the right thing by the American people for however many days it takes. The Tuesday morning edition also takes a dim view of how convicted felon former President Trump’s been handling the storm’s aftermath, writing, “Where Trump is flailing: Former President Donald Trump visited Georgia Monday and claimed Kemp couldn’t get Biden on the phone to help secure much-needed aid for the state,” before listing off all the blatant lies the fat fuck spewed as well including his cowardly escape from an NBC reporter – all in contrast to positive reporting on how Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have conducted the response so far.

Pennsylvania absentee voting underway in some counties https://t.co/LcQl7s7lub

— Fox News (@FoxNews) October 1, 2024

A new survey of Pennsylvania likely voters by AARP/Fabrizio-Ward/Impact finds Vice President Kamala Harris leading convicted felon former President Trump 49 to 47 percent in the Keystone State.

A 43-foot tall marionette of a naked Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, popped up on a roadside on the outskirts of Las Vegas suspended from a construction crane alongside the Great Basin Highway, the Independent reports.

The sculpture, made of wireframing and foam, weighs approximately three tons.  It’s part of an art exhibit called the “Crooked and Obscene Tour,” but the specific artist who constructed it chooses to remain anonymous for obvious reasons:  the anatomical measurements were apparently based on Stormy Daniels’ public descriptions.

The exhibit appeared days after Trump bragged that he had an “beautiful body.”  “You have never seen a body so beautiful, much better than Sleepy Joe,” the 78-year-old Trump boasted at a weekend rally.

Of course it’s a sensationalist headline, but not an inaccurate one:  Caroline Giuliani, the 35-year-old daughter of the Official Undead of MAGA and former lawyer Rudy Giuliani announced her endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, per her piece at Vanity Fair.

Calling her relationship with her father “cartoonishly complicated,” Caroline Giuliani described how she saw falling into the endless pit that is TrumpWorld destroy her father.  “Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful, both on a personal level and because his demise feels linked to a dark force that threatens to once again consume America,” she warned.

Caroline added, “After months of feeling the type of sorrow that comes from the death of a loved one, it dawned on me that I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too.”

Must-win Democratic Montana Senator Jon Tester will face his douchebag Republican challenger Tim Sheehy in their final battle in front of Big Sky State voters on Monday night.

Middle East think tanker Jason Brodsky and other sources are reporting that Syrian state TV propagandist Safaa Al-Ahmed was “martyred” in a Monday night Israeli airstrike on a vehicle in Damascus. Amid the chatter some of the more reactionary accounts are saying that this was a targeted assassination while others – that do not appear necessarily to be Israel apologists – are saying that’s preposterous and the actual target had to be someone Al-Ahmed was accompanying.

Or to be less euphemistic, Al-Ahmed was probably fucking some Syrian or maybe Iranian government official and picked the wrong night to shack up. It’s like if a Fox News lady was in a car with a Republican Congressman when it was hit by a Venezuelan airstrike. And yeah obviously the part about the “Venezuelan airstrike” isn’t realistic but you get the rest of the scenario.

On the eve of his 100th birthday, former President Jimmy Carter will be celebrated for his centennial birthday on Tuesday with the broadcast of a benefit concert that raised $1.3 million for his charity–a legitimate one, unlike that of a certain different former president–as well as the unveiling of thirty new homes for needy families, Politico reports.

The oldest former president in history, Carter and his wife Rosalynn, who died last year, served with Habitat for Humanity, and the group will open thirty newly-built homes in St. Paul, Minnesota to celebrate Carter’s birthday.

“I think he has probably done more personally in his post-presidency than anyone else because he’s not out there looking for attention,” Cassandra Newby-Alexander, professor of Virginia Black history and culture at Norfolk State University, said. “He’s looking to change things. He’s not out there trying to make money for himself. He’s out there trying to live the life of a Christian– a true Christian, one who cares about the poor and the homeless and the children.”

Also what the fuck is with one of his own minions, Kellyanne, interviewing him? How does that even actually qualify as an “interview” when it’s just a conversation between a woman and her boss?

Letcher County, Kentucky Sheriff Mickey Stines, who has served the people since 2018, announced his retirement on Monday, NBC News reports. Stines will move forward and focus on other pursuits, like defending himself from first degree murder charges for shooting Judge Kevin Mullins dead at the county courthouse earlier this month. His defense attorney stressed that the retirement did not equate to an admission of guilt and that his client remains innocent until pleading guilty.

Legendary Major League Scumbag Pete Rose died of something at age 83 on Monday, decades after he was declared dead to baseball over some sort of gambling scam, TMZ reports.