Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro has pretty much officially Stopped the Steal as opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has fled the country for political asylum in Spain, the BBC reports.

A Spanish Air Force jet departed Caracas late Saturday night after Gonzalez had spent the last several days hiding in the embassy. Maduro’s Regime allowed the legitimate winner of this year’s election safe passage to the airport despite having issued an arrest warrant. State security forces have also surrounded the Argentinian embassy where six allies of Gonzalez are holed up, with Maduro propagandists claiming terrorist attacks on the regime are being plotted within.

“CEASE & DESIST: I, together with many Attorneys and Legal Scholars, am watching the Sanctity of the 2024 Presidential Election very closely because I know, better than most, the rampant Cheating and Skullduggery that has taken place by the Democrats in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

“It was a Disgrace to our Nation! Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again. We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T! Please beware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters, & Corrupt Election Officials. Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country,” posted convicted felon former President Trump on Saturday.

Traffic has finally returned to Interstate 75 in Laurel County, Kentucky after the highway was shut down for hours because another angry white man with a gun decided to take his frustration out on society.  The cause of the tie-up is still at large after shooting an unknown number of victims, WKYT in Lexington reports.

Unconfirmed radio traffic from police responding to the search reveals the suspect, 32-year-old white male Joseph Couch, purchased an AR-15 and 2,000 rounds of ammunition Saturday morning, hours before the shooting started.

Republican effort at diversity and GOP nominee for North Carolina Governor Mark Robinson reportedly said at a campaign event that he would support a “zero” week abortion ban, NBC News reports.

Asked if he supported the state’s current 12-week abortion ban, Robinson responded on a recording of a September 3rd event,  “That 12 weeks, exceptions for rape and incest … I’m not going to say it’s reasonable. But my faith allows me to live with that, because that’s where the consensus is. Do I want to continue to lower it? You better know it. I would love to get down to six weeks. And I’d like to get down to zero. I would like to push it back as far as we could and eliminate as many abortions as we can.”

Robinson then went on to push a “zero week” ban as a goal of the anti-choice movement.  “We can’t do it all at once.  The Democrats started off with Roe v. Wade, then moved to ‘safe, legal, and rare.’ Then they got to where? Nine months in the womb. They did that over 50 years. … And we can do it.”

You’ve come back from your Labor Day vacation to find a new resident moved into the rental down the street.  He’s not really new to the neighborhood, though:  your buddy next door told you he lived here a few years back but had to move out after he lost his job.

Most days, he seems friendly enough, waving to people as they walk by.  He’s not so much waving to them, though.  More like waving at them:  he’s just standing in his front door waving, and if you happen to pass by, so be it.  When you’re walking the dog, you wave back out of an unstated neighborly obligation.  He calls it his personal “community review” everyone produces specifically for him. 

A week after he moved in, he erected a fence around the yard, something explicitly against your HOA’s rules.  But he says he’s allowed to because he used to run the board, so he’s allowed.  He was real popular, you see, because he cut monthly fees to practically nothing; that means he’s got special rules, he explains.

Yeah we run a lot of Trump rallies here. It’s easier than having to pick out a single clip of the fucked up and embarrassing things he says. Mediaite usually runs four or five different articles about every single public appearance the fat bastard makes. This isn’t better so much as more efficient.

Cops in Fort Myers, Florida are seeking a a man who they say stole a puppy from a local pet store and concealed it in a hoodie on Thursday, WFLA reports. The Fort Myers Police Department is asking for the public’s help in identifying the man who caught on security cam entering Pet Kingdom around 11:45 am and removing a black and grey Maltipoo (Maltese/Poodle mix) puppy.

Not for nothing, but “puppy thief” makes it sound a lot crueler even if technically accurate. Like if the puppy was stolen from a little kid that’s obviously an extremely heinous crime. But this was really just shoplifting and the asshole simply stole a product from the store, not their pet. Hell if anything he’s probably going to give it a more loving home than the store itself had been.

“No boxes or artificial lifts will be allowed to stand on during my upcoming debate with Comrade Kamala Harris. We had this out previously with former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg when he was in a debate, and he was not allowed a ‘lift.’ It would be a form of cheating, and the Democrats cheat enough. ‘You are who you are,’ it was determined!” posted convicted felon former President Trump on Saturday. We’re pretty sure fatass never actually shared a debate stage with Mike Bloomberg.

The Boeing Starliner spacecraft whose unreliability has stranded two astronauts aboard the International Space Station – until February 2025 at the earliest – landed safely and intact at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico early Saturday, CNN reports. For all the caution being exercised with NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams staying in orbit until a SpaceX mission can be launched to return them home for fear the creaky Boeing capsule could break apart on reentry, the landing was actually a milestone achievement for American spaceflight: It’s the first time a US capsule parachuted down on dry land rather than splashing down in the ocean.

NASA Commercial Crew program manager Steve Stich said an overabundance of caution played a role in Williams and Wilmore’s extended stay in orbit, but the modeling of the landing procedure left the risks unacceptably high. “Now we’ve landed a capsule in the US on land. The entry in particular has been darn near flawless, so that – I wouldn’t say it surprised me – but as I step back and think about the mission, the entry itself was just, and the deorbit burn was spot on.”

“If we’d had a model that would have predicted what we saw tonight perfectly, yeah, it looks like an easy decision to go say we could have had a crewed flight – but we didn’t have that. From a human perspective, all of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there’s a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it. We had planned to have the mission land with Butch and Suni on board,” Stich continued, not exactly regretting playing it safe either.

• Fuck.  It’s “too soon” to have a serious discussion about gun violence. Again.
• Yes, paying more for butter and eggs because of inflation sucks, but when conservatives whine about costs, note that Donald Trump added $24,000 to each American’s individual debt burden by increasing the federal debt by $8 trillion in four years.  That’s roughly six times the cost Republicans claim inflation takes out of household income.  
• The American Dream of freedom, liberty and prosperity gets wonderfully illustrated by the exuberance and energy of the Harris-Walz campaign.  
• Notice most of Trump’s rallies are scheduled earlier in the day to avoid him rambling as he sunsets.  Trump, though, thinks his tale of sharks and batteries is now one of his “hits” he thinks his fans want to hear at each rally.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CXC”

“We have major breaking news out of New York City where, well, very abusively biased Judge Juan Merchan announced the sentencing of former President Donald J. Trump has been postponed until after the election in November,” Trump advisor Sean Hannity says on his subsidized ad for the Trump campaign.

In his annual financial disclosure, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito reported a pair of concert tickets valued at $900 from a German princess, the only gift worthy of him noting on the forms, NBC News reports.  In other news:  Germany still has princesses.

Filed after getting an extension, Alito’s financial forms report the concert tickets gift came from Gloria, Dowager Princess of Thurn and Taxis, a Bavarian socialite, but it doesn’t specify what concert Alito attended.  Another Justice also reported getting tickets, but she proudly announced the performer: Ketanji Brown Jackson got a pair of tickets to see Beyonce, valued at $3,700.

“Dick Cheney is an irrelevant RINO, along with his daughter, who lost by the largest margin in the History of Congressional Races! They couldn’t get Scooter Libby, who did so much for them (but was so unfairly treated!), PARDONED. I did it! He’s the King of Endless, Nonsensical Wars, wasting Lives and Trillions of Dollars, just like Comrade Kamala Harris. I am the Peace President, and only I will stop World War III! What Liz Cheney did with the Unselect Committee of Political Losers is unthinkable. She and her Unselects deleted and destroyed all evidence and info – IT’S GONE.”

“Much of it proved that Nancy Pelosi was responsible for J6 – DIDN’T PROVIDE SECURITY. Cheney and the others should be prosecuted for what they did, but Comrade Kamala is even worse!” posted convicted felon former President Trump on Friday, plainly annoyed that one of history’s evilest Republicans endorsed a Democrat over him, even as it does nothing to move the needle.

That said, Old Dickhead’s clearly a third domino to fall in a row: Adam Kinzinger, then Liz Cheney, then the former Veep. Even if he himself does not expand the permission structure – to not just be anti-Trump but pro-Harris – it could continue spreading to other non-MAGA Republicans. When it gets to Mitt Romney or Lisa Murkowski then yeah, that might be a real problem and certainly a bigger problem than dipshits Bobby Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard are for Kamala, lol.

Devil’s Lake in Lincoln County, Oregon is completely safe to swim in, health officials announced Friday, saying that the waters named for the King of Hell has been cleared of any danger and those immersed will not have their souls taken to the underworld, the Salem Statesman Journal reports.

Officials advised however that to stay on the safe side, folks should report if they see any foamy, scummy, thick like paint, pea-green or blue-green, or if brownish-red mats or green clumps are suspended in the water as that means their bodies may become possessed with a deadly toxin.

Weeks after hosting an ostensive “press event” about crime that somehow turned into a political rally complete with Trump banners, Livingston County (Michigan) Sheriff Mike Murphy is facing a slew of complaints about politicizing the Sheriff’s Department and improperly using his public office, Michigan Advance reports.

At issue is an August 20th event which claimed to have been a candidate forum for Trump to discuss crime and security promoted by the Sheriff’s Department at its headquarters. When media arrived at the Sheriff’s office, the presentation area had been staged with deputy’s cars as a backdrop.  Uniformed deputies stood behind Trump as he rambled on about various topics and against Democrat Kamala Harris.

The state Election Commission received no fewer than seven complaints against Murphy and the county Sheriff’s Department.  But instead of backing away from politics, Murphy has doubled down, leaving the board of a local organization that helps victims of domestic abuse and filming an ad criticizing Harris and Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin.

Republican former Congresswoman Liz Cheney on Friday told a panel at the Texas Tribune Fest that her dad, former Vice President Dick Cheney, will be voting for his successor in the office, Kamala Harris, because Donald Trump is too fascist for the guy suspected of engineering the 9/11 attacks.

A Tennessee man with a pistol strapped to the gas tank of his motorcycle and a chihuahua tucked inside of his jacket was arrested last week in Alpena County, Michigan for carrying without a permit but not endangering or abuse of animals or anything like that, the Detroit Free Press reports.

The unnamed 56 uear-old biker had been pulled over speeding on the way to his girlfriend’s house, having traveled for what had to be at least 12 hours from Tennesee with the freaking tiny, scared little dog in his jacket. It’s not clear what happened to the dog, Michigan State Police Lt Derrick Carroll said he assumed it was taken to the girlfriend’s house as she lives nearby.

Manhattan Judge Juan Merchan on Friday pushed convicted felon former President Trump’s sentencing date to November 26 amid uncertainty over the fat fuck’s ongoing efforts to involve federal appeals courts in the case, Politico’s Josh Gerstein reports

Convicted felon former President Trump did not have a great morning at the Second Circuit Court of Appeals when his lawyers tried to get the verdict in EJ Carroll’s first defamation lawsuit verdict against him tossed. Already the fat bastard started this press conference by complaining about the Justice Department indicting those Russian scumbags and exposing the influence network.

This is supposed to be a press conference too. We’ll see if he actually answers any questions.