“I watched ABC FAKE NEWS this morning, both lightweight reporter Jonathan Carl’s(K?) ridiculous and biased interview of Tom Cotton (who was fantastic!), and their so-called Panel of Trump Haters, and I ask, why would I do the Debate against Kamala Harris on that network? Will panelist Donna Brazil give the questions to the Marxist Candidate like she did for Crooked Hillary Clinton? Will Kamala’s best friend, who heads up ABC, do likewise. Where is Liddle’ George Slopadopolus hanging out now? Will he be involved. They’ve got a lot of questions to answer!!! Why did Harris turn down Fox, NBC, CBS, and even CNN? Stay tuned!!!” posted convicted felon former President Trump late Sunday, very obviously edging toward canceling the September 10th ABC News debate again.

Evidently feeling like he’s been gifted a new “lane” with Robert F Kennedy’s exit from the guaranteed losers’ tier of the 2024 presidential race, Russian asset Cornel West on Sunday tweeted “Brothers and sisters, it’s time we commit to understanding and addressing the role of pharmaceutical influence in public policy. I propose a COVID-19 Truth Commission to explore the disproportionate impact on marginalized communities, seek reparations, and ensure justice and equity in our future responses. We must also challenge the censorship that silences diverse voices in these critical conversations. Additionally, we will establish a Vaccine Safety and Utilization Panel to restore trust in our public health institutions through science, transparency, and community engagement.”

“Together, let’s protect our nation’s health and respect the autonomy of its people,” West continued, that last part’s mention of “autonomy” erasing a lot of the ambiguity where up until then you could maybe have argued that West was promising convicted felon former President Trump would face actual justice for his utter dereliction of duty during the worst crisis of the 21st century. Even the “pharmaceutical influence in public policy” part is kind of Rorschach test-y where one might see it being against big pharma lobbying to maximize profits and what not. But “autonomy” is the key giveaway that Old Cornhole is dipping his toes into the universe of COVID vax conspiracy shit.

Ughhhhh these people are such fucking clowns with this stupid bullshit… Anyway, notice that Jason Miller is citing numbers from Tony Fabrizio’s Friday memo about internal polling but doesn’t actually say the RFK Jr endorsement will actually definitely put Trump up over the top.

“United States Attorney Roger B Handberg announces that Carl Vecchione, has pleaded guilty to receipt and possession of child sexual abuse material. Vecchione faces a minimum mandatory penalty of 5 years, up to 40 years, in federal prison. Sentencing is scheduled for November 19, 2024. According to the plea agreement, on June 9, 2022, Homeland Security Investigations executed a search warrant at Vecchione’s residence after identifying the home’s Internet Protocol (IP) address as sharing child sexual abuse material online. HSI located more than 900 images and videos of child sexual abuse material on Vecchione’s laptop,” says a Justice Department press release.

It doesn’t say that he’s a registered Republican, but VoterRecords.com came through for us again.

Lara Trump was a moron as usual on Sunday, weakly badmouthing the DNC’s tour-de-force, warning “illegal citizens” not to try to vote, and guaranteeing polls would show a huge boost in polls for her degenerate father-in-law after “radical leftist” roadkill freak RFK Jr’s endorsement.

“The Missouri Department of Conservation captured a bald eagle along the boundary of Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield. The eagle has been rehabilitated and released back into the park.”

“The bird, originally reported to be injured, was found to be healthy but engorged with raccoon – in other words, too fat to fly. The x-rays, provided by Dickerson Park Zoo, show the outline of what we suspect is raccoon roadkill. Its release was a coordinated effort between NPS, the Missouri Department of Conservation, and the Dickerson Park Zoo,” says a Facebook post last week from the staff at the National Park Service’s Wilson’s Creek National Battlefield in Missouri.

Feels like this story is a decade or two late for all the “obesity epidemic” coverage when it was treated like a novel thing. Now it’s just accepted as a fact of life. Would’ve been a big hit given the obvious symbolism of the national spirit animal being too bloated to soar majestically.

You don’t need to sit through this whole thing if you don’t feel like self-abuse. It’s early on that Bobby Jr entertains the delusion that this is going to be a “unity government” if convicted felon former President Trump somehow makes good on his word to give him a job in the MAGA Reich.

Former Russian President and Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev on Sunday told state media that Telegram CEO Pavel Durov has only himself to blame for his arrest in France for usual Russian side hustles like drug trafficking and money laundering that he could’ve done at home, Reuters reports.

“He miscalculated. For all our common enemies now, he is Russian – and therefore unpredictable and dangerous. Durov should finally realize one cannot chose one’s the fatherland,” said Medvedev.

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham took a dim view of the DNC’s message this week, telling CNN’s Jake Tapper it doesn’t actually exist because Americans truly want to be miserable and unhappy. Lindsey also both-sidesed convicted felon former President Trump hosting a fundraiser for January 6th rioters by bringing up Harris supporting a bail fund for 2020 rioters in Minneapolis.

Trump campaign pollster Tony Fabrizio put in yet more weekend hours on Saturday slapping together a memo bitching about polling, this time admitting that the “honeymoon” he promised was only going to last a 2-3 weeks has been extended due to the media’s interference and warning fans that Vice President Kamala Harris’s momentum is going to continue building for several more:

We keep ragging on the “honeymoon” line and for good reason – it’s fucking stupid and self-defeating. While we’re sure there are plenty of examples of married couples who decided to get divorced within three months of their wedding and the celebratory vacation afterward, it’s not especially common. Even Trump’s three marriages each lasted longer than that. It was a poor choice of phrasing and now Tony Fabs is blaming the media for “extending” it when he was the one who created the expectation that Harris’s momentum would be blunted in the lead-up to the DNC.

Convicted felon former President Trump on Sunday for some reason felt like he needed to explain his frantic, keypad-mashing call-in to Fox News, posting “Bret Baier of FoxNews called me, I didn’t call him, just prior to the Kamala Convention speech, and asked me if I would like to critique her after she is finished. I agreed to do so! – I thought it was nonspecific and weak, with no fracking, crime, inflation or anything else of interest even mentioned. Delivery was a C+, with far too many and speedy ‘thank you’s’ at the beginning. It was ‘WEIRD!’ Likewise, I didn’t call other outlets that asked me to go on, they called me. The Fake News, like often ‘gilted’ Maureen Dowd of the failing New York Times, wrote incorrectly that I was making the calls. WRONG!!! I don’t have to make calls to go on TV, or anything else – They call me! It’s called Ratings, I guess, and I’m the ‘Ratings Machine!'”

The rant was marginally more comprehensible than his earlier post “These are great patriots who work their hearts out to have a Strong and Powerfulnnz Border, only to be harassed by Border Czar Kamala Harris, who wants the” which literally ended right there only for Trump to delete it.

Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign raised $82 million during last week’s Dem National Convention and $540 million since launching on July 21st, and signed up 200,000 new volunteers for shifts spreading the word, according to a Sunday memo from the campaign.

The founder of Telegram, a social media app favored by extremist groups and right-wing instigators to coordinate and promote their agendas, was arrested at an airport in France on various charges including drug trafficking, fraud and the distribution of illegal materials, the Eastern European outlet Nexta reports.

Russian-born Pavel Durov was arrested at Le Bourget airport after he arrived on a private flight from Azerbaijan.  French authorities claim Telegram’s features including creating untraceable phone numbers, its lack of moderation, and its refusal to notify law enforcement authorities of illegal activity on the platform amount to aiding and abetting the crimes.

It may not have started as a three-hour cruise, but the Gilligan’s Island in Space-type saga experienced by the two members of the Boeing Starliner continues.  After launching June 5th for an eight-day mission, Barry “Butch” Wilmore and Sunita “Suni” Williams learned on Saturday that they won’t return to Earth until at least February 2025, according to USA Today.

Further humiliating Boeing’s space program, the plan now involves Wilmore and Williams returning on a SpaceX Dragon capsule that will dock with the International Space Station in September for a scheduled six-month mission.  Deemed too unsafe for human occupants, the Starliner craft with be returned to Earth uncrewed (and hopefully intact) before the Dragon capsule’s arrival to free up the docking space.

It’s the latest in a number of embarrassing setbacks for the Boeing spacecraft, which included multiple launch delays for its first manned mission due to a mysterious helium leak and years-long delays in development.  Boeing has also been plagued with various malfunctions involving its lower-altitude aircraft, from deadly software glitches to self-detaching fuselage panels.

‼️‼️‼️‼️ https://t.co/suxJpoFPKY

— Karoline Leavitt (@kleavittnh) August 24, 2024

A Pennsylvania court on Friday sided with the Secretary of State’s office and ruled that the Republican lawyers representing Russian asset third party candidate Cornel West had failed to file the required affidavits for 14 of West’s 19 electors, thus disqualifying him, the AP reports.

The Libertarian Chase Oliver and other Russian asset Jill Stein were able to qualify. Stein however is in serious trouble in Wisconsin where the state Supreme Court is expected to rule as early as Monday on a challenge brought by Dems to purge the scumbag from the ballot. Cheesehead Republicans are barely bothering with the “voter choice” bullshit and screams of “Democrats hate actual democracy” as they work desperately to file amici briefs to the 4-3 majority liberal court.

On the other end Robert F Kennedy Jr will likely be successful in withdrawing from the ballot in Pennsylvania and Arizona. CBS News election law expert David Becker reports the same cannot be said of Michigan, Nevada, or North Carolina, where the roadkill guy will most likely have to stay on the ballot because in each of those states he’s the nominee for local third parties who would not want him pulled for risk of losing access for whichever candidate they choose in 2028.

In a scene seemingly ripped from the plots of disaster classics Dante’s Peak, Volcano, and The Day After Tomorrow, the Washington Post reports that Pozzuoli, Italy Mayor Luigi Manzoni says maverick government volcanologist Giuseppe Mastrolorenzo is just fearmongering and even though the recent swarm of earthquakes and hydrothermal activity coming from the nearby Phlegraean Fields caldera are concerning, there’s nothing for residents to be worried about, the town’s totally safe.

“It’s Italy! The earth moves! Meanwhile I’ve got Genco Worldwide Olive Oil coming here looking to build a €50 million bottling plant and this fugazi is trying to scare them off with all this talk of a giant eruption coming out of the ground! Pozzuoli’s economy can’t afford this loose cannon shooting his mouth off,” we imagine Manzoni to have shouted at a town council meeting while Mastrolorenzo held up the latest seismometer readings showing the magma is surging and a major eruption is imminent.

“With all due respect Signor Mayor, I don’t give a damn about your olive oil plant or your reelection campaign. I don’t do politics. I do science. And the science right here says you’re about to lose city hall in a landslide,” said Mastrolorenzo as the musical score made a dramatic pause.

“Kamala and her ‘handlers’ are trying to make it sound like I am the Incumbent President, so that they can blame me for the failure of the past four years. No, it was their failure! It is one of the worst Presidencies in History, and she is definitely the Worst Vice President,” posted convicted felon former President Trump at 1:15 AM on Saturday, plainly bothered by Harris “defining” him.

Trump certainly did not read it, but about 12 hours earlier Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall absolutely nailed it when he wrote that Trump himself “laid the groundwork” for Harris to do exactly that, turning “his own political heft against him. The centerpiece of Trump’s post-presidency is the wicked conceit that he never stopped being president at all. At the most basic level he never admitted that he lost the 2020 campaign. His most ardent supporters believe he is the legitimate president and some of the most febrile actually believe in a funhouse mirror, QAnony way that he still holds secret reins of power. But much of it is more immediate and open. He still calls himself president. He demands and universally receives that billing from his followers.”

• Harris and Walz are a pair of formidable, dynamic speakers, a rather unusual coupling in modern political times.  Typically, one is personable and comfortable, the other is traditionally political and stodgy.  These two will drive crowds and maintain energy.
• Republicans are celebrating a science denier with a worm-eaten brain endorsing a rapist.  How far they have fallen.  (You just know Trump mocks RFK voice affect to his staff.) 
• A reminder that about a year ago, the conservatives who challenge the manliness of Tim Walz were promoting men pointing their naked anuses to the sun in a bogus effort to increase their testosterone, a testicle tanning program pushed by Tucker Carlson, who was a featured speaker at the RNC.
• I applauded Adam Kinzinger’s “They’re patriots, too” line, but alas, the people who need to hear it the most won’t.  It’ll never appear on conservative media.  The Bubble is strong.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXXVII”

That this is pretty repetitive doesn’t mean it isn’t funny that the MAGA assholes freaked out on Friday after Federal Reserve Bank chair Jerome Powell said at long last they’re going to start cutting interest rates, thus juicing the economy right about when the fanboys REALLY want it to be shitty:

“Of course the Democrats instructed the FED to lower the interest rates. They’re trying to interfere in the presidential election” – Top comment on Fox Business News’s story. Kind of sad that a Trump appointee would be so easily influenced by partisan Democrats. Shouldn’t Powell be tougher?

“Weird how the timing of this coincides with the upcoming election… they’ve got a terrible candidate to help win!” – Top comment on RedState.com’s article. “They” are up to no good again.

“Inflation has not ‘declined significantly,’ ass-hat. Anyone who buys their own food knows this” – Top comment on the Gateway Pundit article headlined “Fed Chair Announces Incoming Rate Cut… Just in Time to Boost Kamala Harris.” What’s funny is that this was the only comment that didn’t call it “election interference,” because the headline already did it for them. The poster just jumped ahead to say Powell’s lying about whether a drop from 9.1 percent in June 2022 to 2.1 could be “significant.”