Leonard Leo warns Biden-Harris efforts to radically overhaul Supreme Court could 'backfire' https://t.co/Qnq2AKyWFL

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 30, 2024

Forget the whole “I was a stranger and you welcomed me” from the Bible, Republican Texas Greg Abbott and his posse of Republican thugs have targeted a Catholic organization that runs shelters and soup kitchens frequently used by undocumented migrants, CBS News reports.

Spearheaded by cockeyed Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton, the harassment against the Annunciation House accuses the group of  “illegal alien harboring and operation of a stash house,” when in fact, the organization frequently works with immigration authorities to help ease overcrowding at nearby facilities.

Founded in 1978, Annunciation House runs at least three facilities to help feed, house and care for migrants.  In 2022, one of its facilities that could accommodate 1,500 migrants was forced to shut down.

After a jury found his mismanagement and malfeasance cost the organization more than $5 million, Wayne LaPierre will not be allowed to work with the National Rifle Association for the next ten years, a New York state Supreme Court judge ruled, NBC News reports.

In February, a jury found LaPierre liable for diverting millions of NRA dollars to pay for his personal expenses from house expenses to luxury vacations, and he was ordered to repay $4 million on top of around a million dollars he had already repaid.  New York Attorney General Letitia James sought to have LaPierre banned from non-profit leadership permanently, but the judge ruled a ten-year ban for the 74-year-old was sufficient.

The decision removed LaPierre from the NRA’s leadership for the first time since 1977.  “As a result of this case, Wayne LaPierre will be banned from the NRA for 10 years for spearheading this fraud, and the court called for additional proposed reforms to the NRA. After years of corruption, the NRA and its senior leaders are finally being held accountable,” James said in a statement.

A registered Republican Florida man is lucky to only be facing an animal cruelty charge after tossing a dog at an Aventura cop who responded to an altercation at a park, CBS Miami reports.

Mordechai Oaknin, 66, was in the middle of a dispute of an unspecified nature in a local dog park when at least one officer showed up to intervene… And yeah he threw the dog. This article’s actually going to end up being longer than the upstream source. There was nothing else to it.

It’s also kind of boring by Florida standards, right? Like last year we had not one but two indecent exposure suspects who claimed to be suffering from zipper malfunctions. There was the parrot pirate. The lady who drunkenly drove a golf cart naked through the scene of a six hour shootout between cops and a guy firing at them from the roof. The other lady high on bath salts who was named “Snape” but called herself “Harry Potter.” Shit, we even have a more entertaining story about a Florida man throwing a live animal. Then the “Booty Patrol” truck. The SovCit’s truck with the self-printed license plate that said “DO NOT DETAIN” because he was protected under the “GLOBAL POSTAL UNION TREATY.” The jackass who robbed a Burger King for food and was arrested while hiding in the men’s room to eat it. The two women arrested for sticking up a Taco Bell for food. The Villager who smashed himself on the head with a plate to make it look like his ex-wife – that he was still living with – had started the fight. The cop arrested for DUI in uniform, in his patrol car…

Holy shit we could be here all night underscoring why Oaknin’s such a goddamn amateur Floridian.

Democratic North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper announced that he was withdrawing his name from consideration for the vice presidential slot on the Party’s ticket, CBS News reports.  A longshot consideration, Cooper would have helped to placate the underlying misogyny and racism of some moderates who would not consider a mixed-race woman for the highest office in government.

“I strongly support Vice President Harris’ campaign for President.  I know she is going to win and I was honored to be considered for this role,” Cooper released in a statement.  “This just wasn’t the right time for North Carolina and for me to potentially be on a national ticket. As I’ve said from the beginning, she has an outstanding list of people from which to choose, and we’ll all work to make sure she wins.”

Harris is likely to name her VP within the next ten days, prior to the start of the Democratic National Convention on August 19th.  Among the widely discussed names:  Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, and Arizona Senator Mark Kelly.

Stitched together what we could out of this mess of an interview that Frau Ignraham’s team worked extra hard to come up with something that viewers could sit through. From Trump weirdly commenting on Kamala Harris’s age, to him saying JD Vance’s “childless cat ladies” comment simply means Vance loves families, hinting that Harris is hiding her laugh, assuring viewers he’ll leave office in 2029 even though he resisted in 2021, and all sorts of other shit, there’s something for every kind of MAGA voter who wants to pretend the fat fuck is mentally stable and capable of governing.

Agencies in the US intelligence community said Russia and Iran continue to try to influence American elections, with Russia working to defeat pro-Ukraine candidates and boost Trump and his allies, while Iran is firmly trying to defeat MAGA, the Washington Post reports.

Iran looks at a potential second Trump term as a further step back in its efforts to improve its economics and international standing, with Trump vowing to further undermine Western efforts to negotiate a halt to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  Russia hopes to get Republicans who will cut funding for Ukraine’s defense into office, as well as return Putin’s puppet to the Oval Office.

Eyeliner-wearing Ohio Senator and Mike Pence replacement JD Vance on Saturday privately told GOP donors in Minnesota that President Joe Biden dropping out of the 2024 race and being replaced with Kamala Harris was a “sucker punch” to their campaign, the Washington Post reports.

“All of us were hit with a little bit of a political sucker punch. The bad news is that Kamala Harris does not have the same baggage as Joe Biden, because whatever we might have to say, Kamala is a lot younger. And Kamala Harris is obviously not struggling in the same ways that Joe Biden did,” said Vance on an audio recording of him admitting weakness to donors obtained by the Post.

“We have a very unique opportunity, but also a very unique challenge, because, let’s be honest, 10 days ago, the two candidates who were running for president, everybody had an opinion about them,” the doplin-loving couch fucker continued. “Love ’em or hate ’em, everybody has an opinion about Trump and Biden after the past eight years. But Kamala Harris, people don’t really know.”

In related news, Mother Jones unearthed video of Vance – the old, normal-ish JD Vance – in 2017 telling an interviewer the obvious about the MAGA voter base he’s now appealing to: “Some people who voted for Trump were racists, and they voted for him for racist reasons,” but mostly blaming Steve Bannon, rather than Trump himself, for making the 2016 election “hyper-racialized.”

British astrophysics egghead Dave Clements earlier this month delivered a Venus-shattering presentation on recent indications of two compounds, phosphine and ammonia, are present in the atmosphere of Earth’s hellish neighbor, both of which could be signs of life, CNN reports.

“We had three observation campaigns and in just one run, we got 140 times as much data as we did in the original detection. And what we’ve got so far indicates that we once again have phosphine detections,” said Clements to the July 17 Royal Astronomical Society meeting in Hull, England.

Clements, whose team got the data from a new instrument adapted to the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, said the ammonia “is arguably more significant than the discovery of phosphine. We’re a long way from saying this, but if there is life on Venus producing phosphine, we have no idea why it’s producing it. However, if there is life on Venus producing ammonia, we do have an idea why it might be wanting to breathe ammonia. By all normal expectations, [neither compund should] be there. Phosphine and ammonia have both been suggested as biomarkers, including on exoplanets. So finding them in the atmosphere of Venus is interesting on that basis as well.”

We’re excited for everyone to pretend to be excited over some boring microbial extremophiles on Venus being mankind’s first discovery of extraterrestrial life and for some dickhead to say on television that it “completely changes our understanding of the universe,” but at least that news cycle would be over quickly. More concerning would be is if they were aerial jellyfish-like blobs that float around aimlessly in the thicker parts of the upper atmosphere. That would be so goddamned annoying to watch science pretend that they’re deeply fascinating and worthy of attention.

Hey white dudes who support Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign, did you hear about the big “White Dudes for Harris Kickoff Call” that’s starting in about two hours? No?

Well what the fuck is wrong with you? Sign up and then click on the Zoom link when it starts. Don’t worry about actually participating, just sign in and mute it if you want. Drive up the numbers artificially among convicted felon former President Trump’s main demographic… except if you live in a swing state. Then you should really focus and pay attention to everything they’re saying about volunteering and talking to other white dudes who might be “open to persuasion.”

“OPEC NATIONS ARE GOING ALL OUT TO DRIVE DOWN OIL PRICES IN THE HOPE THAT CRAZY KAMALA HARRIS WILL WIN. THEN THEY WILL REALLY REAP THE REWARDS! SHE WILL BE A DISASTER FOR THE USA!” posted convicted felon former President Trump on Monday, plainly demanding the Saudis and the rest do something immediately to raise gas prices on Americans.

See, this is legitimate panic. A calmer, more collected Trump would make up some bullshit way to take credit for it, saying that the cartel is lowering prices preemptively in anticipation of him winning because he would be so tough on them or some other vague lie. If he can’t do that then maybe he should just leave it alone instead of unintentionally screaming that he wants gas prices to be higher.

Earlier the fat bastard posted “Why is FoxNews putting on Crazy Kamala Harris Rallies? Why do they allow the perverts at the failed and disgraced Lincoln Project to advertise on FoxNews? Even Mr Kellyanne Conway, a man so badly hurt and humiliated by his wife (she must have done some really NASTY things to him, because he is CRAZY!), is advertising on FoxNews. We have to WIN WITHOUT FOX!” Maybe he should spend more time campaigning and less time watching Fox News.

President Joe Biden will speak at the Lyndon B Johnson Presidential Library in Texas on Monday to sell his messaging for bringing accountability to the unaccountable shitbags who call themselves public servants and jurists sitting on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski on Monday admitted to investors that they should probably stop overcharging for shitty food as it kind of backfired and people aren’t eating there as much as they used to when a goddamned McChicken sandwich cost what it’s actually supposed to, CNBC reports.

“We recognize that in several large markets, including the US, we have an opportunity to improve our value execution. Consumers still recognize us as the value leader versus our key competitors but it’s clear that our value leadership gap has recently shrunk. We are working to fix that with pace,” said Kempczinski and if you read not very carefully he said the same thing we just wrote.

“At the end of the day, we expect customers will continue to feel the pinch of the economy and a higher cost of living for at least the next several quarters in this very competitive landscape. So we believe it is critical for us to consider these factors in order to grow market share, and return to sustainable guest count-led growth for the brand,” said McDonald’s USA President Joe Ehrlinger and holy shit what the hell do they need all the extra words? Can’t they just talk normally?

“The point is, we know how to do this. We wrote the playbook on value and we are working with our franchisees to make the necessary adjustments,” Kempczinski continued. And if you’re waiting for the part of the earnings call where they actually said something like “We’re telling our franchisees they can suck a fat, furry, purple Grimace tip if they don’t like it, but Big Macs are capped at $3.99 each nationally until further notice. Deal with it,” then you can go bobbing for nuggets in the fryer.

“Iran is seeking to harm Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in covert online influence operations, fearing a return to power by the Republican nominee would inflame relations with Washington, US intelligence officials said Monday,” writes the Wall Street Journal in the lede to an exclusive report.

The taking of a side marks a shift in Tehran’s strategy, as in prior elections they simply wanted to act as “chaos agents,” especially with regard to Israel and Palestine, according to the officials.

The story contains no specific examples of the newly anti-Trump focused effort, simply quoting an official who says the Iranians are creating “vast webs of online personas and propaganda mills to spread disinformation,” just like the Russians do to help support the fat orange fuck.

We’re just going to ask out loud if the government and/or the Journal wouldn’t divulge any specifics about the “propaganda” because people would simply roll their eyes. It’s not like saying “Trump raped a woman in a department store, is a convicted felon, stole top secret nuclear documents and kept them in a box with old copies of Hustler, and tried to overthrow the government when he lost the 2020 election,” makes his fans want to vote for him any less, so what kind of “disinformation” would actually work on the fat bastard? If they can’t come up with something legitimately novel and funny – and most importantly believable enough – they should worry about their own dysfunctional mess of a country instead of counterproductively trying to fuck with democracy in ours.

CHILLING FOOTAGE of two insurrectionists headed toward the Capitol on January 5th unearthed by Substacker Jamie Dupree reveal a desperate last ditch effort by Trump supporters to overthrow the government! Trump 2020 campaign minions Kenny Chesebro and Mike Brown met with aides to MAGA Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Kelly to hand them falsified electoral votes the afternoon before a shit ton more insurrectionists savagely attacked and tried to hang the vice president for not going along with the plan to create a constitutional crisis that could’ve led to a second civil war!

Whatever’s left of the Wagner Group after their founder Yevgeny Prighozin’s plane took a hard landing last summer took a serious beating during a battle with Tuareg rebels in the Saharan Desert country of Mali, near the border with Algeria, CBS News reports, citing the company itself.

It’s still not clear how many of the Russian mercenaries were killed in last week’s fight, some pro-Ukrainian accounts on Twitter said it was at least 80. Others showed videos of the carnage and photos purportedly of the Tuaregs holding up a Ukrainian flag alongside their own after the battle.

What. Why are all of you looking at the headline like that? Did we misspell something? Does it need one of those funny little accent marks on the vowels that we aren’t really consistent with?

Was that a little too provocative or reckless? Oh come on. The son of a bitch obviously cheated in the election and it’s not like it’s a close call. Plus the US military kills the leader of ISIS like every month. Why’s it okay to kill every new ISIS guy but not okay for Venezuela’s dictator?

Biden’s got less than six months in office left. He should have fun with it. Kill some more bad guys and let Kamala Harris own it and tell all the Venezuelans in Florida that the Biden-Harris Administration is tougher on Maduro than Trump and they brought justice for all their friends and family whose votes were stolen. The US military’s already got some boots on the ground in neighboring Guyana… Oh stop being such libs, the Venezuelans don’t have nukes and they won’t be able to retaliate in any meaningful way. Blast the fucker into next week and warn his replacement we’ve got plenty more where that came from if he doesn’t hold another free and fair election.

Plus we’d get to run a funny headline like “Adios, puto!” Wouldn’t you guys love to see that?

Maduro lost the election in Venezuela badly, then simply declared victory anyway.

He is an illegitimate dictator.

We stand with the people of Venezuela and their diaspora throughout the world in calling for an end to his murderous regime.

It is sad but true that a nation can…

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) July 29, 2024

Game recognizes game. What’s especially effective about his technique is how the first two sentences were extremely likely to have been directly mad-libbed from some Democrat’s tweet in late 2020/early 2021. You don’t need to actually like Matt Gaetz – we sure as shit don’t, even before he was credibly suspected of statutory rape and (technically) sex trafficking – but we can separate the art from the artist here: The utter void of irony or shame is a particularly vibrant texture of this tweet, as is the fact that it’s an objectively true statement about Maduro, who’s also a piece of shit.

As is the circumspection, because that would ruin the framing. Lesser trolls would have tried to tie it to the “Biden regime,” but Gaetz sets his own boundaries and colors so precisely within them.

Save for the fact that we’re analyzing it and heaping the appropriate plaudits rather than reacting as intended and spewing impotent vitriol in a reflexive rage, it’s a work approaching masterful. There are no masters of trolling, there is only masterful trolling. This tweet is almost worthy of such accord.

Sources tell CNN that convicted felon former President Trump has agreed to be interviewed by FBI agents as part of their investigation of the failed assassination attempt earlier this month.

Still think he’s going to have at least one of his lawyers present, even though this is standard operating procedure and the FBI always conducts interviews with victims of federal offenses.

At least eight people were stabbed in the northern English town of Southport on Monday when some fucking crazy asshole with a knife decided to try to get famous. Witness Colin Parry, a service garage owner who saw it happen called the cops, tells the Guardian it was like a “scene in a horror movie. Police have got him. It is like something from America, not like sunny Southport.”

Ouch. Not accurate though, because if it was some MAGA incel white nationalist with an AR-15 then the body count would’ve been higher. And we’d be talking about deaths, not injuries.