President Joe Biden reacts to the assassination attempt against presumptive Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday, July 13th, 2024. Biden said there is no place in America and American politics for violence.  (Note that is from someone in the room as it was being broadcast, not from the broadcast itself, so audio is premium.)

Video of the live rally from Donald Trump’s rally in Pennyslvania show Trump glance to his right before grabbing the right side of his face, with Secret Service rushing the stage.  After speaking for around five minutes, Trump dove onto the stage and was covered by Secret Service agents, who surrounded Trump as he raised a fist.

A photo on the Washington Post website, taken from an off-stage-left angle shows blood on the right side of Trump’s head, apparently coming from his ear.

UPDATE 8:18 p.m. BIDEN STATEMENT SUMMARY: Biden says he’s been “thoroughly briefed.” says he tried to get ahold of doctors. “There’s no place in America for htis kind of violence. It’s sick. It’s sick. …. We cannot condone this. … The Trump rally should have been completed without any problem. … Everybody must condemn it. Everybody.” Asked if this was an assassination attempt, Biden said he did not have enough information to make that determination.

It looks like the fat bastard took a shot to the ear, based on video and that he was bleeding as Secret Service escorted him off the stage. Details still sketchy, stay tuned.

Fitness celebrity Richard Simmons has sweated to his last oldie as TMZ reports the late 20th century VHS aerobics icon has died at 76, just days after his birthday.

It’s going to be difficult to capture the women’s vote for presumptive Republican presidential nominee and adjudicated rapist Donald Trump when every female in his family won’t publicly endorse his campaign.  But that’s what’s going to happen at next week’s Republican National Convention as none of the women in Trump’s family are scheduled to give a keynote speech, per WPVI ABC 6 in Philadelphia.

While Lara Trump is expected to speak as RNC co-chair, Trump’s wife and two daughter will not take the microphone:  unlike 2020, Melania, Ivanka and Tiffany will not address the crowd.  The only other women on the list:  Georgia Congresswoman and missing link Marjorie Taylor Greene; rapper Amber Rose; reality television character Savannah Chrisley; and billionaire widow of a construction mogel (and former television producer) Diane Hendricks.  Cultist Alina Habba, Oedipal replacement Kimberly Giulfoyle, and tradwife Katie Britt, join a half dozen female sycophants from Trump’s only term in office or Congress.  Former primary opponent Nikki Haley is absent.

The four possible VP nominees–Senators Marco Rubio (FL), JD Vance (OH) and Tim Scott (SC) as well as North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum–are all on the slate.  Tucker Carlson, Lee Greenwood, Matt Gaetz, Byron Donalds join Franklin Graham, Charlie Kirk and Vivek Ramaswamy in promoting family values as they nominate the rapist.  And convict Peter Navarro, scheduled to be released from federal prison on Wednesday, is listed as a speaker.

Mexican man charged with killing two children in Wisconsin is in US illegally https://t.co/7LeQcYbFoz

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 13, 2024

You can kind of tell right away that, since there are no photos of the victims in the Fox News tweet that they aren’t white. How else are they going to provoke outrage from their perpetually aggrieved fans who need their daily fix? If you click on the article itself you may or may not notice the “Local media reported that the victims are the suspect’s wife and children” in the sub-headline, but if not then it’s buried in the fourth paragraph, under his mugshot, that “According to WQOW, the victims are Gomez-Acosta’s wife and daughters.” So the tweet could have just said “Mexican man charged with killing his two children in Wisconsin is in US illegally,” but they obviously chose not to.

Convicted felon former President Trump was irritated for obvious reasons Friday night after the House Appropriations Committee failed to advance an amendment defunding Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutions, posting “Just heard from Great Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia that the Amendment to Defund the Prosecution of a Presidential Candidate prior to November’s Election did not pass, 26-25 – It lost by only one vote, because one Republican, Mike Simpson of Idaho, stupidly voted NO, and two ‘Republicans,’ David Valadao of California and Dan Newhouse of Washington, the only two remaining Impeachers in the House of President Donald J Trump, didn’t show up to vote. They must have had more important things to do. Also, Mike Garcia of California, David Joyce of Ohio, and Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, didn’t show up to vote.”

“Thanks very much, fellas, for your great support!” Donald added at the end, plainly sarcastic.

Thing is, if this was so important to Trump – important enough to shitpost about it – you would think that maaaaybe he would have been staying on top of the markup hearing and not just finding out from some asshole MAGA Congressman three days later since the vote was on Tuesday.

Five visitors to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming escaped serious injury after their SUV plunged into a volcanic pond Thursday, the National Park Service said in a press release. The truck was traveling on a park road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris Junction when for whatever reason the driver lost control and rolled into the Semi-Centennial Geyser, an inactive thermal fountain that hasn’t erupted since the 1990s, but is now a pond at least nine feet deep.

All five occupants were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries after getting drenched in acidic water as hot as 105° Fahrenheit. The SUV itself was beyond totaled and it took two hours for divers to hitch it up to be towed out by a wrecker. Worse things have happened at Yellowstone.

• Joe Biden has shown remarkable restraint.  All these new presidential powers and immunities bestowed by the Supreme Court and his political opponents still walk free.  
• How morally corrupted have Republicans become under the GOP?  At his behest, the Republican platform will not include, for the first time in nearly half a century, a mandate for a national abortion ban or limit.  It now says the GOP supports “leaving the decision to the states.” It’s the Trump Doctrine of abdicating leadership.
• Please, Republicans, go after Kamala Harris, a former Senator and state Attorney General.  Unleash your base with your attack ads.  Show everyone what you think about a woman of color.  Let your Base show the nation who you serve.  
• The media focused on Biden accidentally flubbing Zelenskyy’s introduction but failed to recall when Trump intentionally said he believed Putin over US intelligence agencies.   The latter is a far bigger sign of both mental instability and disqualification than the former.
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXXI”

Rambling on with his uninformed bullshit about his takes on Joe Biden’s health, Republican Texas Congressman and uniformed drug dealer Ron Johnson Jackson thinks it’s a deep conspiracy that VP Kamala Harris “covered it up and that’s why I don’t think it matters at this particular point if he backs out or not and she becomes the nominee.  I think, like you said, she’s got a double-digit ID.  She’s got to be the lowest IQ vice president that this country’s ever had.”

Dan Quayle and his potatoe would like a word.  Ronny’s staff needs to book him before his Happy Hour, but he’s never up for morning shows.

Scientists studying the commonality of the genomes of living organisms traced back the tree to the earliest living creature common to modern life and discovered it emerged just 300 million years into the planet’s 4.5 billion-year existence, a discovery that greatly changes understanding of early life.

According to About Science, the last universal common ancestor, or LUCA, was likely a single-celled nucleus-missing organism similar to a prokaryote, but the emergence of the organism comes about 700 million years before the oxygen-rich atmosphere we live in now formed, meaning early life survived in a varying environment.

The revelation could also switch how scientists and astrobiologists search for life in alien worlds, with an understanding that an oxygen-depleted environment does not necessarily eliminate the possibility of life.

President Joe Biden is set to address a rally in Michigan at 7:30 p.m. ET on Friday, a day after holding a 50-minute press conference following the NATO summit in Washington, DC.  (We’re winded just reading his schedule.  Joe’s campaigning like he’s got something to prove.)

Saying it has a responsibility to “allow political expression” from the top candidates, Meta announced it repealed limits it had placed on the presumptive GOP presidential nominee and social media threat Donald Trump.  In a statement posted online by Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, the company explained that it was removing “heightened suspension penalties” for violating the community standards on Facebook and Instagram.

“With the party conventions taking place shortly, including the Republican convention next week, the candidates for President of the United States will soon be formally nominated. In assessing our responsibility to allow political expression, we believe that the American people should be able to hear from the nominees for President on the same basis,” Clegg posted.  “As a result, former President Trump, as the nominee of the Republican Party, will no longer be subject to the heightened suspension penalties. In reaching this conclusion, we also considered that these penalties were a response to extreme and extraordinary circumstances, and have not had to be deployed. All US Presidential candidates remain subject to the same Community Standards as all Facebook and Instagram users, including those policies designed to prevent hate speech and incitement to violence.”

@SecretService https://t.co/H9clw15QLJ

— Chris LaCivita (@LaCivitaC) July 12, 2024

The actual important part of the quote in Dylan Byers’s embedded tweet: “Yeah, I wish I had made him an actual martyr,” meaning that the Reid Hoffman guy wished Trump was dead, a sentiment that was, again, too much for super tough MAGA guy top Trump adviser Chris LaCivita to handle.

Still flailing angrily after getting caught in a lie falsely denying his connections to the ultra-fascist Project 2025 policy plan, top Trump propaganda minion Stephen “Baby Goebbels” Miller’s far right Cellino and Barnes knockoff, America First Legal, have asked to have themselves removed from the Project 2025’s website list of “advisory board” organizations, ABC News reports.

A 10 foot-tall statue of Greek sea god Poseidon, installed in May on a beach on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula faces removal due to a conflict with a local god, the Mayan deity known as Chaac, lord of water, thunder, and lighting, as well as a lack of proper earthly permits, the AP reports.

A local complaint filed against the statute states that “Poseidon is a Greek god who is alien to our Maya culture. I have a human right for my Maya culture to be preserved.” It’s not clear if this person has filed similar injunction requests against the Catholic Church for placing statutes of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary or why the complainant didn’t ask for the Poseidon statue to be reworked in the image of Chaac, similarly to how Zeus and Odin were just merged in with the Abrahamic God.

This is true leadership and transparency.

Will Joe Biden take a cognitive test with Pres Trump? pic.twitter.com/dFybz5iZBI

— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) July 12, 2024

A New York State judge on Friday tossed alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Giuliani’s bankruptcy claim, allowing victorious plaintiffs, former Georgia election workers Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss, to begin collecting whatever they can after having won a $148 million judgment against Captain 9/11 following their federal defamation lawsuit over his lies claiming they were somehow involved in a plot to engineer convicted felon former President Trump’s humiliating defeat in the 2020 election.

Per Jack’s report from earlier this week: Giuliani had consistently missed filing deadlines and refused to comply with demands of information from his creditors, throwing his bankruptcy filing into chaos.

The lawyer representing Freeman and Moss told the judge that Giuliani’s continued refusal to comply could lead to an investigation into obstruction. He now becomes the target of individual lawsuits from his creditors and he faces the complete liquidation of all his assets, including real property and any accounts he holds… which isn’t enough to cover the massive judgment.

Non-governor of Arizona Kari Lake on Friday petitioned the Arizona state Supreme Court to either order a re-do of the 2022 gubernatorial election or declare her the winner, AZ Law reports.

“If this Court mandates proper standards for signature comparisons and denies Maricopa favorable presumptions, reversal must follow. The Court could either set aside the election or proportionally strike 275,000 ballots under Grounds v Lawe, 67 Ariz 176, 183-85 (1948). Because Hobbs eclipsed Lake by more than 10% of Maricopa’s early voting, under Grounds, Lake would win,” the current 2024 Senate candidate’s lawyers wrote in their prayer for relief at the end of the petition.

A federal jury in Manhattan began deliberating in Senator Gold Bars Bob Menendez’s bribery trial on Friday, MSNBC reports. The timing makes it somewhat unlikely the New Jersey Democrat will be convicted before the weekend because there’s a lot of paperwork and stuff to do to render a verdict so we’re probably looking at like 11:30 AM EDT on Monday. But you never know.