President Joe Biden will hold a rally in Wisconsin on Friday, one in which his performance will be heavily scrutinized and if he does well will be written-off as an aberration by the media.

Convicted felon former President Trump personally thinks he can handle Vice President Kamala Harris were she to take over as the Dem presidential nominee as he believes she’s “too liberal, too hostile to business and secure borders, and too inexperienced, weak and phony to be president. But some of his advisers are quite concerned that a fresh, youthful, non-Biden ticket presents a bigger threat than Trump assumes,” Axios reports, adding that they’d be even more worried that Harris would pick a “moderate Midwestern male” as her running mate for November.

Who knows what Axios’s agenda is here, if there is one. It’s obvious enough that having Harris take over would remove the age liability and even put it back on Trump. But this whole situation fucking sucks and as much as we hate to admit it, this is on Joe Biden for not showing up to the debate the way he did for the State of the Union. All this douchey pile-on “insider” reporting – case in point from Axios themselves with “Biden staff ‘miserable,’ alarmed as pressure builds” – is accelerating this spiral into what Talking Points Memo editor and fellow Axios-skeptic Josh Marshall writes is “very likely when, not if” Harris takes over as the 2024 Dem nominee or maybe even as president sooner.

This is not where we or any other anti-MAGA voters wanted to be right now. You can see how we’ve been trying to skirt around it in our coverage while every other site is going balls-to-the-wall with Biden-is-Old-a-Mania for the past week. The Narrative™ is starting to coalesce around Harris and the hard truth is that The Narrative™ all too often gets what it wants. The good news at least is that’s not what the MAGA Reich wants, if we’re to take Axios’s “scooping” at face value.

Convicted felon former President Trump on Friday tried to distance himself from the fascist agenda his own advisers have been devising, posting “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them,” even though obviously he’s voiced much of these ambitions himself.

My take on 9/11: It's hard to tell what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't. But conspiracy theories flourish when the government routinely lies to the public. As President I won't take sides on 9/11 or any of the other debates. But I can promise is that I will open the files…

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) July 5, 2024

When someone who aspires to be the leader of the Free World and the President of the most powerful nation on Earth, but refuses to deny myriad insane conspiracy theories about the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, he immediately disqualifies himself from public office.

A Levittown, New York 11 year-old managed to inflict “extensive damage” on not one but two homes plus completely burn down a wooden shed on Thursday after an unspecified type of firework they had lit malfunctioned during a 4th of July celebration in the suburban community, WNBC reports.

Karamjit Singh, the 33 year-old homeowner who had given the kid the firework and told them to light it, faces arson, reckless endangerment, child endangerment, and various fireworks-related offenses on top of he and his neighbor’s houses having been burned extensively. And his shed too.

The now-liberal majority Wisconsin state Supreme Court on Friday overturned the previous conservative majority’s 2022 decision banning ballot drop boxes, one which prompted convicted felon former President Trump to demand that his roughly 20,000 vote defeat in the state in the 2020 election be “decertified” and the 10 electoral college votes retroactively awarded to him.

Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss, whose 45 days leading the country were remarkable for the record brevity, that a head of lettuce on a webcam outlasted her, and that Queen Elizabeth II died, lost her formerly safe seat Thursday to a Labour challenger by 640 votes, the Guardian reports.

Truss was not seen as in danger given her 26,000 vote win in 2019 and had held the seat since 2010. Locals in her Norfolk district told the Guardian they had seen little of her during the campaign, which tracks with the entitlement and arrogance that led her to blame the Deep State for her being tossed from the premiership for also now ex-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in 2022, with Truss writing a book titled Ten Years to Save the West: Lessons From the Only Conservative in the Room.

Loser former Brazilian dictator Jair Bolsonaro was hit with another indictment on Thursday, this one certainly more serious than falsifying his COVID-19 vax record, as this one concerns the undeclared diamonds the asshole received from Saudi Arabia during his administration, the AP reports.

Reigning Nathan’s 4th of July Hot Dog Eating Contest Women’s Division eating champ Miki Sudo on Thursday won again and set a new record of 51 wieners in her 10th victory, a streak that was only broken when she sat out 2021’s face-off due to pregnancy, Yahoo Sports reports. Sudo even out-ate her husband, Nick Wehry, who finished in third on the men’s side at 48 hot dogs, 10 fewer than new champ Patrick Bertoletti, who downed 58 on the street stage in Coney Island.

However this year’s men’s competition was marred by the absence of the all-time great Joey Chestnut who was in El Paso to face four soldiers at Fort Bliss. He fucking crushed them – and arguably Bertoletti too – downing 57 to 49 in five minutes, half the time Bertoletti had to eat 58. It’s absolutely fair to declare Chestnut the default winner of the Nathan’s contest too.

Less than a day after white nationalist provocateur Tucker Carlson claimed to have an interview scheduled with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President’s office firmly denies any such event would take place, Politico reports.

This surely comes as a letdown for Carlson, who boasted about working for years to get an interview with the leader of Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion.  “Looks like we’ve got the Zelenskyy interview. We’ve been trying for two years, and with particular intensity after interviewing Putin in February,” the former Fox host posted on social media on Wednesday.  “The point is to bring Americans much-needed information about the conflict that’s completely reshaping their country’s position in the world. Coming soon we hope.”

Kyiv disagrees.  When asked about the claim, presidential spokesperson Sergii Nykyforov responded, “The President of Ukraine has a completely different schedule, and Tucker Carlson is not on it.”

First exit polls reported by British media outlets confirm pre-election day forecasts:  the end of the 14-year, five prime ministers reign of the Conservative Party, with the Keir Starmer-led Labor Party taking 410 of the 650-seat House of Commons, according to the BBC.  Before the Parliament was dissolved before the elections, the Conservative Party held 344 seats to Labor’s 205.

The breakdown of seats per the exit polls, which had been fairly accurate in British elections:  410 for Labour, 131 for the Conservatives, 61 for the Liberal Democrats, 13 for Reform U.K., 10 for the Scottish National Party and 2 for the Green Party.  Just 236 are needed for a majority.

Well it sure feels like things are going awesome for conservatives lately. First there was Sleepy Joe Biden’s train wreck of a debate then the patriots on the Supreme Court gave President Trump the freedom to govern without having to worry about the Deep State trying to take him down when he returns to the White House. Libs are screaming in terror and butthurt knowing he will destroy them.

Still, it’s not a sure thing. Polls can be wrong, Democrats can rig it on the margins, and it’s all pretty close. What Republicans really need to help seal the deal with American voters is a deadly foreign terrorist attack that can be blamed on the Biden Administration’s open border policies.

Just think of it: An ISIS or Hamas suicide bomber detonating a vest packed with nails and ball-bearings in the middle of a Fourth of July parade would be the perfect opportunity for Republicans in Congress to go on Fox News and say it’s a direct consequence of the 2020 election being stolen since it obviously never would have happened if Trump was still in power.

Searches for the string “Can fingers be surgically reattached?” on Google spiked dramatically at 2:56 AM EDT on Thursday, July 4th during pre-Independence Day celebrations in the United States, with at least 100 queries to the globally-leading search engine logged at the time, piercing a period of quiet that lasted several hours from 19 of searches for the term at 9:04 PM EDT on July 3rd.

The term “Fireworks mortar to face” saw similar popularity just moments ago, as Google Trends shows at 11:12 AM EDT on Thursday at least 100 users searched for it. “Illegal to shoot a bottle rocket at someone” sure rocketed up the trend chart at 10:32 PM EDT Wednesday too. “Is it dangerous to light Roman candle indoors?” saw steady interest until 2:24 AM EDT on Thursday before plunging to zero, the users evidently learning all they needed to know about the topic.

UK Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride on Thursday told Sky News he sees his Conservative Party headed to an absolutely horrific defeat in the snap election, saying rival Labour is looking at the “largest majority that this country has ever seen, much greater than even 1997’s landslide.”

One poll found Labour winning 484 of the 650 seats up, many more than the 418 won by Tony Blair in 1997 and the Tories hanging on to just 64 seats – the fewest since the party’s founding in 1834.

American airline passengers did not have a fun time on two flights Wednesday.  An overnight flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was diverted to New York’s JFK Airport not for some fun reason like the pilots accidentally ingested laced brownies but because the crew and several passengers ate spoiled food served by the airline, CBS News reports.

At least 70 passengers and ten crew on Delta Flight 136 became ill after eating in-flight meals.  Some passengers reported seeing black mold on the food handed out by the crew in the main cabin.  In response to the incident, Delta said it “proactively adjusted” its “in-flight meal service on a number of international flights” Wednesday.

A different flight from Chicago to Manchester, New Hampshire was exiled diverted to Buffalo after a passenger–who admitted to having whisky and sodas before boarding his flight from Portland, Oregon to Chicago, then a number more in Chicago, and then at least one more on the flight–told police he had a medical urinary condition that caused him to drop his pants and piss in the aisle.  Shockingly, police didn’t believe him and the 25-year-old man was booked with indecent exposure charges, according to ABC News.

In what might be a boost to beleaguered Democrats in at least one must-needed battleground state, organizers fighting for abortion rights in Arizona and Nebraska announced they submitted sufficient petition signatures to get ballot measure guarantee access to reproductive care on their states’ ballots, the Associated Press reports.

The problem is, in Nebraska, there will likely be two competing measures on the ballot:  one to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution, like Arizona’s proposal, and one that would enshrine the current state law that outlaws most abortions after 12 weeks.

In Arizona, activists collected 823,685 signatures, far beyond the 390,000-ish needed.  Pro-choice organizers in Nebraska collected more than 200,000 when 123,000 signatures were required.  Officials in each state must certify the signatures, but it appears both measure will be in voters’ hands in November.

“[Kamala Harris] has an inability to communicate common sense to the American people,” South Dakota’s Republican Deliverer of Ditch Death Kristi Noem claims, apparently unaware that Harris’s home state of California has 40 times more people than Noem’s barren state.  “They just can’t relate to her.”  With the charm of your dad’s third wife on her sixth Xanax of the day, Noem seems jealous of Harris’s enthusiasm on the campaign trail.

Arizona Democratic Congressman Raul Grijalva became the second member of the House to call on President Joe Biden to bow out of the Party’s nomination for President in 2024, saying Biden has to “shoulder the responsibility for keeping that seat and part of that responsibility is to get out of this race,” NBC News reports.  NBC News confirmed comments Grijalva had earlier made to the New York Times.

Grijalva, himself a 76-year-old who announced in March that he was undergoing cancer treatment, called Biden “a good man” who he would support if he chose to stay in the race, but he also urged Biden to step aside so that a fitter candidate could challenge Trump.

The number of humans infected with bird flu in the United States jumped by one-third after a man in Colorado became the fourth person in the United States with a confirmed infection, Reuters reports.  All four people infected in the US have worked at dairy farms and contracted the virus there.

While more than 48 million poultry birds have been destroyed because of infections, human infections typically aren’t fatal.  The previous three US patients exhibited eye irritation or slight respiratory problems, but have all recovered.

“In Biden’s Oval Office, it is the quietest place.  No one’s around.  The only thing is there are cookies, he offers you cookies every time you’re in there, and he goes and gets them.  I mean, it is a depressing moment,” deposed Republican Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy laments about a depression he’ll never re-experience because he shall never set foot in the Oval Office again.