NASA on Thursday announced they were throwing in the towel on the Viper rover mission set to explore the Moon’s south pole and check for traces of water, citing cost overruns and testing capacity that threatened the viability of other missions, the Associated Press reports.

They only pissed away $450 million to learn a valuable lesson about something. Probably.

🚨 #BREAKING: Whistleblowers reveal security failures at Trump rally 🚨 pic.twitter.com/vgXih4onW2

— House Judiciary GOP 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 (@JudiciaryGOP) July 18, 2024

Top Trump campaign advisor Chris LaCivita on Thursday told Politico’s Jonathan Martin that the ongoing push by top Democrats for President Joe Biden to step aside is “nothing more than an attempted coup by the Democratic Party,” apparently failing to appreciate how his words might be taken by people outside of his fucking death cult considering their leader and his minions attempted a coup to prevent Biden from taking power following Trump’s humiliating defeat in November 2020.

But that actually kind of sticks out less if you read The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta’s piece last week profiling LaCivita and other Trump campaign shitbag Susan Wiles, as Alberta detected more than a little apprehension from the two over the possibility that Biden would step aside. “As we talked after the debate, it was apparent that they might have miscalculated. Elected Democrats were calling for Biden’s removal from the ticket. When I asked who Trump’s opponent was going to be come November, his two deputies sounded flummoxed,” Alberta wrote, adding “privately, they are all but praying that he remains their opponent. I was struck by the irony. The two people who had done so much to eliminate the havoc and guesswork that defined Trump’s previous two campaigns for the presidency could now do little but hope that their opponent got his act together,” emphasis his.

“Grindr executives are calling the RNC convention, ‘The Grindr Superbowl.’ Folks, look. I’m openly gay. No qualms about it. Proud conservative Republican. I met my husband on Grindr and we’ve been together for 6 years going on 7, married for almost 3. Let me tell you something, just come out the closet, boys! Come on, it’s fun to be gay and conservative! But look, Grindr is already outing you based on the hits, and who’s in town? It’s all you conservatives,” said fabulous and indicted former Congressman George Santos to followers in a livestream this week, per Meidas Touch.

Problem is that Santos cited “the Halfway Post,” a satirical Twitter account that puts out headlines, meaning no Grindr exec actually said it was their “Superbowl” (slightly surprising that Meidas Touch’s Ron Filipkowski didn’t pick up on that). All the posts about “Down Detector” reports are iffy too because those are all user-generated and any troll can submit one. That said there does in fact appear to be at least one reliable video showing a quite a few active users in and near the RNC’s venue, like dozens of them, all listed as “O feet away” and thus probably on the same Wifi node.

🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨 BREAKING 🚨 🚨 🚨 🚨

RNC debuts first AI powered inflatable sex doll to speak at a national convention. pic.twitter.com/Rqqj1Eq1V8

— Derrick Van Orden (@derrickvanorden) July 18, 2024

Wildlife officials in Alaska are at a loss as to why the bald eagles around the harbor town of Kodiak on the eponymous island are so fucking pissed and have violently attacked at least three people over in a specific area of the docks in the past week, Alaska Public Media reports.

Kodiak Island Borough Assembly member and manager at a nearby seafood plant James Turner said each of the victims required stitches after the patriotic symbols of American Freedom unleashed violent flurries of talons and beaks upon their heads. “Be careful over in Dog Bay, walking on L and M floats. There have been multiple eagle attacks,” Turner warned. “US Fish and Wildlife is looking into this. But multiple people have been attacked and multiple people have needed stitches.”

The US Fish and Wildlife Service are indeed looking into it and so far have concluded they have no idea what the hell is going on. “I’ve dealt with eagles in lots of places and normally they just aren’t that defensive,” said US FWS biologist Steve Lewis. “Like I’ve done things, like I’ve climbed nest trees. And most of the nest trees, in fact all of them, the (eagles) don’t dive-bomb you as you’re climbing, like when you get to the nest. They are definitely aggravated. You can see them flying around and they are calling, but they aren’t diving at you or anything aggressive.”

Lewis does have one intriguing theory however: That the eagles are starting to become just as big of assholes as bears typically do get when they get too used to humans feeding them. “I think they are probably getting fed by people around the harbor. And I think that in a similar way that it kind of changes how bears are, if they start getting food from people, they become more aggressive towards people. I think that might be similar to what’s going on with these birds.”

The season four finale of the hit Amazon Prime series The Boys has been retitled to “Season Four Finale,” after its producers apparently decided the previous title, “Assassination Run” is in poor taste given the events of last weekend in Pennsylvania, NBC News reports. The episode, depicting parallel assassination attempts on both the fictional president and vice president elects of the United States amid a fascist takeover plot led by murderous sociopathic supervillain-disguised-as-patriotic-hero Homelander, also now opens with a disclaimer reading “This episode contains scenes of fictional political violence… Any similarities to recent events are completely coincidental and unintentional.”

Maybe we’d buy that if the red-haired Marjorie Taylor Greene-alike “Firecracker” didn’t rant about “Jewish space lasers” this season and the “QAnon Shaman” didn’t have a “cameo” in the last one.

Super-insidery Beltway news outlet Axios reports in a huge “SCOOP” that they “increasingly hear top Biden aides, including ones who initially urged him to fight on after his disastrous debate on June 27 – 21 days ago – are saying it’s now when, not if, Biden announces he’s not running.”

The scoopy, insidery nature of the news is emphasized by “Behind the Curtain” in the headline.

This comes four days after they printed an article about how Democrats were processing the aftermath of the failed assassination attempt of convicted felon former President Trump that ended with “Most lawmakers who spoke to Axios said it is too early to say whether the cessation in tensions will last until the Democratic National Convention next month. But the second senior House Democrat offered one reason for why it might: ‘We’ve all resigned ourselves to a second Trump presidency,'” in all the hype-y, masturbatory glee we’ve come to know and hate from Axios. The report was on how the effort to get Biden to abdicate had fizzled out after the shooting.

Anyway, maybe Joe Biden will step aside. Maybe not. What is certain however is how abysmally the most insufferable elements of the mainstream political media – looking at you, Axios – have handled this campaign year, mouths agape at the “remarkable comeback story” of a disgraced tyrant who would have them imprisoned or executed for pointing out that he used a fucking sharpie to alter the map of a hurricane, operating as if that’s less of a problem than a thick-foreheaded old Irish American whose worst quality is that he’s too stubborn to admit he’s past his prime.

Namibian officials on Thursday informed Mutebi II, King of Buganda, a subregion of Uganda, to get the fuck out of their country immediately, they don’t care if he’s in the country for medical treatment and that he’s a monarch whose supplicants don’t believe he should be subject to Namibia’s strict 90-day visa limit, just go home now, fuck off, we’ve had enough of this shit with your dumbass fanboys harassing us with accusations that we’re somehow holding you hostage, the BBC reports.

It didn’t help that Bugandan citizens have been protesting the fake “hostage crisis” outside of Namibian diplomatic facilities in South Africa and the UK over the last few months – even after the king had posted a video announcement telling subjects he was still undergoing treatment but looking forward to returning home. “Having checked the records, I wish to inform you that the request for an extension is declined,” a government official told NBC (that’s the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation), possibly with a half-smirk indicating he wasn’t sad to see Mutebi go.

Actual Ugandan government officials weren’t all that upset, like they understood that the Mutebi II stans are a pain in the ass. “I request all the Ugandans to stop embarrassing Uganda by opportunistically trying to show how much they are for the Kabaka [king],” Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni said earlier this month after a particularly embarrassing incident involving Bugandan chiefs. Following the GTFO order from Namibia, Ugandan Foreign Minister Henry Oryem Okello said he totally understood, telling the local paper Uganda Monitor that “Namibia has decided that they are not interested in this kind of bad publicity, and we should respect [their] position.”

Jesus Dork Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday relied on his gut feelings to assert that foreign terrorists have set up cells all over the country, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.

Six-time WWF/WWE World Champion, six-time WCW Heavyweight Champion and star of action classics Suburban Commando and No Holds Barred Hulk Hogan will speak as a real American for rights of every man at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, NBC News reports.

“The Biden-Harris Administration announced today the approval of roughly $1.2 billion in additional student loan relief for 35,000 borrowers across the country who work in public service. These approvals are the result of significant fixes that the Administration has made to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) Program. This relief builds on President Biden and his Administration’s efforts to provide relief to as many borrowers as possible across the country.”

“Today’s announcement brings the total loan forgiveness approved by the Biden-Harris Administration to $168.5 billion for 4.76 million Americans, which includes $69.2 billion for 946,000 million borrowers through PSLF. Before President Biden took office, only 7,000 public servants had received debt relief through PSLF,” says a Department of Education statement.

Pinellas County, Florida school board candidate Erika Picard’s campaign is going hard on the non-existent issue of students at her day job as a guidance counselor at Palm Harbor University HS in the district asking her for kitty litter boxes in the restrooms, the Tampa Bay Times reports.

“When you hear about kids identifying as whatever, and we’re now accommodating them with a kitty litter box in the bathroom, that’s a problem,” Picard told voters gathered at a candidate forum hosted by the North County Council on Monday, adding “And I have actually talked to families that have had that happen in their kids’ classroom. It’s insanity. It’s crazy, right? And I didn’t make that up. This is a family that actually had this happen to them in [neighboring] Hillsborough County schools.”

Asked for actual evidence of kitty litter box requests and/or usage, Picard told the Times she “would love to give you names of the family I spoke with at the First Responders event in March. However, I never wrote their names down, nor did I ask them exactly what school it was at. They just said it was a Hillsborough County school.” Seems like she should have written it down. “I believe there are things that happen in schools that are not always shared with the district level officials, which is exactly why we need someone working on our board that has recent boots on the ground experience in our schools, especially post COVID,” she continued in the email to the Times.

MSNBC’s Michael Steele accused of pushing ‘conspiracy theories’ after questioning Trump’s ear wound https://t.co/2K6RSi1ygC

— Fox News (@FoxNews) July 18, 2024

Convicted felon New Jersey Dem Senator Bob Menendez on Wednesday told CBS News that has has “not resigned nor have I spoken to any so called allies… Seems to me that there is an effort to try to force me into a statement. Anyone who knows me knows that’s the worst way to achieve a goal with me.” We guess a jury finding him guilty on 16 felony counts is the second worst way.

“President Biden is more ‘receptive’ to the push for him to leave the ticket, has gone from saying ‘Kamala can’t win’ to asking if Kamala Harris can win,” CNN’s Jeff Zeleny reports, on the possible, maybe beginning of the end of this deeply sad and sadly kind of necessary saga.

If that’s where this is going then it’s on Democrats and all of us to give Joe the heroic sendoff he deserves. This man has endured so much tragedy, suffering, and now this painfully unfortunate palace coup – that again, is the better outcome to give American democracy a better shot at surviving into next year – to end a career of dedicated service, one lasting more than half of his life so far, capped by the successful presidency that had eluded him for decades, one the most accomplished in generations legislatively. Let this be a celebration, not a lament.

We all have to ride off into that sunset one day or another. That the day may be coming sooner than later for our president is the result of so many forces converging to land us the right man to defend our democracy at the wrong time of his life. Move forward, but never forget him.

Wednesday night is JD Vance’s big debut amid a theme of “Make America Strong Again,” which is just the same bullshit canned “foreign policy” lines about handing Ukraine to Putin.

Republican Colorado State House member and Pastor Scott Bottoms on Sunday told his Evangelical MAGAchurch congregation that the FBI was behind the failed attempt on convicted felon former President Trump’s life at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday, 9News reports.

“I believe it’s the FBI. I’m not talking about the Democratic Party. I’m talking about the people that are controlling our country. The people that have been controlling the FBI, controlling the State Department,” Reverend/Representative Bottoms said to his flock. Bottoms, lol.

“This is just the beginning,” Bottoms continued. “They need that man dead. We’re not gonna have a presidential election. If he’s still alive and he’s not in jail, we’re not gonna have an election.”

Bottoms’s other claims to fame include being formally reprimanded by state House leadership for calling Democratic colleagues pedophiles, claiming January 6th was inside job, and told churchgoers that Israelis held hostage by Hamas should turn to Christianity to be freed from captivity.

President Joe Biden tested positive (again) for COVID on Wednesday just minutes before he was to take the stage for a speech in Las Vegas, CBS White House correspondent Weijia Jiang reports.