A new Politico/Ipsos survey finds 21 percent of independent voters saying fat former President Trump’s May 30th conviction on 34 felony counts in Manhattan matters to their vote and makes them less likely to support the degenerate pornstar fucker in the 2024 election, something offset by only 5 percent of the same cohort saying it’s important and makes them more likely to vote Trump.

In a story that doesn’t do a whole lot to expand upon what Politico reported last week about convicted felong Former President Trump’s post-verdict revenge effort, Rolling Stone reports that the fat bastard is getting annoyed with the lack of action in the last two weeks, something a “senior GOP Senate aide” tells them wasn’t really all that unexpected. “How many are willing to be recruited into these election-year kamikaze missions for Donald Trump? So far, it just looks like the usual gang,” the aide said about the not really all that effective retribution.

Guaranteed basic income programs spread across the country: Is it coming to your city? https://t.co/JxMGAdtF4E

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 17, 2024

Maryland’s Democratic Governor Wes Moore will pardon more than 100,000 people convicted of 175,000 marijuana-related charges in a ceremony on Monday morning, the Washington Post reports, marking one of the widest issues of clemency for pot convictions.

When Maryland legalized recreational marijuana use in 2022, the law directed the judicial branch to expunge the records of hundreds of thousands of people whose only convictions were for simple possession of cannabis, and it gave pathways for others to seek an expungement of their records if there were other charges as well.

Republican Mike Braun is leaving the relative calm of the United States Senate to make a run for governor of Indiana, and he’s learning how screwed up state Republican Party operations actually are.  Case in point: according to the Indianapolis Star, the delegates to the state’s GOP convention rejected Braun’s choice to be his lieutenant governor and are forcing him to pair with a local minister.

Braun wanted state legislator Julie McGuire to be his running mate for the top of the ticket in November, but delegates instead matched him with Noblesville pastor Micah Beckwith who ran a campaign among the delegates stressing their need to be independent of the Governor-nominee and force Braun to select him.  It worked:  the delegates vetoed McGuire and inserted Beckwith onto the ticket against Braun’s will, and now Braun is stuck with him.

A Texas MAGAchruch pastor who served on convicted felon former President Trump’s “Spiritual Advisory Board” has responded to an accusation from a now 56 year-old woman that the pastor sexually molested her on Christmas in 1980 when she was 12 and he was 20 with an admission that he had indeed committed “inappropriate sexual behavior” with her, the Daily Beast reports.

Robert Morris, leader of the Gateway Church, an Evangelical chain with multiple congregations across the Lone Star State claiming 100,000 weekly attendees for services, told the Christian Post there had been “kissing and petting and not intercourse, but it was wrong,” while not acknowledging the woman’s age at the time. Morris supposedly had been caught by his wife and left the ministry industry until returning two years later, allegedly with the blessing of the girl’s father and elders of the congregation he had served with. In 2000 Morris launched the Gateway Church, whose PR team this weekend said “Pastor Robert has been open and forthright about a moral failure he had over 35 years ago when he was in his twenties and prior to him starting Gateway Church. He has shared publicly from the pulpit the proper biblical steps he took in his lengthy restoration process.”

The woman, Cindy Clemishire, told the Dallas Morning News that her family never condoned Morris nor does she think he belongs anywhere near where he is now. “We don’t believe anyone that’s done anything like this should be an overseer to anyone in any industry, but especially in the church. I don’t think that it’s repentant when someone calls a 12 year-old a young lady and tries to just dismiss what happened as just some heavy petting,” Clemishire said. “I don’t believe that’s repentance. There’s no child on earth that any person should ever do that to. It’s just unacceptable.”

With the utmost confidence in his own tenacity and wits, Florida MAGA Congressman Byron Donalds on Sunday assured NBC’s Peter Alexander that he’s “actually pretty smart” and would be ready to serve as president should convicted felon former President Trump pick him as a running mate, get elected in November, and then die of a stroke, leaving us with President Byron Donalds. This came after Donalds squirmed under questioning over false claims of a “weaponized” justice system and tried to explain why the Orange Lord and Savior’s plan to replace the income tax with tariffs on all imported goods would somehow not be utterly catastrophic for the lower and middle classes.

House Freedom Caucasians member Warren Davidson on Sunday endorsed John McGuire, the MAGA primary challenger to the far right squad’s incoming chair, Virginian Bob Good, in what Politico’s Olivia Beavers describesas “a HUGE deal within” the Freedom Caucasians. “I love this country with a soldier’s passion. I’ve served in Congress since 2016, and we need reinforcements to help Make America Great Again. I’m happy to join President Trump by supporting and endorsing John McGuire for Congress,” wrote Davidson. Bob Good has of course been emphatically and repeatedly undorsed by convicted felon former President Trump for the crime of having supported Ron DeSantis during the perfunctory 2024 Republican presidential primary.

Three new surveys of British voters coming ahead of the July 4th general election indicate that, as has been expected for quite a while, the UK’s Conservative Party under Prime Minister Rishi Sunak are going to get absolutely fucking destroyed after a decade of misrule, Reuters reports

“Our research suggests that this election could be nothing short of electoral extinction for the Conservative Party,” said pollster Chris Hopkins, whose firm Survanta found Labour leading the Tories 46 to 21 percent. A survey by another pollster, Survation, estimates that Labor could end up with 456 seats and the Conservatives 72 in the 650-seat House of Commons – it was 365 Tory to 202 Labour after the 2019 general election, back when Boris Johnson was still in office. This would be by far the Tories’ smallest share of Parliament since they were formed nearly 200 years ago.

Eight months after NASA engineers feared the spacecraft has lost function, Voyager 1’s four scientific instruments are now back online and sending data back to Earth from about 15 billion miles away, The Verge reports.  After the signals coming from Voyager 1 were indecipherable starting last November, engineers essentially hit Ctrl-Alt-Del and reset all the systems very slowly because radio signals take 45 hours to get there.

NASA reported, however, that the four scientific systems on the craft–measuring plasma waves, magnetic fields, and space-bound particle–had all returned usable data in the past week, with the reset of a syncing system required as part of some final maintenance.  Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 is the farthest manmade object from Earth.  Some estimate the craft could continue to function into 2036.

Speaking at Turning Point Action’s Detroit grift called “The People’s Convention” two weeks before he reports to federal prison for a four-month stint, collar fetishist Steve Bannon promised a crowd of white nationalist lemmings that Inauguration Day 2025 will be “Accountability Day” should fellow convicted criminal Donald Trump win reelection.

Per CNN, Bannon promised predetermined outcomes for the show trials for Trump’s opponents.  “You are going to be investigated, prosecuted and incarcerated,” Bannon asserted. “This has nothing to do with retribution. It has nothing to do with revenge. Because retribution and revenge might be another order of magnitude. This has to do with justice.”

Birds of a feather….  Promotions for Donald Trump’s just completed roundtable in Detroit included the announcement of a new local endorsement:  former Democratic Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, the Detroit News reports.  Kilpatrick owes Trump:  after his failed coup attempt, Trump commuted Kilpatrick’s 28-year prison sentence, imposed after Kilpatrick was convicted in 2013 on 24 federal counts including wire fraud and racketeering.

“I can never thank President Trump enough for what he’s done for me and my family by giving me freedom,” Kilpatrick said. “But I believe this election and the issues involved are personal to every family and every person in America.”

Trump’s campaign is making overt attempts to endear Trump to the Black community by touting his criminal record, claiming that it makes Black people relate to him more.  There’s no evidence that is true, and it’s likely less true when the individual you’re touting as an endorser was convicted of public corruption

Fat former President Trump has a double-header of appearances scheduled for Saturday, one a “roundtable” with Black MAGAchurch pastors and just a regular rally for his fans. Should be awful.

US military officials are thinking that purported ISIS global leader Abdulqadir Mumin might not be okay after a May 31 airstrike on suspected militants in Somalia, NBC News reports.

They know they definitely turned at least three ISIS guys into applesauce during the strike, they just aren’t sure yet if Mumin was mixed in with the applesauce. They are more sure however that the Somalian ISIS leader Mumin is (probably was) also the global leader of ISIS as the terrorist pseudo-state. Intel indicated that within the last year ISIS decided to move to Africa after one too many of their Iraq and Syria-based leaders got turned into applesauce by American hardware over the years.

From CNN’s outline of their rules for the June 27th Biden/Trump debate:

🇺🇸 “The 90-minute debate will include two commercial breaks, according to the network, and campaign staff may not interact with their candidate during that time.” Fair enough, we guess.

🇺🇸 “Both candidates agreed to appear at a uniform podium, and their podium positions will be determined by a coin flip.” Why the positions of the podiums is important was not made clear. Shouldn’t it just be Biden-left, Trump-right corresponding with their respective “wings” in politics?

🇺🇸 “Microphones will be muted throughout the debate except for the candidate whose turn it is to speak. While no props or pre-written notes will be allowed on the stage, candidates will be given a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.” Would be better if they were allowed to (within reasonable limits) read verbatim from each other’s public statements, but whatever.

It’s not clear why CNN couldn’t just post the rules themselves. They also kind of got scooped by the New York Times, who earlier on Saturday morning provided additional details like “President Biden and former President Donald J Trump will each have two minutes to answer questions – followed by one-minute rebuttals and responses to the rebuttals. Red lights visible to the candidates will flash when they have five seconds left, and turn solid red when time has expired.”

“Both men will be rusty. Neither has debated since their last clash in 2020,” the Times writes, of course failing to mention that Trump had at least seven opportunities to shake off said rust and deliberately chose not to. They do however note that Trump is not undergoing any formal debate preparations with someone standing in for Biden like Chris Christie did in 2020 (his performance reportedly seriously fucking pissed off Trump by bringing up Jared and Ivanka’s graft from the White House). This in contrast with Biden, who has been prepping with former Chief of Staff Ron Klain.

Brainwormed candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign is on “life support” financially and would be in a hole if not for $10 million kicked in by unhinged gold digger running mate Nicole Shanahan as fundraising with gimmicks like raffle tickets has dried up, Politico reports.

“There have been a lot of people who have told me at a very high level – donors, who can really make donations that are meaningful,” said pro-Kennedy PAC co-founder Tony Lyons, adding that what few donors he’s been in touch with “have been very clear that they want to see that Bobby is going to be on the ballot in most or all states, and they want to see polling numbers that are higher.”

Jill Stein’s 2012 campaign manager Ben Manski was less sugar-coaty about the situation. “I’ll explain it this way: I have certainly never heard of a Green Party presidential campaign slowing down in terms of fundraising at this point, or at any point. They tend to start small and build up.”

Kind of weird, right? We were to understand that polling shows Brainworms is destined to be a major factor in the 2024 election by sheer strength of the Kennedy name but here we are with no actual money going into his campaign to match the “enthusiasm” behind him. It’s almost like his 10 percent or whatever he’s getting in polls is coming from respondents who are unlikely to even vote.

• Had the Baltimore Key Bridge collapse happened under the previous administration, I’m convinced no aid would have been released until the name of the replacement bridge was committed to honor Trump.  
• Yep, Hunter Biden was guilty.  Honestly, we knew he was guilty of the crime he was charged with, but I don’t think he merited prosecution.  He acted out of fear stemming from addiction, not criminal intent, and he’s been sober for years.  See how that works?  We can do seemingly contrary things:  think a verdict is proper, feel a charge is unjust, and not see it as the disintegration of our Constitutional government.  We’ll just work to correct things in the future.
• Since I bought my first home, I have flown a flag–most times, the Stars and Stripes, although allowances given for the occasional team flags and the 2016-2021 display of the Maryland flag–and I would never think to deface it or dishonor it by flying it improperly.  When I fly the American flag, I’m flying our flag, not mine.  But it’s my responsibility to honor it.
• Marge compares him to Christ.  Republicans on the Hill welcome him back to the site of the insurrection like he’s the Prodigal Son returning, complete with a cake.  His supporters say his Manhattan conviction makes him a martyr.  The messiah myth is strong in the cult. 
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXVII”

Federal investigator and Boeing officials are looking into a May Southwest Airlines flight from Phoenix to Oakland when the plane made an unexpected “Dutch roll” where the plane seems to slide side-to-side midflight, an aviation move known as yawing, the Washington Post reports.

The maneuver is rarely dangerous to a commercial airline flight or the passengers in the plane, although the unexpected move can cause some discomfort and panic.  The Southwest pilots were able to quickly regain control of the aircraft after it experienced a few rolls.

The May flight may have experienced heavy winds causing the plane to experience turbulence, but investigators are looking into the possibility that a software glitch caused the plane’s control systems to malfunction.  Aviation engineers note that the 737 Max-8 is equipped with automatic yaw dampeners, devices that could cause yawing if malfunctioning.

We’re not going to give a lot of air to the parole-compliant rallies Donald Trump holds because there’s really nothing new in any of them; it’s not like he’s debuting policies.  But when he discloses his new campaign strategy, it’s worth nothing, and reminder voters they’re in an abusive relationship seems like an interesting move:

“I actually tell our people, ‘We don’t need your vote.  We got so many votes, we don’t need ’em.’  We just don’t want to see votes stolen.  We don’t want to say, ‘Y’know, steal the vote.’ We’re not letting it happen.  We’re not gonna let it happen.  Not happening again.  Our country can’t take it, and we’re not gonna let it happen again.”