MAGA Congressman Byron Donalds’s bullshit story about Biden being constantly “jacked up” on drugs to appear coherent was a bit too much even for conspiracy freak Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, who reminded Donalds that “We’re not doctors. We have no idea.”

A Missouri judge on Friday ruled that former “honorary” Ku Klux Klan member Darrell Leon McClanahan III can remain on the Republican gubernatorial primary ballot, squashing the state GOP’s effort to pretend that the racist asshole doesn’t represent their party, NBC News reports

Judge Cotton Walker wrote the state GOP did “not present to the Court any evidence that having McClanahan on a primary election ballot would cause it any injury. McClanahan’s presence on the primary election ballot is not necessarily an endorsement of the candidate by the party.”

President Joe Biden’s speech to Morehouse College’s Commencement ceremony on Sunday hit a number of important topics, affirming his commitment to ceasefire in the Middle East and a Palestinian state, and an impassioned call to the HBCU’s grads to defend democracy from the threat of MAGA.

Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos’s cock-shaped rocket ship launched from West Texas on Sunday, carrying Ed Dwight, NASA’s first ever Black astronaut candidate into orbit, into space for the first time after Dwight was passed over for a mission in the early 1960s, ABC News reports.

At 90 years and 253 days, Dwight is now also the oldest person in space, beating out Star Trek actor William Shatner’s record of 90 years and 206 days set during his Blue Origin flight in October 2021.

Dwight was appointed to the NASA program by President John F Kennedy in 1961 but was never selected for one of the early flights despite being recommended for selection by the US Air Force.

Complete worm Senator Marco Rubio on Sunday refused to answer whether he would accept the results of the 2024 election no matter who wins, telling NBC’s Kristen Welker she was “asking the wrong person,” before filibustering after she pointed out the he voted to certify the results of the 2020 election. Asked about the Orange Hitler’s plans to intern and then deport millions of undocumented immigrants, Rubio said “it needs to dealt with dramatically.” When Welker then reminded Marco that in 2016 he called an earlier Trump proposal for the same not “realistic,” he said the number of illegal immigrants had gone up by millions. It’s not clear how it’s more realistic now if what he’s saying is true and that 25 million+ need to be interned and deported.

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi either suffered a “hard landing” or is missing and rescuers can’t event find it, according to conflicting reports from state TV and other sources, respectively, per the Huffington Post’s Yashar Ali, who notes that state TV’s image of Raisi exiting the chopper is from 2022. So yeah, the “hard landing” is probably bullshit. Thoughts and prayers.

Trump says he wants to violate the Constitution by running for a third term pic.twitter.com/VhTYFJcReB

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 18, 2024

Running in the lead from the start on a muddy track, Seize the Gray ended the Triple Crown hopes of Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan by winning the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore on Saturday.  Owned by more than 2,000 individual shareholders who crowdsourced the costs to maintain and train the horse.

“Can you imagine how many people are going to relish in this and enjoy it?  I mean, I don’t even know how many people own this horse. I don’t know. It’s a lot of people, I know that,” Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas said per ESPN.

Delegates to the Minnesota Republican Party conference voted to endorse Royce White, a Minneapolis-born former professional basketball player, in the August 13th primary whose winner will face incumbent Democrat Amy Klobuchar in November, Minnesota Public Radio reports.

Unlike other dilettante celebrity political candidates favored by Republicans in the last few election cycles, White isn’t just a retired athlete; he’s also a podcaster.  And on that podcast, he’s promoted the conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi’s attacker–recently sentenced to 30 years in prison–was actually his gay lover, claimed there’s a Satanic cabal running the government, and of course endorsed the benchmark conspiracy theory that the coronavirus was a Chinese bioweapons.  But remember:  he was Minnesota’s Mr. Basketball in 2009.

The Georgia Republican Party elected Amy Kremer, whose Women for America First hosted the rally multiply-indicted rapist Donald Trump spoke at on January 6th, to one of the state seats on the Republican National Committee, the Associated Press reports.

At the Women for America First rally, Trump ordered his cult to “go to the CAPitol” and “fight like hell,” motivators that inspired the Republican-led domestic terrorist attack on Congress as his lackeys in Congress attempted to undermine Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.  Kremer herself isn’t accused of attacking the Capitol.

State Party delegates unseated incumbent Ginger Howard in favor of Kremer, but kept the other incumbent Jason Thompson.  Kremer and other challengers to the incumbents argued that Thompson and Howard didn’t do enough to support Trump’s 2021 effort to undermine Georgia’s voters.

Trump fanboys this week were for the most part understandably displeased with how President Joe Biden seized the initiative on one-on-one debates with disgraced former President Trump, dangling the bait and snagging his slippery, large-mouthed bass of a quarry all to quickly and easily. The reactions largely tell a story of an anxious, apprehensive MAGA base coming pretty close to admitting – some even saying outright – that this is a bad deal and the fat fuck got played.

“Jake Tapper was one of the leading media figures who spread the treasonous Russian collusion hoax. Trump agreeing to him as a moderator is foolish” – Top comment on a PowerLine Blog article printed Wednesday after CNN announced that Tapper and Dana Bash would be the mods, after Trump had already agreed to Biden’s terms. Meaning it was actually considerably more foolish of a move than this commenter understood it to be at the time. He should be even more pissed.

“The debates will be rigged since it’s CNN and ABC. We all know this is a joke intended to make Trump look bad like the sham trials. Old uncle joe will be hopped up on whatever his masters juice him with and Trump will be treated unfairly by the moderators the entire time. It will be cringe all around” – Top comment on Revolver’s article. That’s a lot of upvotes considering the brutal honesty.

“My fear is whether Biden’s willingness to agree to a debate signals he knows something we don’t about Trump’s fate at the corrupt trials being orchestrated against him. If Biden was confident Trump will receive jail time (like if he has prior knowledge) then he could ‘agree’ to the debate knowing he won’t actually have to appear at a debate, and that he can put the blame on Trump that the debate doesn’t happen. I hope that is not the case, but the way the DNC manipulates the system it is not hard for me to imagine” – Top comment on PJ Media’s article, threatening us with a good time in its imaginative and tantalizing conspiracy theory of Trump being in jail by late June.

“Imagine after being challenged by your rival to multiple anytime, anyplace, no-holds-barred UFC cage matches, ignoring your rival but then challenging him to, say, a boxing match. Then saying no head shots, no combinations, only single jabs with each boxer trading shots. Each round would be 30 seconds. And there would be only 2 rounds. That’s what just happened” – Top comment on the New York Post’s article. Well we wouldn’t put it that way exactly, but yeah. That’s what happened.

“It’s a trap” – Top comment on WeLoveTrumpReport’s article. No the commenter’s Disqus name is not “Admiral Akbar” or any other Rebel Alliance leader. It’s not even a Star Wars character.

pic.twitter.com/jsyaDZcU6z

— AZ Attorney General Kris Mayes (@AZAGMayes) May 18, 2024

Three Republican primary candidates vying for the nomination to the Michigan seat being vacated by retiring Dem Senator Debbie Stabenow are facing the very same type of fraudulent ballot access petition shitshow that felled no fewer than five gubernatorial hopefuls back in 2022, the AP reports.

The Michigan Dem Party and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee on Friday alleged in a letter sent to the Michigan Board of Canvassers that the campaigns of former Congressmen Mike Rogers and Justin Amash, and businessman Sandy Pensler, have submitted ballot access signatures showing “a possible repeat of the conduct of petition circulators during the 2022 election.”

At least 15,000 signatures were due on April 23. Rogers, the Trump-endorsed frontrunner, submitted 30,000, the maximum permitted (it’s best practice for campaigns everywhere to pad it as much as they can to withstand challenges). Pensler submitted 26,000. Amash’s campaign didn’t respond to the AP’s request for comment. Worth noting is that the 2022 gubernatorial bid by former auto industry exec Perry Johnson submitted more than 15,000 signatures, which means that Rogers and Pensler at least have a lot of room for error. That said, the fuckery that got Perry Johnson, former Detroit Police Chief James Craig, and three scrubs tossed from the 2022 gov race was borderline systemic. In Craig’s case alone 9,879 out of 14,310 signatures were determined to be fraudulent.

On one hand you’d think that maybe Michigan Republicans would’ve learned and lesson and gotten their shit together and that it’s quite possible that the Dems are needling them just for the hell of it and to cover their bases. On the other, lol if the GOP didn’t learn that lesson and are blowing their chance for the seat by doing the very same stupid shit that blew up their 2022 gubernatorial bid.

• Republicans got exactly what they asked for:  they kowtowed to the ultra-rich, and now one of those ultra-rich used his ultra-wealth to buy the leadership of the GOP even though he was thoroughly unqualified and completely sociopathic.  They keep their lips firmly attached to his ass because they made themselves reliant on his ability to raise funds from his cult to support their own political futures.  
• Biden controls the debate narrative, and he baited Trump expertly.  Now Trump wants to schedule a third Fox-controlled event and he’s complaining about the debates he agreed to.  Even Trump doesn’t like Trump’s decisions. 
• At this point, I give the Trump trial a 60% chance of ending in conviction, a 20% chance of ending in a hung jury, 12% of conviction on misdemeanor charges only, 5% complete acquittal, and 3% Other (deal struck, guilty plea for misdemeanors, juror tossed, etc.) but that may change after closing arguments.
• Fuck Alito.  Fuck Thomas.  And fuck John Roberts most of all.  Time will ultimately correct the injustices they’ve pushed from the bench, but the divots in the Supreme Court’s legitimacy will remain forever. 
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume CLXXIII”

Three Spanish tourists were among four killed during a gunfight between religious factions in Bamyan, a town in central Afghanistan; a fourth tourist was among the wounded in the shooting that happened in Afghanistan, CNN reports.  The governments of both Spain and Afghanistan expressed remorse for the deaths of the tourists, who chose to vacation in Afghanistan, which has been involved in some type of war for nearly half a century.  Glad they got to check it off their bucket list before… y’know.

Awww shucks President Trump is speechin to the Lincoln Day Dinner the Minnesotato Republicans have thrown for him on Friday night. Yah, that there trial for fuckin’ a pornstar and paying little secret hish money must be a real doozy for him, right? At least he gets a little break like this special one here. Y’know, some time to unwind and all that with the State Republicans. Just him and all his fellas in the party that feel like he’s Jesus Christ himself even though Jesus Christ would never be caught fucking a pornstar and have himself all embarrassed at the trial in New York for Pete’s sake.

Silicon Valley sugar mama Nicole Shanahan deposited $8 million dollars in the bank account for her and running mate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign in April, a huge cash infusion that went to their efforts to get on the ballot in more states, Politico reports.

Kennedy spent more than $6.5 million in April–more than twice the amount it spent in March–with Shanahan’s donation funding most of it.  Kennedy has raised more than $27 million and currently has about $5 million on hand.  By comparison, Biden has $71 million in cash while Trump has $33.5 million.

Another stat from RFK Jr.’s campaign finance reporting:  his amount raised from small donors–those giving less than $200–dropped by about one-third in April, falling below $900,000 after hitting $1.3 million in March.

Now that he’s secured the GOP Senate nomination, Larry Hogan is going full speed in decrying his earlier statements and now claiming to be pro-choice, a clear effort to fool voters in the statewide race where abortion access is on the ballot around the country, the Washington Post reports.

The one-time governor and a No Labels Party recruit, Hogan voiced his anti-abortion cred early in his career, but while in office, Hogan didn’t block many of the Democratic-led legislature’s bills that provided protections for abortion and birth control.

Now, however, Hogan steps forward as squarely in the pro-Roe camp, decrying the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, claiming this was always his position, not a new view to counter his popular vocally pro-choice Democratic opponent, Angela Alsobrooks.

Boeing announced it delayed the planned launch of the first manned Starliner mission from next Tuesday until the following Saturday, March 25th at 3:09 p.m. as the team continues to fight a helium leak in the fuel system, CBS News reports. Mission commander Barry “Butch” Wilmore and co-pilot Sunita Williams were originally scheduled to take off May 6th, but the launch was scrubbed after the helium leak was discovered, but we’re certain they’re okay with the delay.

Republican Attorney General Austin Knudsen admitted to recruiting a primary challenger so that he could use the opponent to increase fundraising results according to a recording of Knudsen made at a fundraiser, the Associated Press reports.

A former Speaker of the state house, Knudsen had no GOP challenger to his incumbency but told the audience at a May 11th fundraiser in Dillon, that he made sure candidate Logan Dillon “filed to run against me simply because under our current campaign finance laws in Montana, it allows me to raise more money. So, he supports me and he’s going to vote for me.”

Montana Democrats filed a lawsuit alleging that Knudsen was taking more than the state-allowed $790 per person limit allowed when a candidate runs unopposed, so rather than return the money, he got Dillon to file against him on the deadline day for candidate applications.