A new analysis by the eggheads at the Petersen Institute for International Economics has determined that disgraced former President Trump’s planned trade policies, centered on aggressive tariffs “would reduce after-tax incomes by 3.5 percent for those in the bottom half of the income distribution and cost a typical household in the middle of the income distribution about $1,700 in increased taxes each year. If executed, these steps would increase the distortions and burdens created by the rounds of tariffs levied during the first Trump administration (and sustained during the Biden administration), while inflicting massive collateral damage on the US economy.”

A 70 year-old Homer, Alaska man is dead and a local mom on the loose in the woods after a violent altercation over the man attempting to take photos of her children on Sunday, KTUU reports.

“As they were approaching the area suddenly the moose came crashing out from wherever it was they hadn’t seen it, on the attack,” Tim Kizzia, a friend of murder victim Dale Chorman. “And they turned to run and his friend looked back and saw that Dale was already on the ground and the moose was standing over Dale.” Chorman had earlier captured pics of the moose giving birth to two calves and had been leading another friend back to the scene when the attack happened.

First responders were unable to locate the cow moose and Kizzia tells KTUU that Chorman’s family hope it stays that way, having “encouraged everyone not to do anything to the mom. She was just defending new born twins acting in a way that Dale would totally have understood and anticipated.”

Or maybe should have anticipated. Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Cory Stantorf said to watch out for moose with “hackles on the back of their neck standing straight up, the ears pinned back against the head and the moose is licking their lips. Those are all signs that the moose is agitated and you are too close,” adding that the massive wild ungulates are especially fucking pissed this year due to excessive winter snowfall having made it harder to find food sources.

Trump posts a new ad foreshadowing a second Trump term that says he will create a “UNIFIED REICH,” echoing Nazi Germany pic.twitter.com/z4ZmMSWuRH

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) May 21, 2024

A not-that-large 4.4 magnitude earthquake struck the town of Pozzuoli in southern Italy on Monday, causing minor damage to the surrounding region and the major city of Naples about 12 miles to the southeast, AFP reports on a potentially ominous warning sign from the threat under Pozzuoli: the Campi Flegrei supervolcano. The quake, at a depth of just 3 km, was just one of dozens to shake the area over the last 48 hours in a “seismic swarm” that could be a sign that magma is rising under the caldera. Or just superheated gases, if the 500,000 people living in the surrounding area are lucky.

Clearly angry over upcoming Trump 1970s film The Apprentice, large-headed Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung on Monday told the Daily Beast that the fat former President’s lawyers will be “filing a lawsuit to address the blatantly false assertions from these pretend filmmakers. This garbage is pure fiction which sensationalizes lies that have been long debunked.”

“This ‘film’ is pure malicious defamation, should not see the light of day,” Cheung raged, adding “it doesn’t even deserve a place in the straight-to-DVD section of a bargain bin at a soon-to-be-closed discount movie store… it belongs in a dumpster fire,” and is “election interference by Hollywood elites” on the same level as “the illegal Biden Trials.” That bad, huh?

Enjoy yourself as you hear the story from the source:  Democratic Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes explains how agents from her office waited outside Rudy Giuliani’s birthday party for the oily former mayor of New York until he crept out to his car.

While the officers waited in the parking lot, a cocky Giuliani posted to social media, “If Arizona authorities can’t find me by tomorrow morning: 1. They must dismiss the indictment; 2. They must concede they can’t count votes.”  Seventy-five minutes, Rudy have the papers in his janky fingers.  And yes, the officers uttered the classic, “You’ve been served.”

Two former presidents who led criminal conspiracies were in the Manhattan courtroom, the 19th day of Donald Trump’s criminal election interference hush money trial included the typical media circus with Trump’s clown show including on Monday the former president of the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels.  Oh, and there was another criminal in the cast:  disgraced New York Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik.  … ‘cause the best character witnesses are the ones with criminal records.  And that doesn’t include the fireworks inside the courtroom.

• Among the other clowns:  Kash Patel, rich dude Steve Witkoff, co-conspirator Boris Epshteyn, disgraced The Hill contributor Alan Dershowitz, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson, and Congress members Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Mary Miller of Illinois, Eric Burlison of Missouri, and Keith Self of Texas.  
• Cohen admits that he improperly gained $30,000 from the Trump Org via improper billing.  He claimed a vendor, Red Finch, who billed $20,000 was owned $50,000, which the Trump Org paid to Cohen; Cohen kept the difference.
  Read More ▶ “A contemptuous witness, a Hell’s Angel, and a defendant walk into a Manhattan courtroom: Day 19 of Trump’s Manhattan trial”

“Costello was trying to hide his contempt for the court, but the judge had such a thin skin that he threatened him,” man who never met a wrong opinion he didn’t like Alan Dershowitz blurts.  “He said he would strike the testimony and hold him in contempt if he rolled his eyes again.  You have a constitutional right to roll your eyes and to stare at anybody.”  Dershowitz then goes on to state that him sitting in the gallery rolling his eyes is the same as a witness in the dock reacting to judge’s rulings.

So yeah, MAGA lawyer Robert Costello’s testimony for fat former President Trump’s defense went badly Monday as not only was his credibility destroyed in minutes of cross-examination, Judge Juan Merchan got so pissed he threw everyone out of the courtroom – not just the jury – to rip Costello a new asshole while he was still sitting on the stand taking direct examination from Trump’s defense team. What follows is the heretofore unseen transcript of the closed-door exchange. Merchan had already ordered the jury out of the room to lay into Costello at this point of the afternoon:

Merchan: “Okay. So when there is a witness on the stand, if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t say ‘Jeeze,” okay. And then you don’t say ‘strike it,” because I’m the only one that can strike testimony in the courtroom. Do you understand that?”

Costello: “I understand.”

Merchan: “Okay. And then if you don’t like my ruling, you don’t give me side eye and you don’t roll your eyes. Do you understand that? Do you understand that?”

Costello: “I understand that. I understand what you’re saying.”

Merchan: “Okay. Thank you. Let’s get the jury back.”

Merchan: “Are you staring me down right now?”

Costello: “No. I’m just wondering how…”

Merchan: “Clear the courtroom, please. Clear the courtroom.”

Read More ▶ ““Try to stare me down one more time, I will remove you””

The campaigns reported their monthly fundraising numbers, with Trump beating Biden in fundraising in April by a $76.2 million to $51 million margin after Biden had beaten Trump in March $90 million to $65 million, CNN reports.  A few things to point out:  first, Biden held his all-star fundraiser in Manhattan in March, while Trump held his shakedown at the Mar-a-Lago buffet in April.

Second, Biden still holds a major lead in cash-on-hand:  $192 million in Biden’s bank account versus $45 million for Trump.  And third, Trump is spending far more on personal legal fees than Joe Biden, or more precisely, his donors are.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin will not order an investigation into Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito flying an upside-down American flag–a sign of distress and danger–in front of his house in January 2021, NBC News reports.  Alito blamed his wife, saying she got emotional and angry at a neighbor’s “Fuck Trump” yard sign.

“No, we haven’t got anything planned. I think he’s explained his situation. The American public understand what he did.  But I don’t think there’s much to be gained with a hearing at this point. I think he should recuse himself from cases involving Trump and his administration,” Durbin said Monday.  Asked what can be done if Alito refuses to recuse, he replied, “There’s no recourse other than impeachment, and we’re not at that point at all.”

A film about the rise of Donald Trump in pop culture in a thinly-veiled metaphor about the dangers of fascism elicited an eight-minute standing ovation from an audience full of liberal elites at the Cannes Film Festival, Variety reports.

Starring Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump, The Apprentice also features Maria Bakalova, perhaps best known for watching Rudy Giuliani reach down his pants while filming Sacha Baron Cohen’s Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, playing Ivana with Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn.

The movie tracks Trump’s rise in power and popularity as he overtook his father, Fred Trump, to be the face of the family business as he learned underhanded business practices from his mentor, Cohn. “There is no nice metaphorical way to deal with the rising wave of fascism,” director Ali Abbasi said. “I think it’s time to make movies relevant. It’s time to make movies political again.”

Senator Lindsey Graham was relatively harsh on Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for his “not good judgment” in hanging the American flag upside-down outside his home in the weeks after fat former President Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, CNN’s Manu Raju reports.

“Emotions are apparently high in that neighborhood, but it’s not good judgment to do that. He said his wife was insulted and got mad,” said Graham. “I assume that to be true, but you are still a Supreme Court justice. People have to realize that moments like that, to think it through,” Lindsey added, about as harsh as he can get when he can’t avoid addressing the shitshow altogether.

The Iranian government reached out to American diplomats for help after a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi and Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian went down in foggy weather in northern Iran, Politico reports.

The State Department said the US military prepared to brief and deploy search teams in the effort, but it was for naught: before American personnel could set out, the helicopter wreckage was located.  “We said that we would be willing to assist–something that we would do with respect to any government in this situation,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a media briefing Monday. “Ultimately, largely for logistical reasons, we weren’t able to provide that assistance.”

Senior US officials are also wary of Iran’s reaction to the helicopter crash, with special concern for potential conspiracy theories that the US and/or Israel sponsored or conducted an act that brought down the craft.  Politically, Iran will remain relatively stable under Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who along with other religious leaders will determine a pool of potential successors for Raisi in upcoming elections.  US officials, however, fear conspiratorial-minded branches of Iranian-backed terror groups could attack American or Israeli interests in retribution regardless of official investigation outcomes.

“Trump Media and Technology Group Corp. (Nasdaq: DJT) (‘TMTG’ or the ‘Company’), operator of the social media platform Truth Social, is announcing financial results for the fiscal quarter ending on March 31, 2024, and will also file its 10-Q with the Securities and Exchange Commission today.”

“As of March 31, 2024, TMTG’s balance of cash and cash equivalents was $273.7 million. This comprises $233.7 million in unrestricted cash accounts and $40.0 million held in restricted accounts pending the effectiveness of TMTG’s registration statement on form S-1, which was filed with the SEC on April 15, 2024. The Company had a first-quarter operating loss of $12.1 million based on non-GAAP Adjusted EBITDA calculations. Approximately half of that amount, $6.3 million, consisted of one-time payments related to the closing of TMTG’s merger with Digital World Acquisition Corp. (‘DWAC’). TMTG believes it has sufficient working capital to fund operations for the foreseeable future. In the first quarter, the Company recorded $311.0 million in non-cash expenses arising from the conversion of promissory notes, and the associated elimination of prior liabilities, immediately before the closing of TMTG’s merger with DWAC on March 25, 2024. These non-cash expenses resulted in a GAAP loss of $327.6 million for the first quarter,” says a press release from the Trump Media and Technology Group, whose stock is still worth about $48 a share.

“A Wisconsin man was arrested last week on criminal charges related to his alleged production, distribution, and possession of AI-generated images of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and his transfer of similar sexually explicit AI-generated images to a minor. ‘Technology may change, but our commitment to protecting children will not,’ said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. ‘The Justice Department will aggressively pursue those who produce and distribute child sexual abuse material – or CSAM – no matter how that material was created. Put simply, CSAM generated by AI is still CSAM, and we will hold accountable those who exploit AI to create obscene, abusive, and increasingly photorealistic images of children.’ According to court documents, Steven Anderegg, 42, of Holmen, allegedly used a text-to-image generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) model called Stable Diffusion to create thousands of realistic images of prepubescent minors.”

“Many of these images depicted nude or partially clothed minors lasciviously displaying or touching their genitals or engaging in sexual intercourse with men. Evidence recovered from Anderegg’s electronic devices revealed that he generated these images using specific, sexually explicit text prompts related to minors, which he then stored on his computer. Additionally, Anderegg allegedly communicated with a 15-year-old boy and described how he used Stable Diffusion to convert his text prompts into images of minors. Anderegg also allegedly used Instagram direct message to send the boy several GenAI images of minors lasciviously displaying their genitals. Anderegg came to the attention of law enforcement through a CyberTip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) after Instagram reported Anderegg’s account to NCMEC for distributing these images,” says a Justice Department press release on another pedo nerd’s arrest.

Look, we get it, cricket is boring and its appeal is inscrutable to those of us who don’t get why they can’t just figure out how to play baseball instead. That’s still no reason to call the @ICC anti-semitic and accuse them of a “Woke Jihad” over some shit they had nothing to do with.

With a large chunk of the Key Bridge roadway still on the foredeck and as high tide hit the Patapsco River, the MV Dali returned to a pier in the Port of Baltimore after being successfully refloated and having underwater debris cleared overnight, the Baltimore Sun reports, about eight weeks after the March 28th accident.  Last Monday, engineers used explosive charges to break-up wreckage atop the ship, and salvagers removed the wreckage around Dali.

As the ship was pushed by tugboats into the Seagirt Marine Terminal to unload the remaining containers and undergo repairs:  a 30-foot gash could be seen in the bow off the ship, with entire containers seen pushed deep into the hull.  Even though the ship has been moved, it will be at least a couple weeks before the Port of Baltimore is fully operational while salvage crews remove underwater scrap.

Court is in session early Monday as the parties have a number of issues to deal with before the jury comes in for fat former President Trump’s criminal trial on charges he had sex with a porn star for two minutes and then paid her hush money to cover it up before the 2016 election.

Far right Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito last summer sold off his stock in Bud Light parent company Anheuser-Busch InBev and bought up shares of Miller-Coors a few months into the manufactured “controversy” over trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney being featured in a marketing campaign for the watery low calorie beer, LawDork.com reports, noting that the transaction spotted in disclosure sheets came a day after “Libs of TikTok” shitbag Chaya Raichik had obtained and tweeted a pic of Mulvaney before she had transitioned, a post that ended up getting more than 8 million views. The article’s writer Charles Geidner sees this as strong circumstantial evidence that Alito was tuned into the Fox News/Breitbart circlejerk over Mulvaney, a conclusion we do not at all doubt, but it still feels like it falls a bit short of smoking gun-y. Better would’ve been if he had done it within a day of the ad campaign first blowing up last spring rather than a few months in.

The far bigger tell is buying up Miller-Coors. Like Alito knew he should have some major brewer of cheap, watery beer in his portfolio and switched to the one without the reaction to the trans influencer possibly causing MAGA terrorists to plant bombs at a production facility which would hurt sales and put a dent in his vacation fund. Post-retirement vacation fund, we mean. He doesn’t have to pay for vacations as long as he’s still working to earn his “reward points” for exclusive getaways.