That sounds like a yes pic.twitter.com/aijo4Jd3UP

— New York Times Pitchbot (@DougJBalloon) January 29, 2024

For those uninitiated with the darkly brilliant media satire of New York Times Pitchbot, here’s a de-paywalled interview with PublicNotice.co’s Thor Benson from earlier this month.

Leadership of the European Union have had enough of Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban’s pro-Russia bullshit and are planning to drop an economic bomb on the scumbag’s precious economy if and when he blocks a €50 billion aid package to Ukraine on Thursday, the Guardian reports.

The pain points they can exploit abound, with as much as 78 percent of Hungary’s exports reliant on trading partners in the bloc, as well as stripping the Orban Regime of voting rights at summits.

“The reality is Hungary has not really been flexible,” with helping Ukraine, an EU source in Brussels told the Guardian, adding “The member state level of frustration is increasing,”

Most of the Trump Reich are pretty quiet in response to a jury finding the fat bastard owes $83.3 million to rape victim EJ Carroll on Friday, Politico notes in an overview, with former Michigan GOP director Jason Roe telling them that “Everyone is just trying to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“It’s his one legal case that no Republican gives a damn about because it doesn’t fit with their narrative that the Democrats are using the justice system to prevent him from running for office. Which is bullshit. But this one is just about Trump’s personal behavior. It’s separate,” said anti-MAGA Republican former Illinois Congressman Joe Walsh on why the institutional MAGA are mostly silent.

To those who might say, "The Right need its own Taylor Swift for young women to look up to!" I answer we already have that.

Her name is Lauren Boebert pic.twitter.com/lSIkvrJlvF

— Scott Greer 6’2” IQ 187 (@ScottMGreer) January 29, 2024

A retired Republican state judge on Sunday told the Illinois State Board of Elections that Donald Trump should not be eligible for the upcoming election, but a court should make that determination, not the Board, the Associated Press reports.  On Friday, the Board heard arguments from attorneys for Donald Trump and for those who wish to remove him from the Illinois ballot for participating in the January 6th insurrection.

Clark Erickson, the hearing officer for the Board who examined the petition, wrote in his opinion, “In the event that the Board decides to not follow the Hearing Officer’s recommendation to grant the Candidate’s Motion to Dismiss [thereby sending the case to the courts to decide], the Hearing Officer recommends that the Board find that the evidence presented at the hearing on January 26, 2024 proves by a preponderance of the evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection, within the meaning of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and should have his name removed from the March, 2024 primary ballot in Illinois.”

The Chiefs are not a good football team and Travis Kelce looks like he should retire. He’s been worthless the last seven or eight weeks. The double worthless Pfizer shots may have caught up with him. Either that or Taylor Swift is the Chiefs Yoko Ono. Maybe both.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) December 25, 2023

Triple coverage?! That’s just atrocious. The Taylor Swift Super Bowl is here. You failed America, Ravens.

— Clay Travis (@ClayTravis) January 28, 2024

A pair of protesters affiliated with the group Riposte Alimentaire, or “Food Counterattack,” threw soup at the Mona Lisa hanging in The Lourve to protest the lack of sustainable food sources being developed, the BBC reports.  In their performance art in front of art, the two representatives of the group recited, “What is more important? Art or the right to healthy and sustainable food? Your agricultural system is sick. Our farmers are dying at work,” before being led out by security.

Arguably the most famous painting in the world, the Mona Lisa is protected by a glass panel in front of it because it has been the target of a number of such protests in the past.

A retired Illinois judge tasked with making a determination on whether disgraced former President Trump is eligible for the ballot on Sunday ruled the fat fuck did violate Section III of the constitution’s 14th Amendment’s proscription on insurrectionists being eligible for public office though deferred to the courts to rule on whether Trump would appear on the ballot, WBEZ reports.

“[Trump] does not dispute that he knew violence was occurring at the capitol.. He understood that people were there to support him. Which makes one single piece of evidence, in this context, absolutely damning to his denial of his participation: the tweet regarding Mike Pence’s lack of courage while [Trump] knew the attacks were going on is inexplicable,” wrote retired Kankakee County Judge Clark Erickson wrote in his ruling as requested by the State Board of Elections after the Friday hearing he presided over. “[Trump] knew the attacks were occurring because the attackers believed the election was stolen, and this tweet could not possibly have had any other intended purpose besides to fan the flames,” Erickson continued in the opinion.

“It is impossible to imagine the Board deciding whether Candidate Trump is disqualified by Section 3 without the Board engaging in significant and sophisticated constitutional analysis,” Erickson wrote, noting that isn’t the board’s job and a court is going to have to pick it up. “Attempting to resolve a constitutional issue within the expedited schedule of an election board hearing is somewhat akin to scheduling a two-minute round between heavyweight boxers in a telephone booth.”

“Last week, the Office of the Attorney General (‘OAG’) requested the Third Court of Appeals step in to put a stop to a Travis County judge’s lawless orders requiring unnecessary and harassing depositions in a case brought by four disgruntled former employees. Disappointingly, the court denied relief despite the OAG’s decision not to contest liability, which put an end to any need for further discovery in this case and permits the OAG to focus on the critical challenges facing our State, including the unprecedented flood of illegal immigration at our southern border.”

“The OAG will seek relief from the Texas Supreme Court to vindicate its right to choose not to defend a meritless but expensive and time-consuming case in a biased and unfavorable trial court, as defendants routinely do. In seeking review, the OAG will ask the Supreme Court simply to treat the OAG the same as any other litigant who chooses not to contest a lawsuit. The men and women of the OAG who represent the State of Texas look forward to focusing on work that matters to all 30 million Texans, and not the personal crusade of four former employees,” says Picasso-faced Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office in a statement further underscoring just how desperate this corrupt, lazy-eyed son of a bitch is to avoid going under oath and incriminating himself.

Fat former President Trump on Sunday reacted to three American service personnel and thirty injured in a drone attack on an installation in Jordan by capitalizing on it politically in a series of bullshit posts on Truth Social saying Biden is too weak and promising “peace through strength” and blah blah blah without any actual specifics of how he thinks strength is supposed to be projected without having boots on the ground in certain conflict zones – which involves risk of casualties.

Trump should know this better than Biden actually, since the Defense Department’s own records say that no fewer than 75 American service members were killed as a result of “hostile action” between 2017 and 2020. The records do not include 2023, but they list only 13 killed in that one suicide bomb attack during the 2021 evacuation of Kabul and 0 killed in action in 2022. Unless 60+ troops were killed as a result of enemy action in 2023 – which we’re pretty sure nowhere even close to that number died, if any at all – Biden’s record on this matter is significantly and quantifiably better.

Lead Republican negotiator on the border package Oklahoma Senator James Lankford on Sunday calmly mocked his fellow conservatives for dicking around with the border package saying they’re getting what they wanted and it’s stupid to suddenly want to change their minds because it’s a presidential election year. That was the rational shit that Lankford, who on Saturday was censured by his home state party for pushing the bill (though it might not have been “official”), said during his Sunday show hits. The stupid shit was when he told CBS that fat former President Trump getting hit with an $83.3 million defamation judgment to a woman he raped does not give him “pause.”

At least three US military personnel were killed and two dozen injured in a drone attack on a base in Jordan near the border with Syria on Sunday, CNN reports on more Iranian fuckery.

Anticipating getting absolutely destroyed this week at the conclusion of his New York State civil fraud trial this week, disgraced former President Trump on Sunday hinted Judge Arthur Engoron, who will deliver the verdict as it was a bench trial, would face violence if and when Engoron drops the hammer on Donald’s corrupt business empire, posting “The Judge is being badly influenced, and the Gag Order must come off! REMEMBER,THIS JUDGE RULED AGAINST ME BEFORE THE TRIAL EVEN STARTED, AND HE KNEW NOTHING ABOUT THE CASE. The public is angry over this HOAX.”

The fat bastard continued the rant in a subsequent post, writing “Hopefully, Judge Engoron, who should have never taken this NON JURY Trial, or should have dismissed it long ago, will show that the New York State Judicial System is ALIVE, RESPECTED, AND WELL. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”

The rest of the two posts were just the same bullshit admitting that he defrauded the lenders but that it shouldn’t have been considered illegal because of his statements and blah blah blah.

Kristen Welker needs some more Red Bull in her before she sits down for these chats. Her face is easier to look at than that of her rodent-like predecessor Chuck Todd, her voice devoid of the chittering and squeaks. But this is so stupid how she lets Nikki Haley rant about how Trump shouldn’t be disqualified from the ballot when clearly the question was about a political disqualification and not the 14th Amendment that Haley wanted to make it about.

That being said, we will give Nikki Haley some credit here for trashing the fat bastard and being respectful of the jury’s finding on Friday. Not a lot, because she still clearly is trying to avoid pissing off the fanboys. This is still going significantly further than Ron DeSantis ever did.

House Republicans on Sunday released two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, one for “willful and systemic refusal to comply with the law” and and another for “breach of public trust,” even as many refuse to work with the Biden Administration and Senate Republicans on a border security package, ABC News reports.

“These articles lay out a clear, compelling, and irrefutable case for Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green in a statement.

“This is where [Republicans] seek fame, rather than a fix. And what you’re going to find here is that if we were to solve this crisis, this committee wouldn’t have anything to talk about. And that’s more important to the Speaker of this House and that’s more important to the person that too many of them rely upon when they make decisions, which is the former president,” California Dem Eric Swalwell told The Hill in an earlier story about the politics of the border situation overall. The quote fits pretty nicely with this stupid impeachment effort and the markup hearing on Tuesday will give Democrats plenty of opportunity to hammer Republicans on refusing to work with them.

Fat former President Trump on Saturday told a crowd of fans in Las Vegas that he’s happy to take the blame for killing a bipartisan border security bill that would address the “crisis” that he and other Republicans claim is destroying the United States now in the present. “As the leader of our party, there is zero chance I will support this horrible open borders betrayal of America. I’ll fight it all the way. A lot of the senators are trying to say, respectfully, they’re blaming it on me. I say, that’s okay. Please blame it on me. Please,” said Donald, evidently aware he’s playing right into Dems’ hands.

Gina Swoboda, a former Trump advisor who leads an election conspiracy group, was elected to lead the Arizona Republican Party, the Arizona Republic reports.  Swoboda is the executive director of the Voter Reference Foundation, a group that works to sow distrust in election systems.  The job is unpaid, its biggest responsibility is fundraising, and it was open because the guy who had it resigned after it was revealed he tried to get Kari Lake to stay out of the Arizona Senate seat race.

The vice chair of the Texas Republican Party announced a challenge for the leadership of the state Party after the chair was linked to an organization working with white nationalists, the Texas Tribune reports.

“Recently, our party has strayed from its fundamental mission – growing the Republican Party by reaching new voters and advancing a platform that is grounded in conservative principles,” Texas GOP vice chair Dana Myers said in a statement. “Instead, we find ourselves in a state of disarray, fractured by internal divisions and marred by turmoil. This situation is untenable, and it’s time for a positive change.”

Within the last few weeks, the leaders of the Republican Party in Arizona and Florida have resigned in scandals:  in Arizona, the GOP leader attempted to bribe Kari Lake not to enter the Senate race (she did), and in Florida, the state Party’s First Couple engaged in a hypocritical throuple while leading the charge to protect children from people they considered sexual deviants.

“IF IMMUNITY IS NOT GRANTED TO A PRESIDENT, EVERY PRESIDENT THAT LEAVES OFFICE WILL BE IMMEDIATELY INDICTED BY THE OPPOSING PARTY. WITHOUT COMPLETE IMMUNITY, A PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WOULD NOT BE ABLE TO PROPERLY FUNCTION!”  So posts Donald Trump on his failing social media site, but without connection to exactly which one of his legal cases he’s referring to, and without noting that the only way one gets indicted is if one, in fact, is found to have likely committed a crime.

Former South Carolina Governor Nimrata “Nikki” Haley’s home was targeted in a swatting attack by parties unknown last month, Politico reports. As usual whoever called claimed to be a man who murdered his wife, but cops responded to an empty house as Haley was out on the campaign trail with her son and her husband Mike is deployed overseas in an unspecified country.