Remember during the Summer of 2022, when Republicans were crying about their victimization (as they still do), and a disturbed man approached Republican Congressman Lee Zeldin as he was campaigning for New York governor?  The conservative hype machine cried it was a lib knife attack and assassination attempt, but it turned out to be a drunken veteran with PTSD holding a keychain with two sharp points.  Well, seventeen months later, the man, 44-year-old David Jakubonis, has undergone therapy, is completing an alcohol rehab stint, and was sentenced to three years of probation Thursday, per the Associated Press.

“Michael Green, 50, and Byron Bolden, 37, were formally sentenced this month after being convicted of retail theft at a Kohl’s department store in [Parker, Colorado]. The investigation revealed both Green and Bolden were associated with other Kohl’s thefts, which is why the department store dubbed the pair the ‘KitchenAid Mixer Crew.’ In addition to stealing brand name shoes and clothing, the thefts also included high-end KitchenAid appliances… At trial, defense attorneys suggested to a jury that their clients should only face a lesser misdemeanor charge because some of the items they stole were being offered ‘on sale.’ In Colorado, theft under $2,000 is a misdemeanor offense.”

“Meanwhile, theft between $2,000 and $5,000 is a Class 6 felony. The documented value of the items stolen was $2,094.98. A jury ultimately convicted both men of felony theft” says a Wednesday press release from Colorado 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner’s office.

A report from The Denver Gazette tells the story of their “defense” a little better, describing it was more theoretical that the items could have been on sale using various coupons and Kohl’s shopper discounts available… if they had actually paid for the shit. Which they didn’t.

Trump: He asked me a question, ‘please say you don’t want to be a dictator.’ I said no I won’t say that pic.twitter.com/JHHNkENs0D

— Biden-Harris HQ (@BidenHQ) December 14, 2023

“Members of the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force located in the FBI’s West Covina Resident Agency and leaders with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, the Tustin Police Department, the Fullerton Police Department, and the Orange County District Attorney’s Office on December 13 announced that a juvenile suspect who was a member of an online swatting ring was arrested on the morning of December 12. A series of hoax swatting threats had been made over the summer targeting numerous religious, educational, and public institutions in the United States, to include Jewish synagogues and African American churches. The group suspected of perpetrating the hoaxes was known to have called in bomb threats and swatting attempts at Jewish facilities, including at least 25 synagogues in 13 states between July 2023 and August 2023.”

“‘Swatting’ is a term used to describe criminal activity by an individual or group who knowingly provides false information to police suggesting that a threat exists at a particular location so that police respond with tactical units, or what’s commonly known as a SWAT team. The Joint Terrorism Task Force – in concert with law enforcement in Southern California and New York, as well as community organizations – compiled information that led to the identity of the individual believed to have created the server that hosted the suspected swatting network. The server that hosted that network, which has since been taken offline, included members who espoused extremist views, to include the glorification of highly publicized mass killers. The suspect was arrested on the morning of December 12 by members of the Joint Terrorism Task Force and will be charged at the state level by the Orange County District Attorney’s Office with two of the local swatting hoaxes. The local swatting attempts occurred at synagogues in Tustin, California, and in Fullerton, California. The suspect’s name will not be released because the individual is a minor” – FBI press release.

Florida GOP Chair Christian Ziegler has told his party he’ll accept $2 million if they want him to quit, evidently feeling confident enough to shake them down after the rape accusation against him almost certainly collapsed last week, FloridaPolitics.com reports on more fun in the Sunshine State.

One source told Florida Politics the party said they’re in no position to pay out that amount of money and another said the process of removing him is already underway though there’s no consensus on how long it could take. Worse, whatever momentum that still exists is likely to be sapped if and when law enforcement or prosecutors make a public call on whether they’re going to charge Ziegler.

Meanwhile the Biden Campaign tells CNN their Wednesday email fundraising off the inquiry vote was the best performing one so far this month, though they haven’t given specific numbers yet.

Just hours after an intermediate appeals court on Thursday tossed disgraced former President Trump’s appeal of the gag order imposed by Judge Arthur Engoron in the $250 million civil fraud lawsuit case New York Attorney General Letitia James brought against Trump’s corrupt business empire, the New York State Court of Appeals (which should just be called the goddamned Supreme Court like in every other state) denied the Orange Messiah leave for an appeal. Game over, fatass.

Dem former Congressman Tom Suozzi will face Republican Town of North Hempstead Council Member Mazi Melesa Pilip – an Ethiopian-Israeli-American former IDF paratrooper who was actually a registered Dem until recently – in the February 13th, 2024 special election to fill New York’s 3rd Congressional District seat vacated by Cameo star George Santos, the New York Times reports.

Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman rates the contest as a “toss-up” because everything needs to be a fucking horserace these days. Expect a shit ton of money and media coverage of a special in which both candidates were picked by what could reasonably be described with that old “cigar smoke-filled room” trope of Empire State politics. There probably was vape involved too.

“I got Impeached TWICE, was found NOT GUILTY, TWICE, but the Democrats never gave me the benefit or luxury of an Impeachment INQUIRY. Had they done so I never would have been Impeached They went straight to a Trial, before knowing anything about my complete and total innocence. WITCH HUNT! It was disgraceful. Biden is lucky to only have an Inquiry, and he’s GUILTY AS HELL!“ wrote disgraced former President Trump on Truth Social on Thursday.

This is – surprise! – completely false in regard to Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Pelosi did get the House to formalize it in a party-line vote just a few weeks after she had first announced it.

It is true however that there wasn’t an inquiry vote taken the second time around in 2021, but that 10 Republicans went along with the Dems after all of their lives were endangered in the violent insurrection he had incited kind of takes off whatever edge Trump thinks he’s arguing here.

Ukrainian MP Oleksandr Dubinsky Rumored to be Summoned to Joe Biden’s Impeachment Hearings Is Violently Beaten by Unknown Assailants in Ukrainian Detention Center via @gatewaypundit https://t.co/BPyDgkBCXd

— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) December 14, 2023

“Upon the conclusion of the 118th Congress, I will be retiring from the House of Representatives. Serving the wonderful constituents of Georgia’s Third District has been the honor of a lifetime. I have been blessed to have worked with such a talented and dedicated staff in my District and DC offices,” writes Republican Georgia Congressman Drew Ferguson in a Thursday statement that goes on a bit longer with boring boilerplate shit about his “achievements” in office and what not.

What it doesn’t mention – but is extremely hard to imagine doesn’t factor in to Ferguson’s decision to call it quits – is how his family received death threats after Ferguson switched his vote away from Jim Jordan during the locker room freak’s three failed votes to become Speaker of the House.

It’s not clear if it was Ferguson’s wife who got a voicemail from a MAGA terrorist who said “You’re going to be fucking molested like you can’t ever imagine,” among other shit. CNN’s Jake Tapper wouldn’t identify the target of the “grassroots pressure campaign” when he aired it in October.

Alcoholic shitbrain Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer Joe Sibley on Thursday informed the court that his asshole client will not be taking the stand in his defense in the federal civil trial to determine how much in defamation damages mother-daughter former Georgia election worker duo Ruby Freeman and Shae Moss are owed over Giuliani falsely accusing the two of being part of a vast conspiracy to rig the 2020 election against disgraced former President Trump, Politico’s Kyle Cheney reports.

The dodge comes just days after Rudy’s former client Trump pulled a similarly chickenshit move and backed out of previously announced testimony for his defense in the $250 million civil fraud lawsuit case New York Attorney General Letitia James brought against Trump’s corrupt business empire.

Not squirming out of testifying this week were the two plaintiffs. Moss on Tuesday had told the court she was humiliated when the manager of a Chick-fil-A she had applied to work at asked if she was a “traitor” while showing her a pic from some MAGA website. Freeman took the stand on Wednesday and told the court she had to leave her home after her name appeared on a “death list” kept by an Oath Keeper who FBI agents arrested in the days after the Capitol riot, among other horrible shit.

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer on Thursday did a great job of repeating the lines Fox News conspiracy idiot Maria Bartiromo fed him after the Associated Press reported just after midnight reported that Comer’s own financial dealings risk “undercutting the force of some of Comer’s central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden,” and that a shell company that Comer owned but transferred to his wife “functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking his stake in the land that he co-owns with the [Comer campaign] donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms.”

Turkish Islamist opposition MP Hasan Bitmez, who on Tuesday collapsed from a massive heart attack in the parliament chamber immediately after he warned that President Recep Erdogan’s ruling party “will not be able to escape the wrath of Allah” for continuing to trade with Israel during the war in Gaza, died Thursday after having lingered in a hospital for two days, Reuters reports.

It’s not clear if any of Bitmez’s Islamist MPs or other religious/political figures in Turkey or elsewhere in the Muslim world are reconsidering invoking the wrath of Allah on Israel and/or their domestic political opponents given the curious timing. More likely they’re just going to chalk it up to the two blocked veins in his heart that struck him down and leave it there. Science is good enough this time.

The Wisconsin MAGA hillbilly who goes by @JudicialProtest and wrote the infamous “Why is Judge Engoron’s Principal Law Clerk, Allison R Greenfield, palling around with Chuck Schumer?” post that led to fat former President Trump getting slapped with a gag order is himself a serial stalker who has no less than three 50 year restraining orders, has been convicted of violating the multiple times, and is once again under investigation for another violation, the Messenger reports.

Just the week after a screenshot of his September 27 post on Greenfield was picked up by Trump on Truth Social, 40 year-old Brock Fredlin was arrested on 130 counts of violating a restraining order and stalking. Later that month in an appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court, Fredlin wrote that two of his stalking victims should be prosecuted because his “sentiments have already received endorsement from President Trump, who expressed support for them on October 3, 2023.”

The Florida Man virus has mutated into a corporate variant:  A Florida company that promoted itself as “America’s Most Patriot Brand” and said its Manly Man products “are 100% American made and nothing says ‘Merica [sic] like making products right here at home for ‘Merica man and woman alike” are actually 100% made in China, the Miami Herald reports.

According to the company’s website, which goes by the brand name Old Southern Brass USA, you can buy things like a shot glass shaped like a shotgun shell, or a shot glass with a fake bullet in it, or reusable drink chillers shaped like bullets, or a shot glass or a Fourth of July patriotic whiskey decanter sans bullet.  And it gets worse:  the company promoted that 10% of their sales went to support veterans’ charities, which of course was a lie.  (Remember Letitia James’ first victory over Donald Trump was also veterans fraud:  using his Foundation funds illegally for political purposes by paying off veterans charities?).

The website has since been updated with what appears to be boilerplate language explaining that while parts are manufactured in China, some products are assembled in the US. Yahoo has archived images.

With war breaking out in Europe and the Middle East, why not have a new one in South America for kicks, eh?  That’s what’s brewing on the border of Guyana and Venezuela, where troops are massing along the border as the two nations squabble over an oil-rich province that both nations claim as their own, NBC News reports.

Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali called Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro “an outlaw” after Maduro started giving licenses to Venezuelan oil drilling companies for Guyana’s Essequibo region, which Maduro claims voted to join Venezuela suspiciously after oil was found there in 2015.  Election experts–real ones, not like Sidney Powell–question the legitimacy of the claimed outcome, however.

Asked a direct, ambiguous question from Trump advisor and unemployed foosball figurine Sean Hannity–“Is this now an investigation about Joe Biden being involved in what would be a bribery scandal, a money laundering scandal, and an influence-peddling scandal?”–Missouri Republican Jason Smith completely misses the softball:  “This has always, Sean, been an investigation in regards to Joe Biden.  The IRS whistleblowers when they came forward, they highlighted how the Justice Depar–” before Hannity interrupts to ask the question again: “Those three issues, though.  That’s what I’m asking:  bribery, money laundering, influence peddling.”–“It could be a multitude of numerous items and we’re just continuing to follow the facts.”

Except they’re not:  they’re not releasing facts.  They’re releasing quickly-debunked accusations that don’t point to anything corrupt, so “could be” does a lot of heavy lifting when you have no evidence of anything resembling a crime done by Joe Biden.

Three lawyers who represented Republican gubernatorial candidate and soft-focused Zoomer Kari Lake face sanctions from an Arizona regulatory committee after an investigation by the state bar association, the Arizona Republic reports.  Kurt Olsen, Bryan Blehm and Andrew Parker represented Lake either individually or in various combinations in a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn the 2022 gubernatorial election, which Lake lost to her Democratic challenger, the now Gov. Katie Hobbs.

The state bar association has already sanctioned the three lawyers, and the state Attorney Discipline Probable Cause Committee, essentially acting as a grand jury for professional discipline, agreed that there is sufficient proof of malfeasance that the three should face a disciplinary judge.  That judge will determine the appropriate punishment, which could range from a reprimand to disbarment.

In challenges to Hobbs’ victory, Blehm and Olsen repeatedly claimed without evidence that it had been proven that 35,000 votes had been inexplicably added to the vote total to give the election to Hobbs.  Blehm, for his part, continues to believe, as he stated in his response to the charges:  “As I stated at the outset of this response, this argument was presented on behalf of our client in good faith and I continue to believe it has merit.  In no way did I or have I ever attempted to mislead the court and I am not now seeking to mislead the State Bar of Arizona.”

The Attorney General of New Hampshire has filed a civil lawsuit against a group of neo-Nazis for trying to intimidate a LGBTQ-owned coffee shop in Concord from hosting a drag queen story hour, NBC News reports.  Appropriately-named Christopher Hood, the 25-year-old leader of the neo-Nazi group NSC-131, and 19 other unnamed members face fines of up to $10,000 each for violating the state’s anti-discrimination law.

“NSC-131” stands for National Socialist Club 131 intending to imply there are 130 other such “clubs.”  The group of men wearing masks, sunglasses, baseball caps and matching shirts and pants, seen in a viral video taken from inside the Teatotaller coffee shop, banged on the windows and threw Nazi salutes while shouting to intimidate the people, including children, at the cafe for the June event to celebrate Pride month.

“Acts of hate designed to terrorize an individual or business into violating our State’s antidiscrimination laws are simply wrong and will not be tolerated,” New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella said in a statement.  The attorney for Hood called the lawsuit “virtue signaling,” which is a very poor defense in court.