A new Public Policy Polling survey of Wisconsin GOP voters in the state’s Republican US Senate primary to take on incumbent Dem Tammy Baldwin finds far right extremist former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke with 52 percent support and his closest competitor Eric Hovde at 7 percent.

Clarke’s name recognition probably plays a role, as does him telling the audience at a 2021 QAnon fan event that the Capitol riot “was not an insurrection. If we decide to pull an insurrection, you’re gonna know it. There’s very little you’re going to be able to do about it,” and in 2020 tweeting that the COVID-19 pandemic was “an orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM.”

So yeah it’ll be great to have Clarke on the ballot in the one swing state where President Joe Biden has, for reasons unclear, been consistently polling ahead of his 2020 margin against Trump.

WOW! This upcoming political documentary looks fucking awesome. Such gripping footage. Also love the casting choices for the preenactments of the July 4, 2029 battle of Washington, DC. The director Alex Garland and his crew precreated the Western Forces/Florida Alliance assault on the White House perfectly. Just amazing attention paid to future historical authenticity here.

The Sarasota School Board on Monday voted 4 to 1 on a non-binding resolution to urge Moms for Liberty co-founder Bridget Ziegler to resign following the almost certainly unfounded rape accusation against her husband, Florida GOP chairman Christian Ziegler, NBC News reports. The lone dissenter was Ziegler herself, apparently not quitting as it seems extremely likely her husband won’t be criminally charged for a sexual encounter with their mutual three-way sex partner after video of it that Christian had recorded was obtained by police. So really at this point it looks like they’re just trying to fire Bridget for being bisexual, really the best of all outcomes for a woman whose career is built on homophobic and transphobic “moral” crusades.

First Son Hunter Biden showed up on Capitol Hill on Wednesday to not answer the subpoena for a closed-door deposition sent by House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer and his buddies Jim Jordan and Jason Smith, skipping their circlejerk to hold his own press conference with attorney Abbe Lowell, where Hunter railed against the Congressclowns whose “illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence, and lies. I’m here today to acknowledge I have made mistakes in my life and wasted opportunities…for that I am responsible.”

“Let me state as clearly as I can: My father was not financially involved in my business… during my battle with addiction, my parents were there for me. They literally saved my life… to suggest that is grounds for an impeachment inquiry is beyond the absurd,” said Hunter to reporters. He then took it right to the three dipshits, saying “James Comer, Jim Jordan, Jason Smith, and their colleagues have distorted the facts… There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing. They have lied over and over… They have displayed naked photos of me during an Oversight hearing.”

Disgraced former President Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday seriously filed, to the Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, widely considered to be the second most prestigious court of law in the United States, a motion calling their adversarial party, Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, a “Grinch” who was trying to steal Christmas from them and their families.

We know he won’t do it, but Smith really should call Trump “Jabba the Hutt” in his response.

Organizers of the drive to land an abortion rights measure on the 2024 ballot in Florida tell Politico Playbook they’re on track to get the 891,523 valid signatures required by the end of the year to make it, having already gotten 1.4 million signers (200,000 registered Republicans included).

Now since you’re probably asking how 500,000 more than the minimum equals “on track” rather than “a done deal,” here’s an explainer from Ballotpedia: “Florida also has a signature distribution requirement, which requires that signatures equaling at least 8 percent of the district-wide vote in the last presidential election be collected from at least half (14) of the state’s 28 congressional districts,” requiring a thorough review to make sure they got them in enough places.

The organizers sound confident enough as, per Politico’s reporting, they’re sending their canvassing vendor home early and deploying volunteers for the mop-up. So the true test is going to be getting past the DeSantis Regime, who are without a doubt going to make the kind of shit Ohio Republicans tried to pull to stop this year’s abortion ballot measure there look like it was sponsored by Planned Parenthood and probably the real reason the organizers already have more than 150 percent of the legally required signatures. All that extra padding is unfortunately necessary.

We’re not going to be like “Oh Trump’s in BIG trouble in Florida next November if this abortion measure is on the ballot,” because that’s just stupid. He’s still going to win the state, even if there’s serious pro-choice turnout. That’s not to say that turnout isn’t potentially going to be a major headache for him, however. Right off the bat he’ll be forced to invest more money in what’s otherwise a safe red state while Biden can largely just coast on the pro-choice groups’ spending.

We are disappointed by the Court’s decision to allow Democrats a second attempt at gerrymandering in NY.

Instead of focusing on policies that appeal to voters, Democrats are trying to cheat their way to power. We'll continue to hold them & their terrible policies accountable.

— NRCC (@NRCC) December 12, 2023

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Tuesday told reporters his office has been spending money from its budget on Narcan, a medication used to reverse opioid overdoses, to distribute to local election officials in the Peach State after Raffensperger himself was mailed an envelope that tested positive for fentanyl last month, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports.

“We have all these things that keep us up at night. Our job right now is to be prepared for the 2024 election. Some people are just off-kilter. And I just think we need to get back to those values that our parents raised us with, the values of our country,” Raffensperger said. “We’re in a much better place than other states, but yet we still have some angry people out there. All that anger and vitriol, those thoughts of retribution, I don’t think that’s the American way,” he continued naively.

A Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania man visiting St Pete Beach, Florida was arrested last Friday after he threw “gator nuggets” at other patrons of a restaurant and “sexually molested” their manatee statue, then screamed obscenities at a hotel employee, Fox 35 reports on an outsider going native.

As he plans his next raid on Whoville, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) wants everyone–particularly his constituents–to know what’s really important to him.  And that would be his podcast.  Ted Cruz has a podcast, folks!  A podcast, where he talks about things!  …because hearing his dulcet tones is what America wants(?) and being a United States Senator is Ted’s back-up gig.  (Seriously, the GOP would be far more stable if they elected public servants, not self-servants like Cruz, Marge and Gaetz who are more interested in promoting their brands.)

Unwilling to accept that sometimes, life doesn’t go your way, the Republican Attorney General has launched an investigation into the NCAA football playoff selection committee because Florida State University was excluded from the four-team field, NBC News reports.

FSU played an undefeated season, finishing as high as third in some polls, but falling to fifth in the selection committee rankings, who gave the seeds to Texas and neighboring Alabama who had one loss each but arguably played harder schedules. Attorney General Ashley Moody, angry that her home state team was snubbed as teams frequently are when subjective rankings are used, will now waste thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to harass the NCAA and the thirteen members of the selection committee because she cannot accept that her state’s team didn’t make the grade, because Florida is special.

“My Office is launching an investigation to examine if the Committee was involved in any anticompetitive conduct. As it stands, the Committee’s decision reeks of partiality, so we are demanding answers — not only for FSU, but for all schools, teams and fans of college football,” Moody said in a statement. “In Florida, merit matters. If it’s attention they were looking for, the Committee certainly has our attention now.”

A Kentucky woman who sued to have an abortion, challenging the state’s virtual ban on the medical procedure, reports that her fetus no longer has a heartbeat, putting the viability of her challenge to the law into question, the Washington Post reports.

The ACLU of Kentucky filed the challenge to Kentucky’s law on the unnamed woman’s behalf when she was eight weeks pregnant, claiming the state ban on abortion access violated her rights to privacy and self-determination.  Rated as one of the most restrictive states for abortion access in the country, Kentucky has the sixth-highest maternal fatality rate in the United States.

The suit attacks two pillars of Kentucky’s anti-abortion law:  the provision that allows an abortion only for a medical emergency or a danger to the life of the mother, and the provision that allows an abortion up to the sixth week of pregnancy.  “The bans and the irreparable harms they inflict are an affront to the health and dignity of all Kentuckians,” the lawsuit states. “Everyone who can become pregnant has a right to determine their own future and to make decisions about their relationships and life opportunities without government interference that puts their health and well-being at risk.”

House Oversight Chairbilly James Comer is suspicious of Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy after being asked one too many questions about why Comer keeps saying shit that he can’t actually come close to proving and is no longer going on the Fox News morning show because of the bespectacled dork still capable of a modicum of independent thought. Comer seems to almost be stopping himself here from mocking that show’s audience the same way he did with CNN and MSNBC for questioning him.

According to US intelligence community estimates, the Kremlin has lost 87% of the troops–roughly seven out of eight soldiers–that were in the Russian ground forces since the beginning of its invasion of Ukraine, CNN reports, with an additional estimate that two-thirds of the tanks in its inventory are destroyed.

It’s not coincidental that this assessment was released on the day that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House and Capitol Hill to push for continued aid to Ukraine and President Biden announced $200 million in additional assistance.

At least twice over the past three days disgraced former President Trump’s campaign has sent out an email asking fans to “Please add your name to my Official Petition: Restore President Donald J Trump’s First Amendment Rights,” an action call likely representing the apex of MAGA dumbassery.

Something makes this considerably fucking dumber and weirder than the lame unscientific polls they have people answer and then not even show the current result afterwards (the most recent one’s question of “On a scale of 1-5, with 5 being ‘I would write in President Trump’s name even if left-wing judges removed his name from the ballot,’ how strongly do you support President Trump?” is a whole other hilarious can of worms). Setting aside that entering one’s contact data and even more so a credit card number for the campaign contribution prompted afterward is what they’re really after in both the “petition” and the “polls,” the latter at least carries some vague quantum of feedback like rating a customer support person’s helpfulness after you’ve interacted with them.

Does the Trump campaign actually use the feedback data? Almost certainly not. The tiny theoretical possibility that they could do so however is more than we can say about this “petition.”

Pro-Russia far right Polish MP Grzegorz Braun on Tuesday went full MAGA on the menorah in the parliament building in Warsaw, ripping a fire extinguisher off the wall and blasting at the candles.

When someone yelled he should be ashamed Braun said “Those who take part in acts of the satanic cult should be ashamed.” It’s unclear if Braun faces any discipline or legal trouble for the attack.

The New York State Court of Appeals (the “Supreme Court” in every other state) on Tuesday ordered the Empire State’s congressional district maps redrawn, a huge win for Democrats seeking to nuke as many as six of those pesky “moderate” twats like Mike Lawler and Marc Molinaro.